Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners
 
 

Quotes of the Day:


"If Columbus had an advisory committee he would probably still be at the dock." 
– Arthur Goldberg

"Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change, their minds cannot change anything."
– George Bernard Shaw

"You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame. How could you rise anew if you have not first become ashes?"
– Friedrich Nietzsche



1. Prima Donnas in Kevlar zones. Challenges to the Unconventional Warfare efforts of the U.S. Special Forces during Operation Enduring Freedom

2. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, March 10, 2024

3. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, March 10, 2024

4. Russia Is Pumping Out Weapons—but Can It Keep It Up?

5. Trump Should Lay Off NATO, Target the U.N.

6. Special Operations News – March 11, 2024

7. Optimizing The Stalemate: Limited Conflicts And The Use Of Special Operations Forces In The Context Of Global Competition

8. Biden’s Armageddon Moment: When Nuclear Detonation Seemed Possible in Ukraine

9. Pope Francis' 'white flag' comment is met by criticism from Ukraine and its allies

10. US military airlifts embassy personnel from Haiti, bolsters security

11. The Army's Innovation Dilemma

12. A World Divided Over Artificial Intelligence

13.  Geopolitics in the C-Suite – More Than Ever, U.S. Foreign Policy Depends on Corporations—and Vice Versa

14. BROKEN TRACK: Suicides & suffering in Army’s exhausted armor community

15. US denies that American aid drop in Gaza killed civilians on ground

16. ‘Oppenheimer,’ My Uncle and the Secrets America Still Doesn’t Like to Tell

17. CSIS Scholars Call for Escalation Against Russia

18. Competition With China Is Inevitable. US Alliance Policy Could Determine Just How Bad It Gets.

19. Beijing’s Pain Could Be Washington’s Gain

20. The New Cold War: Changing Context And Shifting Contours Of International Politics – Analysis



1. Prima Donnas in Kevlar zones. Challenges to the Unconventional Warfare efforts of the U.S. Special Forces during Operation Enduring Freedom


This is a long read. It is based on a survey of Masters theses by many great SOF/SF practitioners. It will( should/must) be on the syllabus of every PME instruction that has any subject matter related to irregular warfare. The article is valuable for its reference list alone and lists many of our great SOF/SF practitioners writing on these topics while at PME institutions.


We are fortunate that this is not behind the paywall. I am forwarding the entire article with all references in case it later is placed back behind the usual paywall.


The PDF can be downloaded here (for now): https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.1080/09592318.2024.2326600?needAccess=true


But this excerpt is most important because it succinctly explains the SF experience during the GWOT. And the conclusion tells the story.


Excerpt:


It seems that SF were in the middle of a ‘push and pull’ situation: conventional commanders pushed SFODAs to a more kinetic approach while the public hype surrounding JSOC units like SEAL Team Six likely pulled some SFODAs towards Direct Action. Cohen observed that ’[commando] unit prominence occurs only during a politico-military crisis, for it is then that the public searches for heroes and politicians look for panaceas’.Footnote89 At the same time, Cohen rightly contended that ‘[commando] units may be misleading or ambiguous symbols, distorting serious public and governmental discussion of complex issues, encouraging instead a preoccupation with martial theater’.Footnote90 Such preoccupation overshadowed UW.

Conclusion

This paper arrives belatedly. Ideally, it should have appeared two decades ago, following Donald Rumsfeld’s advocacy for a centre-stage role of SOCOM in the GWOT. It should have questioned how SOCOM’s emerging role and expansion integrated in the long-established military apparatus and the distinct military cultures. This might have prevented problematic assumptions such as the notion that ‘special operations forces are the darling of the military’, and might have facilitated a more nuanced understanding of U.S. SOF during the GWOT.Footnote107 Today, the MA theses corpus contributes to a deeper insight into SF’s challenges during OEF, indicating that deploying SF in their UW role within conventional military frameworks is paradoxical. In essence, conventional military structures and cultures restrict policymakers’ access to SF’s unconventional capabilities. Decision-makers should contemplate deploying SF in organisational structures that align more closely with those used by JSOC units. This might involve establishing tighter links and cooperation with intelligence agencies. Considering the CIA’s experience with UW, it may be the right partner.Footnote108 However, any cooperation between SF and an intelligence agency should be preceded by the creation of an appropriate legal framework to balance SF’s freedom of action with accountability to the U.S. people.Footnote109
Further research would be beneficial to explore additional topics present in the rich MA corpus. These topics include SF’s problematic reward and career progression system which may ultimately impede their capacity to refine UW skills.Footnote110 It is also vital to understand how the nation-builder versus door-kicker dichotomy plays out within SOCOM and whether it adversely affects SF to ensure a comprehensive understanding and application of this national security instrument in the UW context.Footnote111 Research on the integration of SF with the conventional military should concentrate more on operational and tactical levels. This could potentially reveal new perspectives on how SF and their conventional counterparts could complement each other.Footnote112 However, most crucially, there is a need for further research into the consequences of GWOT on SOF in general. Such research should include a detailed examination of the organisational changes that the SF authors propose as solutions to mitigate some of the adverse consequences of GWOT.
Most of the organisational and cultural obstacles encountered by SF during OEF could have been anticipated and, theoretically, mitigated. For instance, a national security adviser during the Vietnam War, Robert Komer, cautioned that a ’[Military] organization tends to contort policy to existing structures rather than adjusting structures to reflect changes in policy’. Cohen highlighted the cultural tension between the SOF and the conventional military in the late 1970s. During the 1980s, Builder discussed how the extent to which military services and organisations prioritised their sovereignty and survival sometimes diverged from and took precedence over national interests.Footnote113 In the 1990s, Amy Zegart pointed out inherent weaknesses in military structures.Footnote114 Organisational changes often happen at a glacial pace, undermining military strength and contributing to vulnerabilities in national security. In this case, the U.S. government possesses thousands of SF personnel trained and educated in UW, yet it lacks the military organisational structure necessary to lead a UW campaign as a part of a broader armed forces engagement.








Prima Donnas in Kevlar zones. Challenges to the Unconventional Warfare efforts of the U.S. Special Forces during Operation Enduring Freedom

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09592318.2024.2326600?src=exp-la

Anna M. Gielas

Received 02 Feb 2024, Accepted 29 Feb 2024, Published online: 09 Mar 2024


In this article


ABSTRACT

When Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) commenced in October 2001, the U.S. Special Forces (SF) were the first U.S. military unit on the ground in Afghanistan, utilising their Unconventional Warfare (UW) capabilities. Despite their significant role at the initial stage of the military campaign, SF began to encounter numerous challenges from as early as 2002 and throughout OEF. Based on an analysis of forty-five master’s theses authored by SF officers, this paper discusses the structural-organisational and cultural-conceptual challenges. These obstacles led to the marginalisation of SF’s UW efforts. Scholarship on special operations forces (SOF) often regards the period of the so-called global war on terrorism (GWOT) as U.S. SOF’s golden age focusing predominantly on the activities of SOF units linked to the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command rather than on SF. By examining the challenges faced by SF, this article aims to contribute to a more nuanced discussion of SOF efforts during GWOT.

KEYWORDS: Special forcesunconventional warfareoperation enduring freedomglobal war on terrorismAfghanistanspecial operations forcesGreen Berets

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Introduction

After the George W. Bush administration designated the United States (U.S.) Special Operations Command (SOCOM) to plan and synchronise the global war on terrorism (GWOT), U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF) became ‘virtually synonymous with the American way of war since 9/11.Footnote1 During the GWOT, SOF experienced substantial growth, doubling in size, tripling their budget and, at times, quadrupling their presence overseas.Footnote2 In 2011, Admiral William McRaven stated that the U.S. was in ‘the golden age of special operations.Footnote3 Adm. (ret.) McRaven’s perspective was shaped by his experiences as the head of the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), a component command within SOCOM. JSOC-based units, including 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta (Delta Force) and the Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU), primarily conducted Direct Action missions, such as kill-or-capture operations, often in collaboration with the Central Intelligence Agency.Footnote4 Having gained substantial military and political influence, alongside significant public interest, JSOC emerged as ‘an almost industrial-scale counterterrorism killing machine’.Footnote5

The prominence of JSOC-based units often eclipsed the ‘less visible forces, such as Special Forces’ (SF).Footnote6 Although SF are similarly highly trained in Direct Action, including kill-or-capture operations, these forces, commonly referred to as the Green Berets, are traditionally linked with unconventional warfare (UW). Their proficiency in foreign languages, cultural awareness, and regional awareness enables them to work effectively ‘by, through and with surrogate forces’, undertake missions such as foreign internal defence and support civil government projects.Footnote7 The SF undertook these and other missions during Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) in Afghanistan.

Throughout the past two decades, scholars have consistently documented how SOF ‘have transitioned from a marginalized force structure to a prominent and vital part of U.S. military strategy’.Footnote8 However, this assertion is only partially accurate. JSOC-based units adopted novel organisational and bureaucratic structures, but SF largely remained within long-established military structures, often struggling to effectively apply their UW capabilities during OEF. Scholarship tends to either conflate the different U.S. SOF elements, or focuses primarily on JSOC activities, such as Task Force 714 operations during Operation Iraqi Freedom.Footnote9 The task force has garnered scholarly praise for its novel organisational-structural approach and criticism for the implications of its targeted killing tactic.Footnote10 With academic focus predominantly set on the new aspects characterising SOF during GWOT, less attention has been paid to the impact of the military’s long-established organisational structure and its cultures on SOF activities during OEF. Another trend in scholarship, that has limited deeper insights into SOF’s experiences during GWOT, is the emphasis on quantifying SOF growth.Footnote11 The significant numbers mask the reality that SOF constituted only around two to three percent of the U.S. armed forces, even at the height of GWOT.Footnote12 Consequently, SOF were inevitably immersed in the conventional military’s organisational structure and its cultures.

Based on a primary-source corpus of forty-five master’s (MA) theses authored by SF officers, this paper argues that conventional military’s organisational structure and culture significantly limited SF’s UW approach, resulting in isolated and short-lived UW activities. Unconventional warfare, and Indirect Action in general, usually require a sustained and steady commitment that did not materialise during OEF. JSOC units generally did not face the same challenges because they conducted their Direct-Action missions, which usually necessitate rapid and brief operations, largely outside the conventional military’s organisational and cultural architecture. Consequently, the article suggests that when scholars and commentators describe GWOT as a ‘push to super-empower the SOF community’, they primarily refer to JSOC and Direct Action rather than SF and Indirect Action.Footnote13 The paper further argues that, instead of empowering SF, the developments during OEF encroached upon their identity as the UW force within the U.S. military and highlighted broader challenges within SOCOM due to the GWOT.

The current primary-source corpus is particularly well-suited to learn about the challenges during the GWOT, as the MA theses blend academic rigour with practitioners’ insights, illuminating the day-to-day processes during OEF which are largely inaccessible to most academics. Based on the information provided in the MA corpus, official military reports and the websites of the U.S. armed forces, it was possible to verify that the authors of these theses were members of the SF community at the time of their postgraduate research. The theses were written at the Army Command and General Staff College, the Naval Postgraduate School, the Naval War College, the Army War College, the Air War College and the National Defense University. Given that seven of the theses have multiple authors, the sample of forty-five MA dissertations (comprising 3,293 pages) includes a total of fifty-four authors all of whom were commissioned officers at the time of writing. To respectfully balance the privacy of these military personnel with scholarly referencing, the officers’ names are not mentioned within the body of the article but their names and bibliographical details of their theses are provided in the endnotes and references.

The article is structured in two parts. The first part introduces the structural-organisational obstacles that SF encountered in Afghanistan during OEF, demonstrating how deeply embedded SF were within conventional military structures. A brief comparative discussion on how JSOC units circumvented these structures is included to highlight the limitations faced by SF in pursuing UW. The second part delves into the cultural-conceptual difficulties that SF experienced. The origin of the article’s title, ‘Prima Donnas in Kevlar Zones’, is employed to elucidate the divide between SF and their conventional counterparts. The conclusion briefly outlines a couple of implications of these challenges for national security. Ultimately, this article aims to contribute new insights into the U.S’. continuing difficulties to conduct UW despite the apparent empowerment of U.S. SOF during GWOT.

Organizational-structural challenges

When deployed overseas, the armed forces are organised geographically, through the Geographic Combatant Commands (GCC). Each command is responsible for a clearly defined area of operation, thus, maintaining a distinct regional focus. Similarly, five active SF Groups, each consisting of four battalions, headquarters and support elements, have a specific regional orientation. Prior to 9/11, SF played a supporting role to conventional forces, so much so, that SF Groups were considered tactical level organisations.Footnote14 They were not organised to plan and lead UW campaigns at the operational level.Footnote15 Thus, ‘the terrorist attacks of 11 September … found us scrambling to construct a command and control structure to wage unconventional warfare in Afghanistan against Al Qaida and the Taliban’.Footnote16

SOCOM, SF’s parent organisation, also had existed in a supporting capacity since its creation in 1987. Following 9/11, the Bush administration elevated SOCOM to a supported command.Footnote17 SOCOM now maintained ‘primary control of operations and [was] allowed to act independently from regional combatant commanders’.Footnote18 A central issue, however, was that SOCOM was not a geographic combatant command. As a so-called functional command, SOCOM’s role involved preparing U.S. SOF for their missions but it generally did not have command over SF once they deployed to Afghanistan.Footnote19 Although SOCOM developed a GWOT campaign plan and ‘was expected to arrange global military actions to ensure the optimum employment of force’, the GCCs had their own regional campaign plans and, due to the organisational structure, the authority to execute them.Footnote20 So much so that ‘once the forces [SF] are employed by a Geographical Combatant Commander to support major combat operations, it is difficult for USSOCOM to reassign those units to other efforts’.Footnote21 This created a Catch-22 situation in which SOCOM and SF had to operate: politically designated to lead GWOT they had to steer a global campaign without actually being in charge.Footnote22

According to the DOD, the Theater Special Operations Commands (TSOCs) were ‘the tools it [SOCOM] will need to plan and execute missions in support of the global war on terror’.Footnote23 However, the sample of dissertations highlights a multitude of challenges surrounding TSOCs.Footnote24 Arguably, the most significant issue was that TSOCs were not SOCOM’s assets. Each TSOC was subordinate to a GCC and, for most of GWOT, worked for a conventional Geographic Combatant Commander – as they were designed to since their inception in 1983.Footnote25 TSOCs supported their respective campaign commanders through both Direct and Indirect Action missions. Notably, TSOCs did not receive a portion of SOCOM’s substantial post-9/11 funding because the military services were responsible for financing them. Consequently, and contrary to their intended role as world-class integrators of SOF and their capabilities, TSOCs experienced chronic understaffing and faced difficulties contributing to mission planning due to a lack of higher-ranking officers.Footnote26 For instance, at the time the Counterinsurgency Field Manual 3–24 was published in 2006, the highest-ranking SF officer in Afghanistan was a Colonel while an Army General led the U.S. military campaign there.Footnote27 This Colonel did not ‘even have a “seat at the table” during many important decision meetings’.Footnote28 Simultaneously, while acknowledging the importance of TSOCs, SF personnel often viewed TSOC billets as detrimental to their careers and generally were not eager to join TSOC staff. According to a senior SOF member, ‘TSOC staffs are where special operators’ careers go to die’.Footnote29 Deemed ‘a critical component in the country’s special operations arsenal’, TSOCs were flawed organizational-structural elements during most of OEF.Footnote30

An MA student who graduated prior to 9/11 identified the challenges inherent in the geographic command structure as early as in 1996, writing: ‘The problem with the current command structure, as it exists in the form of the unified command plan, is that it perpetuates the conventional wisdom of subordinating SOF to GPF [General Purpose Force] in integrated operations. Virtually all the warfighting headquarters … are GPF organizations’.Footnote31 Post-9/11 strategic elevation of SOCOM was not accompanied by respective organisational-structural changes to the military architecture overseas.Footnote32 Thus, to conduct UW activities in Afghanistan, SF had to rely ‘heavily on conventional forces for much of their support, such as common logistics, force protection, base operations support, fire support, medical evacuation, [and] outer cordon security’.Footnote33

Due to an organisational development led by then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney, JSOC did not face these challenges. It operated ‘as an independent entity outside the standard military chain of command’.Footnote34 Under the Barack Obama administration, JSOC gained a ‘standing authority to use whatever military resources it needs anywhere in the world in pursuit of its counterterrorist mission’, which allowed them to circumvent conventional organisational-structural challenges and bureaucratic delays.Footnote35 Numerous scholars have studied the legal, and potentially worrisome, implications of JSOC’s growing privileges and shrinking accountability, as the SOF organisation blurred the lines between military and intelligence activities.Footnote36 To describe the novel degree of cooperation between JSOC and intelligence agencies, legal scholars such as Jennifer Kibbe and Robert Chesney use the term ‘convergence’.Footnote37 In contrast to SF engaged in UW missions, convergence allowed JSOC units to access military structures and resources as needed yet to operate outside the conventional military command and control architecture. ‘This independence has allowed surgical strike elements, specifically Joint Special Operations Command to become very effective and efficient in their application of force at the tactical level’, two MA authors commented.Footnote38

Working outside the conventional military structures appears to be conducive to SOF success. During the initial stage of OEF in 2001, SF collaborated with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and brought down the Taliban.Footnote39 While the CIA was not SF’s sole partner and SF units, so-called Special Forces Operational Detachment Alphas (SFODAs), relied on support from, for example, the U.S. Air Force, SFODAs operated independently of the GCC. ‘The operational independence of USSF and CIA teams in the fall of 2001 in Afghanistan, although highly effective, was short-lived’, two MA co-authors wrote in 2006.Footnote40 ‘The 18,000 conventional U.S. troops that would eventually arrive in Afghanistan would far outnumber the original commitment of a few hundred USSF operators who orchestrated the downfall of the Taliban regime’.Footnote41 According to two other MA co-authors, ‘With a greater degree of accountability to the conventional command, SF teams became buried under a multi-tiered hierarchical system of command and control’.Footnote42

The MA authors commonly used the term ‘conventionalisation’ to describe the increasing presence and growing military influence of conventional forces in Afghanistan.Footnote43 Consequently, the freedom of SF to ‘operate throughout their assigned sectors also decreased’.Footnote44 A decade after 9/11, an SF officer observed that ‘in the past 10 years most Army SOF have found themselves on the ground operating within the “battlespace” of GPF regular Army commanders’.Footnote45 At various points in time, SFODAs were restricted to operating only ‘within a 10 kilometer radius of their firebase, requiring permission from higher headquarters to travel further than that distance’.Footnote46 One MA author described a ‘FOB mentality’ that limited SF’s tactical operations and situational awareness because Forward Operating Bases personnel, consisting mainly of conventional forces, engaged in small scope activities such as short patrols, ultimately isolating SF from the Afghan populace on which UW depended.Footnote47 The highly defensive approach of the conventional military clashed with the concept of SF to achieve security ‘not by the physical barriers, weapons, and positioning of the a-camp, but through force integration’ with the local populace that, in the best-case scenario, results in mutual trust, cooperation, and support.Footnote48 However, according to one MA author,

[T]here was nothing linking the actions of the disparate forces within Afghanistan for the first nine years of the conflict. That situation led directly to forces working at cross purposes and a kind of emergent strategy by which actions on the ground were not linked to any kind of clear end-state that supported the security interests of the United States.Footnote49

Some authors used their MA theses to put forward concepts of organisational restructuring. For example, some maintained that transforming SOCOM into a military service was essential for SOF in general, and SF in particular, to become strategically relevant and successful during GWOT and similar campaigns in the future.Footnote50 Two co-authors envisioned a SOF service that would ’1) be constructed around the requirements of various mission sets, 2) reduce the current redundancy in mission focus, and 3) allow UW to move to the forefront in order to prepare the battlespace in U/ITEs [unconventional/irregular threat environments]’.Footnote51 The two MA authors envisioned significant changes considering SOCOM’s actual responsibilities. SOCOM unifies SOF across all military services, for example, by establishing requirements for their training, equipping, and deploying. However, SOF, de facto, belong to their respective services and ‘rely on their service[s] for just about everything’.Footnote52 Arguably most significantly, each service independently determines career paths for its personnel ‘which often supersede SOF-specific personnel requirements’.Footnote53 Some authors focused on changing this situation and stressed that a ‘second revolution in SOF military affairs, similar (but greater) than that associated with the creation of USSOCOM must occur for the US to receive efficient strategic utility from SOF’.Footnote54 Additionally, MA authors proposed some ideas for reorganising specialised irregular warfare and UW capabilities under existing or new organisations.Footnote55 Ultimately, the organisational architecture did not change in the ways the MA authors envisioned. Even though the TSOCs were officially reassigned to SOCOM at the final stage of OEF and SOCOM could now organize and equip them, the GCCs continued to have operational control over them.Footnote56

Cultural-conceptual challenges

The majority of the MA theses introduced SF in more detail. A common narrative was the inextricable link between SF and UW.Footnote57 MA authors not only tied the genesis of SF to UW but also their identity and culture.Footnote58 They share a deep-seated sense of ownership of UW and an understanding of being the UW force within the U.S. military. During OEF, this self-perception was contested and threatened by the conventional forces in several ways, posing additional obstacles to SF’s activities. For example, the latter did not necessarily consider UW ‘a distinct, unique category of conflict’.Footnote59 The MA authors refer to a White Paper from April 2009, in which the Chief of Staff of the Army stated that ‘warfare is warfare. The same capabilities developed for regular, symmetric adversaries can and must be adapted for use against unregulated “irregular” enemies’.Footnote60 This interpretation aligns with military studies literature. According to Carl Builder, military organisations generally interpret threats and adversaries in a way that reflects their interests rather than in terms of how to counter the threat most efficiently.Footnote61 However, the Army’s interpretation, and appropriation, of UW appears to have posed an encroachment on SF’s identity.Footnote62 If the Army decided to do Indirect Action, and the JSOC-based units covered Direct-Action activities, how was SF to contribute? The MA authors reacted by, for example, interpreting the Army’s thinking as a mismatch between the threat posed by terrorism and the military means to address it, and by pointing out that the Army’s forte lies in conventional conflicts.Footnote63 In 2009, three co-authors made the following assertion:

Since the beginning of the ‘War on Terror’ in 2001, the DoD has been unable to maintain the advantage over our adversaries to the degree necessary to win. Many successes have been achieved and battles won, but eight years later, the United States is still at war and making, as some would argue, many of the same mistakes. Why? Our group has learned through research and experience that the DoD does not understand IW [irregular warfare, of which UW is an element].Footnote64

Other MA authors concurred that there were issues with the DOD’s and the conventional forces’ approach to OEF.Footnote65 The latter often focused on kinetic effects and assumed ‘a more threatening posture’ than most SF authors were willing to accept.Footnote66 Adopting a populace-centric approach, SF sought to link the interests of the population with their own interests, such as protecting villages against insurgents, thereby denying them territory and influence. Such contrasting approaches between SF and their conventional counterparts prompted MA authors to express ‘growing concerns over the friction between’ the two forces.Footnote67

The MA authors criticised conventional military’s ‘disjointed, haphazard, and inefficient’ use of SF and their UW capabilities.Footnote68 Conventional commanders tended to perceive SF as another light infantry force and apply them ‘to conduct traditional light infantry missions’.Footnote69 This undermined SF’s identity and purpose. Two MA authors observed that ‘interdependent CF/SOF operations conventionalizes [sic] SOF and results [sic] in tactical utility over strategic utility’.Footnote70 Repeatedly discussed reasons for why conventional commanders ‘incorrectly utilized’ SF in Afghanistan were the elemental differences in cultures of the two communities.Footnote71 The MA authors suggested that ‘SOF represent an organizational subculture’, one that is ‘counter to the Army’s organizational culture’.Footnote72 An MA author quoted Morton Halperin, stating that the inception of SF represented ‘the most determined challenge to the Army’s definition of its essence since the separation of the Air Force from the Army’.Footnote73 The cultural differences led ‘to conflicting operational mindsets’.Footnote74 They, in turn, resulted in a lack of in-depth understanding of each other’s capabilities and operations.Footnote75 This could lead to conventional military and SF compromising each other’s tactical efforts.Footnote76 According to an MA author, ‘There are many cases when SOF has conducted operations in CF [conventional forces] battlespace without informing the battlespace owners and staffs, causing significant disruption to CF operations’.Footnote77 The cultural-conceptual differences between the two forces posed serious challenges to the unity of command and the unity of effort, and remained unresolved in different phases and regions of the Afghan campaign.Footnote78

This article’s title, ‘Prima Donnas in Kevlar Zones’, is an illustration of the cultural-conceptual divide: SF ‘considered the conventional areas of operations as the “Kevlar Zone”, so named because of [the] requirement to wear body armor and helmets’.Footnote79 Generally not used to wearing protective gear in the same situations as conventional forces, SF ‘tended to stay away from their conventional counter parts [sic] to prevent harassment’.Footnote80 Foregoing body armour in particular, and SF’s operational mindset in general, struck some conventional military personnel as ‘prima donna’ behaviour.Footnote81 Scholars have repeatedly documented the friction between conventional and special operations forces.Footnote82 As early as 1978, Eliot Cohen noted that conventional forces stigmatised and acted hostile towards SOF.Footnote83 He described enmity that ‘translated into effective harassment’ but did not address how it manifests during deployment.Footnote84

MA authors expressed concern over the increasing involvement of SFODAs in Direct-Action operations, fearing a migration of the force ‘into the realm of corps d’elite’.Footnote85 Particularly between 2009 and 2011, SF engaged in kinetic operations such as raids.Footnote86 Two co-authors wrote:

The immense potential of USSF has been diminished through chronic misuse by conventional commanders. We believe that USSF itself must also share in the blame for this misuse, as USSF has voluntarily shifted away from the ‘bread and butter’ UW COIN missions in Afghanistan. USSF Operational Detachment Alphas (SFODAs) stopped large-scale ‘through, with, and by’ operations with indigenous Afghan forces, and shifted to smaller operations on the Pakistan border collecting intelligence and hunting terrorists with direct action (DA). We believe that this shift of focus was a serious mistake.Footnote87

Some MA authors sought to understand the extent to which SF’s cultural-conceptual focus was shifting towards Direct Action. One MA author surveyed fellow students with SF background in 2014 and reported:

Subjects were asked if they believed, in their professional opinion, whether SF should conduct more direct or more indirect operations […]. An Overwhelming 96 percent responded saying SF should conduct more indirect operations. However, when asked if the majority of the members of respondents’ ODAs [Operational Detachment-Alphas] were given the same question, what would be the response? In that case, 61 percent of subjects said they believed the majority of their ODAs would say SF should conduct more direct operations.Footnote88

It seems that SF were in the middle of a ‘push and pull’ situation: conventional commanders pushed SFODAs to a more kinetic approach while the public hype surrounding JSOC units like SEAL Team Six likely pulled some SFODAs towards Direct Action. Cohen observed that ’[commando] unit prominence occurs only during a politico-military crisis, for it is then that the public searches for heroes and politicians look for panaceas’.Footnote89 At the same time, Cohen rightly contended that ‘[commando] units may be misleading or ambiguous symbols, distorting serious public and governmental discussion of complex issues, encouraging instead a preoccupation with martial theater’.Footnote90 Such preoccupation overshadowed UW.

The MA authors pointed out that SF’s increasing preference for Direct Action threatened to shift the balance between the force’s Direct-Action skills and their UW capabilities in favour of the former, thus eroding crucial unconventional abilities.Footnote91 Additionally, because most SF repeatedly deployed to the central GWOT campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq – areas outside their actual geographical expertise – the regional proficiency of numerous SF personnel was neglected over a multi-year period.Footnote92 The developments prompted some to enquire whether SF’s identity was changing.Footnote93 According to one SF soldier in 2012, ’[W]e as a force are very confused about what the role of Special Forces is. We are an awesome force with so much potential, but, unfortunately, it is being squandered with this perception that we are a super-infantry/Ranger/(Special Mission Unit) type unit’.Footnote94 The same SF operator expressed concern about the potential loss of the ‘traditional role as the premier UW force … while we continue, haphazardly, trying to figure out who we are’.Footnote95

Based on the dissertation sample, one could argue that instead of contributing their unique cultural-conceptual capabilities to OEF, the campaign in Afghanistan actually changed SF. It is unclear whether these changes should be considered a significant transformation of SF, including their culture, or a temporary adjustment intrinsically linked to their deployment. For example, in his thesis, an SF officer studied the evolution of risk taking during OEF. He concluded that SF became more risk-averse and centralised in its command structures, evolving in ways fundamentally opposed to its original culture and its conceptual understanding of UW.Footnote96 After all, UW takes place in inherently complex environments that require high degrees of both autonomy and risk-taking.Footnote97 The MA author suggested three reasons for the growing risk-aversion and centralisation. One of them was exogenous political factors unique to GWOT, an influence that likely lost its relevance by now. However, the other two reasons are ‘organizational considerations including chain of command’ and the Army officer evaluation system, both of which changed due to GWOT and may still negatively impact SF, contributing to their deeper transformation.Footnote98 Thus, somewhat paradoxically, OEF may have reduced the compatibility between SF and UW missions.

The current MA theses sample suggests that SOCOM did not enough to address the cultural-conceptual challenges of SF. An MA author emphasised that even within the SOF community ‘nation-builders’ often did not receive the same degree of attention given to the ‘door kickers’.Footnote99 In theory, SOCOM should be a hub of UW expertise as it is officially one of SOCOM’s primary activities.Footnote100 However, in practice, SOCOM has tended to prioritise Direct over Indirect Action.Footnote101 Notably, during GWOT, no SF officer has led SOCOM. All SOCOM commanders have progressed through the Direct-Action route, with many having held senior-level command at the JSOC at least once.Footnote102

Some authors criticised SOCOM’s focus on direct approaches as short-sighted and task-oriented rather than a strategic and symbiotic contribution to the counterinsurgency campaigns.Footnote103 One MA author noted ‘an apparent growing animosity within the SOCOM community between those with unconventional warfare (UW) backgrounds and those who favor direct action (DA)“.Footnote104 The same author encouraged SOF to ask themselves, ”[H]ow well are we integrating as a community?’Footnote105 This question suggests that the empowerment of SOCOM and SOF following 9/11 not only posed a challenge to SF’s identity but to the overall SOF community. As one MA author observed, ‘USSOCOM has evolved to the point where it has become its own bureaucracy, with all the survival issues, self preservation issues, and self perpetuating issues that are associated with a bureaucracy. Where SOF was once lean and adaptive, it is now in danger of becoming bloated and lethargic’.Footnote106 This begs the question of whether GWOT was indeed the golden age of U.S. SOF, or whether their unprecedented growth and their sudden centrality to a global U.S. military campaign were a Pyrrhic victory.

Conclusion

This paper arrives belatedly. Ideally, it should have appeared two decades ago, following Donald Rumsfeld’s advocacy for a centre-stage role of SOCOM in the GWOT. It should have questioned how SOCOM’s emerging role and expansion integrated in the long-established military apparatus and the distinct military cultures. This might have prevented problematic assumptions such as the notion that ‘special operations forces are the darling of the military’, and might have facilitated a more nuanced understanding of U.S. SOF during the GWOT.Footnote107 Today, the MA theses corpus contributes to a deeper insight into SF’s challenges during OEF, indicating that deploying SF in their UW role within conventional military frameworks is paradoxical. In essence, conventional military structures and cultures restrict policymakers’ access to SF’s unconventional capabilities. Decision-makers should contemplate deploying SF in organisational structures that align more closely with those used by JSOC units. This might involve establishing tighter links and cooperation with intelligence agencies. Considering the CIA’s experience with UW, it may be the right partner.Footnote108 However, any cooperation between SF and an intelligence agency should be preceded by the creation of an appropriate legal framework to balance SF’s freedom of action with accountability to the U.S. people.Footnote109

Further research would be beneficial to explore additional topics present in the rich MA corpus. These topics include SF’s problematic reward and career progression system which may ultimately impede their capacity to refine UW skills.Footnote110 It is also vital to understand how the nation-builder versus door-kicker dichotomy plays out within SOCOM and whether it adversely affects SF to ensure a comprehensive understanding and application of this national security instrument in the UW context.Footnote111 Research on the integration of SF with the conventional military should concentrate more on operational and tactical levels. This could potentially reveal new perspectives on how SF and their conventional counterparts could complement each other.Footnote112 However, most crucially, there is a need for further research into the consequences of GWOT on SOF in general. Such research should include a detailed examination of the organisational changes that the SF authors propose as solutions to mitigate some of the adverse consequences of GWOT.

Most of the organisational and cultural obstacles encountered by SF during OEF could have been anticipated and, theoretically, mitigated. For instance, a national security adviser during the Vietnam War, Robert Komer, cautioned that a ’[Military] organization tends to contort policy to existing structures rather than adjusting structures to reflect changes in policy’. Cohen highlighted the cultural tension between the SOF and the conventional military in the late 1970s. During the 1980s, Builder discussed how the extent to which military services and organisations prioritised their sovereignty and survival sometimes diverged from and took precedence over national interests.Footnote113 In the 1990s, Amy Zegart pointed out inherent weaknesses in military structures.Footnote114 Organisational changes often happen at a glacial pace, undermining military strength and contributing to vulnerabilities in national security. In this case, the U.S. government possesses thousands of SF personnel trained and educated in UW, yet it lacks the military organisational structure necessary to lead a UW campaign as a part of a broader armed forces engagement.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/09592318.2024.2326600

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anna M. Gielas

Anna M. Gielas holds a PhD in History of Science from the University of St Andrews (UK) and, most recently, was as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Individual Fellow at the University of Cambridge (UK). She also earned a master’s degree in Political Science and is currently working on her second doctoral thesis (Military Studies).

Notes

1. Friend and Culbertson, ‘Special Obfuscations’, 2. Cf. Nevitt, ‘Reforming the Pentagon’, 76; Johnson, ‘Growing Relevance of Special’, 273. Fitzsimmons, ‘Importance of Being Special’, 203.

2. Olson, ‘The Tools of Influence’, 71–2.

3. Moran, ‘Time to Move out’, 1239.

4. Kibbe, ‘The Rise of Shadow’, 110; Salt, ‘Transformation and the War’, 111. Lindsay, ‘Reinventing the Revolution’, 440. Cf. Chesney, ‘Military-Intelligence Convergence’; Niva, ‘Disappearing Violence’; Moran, ‘Time to Move out’; Moran, ‘Assessing SOF Transparency’; Naylor, Relentless Strike; Byman and Merritt, ‘New American Way of War’.

5. Grey and Edge, ‘Kill/Capture’ (Transcript), 2. Cf. Moran, ‘Assessing SOF Transparency’; Naylor, Relentless Strike.

6. Livieratos, ‘Dangerous by Design’, 11.

7. U.S. Special Operations Command, Introduction to U.S. Special Operations”, 4.

8. Johnson, ‘Growing Relevance of Special’, 273.

9. Examples include: Salt, ‘Transformation and the War’; Shultz, ‘Military Innovation in War’; Shultz, ‘Transforming US intelligence’; Long, ‘Small is Beautiful’; Russell, ‘Counterinsurgency American style’; Voelz, ‘The Individualization of American’.

10. Niva, ‘Disappearing Violence’; Bury, ‘US Special Forces transformation’; Salt, ‘Transformation and the War’; Lindsay, ‘Reinventing the Revolution’; Dear, ‘Beheading the Hydra?.

11. Cf. Byman and Merritt, ‘New American Way of War’, 83.

12. Fitzsimmons, ‘Importance of being special’, 203.

13. Hooker, ‘America’s Special Operations Problem’, 51.

14. Silkman, ‘Unconventional Warfare and Operational’, 30.

15. Silkman, ‘Unconventional Warfare and Operational’, 30.

16. Silkman, ‘Unconventional Warfare and Operational’, 30.

17. Jackson, ‘AFSOF, Integration’, 2.

18. Fitzsimmons, ‘Importance of being special’, 204; James, ‘Achieving Unified Direction’, 42.

19. Overdeer, ‘Special Operations: Reexamining’,46; Hedman, ‘Reorganizing SOF’, 1; James, ‘Achieving Unified Direction’,13; 29; Cooper, ‘Proper Employment’, 5.

20. Department of Defense, Authorization for Appropriations, 928.

21. Hedman, ‘Reorganizing SOF’, 9.

22. James, ‘Achieving Unified Direction’, 2. Cf. Basilici and Simmons, ‘Transformation a bold case’, 3; Overdeer, ‘Special Operations: Reexamining’, 50; Christie, ‘Synchronizing Chaos’, 18; Payne, ‘Strategic Choice’, 35; Mulhern, ‘Risky Business’, 46, 52; O’Quinn, ‘An Invisible Scalpel’, 70–71.

23. Department of Defense, News Briefing Transcript, 7 January 2003. Hoelscher and Staab II, ‘Unconventional Restraint’, 86; Doty, ‘Command and Control’, 5–6.

24. Ellison and Hodermarsky, ‘Conventional and Special Operations’, 16; Painter, Weaver, White, ‘Reorganizing for Irregular Warfare’, 41. Doty, ‘Command and Control’, 6. Cf. Cogan IV, ‘Reexamining Ground SOF Command’; Kenny, ‘Leveraging Operational Preparation’, 14. See Cleveland and Collins, ‘Theater Special Operations Command’; Shelton, ‘Coming of Age’.

25. Feickert, The Unified Command Plan, 19. Cleveland and Collins, ‘Theater Special Operations Command’, 444.

26. Hester, ‘Integration of Special Operations’, 74; Cogan IV, ‘Reexamining Ground SOF Command’, xvi; Christie, ‘Synchronizing Chaos’, 13; Buswell, ‘Keeping Special Forces Special’, 8; Doty, ‘Command and Control’, 6.

27. Dyke and Crisafulli, ‘Unconventional counter-insurgency in Afghanistan’, 8. For SOF personnel difficulties with higher-rank CF see also Christie, ‘Synchronizing Chaos’, 13.

28. Dyke and Crisafulli, ‘Unconventional counter-insurgency in Afghanistan’, 8.

29. Robinson, ‘The Future of Special’, 26.

30. Cleveland and Collins, ‘Theater Special Operations Command’, 437.

31. Bado, ‘Integration of special operations’, 116.

32. James, ‘Achieving Unified Direction’.

33. Ortoli, ‘Integration and Interoperability’, 9–10; 72.

34. Moran, ‘Time to Move Out’, 1247; Byman and Merritt, ‘New American Way of War’. 87.

35. Kibbe, ‘Conducting Shadow Wars’, 377.

36. Niva, ‘Disappearing Violence’; Moran, ‘Time to Move Out’; Chesney, ‘Military-Intelligence Convergence’.

37. Kibbe, ‘Conducting Shadow Wars’; Chesney, ‘Military-Intelligence Convergence’; Kibbe, ‘CIA/SOF Convergence’.

38. King and White, ‘Strategic usefulness of conventional’, 3.

39. Buswell, ‘Keeping Special Forces Special’, 1; Hoelscher and Staab II, ‘Unconventional Restraint’, 1.

40. Dyke and Crisafulli, ‘Unconventional counter-insurgency in Afghanistan’, 7.

41. Dyke and Crisafulli, ‘Unconventional counter-insurgency in Afghanistan’, 7.

42. Basilici and Simmons, ‘Transformation a bold case’, 90.

43. Payne, ‘Strategic Choice’, 37.

44. Ramirez, ‘From Bosnia to Baghdad’, 41. Cf. Dyke and Crisafulli, ‘Unconventional counter-insurgency in Afghanistan’, 7. Basilici and Simmons, ‘Transformation a bold case’, 8; Rhyne, ‘Command and Control in’, 42; Payne, ‘Strategic Choice’, 38, 51; Stroud, ‘SOF Integration with Conventional’, 20; Mulhern, ‘Risky Business’, 48, 53.

45. Gleiman, ‘Operational Art’, 18. Cf. Harris, ‘Bridging the gap’, 46.

46. Ramirez, ‘From Bosnia to Baghdad’, 41.

47. Clukey, ‘A district approach to’, 39–40.

48. Clukey, ‘A district approach to’, 60–61. Cf. Day, ‘Implications of Surrogate Warfare’, 12.

49. Martin, ‘Special Operations and Conventional’, 2.

50. Hedman, ‘Reorganizing SOF’, 19. Cf. Overdeer, ‘Special Operations: Reexamining’, 3; Mahla and Riga, ‘An operational concept’, 4.

51. Mahla and Riga, ‘An operational concept’, 4.

52. Gleiman, ‘Operational Art’, 18.

53. Black et al., ‘Special Operations Command’s Future’, 44.

54. Mahla and Riga, ‘An operational concept’, 121. See: Basilici and Simmons, ‘Transformation a bold case’, 7.

55. Hedman, ‘Reorganizing SOF’, 6, 19; James, ‘Achieving Unified Direction’, 45; Painter, Weaver and White, ‘Reorganizing for Irregular Warfare’, 58–60.

56. Feickert, The Unified Command Plan, 1–2.

57. Payne, ‘Strategic Choice’, 27.

58. Payne, ‘Strategic Choice’, 27; Buswell, ‘Keeping Special Forces Special’, 3; Heisler, ‘By, With, and Through’, 53; Hill, ‘U.S. Special Forces: Culture’, 34; Overdeer, ‘Special Operations: Reexamining’, 10–11; Ott, ‘Unconventional Warfare in the’, 7.

59. U.S. Department of the Army, ‘Adapting our Aim’, 6.

60. U.S. Department of the Army, ‘Adapting our Aim’, 6.

61. Builder, ‘The Masks of War’, 6.

62. This problem appears to continue today, see Thielenhaus, ‘Special Forces vs SFAB’.

63. Cf. O’Hearn, Robins and Sessoms, ‘Flattening the Learning Curve’, 2. Buswell, ‘Keeping Special Forces Special’, 70; Ames, ‘Interdependence between Army Conventional’, 30; Lynch, Skeen and Odera, ‘Creating paths of change’, 35. Overdeer, ‘Special Operations: Reexamining’, 2. Cf. Painter, Weaver and White, ‘Reorganizing for Irregular Warfare’.

64. Painter, Weaver and White, ‘Reorganizing for Irregular Warfare’, 4.

65. Basilici and Simmons, ‘Transformation a bold case’, 63; Painter, Weaver and White, ‘Reorganizing for Irregular Warfare’, 50; O’Quinn, ‘An Invisible Scalpel’, 2.

66. U.S. Army Special Forces Team, ‘Vignette 9. Kandahar 2003–2004’, 116.

67. Gleiman, ‘Operational Art’, 2; Mahla and Riga, ‘An operational concept’, 121; Basilici and Simmons, ‘Transformation a bold case’, 3; Hedman, ‘Reorganizing SOF’, 10; Stroud, ‘SOF Integration with Conventional’, 11. Cf. Carty, ‘Planning and Training Considerations’, 10.

68. Silkman, ‘Unconventional Warfare and Operational’, 1. Cf. Basilici and Simmons, ‘Transformation a bold case’, 3.

69. Ortoli, ‘Integration and Interoperability’, 72.

70. King and White, ‘Strategic usefulness of conventional’, 17.

71. Rhyne, ‘Command and Control in’, 24. Cf. Hastings, ‘The Integration of Conventional’, 11; Christie, ‘Synchronizing Chaos’, 12; Bollinger III, ‘Special Forces: Creating Synergy’, 3; Bright, ‘Operational Seam’, 11; Zimlicki, ‘Maximizing the potential’, 51; Payne, ‘Strategic Choice’, 24; Ortoli, ‘Integration and Interoperability’, 26; Finfera, ‘Leveraging Capabilities’, 51; Gleiman, ‘Operational Art’, 2; Stroud, ‘SOF Integration with Conventional’, 1–3; 6; Ellison and Hodermarsky, ‘Conventional and Special Operations’, 14; Mulhern, ‘Risky Business’, 27–29.

72. Gleiman ‘Operational Art’, 6. Cf: Hedman, ‘Reorganizing SOF’, 10.

73. Gleiman, ‘Operational Art’, 12.

74. Call, ‘US Army Special Forces’, 8. Cf. Finfera, ‘Leveraging Capabilities’, 18; 21.

75. Finfera, ‘Leveraging Capabilities’, 5.

76. Call, ‘US Army Special Forces’, 8; Zimlicki, ‘Maximizing the potential’, 16; Siebold, ‘Interdependence and Conventional’, 3; 20.

77. Ortoli, ‘Integration and Interoperability’, 68.

78. Carty, ‘Planning and Training Considerations’, 9–11; Jackson, ‘Tactical Integration of Special’, 41; Hastings, ‘The Integration of Conventional’, 36; 55; Christie, ‘Synchronizing Chaos’, 8; Harris, ‘Bridging the gap’, 8; Bright, ‘Operational Seam’, 4; 6; Cooling, ‘To integrate or to’, 17; Siebold, ‘Interdependence and Conventional’, 8; 12; 23; Ortoli, ‘Integration and Interoperability’, 81; Cooper, ‘Proper Employment’, 3; Finfera, ‘Leveraging Capabilities’, 40; 47; Mulhern, ‘Risky Business’, 51.

79. Rhyne, ‘Command and Control in’, 35.

80. Rhyne, ‘Command and Control in’, 35.

81. Salmon, ‘Mitigating the Cultural Challenges’, 5. Cf. Rhyne, ‘Command and Control in’, 36–7; Ramirez, ‘From Bosnia to Baghdad’, 12; Hastings, ‘The Integration of Conventional’, 60–65; Bright, ‘Operational Seam’, 7; Siebold, ‘Interdependence and Conventional’, 8; Ortoli, ‘Integration and Interoperability’, 69–70; 83.

82. Cohen, Commandos and Politicians; Glicken Turnley, Retaining a Precarious Value; Horn, ‘When Cultures Collide’; Dalgaard-Nielsen, ‘Organizing Special Operations Forces’.

83. Cohen, Commandos and Politicians, 95.

84. Cohen, Commandos and Politicians, 95.

85. Zimlicki, ‘Maximizing the potential’, 53. Jones, ‘Ending the Debate’, 7.

86. Voelz, ‘The Individualization’, 102.

87. Dyke and Crisafulli, ‘Unconventional counter-insurgency in Afghanistan’, 9. Cf. Livieratos, ‘Dangerous by Design’, 13.

88. Hawk, ‘Sexy is what you’, 46.

89. Cohen, Commandos and Politicians, 95–96.

90. Cohen, Commandos and Politicians, 65.

91. Zimlicki, ‘Maximizing the potential’, 51; Hedman, ‘Reorganizing SOF’, 6.

92. Buswell, ‘Keeping Special Forces Special’, 77.

93. Ball, ‘From successful defense to’, 2.

94. Quoted after Buswell, ‘Keeping Special Forces Special’, 64.

95. Quoted after Buswell, ‘Keeping Special Forces Special’, 64.

96. Mulhern, ‘Risky Business’, v; 1.

97. Mulhern, ‘Risky Business’, 4–6.

98. Mulhern, ‘Risky Business’, v.

99. Salmon, ‘Mitigating the Cultural Challenges’, 7.

100. U.S. Army Special Operations Command, Unconventional Warfare, Pocket Guide, 4.

101. Hoelscher and Staab II, ‘Unconventional Restraint’, 6; Basilici and Simmons, ‘Transformation a bold case’, 3, 8; Hedman, ‘Reorganizing SOF’, 8. Cf. Painter, Weaver and White, ‘Reorganizing for Irregular Warfare’, 61; Buswell, ‘Keeping Special Forces Special’, 74.

102. Martinage, ‘Special Operations Forces: Challenges’, 11.

103. Cf. Ames, ‘Interdependence between Army Conventional’; Mahla and Riga, ‘An operational concept’.

104. Harris, ‘Bridging the gap’, 54. Cf. Painter, Weaver and White, ‘Reorganizing for Irregular Warfare’, 63.

105. Harris, ‘Bridging the gap’, 55.

106. Newell, ‘The Use of Special’, 15. Cf. Martin, ‘Zero Dark Squared’, 416.

107. Nevitt, ‘Reforming the Pentagon’, 76.

108. Ball, ‘From successful defense to’, 63.

109. Cf. Repass, ‘Combating Terrorism with Preparation’, 24; Hoelscher and Staab II, ‘Unconventional Restraint’, xxi.

110. Finfera, ‘Leveraging Capabilities’, 59.

111. Buswell, ‘Keeping Special Forces Special’, 71.

112. Baty, ‘Baseball Caps and Beards’, 16.

113. Builder, 11.

114. Zegart, ‘Flawed by Design’, 131.

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2. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, March 10, 2024




https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-march-10-2024



Key Takeaways:

  • A Ukrainian military official confirmed that Russian forces are conducting strikes in Ukraine with improved guided glide bombs.
  • Russian sources reported that the Russian military command has replaced Admiral Nikolai Yevmenov with Northern Fleet Commander Admiral Alexander Moiseev as Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Navy.
  • Russian occupation authorities opened early voting in occupied Ukraine for Russia’s presidential election on March 10 that will last until March 14.
  • Chechen officials organized a march in Grozny, Chechnya, on March 10 in support of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s candidacy in the upcoming March presidential election.
  • Over 1,000 civilian ships have transited Ukraine’s “grain corridor” in the Black Sea despite persistent Russian efforts to undermine international confidence in the corridor.
  • The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) awarded a state honor to a prominent Russian ultranationalist — who is an active supporter of imprisoned former officer and ardent ultranationalist Igor Girkin — likely as part of an ongoing Kremlin campaign to coopt the critical milblogger community.
  • Russian forces recently made confirmed advances near Bakhmut and Avdiivka amid continued positional engagements along the entire frontline on March 10.
  • Prominent Russian ultranationalists praised Russian volunteers and mobilized personnel on March 10, likely to assuage continued concerns among these personnel in spite of their improper and inequal treatment in the Russian military.


RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MARCH 10, 2024

Mar 10, 2024 - ISW Press


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Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, March 10, 2024

Nicole Wolkov, Grace Mappes, Kateryna Stepanenko, Riley Bailey, and George Barros

March 10, 2024, 7:00pm 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 1:30 pm ET on March 10. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the March 11 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.

A Ukrainian military official confirmed that Russian forces are conducting strikes in Ukraine with improved glide bombs. Ukrainian Tavriisk Group of Forces Spokesperson Captain Dmytro Lykhovyi reported on March 10 that Russian forces struck Myrnohrad, Donetsk Oblast, with three universal interspecific glide munition (UMPB) D-30SN guided glide bombs that Ukrainian forces initially originally assessed were S-300 missiles.[1] Lykhovyi stated that improved UMPB D-30SN guided glide bombs essentially convert Soviet-era FAB unguided gravity bombs to guided glide bombs. Russian forces had previously used unguided glide bombs as recently as January 2024.[2] ISW recently observed Russian milbloggers claim that Russian forces began conducting strikes with FAB UMPB guided glide bombs, as opposed to using unguided glide bombs with unified planning and correction modules (UMPC), in unspecified areas in Ukraine.[3] A Russian milblogger claimed that UMPB guided glide bombs have a guidance system that includes a noise-resistant GLONASS/GPS “Comet” signal receiver and folding wings similar to a Kh-101 cruise missile.[4] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces can launch UMPB guided glide bombs from aircraft and ground-based multiple rocket launch systems (MLRS) such as Tornado-S and Smerch MLRS.[5] A Russian outlet claimed that Russian aviation is currently launching UMPBs without jet engines, but that Russia anticipates employing UMPBs with jet engines in the future.[6] Russian milbloggers claimed that UMPB guided glide bombs with a jet engine and fuel tank, currently absent from aerial glide bombs with UMPC, will allow Russian aviation to drop guided glide bombs from a lower altitude “similar to air-to-surface cruise missiles” and increase the maximum strike range to 80-90 kilometers.[7] Russian milbloggers claimed that the increased range of UMPB guided glide bombs will allow Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS) to increase the depth of strikes on Ukrainian positions without risk from Ukrainian air forces detecting or destroying Russian fixed-wing aircraft.[8] Russian milbloggers claimed that the Russian defense industrial base (DIB) is attempting to mass-produce UMPB guided glide bombs.[9] Russian forces will likely attempt to serialize production of UMPB guided glide bombs and increase their use across the frontline.

Russian sources reported that Northern Fleet Commander Admiral Alexander Moiseev has replaced Admiral Nikolai Yevmenov as Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Navy. St. Petersburg news outlet Fontanka reported on March 10 that Moiseev was appointed as Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Navy, and former Black Sea Fleet (BSF) Commander retired Admiral Vladimir Komoyedov later stated that Moiseev is the new Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Navy in an interview with Ural Regional State newswire URA.ru.[10] Russian milbloggers similarly claimed that Moiseev was appointed to command the Russian Navy and that recent command changes in the Russian Navy are occurring amid a “complete paralysis” of fleet leadership about new threats, likely referring to recent Ukrainian strikes against BSF assets in and near occupied Crimea.[11] Russian sources recently claimed that the Russian military officially removed BSF Commander Admiral Viktor Sokolov and replaced him with BSF Chief of Staff Vice Admiral Sergei Pinchuk.[12] ISW cannot confirm either Pinchuk’s or Moiseev’s reported appointments. The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) is in the process of depriving the Northern Fleet of its status as an “interservice strategic territorial organization” (a joint headquarters in Western military parlance) to restore the Moscow and Leningrad Military Districts (MMD and LMD), and Moiseev may have been appointed as Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Navy to retain a high-ranking command role.[13]

Russian occupation authorities opened early voting in occupied Ukraine for Russia’s presidential election on March 10 that will last until March 14. Kremlin newswire TASS reported on March 10 that early voting started in occupied Donetsk Oblast, but noted that early voting in areas close to the frontline has been ongoing since February 25.[14] TASS stated that stationary polling stations will open in occupied Ukraine on March 15-17. Ukrainian Luhansk Oblast Military Administration Head Artem Lysohor stated that 2,600 Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) election commission officials have been conducting door-to-door campaigning for the past 20 days.[15] Ukrainian officials stated that Russian occupation officials intend to claim a 94 percent voter turnout in occupied Ukraine.[16] ISW continues to assess that the Kremlin and Russian occupation officials intend to falsify votes in support of Russian President Vladimir Putin and fabricate a large voter turnout in an attempt to legitimize Russia’s occupation of Ukraine to the international community.[17]

Chechen officials organized a march in Grozny, Chechnya, on March 10 in support of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s candidacy in the upcoming March presidential election. Russian state media outlet TASS reported that more than 150,000 Chechens attended the march in Grozny and that Chechen Republic Head Ramzan Kadyrov’s eldest child, Chechen Presidential Administration First Deputy Head Khadizhat Kadyrova, organized the march.[18] Russian opposition outlet SOTA amplified a claim on March 9 that the Chechen State University and Grozny State Petroleum Technical University instructed its employees and students to attend the election march on March 10.[19] Kadyrov praised the rally on March 10, emphasizing the importance of the election for the Russian state and praising Putin by name.[20] Kadyrov claimed that many prominent Chechen politicians and voices attended the march but did not mention Kadyrova by name.[21] Chechen National Policy Minister Akhmed Dudayev stated that the march “reflects that we [Chechnya] are one united team of our first President, Hero of Russia Akhmat-Khadzhi Kadyrov.”[22] This election march likely supports Kadyrov’s ongoing effort to balance appealing to his Chechen constituency while courting Putin’s favor.[23]

Over 1,000 civilian ships have transited Ukraine’s “grain corridor” in the Black Sea despite persistent Russian efforts to undermine international confidence in the corridor. US Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink stated on March 9 that 1,005 civilian ships have traveled from Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea through the “grain corridor” and have delivered roughly 30 million tons of cargo, including grain, to world markets.[24] A civilian ship used the Ukrainian corridor to leave a Ukrainian port for the first time in August 2023 and to reach a Ukrainian port for the first time in September 2023.[25] Russian forces began heavily targeting Ukrainian grain and port infrastructure in summer 2023 in an effort to exact concessions on the renewal of the defunct Black Sea grain deal and have continued those strikes in part to discourage civilian maritime traffic through the corridor.[26]

The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) awarded a state honor to a prominent Russian ultranationalist — who is an active supporter of imprisoned former officer and ardent ultranationalist Igor Girkin — likely as part of ongoing Kremlin campaign to coopt the critical milblogger community. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu signed a decree awarding Russian military volunteer and milblogger Vladimir Grubnik with the “For Military Cooperation” medal on January 24, 2024.[27] Grubnik routinely publishes and amplifies posts in support of Girkin (also known under the alias Strelkov) - who is a prominent critic of the Russian MoD, the Russian military command, and the Kremlin.[28] Grubnik is also a member of the Russian Strelkov Movement, which advocates for Girkin‘s release from prison, and the Russian Angry Patriots Club, which Girkin founded and briefly headed in 2023.[29] Grubnik had also previously amplified posts that criticized the Russian MoD and the military command, some of which directly accused Shoigu of military failures in Ukraine.[30] Grubnik notably defended Shoigu from accusations posed by deceased Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin during his mutiny in June 2023, however.[31] ISW had previously observed that the Kremlin began to coopt Russian milbloggers critical of the Russian war effort’s poor performance by offering them state awards or government positions starting November 2022 in an effort to regain control over the Russian information space.[32] Grubnik’s award may indicate that the Kremlin is attempting to secure control over the group of ultranationalists who support Girkin’s extremist views, are actively providing military and humanitarian help to Russian forces on the frontline, and have participated in the Russian invasion of Donbas and Crimea in 2014. Grubnik’s award, however, is different than the Order of Merit of the Fatherland Second Class medals that the Kremlin previously awarded to two other milbloggers explicitly for their milblogger activities, but the reason for Grubnik’s award is likely related to his volunteer efforts on the frontline.[33]

Key Takeaways:

  • A Ukrainian military official confirmed that Russian forces are conducting strikes in Ukraine with improved guided glide bombs.
  • Russian sources reported that the Russian military command has replaced Admiral Nikolai Yevmenov with Northern Fleet Commander Admiral Alexander Moiseev as Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Navy.
  • Russian occupation authorities opened early voting in occupied Ukraine for Russia’s presidential election on March 10 that will last until March 14.
  • Chechen officials organized a march in Grozny, Chechnya, on March 10 in support of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s candidacy in the upcoming March presidential election.
  • Over 1,000 civilian ships have transited Ukraine’s “grain corridor” in the Black Sea despite persistent Russian efforts to undermine international confidence in the corridor.
  • The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) awarded a state honor to a prominent Russian ultranationalist — who is an active supporter of imprisoned former officer and ardent ultranationalist Igor Girkin — likely as part of an ongoing Kremlin campaign to coopt the critical milblogger community.
  • Russian forces recently made confirmed advances near Bakhmut and Avdiivka amid continued positional engagements along the entire frontline on March 10.
  • Prominent Russian ultranationalists praised Russian volunteers and mobilized personnel on March 10, likely to assuage continued concerns among these personnel in spite of their improper and inequal treatment in the Russian military.

 

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 northeast of Kupyansk and near Kreminna on March 10, but there were no confirmed changes to the frontline. Positional engagements continued northeast of Kupyansk near Synkivka, west of Kreminna near Yampolivka and Terny, and south of Kreminna near Bilohorivka (12km south of Kreminna).[34]

 

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

Positional engagements continued northeast of Bakhmut in the Siversk direction on March 10, but there were no confirmed changes to the frontline. A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces advanced 200 meters in depth towards Vyimka (southeast of Siversk), but ISW has not observed visual confirmation of this claim.[35] Russian forces reportedly attacked southwest of Siversk near Rozdolivka and east of Siversk near Verkhnokamyanske and Spirne.[36] Elements of the Russian “GORB” detachment (2nd Luhansk People’s Republic [LNR] Army Corps [AC]) are operating near Spirne.[37]

Russian forces recently marginally advanced west of Bakhmut. Geolocated footage published on March 10 indicates that Russian forces recently advanced in eastern Ivanivske (west of Bakhmut).[38] Some Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces control 80 percent of Ivanivske and made marginal advances near Druzhba (southwest of Bakhmut) and within Bohdanivka (northwest of Bakhmut), but ISW had not observed confirmation for these claims.[39] Positional battles continued near Bohdanivka; west of Bakhmut near Ivanivske and east of Chasiv Yar; and southwest of Bakhmut near Klishchiivka, Andriivka, Kurdyumivka, Druzhba, and Shumy.[40] A Russian milblogger claimed that elements of the Russian 11th Separate Guards Air Assault (VDV) Brigade and 68th Tank Regiment and 102nd Motorized Rifle Regiment (both part of 150th Motorized Rifle Division, 8th Guards Combined Arms Army [CAA] Southern Military District [SMD]) are fighting in Ivanivske.[41] Elements of the Russian “Sever-V” Reconnaissance and Assault Brigade (Russian Volunteer Corps) are reportedly supporting Russian assaults on Bohdanivka; elements of the Russian 98th Guards VDV Division are reportedly operating in the Bakhmut direction; and elements of the 132nd Motorized Rifle Brigade (1st Donetsk People's Republic [DNR] AC) are operating near Toretsk (southwest of Bakhmut).[42]

 

Russian forces recently marginally advanced northwest of Avdiivka near Berdychi and west of Avdiivka in Orlivka. Geolocated footage published on March 9 and March 10 indicates that Russian forces recently advanced south of Berdychi and in western Orlivka.[43] Positional battles continued near Berdychi; west of Avdiivka near Orlivka and Tonenke; and southwest of Avdiikka near Pervomaiske, Sieverne, and Nevelske.[44] Elements of the Russian 24th Guards Spetsnaz Brigade (General Staff’s Main Intelligence Directorate [GRU]) are reportedly operating near Berdychi.[45] Elements of the 1st “Slavic” Motorized Rifle Brigade (1st DNR AC) are reportedly operating in the Avdiivka direction.[46]

 

Russian and Ukrainian forces engaged in positional battles west of Donetsk City near Krasnohorivka and Heorhiivka and southwest of Donetsk City near Novomykhailivka and Pobieda.[47] A Russian milblogger claimed that Su-34 fighter jet pilots of the Russian 11th Air and Air Defense Forces Army (Russian Aerospace Forces [VKS] of the Eastern Military District [EMD]) continue to launch air strikes in the southern Donetsk direction using FAB-500 unguided glide bombs.[48] Elements of the Russian 238th Artillery Brigade (8th CAA, SMD) reportedly continue operating near Krasnohorivka, and elements of the Russian 39th Motorized Rifle Brigade (68th AC, EMD) are reportedly operating near Novomykhailivka.[49]

 

Russian forces recently advanced southwest of Vuhledar in western Donetsk Oblast. Geolocated footage published on March 10 indicates that Russian forces recently advanced northwest of Shevchenko (southwest of Vuhledar).[50] Elements of the Russian 29th CAA (EMD) are reportedly operating in the Vuhledar direction.[51]

Positional battles occurred southwest of Velyka Novosilka near Novodarivka and Levadne in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area on March 10.[52]

 


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

Positional fighting continued in western Zaporizhia Oblast on March 10, but there were no confirmed changes to the frontline in this area. Positional fighting continued near Robotyne and Verbove (east of Robotyne).[53] Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces are preparing for tactical counterattacks near Robotyne.[54] Ukrainian Tavriisk Group of Forces Spokesperson Dmytro Lykhovyi stated on March 9 that Russian forces are increasingly relying on off-road “buggies” and all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) to transport Russian infantry near Robotyne because Ukrainian forces are destroying standard Russian military vehicles.[55] Russian forces may be experimenting with using such light unarmored vehicles due to their availability over Russian military vehicles that Ukrainian forces can readily destroy, and/or because such light vehicles are smaller than and have greater speed and mobility over standard military vehicles, making them more difficult for Ukrainian forces to target. Elements of the Russian 7th Airborne (VDV) Division and the 1st Battalion of the 429th Motorized Rifle Regiment (19th Motorized Rifle Division, 58th Combined Arms Army [CAA], Southern Military District [SMD]) reportedly continue operating in the Zaporizhia direction, and elements of the 70th Motorized Rifle Regiment (42nd Motorized Rifle Division, 58th CAA, SMD) are reportedly operating near Robotyne.[56]

 


Ukrainian and Russian sources stated that Ukrainian forces maintain positions in east (left) bank Kherson Oblast near Krynky as of March 10.[57] Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command reported that Russian forces did not conduct combat operations for the second consecutive day on March 10 and instead focused on conducting aerial reconnaissance, artillery fire, and drone operations.[58]

 

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

Russian forces conducted another series of drone and missile strikes against Ukraine overnight on March 9-10. Ukrainian officials reported that Russian forces launched four S-300 missiles at Kharkiv and Donetsk oblasts and 39 Shahed-136/131 drones from occupied Cape Chauda, Crimea and Primorsko-Akhtarsk, Krasnodar Krai.[59] Ukrainian forces destroyed 35 Shaheds over Kirovohrad, Mykolaiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Cherkasy, Odesa, Kherson, Khmelnytskyi, Vinnytsia, Kyiv, and Zhytomyr oblasts. Ukrainian state energy operator Ukrenerho reported that the Russian forces struck two electrical substations in southern and central Ukraine but did not disrupt energy supplies.[60] Odesa Oblast Military Administration Head Oleh Kiper reported that a drone struck an industrial facility in Odesa Oblast.[61]

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

Prominent Russian ultranationalists praised Russian volunteers and mobilized personnel on March 10, likely to assuage continued concerns among these personnel in spite of their improper and inequal treatment in the Russian military. Deputy Head of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) Main Directorate of Rosgvardia, Commander of its special rapid response and riot police (OMON and SOBR), and prominent Russian milblogger Alexander Khodakovsky praised Russian volunteers as “sacred” for suffering higher casualty rates in Ukraine and commended mobilized personnel for fighting in Ukraine despite not choosing to do so voluntarily.[62] Another Russian ultranationalist milblogger characterized Russian military volunteers as Russia’s “backbone” and asserted that Russian volunteers in Ukraine are far more valuable than Soviet volunteers during the war in Afghanistan or Russian volunteers during the first and second Chechen wars.[63]

Kursk Oblast Governor Roman Starovoit claimed on March 10 that 3,500 volunteers are serving in the Kursk Oblast People’s Militia.[64] Starovoit claimed that Kursk Oblast People’s Militia volunteers patrol public areas, bridges, and industrial facilities and assist unspecified Russian security forces.[65] Starovoit announced the creation of the Kursk Oblast People’s Militia in late 2022 under the premise that potential Ukrainian ground assaults could threaten Russia’s oblasts on the border with Ukraine.[66] Elements of a similar People’s Militia in Belgorod Oblast have previously responded to pro-Ukrainian Russian volunteer force raids in Belgorod Oblast, but the Kursk Oblast People’s Militia appears to conduct simple auxiliary patrol functions.[67]

A Russian milblogger observed that Russian forces continue to face some issues with newly deployed personnel and drone capabilities in the Avdiivka direction.[68] The milblogger claimed that a significant number of newly deployed Russian contract servicemen (kontrakniki) have unrealistically optimistic preconceptions about fighting in Ukraine and arrive to eastern Ukraine in full confidence that Russian forces are easily winning in battle. The milblogger added that many of the newly arrived personnel do not want to learn to fight because they think that the Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS) will provide air support and that prisoner recruits will defeat Ukrainian forces based on Russian state propaganda claims. The milblogger observed that Donetsk Peoples Republic (DNR) elements prefer to operate locally-produced first-person vision (FPV) drones over those produced and procured by the Russian “Sudoplatov” volunteer group because “Sudoplatov” drones operate on wavelengths known to Ukrainian forces. The milblogger claimed that Central Military District (CMD) drone operators had all of their “Sudoplatov” drones disrupted after Russian drone malfunctioned and alerted Ukrainian forces to activate electronic warfare (EW) systems during the battles for the Avdiivka industrial area. The miblogger claimed on March 9 that elements of the Russian 114th Motorized Rifle Brigade (1st DNR AC), which is operating in the Avdiivka direction, has several separate air defense groups.[69]


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

Russia continues efforts to scale up its production of guided glide bombs for use in Ukraine. Ukrainian Air Forces Spokesperson Colonel Yuriy Ihnat stated in an interview with CNN published on March 10 that Russia is focusing on producing FAB-1500 guided glide bombs because they are far cheaper to produce than missiles.[70] Ihnat noted that Russia will not be able to quickly increase its production of the FAB-1500 guided glide bombs, however, and that producing the bombs will still be costly.[71] German outlet BILD reported on March 7 that Russia has begun mass producing its FAB-1500-M54 guided glide bomb.[72] CNN interviewed Ukrainian soldiers operating near Krasnohorivka (west of Donetsk City) who stated that Russian previously only shelled Ukrainian positions in the area but are now conducting heavy airstrikes with FAB-1500 bombs.[73] Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) Senior Research Fellow Justin Bronk told CNN that Russia’s defense industrial base (DIB) has bottlenecks for “glide kits” (likely referring to universal planning and correction modules [UMPCs] that Russia attaches to unguided FAB and guided KAB bombs, including FAB-1500 variants, to turn them into glide bombs) but that Russia has a significant amount of materiel for the basic explosive package in the FAB-1500 guided glide bombs.[74]

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

Note: ISW will be publishing its coverage of Ukrainian defense industrial efforts on a weekly basis in the Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment. ISW will continue to track developments in Ukrainian defense industrial efforts daily and will refer to these efforts in assessments within the daily Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment and other ISW products when necessary.

ISW is not publishing coverage of Ukrainian defense industrial efforts today.

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)

Note: ISW will be publishing coverage of activities in Russian-occupied areas twice a week in the Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment. ISW will continue to track activities in Russian-occupied areas daily and will refer to these activities in assessments within the daily Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment and other ISW products when necessary.

ISW is not publishing coverage of activities in Russian-occupied areas today.

Russian Information Operations and Narratives

A prominent Kremlin-affiliated Russian milblogger attempted to portray the recent Moldovan-French defense cooperation agreement and announcement that the French Ministry of Defense (MoD) will open an office in Chisinau as evidence that France intends to deploy military personnel to Moldova and possibly to the pro-Russian Moldovan breakaway republic of Transnistria.[75] The milblogger is attempting to further the Kremlin information operations supporting potential hybrid operations aimed at sabotaging Moldova’s European Union (EU) accession process.[76]

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.



3. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, March 10, 2024



https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-march-10-2024


Key Takeaways:

  • Northern Gaza Strip: Palestinian fighters targeted Israeli forces operating in southern Gaza City.
  • Southern Gaza Strip: Israeli forces continued to conduct clearing operations in northern Khan Younis.
  • US Operations: The US Army sent a vessel to the Mediterranean Sea with the first load of equipment to establish a humanitarian port off the Gaza Strip.
  • West Bank: Israeli forces clashed with Palestinian fighters at least three times in the West Bank.
  • Southern Lebanon and Golan Heights: Lebanese Hezbollah conducted at least 13 attacks from southern Lebanon into northern Israel.


IRAN UPDATE, MARCH 10, 2024

Mar 10, 2024 - ISW Press






Iran Update, March 10, 2024

Andie Parry, Peter Mills, 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. Click here to subscribe to the Iran Update.

CTP-ISW will publish abbreviated updates on March 9 and 10, 2024. Detailed coverage will resume Monday, March 11, 2024

Key Takeaways:

  • Northern Gaza Strip: Palestinian fighters targeted Israeli forces operating in southern Gaza City.
  • Southern Gaza Strip: Israeli forces continued to conduct clearing operations in northern Khan Younis.
  • US Operations: The US Army sent a vessel to the Mediterranean Sea with the first load of equipment to establish a humanitarian port off the Gaza Strip.
  • West Bank: Israeli forces clashed with Palestinian fighters at least three times in the West Bank.
  • Southern Lebanon and Golan Heights: Lebanese Hezbollah conducted at least 13 attacks from southern Lebanon into northern Israel.



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.

Palestinian fighters targeted Israeli forces operating in southern Gaza City on March 10. Palestinian militias reported that their fighters fired mortars and small arms targeting Israeli forces in the Tal al Hawa and Zaytoun neighborhoods, south of Gaza City.[1] The Palestinian Mujahideen Movement targeted Israeli forces southeast of Gaza City with short-range rockets.[2] The IDF Nahal Brigade (162nd Division) has continued to operate in “central” Gaza, likely referring to the areas south of Gaza City in which Palestinian militias continue to claim attacks.[3] Israeli forces are also operating south of Gaza City to demolish structures along a new road that splits the Gaza Strip between the north and south.[4]

Israeli forces continued to conduct clearing operations in northern Khan Younis on March 10. The IDF Givati Brigade (162nd Division) raided Hamas infrastructure used during the October 7 attack and seized mortars, an explosively formed penetrator (EFP), and small arms in eastern Hamad.[5] The Givati Brigade killed and detained Palestinian fighters in the area.[6] The IDF 89th Commando Brigade continued fighting in Hamad in close-range clashes and detained two Hamas fighters who surrendered to the IDF.[7] The IDF Egoz unit directed an airstrike on a Palestinian fighter responsible for the death of an Israeli soldier in the southern Gaza Strip on March 8.[8] The IDF Bislamach Brigade continued to target Palestinian fighters in Qarara.[9]

Palestinian militias continued trying to defend against the IDF around Khan Younis on March 10. Hamas fighters detonated a building in Bani Suheila that Israeli forces had rigged to explode.[10] Hamas claimed the house explosion killed and wounded Israeli forces, but the IDF did not acknowledge casualties from the attack at the time of this writing. This attack bears similarities to a Hamas attack that killed 21 Israeli soldiers as the soldiers rigged a building to detonate in the Central Gaza Strip in January 2024.[11] Hamas fighters also targeted Israeli dismounted infantry operating in tunnels in Bani Suheila.[12] The al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, which is the self-proclaimed military wing of Fatah and aligned with Hamas in the war, reported that its fighters fired mortars and rocket-propelled grenades (RPG) targeting Israeli forces in Hamad and generally west of Khan Younis City.[13]

Israeli forces are targeting Hamas nodes involved in attacks outside of the Gaza Strip. Israeli journalists reported that the IDF conducted a strike in eastern Rafah on March 10 targeting a Hamas official who was responsible for directing attacks in the West Bank.[14] Israeli forces, separately, arrested a cell of Arab Israelis from Sakhnin that was planning an attack on Israelis in coordination with Hamas officials in the Gaza Strip.[15] Hamas instructed the Sakhnin cell to construct improvised explosive devices.[16] Shin Bet said that that Hamas is still attempting to stoke tensions outside of the Gaza Strip during Ramadan.[17]


 


US CENTCOM announced on March 9 that a US Army logistics support vessel departed from Virginia to the Eastern Mediterranean Sea with the first load of equipment to establish a temporary pier to deliver humanitarian supplies to the Gaza Strip.[18] US President Biden announced the temporary pier initiative on March 7 during his State of the Union address.[19] Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said that the US plan to provide aid to the Gaza Strip via a temporary port will “advance the collapse of Hamas’s rule.”[20] Gallant also acknowledged that Cyprus, the United Arab Emirates, and Israel would be involved in the maritime corridor.[21]

Palestinian militias did not conduct any indirect fire attacks from the Gaza Strip into Israel on March 10.

West Bank

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

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

Israeli forces have clashed with Palestinian fighters at least three times in the West Bank since CTP-ISW's last data cutoff on March 9.[22]


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

Lebanese Hezbollah has conducted at least 13 attacks from southern Lebanon into northern Israel since CTP-ISW's last data cutoff on March 9.[23]


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

There is no significant activity to report.




4. Russia Is Pumping Out Weapons—but Can It Keep It Up?


I guess this is why they need help from north Korea.


Excerpts:


During a visit in February to Russia’s largest tank factory, President Vladimir Putin told a worker that he was aware of a shortage of skilled personnel, according to a transcript on the Kremlin’s website. 
The labor crunch at the Uralvagonzavod site was so bad at the start of last year that the company took on 250 convicts from a nearby prison, the correctional facility said at the time.
In June 2022, Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov said that the arms industry had a shortage of around 400,000 people. Borisov and other Russian officials have said the sector needs around 2 million workers, suggesting a personnel shortfall of about 20%.
Since then, Russia has sent more people to fight in Ukraine and hundreds of thousands more are estimated by economists to have left the country, though some may have returned.
To boost output, Uralvagonzavod, which has some 30,000 workers, started 24-hour production at the factory.
Workers there have complained on social media about inadequate training, a lack of tools and poor safety conditions.
In one instance widely reported by Russian media last year, a dispute over training and wages led one worker to stab himself in the throat with a knife in front of his boss. He survived. The company said it regretted the incident, which it described as an ordinary human tragedy.


Russia Is Pumping Out Weapons—but Can It Keep It Up?

Some Western analysts say Moscow’s arms-production figures mask various challenges and could be misleading

https://www.wsj.com/world/russia-is-pumping-out-weaponsbut-can-it-keep-it-up-ba30bb04?mod=hp_lead_pos5


By Alistair MacDonaldFollow and Kate Vtorygina

Updated March 11, 2024 12:01 am ET

Russia’s ability to churn out tanks, missiles and shells has surprised the West and heaped further pressure on Ukraine. The question now is how long it can continue.

For some Western officials and analysts, Russia’s military production figures are misleading and mask challenges including a shortage of labor and a falloff in quality. The ramp-up may not be sustainable as it saps resources from the wider economy, and any drop in output could leave Russia even more reliant on help from allies such as China, Iran and North Korea, they add.

“Russia has rather impressively managed to increase production in many defense sectors,” said Oscar Jonsson, a researcher at the Swedish Defence University. “But I would be very suspicious of Russia being able to continue at that pace… it will stagnate.”

Russia’s ability to produce weapons has become increasingly important as the war drags into its third year, and amid uncertainty over future U.S. military aid for Ukraine. Russia’s greater supply of artillery shells, for instance, proved decisive when Ukraine lost the eastern town of Avdiivka in February. Meanwhile, Russia’s ability to rearm after the war could threaten other countries on its borders, those nations say.

Following Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. and its allies imposed a raft of sanctions aimed at hobbling Russia’s arms industry. On the battlefield, Russia soon lost equipment and ran down inventories of missiles and shells.


Russia’s superior supply of shells helped its forces capture the industrial city of Avdiivka, eastern Ukraine. PHOTO: REUTERS

In response, the Kremlin quickly pumped resources into its arms industry. Last year, 21% of all federal expenditure went into what Moscow categorizes as defense, up from almost 14% in 2020. The 2024 federal budget calls for an even greater proportion of spending on defense this year, at more than 29%.

Russia has also become adept at avoiding sanctions, sourcing components like Western microchips and telecommunications equipment that it can’t buy directly via other countries. 

Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said in December that Russia was producing 17.5 times as much ammunition, 17 times as many drones and 5.6 times as many tanks as it did before the war.

Moscow has also increased production of missiles and other weapons, Western officials say. For example, production of artillery shells went from 400,000 shells in 2021 to 600,000 the following year, more than the combined output of the U.S. and European Union, Estonian military intelligence estimates.

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Russia can likely sustain its war effort for two to five more years at the current scale, according to a senior North Atlantic Treaty Organization official. At least two European military-intelligence agencies also believe Russia can produce enough weapons to last several more years.

The ramp-up in military production shows up in economic data. 

Output from several military-related industries, including optical products and fabricated metals, has grown as much as two times since the start of the war, according to an analysis of Russian statistics by Finland’s central bank. 

But the production increases—and overall level of military spending—may not be sustainable given the drain on investment, manpower and materials from other sectors of Russia’s economy, the Bank of Finland concluded.


A photo released by the Russian Defense Ministry shows armored-vehicle production in Tatarstan. The country’s output figures blend new vehicles with refurbished ones. PHOTO: RUSSIAN DEFENSE MINISTRY PRESS SERVICE/ASSOCIATED PRESS


Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, seen in the foreground at a weapons-storage site, has said Russia’s military production multiplied after the 2022 Ukraine invasion. PHOTO: VADIM SAVITSKY/ZUMA PRESS

The central bank’s analysis also shows that much of the increase in defense-related output was in low-tech products, such as fabricated steel, rather than more sophisticated items, like semiconductors, for which Russia is reliant on foreign suppliers.

While Moscow has been able to get around sanctions for some products, other more specialized components that Russia bought from the West—such as tank optics that help crew members see—are much harder to buy through third parties.

Some analysts question Moscow’s production boasts. Russia’s output figures, for instance, don’t differentiate between newly produced armored vehicles and old models brought out of storage and refurbished.

“They are hyping up the numbers,” said Michael Gjerstad, a researcher at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Last year Russia brought out at least 1,200 old tanks from storage, Gjerstad estimates, based on a review of satellite images before and after the start of the war. That means that, at the very most, Russia produced 330 new tanks last year, though the true figure is likely to be half that number, Gjerstad said.


A Russian tank sits abandoned in southern Ukraine. PHOTO: DIMITAR DILKOFF/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

For example, up to 200 tanks at a time have sat outside the Omsktransmash tank factory in Omsk, Siberia, since late 2022, according to satellite photos provided by Planet Labs PBC. That’s despite the plant having produced no new tanks for several years before the war began, Gjerstad said.

The tanks look like the T-62, which hasn’t been produced since the 1970s, and the T-54/55, which was first designed just after World War II, according to Nicholas Drummond, a defense consultant.

These older tanks aren’t as good quality as new models, and stocks will eventually run dry.

The Kremlin didn’t respond to a request for comment on the output and quality of its arms production.

Russia has also dipped into reserves of old artillery ammunition. That stockpile now stands at around 3 million rounds, much of which is in poor condition, according to the Royal United Services Institute, a U.K. think tank.

RUSI and other analysts say that Russia’s domestic ammunition production isn’t sufficient to meet its needs for Ukraine, meaning Moscow will grow more dependent on foreign allies.

North Korea, Iran and Belarus have supplied munitions, while Russia has received components such as computer chips and chemicals from China, analysts say.

North Korean munitions factories are currently operating at full capacity to supply Russia, South Korea’s defense minister recently told reporters. Shin Won-sik said that North Korea may have shipped the equivalent of around 3 million 152mm artillery shells since last September. Ukrainian military intelligence has said that the quality of North Korean ammunition has been poor, sometimes even destroying Russian guns. 

In return for such supplies, there is some evidence that Russia has shared technical military information with China and North Korea, the senior NATO official said.


The war overseen by Shoigu and Putin has required Russia’s arms industry to increase output even as emigration and mobilization shrank the labor force. PHOTO: ALEXANDER KAZAKOV/SPUTNIK/KREMLIN POOL/EPA-EFE/SHUTTERSTOCK

Back at home, Russia’s arms makers face labor challenges.

During a visit in February to Russia’s largest tank factory, President Vladimir Putin told a worker that he was aware of a shortage of skilled personnel, according to a transcript on the Kremlin’s website. 

The labor crunch at the Uralvagonzavod site was so bad at the start of last year that the company took on 250 convicts from a nearby prison, the correctional facility said at the time.

In June 2022, Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov said that the arms industry had a shortage of around 400,000 people. Borisov and other Russian officials have said the sector needs around 2 million workers, suggesting a personnel shortfall of about 20%.

Since then, Russia has sent more people to fight in Ukraine and hundreds of thousands more are estimated by economists to have left the country, though some may have returned.

To boost output, Uralvagonzavod, which has some 30,000 workers, started 24-hour production at the factory.

Workers there have complained on social media about inadequate training, a lack of tools and poor safety conditions.

In one instance widely reported by Russian media last year, a dispute over training and wages led one worker to stab himself in the throat with a knife in front of his boss. He survived. The company said it regretted the incident, which it described as an ordinary human tragedy.

Alastair Gale and Warren Strobel contributed to this article.

Write to Alistair MacDonald at Alistair.Macdonald@wsj.com




5. Trump Should Lay Off NATO, Target the U.N.


Trump Should Lay Off NATO, Target the U.N.

Military alliances provide hard security benefits to the U.S. Turtle Bay is useless at best and often inimical to America.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-should-lay-off-nato-target-the-u-n-7e02e960?mod=Searchresults_pos4&page=1

By John Bolton

March 8, 2024 3:25 pm ET


President Donald Trump at a news conference after a NATO Summit in Brussels, July 12, 2018. PHOTO: REINHARD KRAUSE/REUTERS

Donald Trump’s assault on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization began in his first term and has continued as he campaigns for a second. NATO certainly has its problems, as Henry Kissinger argued in “The Troubled Partnership: A Re-Appraisal of the Atlantic Alliance” (1965). But it serves U.S. national-security interests. Undermining U.S. strength by eroding alliances hardly amounts to an America-first agenda. Further, Mr. Trump’s focus on NATO shields from scrutiny the United Nations and other international institutions that are much more inimical to America.

Mr. Trump’s acolytes recognize that his NATO withdrawal threats have kicked up problems. Tellingly, however, their efforts to clean up after him are themselves unwise and unworkable. They unintentionally reflect the irrationality of Mr. Trump’s longstanding effort to debilitate NATO and his blunderbuss approach to world affairs generally.

One MAGA-world alternative to complete withdrawal is creating a “two-tier NATO,” in which any member not meeting the 2014 Cardiff summit commitment to spend 2% of gross domestic product on defense wouldn’t receive alliance protection. This notion is toxic to alliance solidarity and impractical. Iceland, a NATO member, has no military and therefore spends nothing on defense. I never discussed Iceland with Mr. Trump, but I expect he’d question why it was even allowed in NATO. The simple answer: Look at a map. Shall we concede Iceland to Russia or China so it can “persuade” Reykjavik to allow naval and air bases there?

Consider the vulnerability of Poland, the Baltics and others on Russia’s periphery. Because of geography, they are at risk no matter how high their defense spending—and all now exceed the Cardiff target. NATO deterrence provides their only real protection. If that deterrence recedes or fails, the Moscow-Beijing axis will seize these low-hanging fruit, notwithstanding that they satisfy Trump accounting rules.

Finally, a two-tiered NATO would be untenable in combat, logistics and communications. Imagine that Russia invades Poland. The U.S. springs to its aid, but Russia advances close to the German border. The U.S. field commander calls his Russian counterpart to say: “You can do whatever the hell you want in Germany. Please excuse us while we retreat to the next NATO country that spends 2% of its GDP on defense. We’ll see you there if you attack them after you finish Germany.” The Russians are already enjoying vodka toasts over a two-tiered NATO.

Another Trump World proposal is to impose tariffs on NATO member countries that don’t reach the 2% spending level. Presumably, this logic also applies to non-NATO allies like Japan, South Korea and Australia if Mr. Trump believes they aren’t carrying their fair share of the defense burden. This gambit is a non sequitur to everyone but Mr. Trump, for whom international problems are nails crying out for his tariff hammer. Penalizing the economies of U.S. allies to encourage them to increase defense spending sounds like “the beatings will continue until morale improves.”

More practically, on what authority could Mr. Trump draw to impose such tariffs? Even a Republican-controlled Congress, which is far from certain, is highly unlikely to give him new tariff authority. Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act, often cited in Mr. Trump’s first term, applies when foreign actions are “unreasonable or discriminatory, and burden or restrict U.S. commerce.” That hardly covers sovereign defense-spending decisions we happen not to like.

Section 232 of the 1962 Trade Act, authorizing tariffs to protect American national security, is closer to the mark. Mr. Trump used Section 232 to impose tariffs on Canadian and European steel and aluminum imports, thereby proving, unsurprisingly to everyone but Mr. Trump, that penalizing your allies doesn’t weaken your adversaries. Obviously, the opposite is true: we should be unifying allies against China economically as well as politically, not splitting the camp of those harmed by Chinese intellectual-property piracy and harmful trade policies.

Even if all NATO members reached the Cardiff targets, the spending issue wouldn’t disappear. Facing mounting global threats, Washington’s defense budgets need to increase to Reagan-era levels, perhaps 5% to 6% of GDP from the current 3.5%. Inevitably, therefore, NATO members (and other allies globally) will have to increase to perhaps a 4% minimum. Getting to 2% is the easy part. The Trump-mitigating proposals are untenable, evanescent, and inadequate to keep NATO strong.

Besides, there are better targets for MAGA ire. Mr. Trump could usefully wreak havoc on the U.N. As I said 30 years ago, you could lose the top 10 floors of the U.N. Secretariat building and it wouldn’t make a bit of difference. Things have only gotten worse.

In 2022, Washington spent about $18.1 billion across the U.N. system, far more than any other contributor. Contributions are made via several methods in a complex, nearly incomprehensible system, most commonly through “assessed” contributions, with the U.S. generally paying 22% of agency budgets so funded. Washington has had limited success in constraining U.N. budgets, and has often itself prompted significant increases.

Assessed contributions are functionally taxes. Contrary to what some Trump supporters have said, defense expenditures aren’t. We need to spend on our defense whether we have allies or not. Allies help reduce that burden. The U.N. only makes it heavier.

One powerful reform would be shifting from assessed contributions to wholly voluntary ones. America and other members would pay only for what they want and insist they get value for money. Even if only the U.S. switched unilaterally to voluntary contributions, it would create a tsunami that could fundamentally change the entire U.N. Or not, in which case at least we wouldn’t be paying for it.

There is no chance any U.N. component will ever voluntarily adopt such a system, because the U.S. has been the U.N.’s cash cow since 1945. Instead, a President Trump could simply say we are moving to voluntary contributions whether anyone else does or not. Under Article 19 of the U.N. Charter, failure to pay assessments for two years running could cost a country its vote in the General Assembly, but that loss is insignificant. General Assembly votes are nonbinding, and the U.S. carries no more weight than Vanuatu or Eritrea.

America’s Security Council vote, and therefore its veto power, is totally secure, guaranteed by the charter’s Article 27, and the charter itself can’t be amended without consent from all permanent members, including the U.S., per Article 108.

For those U.N. specialized agencies and programs already funded voluntarily, Inauguration Day would present immediate opportunities to defund some entirely and reduce funding for others. In his first term, Mr. Trump defunded the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, a decision Joe Biden reversed. Given that some Unrwa employees joined Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks, defunding it should be a top priority.

As Washington implemented a switch to voluntary contributions, it would face important decisions on continuing membership in several U.N. entities, decisions which would involve not merely defunding, but withdrawing from them completely. The U.S. has been in and out of the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization for decades, withdrawing first under Ronald Reagan, inexplicably rejoining under George W. Bush. Mr. Trump took us out again, and Mr. Biden again returned. A Trump win should guarantee a third withdrawal, hopefully for good. Mr. Trump also served notice of withdrawing from the Universal Postal Union but later backed down. UPU warrants another look.

Beyond massive changes in U.N. funding and membership, Mr. Trump should insist that an American become U.N. secretary-general when António Guterres’s term expires in December 2026. Although I have no prospect of and no desire for a position in Mr. Trump’s second-term administration, I would be available as our candidate for secretary-general.

The ultimate question is whether America should withdraw from the U.N. altogether. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick was once asked that question. She paused, then answered: “No, it’s not worth the trouble.”

Although technically part of the U.N., international financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank should also be carefully re-examined. On the IMF, Mr. Trump should read the seminal 1998 op-ed in these pages by George Shultz, William Simon and Walter Wriston, “Who Needs the IMF?” No one has answered the question adequately.

Not since the Reagan administration has there been a comprehensive review of multilateral foreign assistance. Proponents long argued that multilateral development banks help Washington mobilize development resources, but private capital is now far more widely available than when they were founded. Multilateral foreign aid only marginally advances U.S. national-security interests, but these banks have powerful Washington lobbies. Mr. Trump should mark them down for defunding or withdrawal. That would free up greater resources for bilateral foreign assistance, which, if implemented effectively, can advance core American interests.

Finally, a wall of pretend international courts—including the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, the Law of the Sea Treaty’s tribunal and the World Trade Organization’s dispute-resolution process—are already on history’s ash heap, or on their way there. Clearing away what remains is still important work. In his first term, Mr. Trump stymied the WTO judicial mechanism, and even the Biden administration has kept it stymied so far. Mr. Trump’s focus shouldn’t be limited to international trade, but to all manifestations of emerging “global governance,” heartily encouraged under Mr. Biden and Barack Obama.

A related issue is arms control, particularly how to handle a potential renewal of the New Start Treaty. Although we persuaded Mr. Trump in 2019 to withdraw from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces and Open Skies treaties with Russia, New Start was never much of an issue. Mr. Trump’s desire to cozy up to Vladimir Putin may give Mr. Putin an opportunity to cajole Mr. Trump into negotiations to extend New Start. Mr. Trump should resist any such temptation. Moreover, any strategic weapons negotiations should include China as well as Russia, given China’s rising nuclear and ballistic-missile capabilities.

Mr. Trump rightly never expressed support for the “rules-based international order” the left loves to conjure. As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Hamas’s barbaric attack on Israel, and countless other examples demonstrate, there is no such thing. A president who truly grasps this can reawaken Americans to the necessity of operating from positions of strength in the world, not high-minded rhetoric and virtue-signaling.

NATO and other U.S. politico-military alliances aren’t acts of charity, and they are fundamentally different from the U.N., the international financial institutions and the global-governance project. We founded and support NATO because it serves hard U.S. national-security interests, not because of warm feelings for Europeans or abstract notions of “democracy.”

Nobody is going to defend us or maintain an international system favoring America if we don’t. That requires spending the necessary resources and extending our reach through alliances like NATO. If we reduce our defense capabilities or retreat from positions of strength, others will fill the vacuum, invariably to our disadvantage.

Mr. Bolton served as President Trump’s national security adviser, 2018-19, and ambassador to the United Nations, 2005-06. He is author of “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir.”

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Wonder Land: Historical parallels are never perfect. But given Donald Trump's isolationist rhetoric and increasingly threatening actions from Iran, Russia and China, the former President could learn much from the Munich Agreement of 1938. Images: Reuters/CTK via ZUMA Press Composite: Mark Kelly

Copyright ©2024 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Appeared in the March 9, 2024, print edition as 'Trump Should Lay Off NATO, Target the U.N.'.





6. Special Operations News – March 11, 2024




Special Operations News – March 11, 2024

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Recent news, analysis, and commentary on current conflicts and special operations from around the world. View this email in your browserSOF News

Special Operations News From Around the World


By SOF News on 03/11/24


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

Photo / Image: UK Special Reconnaissance Squadron snipers taking part in Exercise STEADFAST DEFENDER in Norway. (Photo by AS1 Daniel Smither, UK MOD, Feb 1, 2024)

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

SOF News

Women in SOF. The participation of women in elite special operations forces roles has remained a rarity after almost eight years of being open to female servicemembers. Some observers say this is going to take some time. “Why getting more female troops into Special Operations will take time”, by Hope Hodge Seck, Army Times, March 5, 2024.

Osprey in the Air? The military stood down all the V-22s in December 2023 after a fatal crash of an AFSOC CV-22 that killed eight crewmembers. Now it appears they will soon be returning to flight. (DOD News, 8 Mar 2024) This is welcome news to the services; especially AFSOC, because the platform offers a unique capability that goes unfilled if it isn’t flying. As time goes on the role of the Osprey is more vital than ever. “The Osprey, Indispensable for Future War Plans”, by Rebecca Grant, Real Clear Defense, March 7, 2024.

SWCS and Training Foreign Partners. Allied partners send top officers and service members to receive professional training and education through the U.S. Army Special Warfare Center and School. They attend schools such as the Joint Special Operations Master of Arts Program and Army Special Operations Forces qualification courses. Advanced skills training provides quality training to hone skills, including Military Freefall Jumpmaster Course in Yuma, Arizona. Read more in “Starting from Beginning: Strengthening of Strategic Foreign Partnerships from Initial Acquistion Training, Education”, by Steve Morningstar, SWCS, March 6, 2024.

FL State Guard ‘Special Operations Unit’. The 3rd Battalion, 20th Special Forces Group (Airborne), an Army National Guard unit, is located in Florida. So are other active duty Special Operations Forces units and organizations. However, there is a ‘special operations unit’ that is not subject to federal oversight or presidential authority. Read more in “The Truth About Florida State Guard’s Special Operations Unit”, Ammoland, March 6, 2024.

Drones and SF. Members of the 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne) employed drones during an exercise with Greek special operations forces in early March 2024. The First-Person View (FPV) have become increasingly popular for reconnaissance missions. The FPVs have been used extensively and successfully by both Ukraine and Russia in the current conflict in eastern Ukraine. “US Army Green Berets field FPV drones”, Defence-Blog.com, March 9, 2024.

A Rewarding Career in CA. Lt. Col. Sarah Stockton describes her career in the Army. “1st TSC Civil Affairs officer empowers leaders internationally”, U.S. Army, March 8, 2024.

26th MEU(SOC) Heading to Home Port. The ships of the Bataan Amphibious Ready Group (ARG), along with the embarked 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit (Special Operations Capable) exited the Mediterranean Sea after conducting operations in the U.S. Sixth Fleet area of operations, March 6, 2024. “Bataan ARG, 26th MEU(SOC) to Return to Homeport”, U.S. Sixth Fleet, March 6, 2024.

SF Veteran Heading to Congress. Pat Harrigan has won the Republican congressional primary in the 10th Congressional District in North Carolina. The district votes heavily Republican, so it is very likely he wins in November. Harrigan is a veteran of the Afghan War. (Blue Ridge Public Radio, 5 Mar 2024)

Trojan Footprint. Forces from Albania, Bulgaria, France, Georgia, Greece, Italy, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Portugal, Romania, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States are participating in Exercise Trojan Footprint March 4-15 at locations in Bulgaria, Georgia, Germany, Greece (DOD 8 Mar 2024), North Macedonia and Romania. Approximately 900 U.S. service members will be among the about 2,000 total participants. Trojan Footprint 24 is a U.S. European Command-approved exercise conducted by U.S. Special Operations Command Europe every two years. (SOCEUR, 4 Mar 2024)

Exercise Agile Angel. A team of special warfare Airmen conducted a low-visibility ground infiltration to establish an austere LZ and FARP. The site refueled an MQ-9 Reaper. The team then was re-tasked to launch in support of a combat search and rescue mission. Learn more about Agile Angel in “Special Warfare and Combat Rescue Airmen demonstrate ACE capabilities”, DVIDS, March 6, 2024.


Help Special Operations Forces (SOF) personnel with spine injuries receive the healthcare options, education, and care they need.

SOF People in the News

Maj. Gen. (Promotable) John W. Brennan Jr. will be assigned as deputy commander, U.S. Africa Command, Germany. He most recently served as director of operations, J-3, U.S. Special Operations Command, MacDill Air Force Base, Florida.

Brig. Gen. Constantin E. Nicolet, director of Intelligence, J-2, U.S. Special Operations Command, MacDill Air Force Base, Florida, to director, J-2, U.S. Central Command, MacDill Air Force Base, Florida.

Brig. Gen. Jason C. Slider, deputy commanding general (Operations), 3rd Division (France), France, to commanding general, U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School, Fort Liberty, North Carolina.

Brig. Gen. Joseph W. Wortham II, deputy commanding general (Operations), 1st Special Forces Command (Airborne), Fort Liberty, North Carolina, to assistant commander-Support, Joint Special Operations Command, U.S. Special Operations Command, Fort Liberty, North Carolina.

Brig. Gen. Philip J. Ryan, commander, Special Operations Joint Task Force-Levant, Operation Inherent Resolve, Jordan, to commanding general, U.S. Army South, Joint Base San Antonio, Texas.


International SOF

Ukraine’s Group 13. Russian warships keep sinking to the bottom of the Black Sea (NSI, map). One reason is because of the effectiveness of a secretive unit that uses maritime drone operators to destroy Russian watercraft. Group 13 belongs to the Ukrainian Main Intelligence Directorate. “What is Group 13, the Shadowy Ukrainian Unit That Keeps Sinking Russian Ships?”, by Susan Katz Keating, Soldier of Fortune Magazine, March 4, 2024.

Qatar SOF Training Site. The Gulf nation is improving its training facilities for special operations forces. The expansion of Project 401’s Special Operations Training Centre is for both land and sea-based SOF units. The facility will train special operators and counterterrorism units from around the world. “Qatar Positions Itself as Special Operations Training Hub”, National Defense Magazine, March 4, 2024. See also, “Qatar shows new naval special forces training centre”, Janes.com, October 12, 2022.

Jaeger Corps. Green Berets from the 10th Special Forces Group and special operators from Denmark trained together during a recent exercise. “Arctic security put on full display during Arctic Edge 2024”, EUCOM, March 5, 2024.

SAS Soldiers Arrested. Five members of the Special Air Service have been arrested by British military police on suspicion of allegedly committing war crimes while on operations in Syria. The case against the five revolves around the alleged murder of a suspected jihadist in Syria who was killed in operations two years ago. The SAS has been actively deployed in Syria for the past decade – engaged in the fight against the Islamic State and supporting Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). “Five SAS soldiers arrested in UK on suspicion of alleged war crimes in Syria”, The Guardian, March 5, 2024.


SOF History

Norm Hooten Interview. A Special Forces NCO talks about his life in Special Forces, in a SMU, the Battle of Mogadishu, the aftermath, and transitioning to civilian life (whiskey and cigars). In the movie Black Hawk Down, Hooten is played by Eric Bana. “Norm Hooten: From Somalia to Cigars with a Special Forces Operator & Black Hawk Down Veteran”, Recoil Web, March 6, 2024.

UDT Training in the Early 1960s. Ned Pugh writes about joining the Navy, going through UDT training, almost dying from a sub lockout, and his time in Vietnam. “No One Makes It Through Underwater Demolition Team Training, They Said. They Were Wrong”, The Warhorse, March 6, 2024.

MoH Bennie Adkins. During March 9-12, 1966, the A Sahu Valley Special Forces camp was attacked by a large North Vietnamese force. One Green Beret, Bennie Adkins, was awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroic actions during the four-day fight.

Operation Bright Light – RVN. On March 16, 1967, Operation Bright Light was initiated. During the Vietnam War when a down pilot, Hatchet Force, or Recon Team was in trouble a MACV-SOG Brightlight team was formed and inserted into the fight to find, locate, assist, and exfiltrate the entity in trouble.

http://specialoperations.org/operation_brightlight.html

MACV-SOG. Abbi Clark writes about the operational structure, command control, equipment, weapons, uniforms, TTPs, and more about the Studies and Observations Group of the Military Assistance Command Vietnam. “MACV-SOG: Secret Operations in Vietnam”, Grey Dynamics, March 5, 2024.


Conflict in Israel and Gaza

Food Airdrops. The United States and other nations continued the humanitarian relief air operations in Gaza with the drop of food to civilians. The latest drop occurred on Sunday, March 10, 2024, when CENTCOM and Royal Jordanian Air Force aircraft dropped food over Northern Gaza. (CENTCOM Twitter)

Maritime Corridor for Humanitarian Aid. The United States and other nations are joining together to establish a sea-borne method of delivering food and other types of assistance to the residents of the Gaza Strip. A major part of this plan, referred to as the Amalthea Initiative, is the building of a temporary pier (JLOTS) in Gaza. Cyprus, located in the eastern Mediterranean Sea (NSI, map), would be a staging base for the operation.


Ukraine Conflict

Deploy U.S. Special Forces into Ukraine. Brian Petit, a retired Special Forces officer, argues that the time is ripe for the United States to deploy U.S. Army Special Forces advisor and training teams into Ukraine. “Send in the A-Team: A graduated response for Ukraine”, War on the Rocks, March 7, 2024.

Report – Russian Military Performance and Outlook, Congressional Research Service, CRS IF12606, March 8, 2024, PDF, 3 pages. Covering topics of the Ukraine conflict to include command and control, personnel, equipment and ammunition, military performance, and outlook. https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF12606

Fight for the Black Sea. The patrol ship Sergei was sunk in the Black Sea (NSI, map) on March 4, 2024, by five Ukrainian sea drones. A Ka-29 helicopter was also sunk with the ship.


Sudan Conflict and Evac of Foreign Nationals

Ukrainian SOF in Sudan? The Wall Street Journal reported that last summer President Zelensky sent Ukrainian special forces, including intelligence officers, to the African country at the request of its leader, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. The Sudanese rebels, the Rapid Response Force, were being supported by the Wagner PMC. The Russian mercenaries were involved in the gold market, sending millions home to Russia to finance the war. “Khartoum Gave Weapons to Kyiv so Zelensky Sent Ukrainian Special Forces to Sudan”, Kyiv Post, March 6, 2024. See also, “Ukraine Is Now Fighting Russia in Sudan”, The Wall Street Journal, March 6, 2024. (subscription)

Update on the conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and Rapid Support Forces (RSF), ceasefire, humanitarian crisis, and evacuation of foreign nationals.

https://www.national-security.info/country/sudan/sudan-neo.html


Commentary

SOF and CF Relationships. Anna M. Gielas PhD. writes about how the relationship between U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF) and Conventional Forces (CF) has been historically challenging, leading to mission failures and the loss of lives. Her 20-page article investigates whether the intimate collaboration in Afghanistan and Iraq improved relations between SOF and SF. “Quarrelsome Siblings – The Relationship Between Special Operations and Conventional Forces.” Journal of Strategic Security 17, no. 1 (2024): 58-75.

TCCC LL by 75th Ranger Regiment. Knight, Col. Ryan M., Col. Russ Kotwal, and Lt. Col. Charles Moore, “Lessons Learned by the 75th Ranger Regiment during Twenty Years of Tactical Combat Casualty Care”, Military Review, March-April 2024.

https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review/English-Edition-Archives/March-April-2024/Lessons-Learned/

Challenges to UW Efforts of SF During OEF. Anna M. Gielas PhD has published a paper entitled “Prima Donnas in Kevlar zones”, Taylor & Francis Online, March 9, 2024, PDF, 23 pages. The paper is about the challenges to unconventional warfare efforts of the U.S. Special Forces during Operation Enduring Freedom.


National Security

SOTU Address. On Thursday, March 7, 2024, President Biden delivered the State of the Union address at the United States Capitol. The transcript is provided by the White House. As expected, little mention of Afghanistan. Ukraine, Putin, and NATO get a big mention at the beginning of the speech. After the national security issues are quickly addressed, most of the middle part of the speech revolved around politics, social issues, taxes, social security, immigration reform, climate, gun control, and the economy. Towards the end of the speech, he mentions the Israel-Gaza conflict, Houthis interfering in the Red Sea, and threats from China.

Beware the Honeypots. A civilian employee of the U.S. Air Force assigned to the U.S. Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM), at Offutt Air Force Base, was arrested Saturday, March 2, for allegedly conspiring to transmit and transmitting classified information relating to the national defense on a foreign online dating platform. David Slater, age 63, is a retired U.S. Army LTC and is accused of transmitting information classified as SECRET that was related to the Russia – Ukraine War. He is accused of sending the info to someone who claimed to be a female living in Ukraine. ‘She’ referred to Slater as her “secret informant love” and her “secret agent”. “Air Force Employee Indicted for Unlawful Disclosure of Classified National Defense Information”, Department of Justice, March 4, 2024.


42K For Secrets? A soldier from the 101st Airborne Division, Korbein Schultz – an intelligence analyst, has been charged with selling high tech secrets to ‘someone in China’. The payoff was a mere $42 grand . . . not even enough to buy a pickup truck. He sent classified information on HIMARS missiles, hypersonic equipment, and the F-22 Raptor. (Department of Justice, March 7, 2024)

Border Crisis. Before President Biden became president, the Panama-Colombia border saw only 10,000 migrants a year. Under Biden, more than 500,000 migrants have crossed that border in each of the past two years. Central American and South American countries are benefiting from the ‘catch and release’ program of the Biden administration. The visa requirements of these countries have loosened in an effort to attract more ‘tourists’ who ultimately pay big money to get to the U.S. southern border. “The Biden-Harris ‘root cause’ border failure”, Washington Examiner, March 10, 2024.

Report – IC OSINT Strategy. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) released the Intelligence Community (IC) Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) Strategy for 2024-2026. OSINT, or intelligence derived exclusively from publicly or commercially available information that addresses specific intelligence priorities, requirements, or gaps, is vital to the IC’s mission, providing unique intelligence value and enabling all other intelligence collection disciplines. (DNI, 8 Mar 2024)


Strategic Competition

SOF and Limited Conflicts. A team of writers have provided their perspective on the use of special operations forces in limited and unwinnable conflicts. They use Afghanistan as a vehicle to argue their point. “Optimizing the Statement: Limited Conflicts and the Use of Special Operations Forces in the Context of Global Competition”, InterPopulum, March 11, 2024.

SOF in Strategic Competition. Clementine Starling and Alyxandra Marine collaborated on Stealth, speed, and adaptability: The Role of special operations in strategic competition, Atlantic Council, March 7, 2024. https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/in-depth-research-reports/report/starling-marine-special-operations-forces-in-strategic-competition/

SOF and Shaping Conflicts . . . Before They Start. Much is being written about SOF in an era of Great Power Competition or Strategic Competition. Mark Pomerleau writes on comments by ASD SO/LIC Christopher Maier at an Atlantic Council conference held on Thursday, March 7, 2024. “Special Ops expected to play key role in shaping future battlespaces in ‘non-physical domains'”, DefenseScoop, March 8, 2024.

Sweden Joins NATO. One of the unforeseen results of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is a stronger and more united North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Now add to that . . . a larger NATO. Since the invasion, Finland and Sweden are now part of NATO. The Baltic Sea (NSI, map) is now being referred to as the “NATO Sea”. “Sweden officially joins NATO”, NATO, March 7, 2024.


SOF News welcomes the submission of articles for publication. If it is related to special operations, current conflicts, national security, or defense then we are interested.

Around the World

CRS Report – U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM). The Congressional Research Service has published a report providing a description of the mission, posture, organization, and more about INDOPACOM. March 5, 2024, PDF, 3 pages. https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF12604

UN Quarterly Report. The United Natons Secretary-General quarterly report on Afghanistan was published on February 28, 2024. It describes the situation in Afghanistan and its implications for international peace and security. Topics covered include political developments, security, regional cooperation, human rights, economic development, aid effectiveness, humanitarian assistance, counter-narcotics, mission support, and other observations. This report covers the period of December 2023 through February 2024. PDF, 16 pages.


Red Sea Cables Cut. Three underwater cables that provide internet and telecommunications between continents have been cut – likely by Yemen’s Houthi rebels. There are 14 submarine cables running through the Red Sea that provide over 90% of communications between Europe and Asia. “Red Sea underwater data cables cut as Houthi attacks continue”, C4ISRNET, March 4, 2024.

More Ship Attacks. Multiple news sources reported that a Houthi missile struck the MV True Confidence, a Liberian-owned vessel, in the Red Sea on Wednesday, March 6, 2024. Three crewmembers were killed and six injured, Coalition warships responded to the event. On Saturday, March 9, 2024, at least 28 Houthi drones were shot down by U.S. and allied nation naval vessels. (CENTCOM Twitter)

ISIS in Africa. Aaron Y. Zelin writes on how local branches of IS now control territory in Mali, Somalia, and Mozambique. “The Islamic State on the March in Africa”, Washington Institute, March 1, 2024.


Books, Podcasts, and Videos

Book Review – Bubbleheads, SEALs and Wizards: America’s Scottish Bastion in the Cold War. Doug Wise, a former Deputy Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency reviews a new book out that opens the door to a fascinating and little-known chronicle of Scotland’s critical military and intelligence roles in allied efforts during the Cold War. The book author, David Mackay, is a former special forces officer and veteran of the British Parachute Regiment. “Bubbleheads, SEALs and Wizards”, The CIPHER Brief, March 5, 2024.

Podcast – Secret Wars: Cover Action and Irregular Warfare, Irregular Warfare Initiative, March 7, 2024, 55 minutes. Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Michael Nagata and Austin Carson are interviewed in this episode. The guests discuss covert and clandestine operations, complexities and difficulties associated with IW policies. https://irregularwarfare.org/podcasts/secret-wars-covert-action-and-irregular-warfare/

Podcast – Heavy Water Plant Sabotage. Mitch Utterback, a retired Special Forces officer, is in the “G Base” to discuss the race for the atomic bomb between the opposing sides during World War II. In addition, the discussion covers the heroic efforts of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and Norwegian Commandos who conducted daring operations to sabotage the Norsk Hydro heavy water plant and deny the Nazis the atomic bomb. Episode 094, February 29, 2024, one hour.

Video – Regional Power: North Korea. This film examines the current political and military situation in North Korea. Subject matter experts discuss Korean history, DPRK current affairs, and KPA military doctrine. Topics include the rise of the Kim family to political leadership of the DPRK, its influence in the region, and how the U.S. works in partnership with the Republic of Korea. Army University Press, February 13, 2024, 53 minutes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUi44d3YPoc

Video – Abrams Charter, The 75th Ranger Regiment, March 9, 2024, YouTube, 4 minutes. In the early 1970 a document wrote by General Creighton Abrams was the foundation for the organization, doctrine, and capabilities of the 1st Ranger Battalion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qzojx7mEVb0

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7. Optimizing The Stalemate: Limited Conflicts And The Use Of Special Operations Forces In The Context Of Global Competition



The math below is complicated and hurts my head.


https://interpopulum.org/optimizing-the-stalemate-limited-conflicts-and-the-use-of-special-operations-forces-in-the-context-of-global-competition/



ARTICLE

Optimizing The Stalemate: Limited Conflicts And The Use Of Special Operations Forces In The Context Of Global Competition


By

Leo J. Blanken, Jason J. Lepore & Kai Thaxton

Published

3 days ago



Introduction

The ignominious end of the war in Afghanistan raises many questions about what could have been accomplished there and, more importantly, what the future holds for the efficacy of limited armed conflict as a viable instrument for great powers.[i] The disastrous nature of the American withdrawal, however, has overshadowed deeper debate concerning the purpose and sustainability of any future such conflicts. One month after the last troops departed Kabul International Airport, President Biden’s top generals publicly contradicted him, saying that they had recommended maintaining a reduced military force as opposed to complete withdrawal.[ii] What was not articulated by these military leaders, however, was any fresh thinking to optimally employ such a small military footprint. We offer one here. Though our prescriptive model comes too late to change the outcome of Afghanistan, it is relevant for any future asymmetric military conflicts engaged in by the United States. More specifically, our model of tacit collusion (a) provides specific prescriptions for sustaining and managing limited armed conflict within the context of global competition, and (b) provides a scalable logic that can be extended to other domains of global competition. In brief, we examine conflicts in which neither side can defeat the other and bargained settlements are not possible. Our model shows that actors in such conflicts can arrive at an equilibrium where they refrain from wasteful fighting, but rather identify a mutually acceptable state of affairs in which each actor uses limited applications of pain to maintain the equilibrium. It is even possible to identify additional points of shared interest among warring actors around which limited cooperation may be fostered.

CONTACT Leo J. Blanken, ljblanken@nps.edu | Jason J. Lepore, jlepore@calpoly.edu | Kai Thaxton, kaionathaxton@gmail.com The views expressed in this publication are entirely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views, policy, or position of the Naval Postgraduate School, California Polytechnic State University, the U.S. Army, United States Government, Department of Defense, or United States Special Operations Command. © 2023 Arizona State University

This model is designed to provide novel strategic concepts for “unwinnable” conflicts–when victory is not possible, and resources are limited. Beyond stalemated armed conflicts, our model also seeks to provide a logical basis for grounding the emerging doctrinal concept of “strategic competition,” which is defined by the Joint Chiefs of Staff as “an enduring condition to be managed, not a problem to be solved.”[iii] Further, our model has significant implications for U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF). If our arguments have merit, then U.S. SOF forces would seem to be well-suited to engage in the types of activities suggested here. This is due to their ability to plan and conduct strategically oriented operations with a minimal footprint, as well as their pre-existing skillsets in irregular warfare and familiarity with politically sensitive activities. In sum, this model would provide a novel blueprint for U.S. SOF activities within a global competition environment.

To contextualize our model, let us consider why the United States chose to abandon the war in Afghanistan. By the last few years of the two-decades long conflict, critics often decried the war as a “stalemate,”[iv] with that term even becoming regularly used by U.S. military leadership.[v] This criticism even dominated the debate on Afghanistan in the 2020 presidential election as both candidates promised to end the war, due its stalemated condition.[vi] Donald Trump referred to the war as “ridiculously endless”[vii] and Biden referred to it as a “forever war.”[viii] In the words of one critic:

The trouble is that continuous war violates a core precept of strategy, which, at least as presently understood, involves the relation of means and ways to defined ends, not indefinite pursuits. If a campaign has no end, it can have no objective; if it has no objective, it cannot be won.[ix]

But do all conflicts need to be “won” for military activity to have purpose? If Clausewitz is correct in asserting that there is “a whole category of wars in which the very idea of defeating the enemy is unreal,” then can strategies be developed to pursue goals while eschewing traditional concepts of “winning?”[x]

Not only did Afghanistan appear to be “unwinnable,” but the enormous costs associated with the war began to be seen as a liability, as adversarial peer powers began to rise and the opportunity cost of pouring money into the Afghan stalemate began to elicit concern at the grand strategic level. How might the United States have optimized the war within this set of conditions? By drawing on the logic of tacit collusive models from oligopolistic competition among firms, we propose a reconceptualization of comparative strategies for managing such stalemated conflicts. To do so, we construct a model that escapes the constraints imposed by the pursuit of either military “victory” or a formal diplomatic conclusion. More specifically, we explore the possibility of identifying and fostering equilibria that are Pareto superior to continued active warfighting. The strategy to achieve such an outcome builds on the dynamics of oligopoly; how do rival firms engage in price fixing in the face of anti-trust laws? They use tacit mechanisms to arrive at mutually beneficial outcomes in which actors coordinate on equilibria without overt contracts with one another. In terms of military strategy, the advantage of such an approach is that it defines practicable goals in unwinnable conflicts, it logically nests tactical lines of effort underneath a well-defined strategic vision, and it entails relatively low costs and risks.

The paper proceeds as follows. First, we discuss the relevant literature on bargaining and war outcomes, and then focus particularly on the problematic aspects of internal wars. This provides a conceptual foundation upon which to build our treatment of asymmetric military interventions. We then discuss the use of the “Tulluck contest” as the most common framework currently chosen for the formal modeling of war termination and why it is inappropriate for our needs here (due to its supposition of clear a winner and loser in the modeled contest). We then proceed to construct and solve an alternative model based on oligopolistic competition; using such an approach allows us to provide the formal characterization of an equilibrium in which actors may optimally stabilize a conflict and even foster cooperation on other mutually desired outcomes despite neither being able to dominate the battlefield or engage in diplomatic bargaining. Finally, we return to the case of Afghanistan and counterfactually apply some of the model’s implications to that forsaken war.[xi]

Bargaining and War Outcomes: Unexplored Equilibria for Unwinnable Wars

To build our argument, we first review the application of bargaining models to the puzzle of war termination. We then narrow our discussion to the dynamics of war termination for intrastate conflicts. More specifically, we focus on this subset of conflicts to highlight four commonly observed aspects of internal wars that are also found in the population of protracted asymmetric military interventions that are relevant here.[xii] These four aspects are: the inability for either actor to achieve decisive military victory, inherent instabilities that hinder negotiated settlements, the frequent presence of “profitable” rent-streams that sustain the conflict, and the often fractured nature of the warring actors. After discussing each of these attributes in turn, we then set the stage for their employment in our model.

 The study of war termination has a relatively short and thin history. As late as 2009, Reiter could still lament that “[w]e know relatively little about how wars end, in contrast to the mountain ranges of ideas and scholarship we have about how wars start … war termination must receive closer attention.”[xiii] Kecskemeti and Ikle began the modern agenda on war termination by examining the strategic nature of surrender and how prewar visions of quick victory often diverge from the duration and costs of actual wars.[xiv] More recent efforts, such as Stam, Goemans, and Reiter build on the seminal work of Wittman and Pillar and emphasize war termination as a bargaining process.[xv] As actors fight one another the conflict may culminate in a total military victory in which one side is completely disarmed and left at the mercy of the other, but it is more likely to result in a diplomatic settlement somewhere short of total subjugation, with the exchange of violence serving as a form of bargaining that drives the terms of the settlement. This logic can be seen to reflect Clausewitz’s famous dictum that war is a continuation of politics and those political aims are often limited.[xvi] In typical analyses of inter-state war outcomes, wars can be decided militarily (either side wins through force of arms), or a “draw” can occur when “both sides are willing to accept [an] … outcome through some form of negotiated settlement.”[xvii] Within this framework fighting serves two purposes: it can reveal information about the likelihood of either side winning the war, and it can also serve to change that likelihood (by degrading the capabilities of the actors at varying rates).[xviii] In other words, a “military contest is like a very costly experiment that tests competing theories as to how the war will unfold.”[xix] Internal wars, however, often confound this characterization.

 First, is the inability of either side to achieve decisive military victory in the conflict. The inter-state war termination literature centers on the use of fighting to reveal information to the participants.[xx] As they fight, their expectations about outcomes become more consistent with one another, allowing settlements to be achieved. But as Fearon points out, grinding civil wars confound this story as “it strains credulity to imagine that the parties to a war that has been going on for many years … can hold any significant private information about capabilities or resolve.”[xxi] As a result, internal wars can end up frozen in place, and “parties can be locked in a completely unwinnable war despite the presence of mutually preferable deals.”[xxii]

 The second feature is the commitment problem that hinders the likelihood of stable, negotiated settlements in internal conflicts. Schmitt argues that one of the greatest achievements of early modern Europe was the capacity for wars between sovereign states to be “bracketed” by the resumption of peaceful coexistence.[xxiii] In other words, besides outright military victory, warring sovereign states can also choose to diplomatically terminate conflict and reestablish normal relations.[xxiv] The dynamics of intrastate wars, however, differ significantly; since both actors are struggling to occupy the same sovereign space, it is usually the case that one actor needs to be utterly extinguished for the conflict to end.[xxv] Fearon shows why this is such a significant problem for negotiated war termination in civil wars, namely that any outcome in which one actor ends up fully subordinated to the other begs for reneging and is hence unstable.[xxvi]

A third feature of internal wars is relevant for our analysis: making the war itself “profitable.” Fearon shows that this outcome is particularly likely to occur when both actors can make the civil war “pay” (usually through the exploitation of some appropriable rent-stream, such as drug trafficking or valuable natural resources).[xxvii] There is often a mutually reenforcing relationship between conflict and appropriable rent-streams as wealth can be generated as a flow of private goods that are easily controlled by force.[xxviii] The relevant aspect of this feature is that oftentimes the wealth associated with the rent-stream becomes highly valued by the conflict’s participants, in some cases arguably more so than the nominal goals of the actor.[xxix] Since these sources of rents are highly valued, threats to these streams provide a potential “lever” to shape actors’ behavior (a feature we exploit below).

Finally, rather than a bargaining problem among unitary actors, as is normally the case in inter-state war termination, the conflict may be more complicated. Since the conflict takes place within a non-functioning state, violence may be exercised by any number of players.[xxx] This may be due to the breakdown of command and control among factions or the proliferation of additional actors taking advantage of the opportunity to exploit the political vacuum created by war.[xxxi] In other words, events may occur within the conflict environment for which it is not clear who is responsible. This complexity makes bargaining processes significantly more difficult.[xxxii]

What does this body of work imply for asymmetric military interventions? If these four factors are pernicious features of intrastate conflict, why is our model not one of civil wars? The answer is that asymmetric interventions have an additional feature, one that is not common in civil wars. In asymmetric interventions, the conflict is an external and (often) trivial endeavor for one of the combatants.[xxxiii] Despite the asymmetric resource endowment, however, often the “powerful” intervenor fails to achieve victory; in fact, forty percent of asymmetric conflicts result in failure by the more powerful side.[xxxiv] If these well-resourced intervenors are unable to achieve “victory” through such costly activities as large-scale counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine,[xxxv] what other strategies exist that might be sustained for lower costs? Answering this question is critical for American foreign policy, given the failures of the last two decades.

Our tacit collusive model provides a new strategic logic for stalemates by highlighting a mostly overlooked type of equilibrium that may exist within this class of conflicts. Beyond the three outcomes that have been the focus of the existing literature — (1) win/lose (one side militarily disarms the other), (2) draw (formally negotiated political settlement), or (3) continued fighting — we focus on a fourth: tacit collusion.[xxxvi] This equilibrium enables an outcome that is Pareto superior to continued fighting and would be a feasible outcome when victory or negotiated settlement are not attainable. It constitutes a relatively attractive form of coexistence within which both actors coordinate in refraining from overly injurious actions. In sum, a tacit collusive outcome is optimization within a stalemate.

Optimizing the Stalemate: Tacit Collusion

We now turn to an alternative way to conceive of strategies and outcomes in limited armed conflicts within the context of wider competition. To develop a useful model of such conflicts we need to diverge from the standard assumptions of a contest with a decisive culminating point and, instead, utilize a framework that allows for endless competitive interactions. Models of tacit collusion among firms provide an attractive set of tools for such an endeavor.

Our modeling choices diverge from the standard approach to formally modeling conflict: a Tulluck contest.[xxxvii] In such a contest, participants exert costly effort and victory is decided by a random variable with its distribution determined by the efforts of the participants. This framework presupposes that one actor in the conflict eventually “wins” (or at least the conflict is neatly settled).

In many recent and ongoing military conflicts, however, there is reason to believe that this framework is an ill fit. In asymmetric interventions, for example, the militarily powerful state may be too constrained by political considerations to bring their resources to bear, while the weaker side is simply incapable of destroying the forces of the invader; hence, a military resolution is rarely possible. Consequently, we have a very different operational environment than that described by a Tulluck contest. When stylized, the static equilibrium of a ‘stalemate game’ is essentially the outcome of a prisoners’ dilemma each period; costly battles—even when repeated over and over again—result in little real movement in territory. This setting shares key abstract features of price competition between rival suppliers in an industry in which neither firm will ever be able to eliminate the other. For this reason, we are able to utilize analytical tools from the literature on industry dynamics. Particularly, we show that in this setting there is a dynamic equilibrium that is better for both actors. In this equilibrium, each actor refrains from defection and is, further, incentivized to exert resources to prevent disruption by outside forces.

The idea that firms can use dynamic strategies to sustain supra-competitive profits is very old and based on the “folk theorem” in game theory. This idea was first formalized in a noncooperative repeated game setting by Friedman.[xxxviii] The literature on tacit collusion is now extensive and includes some powerful results.[xxxix] The basics of tacit collusion are as follows: Actors play a particular collusive path of strategies. In any given time period, there is a short-term benefit from defecting from the collusive path. The key to sustaining collusion is a punishment that is enacted if an actor defects from the collusive path. For a collusive path to be an equilibrium it must be that the short-term gain from defection is outweighed by the expected future punishment of taking such an action. Abreu established the idea that carrot and stick punishments paths can be optimal.[xl] This is a punishment that involves a brief hit of a “stick” and then returning to the collusive “carrot” path. Green and Porter and Abreu et al. expand this reasoning to a model of incomplete information and imperfect observability.[xli] In a setting when defections are not perfectly observable a carrot/stick form of collusion with periods of punishment (the stick) are on the equilibrium path. The finite periods of punishment are enacted after harm occurs to an actor and the actor cannot determine if the harm was intentional or not. These short-term punishments are essential to keep the players from taking actions that harm the other actor. The model we construct is built upon the results of this literature and includes periods of punishment on the equilibrium path.

Our choices build on previous work designed to model the interactions among terrorist groups and state actors.[xlii] This work seeks to reveal the dynamics that unfold between an irregular opponent that can leverage asymmetric informational advantages to inflict damage on a materially superior state.[xliii] Jacobson and Kaplan, for example model the exchange between targeted killings employed by the state versus suicide bombings employed by terrorists, focusing on the impact of relative patience between the two actors.[xliv] Bueno de Mesquita examines the tension between moderate and extremist factions common within terrorist groups and models the conditions under which the government may induce cooperation from moderate terror faction to aid in the contest with the extreme faction in infinitely repeated interactions.[xlv] More recent work, such as Baron, Berman, and Gavious, build on this work by analyzing empirical data of terror attacks and then building models to explain the observed patterns.[xlvi]

Such an approach has the novel implication of turning uncertainty on its head: Traditional military strategy emphasizes the need to “keep the enemy guessing” and maximize uncertainty, disruption, and surprise.[xlvii] This model, rather, seeks to find a stable equilibrium that is a mutually acceptable and sustainable outcome; players have a common understanding that unacceptable actions trigger swift, proportionate punishment while acceptable behavior goes unpunished. In the following section we provide a model of repeated conflict for a territorial space with the possible occurrence of unidentifiable acts of violence. We then characterize dynamic collusive strategies, and derive the conditions based on the model primitives for these strategies to be a mutually beneficial equilibrium.

A Model of an Unwinnable War

Consider two actors that are in a long-term conflict such that neither actor can hold territory without costly effort. The game takes place over discrete time periods , which go on indefinitely. Here we use the word “territory” to denote multidimensional span of control over the conflict environment. We use  to denote an arbitrary actor and j is used to index the actor other than i. Actor i takes actions to fight for territory in time period  that costs  to the actor, where . Denote by , the vector of territorial fighting actions at time . The total value of holding control of the territory for each actor  is . For simplicity we assume that regardless of the territorial distribution in the preceding period, it is just as difficult to hold or gain territory in the following period. Territorial distribution is determined for period t by military effort according to the function

,

where each  is a continuously differentiable, bounded, concave and strictly increasing function from . Further,  for . We allow a territorial split at the discontinuity point  to be split such that , and  for each actor .

The two actors can also take military actions that do not impact the territorial distribution but cause direct harm to the rival actor  and create some positive effects for the actor  taking the actions. We call these actions non-territorial military actions. For each actor ,  is used to denote non-territorial actions, with  meaning the actions are taken and  meaning they are not taken. Denote by , the vector of actions at time . The utility from taking these actions to actor  is denoted by , with  and . These action cause harm to the other actor  specified by the function , with  and . The last inequality imposes that the net benefit to both actors from the non-territorial military actions is negative.

There is also a positive probability that a non-territorial “terror” attack happens to actor  by some rogue elements not following the instructions of actor . This type of attack occurs to actor  with probability . This probability of an outside strike to actor  can be reduced by the costly effort of actor . This is specified by , a continuously differentiable, concave and strictly decreasing function from . The effort level of actor  is unobservable by the rival actor . This function  captures the control each actor\ j has of their own forces as well as non-state actors in conflict environment. An environment with many rogue actors who are not controlled by actor  involves a function  that are larger at every effort level. We assume that the probability of an unauthorized terror strike hitting each actor is independent. A terror strike to actor  causes that harm . There is no way for actor  to know if the strike was a deliberate action of actor , or an action by some other external actor in the conflict environment.

Actor ‘s expected payoff of a particular time period  is:

.

Each actor  has a geometric discount factor . The expected payoff of actor  at any time period  is written


 Next, we consider equilibria of this repeated game.

All Out War

To begin the analysis, we focus on the equilibrium of the repeated game that does not involve dynamic strategies. This will be denoted as the War equilibrium and is composed of the repeated play of the static or one-shot Nash equilibrium from each period. Since the same one-shot game is repeated for each period , we are free to suppress the time subscript in our analysis. The additive separability of the payoff functions makes each player ‘s choices of each the variable , , and  independent of each other. Let us begin by analyzing the static equilibrium choices of  and , which are just basic optimization problems in which the optimal choice is not impacted by the other player ‘s choices. Player ‘s first order condition for effort  is

,

and consequently, the equilibrium involves each player picking the minimal effort . The binary choice  is also straightforward since  gives an addition of utility , while the choice of  results in zero added utility. Therefore, the optimal choice is .

Each period  static game has the following unique one-shot Nash equilibrium in territorial actions  that satisfy the following expression from the first order condition of each player :[xlix] For each ,  is implicitly defined by the expression

.

The one-shot Nash equilibrium expected payoff of player  for any period  is:

,

Each actor  has a common geometric discount factor . Then actor ‘s discounted expected payoffs of the war equilibrium starting at any period  can be written:


Dynamic Equilibrium: Tacit Collusion

In this section, we consider dynamic strategies that can improve the expected payoffs of both parties. The subgame perfect equilibrium that we focus on has the following character:

The equilibrium strategy involves each actor using the no war actions , and the territorial split is  until a punishment is necessary. [l]

Each actor puts in effort  to prevent outside actors attacking their rival defined by

.

For notational simplicity we write . Clearly,  for both actors .[li]

The strategy we propose is based on each actor  playing actions , each period until a defection from x or harm to an actor is observed. We label the actions of actor  playing , from period  onward is called the initial path of actor  starting at period . The strategy we propose begins with each actor playing the initial path at time .

On this equilibrium path, there are two types of punishments triggered by two different events.

Punishment type 1: If either actor  defects from  at time , then a punishment is triggered. This action is perfectly observable so if the punishment path is sufficiently harsh, then it will never be observed on the equilibrium path. For simplicity we have each actor impose the punishment of forever (since it will never appear on the equilibrium path) non-collusive reversion  for any such defection.

Punishment type 2: The second punishment type is triggered if an actor  is harmed from a non-territorial attack. This punishment is triggered regardless of who caused the harm to actor . If the actor  is on the actor ‘s initial path at time  and actor  receives harm at time , then actor  switches to single period of punishment at time . The punishment is to play  for period . As long as there is no harm to actor  at period , actor  plays ‘s initial path from  onward.

Notice that during a period of actor  punishment by playing , actor  is still on ‘s initial path. Thus, if harm is inflicted to actor  in this period, then another period of punishment by actor  will follow.

The single period expected payoff of these actions for actor  is

,

Given the implementation of this by both actors within the dynamic strategy with regards to actions x and a, each actor  maximizes her own discounted expected payoff by picking . This is an important feature of these dynamic strategies: each actor  puts in effort to stop terror attacks on the other actor , because they internalize some of the cost of the terror attack to their rival via an increased probability of the punishment type 1. The incentive to minimize terror attacks to your rival is a distinct feature of this dynamic strategy.

The statement of the following proposition includes the conditions such that this dynamic strategy is a subgame perfect equilibrium.

Proposition 1 The dynamic strategy is a subgame perfect equilibrium if for both actors ,

.

The inequality in the proposition highlights that the key to these strategies being a subgame perfect equilibrium is that each actor must be sufficiently patient. That is, the value of utility tomorrow compared to today must be high enough that a defection today is not worth the punishment tomorrow for either actor. This must be true for both types of defections. First, the gain to an actor from terror type attacks is outweighed by the punishment of a retaliatory attack next period. Second, the short-term gains from fighting for territory are outweighed by resulting punishment of battles in the future. Given these dynamic strategies are a subgame perfect equilibrium, the equilibrium effort to mitigate terrorism on the other actor  is an optimal choice for actor  at each time period . This effort weighs the cost of effort against the decreased probability of being punished by the other actor next period for a terror attack that came from a rogue element.

Conclusion: Rethinking Afghanistan

The model presented here provides general prescriptions for an entire class of conflicts: limited armed conflicts where neither actor is capable of defeating the other. By moving beyond the assumptions built into the Tulluck contest and borrowing the architecture of tacit collusion among oligopolistic firms, we have identified optimal strategies for an entire class of conflicts that have befuddled military planners in recent decades. As such, we contribute to a growing literature that leverages insights from the folk theorem for better understanding armed conflict. Our model suggests that conceiving of strategy in such conflicts as tacit collusive equilibria would not lead to “victory” but would rather achieve valued results at much lower cost.

We began this article with reference to Afghanistan. How could this conflict have been approached differently once the war sank into stalemate? We explore this question with some counterfactual reasoning here.

First, it is easy to establish that altering the territorial division of the conflict for either side became cost prohibitive as the conflict dragged on.[lii] By the last few years of the war United States forces were limited to operating within “med rings” (rings determined by the ability to transport wounded soldiers to surgery facilities within one “golden” hour).[liii] This had been true since the cessation of direct American combat operations and the failure of the “Village Stability Operations” campaign (2009-2014) to contest Taliban control in the hinterlands of Afghanistan.[liv] Conversely, it was also exceedingly difficult for the Taliban to have made significant gains within these rings and they rarely sought to do so. Once the territorial fighting effectively stopped, the essential conditions of the tacit collusion equilibrium were set and understood by both sides. This is an important component of the tacit collusive strategies we are exploring, that actors come to recognize the futility of spending additional resources to change the territorial distribution within the context of an “unwinnable” war.

The second component of the model concerns the capacity for each actor to inflict punishments on the other that are not designed to contest the territorial division – what we have labeled as “terror attacks.” The model speaks to the conditions under which these “terror attacks” form part of the collusive strategy, particularly when there may be attribution concerns around terror strikes from “rogue” elements within a confusing operational environment. In the case of Afghanistan, the Taliban had the capacity to conduct terror attacks within the urban areas.[lv] Less well known, however, was the American capacity to inflict non-territorial punishment on the Taliban. Rather than inflicting additional casualties on the Taliban forces (they were largely insensitive to such killing and were regularly able to turn such strikes to their advantage through propaganda) the “terror strike” tool available to American forces was the painful disruption of the Taliban’s heroin industry through the targeted bombing of the presses which processed opium into heroin. Over the course of the war, the Taliban had grown into the world’s largest exporter of heroin[lvi] and disrupting the processing of their heroin production provided an exceedingly attractive lever to be pulled by U.S. forces. Bombing the heroin refining locations cut into the Taliban’s profits; it also generated friction between the Taliban cartel and the rural Afghan poppy farmers upon whom they relied for political support and the supply of opium.[lvii] To be clear, disrupting heroin production in the context of our proposed strategy would not be intended to cripple or eradicate the heroin trade,[lviii] but would rather be used sparingly and instrumentally to maintain tacit collusion.

Building on the stability of territorial distribution, the strategic use of such “terror” strikes by both sides could have allowed both actors to develop a tacit collusive relationship that identified a mutually acceptable state of affairs within Afghanistan, as well as low-cost tools to maintain that outcome in an endogenously binding equilibrium. This could have set the stage for an even more attractive form of mutually beneficial cooperation concerning rogue elements within the operational environment. Consider that the original purpose of the American invasion of Afghanistan was ending Taliban support for trans-national terrorism. The Taliban seemed to have never been terribly interested in global Jihad and had shown itself to be quite uncomfortable with ISIS militants operating in the Eastern regions of the country.[lix] The model presented here serves to exploit such antipathy through discrete punishments. It prescribes strategic actions in light of information asymmetries regarding the attribution of terrorist attacks and amplifies existing shared interest in “policing” such trans-national terrorist groups that operated in Afghanistan.[lx] If fully realized, the framework presented here illuminated a path towards achieving this central goal of the 2001 invasion – the prevention of Afghanistan reemerging as a base for transnational terrorism – at a fraction of the cost of a counterinsurgency campaign.

The greatest challenge to implementing the strategic concepts posited here is the political appetite to sustain a military conflict — even a minimally costly one — for an indefinite period of time within the domestic American arena. The political pressure around military commitments tends to vary with the size of the forces deployed, with the deployment of large, conventional forces significantly increasing the “flow of sand through the political hour-glass.”[lxi] Given this constraint, U.S. SOF forces have the capacity to deploy small numbers of troops while retaining the ability to plan and execute sensitive and strategic operations in semi-permissive or non-permissive environments. Therefore, U.S. SOF units seem best suited to operationalize the concepts outlined here in a manner that might sustain political will.

To summarize the application to Afghanistan, the model presented here would not have offered a path to military “victory” in Afghanistan. It rather would have provided fresh strategic thought for the small footprint of forces that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the Central Command’s Commanding General claim to have advocated to President Biden in the wake of the controversial withdrawal from Afghanistan.[lxii] It does so by providing a logical basis for cheaply sustaining armed conflicts to achieve limited aims; this is particularly attractive in the context of managing wider competition and resource constraints for an indefinite period. Further, if one assumes that the United States will face similar militarized conflicts in the future—and based on the record of American interventions since the Second World War, this is a safe bet[lxiii]—then the model presented here provides a novel strategy for cheaply managing them. In an oncoming era in which both fiscal constraints and the rise of peer competitors may make “winning” strategies prohibitively expensive, the “management” strategies presented here will become more attractive. Finally, we suspect that the logic offered here can scale to other domains of strategic competitions that last for indefinite periods and in which all out conflict is prohibitively costly and the likelihood of ultimate victory is very small or absent. Future work will explore such extensions of the model.

Appendix: Proof of Proposition 1

We now show that this inequality is sufficient to guarantee that neither actor will defect from the dynamic strategy outlined in Proposition 1. The proof is done by verifying these dynamic strategies are in fact a subgame perfect equilibrium for any discount factors weakly larger than the bound in the statement of the proposition.

We begin by showing that, given  is played in each period, choosing  each period is supported by the dynamic strategy.

First, we denote by  actor ‘s discounted expected payoff of the stable peace strategy starting at any period . At an arbitrary time period  the stable peace has expected payoff for period ,  since with probability  actor  was harmed last period. Thus, we can write for 

,

and


=

,

Now we consider the case that actor  defect from her initial path. This defection can only occur if last period  no harm was inflicted on actor . The single period defection profit minus collusive profit is . The future loss from this defection is the harm of  for sure next period instead of the expected harm of . The incentive compatibility constraint for not defecting to  is


.

Rewritten in terms of a bound on the discount factor we have,

.

Second, we consider defections from . Given such a defection at time , the actors switch to the static Nash equilibrium from  onward. The upper bound of the gain from defection for either actor  happens at the limit of  as . The incentive compatibility constraint for collusion must cover all , which means it must cover the upper bound . The incentive compatibility constraint for actor  non-territorial action in all periods  is:



.

Rewritten in terms of the discount factor we have,

.

For time period 1, this constraint is slightly different



Rewritten in terms of the discount factor, we have

.

The discount factor bound for period 1 is larger than in any period  and is the bound used in the statement of the proposition.

Finally, we verify that each actor picking  at every time  is an equilibrium. We write the discounted expected payoff for player  from time  onward given the dynamic equilibrium by both players for all , except any effort  can be picked in period .


Then maximizing  with respect to  we attain the first order condition


The unique solution to this problem is .

Endnotes

[i] This research grew from the direct experience of two of the authors who analyzed these issues on the ground in Afghanistan during the Fall of 2016.

[ii] Rebecca Shabad, “Contradicting Biden, top generals say they recommended a small force stay in Afghanistan,” NBC News, 28 September 2021, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/pentagon-leaders-austin-milley-face-questions-chaotic-afghanistan-withdrawal-n1280230.

[iii] Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joint Concept for Competing (Washington, D.C.: Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2022), iii.

[iv] Ali Wyne, “In Afghanistan, A Protracted Stalemate,” The RAND Blog, 26 February 2018, https://www.rand.org/blog/2018/02/in-afghanistan-a-protracted-stalemate.html; Christopher D. Kolenda, “Slow Failure: Understanding America’s Quagmire in Afghanistan,” Journal of Strategic Studies 42:7 (2019): 992-1014.

[v] Ellen Mitchell, “Afghanistan War at a Stalemate, Top General Tells Lawmakers,” The Hill, 4 December 2018, https://thehill.com/policy/defense/419739-afghanistan-war-at-a-stalemate-top-general-tells-lawmakers.

[vi] James M. Lindsay, “Campaign Foreign Policy Roundup: What to Do About Afghanistan?” Council on Foreign Relations: The Water’s Edge Blog, 16October 2020, https://www.cfr.org/blog/campaign-foreign-policy-roundup-what-do-about-afghanistan.

[vii] Reuters, “Trump Pledges to Withdraw Troops from Afghanistan by Christmas; Taliban Cheer,” NBC News, 8 October 2020, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/trump-pledges-withdraw-troops-afghanistan-christmas-taliban-cheer-n124259.

[viii] Joshua Keating, “The Forever War Won’t End Until Congress Ends It,” Slate, 5 May 2021, https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/05/biden-afghanistan-aumf-forever-war-power-congress.html.

[ix] Ali Wyne, “The Risks of Permanent War,” The RAND Blog, 28 September 2018, https://www.rand.org/blog/2018/09/the-risks-of-permanent-war.html.

[x] Carl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. M.E. Howard and P. Paret (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 91.

[xi] This prescriptive application of our model accords with Aumann’s insights on game theory that “the distinction between the descriptive and the normative modes is not as sharp as might appear… solution concepts will often have both descriptive and normative interpretations.” Robert Aumann, “What is Game Theory Trying to Accomplish?” in Frontiers of Economics, ed.K. Arrow and S. Honkapohja (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985), 13.

[xii] We follow the usage of the term internal war as Eckstein: “The term ‘internal war’ denotes any resort to violence within a political order to change its constitution, rulers, or policies … Nor does it mean quite the same thing as certain more commonly used terms, such as revolution, civil war, revolt, rebellion, uprising, guerrilla warfare, mutiny, jacquerie, coup d’etat, terrorism, or insurrection. It stands for the genus of which the others are species.” Harry Eckstein, “On the Etiology of Internal Wars,” History and Theory, 4:2 (1965): 133-163, 113.

[xiii] Dan Reiter, How Wars End (Princeton: Princeton University Press 2009), 1.

[xiv] Paul Kecskemeti, Strategic Surrender: The Politics of Victory and Defeat (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1958); Fred Charles Ikle, Every War Must End (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971).

[xv] Allan C. Stam, Win, Lose, or Draw: Domestic Politics and the Crucible of War (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996); H.E. Goemans, War and Punishment: The Causes of War Termination and the First World War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000); Reiter, How Wars End; Donald Wittman, “How a War Ends: A Rational Model Approach,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, 23:4, (1979): 743-763; Paul Pillar, Negotiating Peace: War Termination as a Bargaining Process (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983).

[xvi] Clausewitz, On War, 69; R. Harrison Wagner, “Bargaining and War,” American Journal of Political Science 44:3 (2000): 469-484.

[xvii] Stam, Win, Lose, or Draw, 35.

[xviii] R. Harrison Wagner, War and the State: The Theory of International Politics (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007), 150.

[xix] Wagner, War and the State, 153.

[xx] Robert Powell, “Bargaining and Learning While Fighting,” American Journal of Political Science, 48:2 (2004): 344-361; Branislav Slantchev, “The Principle of Convergence in Wartime Negotiations,” American Political Science Review, 97:4 (2003): 621-632.

[xxi] James D. Fearon, “Why do Some Civil Wars Last So Much Longer than Others?” Journal of Peace Research, 41:3 (2004): 275-301, 290.

[xxii] Fearon, “Why Do Some Civil Wars,” 294; see also Jean-Pierre Langlois and Catherine C. Langlois, “Does the Principle of Convergence Really Hold? War, Uncertainty, and the Failure of Bargaining,” British Journal of Political Science, 42:3 (2011): 511-536.

[xxiii] Carl Schmitt, The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of Jus Publicum Europaeum (Candor, NY: Telos Press, 2006).

[xxiv] Louiza Odysseos and Fabio Petito, “Introduction,” in The International Political Thought of Carl Schmitt: Liberal War, and the Crisis of Global Order, ed.L. Odysseos and F. Petito (London: Routledge, 2007).

[xxv] Gordon H. McCormick, Steven B. Horton, and Lauren A. Harrison, “Things Fall Apart: The Endgame Dynamics of Internal Wars,” Third World Quarterly, 28:2 (2007): 321-367.

[xxvi] Fearon, “Why Do Some Civil Wars”; Barbara F. Walter, “Bargaining Failures and Civil War,” Annual Review of Political Science, 12 (2009): 243-261.

[xxvii] Fearon, “Why Do Some Civil Wars,” 294.

[xxviii] Jeffrey Frieden, “International Investment and Colonial Control: A New Interpretation,” International Organization, 48:4 (1994): 559-593; Kevin M. Murphy, Andrei Shleifer, and Robert W. Vishny, “Why is Rent-Seeking So Costly to Growth?” American Economic Review, 83:2 (1993): 409-41.

[xxix] Michael Ross, “A Closer Look at Oil, Diamonds, and Civil War,” Annual Review of Political Science, 9 (2006): 265-300.

[xxx] Peter Rudloff and Michael G. Findlay, 2016. “The Downstream Effects of Combatant Fragmentation on Civil War Recurrence,” Journal of Peace Research, 53:1 (2016): 19-32.

[xxxi] Michael Burch and Leslie Ochreiter, “The Emergence of Splinter Factions in Intrastate Conflict,” Dynamics of Asymmetric Conflict, 13:1 (2019): 47-66; Mohammed M. Hafez, “Fratricidal Rebels: Ideological Extremity and Warring Factionalism in Civil Wars,” Terrorism and Political Violence, 32:3 (2020): 604-629.

[xxxii] Gordon H. McCormick and Guillermo Owen, “Factionalism, Violence and Bargaining in Civil Wars,” Homo Oeconomicus XX:4 (2004): 361-390.

[xxxiii] Ariel E. Levite, Bruce W. Jentleson, and Larry Berman, eds, Foreign Military Intervention: The Dynamics of Protracted Conflict (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994); Gil Merom, How Democracies Lose Small Wars (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

[xxxiv] Patricia Sullivan, Who Wins? Predicting Strategic Success and Failure in Armed Conflict (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 4; see also Andrew Mack, “Why Big Nations Lose Small Wars: The Politics of Asymmetric Conflict,” World Politics, 27:2 (1975): 175-200; Ivan Arreguin-Toft, “How the Weak Win Wars: A Theory of Asymmetric Conflict,” International Security, 26:1 (2001): 93-128.

[xxxv] David Kilcullen, Counterinsurgency (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).

[xxxvi] Although repeated prisoner’s dilemma games, which focus on dynamic equilibrium that qualify as “tacit collusion,” have been used to understand international conflict since Shubik, dynamic strategies using these insights have remained on the sidelines with regards guiding strategy in asymmetric conflicts. See Marin Shubik, “Game Theory, Behavior, and the Paradox of the Prisoner’s Dilemma: Three Solutions,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, 14:2 (1970): 181-193.

[xxxvii] For a review of this literature see Erik O. Kimbrough, Kevin Laughren, and Roman Sheremeta, “War and Conflict in Economics: Theories, Applications, and Recent Trends,” Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 178 (2017): 998-1013.

[xxxviii] James Friedman, “A Non-cooperative Equilibrium for Supergames,” Review of Economic Studies, 38:1 (1971): 1-12.

[xxxix] Feuerstein provides an excellent survey of the theoretical literature on tacit collusion. Switgard Feuerstein, “Collusion in Industrial Economics: A Survey,” Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade, 5 (2005): 163-198.

[xl] Dilip Abreu, “Extremal Equilibria of Oligopolistic Supergames,” Journal of Economic Theory, 39:1 (1986): 191-225; Dilip Abreu, “On the Theory of Infinitely Repeated Games with Discounting,” Econometrica, 56:2 (1988): 383-396.

[xli] Edward H. Green and Robert J. Porter, “Noncooperative Collusion under Imperfect Price Information,” Econometrica, 52:1 (1984): 87-100; Dilip Abreu, David Pearce, and Ennio Stacchetti, “Optimal Cartel Equilibria with Imperfect Monitoring,” Journal of Economic Theory, 39:1 (1986): 251-269; Dilip Abreu, David Pearce, and Ennio Stacchetti, “Toward a Theory of Discounted Repeated Games with Imperfect Monitoring,” Econometrica, 58:5 (1990): 1041-1063.

[xlii] For surveys of this work see Todd M. Sandler and Kevin Siqueira, “Global terrorism: Deterrence versus pre-emption,” Canadian Journal of Economics, 39:4 (2006): 1370-1387; Walter Enders and Todd Sandler, The Political Economy of Terrorism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

[xliii] B.J. Brophy-Baermann and A. C. Conybear, “Retaliating against terrorism: Rational Expectations and the Optimality of Rules versus Discretion,” American Journal of Political Science 38:1 (1994): 196-210.

[xliv] D. Jacobson and E. H. Kaplan, “Suicide Bombings and Targeted Killings in (Counter-) Terror Games,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, 51:5 (2007): 772–792.

[xlv] Ethan B. Bueno De Mesquita, “Conciliation, counterterrorism, and patterns of terrorist violence,” International Organization, 59:Winter (2005): 145-176.

[xlvi] Opher Baron, Oded Berman, and Arieh Gavious, “Game Between a Terrorist and a Defender,” Production and Operations Management, 27:3 (2017): 433-457. In two other closely related papers, Acemoglu and Wolitzky and Yared, use repeated games with imperfect observability to provide new understanding on the nature of international conflict. Acemoglu and Wolitzky provide an “overlapping generations” model conflict spirals in which agents eventually learn that the conflict began based on a misperception and switch back to good actions, thereby restarting the cycle. Daron Acemoglu and Alexander Wolitzky, “Cycles of Conflict: An Economic Model.” American Economic Review, 104:4 (2014): 1350-1367. Yared provides a model of conflict with an aggressive and non-aggressive county in which the efficient outcome can only be sustained by equilibrium strategies that involve temporary wars. Pierre Yared, “A Dynamic Theory of War and Peace,” Journal of Economic Theory, 145 (2010): 1921-1950.

[xlvii] For a critical analysis on this topic, see Leo J. Blanken, “Reconciling Strategic Studies… with Itself: A Common Framework for Choosing Among Strategies,” Defense and Security Analysis 28:4 (2012): 275-287.

[xlviii] We use the term “terror” in spite of the fact that these strikes do not necessarily fit the formal definition of terrorism. The accepted definition of terrorism from Enders and Sandler is “the premeditated use, or threat of use, of extra-normal violence or brutality to obtain political objective through intimidation or fear directed at a large audience.” We do not specify the purpose of the attacks or that they involve extra-normal violence. The term is only used informally because what we call terror attacks includes the case of terrorism. Walter Enders and Todd Sandler, “Terrorism: Theory and Applications,” in Handbook of Defense Economics, Volume 1, ed. K. Hartley and T. Sandler (New York: North-Holland, 1995), 213.

[xlix] Uniqueness of equilibrium follows from Proposition 1 of Takashi Yamazaki, “On the Existence and Uniqueness of Pure-Strategy Nash Equilibrium in Asymmetric Rent-Seeking Contests,” Journal of Public Economic Theory, 10:2 (2008): 317-327.

[l] Although the territorial split or “sharing rule” at  can be an endogenous part of the dynamic equilibrium we fixed it at the split of . The intuition for this procedure is that we are assuming the two actors retain the existing distribution of territory when foregoing “all out” conflict. Conditions for similar dynamic equilibrium to the one we outline can be constructed for a range of similar territorial distributions.

[li] Note the  is simply the solution to each actor ‘s discounted expected utility maximization problem given the dynamic strategies outlined below.

[lii] Anthony H. Cordesman, “The State of the Fighting in the Afghan War in Mid-2019,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2019, https://www.csis.org/analysis/state-fighting-afghan-war-mid-2019

[liii] Ben Barry, “Battlefield Medicine: Improving Survival Rates and the ‘Golden Hour’,” International Institute of Strategic Studies, 2019, https://www.iiss.org/blogs/military-balance/2019/04/battlefield-medicine

[liv] William Knarr and Mark Nutsch, Village Stability Operations and the Evolution of SOF Command and Control in Afghanistan: Implications for the Future of Irregular Warfare (MacDill AFB: Joint Special Operations University Press, 2020).

[lv] Andrew Wilder, “What’s Behind the Spike in Deadly Terror Attacks in Afghanistan?” United Institute of Peace,2018, https://www.usip.org/publications/2018/01/whats-behind-spike-deadly-terror-attacks-afghanistan.

[lvi] Alfred W. McCoy, “How the Heroin Trade Explains the US-UK Failure in Afghanistan.” The Guardian, 9January 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/jan/09/how-the-heroin-trade-explains-the-us-uk-failure-in-afghanistan

[lvii] Dan Lamothe, “The US begins bombing Taliban drug labs as Trump’s Afghanistan strategy takes hold,” Washington Post, 20 November 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2017/11/20/the-u-s-begins-bombing-taliban-drug-labs-as-trumps-afghanistan-strategy-takes-hold/?utm_term=.c8831b8efa66

[lviii] David Mansfield, “Bombing Heroin Labs in Afghanistan: The Latest Act in the Theater of Counternarcotics.” London School of Economics Drug Policy Unit, 2018, https://www.lse.ac.uk/united-states/Assets/Documents/Heroin-Labs-in-Afghanistan-Mansfield.pdf

[lix] Wesley Morgan, “Our Secret Taliban Air Force: Inside the Clandestine US Campaign to Help Our Longtime Enemy Defeat ISIS,” Washington Post, 22 October 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/10/22/taliban-isis-drones-afghanistan/?arc404=true

[lx] Shawn Snow, “ISIS Loses More than Half of Its Fighters from US Airstrikes and Taliban Ground Operations,” Military Times, 27 February 2020, https://www.militarytimes.com/flashpoints/2020/02/27/isis-loses-more-than-half-its-fighters-from-us-airstrikes-and-taliban-ground-operations/

[lxi] John Bleigh, Justin Hufnagel, and Curt Snider, “Institutional Challenges to Developing Metrics of Success in Irregular Warfare” (master’s thesis, Defense Analysis Department, Naval Postgraduate School, 2011).

[lxii] Leo Blanken and Stephen Rodriguez, “The Strategic Logic of a Forever War,” Foreign Policy, 8 September 2021, https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/09/08/afghanistan-biden-sunk-costs-forever-war/

[lxiii] Barbara Salazar Torreon and Sofia Plagakis, Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-2022 (Washington D.C.: Congressional Research Service, 2022).

In this article:

Afghanistan, asymmetric warfare, Featured, game theory, Irregular Warfare, Special Operations Forces, strategic competition




























































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































8. Biden’s Armageddon Moment: When Nuclear Detonation Seemed Possible in Ukraine



Biden’s Armageddon Moment: When Nuclear Detonation Seemed Possible in Ukraine

For a few weeks in October 2022, the White House was consumed in a crisis whose depths were not publicly acknowledged at the time. It was a glimpse of what seemed like a terrifying new era.


On his trip to New York in October 2022, President Biden stopped for a tour of an I.B.M. plant. That night, he had a disturbing message for guests at a fund-raiser.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times


By David E. Sanger

David E. Sanger is a White House and national security reporter and the author, with Mary K. Brooks, of the forthcoming “New Cold Wars: China’s Rise, Russia’s Invasion and America’s Struggle to Defend the West,” from which this article is adapted.

March 9, 2024


President Biden was standing in an Upper East Side townhouse owned by the businessman James Murdoch, the rebellious scion of the media empire, surrounded by liberal New York Democrats who had paid handsomely to come hear optimistic talk about the Biden agenda for the next few years.

It was Oct. 6, 2022, but what they heard instead that evening was a disturbing message that — though Mr. Biden didn’t say so — came straight from highly classified intercepted communications he had recently been briefed about, suggesting that President Vladimir V. Putin’s threats to use a nuclear weapon in Ukraine might be turning into an operational plan.

For the “first time since the Cuban Missile Crisis,” he told the group, as they gathered amid Mr. Murdoch’s art collection, “we have a direct threat of the use of a nuclear weapon if in fact things continue down the path they’ve been going.” The gravity of his tone began to sink in: The president was talking about the prospect of the first wartime use of a nuclear weapon since Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

And not at some vague moment in the future. He meant in the next few weeks.

Image


The commander of a Ukrainian assault unit, standing by an abandoned Russian tank in October 2022. That period appears to have been the high-water mark of Ukraine’s military performance over the past two years.Credit...Ivor Prickett for The New York Times

The intercepts revealed that for the first time since the war in Ukraine had broken out, there were frequent conversations within the Russian military about reaching into the nuclear arsenal. Some were just “various forms of chatter,” one official said. But others involved the units that would be responsible for moving or deploying the weapons. The most alarming of the intercepts revealed that one of the most senior Russian military commanders was explicitly discussing the logistics of detonating a weapon on the battlefield.

Fortunately, Mr. Biden was told in his briefings, there was no evidence of weapons being moved. But soon the C.I.A. was warning that, under a singular scenario in which Ukrainian forces decimated Russian defensive lines and looked as if they might try to retake Crimea — a possibility that seemed imaginable that fall — the likelihood of nuclear use might rise to 50 percent or even higher. That “got everyone’s attention fast,” said an official involved in the discussions.

No one knew how to assess the accuracy of that estimate: the factors that play into decisions to use nuclear weapons, or even to threaten their use, were too abstract, too dependent on human emotion and accident, to measure with precision. But it wasn’t the kind of warning any American president could dismiss.


Image


Gen. Mark A. Milley in November 2022, while he was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and contending with a possible nuclear threat from Russia.Credit...Yuri Gripas for The New York Times

“It’s the nuclear paradox,” Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff until he retired in September, told me over dinner last summer at his official quarters above the Potomac River, recalling the warnings he had issued in the Situation Room.



He added: “The more successful the Ukrainians are at ousting the Russian invasion, the more likely Putin is to threaten to use a bomb — or reach for it.”

This account of what happened in those October days — as it happened, just before the 60th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the closest the United States and the Soviet Union ever came to a nuclear exchange in the Cold War — was reconstructed in interviews I conducted over the past 18 months with administration officials, diplomats, leaders of NATO nations and military officials who recounted the depth of their fear in those weeks.

Though the crisis passed, and Russia now appears to have gained an upper hand on the battlefield as Ukraine runs low on ammunition, almost all of the officials described those weeks as a glimpse of a terrifying new era in which nuclear weapons were back at the center of superpower competition.

While news that Russia was considering using a nuclear weapon became public at the time, the interviews underscored that the worries at the White House and the Pentagon ran far deeper than were acknowledged then, and that extensive efforts were made to prepare for the possibility. When Mr. Biden mused aloud that evening that “I don’t think there’s any such thing as the ability to easily” make use of “a tactical nuclear weapon and not end up with Armageddon,” he was reflecting urgent preparations being made for a U.S. reaction. Other details of extensive White House planning were published in a New York Times opinion piece by W.J. Hennigan and by Jim Sciutto of CNN.

Mr. Biden said he thought Mr. Putin was capable of pulling the trigger. “We’ve got a guy I know fairly well,” he said of the Russian leader. “He is not joking when he talks about potential use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons because his military is, you might say, significantly underperforming.”

Since then, the battlefield advantage has changed dramatically, and October 2022 now looks like the high-water mark of Ukraine’s military performance over the past two years. Yet Mr. Putin has now made a new set of nuclear threats, during his equivalent of the State of the Union address in Moscow in late February. He said that any NATO countries that were helping Ukraine strike Russian territory with cruise missiles, or that might consider sending their own troops into battle, “must, in the end, understand” that “all this truly threatens a conflict with the use of nuclear weapons, and therefore the destruction of civilization.”

Image


President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia made a new set of nuclear threats during his speech to the nation in late February. Credit...Maxim Shemetov/Reuters

“We also have weapons that can strike targets on their territory,” Mr. Putin said. “Do they not understand this?”

Mr. Putin was speaking about Russian medium-range weapons that could strike anywhere in Europe, or his intercontinental ballistic missiles that can reach the United States. But the scare in 2022 involved so-called battlefield nukes: tactical weapons small enough to be loaded into an artillery shell and designed to eviscerate a military unit or a few city blocks.

At least initially, their use would look nothing like an all-out nuclear exchange, the great fear of the Cold War. The effects would be horrific but limited to a relatively small geographic area — perhaps detonated over the Black Sea, or blasted into a Ukrainian military base.

Yet the White House concern ran so deep that task forces met to map out a response. Administration officials said that the United States’ countermove would have to be nonnuclear. But they quickly added that there would have to be some kind of dramatic reaction — perhaps even a conventional attack on the units that had launched the nuclear weapons — or they would risk emboldening not only Mr. Putin but every other authoritarian with a nuclear arsenal, large or small.

Yet as was made clear in Mr. Biden’s “Armageddon speech” — as White House officials came to call it — no one knew what kind of nuclear demonstration Mr. Putin had in mind. Some believed that the public warnings Russia was making that Ukraine was preparing to use a giant “dirty bomb,” a weapon that spews radiological waste, was a pretext for a pre-emptive nuclear strike.

The wargaming at the Pentagon and at think tanks around Washington imagined that Mr. Putin’s use of a tactical weapon — perhaps followed by a threat to detonate more — could come in a variety of circumstances. One simulation envisioned a successful Ukrainian counteroffensive that imperiled Mr. Putin’s hold on Crimea. Another involved a demand from Moscow that the West halt all military support for the Ukrainians: no more tanks, no more missiles, no more ammunition. The aim would be to split NATO; in the tabletop simulation I was permitted to observe, the detonation served that purpose.

To forestall nuclear use, in the days around Mr. Biden’s fund-raiser appearance Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken called his Russian counterpart, as did Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and the national security adviser, Jake Sullivan. Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, was going on a planned visit to Beijing; he was prepped to brief Xi Jinping, China’s president, about the intelligence and urge him to make both public and private statements to Russia warning that there was no place in the Ukraine conflict for the use of nuclear weapons. Mr. Xi made the public statement; it is unclear what, if anything, he signaled in private.

Mr. Biden, meanwhile, sent a message to Mr. Putin that they had to set up an urgent meeting of emissaries. Mr. Putin sent Sergei Naryshkin, head of the S.V.R., the Russian foreign intelligence service that had pulled off the Solar Winds attack, an ingenious cyberattack that had struck a wide swath of U.S. government departments and corporate America. Mr. Biden chose William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director and former U.S. ambassador to Russia, who is now his go-to troubleshooter for a variety of the toughest national security problems, most recently getting a temporary cease-fire and the release of hostages held by Hamas.

Image


Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s foreign intelligence service.Credit...Evgenia Novozhenina/Reuters

Image


C.I.A. Director William J. Burns, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia.Credit...Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times

Mr. Burns told me that the two men saw each other on a mid-November day in 2022. But while Mr. Burns arrived to warn what would befall Russia if it used a nuclear weapon, Mr. Naryshkin apparently thought the C.I.A. director had been sent to negotiate an armistice agreement that would end the war. He told Mr. Burns that any such negotiation had to begin with an understanding that Russia would get to keep any land that was currently under its control.

It took some time for Mr. Burns to disabuse Mr. Naryshkin of the idea that the United States was ready to trade away Ukrainian territory for peace. Finally, they turned to the topic Mr. Burns had traveled around the world to discuss: what the United States and its allies were prepared to do to Russia if Mr. Putin made good on his nuclear threats.

“I made it clear,” Mr. Burns later recalled from his seventh-floor office at the C.I.A., that “there would be clear consequences for Russia.” Just how specific Mr. Burns was about the nature of the American response was left murky by American officials. He wanted to be detailed enough to deter a Russian attack, but avoid telegraphing Mr. Biden’s exact reaction.

“Naryshkin swore that he understood and that Putin did not intend to use a nuclear weapon,” Mr. Burns said.


David E. Sanger covers the Biden administration and national security. He has been a Times journalist for more than four decades and has written several books on challenges to American national security. More about David E. Sanger

A version of this article appears in print on March 11, 2024, Section A, Page 9 of the New York edition with the headline: Biden Confronted Threat of a Russian Use of Nuclear Weapons in Ukraine in 2022. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe




9. Pope Francis' 'white flag' comment is met by criticism from Ukraine and its allies


His comments should be criticized.


Excerpts:


In an interview recorded last month with Swiss broadcaster RSI and partially released on Saturday, Francis used the phrase “the courage of the white flag” as he argued that Ukraine, facing a possible defeat, should be open to peace talks brokered by international powers.
“Our flag is blue and yellow. We live, die and win under it. We will not raise other flags,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba posted on Sunday on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski tweeted: “How about, for balance, encouraging Putin to have the courage to withdraw his army from Ukraine? Peace would immediately ensue without the need for negotiations.”
In his tweet, Kuleba urged the Holy See to “not repeat historical mistakes” as he alleged that the Vatican didn’t do enough to resist Nazi Germany. Yet he also invited Francis to Ukraine, saying the pope’s visit would show support for the “more than a million Ukrainian (Roman) Catholics, more than 5 million Greek Catholics, all Christians and all Ukrainians.”



Pope Francis' 'white flag' comment is met by criticism from Ukraine and its allies

AP · March 10, 2024

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian and allied officials Sunday criticized Pope Francis for saying that Kyiv should have the “courage” to negotiate an end to the war with Russia, a statement many interpreted as a call for Ukraine to surrender.

The foreign ministers of Ukraine and Poland, a vocal ally of Kyiv, condemned the pope’s remarks. And a leader of one of Ukraine’s Christian churches on Sunday said that only the country’s determined resistance to Moscow’s full-scale invasion, launched by Russian President Vladimir Putin on Feb. 24, 2022, had prevented a mass slaughter of civilians.

In an interview recorded last month with Swiss broadcaster RSI and partially released on Saturday, Francis used the phrase “the courage of the white flag” as he argued that Ukraine, facing a possible defeat, should be open to peace talks brokered by international powers.

“Our flag is blue and yellow. We live, die and win under it. We will not raise other flags,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba posted on Sunday on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski tweeted: “How about, for balance, encouraging Putin to have the courage to withdraw his army from Ukraine? Peace would immediately ensue without the need for negotiations.”

In his tweet, Kuleba urged the Holy See to “not repeat historical mistakes” as he alleged that the Vatican didn’t do enough to resist Nazi Germany. Yet he also invited Francis to Ukraine, saying the pope’s visit would show support for the “more than a million Ukrainian (Roman) Catholics, more than 5 million Greek Catholics, all Christians and all Ukrainians.”


The head of Ukraine’s Greek Catholic Church, Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, said Sunday that surrender isn’t on the minds of Ukrainians.

“Ukraine is exhausted, but it stands and will endure. Believe me, it never crosses anyone’s mind to surrender. Even where there is fighting today: listen to our people in Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Odesa, Kharkiv, Sumy,” Shevchuk said while meeting with Ukrainians in New York City. He mentioned the regions that have been under heavy Russian artillery and drone attacks.

Shevchuk also spoke of the brutality of Moscow’s invasion, referencing the town near Kyiv where Russian occupation left hundreds of civilians dead in the streets and in mass graves. He argued that the gruesome scenes seen in Bucha would have been “just an introduction” if not for Ukrainians’ fierce resistance as Russian troops marched on the capital in February 2022.

Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni on Saturday clarified that the pope supported “a stop to hostilities (and) a truce achieved with the courage of negotiations,” rather than an outright Ukrainian surrender. Bruni said that the journalist interviewing Francis used the term “white flag” in the question that prompted the controversial remarks.

“I think that the strongest one is the one who looks at the situation, thinks about the people and has the courage of the white flag, and negotiates,” Francis said, when asked to weigh in on the debate between those who say that Ukraine should agree to peace talks and those who argue that any negotiations would legitimize Moscow’s aggression.

Kyiv remains firm on not engaging directly with Russia on peace talks, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said multiple times that the initiative in peace negotiations must come from the country that has been invaded.

Throughout the war, Francis has tried to maintain the Vatican’s traditional diplomatic neutrality, but that has often been accompanied by apparent sympathy with the Russian rationale for invading Ukraine, such as when he noted that NATO was “barking at Russia’s door” with its eastward expansion.

In the RSI interview, Francis insisted that “negotiations are never a surrender.”

“When you see that you are defeated, that things are not going well, you have to have the courage to negotiate,” he said.

During the Angelus prayer on Sunday from the window overlooking St. Peter’s Square, Francis said that he was praying “for peace in the tormented Ukraine and in the Holy Land.”

“Let the hostilities which cause immense suffering among the civilian population cease as soon as possible,” he said.

Elsewhere, both Ukraine and Russia reported civilian deaths on Sunday after overnight trading drone, missile and shelling attacks that also caused a fire at a Russian oil depot and targeted Ukrainian power stations, according to officials.

Ukrainian air defenses overnight shot down 35 out of 39 drones launched by Russia, air force commander Mykola Oleshchuk reported, following a 4½-hour barrage that officials said also targeted power stations.

Two people died under rubble after Iranian-made Shahed drones around midnight struck private homes and state offices in Dobropillya, a large Ukrainian-held town in the east, authorities said. A 66-year-old man was also reported killed by shelling in Chasiv Yar, northeast of Dobropillya.

In Myrnohrad, another eastern Ukrainian town, 11 civilians were wounded after Russian missiles overnight struck residential buildings, the local prosecutor’s office reported. It also posted photos of rubble lining the courtyard outside a high-rise apartment building, its windows blown out, and of cars parked outside that appeared reduced to piles of twisted metal.

A woman also died in Russia’s Kursk region, which borders Ukraine, after shells fired from Ukraine set her house on fire, while her husband suffered severe burns, local Gov. Roman Starovoit reported.

Starovoit also said that debris from a downed Ukrainian drone sparked a fire at an oil depot in the Kursk region.

Nine Ukrainian drones targeted the Belgorod region, another southern Russian province that borders Ukraine, overnight and on Sunday, according to local Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov. Later on Sunday, Russia’s Defense Ministry said that three drones in total were shot down over the northern Leningrad and Novgorod regions, well over 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) from the Ukrainian border.

Earlier on Sunday, Russian media reported on a fire at an aircraft hangar near the main airport in St Petersburg, just kilometers (miles) from the Leningrad region, without specifying what caused it. According to the reports, two people were hospitalized with burns, and flights were briefly diverted away from the airport, Pulkovo.

___

Nicole Winfield and Giada Zampano in Rome, and Vanessa Gera in Warsaw, Poland, contributed to this report.

___

Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

AP · March 10, 2024





10. US military airlifts embassy personnel from Haiti, bolsters security








US military airlifts embassy personnel from Haiti, bolsters security

https://www.reuters.com/world/us-military-airlifts-embassy-personnel-haiti-bolsters-security-2024-03-10/?utm

Reuters

March 10, 20246:43 PM EDTUpdated 12 hours ago






0 seconds of 0 secondsVolume 0%


 

WASHINGTON, March 10 (Reuters) - The U.S. military said on Sunday it has carried out an operation in Haiti to airlift non-essential embassy personnel from the country and added U.S. forces to bolster embassy security, as the Caribbean nation reels under a state of emergency.

The operation was the latest sign of Haiti's troubles as gang violence threatens to bring down the government and has led thousands to flee their homes.

"This airlift of personnel into and out of the embassy is consistent with our standard practice for embassy security augmentation worldwide, and no Haitians were on board the military aircraft," the U.S. military's Southern Command said in a statement.

The European Union's delegation in Haiti has temporarily closed its offices and reduced its presence in the country to the minimum, according to a post on social media X, citing security concerns.

Haiti entered a state of emergency last Sunday after fighting escalated while Prime Minister Ariel Henry was in Nairobi seeking a deal for the long-delayed U.N.-backed mission.
















[1/8]A U.S. flag flutters at the U.S. embassy building where the U.S. military airlifted embassy non-essential personnel due to violence, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti March 10, 2024. REUTERS/Ralph Tedy Erol Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab


Kenya announced last year it would lead the force but months of domestic legal wrangling have effectively placed the mission on hold.Report this 

On Saturday, the U.S. State Department said Secretary of State Antony Blinken had spoken with Kenyan President William Ruto about the Haiti crisis and the two men underscored their commitment to a multinational security mission to restore order.

In the Southern Command's statement, it said Washington remained committed to those goals.

"Our embassy remains focused on advancing U.S. government efforts to support the Haitian people, including mobilizing support for the Haitian National Police, expediting the deployment of the United Nations-authorized Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission and accelerating a peaceful transition of power via free and fair elections," it said















Jamaica will host leaders from the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) on March 11 to discuss ways to support Haiti and promote political dialogue.

Reporting by Phil Stewart, Additional reporting by Harold Isaac in Port-au-Prince; Editing by Louise Heavens and Sandra Maler



11.  The Army's Innovation Dilemma



Excerpts:

Finally, it is important to consider the impacts of turnover. The Army’s ideal leader is a generalist. It has institutionalized a massive enterprise education system to create and curate leaders who are exposed to a little of everything. Consequently, it moves its personnel around the world every 18–36 months. If a strategic goal is to better recognize and seize disruptive opportunities, this is problematic. First, the process and associated practices are prioritized well ahead of the influence any one individual can exert. This both solidifies the undercurrent of risk aversion and suppresses any sense of personal initiative. Second, the frequent moves make it difficult for one to recognize necessary and responsible change—especially when the role is outside of one’s core competency. Third, whether a vestige of the past or not, these frequent moves are at odds with the modern workforce’s expectations of predictability and inadvertently pushes away our most entrepreneurial and capable soldiers.
Looking ahead, the Army must confront these institutional and c ultural barriers to innovation and disruption. To do so, we must encourage our leaders and our legislators to push for foundational change in our most trusted institutions. Today’s operational environment and the pace of change demand it. Key to national defense will be a versatile Army that can flexibly respond to any contingency and mix the full capacity of our military with modern problem-solving. Anything less risks our precious resources, the quality of our Army, and our national security.


The Army's Innovation Dilemma - Modern War Institute

mwi.westpoint.edu · by Abdul Subhani · March 11, 2024

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When Clayton Christensen first published The Innovator’s Dilemma in 1997, he almost perfectly forecast today’s dynamic across the United States Department of Defense. His central warning—that private incumbents who fail to embrace disruption will seriously risk their positions of market leadership—now rings especially true for our most trusted national institutions. For example, the United States Army employs 1.2 million people and executes a budget that reached $178 billion in fiscal year 2023. It operates at a depth and breadth of verticals that no Fortune 500 could imagine—and its idiosyncratic culture predates the birth of our nation. And as we now face a new round of transformation, it wanders directly into the path of Christensen’s warning.

So what is the urgency for an Army that has talked about reorganizing and modernizing since the end of the Cold War brought the peace dividend? Simple—it is the uniqueness of today’s moment in time. Never before have we endured such unpredictable budgets and funding due to abysmally partisan politics at an unprecedented strategic crossroads while technology changes faster than our systems and processes can accommodate. Make no mistake—the situation is dire and each day we are charged with global leadership in an unforeseen crisis. The need to innovate and maximize the responsiveness of our Army is now. We can’t control the external dynamics but we can begin to identify the behavioral and structural challenges preventing us from innovating from within.

At the heart of Christensen’s findings was an observation that good companies unsuspectingly err by continuing to refine their businesses around customer needs while failing to recognize larger market disruptions until losing market share and confronting obsolescence. Obviously, the Army doesn’t have customers, per se. Much has been written about the effect of a lack of market forces in the public sector. However, it’s worthwhile to map the customer-like effect of certain Army-specific stakeholders. As an incredibly hierarchical and byzantine organization, those with the power to mandate change do not necessarily have the power to execute it. Consequently, even the esteemed leadership team of Secretary Christine Wormuth and General Randy George must still rely on those around them to articulate their guidance and monitor the necessary steps to evolution. Unfortunately, those who spend the most time with Army leaders are largely some of the least well-situated to recognize disruptive opportunities or soldier needs. Our leaders are left with “customer” insights from either a misaligned military industrial complex or aloof bureaucrats who are far removed from both ground truth and advances in technology. This is why the Army finds itself in such a dire place today—struggling to balance generational recruiting issues with an inability to modernize at a pace that keeps up with the modern economy. The institution has embraced a system that has effectively insulated its leaders from ground truth and, moreover from the ability to drive enterprise change—even when it’s sorely needed.

Those who rarely deal with the Army might be reading this and wondering, how could the Army face such criticism after sharpening its sword for the last twenty years of war? There is some validity to the premise here. Yes, the Army just put an entire generation through two wars. But the Army also received priority attention and funding for whatever it needed during that time. As geopolitics shift, it now plays a secondary role (at best) to the Air Force and Navy as the United States reevaluates its technological dominance, its supply chains, and its ability to project power. And therefore, the Army finds itself attempting to prioritize modernization with practices and personnel accustomed to being first to the trough for the past twenty years. It will take time to build an institution resilient enough to pounce on emerging opportunities given this new reality.

Leadership also plays a role in facilitating—or hindering—innovation, and the Army’s leadership lays at a crossroads. For years, the Army promoted its leaders based upon who demonstrated the very best combat effectiveness in war. Leaders who were the most battle-tested were prioritized above all else (and for good reason). However, as the landscape shifted faster than the institution could realize, it’s fair to question institutional shortcomings in the promotion systems and talent management of the Army’s leaders. Today’s general officers were largely promoted because of their tactical prowess, not because they were experts in emerging technologies, contracting, recruiting, or marketing. And although there are obviously exceptional leaders who can thrive in any vertical, many cannot, or at least should not, be our only choice for leadership in today’s Army. This talent and experience mismatch among the Army’s general officer corps has an outsized effect on its ability to recognize disruptive opportunities because they simply do not have the appropriate context to do so.

Risk aversion is yet another obstacle to innovation. You may also think that any organization built to win wars could not possibly be too risk averse. You would be wrong. The Army’s culture does not promote risk-taking. There are many reasons for this and most of them apply to almost any other public sector organization. But the Army’s risk tolerance is particularly unsettling because of such widespread recognition for the need to innovate. Invariably, innovation means messiness. Yet enterprise leaders cannot effectively underwrite the career risk for the rare leaders who do show entrepreneurial skills and take risk to meet emerging opportunities. Too often, leaders kowtow to planned innovation in which certain units or commanders are authorized the wherewithal to operate differently. To truly embrace innovation, we must make leaders more comfortable with disruption within the institution itself—not just in a combat setting.

The characteristics of the modern information environment also play a role. The Army’s centralized decision-making apparatus lacks true operating context or ground truth. There are several reasons for this. First, the flow of information today is overwhelming. At the Army’s scale, it’s impossible to effectively manage. Leaders are forced to constantly switch context or adjust to the tyranny of the day. Operating a “7,000-mile screwdriver”—senior leaders engaging with details at the tactical edge—has never proven optimal and today’s modern information environment makes such an approach entirely untenable. Second, Pentagon topic briefs and attention spans are short for the things that are different. It should be the other way around but this is due to the aforementioned cultural issues. Disruptive ideas rarely get senior leader follow-through during execution phases but that’s when it’s needed the most. This inverted pyramid effect perversely reinforces the inclination for conformity and risk aversion as senior leaders are simply not given the time to focus on the fledgling, different ideas that badly need their personal touches. Third, the chain of middle management is well-versed in these challenges and has professionalized an autoimmune response to change—something Bob Gates described very well in his book Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War. This layer is the source of continuity across administrations and it understands that there is a low probability that a senior leader will find the time to return to an issue (and even if he or she does return to it, that momentum can be reversed after time lapses). More institutionalized middle management will prey on the decision-makers’ good-natured expectations that follow-through was appropriately executed to presumably protect exciting new initiatives.

Finally, it is important to consider the impacts of turnover. The Army’s ideal leader is a generalist. It has institutionalized a massive enterprise education system to create and curate leaders who are exposed to a little of everything. Consequently, it moves its personnel around the world every 18–36 months. If a strategic goal is to better recognize and seize disruptive opportunities, this is problematic. First, the process and associated practices are prioritized well ahead of the influence any one individual can exert. This both solidifies the undercurrent of risk aversion and suppresses any sense of personal initiative. Second, the frequent moves make it difficult for one to recognize necessary and responsible change—especially when the role is outside of one’s core competency. Third, whether a vestige of the past or not, these frequent moves are at odds with the modern workforce’s expectations of predictability and inadvertently pushes away our most entrepreneurial and capable soldiers.

Looking ahead, the Army must confront these institutional and cultural barriers to innovation and disruption. To do so, we must encourage our leaders and our legislators to push for foundational change in our most trusted institutions. Today’s operational environment and the pace of change demand it. Key to national defense will be a versatile Army that can flexibly respond to any contingency and mix the full capacity of our military with modern problem-solving. Anything less risks our precious resources, the quality of our Army, and our national security.

Abdul Subhani is a career technologist and entrepreneur. He balances his role as the president and CEO of a tech company with several service‐oriented roles, such as the civilian aide to the secretary of the Army for the Texas capitol region and the distinguished innovation chair at the United States Military Academy at West Point. He also serves on the board of advisors for the Center for a New American Security as well as in several advisory roles across the country.

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: Spc. Nolan Brewer, US Army

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mwi.westpoint.edu · by Abdul Subhani · March 11, 2024






12. A World Divided Over Artificial Intelligence


Excerpts:

In an era of faltering global resolve on other challenges, great powers had initially struck an optimistic note in grappling with AI. In Beijing, Brussels, and Washington, there seemed to be broad agreement that AI can cause potentially grave harms and that concerted transnational action was needed.
Countries are not, however, taking this path. Rather than encouraging a collective effort to establish a clear legal framework to manage AI, states are already engaged in subtle, shadowy conflicts over AI’s material and intangible foundations. The resulting legal order will be characterized by fracture and distance, not entanglement. It will leave countries suspicious of one another, sapping goodwill. And it will be hard to advance proposals for better global governance of AI. At a minimum, the emerging regime will make it more difficult to gather information and assess the risks of the new technology. More dangerously, the technical obstacles raised by the growing legal Balkanization of AI regulation may make certain global solutions, such as the establishment of an intergovernmental panel on AI, impossible.
A fragmented legal order is one in which deeply dangerous AI models can be developed and disseminated as instruments of geopolitical conflict. A country’s efforts to manage AI could easily be undermined by those outside its borders. And autocracies may be free to both manipulate their own publics using AI and exploit democracies’ free flow of information to weaken them from within. There is much to be lost then if a global effort to regulate AI never truly materializes.


A World Divided Over Artificial Intelligence

Geopolitics Gets in the Way of Global Regulation of a Powerful Technology

By Aziz Huq

March 11, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by The Collapse of Constitutional Remedies · March 11, 2024

In November 2023, a number of countries issued a joint communique promising strong international cooperation in reckoning with the challenges of artificial intelligence. Startlingly for states often at odds on regulatory matters, China, the United States, and the European Union all signed the document, which offered a sensible, wide-ranging view on how to address the risks of “frontier” AI—the most advanced species of generative models exemplified by ChatGPT. The communique identified the potential for the misuse of AI for “disinformation” and for the kindling of “serious, even catastrophic” risks in cybersecurity and biotechnology. The same month, U.S. and Chinese officials agreed to hold talks in the spring on cooperation over AI regulation. These talks will also focus on how to handle the risks of the new technology and ensure its safety.

Through multinational communiques and bilateral talks, an international framework for regulating AI does seem to be coalescing. Take a close look at U.S. President Joe Biden’s October 2023 executive order on AI; the EU’s AI Act, which passed the European Parliament in December 2023 and will likely be finalized later this year; or China’s slate of recent regulations on the topic and a surprising degree of convergence appears. They have much in common. These regimes broadly share the common goal of preventing AI’s misuse without restraining innovation in the process. Optimists have floated proposals for closer international management of AI, such as the ideas presented in Foreign Affairs by the geopolitical analyst Ian Bremmer and the entrepreneur Mustafa Suleyman and the plan offered by Suleyman and Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, in the Financial Times in which they called for the creation of an international panel akin to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to “inform governments about the current state of AI capabilities and make evidence-based predictions about what’s coming.”

But these ambitious plans to forge a new global governance regime for AI may collide with an unfortunate obstacle: cold reality. The great powers, namely, China, the United States, and the EU, may insist publicly that they want to cooperate on regulating AI, but their actions point toward a future of fragmentation and competition. Divergent legal regimes are emerging that will frustrate any cooperation when it comes to access to semiconductors, the setting of technical standards, and the regulation of data and algorithms. This path doesn’t lead to a coherent, contiguous global space for uniform AI-related rules but to a divided landscape of warring regulatory blocs—a world in which the lofty idea that AI can be harnessed for the common good is dashed on the rocks of geopolitical tensions.

CHIPS ON THEIR SHOULDERS

The best-known area of conflict related to AI is the ongoing duel between China and the United States over global semiconductor markets. In October 2022, the U.S. Commerce Department issued its first comprehensive licensing regime for the export of advanced chips and chip-making technology. These chips are needed to manufacture the devices that can run the cutting-edge AI models used by OpenAI, Anthropic, and other firms on the technological frontier. The export controls apply not just to U.S. companies but to any manufacturer that uses such U.S. software or technology; in practice, Washington’s export-control regulations have a global remit. In August 2023, China countered with its own export controls on the rare minerals gallium and germanium—both necessary components for manufacturing chips. Two months later, the Biden administration toughened its earlier regulations by expanding the range of covered semiconductor products.

Tit-for-tat competition over semiconductors is possible because international trade law under the World Trade Organization does not sufficiently constrain governments from instituting export controls. The body has rarely addressed the issue in the past. And since former U.S. President Donald Trump neutered the WTO’s appellate body in 2018 by blocking the appointment of new members, there has been little prospect of new formal rules that can be credibly enforced by an authoritative global institution. As a result, these salvos in the chip war between China and the United States are eroding free trade and setting destabilizing precedents in international trade law. They will likely work as a complete substitute for such law in the near term, guaranteeing lower levels of trade and greater geopolitical strains.

But the chip war is just the most high-profile front in the gathering contest over AI’s necessary components. A second zone of conflict concerns technical standards. Such standards have long undergirded the use of any major technology: imagine trying to build a railroad across the United States if every state had a different legally mandated gauge for train tracks. The rise of the digital era has seen the proliferation of various kinds of standards to enable the production and purchase of complex products around the world. The iPhone 13, for example, has nearly 200 parts sourced from more than a dozen countries. If these disparate elements are to work together—and make an object that can communicate with cell towers, satellites, and the Internet of Things—they have to share a set of technical specifications. The choice of such standards has profound effects. It determines whether and how innovations can find commercial uses or achieve market shares. As the German industrialist Werner von Seimens said in the late 1800s, “He who owns the standards, owns the market.”

The chip war between China and the United States is setting destabilizing precedents in international trade law.

At present, a series of little-known bodies such as the International Telecommunication Union, the International Electrotechnical Commission, the International Organization for Standardization, and the Internet Engineering Task Force negotiate technical standards for digital technology in general. Based in Geneva and operating as nonprofits or as UN affiliates, these bodies play a major role in setting the terms of global digital trade and competition. Members of these institutions vote on standards by majority rule. To date, those forums have been dominated by U.S. and European officials and firms. But that is changing.

In the last two decades, China has increasingly taken on leadership roles in the technical committees of several of these bodies, where it has unstintingly promoted its preferred standards. Since 2015, it has integrated its own technical standards in the projects of its Belt and Road Initiative, a vast global infrastructure investment program. As of 2019, it had reached 89 standardization agreements with 39 countries and regions. In March 2018, China launched yet another strategy, “China Standard 2035,” calling for an even stronger Chinese role in international standard setting and demanding greater civil-military coordination within China on the choice of standards. Predictably, some industry analysts in the United States have responded by calling for Washington to combat “more proactively . . . Chinese influence over standard-setting bodies.”

This is not the first time technical standards have become ensnarled in geopolitical tensions. In August 2019, U.S. sanctions on the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei led China to establish its own energy-efficiency standards that were incompatible with Western ones. The result was a fracturing of technical standards for managing how large data centers, which are central to the digital economy, work. In the AI context, markets separated by different technical standards would slow the diffusion of new tools. It would also make it more difficult to develop technical solutions that could be applied globally to problems such as disinformation or deepfake pornography. In effect, the problems that great powers have identified as important to jointly address would become harder to solve.

Divisions over AI-related technical standards have already emerged. The EU’s AI Act, for example, mandates the use of “suitable risk management measures.” To define this term, the act looks to three independent standard-setting organizations that would develop and promulgate context-specific standards regarding AI safety risks. It is telling that the three bodies specified in the legislation to date are European, not the international ones mentioned above. This seems a quite conscious effort to distinguish European regulation from its U.S. and Chinese counterparts. And it promises the Balkanization of standards pertaining to AI.

THEIR DARK MATERIALS

Geopolitical conflict is not just shaping a new international regulatory landscape for the physical commodities that make up AI. It is also sharpening divides over the intangible assets needed for the technology. Again, the emerging legal regime entrenches a divided world order in which broad-based, collective solutions are likely to fail.

The first important intangible input of AI is data. AI tools such as ChatGPT are built on massive pools of data. To succeed, however, they also need more targeted batches of data. Generative AI tools, which are able to produce paragraphs of text or extended video based on brief prompts, are incredibly powerful. But they are often unsuited to highly specific tasks. They must be fine-tuned with smaller, context-specific data sets to do a particular job. A firm using a generative AI tool for its customer-service bot, for example, might train such an instrument on its own transcripts of consumer interactions. AI, in short, needs both large reservoirs of data and smaller, more bespoke data pools.

Companies and countries will therefore invariably compete over access to different kinds of data. International conflict over data flows is not new: the United States and the EU repeatedly clashed over the terms under which data can cross the Atlantic after the EU’s Court of Justice struck down, in 2015, a safe harbor agreement that had allowed companies to move data between servers in the United States and Europe. But the scale of such disagreements is on the rise now, shaping how data will flow and making it harder for data to cross national borders.

The emerging legal regime around AI will frustrate broad-based, collective solutions.

Until recently, the United States promoted a model of free global data transfers out of a commitment to open markets and as a national security imperative—a more integrated world, officials believed, would be a safer one. Washington was aggressive in its use of bilateral trade deals to promote this vision. In contrast, European law has long reflected greater caution about data privacy. For their part, China and India have enacted domestic legislation that mandates in different ways “data localization,” with greater restrictions on the flow of data across borders.

Since AI swept to center stage, these views have shuffled. India recently relaxed its prohibition, suggesting that it will allow greater data flows to other countries—thus giving it greater sway over the terms of global digital trade. China also seems to be easing its localization rules as its economy sputters, allowing more companies to store data outside China’s borders. But startlingly, the United States is moving in the opposite direction. U.S. politicians who were worried about the social media app TikTok’s relationship with the Chinese government pressured the company to commit to limiting data flows to China. (TikTok, by its own admission, has honored this commitment somewhat inconsistently.) In October 2023, the U.S. trade representative announced that the federal government was dropping the country’s long-standing demands at the WTO for the protection of cross-border data flows and prohibitions on the forced localization of data. If Washington maintains this path, the world will have lost its principal advocate of free data flows. More data localization would likely ensue.

Finally, global competition is starting to emerge over whether and when states can demand the disclosure of the algorithms that underlie AI instruments. The EU’s proposed AI Act, for instance, requires large firms to provide government agencies access to the inner workings of certain models to ensure that they are not potentially damaging to individuals. Similarly, recent Chinese regulations regarding AI used to create content (including generative AI) requires firms to register with authorities and limits the uses of their technology. The U.S. approach is more complex—and not entirely coherent. On the one hand, Biden’s executive order in October 2023 demands a catalog of disclosures about “dual-use foundation models”—cutting-edge models that can have both commercial and security-related uses. On the other hand, trade deals pursued by the Trump and Biden administrations have included many provisions prohibiting other countries from mandating in their laws any disclosure of “propriety source code and algorithms.” In effect, the U.S. position seems to demand disclosure at home while forbidding it overseas.

Even though this kind of regulation regarding algorithms is in its infancy, it is likely that countries will follow the path carved by global data regulation toward fragmentation. As the importance of technical design decisions, such as the precise metric an AI is tasked with optimizing, becomes more widely understood, states are likely to try to force firms to disclose them—but also to try to prohibit those firms from sharing this information with other governments.

THINGS FALL APART

In an era of faltering global resolve on other challenges, great powers had initially struck an optimistic note in grappling with AI. In Beijing, Brussels, and Washington, there seemed to be broad agreement that AI can cause potentially grave harms and that concerted transnational action was needed.

Countries are not, however, taking this path. Rather than encouraging a collective effort to establish a clear legal framework to manage AI, states are already engaged in subtle, shadowy conflicts over AI’s material and intangible foundations. The resulting legal order will be characterized by fracture and distance, not entanglement. It will leave countries suspicious of one another, sapping goodwill. And it will be hard to advance proposals for better global governance of AI. At a minimum, the emerging regime will make it more difficult to gather information and assess the risks of the new technology. More dangerously, the technical obstacles raised by the growing legal Balkanization of AI regulation may make certain global solutions, such as the establishment of an intergovernmental panel on AI, impossible.

A fragmented legal order is one in which deeply dangerous AI models can be developed and disseminated as instruments of geopolitical conflict. A country’s efforts to manage AI could easily be undermined by those outside its borders. And autocracies may be free to both manipulate their own publics using AI and exploit democracies’ free flow of information to weaken them from within. There is much to be lost then if a global effort to regulate AI never truly materializes.

Foreign Affairs · by The Collapse of Constitutional Remedies · March 11, 2024





13. Geopolitics in the C-Suite – More Than Ever, U.S. Foreign Policy Depends on Corporations—and Vice Versa



Excerpts;

Finally, Washington must invest more in gathering economic intelligence. A better understanding of China’s indigenous development of critical technologies and of how Beijing is exploiting regulatory loopholes could help avoid surprises, such as Huawei’s recent announcement that it had developed a seven-nanometer chip for its Mate 60 smartphone. (Although China can’t yet produce the chips efficiently and at scale, most observers, including in the U.S. government, were nevertheless caught off-guard by this development.) This will require an increase in funding for economic intelligence at the Treasury and Commerce Departments and at the CIA. Over the years, Washington has gone back and forth about how much to embrace economic intelligence. But today, there’s no doubt about its centrality to national security.
More broadly, U.S. policymakers will have to get comfortable with a broad set of questions and problems that their forebears during the Cold War and its immediate aftermath had the luxury of avoiding. They will have to develop new economic expertise, build new relationships with industry, and find new ways to operate. But it is worth remembering that those earlier generations of policymakers had to do all of those things, as well, in response to the geopolitical paradigm shifts of their times. The question and problems were different, but they required the same kind of adaptation. American officials have succeeded at that task many times before, and they can do so again.


Geopolitics in the C-Suite

More Than Ever, U.S. Foreign Policy Depends on Corporations—and Vice Versa

By Jami Miscik, Peter Orszag, and Theodore Bunzel

March 11, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by Jami Miscik, Peter Orszag, and Theodore Bunzel · March 11, 2024

In late 1914, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson was facing pleas from a number of influential supporters who wanted him to make a public appeal to American manufacturers to stop selling arms to European countries—or even ban them from doing so. Wilson was seeking a way to end the war then raging in Europe, or at least slow it down, and he was sympathetic to the impulse. But in a response to one such plea, he explained his predicament. “The sales proceed from so many sources, and my lack of power is so evident,” he wrote, “that I have felt that I could do nothing else than leave the matter to settle itself.”

Wilson’s claims of presidential powerlessness sound odd today, during an era in which U.S. government intervention has become routine in a wide range of economic activities relating to national security, even in peacetime. Contrast them, for example, with comments made last December by U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, whose department has spent the past few years designing export controls intended to prevent American companies from aiding China’s advancement in critical technology—and who had a stern warning for any U.S. firm that might try to cleverly circumvent those controls. “If you redesign a chip around a particular cut line that enables [China] to do AI, I’m going to control it the very next day,” she told a gathering of policymakers and executives.

The historical changes that took place in the century-plus between Wilson’s comments and Raimondo’s were profound. But even though national security and foreign policy occasionally intruded on corporate America during that time, until very recently, few executives concerned themselves with geopolitics. In the post–Cold War world, with globalization on the march, the idea that national interests might be at odds with open markets and expanding trade came to seem alien to American executives.

But the changes that have roiled the geopolitical landscape in recent years have left an impression in C-suites around the United States. In a recent poll of 500 institutional investors, geopolitics ranked as the top risk to the global economy and markets in 2024. Part of this concern is driven by the quickening cadence of global conflicts, with ongoing wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and concerns about a crisis in the Taiwan Strait. More fundamentally, however, a tectonic shift is taking place, one that is forcing corporations to become actors on the geopolitical stage. As governments lean on economic restrictions and industrial policies to achieve geopolitical ends, corporations have increasingly become both the objects and instruments of foreign policy. Some of Washington’s main foreign policy priorities, such as encouraging resilient clean-energy supply chains or slowing down China’s technological advance, rely on thousands of individual corporate actors, whose interests do not always align with those of the U.S. government and who often possess an informational advantage over the public sector.

This understandably makes some policymakers uneasy; they are used to being in the driver’s seat when it comes to geopolitical decision-making, not riding shotgun. But given the federal government’s ultimate role as the arbiter and protector of U.S. national interests, officials need to adapt to this new paradigm. Institutionalized consultations with the private sector, funding for industry expertise, and better economic intelligence would be good first steps. At a deeper level, policymakers will have to commit to thinking in a fundamentally different way about the private sector.

HOW WE GOT HERE

The centrality of economic competition to today’s foreign policy problems represents a qualitative break from the past. During the Cold War, for example, the United States and the Soviet Union hardly interacted economically: trade between them peaked at a paltry $4.5 billion in 1979; in recent years, the United States and China have generally traded that much every week or two, adjusting for inflation. In the post–Cold War era, U.S. foreign policy was focused on opening markets and reducing international economic barriers rather than erecting them. Era-defining crises such as the 9/11 attacks did little to change the relationship between U.S. policymakers and American corporations; if anything, the “war on terror” further solidified the idea that foreign policy was primarily concerned with security and military issues, not economics.

But in the background, global economic integration was transforming the playing field. In 1980, trade accounted for just 37 percent of global GDP. Today, that figure is 74 percent. Today, economies have become intertwined to a degree never seen in the twentieth century. Globalization is not new, of course; it has been a centuries-long process. What is new, however, is the emergence of great-power rivalry in a highly interconnected world. Military power still matters, but economic and technological competition have become the main battlefield of global politics. Under the so-called Washington Consensus that dominated policymaking for decades, the question of where a semiconductor manufacturer would build its next factory, or whether German auto companies would decide to throttle their investments in China, would have seemed relatively unimportant to policymakers. Now, such questions are at the center of almost every major foreign policy debate.

Greater economic integration has also created a complex web of links between geopolitical rivals that policymakers now seek to leverage for strategic ends. This is especially true when it comes to financial and technological networks, where Washington holds a privileged position. As noted by the scholars Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman in their recent book Underground Empire, the United States sits at the center of a vast informational plumbing system, built almost haphazardly over decades, that allows the global economy to function. The ubiquity of the dollar in global transactions, U.S. control of critical Internet infrastructure, and the dominance of American companies when it comes to the intellectual property rights behind the most important technology have allowed Washington to coerce or target geopolitical rivals, often through sanctions.

But as great-power tensions have increased, so has the number of sectors caught in the fray of what Farrell and Newman call “weaponized interdependence.” Consider, for example, the way that G-7 countries have taken advantage of Russian dependence on shipping insurers based in the West, an industry that most foreign policymakers had probably never thought about before Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. To try to cap the price of Russian oil exports, the G-7 prevented these companies from insuring Russian crude oil cargoes unless they had been sold at a maximum of $60 per barrel.

Economic and technological competition have become the main battlefield of global politics.

Western powers are not the only ones playing this game. In 2010, after a Chinese fishing trawler and Japanese Coast Guard patrol boats collided in disputed waters, setting off a diplomatic row between Beijing and Tokyo, China banned exports to Japan of the rare earth minerals that are critical components of batteries and electronics, thus raising costs and creating shortages for Japanese manufacturers of everything from hybrid cars to wind turbines.

Geopolitical friction has also made life more confusing for companies operating in multiple countries with competing directives, sometimes forcing them to choose which set of rules to follow. After Russia invaded Ukraine, many companies seeking to leave Russia had to freeze their operations. If they carried on, they faced Western sanctions; if they decided to exit Russia, they faced countersanctions from Moscow. More recently, a number of American consulting firms have been caught in the middle of the complex U.S.-Saudi relationship, with Congress demanding details about their contracts with Saudi Arabia that Riyadh has forbidden them to provide.

All these dynamics are being turbocharged by an intensifying competition between the United States and China, the two countries with the largest and most globally intertwined economies. Both aim to dominate the twenty-first-century economy, which means gaining the upper hand in computing technologies, biotechnology, and clean energy. And the foreign policies of both countries are now driven by a shared desire to shape their economies in ways that reduce their vulnerability and increase their leverage. China calls this “self-reliance.” Washington calls it “de-risking.” For the United States, what it looks like in practice is expanded export controls on advanced semiconductors and manufacturing equipment, enhanced government screening of investments by U.S. companies in foreign markets, and major subsidies for industries such as electric vehicles and microchips, primarily through the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS Act. In this brave new world, the secretary of commerce is as important to foreign policy as the secretaries of state and defense.

Washington is hardly alone in taking such steps. State-sponsored drives for greater self-reliance have taken hold in nearly every major economy, particularly after the supply-chain disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic. The number of countries introducing or expanding investment screening, for example, jumped from three between 1995 and 2005 to 54 between 2020 and 2022. Meanwhile, a wave of industrial policies has increased trade barriers in an attempt to induce companies to re-shore their supply chains. At the same time, the understanding of what matters to national security has also expanded, as countries seek to advance or protect everything from software and microchips to pharmaceuticals and foodstuffs.

“HOW AM I IN THIS WAR?”

In this new environment, the success or failure of foreign policymaking increasingly depends on corporate decision-making. Export controls and sanctions are effective only if companies don’t pursue workarounds. Industrial policies and subsidies are effective only if companies respond to the incentives they are meant to create.

Many of the complications of this new era are rooted in the difference between the way the public and private sectors view time horizons. Policymakers set bright lines with immediate operational implications—for example, suddenly forbidding companies from exporting or importing certain goods from certain countries. But companies need to make long-term investment decisions. Should a company set up another plant in China if there is market demand and doing so is currently allowed by law? Should a pharmaceutical company set up advanced R & D centers in mainland China, or purchase a Chinese biotech firm, given the long-run trajectory of relations between Beijing and the West? Should a consumer electronics firm purchase Chinese-made chips if they are the most cost-efficient option? Answering these questions requires executives to forecast the outcomes of highly volatile political debates and policymaking choices over which they have little control. And yet whatever decisions they make have a significant effect on whether, for example, the United States can effectively “de-risk” its economic relationship with China.

The example of semiconductors is instructive. Washington is seeking to re-shore semiconductor manufacturing, but the success of its flagship industrial policy, the CHIPS Act, depends only in part on how the Commerce Department distributes the legislation’s $39 billion in subsidies over the next five years. A much more important factor is whether the Taiwanese chip manufacturer TSMC will risk setting up facilities in the United States despite high costs and a relative scarcity of human capital, and whether Apple decides to buy slightly more expensive chips made by U.S. fabricators instead of less expensive ones produced in Asia. And the CHIPS Act is only one input in those decisions.

In some cases, companies are shaping foreign policy and international conflicts in more overt ways. Consider Starlink, the satellite-based Internet service offered by SpaceX, a company owned by the richest man in the world, Elon Musk. After Russian cyberattacks ahead of the February 2022 invasion eliminated most Internet connectivity in Ukraine, Musk rushed to provide Starlink access to the country, giving it a crucial lifeline. But in September of that year, Musk denied Kyiv’s request to extend Starlink coverage into Crimea so that Ukrainian forces could carry out an attack on Russia forces there. Musk later wrote that doing so would have made SpaceX “explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.” Musk found himself wondering, as he put it in an exchange at the time with the journalist Walter Isaacson, “How am I in this war?”

But Musk’s predicament should have come as no surprise to him or anyone else. The lines separating governments from corporations and international relations from commerce have blurred to the point of vanishing.

A GROWTH MIND-SET

As governments tinker with complex supply chains and technology ecosystems built over decades, the choices and conduct of thousands of corporate actors will make it harder to achieve policy goals. And given an inherently limited toolkit and the myriad nuances of each industry, the U.S. government can’t possibly think of every conceivable workaround or contingency for a specific sanction or export control. Washington will have to rely on companies to adhere to the spirit of policies, rather than just the letter. Even if most companies comply with new rules at first, over time, some will find ways to get around restrictions and overcome hurdles; regulators and lawmakers will need to be vigilant. And U.S. rivals will hardly sit idly by. After the West severed nearly every economic interaction with Russia in 2022, Moscow soon found alternative sources of supply from China: Russian imports from Beijing have surged 64 percent since 2021.

Policies such as export controls and outbound investment restrictions have unintended consequences and will work only for a limited time. They require constant updating as countries and industries respond and as technology changes. Such rules also require multilateral action, since other players around the globe will happily seek to replace U.S. expertise and capital whenever Washington makes it unavailable.

Industrial policies have similar limitations. Governments can convey their intent to reduce foreign economic dependencies, but their means are limited. Subsidies and other financial breaks are too small to fully rewire embedded supply chains that were built over decades. And more extreme policies such as import bans risk shortages and price spikes, not to mention full-blown trade wars that could devastate entire sectors.

Adapting to this new geopolitical reality demands a paradigm shift for policymakers. Traditionally, interactions between foreign policy decisionmakers and businesses have been either adversarial (“Don’t sell these things here!”) or promotional (“Do sell those things there!”). Going forward, the U.S. government will need to adopt a more collaborative approach. A key step is to clearly articulate the intention and objective of every policy. It is impossible to follow the spirit of a government regulation if its intent is unclear and its objective is undefined. For example, Biden administration officials have repeatedly referred to “biotechnology” as an area of focus and next in line for economic restrictions on China akin to those placed on semiconductors. Yet it has not yet defined which aspects of the complicated and broad biotechnology ecosystem—which includes an array of elements, including genomics, cell therapies, and advanced biomanufacturing—are the most concerning. Neither has it indicated how it plans to restrict U.S. capital and know-how, and for what purpose. Doing so would help provide companies some sense of how to interact with the Chinese market today, even before new measures are announced.

People attending the opening of a Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company center in Hsinchu, Taiwan, July 2023

Ann Wang / Reuters

Foreign policy officials also need to develop more expertise in economics and critical technologies. Gone are the days of Brent Scowcroft, who served as national security adviser to Presidents Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush and who was a master strategist—but who pleaded ignorance about anything related to economics. Building up those muscles will require more institutionalized dialogue with the private sector, including in fast-moving situations when companies have to make decisions with long-term consequences, such as foreign acquisitions or operational reorganizations. Although major technology firms that are caught in the crosshairs have plenty of access to the administration these days, smaller companies and those in other sectors may not know where to receive guidance on major decisions related to their operations or businesses in, say, China. The Commerce Department should establish a consultation office for just such discussions, where companies can have an open dialogue with policymakers with some assurance that raising the issue will not trigger increased regulatory scrutiny. The idea would be to destigmatize the notion of consulting with the government early and often. One model of healthy dialogue is the Cyber Safety Review Board run by the Department of Homeland Security and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which brings together cybersecurity experts from the public and private sectors.

To enhance the effectiveness of sanctions, improve enforcement, and build a better picture of economic vulnerabilities, Washington needs better monitoring systems. The White House Council on Supply Chain Resilience, which President Joe Biden established last year, is a good start. The Commerce Department needs increased funding for collecting industry data and carrying out predictive analysis to enhance its new Supply Chain Center, which should conduct annual stress tests of critical supply chains to gauge how they would weather geopolitical disruptions. The department also needs more funding for its Bureau of Industry and Security, which oversees the development and monitoring of export controls—and whose budget is the same as it was ten years ago.

Finally, Washington must invest more in gathering economic intelligence. A better understanding of China’s indigenous development of critical technologies and of how Beijing is exploiting regulatory loopholes could help avoid surprises, such as Huawei’s recent announcement that it had developed a seven-nanometer chip for its Mate 60 smartphone. (Although China can’t yet produce the chips efficiently and at scale, most observers, including in the U.S. government, were nevertheless caught off-guard by this development.) This will require an increase in funding for economic intelligence at the Treasury and Commerce Departments and at the CIA. Over the years, Washington has gone back and forth about how much to embrace economic intelligence. But today, there’s no doubt about its centrality to national security.

More broadly, U.S. policymakers will have to get comfortable with a broad set of questions and problems that their forebears during the Cold War and its immediate aftermath had the luxury of avoiding. They will have to develop new economic expertise, build new relationships with industry, and find new ways to operate. But it is worth remembering that those earlier generations of policymakers had to do all of those things, as well, in response to the geopolitical paradigm shifts of their times. The question and problems were different, but they required the same kind of adaptation. American officials have succeeded at that task many times before, and they can do so again.

  • JAMI MISCIK is Senior Adviser at Lazard Geopolitical Advisory. She was CEO of Kissinger Associates and previously served as Deputy Director for Intelligence at the Central Intelligence Agency.
  • PETER ORSZAG is Chief Executive Officer of Lazard. He was Director of the Office of Management and Budget from 2009 to 2010 and Director of the Congressional Budget Office from 2007 to 2008.
  • THEODORE BUNZEL is Managing Director and head of Lazard Geopolitical Advisory. He has worked in the political section of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow and at the U.S. Treasury Department.

Foreign Affairs · by Jami Miscik, Peter Orszag, and Theodore Bunzel · March 11, 2024




14. BROKEN TRACK: Suicides & suffering in Army’s exhausted armor community


BROKEN TRACK: Suicides & suffering in Army’s exhausted armor community

armytimes.com · by Davis Winkie · March 11, 2024

Editor’s Note: If you or a loved one is experiencing thoughts of self-harm or suicide, you can confidentially seek assistance via the Military/Veterans Crisis Line by calling 988 and dialing 1, via text at 838255 or chat at http://VeteransCrisisLine.net. You don’t need to be a VA beneficiary to use the service.

Collin Pattan remembers the winter of 2020.

Before the first snow blanketed Fort Carson, Colorado, two members of the Iron Knight battalion were dead: Sgt. Larry Cook, a tanker, died by suicide in April, and Spc. Brian Seely, an intel analyst, killed himself in June.

In total, six soldiers from 1st Battalion, 66th Armor Regiment died by suicide in 14 months.

Pattan, a combat medic, now screens soldiers’ medical records for his brigade’s upcoming deployment to Europe. He sees the scars from that winter. He reads about the struggles with mental health. He knows the toll the job can take.

More than three years later, he still can’t answer unexpected calls. When the phone rings, he’s gripped with fear: is another soldier dead?

The 27-year-old sergeant now faces a medical retirement for PTSD after his soldiers died, after he cleaned their blood from the carpet and after he interrogated himself over whether he could have done more.

Between 2019 and 2021, tank brigades experienced a suicide rate twice as high as the rest of the active duty force, according to an Army Times analysis of death records. At least 79 soldiers assigned to active duty Armored Brigade Combat Teams — units of approximately 4,000 soldiers that include support troops like cooks in addition to their tanks and Bradleys — killed themselves. Across all unit types, enlisted tankers were three times as likely to die by suicide than other soldiers. Sixteen died by suicide during that three-year period.


The battalion colors of 1st Battalion, 66th Armor Regiment seen at Fort Carson, Colorado, April 5, 2022. The unit suffered one of the Army's highest suicide rates between 2019 and 2021. (Capt. Tobias Cukale/Army)

Retired Gen. Robert “Abe” Abrams, a career armor officer, said the suicide numbers hit him “square in the gut.”

“The armor force needs to train hard to be ready,” he said. “But it cannot sustain that tempo indefinitely so that every 18 months, they can be gone for nine months. That’s what’s crushing them.”

In interviews with Army Times, more than 60 soldiers from tank brigades described a high operational tempo — a loosely defined term that encompasses time spent away from home for training or deployments. The soldiers said they endured countless late nights and early mornings maintaining vehicles only for them to break repeatedly amid training. And they said the unforgiving pace of work suffocated the spirit of those around them.

For a decade, U.S. tank brigades have been in high demand overseas, even though they’re not fighting.

Perhaps nowhere was the strain felt more than 1st Battalion, 66th Armor.

“I just thought it was normal, growing up in this unit,” said Staff Sgt. Colton Herzing, a tanker who has spent his entire seven-year career in the unit. “I thought the OPTEMPO was normal. I thought the suicide rate was normal.”

The Pentagon’s stated — but rarely enforced — goal is for soldiers to spend three months at home for every one month deployed. Abrams, whose father’s name adorns the military’s tanks, argued that armor units cannot indefinitely sustain their operational treadmill of two months at home for each month deployed unless the Army is willing to pour more resources than it already has into manning, equipment and support.

Randy Lane, who heads the Army’s data work for suicide prevention and similar programs, confirmed that enlisted tankers suffered the worst suicide rate of any high-population career field during the three-year period. He also acknowledged higher suicide rates for members of armor and Stryker brigades, but added Army databases are “not set up to account for brigade type.”

Army secretary Christine Wormuth said in a statement to Army Times that “suicide prevention remains a challenge.”

“Gen. [Randy] George and I recognize there are several contributing factors to suicide and that we need to tailor our prevention efforts based on specific factors at the unit level,” she said. Wormuth added that she and George review suicide prevention efforts with senior commanders “on a nearly monthly basis … [to] assess progress and identify areas for improvement.”

While Army leaders pointed to a series of suicide prevention programs in place, none are aimed specifically at the problems raised by tank units’ operational pace.


Soldiers from 1st Battalion, 66th Armor Regiment push a Humvee on April 9, 2015 in Kuwait. This was the Iron Knights' first of five deployments in a 10 year span. (Spc. Gregory T. Summers/Army)

Sgt. Maj. Michael Perry, the top enlisted advisor to the Army’s head of installations and quality of life programs, acknowledged that brigade combat teams have been “deploying a lot” despite the gradual end to the War on Terror.

“There is no denying that OPTEMPO … [places] a significant strain on our force and on our families,” Perry said, emphasizing the need for support resources to reduce suicides and other harmful behaviors.

An Army public affairs official did not allow Perry to answer a question about what the service was doing to address the problem specifically for armor units.

Doing so may require looking inward.

Abrams argued the problem is rooted both inside and beyond the Army, but he emphasized that the service can do more.

The retired general said armor units must meet strict requirements — called “business rules” — set by geographic combatant commands for units embarking on non-combat deployments to their theater. Among other criteria, units cannot have too many vacant positions, a certain percentage of their vehicles must be operational and they must be trained to a high standard.

To make the cut, senior commanders often shuffle soldiers and leaders between chronically undermanned units, harming their cohesion. Abrams added that the strain is compounded by constant backlogs on vehicle parts as well.

“It’s like trying to prepare the force with one arm tied behind your back,” Abrams said. Despite Army efforts to mitigate the rules’ impact, “we were still crushing people,” the general added.

A growing vein of suicide prevention research suggests that baseline stress in a population — such as operational tempo for armor brigades — can raise the entire group’s suicide risk. Mental health experts say the military has been slow to embrace this new approach.

Army expert Lane said the service requested a research study in spring 2023 about whether its new readiness and deployment model has increased suicide risk for armor units. But for nearly a year, the Army has struggled to find a partner for the study.

Lane also conceded that officials have neither “enough data nor the agreed upon definition” to analyze the relationship between operational tempo and suicide risk.

While Army headquarters struggles to pin down the problem, the soldiers on the line bear its consequences.


Members of 1st Battalion, 66th Armor Regiment told Army Times that the unit's "Iron Knight For Life" motto took on a darker connotation during the 2020 suicide cluster. (Spc. Gregory Summers/Army)

The soldiers of 1st Battalion, 66th Armor said they didn’t have a chance to pause and process the deaths from 2020 and 2021. Training never stopped. Maintenance never stopped.

Roughly every 18 months, the 4th Infantry Division’s 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, of which they were a part, had deployed for nine months. In 2015, it was Kuwait. In 2017, the Iron Brigade went to Europe. In 2019, Kuwait was the destination again. Another Europe deployment came in 2022, and the brigade will return to the continent this spring.

The soldiers were already bone-tired when the pandemic began, said Capt. Nick Bierwirth, who spent three-and-a-half years there as a lieutenant. He and other soldiers, such as former Sgt. Dan Lewis, described the relentless cycle.

“I would bring my daughter in at night when she wouldn’t sleep, because I wanted to see my family,” recounted Capt. Dave Wright, an infantry officer who served four years in 1-66.

Because COVID took months away from their training calendar, the brigade’s soldiers were away from home more often than usual once restrictions were lifted. The Iron Knights described those months as the most difficult training cycle they had ever experienced, detailing how back-to-back field exercises took a toll on their tanks, their bodies, their families, their mental health and more.

Exhausted, frustrated and already shaken by two suicides (Cook, the tanker, and Seely, the intel analyst), the unit was on the brink when November 2020 began.

The winter was cruel.

The day Sgt. Aaron Pollitt died, the 28-year-old infantryman was doing what he did best: caring for those who mattered to him — his wife, his daughter and his soldiers.

A nine-year veteran, Pollitt came up in the battalion’s Bradley company before becoming a master gunner in the headquarters company.

On Nov. 6, 2020, Pollitt was driving a junior soldier home from work when he lost control of his SUV and careened across the median of Interstate 25 into a garbage truck.

Pollitt died. His passenger survived. The gregarious infantryman’s death was not a suicide, but it sent shockwaves through the battalion.

“That was definitely … where things became very difficult for our unit,” Pattan said.

Five days later, the unit suffered its third suicide of the year. Sgt. Cody Kane, a 24-year-old infantryman and father, killed himself in his Fountain, Colorado home on Nov. 11, 2020.


Sgt. Cody Kane, seen in an undated photograph. Kane died by suicide on Nov. 11, 2020, in Fountain, Colorado. (Courtesy of Jessica Lane)

Kane’s colleagues recalled the infantryman blaring “Baby Shark” to raise spirits before he and his tent-mates embarked on a long range day during the unit’s 2019 Kuwait deployment.

“I was his senior medic,” Pattan recalled. “I looked at it as my job to take care of these guys, and I had two people die in a week.”

But training had to continue — Kane’s Bradley company went to the field the day after his suicide. Pattan watched his company commander and first sergeant unsuccessfully fight against the decision.

Then, Spc. Wyatt Thyfault died on Nov. 22. His was the fourth suicide.

Thyfault, a 20-year-old combat medic who grew up northeast of Denver, was at a party at a fellow soldier’s apartment when he died; his casualty form deemed it self-inflicted. Investigative records reveal he was intoxicated and had easy access to another soldier’s unsecured firearm, though nobody faced charges.

The medic’s portrait still hangs in the company headquarters, Herzing said.

Pattan, who was Thyfault’s squad leader, recalled his survivor’s guilt intensifying.


A portrait of Spc. Wyatt Thyfault hangs in the headquarters offices of Battle Company, 1st Battalion, 66th Armor Regiment, at Fort Carson, Colorado. The trophy in the center-left of the Feb. 27, 2024 photograph is the Sullivan Cup trophy, which the company won in 2022 for having the Army's top tank crew. (Sgt. Collin Pattan/Army)

“I got rid of the couch that he was sitting on. I cleaned the carpet. I repaired the bullet hole in the wall,” Pattan said. The Pentagon’s suicide prevention committee later found that soldiers should not clean death scenes.

The battalion’s soldiers, after three deaths in three weeks, charged headlong into holiday block leave season.

But they returned to news of the fifth suicide since April. Pvt. Sean Teasley, who killed himself at his family’s Maryland home on Dec. 29, 2020, still evokes mixed feelings from the soldiers of Battle Company.

The 21-year-old tanker was known as the “kid” of the company, Herzing recalled.

When the unit returned from leave, an officer said, their battalion and brigade “surged” resources to help them cope.

Then everyone learned that Teasley was under criminal investigation for alleged child sexual abuse — police interrogated him shortly before his death. “Once the news broke, it was like, ‘OK, go back to work,’ and people were still fucking struggling,” the officer recalled.

Almost six months passed between Teasley’s death and the sixth suicide.

Sgt. Bayaman Michael Barcus killed himself in front of his girlfriend after a violent outburst following a concert in San Antonio, Texas, on June 13, 2021.


Sgt. Bayaman Michael Barcus rides atop an M113 personnel carrier during 1st Battalion, 66th Armor Regiment's May 2021 training rotation at the National Training Center, Fort Irwin, California. (Sgt. Collin Pattan/Army)

A 24-year-old childhood immigrant from Kyrgyzstan, Barcus grew up in North Georgia. The young father, a sniper in the headquarters company, loved country music and drove a lifted Chevrolet K10.

After Barcus died, Pattan recalled that he “shut down.” He skipped his friend’s memorial, hellbent on “avoiding the problem” lest his own mental state deteriorate further.

Others were in a similar headspace.

“I was at the point where driving off a cliff on the way to work would have been as good as showing up to work,” said one officer. One noncommissioned officer said he called a suicide hotline.

“Looking back … it was like surviving,” Pattan said.

The stress from the unit’s training tempo was compounded by their seemingly futile battle to keep their vehicles running, the Iron Knights said. Members of other armored units described similar struggles.

Soldiers regularly worked nights and weekends in the motorpool, they said. Former Spc. Garrett Shiemke, a Bradley mechanic, said the maintainers turned wrenches even on so-called “mandatory fun days,” when the rest of the unit would participate in morale-boosting and team-building activities.

“Everything was secondary to making sure the vehicles are up — including personal health and physical fitness,” said Wright, the infantry captain.

And as the battalion’s training reached a fever pitch in 2020, its vehicle crews and maintainers struggled to keep up. The longer the vehicles were in the field, the more they broke.


Maintenance can be grueling for members of armor brigades. In this May 12, 2015 photo, an enlisted tanker hammers in end connectors, a job known as “walking track," at the Army’s Hohenfels Training Area, Germany. (Sgt. 1st Class Caleb Barrieau/Army)

Chief Warrant Officer 2 Trevor Nelson, who at the time was a sergeant first class leading maintenance for 1-66′s Bradley company, and other Iron Knights described parts backlogs that meant some tanks faced long delays before repair. That made the unit lean even harder on its functional vehicles and on its soldiers. Sometimes the “burnt out” maintainers would resort to visiting auto parts stores and buying common parts on their own dime.

Sometimes the soldiers designated “hangar queen” vehicles, which were awaiting major repairs with long lead times. If a part breaks on a tank, soldiers raid the hangar queen for parts, stressing the mechanics who must both swap the borrowed part and install the new one once it arrives. While Army regulations allow such swaps, unit leaders are directed to reduce such “controlled exchanges” between vehicles.

“I remember the maintenance teams being exhausted 99% of the time and just having zero hope for a let up,” said Shiemke, a Bradley maintainer. “Everything seemed like an emergency. But if everything’s an emergency, then nothing is an emergency.”

Crews and officers responsible for overseeing maintenance also felt the strain.

A former company executive officer worked six consecutive Saturdays before a deployment in the maintenance bays, he said.

“The two months [before deployment] where I’m trying to spend as much time as I can with my wife, half of those weekends were robbed from me,” the officer said.

Col. Roger Cabiness II, an Army spokesperson, acknowledged parts backlogs in a statement to Army Times. He said a “working group” between Army Materiel Command and “other stakeholders” aims to reduce such backorders. Cabiness also said that “advanced manufacturing, data analytics and other innovative solutions” will combine to ease the difficulty of getting the right parts at the right time.

A former 1-66 company executive officer said leaders directed him to “play musical parts” so training could continue, which he said “took a psychological toll” on the overburdened maintainers.


M1A2 Abrams tanks await loading at the Port of Shuaiba, Kuwait on Jan. 30, 2017. (Staff Sgt. Dalton Smith/Army)

It also discouraged the soldiers, who affectionately name their vehicles and emotionally bond with them. A crew unlucky enough to need major repairs would often sit back and watch the unit raid their beloved tank like a spare parts bazaar.

Military suicide prevention officials have trouble seeing the forest for the trees, some mental health experts argue.

In recent years, psychologist Craig Bryan of Ohio State University has critiqued the military’s traditional approach to suicide prevention: detecting and treating mental illness in individual service members, with a focus on crisis intervention. He and others have found that the “majority” of soldier suicides are not directly linked to mental illness.

“We waste so much money on machine learning and predictive analytics, stuff … geared toward [identifying] who’s going to kill themselves and when, but we’re never going to have an algorithm to do that,” Bryan said.

The former Air Force psychologist argued in his 2022 book, “Rethinking Suicide,” that the military’s suicide prevention efforts have largely ignored how sustained stress in troops’ daily lives can increase their suicide risk.

Bryan was also a member of the Defense Department’s 2022 Suicide Prevention and Response Independent Review Committee, which found that “training demands and requirements … [are] primary sources of stress, burnout and demoralization.” Other common stressors include shoddy computers, byzantine promotion policies, unsupportive leaders and poor housing.

For members of armor brigades, the operational tempo and long working hours in the maintenance bays add up, he said.


Craig Bryan, a psychologist and mental health researcher at Ohio State University, speaks about suicide prevention at Fort Drum, New York, on Feb. 23, 2022. His conception of systemic suicide risk is gaining influence in military circles. (Spc. Ethan Scofield/Army)

“It’s like death by 1,000 paper cuts,” Bryan said. “The damage starts to accumulate, and it becomes harder to resist bigger shocks to the system.” When a soldier exceeds their stress threshold from daily difficulties and acute strains (such as finances, or the end of a relationship), they are then more vulnerable to sudden suicidal behavior.

Carrie Shult, the Army’s suicide prevention program manager, said emerging research — including Bryan’s work for the Pentagon — recently led the service to begin studying “systemic [suicide] risk” factors and explore ways to reduce them. But she cautioned that “chang[ing] the way we think about the problem takes some time.”

Both she and Lane said their teams struggle to measure soldiers’ quality of life. Army headquarters officials cannot easily quantify how much time soldiers spend away from home (which the Army’s top noncommissioned officer has also noted), whether their training schedules are predictable or how their work hours impact their relationships and sleep.

Cabiness detailed a series of Army headquarters-led suicide prevention initiatives, but none were focused specifically on armor units’ systemic risk factors. The list also included a patchwork of local efforts, such as a Fort Bliss brigade making soldiers pledge not to kill themselves.

Wormuth highlighted three division-level suicide prevention initiatives in her statement, including the Alaska-based 11th Airborne Division’s “Mission 100″ program. These efforts, the Army secretary said, “are prioritizing engaged leadership and providing a range of resources [to] soldiers and their families.”


A Bradley from Chaos Company, 3rd Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division maneuvers in Bemowo Piskie, Poland, Nov. 23, 2022. The Texas-based division is debuting new programs aimed to reduce maintenance stress for soldiers. (Staff Sgt. Matthew A. Foster/Army)

The Army is launching other efforts outside of the suicide prevention program. The 1st Cavalry Division recently developed training for new company command teams and battalion executive officers that includes instruction on how to run maintenance programs without running soldiers into the ground. Division commander Maj. Gen. Kevin Admiral said the effort, which begins this summer, aims to “bring the stress down and add more predictability to our schedules for soldiers.”

Between the deaths, the training pace and the maintenance, many soldiers from 1-66 struggled to maintain their personal relationships. Others lost faith in the Army and asked whether the peacetime mission was worth the cost.

Several Iron Knights divorced.

“My wife at that time, she couldn’t take … me being gone for 16 hours a day,” Herzing, a tank commander, said. “I’d come home and we’d fight because I wasn’t spending time with her.”

“I’ve never seen more burnout in a unit before,” said Pattan, who also divorced. He said he’s grateful to have worked for leaders who “would die for their soldiers,” but he believes the Army must confront the “fundamental” problems facing tank brigades. He described the armor brigade grind as more difficult than his time in the 82nd Airborne Division, which included a 2019 deployment to Afghanistan.

The medic resisted seeking mental health treatment until December 2021, when he first saw a Fort Carson therapist. Since then, he has kept weekly appointments, attending them via phone during the unit’s 2022 deployment to Europe. He wants junior soldiers to see that it’s okay to need help for the stresses of Army life.

“The Army’s overall mission was readiness,” recalled one officer. “Well, after a few years … being ready isn’t enough to keep you going.”

Abrams, the retired four-star general, explained why the pace intensified. He retired in 2021 after stints leading Forces Command, which oversees most of the Army’s combat units while they prepare for deployments, and U.S. Forces Korea, the standing American command in South Korea.


Now-retired Gen. Robert Abrams, then the commanding general of Army Forces Command, meets soldiers deployed in support of Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve, at Camp Taji, Iraq, Nov. 16, 2017. (Cpl. Rachel Diehm/Army)

He argued that the demand for armor brigades was enabled by budget-driven cuts to units stationed overseas, leading the service to deploy tank brigades to Korea on one-after-the-other rotations beginning in 2013. Then Russia’s aggression against Ukraine led policy makers to establish a similar ongoing armor deployment to Europe — Operation Atlantic Resolve — in 2016. Combined with consistent Central Command deployments, these requirements created a crushing cycle: a brigade would deploy for nine months, return home, and then immediately launch into 18 months of training for their next deployment.

Although the Army tried to reduce overseas requirements for tank brigades, the moves came after a surge in demand for armor units forced four of the service’s 11 active duty armored brigades to be deployed simultaneously. Two active duty tank brigades are currently overseas.

The path to reduce such stress is unclear. In the wake of Russia’s expanded invasion of Ukraine, countries such as Lithuania and Poland have reiterated their desire for permanently based U.S. tanks.

Returning to overseas basing, which Army experts have previously recommended, could end rotational deployments for good. But Cabiness, the Army spokesperson, cautioned that such a move would require a series of military and political approvals from the U.S. and possible host countries.

Thus the Iron Knights will deploy to Europe once again this spring.

Herzing and his new significant other will become parents during this rotation.

Pattan will stay stateside and expects he will receive a medical retirement this summer. “I don’t think that the battalion is healed, even though a lot of those people are no longer here,” he said.

Some soldiers argued the mission may not be worth its cost.

Nelson, the former maintenance chief, said that when the suicides occurred, “it never felt like their deaths were a priority” for the unit.

“We just kept chugging along, which I get we’re supposed to do as an Army, but we were just training,” Nelson said. “Not even training to go to war. We just trained to go to training exercises so we could train to go on training rotations.”


A National Guard-crewed Bradley from the 1st Combined Arms Battalion, 194th Armor Regiment, fires at Camp Ripley Training Center, Minnesota, on Aug. 5, 2014. The Guard helped reduce operational tempo strain on active tank units by taking over the Operation Spartan Shield rotation to the Middle East beginning in late 2019. (Staff Sgt. Bill Boecker/Army)

Wright plans to leave the active duty force and return to the National Guard.

“What is the mission that we’re killing ourselves for?” he asked. “The [armor brigades] weren’t at war. They were training in Europe, and they were training in Korea, and they were training in Kuwait, and they were babysitting [bases] in Iraq.

“Leaders will talk about taking it personally when they make a decision [in combat] and it results in somebody’s death. But we’re making decisions every single day that are resulting in people dying, and no one wants to take responsibility for it.”

Meanwhile, tank brigades run a familiar treadmill, powered by a decade’s worth of decisions by the Army, the Defense Department and policymakers.

The Iron Knight battalion returned from an eight-month deployment to Poland in December 2022. If the Army met its dwell-to-deployment ratio goal, soldiers who completed that rotation would not deploy again until December 2024.

The battalion’s lead element deploys next week.

About Davis Winkie

Davis Winkie covers the Army for Military Times. He studied history at Vanderbilt and UNC-Chapel Hill, and served five years in the Army Guard. His investigations earned the Society of Professional Journalists' 2023 Sunshine Award and consecutive Military Reporters and Editors honors, among others. Davis was also a 2022 Livingston Awards finalist.

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armytimes.com · by Davis Winkie · March 11, 2024




15. US denies that American aid drop in Gaza killed civilians on ground




How would we know if we have no one on the drop zone? These allegations (whether true or not) surface with nearly every humanitarian aid drop. But dropping into unsecured drop zones increases the likelihood that casualties will occur.


US denies that American aid drop in Gaza killed civilians on ground

A U.S. official did confirm that the U.S. dropped more aid into Gaza Friday morning, but denied it had caused any deaths on the ground.

BY PATTY NIEBERG | PUBLISHED MAR 8, 2024 11:31 AM EST

taskandpurpose.com · by Patty Nieberg · March 8, 2024

A U.S. official refuted claims that an American aid drop of humanitarian aid and food into Gaza had killed people on the ground.

The Jerusalem Post reported that at least five people in Gaza were killed Friday afternoon after being hit by aid packages dropped via parachute by U.S. planes. The Post’s report cited “Israeli media citing Gaza reports” that parachutes on the humanitarian aid packages did not open.

A U.S. official told Task & Purpose that U.S. forces did complete an aid drop Friday morning, but denied that the drop had led to deaths. The U.S. made at least two large drops of parachute-equipped aid packages in Gaza earlier this week.

The U.S. official said that they are looking into the matter but based on facts and timelines, “we do not believe these deaths to be a result from U.S. air drops,” the official said.

The reports come a day after President Joe Biden announced during his State of the Union that the U.S. military would establish a sea port to more efficiently deliver aid to Palestinians in Gaza without putting boots on the ground.

Other nations have also dropped aid into Gaza where the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimated that over half a million people — one quarter of the Gaza’s population – are in danger of living in famine conditions.

The U.S. official did not indicate which other country’s aid may be at fault. Jordan, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and France have all conducted air drops in Gaza, according to media reports.

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The U.S. began dropping aid into the Gaza strip in March after at least 100 Palestinians were killed when IDF soldiers opened fire around a convoy of trucks carrying aid. Israel and Hamas have each blamed the other for inciting the disaster, while the IDF has maintained that many of the Palestinian deaths were caused by trampling as a large crowd scattered.

In the wake of those deaths, State Department spokesman Matt Miller said in a press briefing, “People need more food; they need more water; they need medicine and other humanitarian goods, and they need it now.”

On March 2, U.S. Air Force C-130s dropped 66 aid bundles just off a beach on the Gaza coastline. That drop included more than 38,000 ready-to-eat meals and water for Palestinians in need of supplies. The operations were carried out by personnel from the Royal Jordanian Air Force personnel and U.S. Air Force and Army members.

Another drop of 38,000 meals by U.S. and Jordanian personnel took place on March 7.

Footage of that drop showed several dozen of the packages falling under parachutes. Each package was several feet tall and appeared to weigh many hundred pounds. Though the C-130 crews appeared to release the packages over the water, several appeared to be caught by high winds and drifted onto an adjacent beach, making hard landings among crowds of people who had gathered. No one appeared injured from the landings and no reports of injuries emerged from those initial drops.

The latest on Task & Purpose

  • Sailors at Norfolk will be locked out of their rooms if they fail inspection
  • Army Reserve colonel allegedly pocketed $62,000 in fake rental property scheme
  • Army quietly dropped 5-mile run requirement from airborne school in 2018
  • Alaska paratroopers get a secret weapon for the arctic: beards
  • Army will add 17 air defense units while cutting 24,000 active duty spots


taskandpurpose.com · by Patty Nieberg · March 8, 2024




16. ‘Oppenheimer,’ My Uncle and the Secrets America Still Doesn’t Like to Tell





‘Oppenheimer,’ My Uncle and the Secrets America Still Doesn’t Like to Tell

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/11/opinion/oppenheimer-secret-lives.html?referringSource=articleShare&smid=nytcore-ios-share&utm

March 11, 2024, 1:00 a.m. ET


Credit...Musubu Hagi

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By Ariel Kaminer

Ms. Kaminer is an editor at Times Opinion.

The darkened sky stretches over miles of desert sand as in the distance, from an illuminated scaffold, the object rises that will change the world. The first atomic test is the defining scene in “Oppenheimer,” which won seven Academy Awards on Sunday night, including best picture. The scene plays out over seven or so minutes of steadily escalating tension: No one knew whether the bomb would go off at all that night and, if it did, whether it would incinerate the whole world.

Watching the film on opening weekend, I found the scene excruciating, even though history had long since recorded the outcome. I just kept staring at the Los Alamos scientists who gathered to witness the big event, lying under the stars as though taking in an outdoor movie, with nothing more to protect them than a small eye shade. The physicist Edward Teller is the only one who seems to recognize the need for any precautions, and he addresses it by applying sunscreen.

“Oppenheimer” is a movie about a singular genius, an extraordinary collaboration and a turning point in history. But it’s also a lesson in applied physics: the way a lone catalyst may trigger a chain reaction whose impact cannot be predicted or controlled. J. Robert Oppenheimer’s greatest triumph set into motion forces that brought about his downfall. An innovation designed to make the world safer in the long term made it manifestly more dangerous. And in subsequent atomic tests through the postwar years, many Americans were deliberately exposed to radiation, to see what the blast and its aftermath would do to them.

Soldiers were marched through detonation sites when the sand cooled down enough to walk on; pilots were sent through the still-billowing clouds; sailors were lined up on nearby boats. At the Yucca Flat testing grounds in Nevada, an Army band was even summoned to play. I know that last part because my uncle Richard Gigger was the band’s leader.

Image


Richard Gigger, at left, discussing a musical score.Credit...Courtesy of the Kaminer family

Richard enlisted in 1946. He was a 16-year-old Black kid in a still-segregated Army, but it got him from East St. Louis to Germany. While there, he got permission to attend a music training program in Dachau, of all places, led by members of the Berlin Philharmonic. It changed his life. Over the next decades he performed for heads of state, led ticker-tape parades through Manhattan and made numerous appearances on “The Ed Sullivan Show.”

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On multiple occasions between 1952 and 1955, his responsibilities also included playing “Shake, Rattle and Roll” to accompany the most destructive force in human history.

Other atomic veterans, as they have come to be known, were in the South Pacific, wading through radioactive water while filling in blast craters. You can hear former service members speak about a range of these experiences — with pride, honor and a deep sense of betrayal — in a documentary called “I Have Seen the Dragon.” Richard’s in it, too.

After 25 years spanning three wars, he retired from the Army and met my aunt Ellen. Together they started teaching music at San Fernando High School, where they led the marching band to so many championships — 13 in all, 11 of them consecutively — that it almost wasn’t fair. Along the way they mentored hundreds or maybe thousands of kids, many of whom still credit them with changing their lives. A school building and an intersection were renamed in tribute. There’s a huge mural, too. But eventually Richard’s military service caught up with him, as it did for so many others.Editors’ Picks



For Richard it started with a pituitary tumor. Surgeons removed it, but the result, a few years later, was a cranial bleed and brain damage that worsened over time.

As a kid I found my uncle kind but intimidating, a larger-than-life mix of showman’s bravado and military rigor. After the bleed, all that was gone. He moved slowly and said little. He could still play musical instruments, but in the documentary, it’s my aunt who speaks. Richard sits, silent. He died three months later.

For five decades, atomic veterans were forbidden to tell anyone about their experience, not even a spouse or doctor. That has made it hard to get a reliable accounting of their numbers, or of the medical consequences they suffered, which include leukemia, thyroid cancer, esophagus cancer and multiple myeloma. It has also made it hard for them or their family members to get needed support. To prove her case to the Department of Veterans Affairs, my aunt spent long hours in the library reading scientific articles about atmospheric ionizing radiation (many of which she first had to get translated from Japanese), went digging through the archives of old Nevada newspapers, consulted doctors. She was rebuffed many times but finally, after seven years, the V.A. relented. It confirmed that Richard’s condition was most likely caused by his exposure. That qualified her to receive modest compensation.

A number of conditions are now “presumptive” for atomic vets, meaning that they’re assumed to be a result of their service. But there’s no way to know how many people suffered or died before that policy was adopted or how many other conditions may also be the result of exposure — nor how many families couldn’t undertake the kind of research my aunt did or persevere through so many setbacks. The veterans’ numbers are dwindling, but these questions remain urgent, since the effects of radiation can be passed on to children and grandchildren.

“Oppenheimer” has been criticized for not showing the devastation in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I think it was the right choice. It would have been offensive, maybe even obscene, to reduce that suffering to a subplot of a great-man biopic, a movie that, however deeply based in fact, is ultimately an entertainment, a fiction. Leaving Japan’s horror to the imagination, or to the intrusive thoughts you can see Oppenheimer struggling to shut out, felt to me like appropriate humility about the limits of representation, as when the film goes all but silent when the blast first registers.

As for the bomb’s effect on American bodies, the sight of those unprotected scientists is the closest the film comes. The scene plays like a metaphor for how naïvely optimistic the nuclear program was, how unprepared the nation, or even the world, was for the terrors it would unleash. After the test, when the Army guys crate up the remaining bombs and drive them away, Oppenheimer tells Teller, “Once it’s used, nuclear war, perhaps all war, becomes unthinkable.” Equally unthinkable, I suspect, would have been the idea that the United States would intentionally inflict some of the bomb’s harmful effects on its own service members.

If “Oppenheimer” were a more traditional film, Japan’s surrender might have been the climax. But the movie continues for another hour, turning its attention to Oppenheimer’s struggle to retain his security clearance, a fight that plays out in parallel with a Washington insider’s struggle to secure a cabinet post. It’s possible to leave the theater with the impression that, in the United States at least, the main victim of the bomb was Oppenheimer’s career.

For my uncle, the fallout came later. For some other atomic vets or their families — or for people living near test sites such as those in Nevada and the Marshall Islands and of course for people in Japan — it may yet be in the future. The film honored at the Oscars told a very specific story, but countless other lives trace back to that day, too. In one way or another, no one emerged untouched. We are all living downwind of that first momentous blast.



Ariel Kaminer is an editor at Times Opinion.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

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17. CSIS Scholars Call for Escalation Against Russia


Excerpts:


The CSIS scholars--Max Bergmann, Michael Kimmage, Jeffrey Mankoff, and Maria Snegovaya--rest their proposals on questionable premises. First, they contend that Russia is “the principal threat to the international order.” No, China, is. The Soviet Union that George Kennan said needed containing and that President Kennedy envisioned waging a lengthy struggle against was significantly militarily stronger in relative terms than today’s Russia, and unlike today’s Russia was motivated by a revolutionary ideology that sought to spread communism throughout much of the world. Russia’s expansionist tendencies, of course, have historical roots dating back to the times of the Czars, but those imperial ambitions paled in comparison to Soviet imperial designs. More importantly, Russian relative military power today, as demonstrated in their difficulty in achieving even limited aims in Ukraine, is a shell of its former Soviet self during the Cold War when the threat of Soviet forces overrunning Western Europe was real. It is China, not Russia, that today poses a threat of hegemony on the Eurasian land mass and its littoral seas.



CSIS Scholars Call for Escalation Against Russia


By Francis P. Sempa

March 11, 2024

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2024/03/11/csis_scholars_call_for_escalation_against_russia_1017320.html?mc_cid=1ab9885b0f&mc_eid=70bf478f36


Four scholars at The Center for Strategic and International Studies CSIS), writing in Foreign Affairs, invoke George Kennan and the words of President John F. Kennedy in advocating a new policy of “containment” of Russian “expansionist tendencies,” and for waging another “long twilight struggle” against Moscow. Not satisfied with defeating the Soviet Union in the Cold War and doubling the size of the North Atlantic Alliance, these scholars want to continue and increase aid to Ukraine and to provide infrastructure investments, intelligence, arms, and training to military forces in Georgia, Armenia, and Moldova. George Kennan and John F. Kennedy would be appalled at the misuse of their Cold War legacies.

The CSIS scholars--Max Bergmann, Michael Kimmage, Jeffrey Mankoff, and Maria Snegovaya--rest their proposals on questionable premises. First, they contend that Russia is “the principal threat to the international order.” No, China, is. The Soviet Union that George Kennan said needed containing and that President Kennedy envisioned waging a lengthy struggle against was significantly militarily stronger in relative terms than today’s Russia, and unlike today’s Russia was motivated by a revolutionary ideology that sought to spread communism throughout much of the world. Russia’s expansionist tendencies, of course, have historical roots dating back to the times of the Czars, but those imperial ambitions paled in comparison to Soviet imperial designs. More importantly, Russian relative military power today, as demonstrated in their difficulty in achieving even limited aims in Ukraine, is a shell of its former Soviet self during the Cold War when the threat of Soviet forces overrunning Western Europe was real. It is China, not Russia, that today poses a threat of hegemony on the Eurasian land mass and its littoral seas.

Next, the CSIS scholars make the dubious claims that “Europe’s security hinges on the fate of Ukraine” and that “Ukraine’s defense is crucial for European stability and for preventing the spread of Russian power globally.” One searches in vain for American policymakers who previously identified Ukraine as a vital interest of the United States. We won the Cold War without first liberating Ukraine. Indeed, during the First and Second World Wars, Ukraine was one of the passageways for Germany’s invasions of Russia and the Soviet Union, who were our allies in those conflicts. Approximately four million Ukrainians fought for Russia during the Great War, while nearly three-hundred thousand Ukrainians fought with Austro-Hungarian armies against Russia. Under the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, German and Austrian troops occupied Ukraine, though the treaty subsequently expired after Germany’s defeat. Ukrainians also fought on both sides during World War II. There is a reason that Timothy Snyder calls this region the “bloodlands.”

There was no sense among American statesmen at the end of the Second World War that Ukrainian independence was desirable, let alone feasible. There was also no sense that Europe’s security depended on an independent Ukraine. In fact, in 1951, the same George Kennan invoked by the CSIS scholars wrote that American policymakers needed to recognize that “Ukraine is economically as much a part of Russia as Pennsylvania is a part of the United States.” And it was that same George Kennan who presciently warned in 1997 that NATO’s expansion closer to Russia’s borders “would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era.” One can only surmise what Kennan would say about the CSIS scholars’ advocacy of the United States and its European allies arming and training Armenians, Moldovans, and Georgians against Russia.

As for President Kennedy who coined the term “long twilight struggle” to describe our Cold War conflict with the Soviet Union, he also said, as Jeffrey Sachs has pointed out, that the United States must not “see conflict [with the Soviet Union] as inevitable [or] accommodation as impossible, and communication as nothing more than an exchange of threats.” He accommodated the Soviet Union to resolve the Cuban Missile Crisis by effectively (and secretly) trading the removal of U.S. Jupiter missiles from Turkey for the removal of Soviet missiles from Cuba and promised not to invade Cuba. Kennedy, Sachs writes, unlike the four CSIS scholars (and the Biden administration), understood that our opponents and adversaries also have legitimate security concerns.

The CSIS scholars notably do not describe or define in concrete terms the global threat posed by Russia, and they don’t explain why Russia is the “principal threat to the international order.” Do they believe Russia has the intention and capability to dominate the Eurasian land mass? They don’t say. Do they believe that the Russian navy threatens U.S. command of the seas? There is no mention of that. Do they explain what Russia’s “geopolitical agenda” is? No, they do not. They simply assume that Putin’s aims are the same as Stalin’s and his Soviet successors were during the Cold War. And it is based on that very questionable assumption that the CSIS scholars suggest that we poke the Russian bear a little more.

Francis P. Sempa writes on foreign policy and geopolitics. His Best Defense columns appear at the beginning of each month.



18. Competition With China Is Inevitable. US Alliance Policy Could Determine Just How Bad It Gets.


Excerpts:


A grand strategy that suppresses allied autonomy and constrains the kinds of military contributions they could potentially make to the regional containment effort brings its own problems. Its prescriptions will not be easy to swallow for U.S. elites who prioritize alliance “burden sharing” in East Asia, for allied policymakers who believe that the United States should be willing to underwrite their country’s actions in every dispute or crisis involving China, and more generally for those who – for moral or ideological reasons – believe that giving agency and voice to weaker actors in a partnership is a good in itself. But in today’s East Asia, such a grand strategy is nonetheless better than the alternative strategy based on outsourcing, which is likely to aggravate a China-U.S. competition that is already destined to be quite intensive and dangerous.

Competition With China Is Inevitable. US Alliance Policy Could Determine Just How Bad It Gets.

thediplomat.com

The two sides will find it increasingly difficult to avoid intense security competition over the coming decades, but there are still meaningful choices to make.

By Joshua Byun

March 11, 2024


In this Sept. 25, 2015, file photo, a military honor guard await Chinese President Xi Jinping for a state arrival ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, D.C., United States.

Credit: AP Photo/Andrew Harnik

Not long after the collapse of the Soviet Union, scholars like Aaron Friedberg, John Mearsheimer, and Richard Betts began voicing concerns about a new era of great power competition with China. But well into the first decade of the 21st century, many saw such fears as relics of a bygone era of international politics – no longer relevant in the age of global interdependence.

Today, it is the optimists who are the beleaguered minority. Many in the U.S. foreign policy community who once enthusiastically supported engagement and cooperation with China now tend to advocate much more cautious positions, if not outright anti-engagement.

In fact, the United States and China should have anticipated intense security competition in East Asia from the beginning of the post-Cold War period. The two sides will find it increasingly difficult to avoid such competition over the coming decades. The fundamental reason does not have to do with the nature of either country’s politics or society, but rather with the basic structure of the situation in which the two great powers are dealing with each other.

The Centrality of East Asia to U.S. and Chinese Strategic Interests

The United States has long regarded the preservation of robust access to the globe’s largest economic regions as a vital strategic interest. In practice, this implies that the United States seeks to prevent another great power from achieving dominant influence in Eurasia’s core industrial-population centers.

Western Europe was the most important of such centers during the Cold War. “Of the nations that were previously able to deploy” significant power resources, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) observed in 1949, “[i]t is only Western Europe as a group of nations that can now be considered capable of [re]attaining this status within a reasonable amount of time.” The basic problem confronted by U.S. policymakers was thus one “of keeping the still widely dispersed power resources of Europe… from being drawn together into a single Soviet power structure[.]”

East Asia occupies an analogous position today. As the 2019 Indo-Pacific Strategy Report observed, the region “contributes two-thirds of global growth in gross domestic product (GDP) and accounts for 60 percent of global GDP.” Thus the United States’ strategic premise is “that no one nation… should dominate” this region.

And if East Asia is so important to the United States, it stands to reason that it is equally as vital for China – if not more so. As Rush Doshi has documented, a consistent priority of Beijing’s modern foreign policy has been to exert as much influence as possible over the political and economic affairs of China’s immediate vicinity, known as the “periphery” in Chinese diplomatic parlance.

The simple fact that neither the United States nor China can afford to give each other a complete “free hand” over East Asia is a good first step to understanding why we should expect to see considerable competition in the region over the coming decades.

China’s Growing Power

Despite the vital stakes both the United States and China hold in East Asia, the two sides would have an easier time avoiding dangerous competition if they could be confident that neither side is able or willing to overturn the status quo. The problem, however, is that China’s power is growing. Despite reports that China’s rise has been slowing over the past few years, its overall trajectory still indicates that China’s military and economic weight in East Asia will likely further increase over the coming decades.

The central problem is that, no matter what it does, China probably cannot commit to not exploiting its growing power at the expense of the United States and its allies. Beijing doesn’t have to do much to create justifiable fears among its interlocutors. Even if China had no intention of aggressing against its neighbors, they obviously can’t trust that it will stay that way 10, 20, or 50 years down the road. Therefore, out of essentially defensive motivations, the United States and its allies will continue to pursue measures to correct the growing imbalance of regional power driven by China’s rise – beefing up their military capabilities, adjusting their defense postures to array more forces in China’s vicinity, pursuing more cutting-edge military technologies while trying to deny them to Beijing, and forming new arrangements for security cooperation directed against China.

But from China’s perspective, such efforts will invariably look quite threatening. They will appear as efforts by a hostile military coalition to “gang up” on China. China is right to think in this way, even if its interlocutors are acting with defensive motivations. Beijing’s leaders should understand that there is ultimately little China can do to fundamentally alleviate its neighbors’ concerns and that they will be searching hard for ways to bolster their security at its expense.

This, in turn, means that the “rising power” itself must continuously worry that its rivals might eventually find the means to inflict a devastating reversal of fortunes upon China. Thus, out of its own legitimate fears China will adopt riskier measures to shore up its own security, which will tend to “confirm” the fears harbored by the United States and its allies and drive them to adopt even stronger containment measures. The “feedback effects” generated under conditions of shifting power tend to make both sides adopt increasingly hardline policies toward each other.

All of this is to say that intense security competition between the United States and China will probably be unavoidable over the coming decades. There is bound to be considerable tension and hostility, and even crises that carry a serious risk of escalating to militarized conflict. Some may call this a “self-fulfilling prophecy.” It most certainly is. But simply recognizing a self-fulfilling prophecy at work does not mean that one can escape it in any fundamental sense. Unfortunately, the United States and China will increasingly find themselves at loggerheads with each other, even if policymakers on both sides realize the self-fulfilling dimensions of their mutual hostility.

The Role of U.S. Grand Strategy

Even if some amount of China-U.S. security competition is unavoidable, the kind of grand strategy that the United States pursues in East Asia can significantly affect the intensity of this competition. The key to understanding this dimension of the problem is that great powers instinctively tend to be more fearful about the militarization of geographically proximate competitors than those that are located farther away.

The same proximity also increases the likelihood that the great power’s efforts to forcefully arrest such states’ efforts will succeed. Not only does the great power then encounter lower physical barriers to aggression, but it can also more easily deploy capabilities that blunt a faraway rival’s ability to militarily intervene on behalf of its “frontline” allies. Therefore, even when they enjoy the formal protection of a leading power like the United States, some weak states cannot rule out the possibility that their great-power neighbor might target them with costly aggression in the hope of presenting their patron with a fait accompli.

Episodes from the Cold War serve to drive this point home. In the late 1950s, West Germany’s apparent efforts to acquire nuclear capabilities under the auspices of Washington’s “nuclear sharing” policies were thwarted by preventive threats from the Soviet Union. In essence, the Soviet-launched Second Berlin Crisis (1958-1962) presented West German leaders and their American sponsors with the choice of continuing down the path of promoting the West German army’s nuclear armament at the risk of catastrophic escalation in Berlin or holding off on such efforts to reach an understanding with the Soviets. West Germany’s vulnerability to Soviet punishment left them with no choice but to accept the latter.

Washington’s behavior during the Cuban missile crisis can be interpreted in an analogous light. The United States was much more fearful of a handful of nuclear missiles that the Soviet Union sent to Cuba than the thousands of missiles the Soviets had in their own territory. One key fear that motivated Washington’s efforts to nip this development in the bud was the possibility that, at some point in the future, Cuba itself might come to wield nuclear capabilities at the expense of U.S. interests.

As Attorney General Robert Kennedy articulated during the “Ex Comm” discussions of October 1962, the United States couldn’t dismiss the possibility that nuclear capabilities in Cuba might dangerously constrain its future freedom of action in the Western hemisphere: “[Let’s say] in South America a year from now…[you have] these things in the hands of Cubans…[then] some problem arises in Venezuela [and] you’ve got Castro saying, [y]ou move troops down into that part of Venezuela, we’re going to fire these missiles.” The United States was ready to take extraordinary risks to prevent such nightmarish scenarios.

The takeaway for the United States today is clear: although some intense competition with China will be inevitable over the coming years, Washington risks exacerbating mutual antagonism and the danger of military clashes by adopting a grand strategy designed to “outsource” military capabilities and decision-making responsibilities to security partners located close to the Chinese littoral. China has good reasons to be apprehensive about the U.S.-led alliance network from the get-go, but this fear will be further aggravated if Beijing’s leaders believe that their country is being pushed against the wall by multiple proximate rivals – each with significant military capabilities, each with their own political or territorial grievances vis-à-vis China, and each with the decision-making capacity to act upon those grievances if given the opportunity.

Among other things, this dynamic has implications for debates about the feasibility of devolving nuclear assets and responsibilities to the United States’ East Asian allies as an expedient to balancing Chinese power. Such measures have received growing attention among foreign policy experts in recent years.

The chief hurdle to such efforts is that substantive policies of nuclear devolution take time to materialize, as allies arrange the transportation and storage of warheads, the acquisition of new delivery platforms, specialized training for personnel, and new command and control systems. During this time, the adversary expecting to become more insecure by the militarization of a proximate rival will be strongly tempted to use forceful countermeasures to arrest this development. This, in turn, will present the United States and its allies with a difficult choice between walking back their militarization efforts or risking inviting preventively motivated aggression from China.

The alternative grand strategy is one that calls on the United States to embrace a heavy-lifting role within the East Asian alliance network, with all its attendant political and financial burdens, but with the benefit of being able to limit the amount of leeway individual allies have in the coalition’s military interactions with China. In effect, the United States would strive – as much as possible – to be the sole executive agent of the alliance network. This is a grand strategy of “insourcing,” designed to meet China with a hierarchical and monolithic structure of military capabilities centered squarely on the United States.

A grand strategy that suppresses allied autonomy and constrains the kinds of military contributions they could potentially make to the regional containment effort brings its own problems. Its prescriptions will not be easy to swallow for U.S. elites who prioritize alliance “burden sharing” in East Asia, for allied policymakers who believe that the United States should be willing to underwrite their country’s actions in every dispute or crisis involving China, and more generally for those who – for moral or ideological reasons – believe that giving agency and voice to weaker actors in a partnership is a good in itself. But in today’s East Asia, such a grand strategy is nonetheless better than the alternative strategy based on outsourcing, which is likely to aggravate a China-U.S. competition that is already destined to be quite intensive and dangerous.

This article is based on a paper presented at a February 2024 conference hosted by the Security and Foreign Policy Initiative at the Global Research Institute, William & Mary.


Authors

Guest Author

Joshua Byun

Joshua Byun is an assistant professor in the Political Science Department at Boston College. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and is currently writing a book on the success and failure of grand strategy in the context of military alliances.

thediplomat.com



19. Beijing’s Pain Could Be Washington’s Gain



Beijing’s Pain Could Be Washington’s Gain

The US should deal with a slowing China differently than a growing one. 

March 10, 2024 at 4:00 PM EDT

By Minxin Pei

Minxin Pei is professor of government at Claremont McKenna College and author of "The Sentinel State: Surveillance and the Survival of Dictatorship in China."


https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-03-10/national-people-s-congress-china-s-economic-pain-could-be-america-s-gain?sref=hhjZtX76




The most consequential change in US grand strategy in the last decade has been the shift to a whole-of-government approach to countering China. This pivot initially began toward the end of former President Donald Trump’s administration. But, like every other Trumpian policy, its execution was marked by disorganization and incoherence.

After President Joe Biden took office, his foreign policy team turned the whole-of-government concept into a set of well-organized and coordinated initiatives, with far superior outcomes. His singular achievement has been the rallying of allies and partners in a common cause to contain Chinese power.

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Ironically, the original inspiration for this approach came, as you may have guessed, from China. Thanks to the Chinese Communist Party’s dominance of government bureaucracies, China has perfected the art of mobilizing all available resources of the state to accomplish high-priority domestic and foreign-policy objectives.

Although Washington had good reason to push back against the expansion of Chinese power using the same playbook, it must not overlook another less well-known aspect of China’s approach: Chinese rulers do not lightly apply this method to all problems they confront. They adopt the approach selectively because its overuse produces diminishing returns, if not waste.

It may be time for the US also to rethink its strategy, not because of anything China has done to improve the relationship — but because of what it can no longer do.

The continuous deterioration of the Chinese economy since last year has profound long-term geopolitical consequences. In his decade in power, President Xi Jinping has made a series of risky bets because he assumed, over-optimistically as it turned out, that sustained growth would underwrite his global ambitions.

Now that the Chinese economy continues to lose steam, as demonstrated by deflation, the persistent fall in manufacturing activities, and a worsening real estate crisis, he appears to have made another fateful bet — that China’s wounded economy can recover on its own without a robust stimulus package.

Xi’s thinking is reflected in the speech delivered by Premier Li Qiang at the annual session of the National People’s Congress that began on March 5.

Instead of setting a realistic target that recognizes the strong headwinds China faces, Li declared that growth for the year would again approach 5%, a goal most analysts think unachievable (the World Bank’s projection is 4.5%).

Even more puzzling, Li announced the ambitious target without also increasing fiscal spending to boost household consumption, or detailing coherent policies to address the real estate crisis and local government debt that has reached close to 80% of GDP.

Beijing’s resistance to bold policies to stimulate growth will not only prolong the current stagnation, but also undercut the country’s long-term growth potential. Geopolitically, a China that clocks only 2%-3% of growth per year in the coming decade simply won’t be able to finance Xi’s foreign policy ambitions. Pet projects such as the Belt-and-Road Initiative will have to be scaled back.

The US should not ignore such changes. Instead of countering China on every issue and everywhere, America should devote its limited resources to top strategic priorities.

Indeed, in such a world, strategic competition against China may no longer need to be the organizing principle of US foreign policy. Instead, Washington should be able to decide its priorities on a case-by-case basis. Obviously, strengthening alliances, cultivating new partnerships, and maintaining robust military deterrence in the Indo-Pacific ought to remain key goals because that is where America’s vital interests reside.

Another potential area to prioritize would be access to minerals critical to the energy transition. This calls for channeling more diplomatic and economic resources to countries with large quantities of such deposits. The Democratic Republic of Congo has half of the world’s cobalt deposits; Bolivia and Argentina have, respectively, the world’s largest and second-largest reserves of lithium.

What the US shouldn’t do is try to fill the vacuum created by the withdrawal of Chinese aid and influence. Except in cases that directly affect its security, the US should not get distracted by areas with marginal strategic value.

At home, the federal and state governments need to review some recent policies that may hurt the US more than China. One obvious example is banning Chinese nationals from buying real estate and farmland (a Florida law has been blocked by a federal appeals court). Such actions do little to improve US security while staining America’s image.

We may not wait long for indicators of waning Chinese influence. We can track the frequency of foreign visits by top Chinese leaders, the amount of credit issued by Chinese banks to overseas recipients, and the number of large commercial deals China strikes abroad.

Perhaps it’s still too early to make immediate changes. Unquestionably, though, it is time to start thinking about what the US should prioritize as and when China continues to stumble.

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

To contact the author of this story:

Minxin Pei at mpei6@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:

Nisid Hajari at nhajari@bloomberg.net

Minxin Pei is professor of government at Claremont McKenna College and author of "The Sentinel State: Surveillance and the Survival of Dictatorship in China."




20. The New Cold War: Changing Context And Shifting Contours Of International Politics – Analysis



Excerpt:


Unlike during the Cold War when the American camp and Soviet camp was neatly demarcated and the global economy was far from being integrated, the new Cold War witnessed the phenomenon of increasing use of American sanctions by the US as it plays a pivotal role in the global market economy and in a bid to check regional ambitions of competitors, it very often resorted to different types of sanctions.



The New Cold War: Changing Context And Shifting Contours Of International Politics – Analysis

https://www.eurasiareview.com/11032024-the-new-cold-war-changing-context-and-shifting-contours-of-international-politics-analysis/#google_vignette

 March 11, 2024  0 Comments

By Dr. Manoj Kumar Mishra

The new Cold War also known as Cold War 2.0 is characterized by simmering tensions, breach of international norms, proxy wars and arms race between the US on the one hand and major powers such as China and North Korea in the Indo-Pacific, Iran in West Asia and Russia in Eurasia on the other.


For instance, Russia’s assertion of sovereignty over Ukraine and prolonged war with the latter since February 2022 pushed the US towards an armament race with Russia and the American administration kept supplying updated arms and ammunitions to the Ukrainian regime in a bid to contain Russia. In the post-Cold War era, neither the world emerged completely unipolar, nor did any world society become firmly established.

On the contrary, a large grey area emerged where states moved from the pro-US foreign policy or clear anti-US or restricted foreign policy to a more independent foreign policy. While China is the key challenger to the US power and most important player in the new Cold War, many other regional powers challenge American predominance in different parts of the globe and maintain friendly relations with China.

Primarily, the US began to face challenges from rising and revisionist China, assertive Russia and from recurring threat of Iran’s nuclear ambitions. While many experts define the American arms race and rising tensions with China as the new Cold War, others define it as the tensions and arms competition arising from the sharing objective of multiple regional players challenging the American hegemony. 

Changing Dynamics

While the Cold War referred to power competition and arms race between two superpowers – the US and the USSR, the new Cold War involves multiple players such as China, Russia and Iran who seek to defy American hegemony and cooperate with one another to challenge the power position of the US.

Whereas the Cold War was a conflict for global ideological supremacy between American capitalism (promoting market economy) versus communism (promoting closed and state-controlled economy) of the Soviet Union, ideology plays a little role in the new Cold War as all the countries pursue market economy whereas communism/socialism in its conventional form is not practiced anywhere although there are socialist countries.


Some American experts see the new Cold War as a competition between two other ideologies such as American democracy versus authoritarianism of China, Russia and Iran. However, experts from other parts of the globe do not see this as an ideological competition as American foreign policy does not always promote democracy.

The competition for power and ideology between the superpowers spread across the globe. Proxy wars between allies of the superpowers also spread their tentacles across the globe. Intensity or dangerousness of conflicts was relatively low because of their global distribution and the American and Soviet attentions were divided although Korean crisis, Vietnamese war, Cuban Missile Crisis and Soviet intervention in Afghanistan received immediate attention of the superpowers.

However, intensity of conflict between the competitors in the new Cold War is likely to be higher because of localized nature of conflicts. For instance, any conflict between the US and China will be confined to the Indo-Pacific region as China does not seek global hegemony like erstwhile USSR and hence Beijing is likely to bring in its entire power capabilities to the Indo-Pacific theatre in a war-like situation with the US. 

Non-Alignment Movement (NAM) acted as a third bloc involving Afro-Asian countries who distanced themselves from the arms race and power competition of the Cold War and attempted to promote global peace by resolving Cold War related disputes and promoting disarmament. On the other side, NAM does not exist as a relevant actor during the new Cold War to resolve disputes and promote global peace.

While Cyber Warfare was not a feature of the Cold War as technology had not advanced to that level during those times, cases of cyber warfare are rising and it is a key feature of the new Cold War.

Much like the Cold War, contenders in the new Cold War avoid direct wars due to the possibilities of a nuclear catastrophe while militarization and proxy wars continue. Unlike the Cold War, the competitors also avoid direct war for another reason such as global economic integration. Any direct war in the era of globalization will cost them on the economic front too.

During the Cold War, the world was far from global economic integration and hence the allies took clear sides and fought against one another. Much like the proxy wars of the Cold War, the new Cold War involves proxy wars but with another dimension and more complexity such as shifting alliances between states on the one hand and secret and shifting alliances between states and terrorist groups on the other. 

International laws and norms which came into existence in the post-World War scenario were soon violated by both superpowers. Doctrines of human rights and human security had not evolved then and states resorted to the doctrine of absolute sovereignty to violate international laws and norms. These laws and norms are violated by the competitors during the new Cold War despite their long years of evolution. As Israel has been witnessed violating these norms in its all-out war against Hamas. However, doctrines and laws related to human rights and human security still restrain certain militaristic actions of the contenders of the new Cold War.

There has been palpable pressure on Israel from the international community to refrain from violating these laws. Looking back, both US and Russia had turned away from the INF treaty in 2019 to invigorate the arms race whereas there is no third block such as NAM to collectively work for peace and disarmament. With advanced weapons and weapons delivery systems available with the contenders of the new Cold War, the evolving great game is becoming bleaker despite the international laws and norms.

Unlike during the Cold War when the American camp and Soviet camp was neatly demarcated and the global economy was far from being integrated, the new Cold War witnessed the phenomenon of increasing use of American sanctions by the US as it plays a pivotal role in the global market economy and in a bid to check regional ambitions of competitors, it very often resorted to different types of sanctions.

India as a Party to the New Cold War

While India seems unwilling to participate in the evolving new Cold War, it is reluctantly becoming a participant and the Indo-Pacific region is fast emerging as the troubling global hotspot due to China’s significant economic and military rise and assertion of sovereignty in the region.

India has made strategic moves to enhance its profile in the Indo-Pacific region by entering deep into the strategic ambit of the US and both signed Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA) in 2016, the Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement (COMCASA) in 2018 and the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement (BECA) in 2020 intended to provide India with real-time access to US geospatial intelligence. Both countries are co-developing air-launched unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) under the Defense Technology and Trade Initiative.

While New Delhi has so far carefully crafted its Indo-Pacific policy and participation in QUAD so as to strengthen its maritime security and maintain a free and open region without explicitly endorsing a containment strategy aimed at China, Beijing’s continuous efforts to flex muscle and project of power in the Himalayan landscape as well as in the Indo-Pacific region could prompt India to take a categorical stance against China although it is already tacitly a party to the New Cold War and the evolving arms race.


Dr. Manoj Kumar Mishra

Dr. Manoj Kumar Mishra has a PhD in International Relations from the Department of Political Science, University of Hyderabad. He is currently working as a Lecturer in Political Science, S.V.M. Autonomous College, Odisha, India. Previously, he worked as the Programme Coordinator, School of International Studies, Ravenshaw University, Odisha, India. He taught Theories of International Relations and India’s Foreign Policy to MA and M.Phil. students.











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



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