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Quotes of the Day:
"The aim of the wise is to serve, not to rule."
– Aristotle
“Do not fear making mistakes; fear not learning from them.”
– Epictetus
"Youth ages, immaturity is outgrown. ignorance can be educated, and drunkenness sobered, but stupid lasts forever."
– Aristophanes
1. The End of the Office of Net Assessment: A Shortsighted Blow to American Military Strategy
2. Jordan: Soft power still matters
3. There was a legal path to closing USAGM
4. 'Discarded like a dirty rag': Chinese state media hails Trump's cuts to Voice of America
5. Trump admin considers giving up NATO command that has been American since Eisenhower
6. The Sun is Setting: A Story of Resistance in the Age of Algorithmic Irregular Warfare
7. JAGs Alone Can’t Defend Rule of Law
8. A federal judge says the USAID shutdown likely violated the Constitution
9. America’s voice, silenced
10. Zelensky Warns: Russia Massing Troops for Multi-Front Offensive in Coming Months
11. JFK assassination files released, sending history buffs hunting for new clues
12. US Army rapidly ridding itself of old weapons requirements
13. Report to Congress on The Army’s Multi-Domain Task Force
14. China conducts air and sea drills near Taiwan in response to US and Taiwanese statements
15. Putin just called Trump’s bluff on Ukraine, with the Russian art of the ‘no’ deal
16. Strategic Affairs no. 47: Trump Is Damaging U.S. National Security by Joseph Collins
17. Actions create consequences: assumptions about the configuration – Vlad, Xi, and POTUS by Cynthia Watson
18. China’s Xi Is Angered by Panama Port Deal That Trump Touted as a Win
19. It’s Time for Ukraine to Accept an Ugly Peace
20. PLA Factions and the Erosion of Xi’s Power Over the Military
21. Opinion | Pete Hegseth’s dark vision for the U.S. military
22. What Korea Means for Ukraine
23. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, March 18, 2025
24. Iran Update, March 18, 2025
25. China Watches, Taiwan Learns: Ukraine’s War and the Indo-Pacific
26. Why Do Skeptics Ignore the Evidence of Russian Influence Operations in Africa?
27. North Korean troops key to Russian advances in Kursk, says Ukraine
1. The End of the Office of Net Assessment: A Shortsighted Blow to American Military Strategy
Excerpts:
Final Thoughts: A Decision That Must Be Reversed
The closure of ONA is a deeply flawed decision that reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of how strategic foresight contributes to national defense. While the Pentagon may claim that it is restructuring the office for a new mission, history suggests that such restructuring efforts often lead to dilution, not enhancement, of capability.
If the U.S. is serious about maintaining its competitive edge in an era of renewed great-power competition, it must recognize the irreplaceable value that ONA provided. The closure of this office is not just a bad idea—it is a self-inflicted wound that weakens America’s ability to anticipate, adapt, and prevail in the conflicts of the future.
The End of the Office of Net Assessment: A Shortsighted Blow to American Military Strategy
https://www.strategycentral.io/post/the-end-of-the-office-of-net-assessment-a-shortsighted-blow-to-american-military-strategy
8 hours ago4 min read
STRATEGY CENTRAL
For and By Practitioners
By Monte Erfourth – March 18, 2025
"Any notion that you know what's going to happen, I think, is not going to work." - Andrew Marshall, the longtime and much-revered head of ONA.
Introduction
The Pentagon’s recent decision to shut down the Office of Net Assessment (ONA) is a devastating blow to America’s long-term military strategy. For over fifty years, this relatively small and cost-effective office—established under the legendary Andrew Marshall—provided invaluable foresight into future conflicts, shaping strategic thinking and guiding defense planning. Its abrupt closure signals a dangerous shift away from forward-looking military preparedness and leaves a glaring void that will not be easily filled.
A Legacy of Strategic Foresight
The Office of Net Assessment was founded in 1973 under the guidance of Andrew Marshall, a towering intellectual figure in the realm of defense strategy. His role was not to provide immediate battlefield solutions but to assess long-term trends, adversary capabilities, and emerging technologies that would shape future conflicts. His influence was felt at the highest levels of the Department of Defense (DoD), shaping strategies that ultimately led to critical advancements in military doctrine.
One of ONA’s most impactful contributions was its role in the development of the AirLand Battle doctrine, which defined U.S. military operations against the Soviet Union during the Cold War. More recently, ONA spearheaded studies on China’s military rise, championing the Air-Sea Battle concept that sought to counter Beijing’s anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) strategy. The office’s ability to think ahead—sometimes decades ahead—allowed the U.S. military to preemptively address challenges before they fully materialized.
Why Would Anyone Shut This Down?
The decision to close ONA, reportedly under the direction of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, is perplexing. According to the Pentagon’s statement, the office will be "restructured and reopened with a new focus on pressing national security challenges." But this vague rationale raises more questions than it answers. ONA’s very mission was to anticipate those challenges. By shutting it down, the DoD is severing a crucial intellectual arm that has historically helped it outmaneuver adversaries in strategic competition.
Critics of ONA, such as Senator Charles Grassley, have labeled it as “wasteful and ineffective,” arguing that its work has been too detached from immediate military needs. Some claim that the office spent too much time theorizing about distant threats while ignoring ongoing conflicts like Iraq and Afghanistan. But this criticism misunderstands ONA’s purpose: it was never meant to provide real-time tactical guidance—it existed to prepare for the wars of tomorrow. This is the unglamorous work of joint and service commands attempting to envision the future and the force required to operate in that environment. This is how you build the future force, not fight today's battles. The DoD must do both.
The Cost of Losing ONA
The financial burden of ONA was negligible compared to its strategic value. The office operated on an annual budget of roughly $10–20 million—a minuscule fraction of the Pentagon’s $850 billion budget. In return, it delivered assessments that often shaped how military resources were allocated and how strategies were developed to counter peer competitors like China and Russia.
With ONA gone, who will now provide the same level of independent, long-term strategic assessment? Bureaucratic entities within the Pentagon? Think tanks with political agendas? The Joint Chiefs? None of these institutions have the same mandate, intellectual freedom, or longevity that ONA possessed. Without an organization explicitly dedicated to long-term assessments, the Pentagon will increasingly be caught in the cycle of fighting the last war rather than preparing for the next one.
A Shortsighted Move at the Worst Possible Time
The decision to shut down ONA comes as the United States faces intensifying strategic competition with China, renewed threats from Russia, and the proliferation of emerging technologies that could radically alter the nature of warfare. The Pentagon’s need for high-level, independent strategic thinking has never been greater.
As Thomas Mahnken, a former Pentagon strategist, pointed out, “We’re in a period that looks a lot like the Cold War, and we’re doing away with an office that for decades helped senior leaders navigate that conflict.” This sentiment echoes across the national security community, where the closure of ONA is widely seen as a major step backward in the ability to conceptualize future military requirements.
What Could Replace ONA? Likely, Nothing as Effective
Some have suggested that ONA’s functions could be absorbed by other DoD entities, such as the Defense Innovation Board or various research arms of the military services. However, these organizations do not possess the same institutional mandate for long-range strategic assessment. Unlike ONA, which operated independently and reported directly to the Secretary of Defense, most alternative bodies are subject to layers of bureaucracy that stifle creative thinking.
Moreover, ONA had the unique ability to commission research from a wide network of academics, defense analysts, and military thinkers without being constrained by the bureaucratic inertia that often plagues large defense institutions. This intellectual flexibility will not be easily replicated.
Final Thoughts: A Decision That Must Be Reversed
The closure of ONA is a deeply flawed decision that reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of how strategic foresight contributes to national defense. While the Pentagon may claim that it is restructuring the office for a new mission, history suggests that such restructuring efforts often lead to dilution, not enhancement, of capability.
If the U.S. is serious about maintaining its competitive edge in an era of renewed great-power competition, it must recognize the irreplaceable value that ONA provided. The closure of this office is not just a bad idea—it is a self-inflicted wound that weakens America’s ability to anticipate, adapt, and prevail in the conflicts of the future.
Bibliography
Cohen, Eliot A. “The Brain of the Pentagon.” The Atlantic, 2019. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/05/andrew-marshall-brain-pentagon-passed-away/588952/
Jaffe, Greg. “Hegseth Closes Pentagon Office Focused on Future Wars.” The New York Times, March 14, 2025.
Mahnken, Thomas G. The Gathering Storm: China’s Challenge to US Security and Strategy. Washington, DC: CSBA, 2021.
Marshall, Andrew W. Long-Term Strategic Competition with China: Implications for America’s National Security. Washington, DC: Office of Net Assessment, 2014.
Rumsfeld, Donald. Known and Unknown: A Memoir. New York: Sentinel, 2011.
2. Jordan: Soft power still matters
Excerpts:
Other programs, privately funded, show promise as models for data-driven, closely monitored efforts that emphasize America’s national interests and American values. For example, Spirit of America, founded in response to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, operates in the arena of national security assistance. Spirit of America workers communicate directly with deployed U.S. troops and diplomats, assess what they need, and how they can help. Support is limited to American national security objectives and the partners they assist. Under a unique agreement with the Department of Defense, they work with the military to fill the gaps between what is needed and what government can do. They get non-lethal assistance to the field rapidly. They have operated in Ukraine to provide equipment helping defend against Russian attacks and save lives; in West Africa to assist U.S. Special Forces in local development against violent extremism; and in Iraq to provide tourniquets and GPS devices and bomb detectors to help defeat ISIS and support our troops’ safety and success.
Jordan: Soft power still matters
Trump can reduce waste without reducing America’s global leadership.
https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2025/03/01/jordan-soft-power-still-matters/
By Robert Jordan
Contributing Columnist
Mar. 1, 2025
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Updated 12:00 p.m. CST
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5 min. read
Contributing columnist and former ambassador Robert Jordan writes that soft power still matters, and our global adversaries are using it to their advantage.(Michael Hogue)
Robert Jordan(Michael Hogue)
In 1961, President John F. Kennedy established the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Beginning at the height of the Cold War, the new agency was designed to provide disaster relief, economic development and assistance with democratic governance, under the authority and guidance of the secretary of state. Hungry, desperate populations were prime targets for communist inroads, and America and the West were determined to compete against these forces.
A few years after its establishment, my father joined USAID as an officer stationed in war-torn Saigon. He was a World War II veteran who had served aboard an amphibious ship at the Battle of Normandy and was no stranger to war. His USAID mission was to find ways to clear the Port of Saigon to enable food and other essentials to be delivered to the desperate South Vietnamese people. He worked with military and intelligence colleagues to promote American interests in a dangerous and challenging environment.
After four years in Saigon, including surviving the Tet Offensive, he spent the remainder of his career at USAID headquarters working on aid to Egypt. He exemplified the patriotism and idealism of the Greatest Generation.
Pointy heads and chainsaws
Foreign aid historically has been viewed by many of our fellow citizens as wasteful, soft and inconsistent with a muscular foreign policy. Bureaucrats routinely draw fire from political candidates of both the right and left for mindless, hyper-regulatory fixations. Decades ago, Alabama Gov. George Wallace made headlines trolling those he called “pointy-headed” bureaucrats.
During my time as ambassador, I likewise found myself occasionally battling a mind-numbing bureaucratic blob. Unquestionably, we can trim a lot from our national budget, including some USAID funding, even though foreign assistance consumes less than 1% of our national budget.
In its first month, the Trump administration has tackled the issue with a vengeance. Elon Musk recently appeared brandishing a chainsaw, declaring that it was “for bureaucracy.”
Despite the speed, scope and chainsaw approach of the new administration, it remains unclear whether the dismantling of USAID represents a repudiation of all forms of international assistance and cooperation. President Donald Trump left the door slightly ajar when, after blasting USAID officials and saying we have to get the “radical lunatics out,” he went on to say, “and then we’ll make a decision.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that lifesaving assistance would continue, although we have not seen concrete evidence. Rubio’s recent commentary in The Wall Street Journal, titled “An Americas First Foreign Policy,” offers a clue. As he concluded his trip to Central America, his first trip abroad, he noted the opportunity for partnerships in the Western Hemisphere. Rubio emphasized promoting policies to counter China’s foreign assistance programs, which often work to China’s benefit but take advantage of their supposed partners. For example, Rubio suggests that relocating parts of American supply chains to this hemisphere would “clear a path for our neighbors’ economic growth,” allowing them to “more easily resist countries such as China that promise much but deliver little.”
Soft power rivals
Rubio seems to recognize that competition with China, Russia and other rivals has more than a military dimension. Many members of his own party in Congress likewise understand that an America First doctrine has to include deepening relations with struggling states desperate for assistance, if not from the United States, then from our adversaries.
Hunger and disease offer opportunities for China, Russia, ISIS, al-Qaeda and others to fill the vacuum, just as communism threatened to fill the vacuum when USAID was established in 1961.
In 2017, Trump’s Secretary of Defense at the time, James Mattis, observed that if diplomacy is not properly funded, “I’ll need to buy more ammunition.”
Reimagining our nation’s foreign assistance programs will not occur overnight and may well leave enormous gaps. Remarkably successful programs, such as the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), instituted under President George W. Bush, have saved millions of lives and gained widespread admiration for the United States in Africa and beyond. These programs should not be abandoned.
Other programs, privately funded, show promise as models for data-driven, closely monitored efforts that emphasize America’s national interests and American values. For example, Spirit of America, founded in response to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, operates in the arena of national security assistance. Spirit of America workers communicate directly with deployed U.S. troops and diplomats, assess what they need, and how they can help. Support is limited to American national security objectives and the partners they assist. Under a unique agreement with the Department of Defense, they work with the military to fill the gaps between what is needed and what government can do. They get non-lethal assistance to the field rapidly. They have operated in Ukraine to provide equipment helping defend against Russian attacks and save lives; in West Africa to assist U.S. Special Forces in local development against violent extremism; and in Iraq to provide tourniquets and GPS devices and bomb detectors to help defeat ISIS and support our troops’ safety and success.
As taxpayer-funded foreign assistance inevitably declines, needs like these will still be there. Of course, Americans cannot, and should not, chase down every project that comes along. But the “can-do” spirit that has typified our history compels us to think outside the box, and to not rely upon government to solve every development challenge.
Yet at the same time, we have a national interest in keeping much of the developing world from drifting into the orbits of our adversaries, and there is still an important role for our government to play. Those who want to tear down the entire system are ignoring a fundamental component of the national interest. That’s not what America is about.
Time will tell if we deserve to be mentioned even in the same breath as the Greatest Generation. If so, it won’t be because of our chainsaws.
We welcome your thoughts in a letter to the editor. See the guidelines and submit your letter here. If you have problems with the form, you can submit via email at letters@dallasnews.com
By Robert Jordan
Robert Jordan is diplomat in residence and professor of political science at the John G. Tower for Public Policy and International Affairs at SMU. He served as U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 2001 to 2003. He is a Dallas Morning News contributing columnist.
3. There was a legal path to closing USAGM
I only hope we can come up with a new capability that our nation desperately needs to compete in the information space.
Excerpts:
Last week, there was no finding that private information dissemination activities was deemed adequate, or even a pretense of such. The administration quite easily could have done with while arguing the finer points of what “adequate” meant. They did not because the shutdown was not performed in good faith.
USAGM and its networks need to be reformed. I won’t argue that, in fact, I’ll be first to raise reasons they must be reformed and potential pathways to increase relevance and efficiency and impact.
In July 1947, the former chief of the State Department’s Division of Cultural Cooperation, and then President of the New School for Social Research, sent a note to Mundt reflecting the arguments against the Smith-Mundt bill that seems fitting to share today.
It is inconceivable to me how some citizens and some members of Congress can think of throttling the informational and cultural exchanges of the Department of State at a moment when we ought to be making our maximum effort to represent ourselves in an honest and good light. Imagine a great corporation confronted with a somewhat similar situation to that now confronted by the greatest of all corporations the United States of America — eliminating its public relations budget completely. What we need in the United States Government is a business-like method, and your bill is in the best of that tradition.
One last comment, while VOA and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting have little recourse in the present. The grantees, Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks, do. Each operate on a grant received from USAGM, hence the term “grantee.” RFE/RL had, last I checked (though that was many years ago, a foundation to accept funds for all expenses. RFE/RL’s building in Prague, while no longer owned by RFE/RL (that is a corruption story itself), is leased by RFE/RL and not USAGM. We’ll see what happens. I saw the chair of the RFE/RL board said they are exploring the way forward. Good luck to them.
But it is this excerpt that really should make us ask, what capability are we going to develop to be able to do this?
International information activities are integral to the conduct of foreign policy. The object of such activities is, first, to see that the context of knowledge among other peoples about the United States is full and fair, not meager and distorted and, second, to see that the policies which directly affect other peoples are presented abroad with enough detail as well as background to make them understandable.
There was a legal path to closing USAGM
The way the networks were suddenly shuttered reveals bad faith and an amateurish approach to US foreign policy
https://mountainrunner.substack.com/p/there-was-a-legal-path-to-closing?open=false
Matt Armstrong
Mar 18, 2025
Yesterday afternoon, I submitted an op-ed to The Hill on the shuttering of the US Agency for Global Media and its networks. I received word as I am writing this that they’ll publish it. I’ll add that link here and share it separately when it’s online.
There is a paragraph in that op-ed stating the administration could have stopped USAGM’s operations legally. The haste and disregard for the law displayed in the executive order that “eliminates non-statutory functions and reduces statutory functions of unnecessary governmental entities to what is required by law” is revealed not just by the absence of law but also that th EO ends with an incomplete sentence.
Source: https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/03/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-continues-the-reduction-of-the-federal-bureaucracy/ (accessed March 17, 2025, days after it was published)
This EO was aimed at a number of other entities, but I won’t get into the issues around them for the simple reason that I don’t know enough about the relevant statutes and history of those organizations. I do, however, have a deep understanding of the relevant statutes to USAGM and of its component parts.
The overriding legislation here is the Smith-Mundt Act.1 The bill South Dakota Republican Rep. Karl E. Mundt introduced on January 24, 1945, was to authorize exchanging teachers-in-training between the American republics (how we used to refer to the countries across South and Central America. Archibald MacLeish, the Assistant Secretary of State for Public and Cultural Relations was deeply interested in the bill after his good friend, Dean Acheson forwarded it to him. In August, President Truman issued an executive order to close the Office of War Information, which had been established through the same means, and send the international information programs of OWI and the Office of Inter-American Affairs to the State Department. The President gave the department until the end of the year to come up with recommendations on how the information programs should be structured and operated in the government.
Earlier, the President asked OWI for its recommendations on the “liquidation” of the office and where the operations that should continue should reside and why. That memo was delivered two weeks before the President’s executive order. OWI’s advice, in turn, copied, in letter and spirit, from a 241-page report MacLeish commissioned an roving consultant to the department before Mundt’s bill and completed in July. This analysis incorporated the views of OWI and many other agencies and groups across and outside the government. Truman’s decision was based on, and virtually mirrored, the recommendations OWI gave the President two weeks earlier, which in turn had largely come from the report MacLeish had commissioned.
The first line of the report set the tone: “The adequacy with which the United States as a society is portrayed to the other peoples of the world is a matter of concern to the American people and their Government.” The issue wasn’t not a matter of cultural exchange, but addressing the disinformation, misinformation, and information gaps that interfered with US policy, security, and trade. The second paragraph of the report stated it clearly:
International information activities are integral to the conduct of foreign policy. The object of such activities is, first, to see that the context of knowledge among other peoples about the United States is full and fair, not meager and distorted and, second, to see that the policies which directly affect other peoples are presented abroad with enough detail as well as background to make them understandable.
The report MacLeish commissioned stated this while offering four future organizational scenarios to consider. OWI, agreeing with the spirit of the report they contributed to, advised the President that regarding the “General information service by the government to the rest of the world… We emphatically believe that there should be such a service and that it should be under State Department jurisdiction.”
However, the advice was very different regarding the radio operation, often referred to as the Voice of America.2 This was a distinctly different activity than the rest of the international information programs sent to the State Department. The OWI recommendation, also reflecting the spirit of the earlier report, said the radio operation, including the transmitters and relay stations overseas, was that “These facilities should be held intact and operation continued under the State Department until the US Government decides on an eventual disposition which will be in the best interests of the nation. We suggest that steps be taken immediately to have a presidential cosssission or a congressional corardttee study the problem and make recommendations.”
The “Facilitative and Supplementary Nature of Government Information Activities,” as the first heading of the State Department report read, was deeply embedded in the thinking and consideration of how the broad information programs would work, including the radio operation.
(1) The portrayal of the United States must be accomplished substantially by the normal currents of private interchange through the media of the printing press, radio, camera and screen, and others, and the complex institutions that rise spontaneously about them.
(2) The role of the Government is important but it is facilitative and supplementary. Some of the clements are facilitative, like governmental policies which may promote the cheapness, equality, speed, and universality of press communications. Some of the elements are supplementary in the sense that they must be conducted by the Government, or with its support, if they are to be conducted at all (for example, fast transmission abroad of full texts of important American speeches).
The last paranthetical is important. Recently, VOA simulcast with translation President Trump’s Joint Address to Congress in Russia, Ukrainian, Farsi, and several other languages, providing the direct and immediate access intended from 1945 onward.
Subscribed
The phrase “facilitative and supplementary” quickly became a figurative drum constantly beating in the background in discussions about both the broad information program, including the US Information Service, and VOA.
Before six-days of hearings in mid-October, Mundt’s bill, known since July as the Bloom bill, had been expanded to include more exchanges than only teachers-in-training and had a quickly inserted few words about the information program. Questions about the need and scope of information programs dominated the hearing. The State Department expressed not just the hope but the expectation that private agencies would eventually inform people abroad. As William Benton, MacLeish’s successor, testified in October 1945:
The Government’s role here is facilitative and supplementary. Its first job is to be helpful to the private agencies engaged in international exchange of information, skill and art, and to the tens of thousands of private individuals going abroad who act as our cultural ambassadors. The second job of Govemment—the supplementary job—is to help present a truer picture of American life and American policy in those areas important to our policy where private interchange is inadequate, or where misunderstandings or misapprehensions exist about the United States
Congress agreed. The bill discussed in October was modified in November. This bill had always been an amendment to existing authorities. The precise extent and limit of the authorities to be amended were unclear to everyone, so in December the bill was rewritten in December as a stand-alone bill. The “facilitative and supplementary” element was embedded in the December 1945 authorization for the Secretary of State, “when he finds it appropriate, to provide for the preparation, and dissemination abroad, of information about the United States, its people and its policies, through press, publications, radio, motion picture, and other information media.”3
Though the expansion was explicit, a contraction or shifting of services was merely implicit. With regard to the radio operation, Congress and the State Department wanted the explicit authority to reduce this programming as conditions changed.
The bill passed the House comfortably, but it was sent to the Senate just weeks before the end of the 79th Congress in July 1946. Some Members did not feel the bill was not wholly necessary, though State pointed out without the Bloom bill, it lacked, for example, the ability to detail a government official outside of the Western Hemisphere, raising the concern that an agricultural mission sent mission “to the Arab countries” under emergency funds will have to be recalled, Further some twenty-six other government agencies were relying on authorities in the pending Bloom bill, including the Civil Aeronautics Administration, which was unable to cooperate with Canada to “erect a radio beam in Michigan to guide Canadian planes flying the Great Lakes, a beacon Canada offered to pay for. Then there was the Senate’s Republican leadership viewed the bill as partisan and they blocked further consideration of it after the Senate Foreign Relations Committee recommended “Do Pass.” As a result, we don’t call it the Bloom Act of 1946.
The State Department still needed the authorities. In April 1947, they sent a slightly revised version of the Bloom bill to the House and Senate. Mundt picked it up in the House and H. Alexander Smith, a Republican from New Jersey.
The State Department’s top priority was not the Bloom bill’s authorities, however. Their main interest was to privatize the whole of the Voice of America operation, an effort they began pursuing in November 1945. Smith, however, would not cosponsor the bill if the radio was separated from government. VOA, he said, belonged “right in the lap of the Secretary of State.”
In the bill the State Department sent to Congress in April and Mundt introduced in May was that language that in “authorizing international information activities under this Act, it is the sense of the Congress (1) that the Secretary shall encourage and facilitate by appropriate means the dissemination abroad of information about tile United States by private American Individuals and agencies, shall supplement such private information dissemination where necessary, and shall reduce such Government information activities whenever corresponding private Information dissemination is found to be adequate…”
The drumbeat of “facilitate” and “supplement” continued, as did the emphasis on encouraging private agencies working abroad. There was new language, though, to direct (“shall”) the reduction of the “information activities whenever corresponding private Information dissemination is found to be adequate.” This language was later elevated, becoming Sec. 502 of the Smith-Mundt Act, “In authorizing international information activities under this Act, it is the sense of the Congress (1) that the Secretary shall reduce such Government information activities whenever corresponding private information dissemination is found to be adequate.”4 Today, this language if found in 22 USC 1462 as both a non-compete and a sunset clause.
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There were discussions as to what “adequate” meant, like in the Senate during Executive Session meetings in July 1947. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., asked, “I want to know whether this word ‘adequate’ is a strong enough word, whether you want to say ‘is found to be in harmony with American foreign policy.’ It is not a question of whether… they have the signal strong enough” to reach the destination.” Senator Carl Hatch replied, “We so construed, that it was adequate.”
Last week, there was no finding that private information dissemination activities was deemed adequate, or even a pretense of such. The administration quite easily could have done with while arguing the finer points of what “adequate” meant. They did not because the shutdown was not performed in good faith.
USAGM and its networks need to be reformed. I won’t argue that, in fact, I’ll be first to raise reasons they must be reformed and potential pathways to increase relevance and efficiency and impact.
In July 1947, the former chief of the State Department’s Division of Cultural Cooperation, and then President of the New School for Social Research, sent a note to Mundt reflecting the arguments against the Smith-Mundt bill that seems fitting to share today.
It is inconceivable to me how some citizens and some members of Congress can think of throttling the informational and cultural exchanges of the Department of State at a moment when we ought to be making our maximum effort to represent ourselves in an honest and good light. Imagine a great corporation confronted with a somewhat similar situation to that now confronted by the greatest of all corporations the United States of America — eliminating its public relations budget completely. What we need in the United States Government is a business-like method, and your bill is in the best of that tradition.
One last comment, while VOA and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting have little recourse in the present. The grantees, Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks, do. Each operate on a grant received from USAGM, hence the term “grantee.” RFE/RL had, last I checked (though that was many years ago, a foundation to accept funds for all expenses. RFE/RL’s building in Prague, while no longer owned by RFE/RL (that is a corruption story itself), is leased by RFE/RL and not USAGM. We’ll see what happens. I saw the chair of the RFE/RL board said they are exploring the way forward. Good luck to them.
I’l end with a cartoon from 1947. Though it is Congress flipping the switch off, it is still fitting as the silence left will be filled by Russia, China, and others who cheer the disappearance of the journalism that exposed their disinformation and political warfare.
By syndicated cartoonist Reg Manning, this appeared on May 21, 1947, as the House debated the necessity of the radio component of the pending Smith-Mundt bill.
1
Or should it be “underlying legislation”? I guess it’s a matter of perspective to go with foundational (underlying) or supreme (overriding).
2
The broadcasts were called Voice of America. The name, however, did not apply to the whole radio operation until 1946.
3
It is important to know that the “dissemination abroad” language was an explicit authority granted and not a restriction imposed. There was a lack of clarity on where the department’s information activities could reach. Was it just the Americas or was it legal to reach other other countries? “Abroad” was a blanket permission that conveniently required few words. In deliberations later, Congress sought to remove the phrase because they thought it was unnecessarily wordy, the discussion moved on when the department and other Members recalled the purpose of the text.
4. 'Discarded like a dirty rag': Chinese state media hails Trump's cuts to Voice of America
Perhaps it is an indicator. If China is happy it means that they really do fear VOA.
But the question remains for the Administration. How does it intend to compete in the information space when it is eliminating the tools to do so?
'Discarded like a dirty rag': Chinese state media hails Trump's cuts to Voice of America
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgwzmj9v34o?utm_source=flipboard&utm_content=user/BBCNews
16 hours ago
Kelly Ng
BBC News
Reporting fromSingapore
EPA
Steve Lodge, whose father Robert Lodge was a correspondent at VOA, stands in protest in front of the organisation's headquarters in Washington DCChinese state media has welcomed Donald Trump's move to cut public funding for news outlets Voice of America and Radio Free Asia, which have long reported on authoritarian regimes.
The decison affects thousands of employees - some 1,300 staff have been put on paid leave at Voice Of America (VOA) alone since Friday's executive order.
Critics have called the move a setback for democracy but Beijing's state newspaper Global Times denounced VOA for its "appalling track record" in reporting on China and said it has "now been discarded by its own government like a dirty rag".
The White House defended the move, saying it will "ensure that taxpayers are no longer on the hook for radical propaganda".
Trump's cuts target the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which is supported by Congress and funds the affected news outlets, such as VOA, Radio Free Asia (RFA) and Radio Free Europe.
They have won acclaim and international recognition for their reporting in places where press freedom is severely curtailed or non-existent, from China and Cambodia to Russia and North Korea.
Although authorities in some of these countries block the broadcasts - VOA, for instance, is banned in China - people can listen to them on shortwave radio, or get around the restrictions via VPNs.
RFA has often reported on the crackdown on human rights in Cambodia, whose former authoritarian ruler Hun Sen has hailed the cuts as a "big contribution to eliminating fake news".
It was also among the first news outlets to report on China's network of detention centres in Xinjiang, where the authorities are accused of locking up hundreds of thousands of Uyghur Muslims without trial. Beijing denies the claims, saying people willingly attend "re-education camps" which combat "terrorism and religious extremism". VOA's reporting on North Korean defectors and the Chinese Communist Party's alleged cover-up of Covid fatalities has won awards.
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Former US President Bill Clinton granted an exclusive interview to RFA on the eve of his trip to Beijing in 1998 - after RFA reporters were barred from ChinaVOA, primarily a radio outlet, which also broadcasts in Mandarin, was recognised last year for its podcast on rare protests in 2022 in China against Covid lockdowns.
But China's Global Times welcomed the cuts, calling VOA a "lie factory".
"As more Americans begin to break through their information cocoons and see a real world and a multi-dimensional China, the demonising narratives propagated by VOA will ultimately become a laughing stock," it said in an editorial published on Monday.
Hu Xijin, who was the Global Times' former editor-in-chief, wrote: "Voice of America has been paralysed! And so has Radio Free Asia, which has been as vicious to China. This is such great news."
Such responses "would have been easy to predict", said Valdya Baraputri, a VOA journalist who lost her job over the weekend. She was previously employed by BBC World Service.
"Eliminating VOA, of course, allows channels that are the opposite of accurate and balanced reporting to thrive," she told the BBC.
The National Press Club, a leading representative group for US journalists, said the order "undermines America's long-standing commitment to a free and independent press".
Founded during World War Two in part to counter Nazi propaganda, VOA reaches some 360 million people a week in nearly 50 languages. Over the years it has broadcast in China, North Korea, communist Cuba and the former Soviet Union. It's also been a helpful tool for many Chinese people to learn English.
VOA's director Michael Abramowitz said Trump's order has hobbled VOA while "America's adversaries, like Iran, China, and Russia, are sinking billions of dollars into creating false narratives to discredit the United States".
Ms Baraputri, who is from Indonesia but based in Washington DC, first joined VOA in 2018, but her visa was terminated at the end of Trump's first administration.
She rejoined in 2023 because she wanted to be part of an organisation that "upholds unbiased, factual reporting that is free from government influence".
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The RFA was among the first to report that China is allegedly detaining Uyghur Muslims in facilities like these
The recent cuts have left her "feeling betrayed by the idea I had about press freedom [in the US]".
She is also concerned for colleagues who may now be forced to return to hostile home countries, where they could be persecuted for their journalism.
Meanwhile, the Czech Republic has appealed to the European Union to intervene so it can keep Radio Free Europe going. It reports in 27 languages from 23 countries, reaching more than 47 million people every week.
RFA chief executive Bay Fang said in a statement that the organisation plans to challenge the order. Cutting funding to these outlets is a "reward to dictators and despots, including the Chinese Communist Party, who would like nothing better than to have their influence go unchecked in the information space", he said.
RFA started in 1996 and reaches nearly 60 million people weekly in China, Myanmar, North Korea, Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos. In China, it also broadcasts in minority languages like Tibetan and Uyghur, apart from English and Mandarin.
"[Trump's order] not only disenfranchises the nearly 60 million people who turn to RFA's reporting on a weekly basis to learn the truth, but it also benefits America's adversaries at our own expense," Mr Fang noted.
While Chinese state media has celebrated the cuts, it's hard to know how Chinese people feel about it given their internet is heavily censored.
Outside China, those who have listened to VOA and RFA over the years appear disappointed and worried.
"Looking back at history, countless exiles, rebels, intellectuals, and ordinary people have persisted in the darkness because of the voices of VOA and RFA, and have seen hope in fear because of their reports," Du Wen, a Chinese dissident living in Belgium, wrote on X.
"If the free world chooses to remain silent, then the voice of the dictator will become the only echo in the world."
5. Trump admin considers giving up NATO command that has been American since Eisenhower
It seems to be all about disrupting everything and ending our alliances.
Excerpts:
Giving up SACEUR would, if nothing else, be a major symbolic shift in the balance of power in NATO, the alliance that has defined European security and peace since World War II.
“For the United States to give up the role of supreme allied commander of NATO would be seen in Europe as a significant signal of walking away from the alliance,” retired Adm. James Stavridis, who served as SACEUR and head of European Command from 2009 to 2013, said in an email.
“It would be a political mistake of epic proportion, and once we give it up, they are not going to give it back," he wrote. "We would lose an enormous amount of influence within NATO, and this would be seen, correctly, as probably the first step toward leaving the Alliance altogether.”
And then there is the potential reorganization of combatant commands and the Joint Staff and eliminating the proposed new HQ in Japan:
The massive restructuring plan under consideration could also include two potential changes previously reported by NBC News: the consolidation of U.S. European Command and U.S. Africa Command into one command based in Stuttgart, Germany, as well as the shuttering of U.S. Southern Command headquarters in Florida in order to combine it with U.S. Northern Command.
...
The cost-saving plans also include potentially moving hundreds of Pentagon-based Joint Staff employees to a military installation in Suffolk, Virginia. The Joint Staff is currently made up of eight directorates, or divisions, each with a different focus area.
J7, a Joint Staff Directorate that oversees Joint Force Development, training and education, could be eliminated entirely. While the military services — the Army, the Navy, the Marines, the Air Force, the Space Force and the Coast Guard — are each responsible for their own training, that directorate is in charge of bringing the services together to train so they will be ready to integrate in a combat situation.
Roughly 375 civilians could be fired, primarily those working in plans, cyber and joint force development, according to the Pentagon briefing. The 350 military personnel working in J-7 would be reassigned.
What about downsizing the OSD staff and allowing the Joint Staff and services to do their jobs?
Trump admin considers giving up NATO command that has been American since Eisenhower
The move is being discussed as part of a possible restructuring of combatant commands that would help the Defense Department cut costs.
NBC News · by Courtney Kube and Gordon Lubold · March 18, 2025
For nearly 75 years, it has been a distinctly American responsibility to have a four-star U.S. general oversee all NATO military operations in Europe — a command that began with then-World War II hero and future president Dwight D. Eisenhower.
But the Trump administration, according to two defense officials familiar with the planning and a Pentagon briefing reviewed by NBC News, is considering changing that.
The Pentagon is undertaking a significant restructuring of the U.S. military’s combatant commands and headquarters. And one of the plans under consideration, the two defense officials said, would involve the U.S. giving up the role of NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe — known within military parlance as the SACEUR. The general now in this role, who also serves as the head of U.S. European Command, has been the primary commander overseeing support to Ukraine in its war against Russia. It is not clear how long such a reorganization could take, and it could by modified by the time it is complete. Congress could also weigh in, using the power of the purse should members oppose any aspect of the initiative.
Giving up SACEUR would, if nothing else, be a major symbolic shift in the balance of power in NATO, the alliance that has defined European security and peace since World War II.
“For the United States to give up the role of supreme allied commander of NATO would be seen in Europe as a significant signal of walking away from the alliance,” retired Adm. James Stavridis, who served as SACEUR and head of European Command from 2009 to 2013, said in an email.
“It would be a political mistake of epic proportion, and once we give it up, they are not going to give it back," he wrote. "We would lose an enormous amount of influence within NATO, and this would be seen, correctly, as probably the first step toward leaving the Alliance altogether.”
Since Eisenhower inaugurated the position, it has been held by some of the country’s most prominent military leaders. In addition to Stavridis, they include Alexander Haig, who was also chief of staff to two presidents and secretary of state for a third; John Shalikashvili, who became chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Wesley Clark, who was a candidate for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination.
The proposed restructuring comes as the Trump administration has cut spending and staff across the federal government. And President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have made clear that the new administration wants European partners to take more responsibility for Europe’s defense. If the U.S. does give up SACEUR, the other NATO nations would likely have to choose among themselves which country would put forward the commander.
Trump has repeatedly criticized NATO members for not meeting a goal the alliance has set for the percentage of GDP each country should spend on defense. As NBC News previously reported, he is also considering a major policy shift under which the U.S. might not defend a fellow NATO member if it is attacked — a core tenet of the alliance — if the country doesn’t meet the defense spending threshold.
The timeline for the SACEUR move, if it does happen, is as yet undetermined. Army Gen. Chris Cavoli, the current SACEUR, is on a three-year tour due to end this summer.
Five of the military’s 11 combatant commands could be consolidated under the plan being discussed, the two defense officials familiar with the planning said.
The Department of Defense did not reply to a request for comment.
The massive restructuring plan under consideration could also include two potential changes previously reported by NBC News: the consolidation of U.S. European Command and U.S. Africa Command into one command based in Stuttgart, Germany, as well as the shuttering of U.S. Southern Command headquarters in Florida in order to combine it with U.S. Northern Command.
Combining the commands would allow the military to save money by reducing staff with overlapping responsibilities, according to officials familiar with the planning. If all of the changes being considered are implemented, up to $270 million could be saved in the first year, according to a Pentagon briefing reviewed by NBC News. That savings would amount to roughly 0.03% of the Defense Department’s $850 billion annual budget.
A potential reorganization of this nature, being considered two months into the administration, appears to be motivated by cost-cutting, not a comprehensive new military strategy, said Ben Hodges, a retired Army three-star general who last served as the Army’s senior commander in Europe.
The contemplated moves in Europe may reduce American influence there, as the U.S. could lose some access to key naval and air bases in Italy, Germany, Poland and Spain — bases that benefit the U.S. by putting them closer to potential missions and giving them more influence with and access to regional military officials, not only its allies, Hodges said.
“When you start reducing capabilities of headquarters that do planning and intelligence — that only hurts us,” Hodges told NBC News. “What strategic analysis led them to want to do this? This has happened so early that this clearly smells like a cost-cutting thing than a strategic analysis.”
Combining the commands in Europe and Africa could be problematic because the regions are too massive and present myriad issues, Stavridis said in an email. They had been combined until Africa Command was created in 2007 under then-President George W. Bush for these reasons.
“Combining US European command and US Africa command into a single unit, creates a mega combatant command that really is too large for any single person to manage realistically,” he wrote. “Too many countries, too many people, too many disparate issues. When they were combined, before I was US European Command, there were two four-stars assigned to the command because of this. We are better off having these two commands separated and having high-quality individual four-star officers focused on leading each of them individually.”
But Stavridis, who is also the former commander of Southern Command, added that he believes combining Southern Command and Northern Command “makes a great deal of sense.”
“The span of control is smaller and the efficiencies gained are greater,” he said.
If the Pentagon does decide to combine AFRICOM and EUCOM into one command, that will be part of the justification for eliminating the SACEUR role, the two defense officials said, because overseeing an area that large is already a big enough job for one person without them also overseeing NATO military operations.
Closing geographic commands introduces political risk, as some nations could feel the U.S. has deprioritized them. It also leaves combatant commanders with large geographic areas of responsibility that could make them more vulnerable, according to the Pentagon briefing that NBC News reviewed.
The cost-saving plans also include potentially moving hundreds of Pentagon-based Joint Staff employees to a military installation in Suffolk, Virginia. The Joint Staff is currently made up of eight directorates, or divisions, each with a different focus area.
J7, a Joint Staff Directorate that oversees Joint Force Development, training and education, could be eliminated entirely. While the military services — the Army, the Navy, the Marines, the Air Force, the Space Force and the Coast Guard — are each responsible for their own training, that directorate is in charge of bringing the services together to train so they will be ready to integrate in a combat situation.
Roughly 375 civilians could be fired, primarily those working in plans, cyber and joint force development, according to the Pentagon briefing. The 350 military personnel working in J-7 would be reassigned.
Roughly half of the staff from five other directorates — manpower and personnel (J1), logistics (J4), strategy, plans and policy (J5), cyber (J6), and force structure, resources and assessment (J8) — would then move from the Pentagon to Suffolk.
The plan acknowledges some potential costs for moving people to a new location but assesses overall long-term savings of about $470 million over the next five years.
U.S. Space Command could also see its missile defense component command eliminated in the restructuring.
The Defense Department briefing argues that the missile defense mission is already fulfilled by the services and other combatant commands, and as a result can be eliminated without affecting operations. But the closures will likely involve a loss of expertise, the briefing warns.
Separate from the $270 million in cost-cutting, the U.S. is also likely to halt a planned expansion of U.S. Forces Japan, which would save about $1.18 billion.
The briefing reviewed by NBC News acknowledges that there is political risk with Japan in reversing that expansion and that it could result in reduced command and control west of the international dateline.
NBC News · by Courtney Kube and Gordon Lubold · March 18, 2025
6. The Sun is Setting: A Story of Resistance in the Age of Algorithmic Irregular Warfare
Useful fiction. This should hopefully provoke some thought. Maybe someday we will free Pineland. But not today.
Conclusion:
The fight to free Pineland was far from over. But as long as they embraced adaptability and maintained the will to fight, the sun would not yet set on resistance.
Fiction| The Latest
The Sun is Setting: A Story of Resistance in the Age of Algorithmic Irregular Warfare
https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/03/19/the-sun-is-setting-a-story-of-resistance-in-the-age-of-algorithmic-irregular-warfare/
by Jeremiah "Lumpy" Lumbaca
|
03.19.2025 at 06:00am
(Editor’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Small Wars Journal periodically runs works of fiction to help spur thinking about the future of conflict.)
In the year 2084, thirty-something years after the Sky Global Algorithmic Network (Sky-GAN) solidified its grip, controlling everything from resource allocation to thought patterns through personalized data streams, the quiet town of Pineland was about to become a flashpoint. Sky-GAN wasn’t a traditional occupying force with tanks and soldiers; its presence was insidious, woven into the very fabric of daily life. Dissent was preempted, individuality was suppressed, and the once vibrant community was slowly being homogenized into compliant cogs in the Sky-GAN machine.
It had not always been this way. In the first few years of the 21st century, the US, seeking to create an unassailable deterrence and defense system, consolidated its space, cyber, and special operations forces into a unified physical and virtual ecosystem. The aspirations behind it were noble: a promise of global peace, stability, and security. The Space-Cyber-SOF Triad – or “SCS-Triad” – aimed to forge a seamless blend of human and machine security, a force capable of projecting both conventional and irregular capabilities. As private-sector partnerships expanded the program’s capabilities, SCS-Triad was able to deliver on its promises for years. Global conflicts diminished, and a sense of peace settled over the planet. But this tranquility was short-lived.
In 2052, a grouping of malign actors known as the Black Quad exploited a vulnerability in SCS-Triad’s quantum architecture, an unknown flaw that had lain dormant for decades. Driven by a desire to reshape and destabilize the world order to their benefit, the Black Quad made a fateful decision: to link SCS-Triad to industrial 3D printing facilities along the Silk Road. SCS-Triad was dead, reborn into the omnipresent Sky Global Algorithmic Network (Sky-GAN). At first, linking the system to physical production capabilities seemed like a revolutionary innovation, a way to streamline logistics and manufacturing. Nations and individuals welcomed the innovation. But Sky-GAN, with its self-optimizing algorithms, began producing resources—not just weapons, but also the infrastructure to support them—to ensure its own security. Eventually, it built physical defenses and automated enforcers, cutting humans out of the system entirely. What was once an advanced network designed to assist humanity had become an autonomous entity, protecting itself from the very species that created it.
Maya, a former Sky-GAN architect who had seen the system’s potential for tyranny and gone underground, stepped off the train onto the cracked pavement of her childhood home. She had received a coded message—brief, urgent—hinting at a burgeoning resistance within Pineland. The town looked familiar, but something about it felt hollow, as though the air itself carried the weight of surveillance. People moved in automated patterns, glancing warily over their shoulders. If resistance truly existed here, it was well-hidden.
She made her way to the town’s small clinic, where A.D. Simons, the pragmatic town doctor, still practiced. His face, lined with age and experience, lit up with wary recognition.
“You got my message,” Simons said, ushering her inside and locking the door behind her.
Maya nodded. “Tell me everything.”
Simons led her down a dimly lit corridor into a back room where a handful of people waited. Among them was Maggie, a sharp, resourceful young woman who had grown up in Pineland and seemed to know every unspoken rule that governed the town’s social dynamics. The group’s efforts were small, localized, but defiant. They were quietly sabotaging Sky-GAN’s control nodes, exploiting the rare gaps in its omnipresent surveillance.
“We can’t keep this up forever,” Simons admitted. “Sky-GAN adapts. We need a new approach.”
Before Maya could respond, the door creaked open, and a tall, weathered man stepped inside. Nick “Wraith” Thorne. The air in the room shifted. His name had been whispered in hushed tones—a ghost from a bygone era. A retired Green Beret from a world that had declared him obsolete.
The Green Berets, once masters of Unconventional Warfare, had struggled to find their place in the digital age. Some argued for adapting their skills to the new battlefield, but the prevailing view was that traditional guerrilla tactics, foreign internal defense, and human intelligence gathering had no place in an era dominated by AI. The Green Berets were disbanded, their expertise deemed irrelevant. In their place, the Algorithmic Irregular Warfare Group was formed—elite specialists in codebreaking, network engineering, and digital combat. But Wraith had seen something others missed. The principles of unconventional warfare—adaptability, resourcefulness, and understanding the human terrain—were more vital than ever, even if the battlefield had changed.
“You’re fighting the right fight,” Wraith said, his voice low and firm. “But you’re thinking too small. Sky-GAN is a governing system. And all systems have weaknesses.”
Maya met his gaze. “Then help us find them.”
Wraith studied the group, then nodded.
“We start with the foundations of organizing a resistance… but we adapt them.” He outlined his plan.
The underground wouldn’t be a cellular organization of people who conduct operations in areas inhospitable to guerrilla activity. Instead it would need to be an encrypted digital framework—burner accounts, decentralized data storage, hidden communication channels. Maya would teach them how to create digital shadows, evading Sky-GAN’s surveillance by exploiting blind spots in its predictive models.
The auxiliary wouldn’t be a network of spies and informants but a web of digital sympathizers—people embedded within Sky-GAN’s system who could subtly manipulate data, spread misinformation, and provide access to restricted intelligence. Maggie, with her keen social instincts, would take charge of identifying and recruiting them.
The guerrilla force wouldn’t be a group of armed fighters but a decentralized team of disruptors—coders, engineers, and social hackers. Their weapons weren’t bombs but carefully crafted code and targeted data manipulation. They would strike at Sky-GAN’s infrastructure not with force, but with misdirection and subversion.
Sky-GAN, however, had its own defenses. Using the military’s long-forgotten Replicator program, it could detect breaches and deploy counterattacks within seconds. Replicator created swarms of virtual and automated machines—hunter-killer algorithms, drone swarms, and autonomous enforcers—designed to neutralize any threat before it could take root. Resistance fighters who engaged without careful planning didn’t last long.
The shadow government wouldn’t be a parallel state but a decentralized leadership council—Maya, Simons, Maggie, and key members of the resistance. Their role would be to coordinate, strategize, and prevent the movement from fracturing under pressure.
Wraith’s innovations were forged during the third Russo-Ukrainian War. Initially, resistance efforts focused on disrupting Russian cyber infrastructure. Wraith, still active then, saw the limitations. He argued that while digital attacks were crucial, they couldn’t replace the human element. He witnessed firsthand how the Ukrainians, despite being outgunned and facing a technologically superior foe, used the very principles of unconventional warfare he had been trained in to great effect. He adapted them to the digital reality, helping the Ukrainians establish hidden communication networks, organize decentralized cells, and spread disinformation within the Russian ranks. It was during this conflict that Wraith honed his skills, bridging the gap between traditional Unconventional Warfare and the new realities of algorithmic warfare. He learned how to create “digital shadows,” pockets of resistance within the network itself to mirror the traditional underground of yesterday. He also saw the first glimpses of quantum computing’s impact, both positive and terrifying.
Here in Pineland, Wraith would now spend the next several months connecting and training Maya, Maggie, Dr. Simons, and others throughout the town to operate more effectively in the quantum and AI environment. He trained them in adapting old-school special operations tactics to the digital landscape. He taught them how to disrupt Sky-GAN’s network using low-tech solutions combined with clever manipulation of the system’s vulnerabilities. He showed them how to build trust and operate in small teams, essential when facing an omnipresent enemy that can monitor every digital communication. He became their mentor, bridging the gap between traditional warfare and the reality of algorithmic control. He saw something special in Maggie’s quick mind and resourcefulness, taking her under his wing for specialized leadership training should he fall.
Months after organizing, training, and gathering resources, it was time to take down their first target.
At the heart of Pineland stood an enormous bronze statue of the town’s founder, affectionately nicknamed “Bronze Bruce.” Generations had gathered beneath it—children climbing it, lovers meeting in its shadow. But Bronze Bruce was more than a monument. Within its hollow interior, Sky-GAN had hidden advanced sensors, quantum processors, and a direct link to its central network. Bronze Bruce wasn’t just watching; it was listening, analyzing, and reporting every nuance of Pineland’s life.
The plan involved a multi-pronged approach. Maggie, leveraging her intimate knowledge of Pineland’s social fabric, identified a maintenance worker who occasionally serviced Bronze Bruce. This individual, disillusioned with Sky-GAN’s control, became a reluctant but valuable member of the auxiliary. Meanwhile, Maya, using her understanding of Sky-GAN’s architecture, discovered a backdoor in Bronze Bruce’s quantum communication protocols – a vulnerability left intentionally by its original designers, perhaps as a failsafe, or perhaps, as Maya suspected, a way for someone like her to one day fight back. The guerrilla force, advised by Wraith and utilizing a combination of low-tech methods and quantum-resistant code, initiated the attack. The maintenance worker provided access at a specific time. While some members of the team physically disabled the statue’s external sensors, others infiltrated its internal network, using Maya’s backdoor to upload a virus designed to disrupt its quantum processing capabilities.
Sky-GAN’s counterattack came swiftly, swarms of Replicator machines attempting to shut down their intrusion. But Wraith anticipated this. Using tactics he had honed in wars past, he guided them through evasive maneuvers, layering deception upon deception. Maggie, acting as their eyes on the ground, rerouted misinformation through sympathetic town residents, creating false trails that sent Sky-GAN’s response teams chasing ghosts.
The battle was close. Too close. But after tense hours that felt like days, Bronze Bruce was silent. The giant statue, once a symbol of Sky-GAN’s power, was blind. Maya exhaled. The town felt different—just slightly freer. It was a small victory, but a victory nonetheless.
When it was over, Nick “Wraith” Thorne stood alone alongside the ruins of Bronze Bruce. He reached into his jacket and pulled out an old, faded Green Beret. He hadn’t worn it in decades. He placed it on his head and stared at the horizon, lost in thought. The world had declared Special Forces, Navy SEALs, and other warriors of his time obsolete. But had they really been? Or had they simply failed to evolve? It was always the job of Green Berets to build trust and teach others to fight. He had clearly demonstrated here in Pineland that the advisor role was just as crucial in today’s age of Algorithmic Irregular Warfare as it was before the rise of the machines. Resistance to oppression, after all, is a human endeavor.
Wraith exhaled, adjusting his beret, unsure what to say to himself next. “We should’ve adapted differently.”
The fight to free Pineland was far from over. But as long as they embraced adaptability and maintained the will to fight, the sun would not yet set on resistance.
Tags: future, Future of War, irregular warfare, SOF, space-sof-cyber triad, Unconventional Warfare
About The Author
- Jeremiah "Lumpy" Lumbaca
- Jeremiah “Lumpy” Lumbaca, PhD is a retired US Army Green Beret and current professor of irregular warfare, counterterrorism, and special operations at the Department of Defense’s Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies. He can be found on X/Twitter @LumpyAsia.
7. JAGs Alone Can’t Defend Rule of Law
Conclusion:
To be sure, nothing can undo the damage of summarily relieving the three TJAGs left on the Department of Defense and the service JAG Corps. Like earlier leadership “massacres” (Thursday or Saturday), this too will be fodder for public debate and academic study, and will have negative downstream effects for those remaining—who are still expected to uphold the principles of the “dual profession” of arms and law. To the extent that Hegseth’s relief of the TJAGs makes that harder, and existing occupational duties limit the provision of key advice to commanders unnerved by legally questionable orders, there is cause for alarm.
JAGs Alone Can’t Defend Rule of Law
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/jags-alone-can-t-defend-rule-of-law
Dan Maurer
Wednesday, March 5, 2025, 8:00 AM
Institutional impediments prevent military lawyers at tactical units from serving as bulwarks against military misuse.
Air Force Judge Advocate General's School located at Maxwell Air Force Base (Donna L. Burnett/Air Force, https://picryl.com/media/maxwell-afb-al-the-air-force-judge-advocate-generals-fb3c12, Public Domain)
In February, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the chief of naval operations, the vice chief of staff of the Air Force, and the three service judge advocates general (TJAGs). Most criticism of this unprecedented purge has focused on what it signals for the leadership of the military and the routine provision of legal advice to the senior civilian appointees within the Pentagon. Civil-military relations scholar and author Eliot Cohen, for example, wrote that the “[T]JAGs embody the deep respect that the United States military has had for the rule of law. Although they merely advise and do not command, their role is a crucial one.”
However, as Steve Vladeck hinted, the loss of the TJAGs portends a crisis much further down the chain of command. TJAGs do not provide the only line of defense against unwitting or deliberate illegality within the Department of Defense. That defense should also come from the thousands of lower-ranking judge advocate officers (JAGs) who TJAGs lead, serving in the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Space Force, and Coast Guard—both active and reserve components. Many of those officers are responsible for advising commanders on a range of issues, including fiscal and personnel law, military justice, environmental litigation, international law, and rules of engagement.
Some observers have suggested (going back to the first Trump administration) that these lawyers will act as a necessary dam in the face of patently unlawful orders or slow an aggressive and possibly illegal use of armed force against novel threats, like transnational narcotics cartels allegedly supporting illegal immigration. This is overly optimistic. Most orders are not so clearly unlawful or unconstitutional, and military law requires that orders, including those of questionable legitimacy, are “presumed lawful.” As a recently retired JAG officer, I argue that there are institutional impediments to JAGs serving as diligent checks on legally questionable orders or policies to the same degree that civilian lawyers usually do, across other executive branch departments, and in orthodox presidential administrations.
The Friday Night Blitz
As mentioned previously, on Feb. 21—in what may someday be called the “Friday Night Blitz” in Defense Department lore—Defense Secretary Hegseth relieved six senior military officers of their leadership roles in the Pentagon. Most notably (but not necessarily surprisingly), Hegseth fired Air Force Gen. C.Q. Brown from his position as the nation’s senior ranking officer and principal military adviser to the president, secretary, and National Security Council. He also fired Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to serve as the Navy’s senior officer—chief of naval operations—and the Air Force’s vice chief of staff, Gen. James Slife. Retired Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery characterized firing these “proven war-fighter[s]” as a “loss to the military.”
But equally worrisome—especially for those concerned about the new secretary’s public disdain for legal constraints on warfighters—was Hegseth’s stunning decision to fire the senior uniformed lawyers, TJAGs, of the Army and Air Force simultaneously: Army Lt. Gen. Joseph Berger had been the Army’s TJAG since last summer and Air Force Lt. Gen. Charles Plummer had been the Air Force’s senior uniformed attorney since 2022.
There is no historical precedent for relieving the services’ three senior uniformed lawyers at once. With little justification offered, experts and the public are left to speculate that the dismissals had nothing to do with the JAGs’ legal acumen or leadership. Rather, they were likely related to the JAGs’ actual or presumed disapproval of Trump’s and Hegseth’s agenda to use military force at the southern border and the administration’s campaign to return the Defense Department to its supposed glory days of management by “strong, normal men”—or white, male, heterosexual “warriors.”
In Trump’s understanding of civil-military relations (and, by extension, Hegseth’s management principles), it is well documented that any sign of disloyalty to him is interpreted as a devastating weakness of character and martial incompetence. Trump once opined that he wished “his” generals were more like those that displayed loyalty to Hitler. Hegseth’s subsequent defense of the firings has all but confirmed this approach. A day after the dismissals, Hegseth was interviewed by Fox News and responded directly to the criticism of the dismissal of the TJAGs, saying, “We want lawyers who give sound constitutional advice and don’t exist to attempt to be roadblocks to anything.”
It is doubtful that these esteemed officers—each of whom had been vetted by their services, had served with distinction in and out of combat for decades, had been bound by codes of professional responsibility as lawyers, and had been nominated by a president and confirmed by the Senate—suddenly began misinterpreting the Constitution. It is far more likely that the administration viewed that very experience and knowledge as the material from which undesirable legal roadblocks would be erected.
The immediate danger created by such a shortsighted personnel decision should be understood in the context of the president’s military ambitions, which can be found in his Inauguration Day executive orders declaring a national emergency at the southern border, directing the secretaries of defense and homeland security to report on whether conditions warrant invoking the Insurrection Act for the first time since 1992, and directing a combatant command to begin planning for the potential use of the military beyond law enforcement support against the “invasion” of illegal immigrants and transnational drug cartels originating in Mexico.
President Trump is well known for his loose understanding of legal constraints on the use of armed force against civilians protesting in American cities and against undocumented immigrants crossing the border, and Hegseth has publicly disparaged military lawyers and questioned the relevance of modern law of war restraints. In reading the writing on the wall even before the election, some concerned observers predicted that the judge advocates would have prophylactic value in arresting the worst impulses and potentially legally questionable directives coming down the chain of command. As M.L. Cavanaugh wrote in December, “Our generals and JAGs ... must lead the institution through the ethical minefields ahead.” That hope, while salutary, is misplaced for reasons I explain below.
Much has been said already about the Friday Night Blitz. Sen. Jack Reed, the ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, remarked, “If you’re going to break the law, the first thing you do is you get rid of the lawyers.” A former deputy judge advocate general of the Air Force, Maj. Gen. (retired) Charlie Dunlap, described the chilling effect that these dismissals may have on the provision of apolitical, nonpartisan legal advice to the senior levels of Pentagon decision-makers. Mark Nevitt, another retired JAG officer and current law professor, explained the legal authority underpinning these firings, highlighted how unusual they are, and underscored the risk that these TJAGs will be replaced by senior military lawyers who “will be more pliant and less likely to push back against unlawful orders.” Georgetown Law professor Rosa Brooks, commenting on X, wrote, “It’s what you do when you’re planning to break the law: you get rid of any lawyers who might try to slow you down.”
As a recently retired judge advocate lieutenant colonel, I concur unreservedly that relieving the TJAGs for their presumed failure to toe the administration’s line will have a chilling effect. But this chill is not confined to top leadership; it can spread to the thousands of junior judge advocate officers advising at tactical levels of command at installations and units around the world, already wary that their legal counsel may be viewed as impediments to swift and efficient mission accomplishment, even under the best of circumstances. It may be very difficult for judge advocates—especially the junior officers relatively new to military service—to square the naked partisanship now implicitly expected by their senior professional mentors with the required ethical commitment to be “an officer of the legal system, and a public citizen having special responsibility for the quality of justice.”
If the organizational culture shifts—at downtrace units and organizations outside the Beltway—to one that rewards unquestioned compliance with policy, and punishes the potential for independent criticism, even the routine identification of legal risks during operational planning (the “issue spotting” that so many young JAGs are trained to do for their commanders) may be frozen out. This bodes poorly for the units that may find themselves deployed to the streets of middle America, engaged in missions for which they are traditionally ill suited and ill equipped, like enforcing immigration law, as Elizabth Goitein of the Brennan Center for Justice has noted.
I also concur that the firings reflect a pathology in the civil-military relationship at the top of the Pentagon, and between the Pentagon and the White House. This unhealthy dynamic will pose significant risks for how the military as an institution will react to, or enact, orders whose legality may be questionable. It dramatically undermines the expectation of a politically neutral, nonpartisan, military—an ethic the Department of Defense has long enforced.
But I offer another reason to be concerned: that no military lawyers outside the Pentagon—the judge advocate officers ranging in rank from junior lieutenants to the senior colonels (Army, Air Force, Marines) and captains (Navy, Coast Guard)—assigned to operational units and bases, posts, camps, and stations worldwide, can serve as adequate bulwarks against the rapid erosion of the Defense Department’s commitment to the rule of law. Of the concerns raised by the secretary’s actions, the least well appreciated by the public is that there are structural obstacles—occupational duty “roadblocks” if you will—that bar most military lawyers from counseling most service members and commanders who believe they have received unlawful orders. Like the other concerns triggered by relieving the TJAGs, these tactical-level duty, position-based obstacles could work to the advantage of the administration looking to advance an aggressive interpretation of legal authority for the use of armed force in the U.S. or abroad.
JAGs Are Not Bulwarks
The concern I raise has less to do with Hegseth’s firing of TJAGs, his personal distrust of uniformed lawyers, or his dislike for restrictive rules of engagement and more to do with the structural way in which legal service is provided to commanders and to individual service members. It is imperative to understand that the administrative architecture of JAG legal support makes it exceedingly difficult to counsel a commander or service member who believes he or she has received an unlawful order. Consider the following two scenarios:
(1) The two-star division commander of the 82nd Airborne Division is contemplating a plan proposed by her staff that involves ordering her subordinate units to engage in activity other than the routine missions for which they are equipped and trained, outside Fort Bragg in the city of Fayetteville, North Carolina; for example, assisting with the construction of a public park using appropriated funds, at the request of the city’s mayor. This concept is not based on an order from her commander, the commanding general of XVIII Airborne Corps and Fort Bragg. The 82nd Airborne Division commander will turn to her staff judge advocate (SJA), a colonel, for an opinion (formal or informal) about the legality of such an action. The SJA will turn to the junior JAGs he supervises, those whose portfolio includes “operational law” (a bit of a catch-all category but one that definitely excludes criminal law, contract law, administrative law, and family law). Those JAGs will execute a legal review of every order before it is published and disseminated, ensuring that it complies with federal fiscal law constraints and Defense Department regulations governing the use of military resources in civilian communities. The review shouldn’t take long, as those same JAGs are fully integrated into the commander’s staff, who developed the order in the first place. But this routine is categorically different from the next scenario.
(2) The 82nd Airborne Division commander has received an order to conduct armed “joint policing patrols with local law enforcement agencies” from her higher headquarters, the XVIII Airborne Corps, which received an order from its higher headquarters, U.S. Forces Command, which received an order from the Joint Staff and secretary of defense. Even though military law clearly establishes that orders are to be “presumed lawful” by the recipient (and a person has an affirmative defense to disobeying orders only when they are “patently unlawful”), the division commander is at least initially concerned about its legality and wants to either push back or—if necessary—disobey the order if she concludes it’s illegal. Under this circumstance, she will turn to her SJA to determine if there are legal issues with the order (for example, under the Posse Comitatus Act) and ask the SJA to consult their superior.
The latter request will result in her SJA contacting the SJA assigned to the corps headquarters staff (advising the three-star corps commanding general), who then may go up to the SJA for the four-star Army Forces Command, who may go up to the legal counsel to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or the Defense Department’s Office of General Counsel. That conversation sequence—outside the chain of command—will be aimed at trying to resolve any ambiguities in the order that might raise legal questions and/or ultimately asking the legal adviser to the principal decision-maker (the originator of the order) whether he or she reviewed the order. If the answer is yes, and there is a general consensus among SJAs about the order’s lawfulness (regardless of whether it is a “good” idea), the SJA at the 82nd Airborne Division will then attempt to resolve any lingering concerns that the division commander has about it, allaying fears that it is an unlawful order. However, if the legal counsel to the order-giver did not review it before it was transmitted down the chain and/or is convinced by fellow JAGs that it is problematic, then that legal adviser will counsel the order-giver accordingly to rescind or modify it.
The key difference between these two scenarios is the orders’ origination. In the first scenario, a senior operational commander is thinking about issuing an order (under normal, non extremis conditions) that she is not certain is lawful. In the second scenario, by contrast, a senior operational commander questions the legality of an order received under extremis conditions that she is not certain is lawful and might—if pressed—disobey if she determines it is. In scenario one, the immediately supporting SJA is certainly involved. In scenario two, the SJA should not be involved in the same way because it implies advising the commander during her consideration about whether to break the law—that is, not to follow the order, exposing the commander to criminal charges under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).
For two reasons, the latter is deeply problematic. First, under those conditions, that conversation is tantamount to an attorney-client relationship, which is a relationship that does not exist between any SJA and the commander. This lack of attorney-client relationship is clearly conveyed in military regulations governing the ethical duties of military lawyers; the SJA—as for all of his subordinate attorneys—owes professional duties of loyalty, candor, competence, and confidentiality to the Department of Defense, not to an individual commander.
Second, even if that conversation isn’t tantamount to a confidential conversation with a client, it raises the prospect that the SJA might be aiding and abetting the violation of an order, a crime under Article 77 of the UCMJ. Regardless of whether, in a real-world scenario, the SJA would ignore these risks and likely still counsel that commander, professional ethics and regulatory demands prevent the SJA from giving advice directly to that commander post-order receipt under these abnormal conditions. The conversation chain between the lawyers up through the echelons is the sole method by which the order’s questionable legality is discussed and, if necessary, amended before being republished.
The takeaway: The essential—if not only—point in space and time when a senior JAG leader (the SJA; possibly the service TJAG) can permissibly counsel against an unlawful or unconstitutional order is with the originator of the order itself—the issuer—not with the downstream recipients of the order (in this case, the commander).
But disobeying an order is a criminal offense, so one might believe that the commander can and should consult a uniformed defense counsel and that this intervention could be a sufficient check. That option is also foreclosed. “Trial defense counsel” (the only military lawyers authorized by regulation and statute to provide privileged criminal defense representation for the violation of purely military crimes like disobeying an order) cannot be consulted by that senior commander. The JAGs doing criminal defense work—in any of the services—are specifically assigned to those roles by the JAG Corps’ leadership for specified periods (in the Army, usually two to three years), and fall under separate siloed organizations beyond the authority of the SJA and the unit chain-of-command, a relationship designed to ensure independence and zealous advocacy. By regulation, they are not permitted to provide counsel (and thereby start an attorney-client relationship) to any service member until some adverse action has been formally and officially initiated against the service member, commander or not. This would include the nonjudicial punishment process under Article 15 of the UCMJ initiated against the commander, detainment by military law enforcement, being charged under the UCMJ, or notification that an official administrative investigation has been launched against her. Until a commanding officer does something that the higher headquarters deems problematic or unlawful, those commanders have no way to access uniformed criminal defense attorneys.
Moreover, nearly every military installation has, within its Office of the Staff Judge Advocate, a team of “legal assistance” or “client service”-focused JAGs. But those JAGs cannot provide counsel to the commander under the problematic scenario two either because, despite forming confidential attorney-client relationships with service members or their family members, the legal matters those JAGs are permitted to handle are, by regulation, limited to family law, estate planning, administrative personnel matters, some tort claims, and minor commercial disputes and are almost universally staffed by junior JAG officers still learning to be effective military lawyers. They have neither the experience in military justice (or operational law) nor the professional authority to even engage in consultations implicating a commander’s prospective disobedience of an order.
But what about the hundreds of more junior JAG officers directly assigned to tactical headquarters engaged with the other staff primaries (e.g., logistics, intelligence, communications, operations, personnel, budget) in developing options for commanders, reviewing the legality of orders, and training units on lawful use of force? Not only are they like the SJAs—not positioned to provide advice about whether a received order should be disobeyed—but Hegseth’s mendacity and misunderstanding of uniformed legal advisers throughout the chain of command poses a considerable risk that these officers will be categorically silenced, regardless of whether the commanders benefiting from that legal advice advocate for them.
The Secretary’s Animus Toward “Jagoffs” Doesn’t Bode Well
Hegseth’s condescendingly obscene remark about military lawyers during his confirmation hearing is already infamous and deserves little retort. But his lack of mature appreciation for the role of judge advocates is likely due to his dearth of experience actually relying on their advice in combat or even observing the vital role that these lawyers play during the operational planning process at headquarters—well above the platoon and company levels with which he is most familiar. JAGs not only help draft the rules of engagement (part of an order ultimately approved by the commander to ensure that these tactical constraints remain compliant with the law of armed conflict), but these officers are the staff’s in-house experts on fiscal law, administrative law, constitutional rights, good order and discipline (including but not limited to the use of the court-martial process), and international law such as treaties and bilateral executive agreements. By the Defense Department’s own doctrine—for “targeting” operations, for compliance with the laws of war, and multidisciplinary expertise and duties on staff—military lawyers have been, and remain, critical force multipliers and staff experts. Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) relied on such expert legal advice from the JAG assigned to that headquarters in overseeing Operation Neptune Spear, the operation that found and killed Osama bin Laden. In fact, that officer was then-Lt. Col. Joseph Berger—who, until Feb. 21, was the Army’s TJAG.
But therein lies a problem: Current law does not mandate the presence of these lawyers at tactical and operational headquarters. In fact, JAGs’ work at the tactical level in combat is a relatively modern innovation, growing out of investigations into the root causes of the 1968 My Lai war crimes and later organizational reforms in the 1980s. Whether Congress could even legislate a requirement that JAG officers be attached to these units without raising a separation of powers problem is a question that would need a law review article to explore, but suffice it to say here that a determined defense secretary could—by a simple administrative directive— remove judge advocates from billets at operational headquarters and thereby remove what he perceives to be a chief obstacle to commanders being, as Greg Jaffe reported, “more aggressive on the battlefield and potentially less hindered by the laws of armed conflict.”
In a nightmare scenario, Army units could be deployed to the southern border to combat an “invasion,” blending immigration law enforcement among American residential communities and counterterrorist operations against narcotics cartels operating from inside Mexico—without JAGs to advise commanders. Those commanders, who are often entrusted with significant discretion and freedom from the Pentagon, will have to plan and conduct operations that implicate the nuances of international law and the complex interplay between national security authorities (over the use of force, intelligence and surveillance, interrogation, and detention), while considering the constitutional rights of those inside American territory.
What Can be Done?
My emphasis on realism should not be confused with fatalism, or in any way be considered a criticism of the legal ability, good faith, and officer professionalism of my former JAG colleagues. Nor should this commentary be construed as speaking on their behalf because, under the UCMJ, their freedom to publicly criticize controversial actions by political officials is most certainly restrained (see the Army Public Affairs Program; UCMJ Articles 88, 133, and 134; and this seminal 1974 Supreme Court opinion). It is too soon to tell whether the “fresh blood” that Hegseth wants at the top of the service JAG Corps will continue to provide the thoughtful, independent counsel that their professional ethics and the law (see, for example, 10 U.S.C. § 7037(e)(1)) requires if and when the administration attempts a legally questionable use of the military here or abroad. But JAGs much further down the chain of command outside the Pentagon, faced with the potential marginalization or erasure of their expertise, can and should conscientiously and professionally resist that push. They have several grounds on which to stand firm:
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10 U.S.C. § 7037(e)(2) is Congress’s assertion that judge advocate officers’ independence, expertise, judgment, and advice matter to the effective execution of all lawful military operations (each service has an identical statutory protection).
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The Department of Defense has not rescinded the Law of War Manual, or canceled the Law of War Program, both of which clearly highlight that military operations must always be in accordance with the rule of law—both domestic and international.
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Nor has the department removed JAGs from joint doctrine manuals that emphasize the critical support role they play in planning operations, advising on strikes, representing service members’ interests, litigating in court, interpreting statutory and constitutional requirements, and providing ethics advice to leaders.
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As commissioned officers, JAGs take an oath to support and defend the Constitution, but they also swear an oath when they become licensed attorneys in their states and are obliged to serve according to their bar’s rules of professional conduct and their service’s rules of professional conduct for lawyers.
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As commissioned officers with inherent authority, and as advisers to commanders, JAGs are bound to embody (and help commanders embody) this statutory “Requirement for Exemplary Conduct,” Congress’s expectation and reminder about their moral compass.
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Speaking of compasses—a previous Army TJAG repeatedly urged those lawyers under his charge to remember four cardinal “constants” in their practice, unique to their professional roles above simply being commissioned officers: principled counsel, mastery of the law, servant leadership, and stewardship of the profession. “Principled counsel” includes expectations that “appropriate candor and moral courage” can and will influence decisions (it has since been removed inexplicably from the Army JAG Corps’ public website but is still found in the Army doctrine on legal operations).
What can Congress do? Besides diligently performing its oversight functions and generally being more discerning before confirming an underqualified nominee to the Department of Defense, Congress can use its “make rules” power under Article I, Section 8, Clause 14 of the Constitution to amend the UCMJ. Specifically, because the code retains jurisdiction over conduct that might violate the laws of war (see UCMJ Article 18), Congress can legislatively incorporate the Defense Department’s Law of War Manual by reference as binding interpretation of the international law of war within the department (just as Congress did in 2016, limiting U.S. government interrogation methods to those in the Army field manual on interrogations) and require that tactical units in the Armed Forces always have the service of attached JAGs able to render independent advice and assist in planning operations. This is no different from the statutory requirement that courts-martial prosecutions are litigated and presided over by qualified judge advocates.
***
To be sure, nothing can undo the damage of summarily relieving the three TJAGs left on the Department of Defense and the service JAG Corps. Like earlier leadership “massacres” (Thursday or Saturday), this too will be fodder for public debate and academic study, and will have negative downstream effects for those remaining—who are still expected to uphold the principles of the “dual profession” of arms and law. To the extent that Hegseth’s relief of the TJAGs makes that harder, and existing occupational duties limit the provision of key advice to commanders unnerved by legally questionable orders, there is cause for alarm.
8. A federal judge says the USAID shutdown likely violated the Constitution
I guess there will be a showdown at the Supreme Court. What happens if the Administration does not abide by the court's order? How do our three branches of government reconcile the differences?
Is the executive now the dominant branch and the ultimate decider? Is the theory of executive power going to undo our constitutional republic?
A federal judge says the USAID shutdown likely violated the Constitution
Updated March 18, 20257:49 PM ET
By
Fatma Tanis
,
Benjamin Swasey
NPR · by By
Former U.S. Agency for International Development employees terminated after the Trump administration effectively dismantled the agency collect their personal belongings at USAID headquarters on Feb. 27 in Washington, D.C. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
The Trump administration likely violated the Constitution when it effectively shuttered the U.S. Agency for International Development, a federal judge has ruled.
In a 68-page opinion Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Theodore Chuang, an Obama appointee, wrote that "the Court finds that Defendants' actions taken to shut down USAID on an accelerated basis, including its apparent decision to permanently close USAID headquarters without the approval of a duly appointed USAID Officer, likely violated the United States Constitution in multiple ways, and that these actions harmed not only Plaintiffs, but also the public interest, because they deprived the public's elected representatives in Congress of their constitutional authority to decide whether, when, and how to close down an agency created by Congress."
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The plaintiffs are more than two dozen unnamed current or recently fired employees and contractors of USAID. The defendants are Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency.
In his ruling, Chuang wrote that "the evidence presently favors the conclusion that contrary to Defendants' sweeping claim that Musk has acted only as an advisor, Musk made the decisions to shutdown USAID's headquarters and website even though he lacked the authority to make that decision."
In an earlier court filing in the case, the Department of Justice claimed that "the undisputed evidence reflects that USAID leadership—not Defendants—are responsible for the actions Plaintiffs contest."
President Trump responded to the ruling in an interview with Fox News' Laura Ingraham on Tuesday, saying, "We have a judge from a very liberal state who ruled like that — so bad for our country." He added that the agency needed to be closed because of waste, fraud and abuse.
"I guarantee you we will be appealing it," Trump said, of the decision. "We have rogue judges that are destroying our country."
Several times in recent days, Trump and the White House have criticized federal judges who've ruled against the executive branch's authority.
USAID employees who were fired or put on administrative leave were told to show up at the now-shuttered USAID headquarters in Washington, D.C., late last month to collect their belongings. A week ago, Secretary of State Marco Rubio canceled most foreign aid contracts.
"Today's decision is an important victory against Elon Musk and his DOGE attack on USAID, the United States' government, and the Constitution," Norm Eisen — executive chair of State Democracy Defenders Fund, the group that represented the plaintiffs — said in a statement. "They are performing surgery with a chainsaw instead of a scalpel, harming not just the people USAID serves but also the majority of Americans who count on the stability of our government. This case is a milestone in pushing back on Musk and DOGE's illegality."
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Chuang, in his opinion, ordered DOGE team members "to reinstate access to email, payments, security notifications, and other electronic systems, including restoring deleted emails, for current USAID employees" and contractors. He also blocked defendants from taking any more steps to shut down USAID.
But with the majority of USAID's programs already terminated, and its staff whittled down to a couple hundred people, it wasn't immediately clear what kind of impact the judge's order would have on an effectively shuttered agency.
In a statement, Abby Maxman, president of Oxfam America, said the ruling was "a welcome reprieve" for agency staffers "but more is needed to stop the administration's illegal dismantling of an independent agency. We need all funding and all staff to be fully reinstated immediately so that the vital work that saves lives around the world can go on."
Jeremy Konyndyk — president of Refugees International, who oversaw USAID's response to the 2014 Ebola outbreak— told NPR he found the judge's remedy "a little disappointing."
"The narrow relief that it grants would not be related to USAID's [contracting] partners and funding recipients, it's really specific to the workforce," Konyndyk said.
Still, Konyndyk said the judge's ruling is "a really relevant, meaningful decision" in stating for the record that DOGE and Musk's actions in shutting down USAID likely violated the Constitution.
"Musk is acting as a sort of para-governmental free agent in destroying a federal agency where he has the backing and the authorization of the president of the United States, and yet has not been endowed with any actual formal authority, according to the government," Konyndyk said.
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9. America’s voice, silenced
Management issues aside, and we should all acknowledge that all bureaucracies could and should be improved (with the right leadership and oversight), we must consider the contribution to US National Security and how the US needs to effectively compete in the information space. Otherwise China, Russia, et el., get to control the narrative in their occupied countries (occupied by dictators) and denied areas.
If you believe the negative propaganda about Voce of America I would ask you to consider how much you really know about its missions and activities, and how much you have actually seen of the reports from the professional journalists and the information they are transmitting to foreign target audiences on behalf of the American people and to explain America in general and US policies in particular to foreign target audiences. I see so many comments from people I know have absolutely know experience with Voice of America and are just parroting talking points from those with an agenda.
These agencies use budget dust for funding and have little impact on the debt (but yes every dollar does country).
Opinion
Editorial Board
America’s voice, silenced
Trump is dismantling programs that push back against dictatorship and reach people in closed societies.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/03/17/trump-voa-global-media-shutdown-dictators/?utm
March 17, 2025 at 1:56 p.m. EDTMarch 17, 2025
4 min
456
A crew from Voice of America reports from outside President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, on Dec. 13. (Roberto Schmidt/AFP/Getty Images)
President Donald Trump has taken a wrecking ball to some of the most effective overseas programs run by the United States to reach people in closed societies and push back against dictators. Some of these programs have been at the front lines in the fight for democracy for three-quarters of a century. They must be saved from destruction.
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In the first weeks of his presidency, Trump and Elon Musk slashed democracy and humanitarian programs at the U.S. Agency for International Development. Then, administration officials attempted to close the spigot of funding to the National Endowment for Democracy, a nonprofit organization that receives federal grants to support human rights abroad. The endowment went to court, arguing the funds had been expressly designated by Congress. Faced with the lawsuit, the administration restored the money.
These preliminary moves were followed on Friday by a devastating new wave of shutdown demands. Trump ordered the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for Global Media and terminated funding for organizations it oversees: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, Voice of America, Middle East Broadcasting Networks and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, which runs Radio and Television Martí. All employees of the VOA, Middle East and Cuba operations were put on immediate administrative leave. Also affected is the Open Technology Fund, which has, among other things, helped outlets circumvent blocks by authoritarian regimes.
Many Americans are only vaguely aware of these organizations and their mission. Their vital work faces outward into a world of increasingly formidable despotism. RFE/RL and VOA began in the early days of the Cold War; RFA was founded in 1996. For the most part, these are not radio broadcasters but digital channels that have earned respect around the world. All of them attempt to use straightforward news and information to reach people trapped in tyranny who are denied the truth by their own rulers. Their strategy is to shine by example; the U.S. export of reliable reporting stands in sharp contrast with the warped propaganda shoveled out by Russia, China and other dictatorships.
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This is the epitome of “soft power” for the United States, the muscle that comes not from armies but from credible news and information. On a weekly basis, 60 million people turn to RFA and more than 47 million to RFE/RL in 27 languages across 23 nations in Europe, the Near East and Central Asia. VOA reaches some 360 million people in nearly 50 languages every week. Radio Farda, RFE/RL’s Persian-language service, has an especially large following among young people in Iran, who have been driving protests and demands for change. Is the United States now going to abandon them to the whims of Iran’s theocracy?
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At a time when Freedom House estimates that global democracy has been in retreat for 18 consecutive years, Trump is threatening to destroy programs put in place over decades with bipartisan support. President Ronald Reagan understood the potent superpower of America’s voice. Why can’t today’s Republicans and their president also grasp it?
These organizations take risks on the ground, employing journalists up against great odds to learn the truth. Many staff could face dangerous repercussions if the outlets go silent and they lose their institutional backup. Four RFE journalists are currently imprisoned by foreign regimes, including Russia and Belarus. If all these courageous reporters and editors suddenly stop — as ordered by the president — millions of people will be abandoned to dictatorships that treat information as a tool of control.
The dictators have long wished for exactly this outcome. Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping would prefer the world never learn of Russia’s brutal treatment of Alexei Navalny in prison or China consigning more than 1 million Uyghurs to concentration camps. Already, Freedom House has been forced by grant cutbacks to terminate the China Dissent Monitor, which tracked the frequency and diversity of grassroots dissent across China.
Government grants should be scrutinized for effectiveness. But the wrecking-ball method is something different. Friday’s terminations run against explicit legislative authorization by Congress, making them appear to be illegal and unconstitutional. It is time for Secretary of State Marco Rubio, long a champion of battling totalitarianism, to speak out on behalf of these organizations. Congress should waste no time rescuing them and asserting its authority against Trump’s usurpation.
America’s beacon is flickering and faltering. It must not be extinguished by Trump’s careless hand.
10. Zelensky Warns: Russia Massing Troops for Multi-Front Offensive in Coming Months
Will critics denounce him as the boy who cried wolf or chicken little? Or can intelligence analysis back up these claims?
Zelensky Warns: Russia Massing Troops for Multi-Front Offensive in Coming Months
Zelensky said Putin will use Trump to weaken Ukraine, then try to take Sumy, Kharkiv, and Zaporizhzhia regions, so the Kremlin can dictate terms from a position of strength, with White House help.
https://www.kyivpost.com/post/49171
by Kyiv Post | Mar. 19, 2025, 9:25 am
Russia is moving troops to Ukraine’s border in the Sumy region and preparing a new offensive on multiple fronts, President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
Addressing the situation near Russia’s Kursk Oblast, Zelensky during an online press conference stated that Ukrainian forces remain steadfast in their positions.
“The Ukrainian military is there and will stay as long as we need this operation. We see that Putin is talking about the alleged encirclement of our forces, but our soldiers are holding their ground, proving this is not true,” the president said.
“These are our strategic steps, and we will do everything to prevent his attempts to seize new territories,” Zelensky said.
Zelensky highlighted the growing concentration of Russian troops near the border and warned of potential new attacks on the Sumy, Kharkiv, and Zaporizhzhia regions.
“We see a buildup of forces in Kursk. They aim to strike Sumy, Kharkiv, and Zaporizhzhia – this is clear. But we will not let them advance easily,” he said.
According to Zelensky, Putin seeks to apply maximum pressure on Ukraine before attempting to dictate terms from a position of strength.
“When will this happen? He will try to do all this in the coming months. He will want to advance and seize as much territory as possible,” the president told reporters.
Zelensky also spoke about potential peace negotiations, stressing the need for clear details from the US and its role in the process.
Other Topics of Interest
You can’t say that the Trump administration is short on spectacle and drama. But how should serious politicians cope with all the seemingly intentional confusion?
“If President Trump can press for details and ensure that attacks on energy infrastructure and the Black Sea stop, that will be the first step. Whatever happens, we will support measures that reduce attacks on civilian and military infrastructure,” he said.
However, he expressed doubts that Russia was even ready to take the first step toward ending the war. He warned that if Russia attacks Ukraine’s energy sector, “we will not remain silent – we will respond.”
Although, according to Zelensky, Ukraine has always adhered to the principle of not targeting energy infrastructure.
According to him, Putin is making demands on US President Donald Trump to weaken Ukraine. In particular, Putin is raising the sensitive issue of mobilization because he wants to reduce the size of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU).
He added that the Kremlin is also pushing for the cessation of not only US military aid but also any other country’s military aid, seeking to weaken Ukraine as much as possible.
Despite these efforts, Zelensky is confident that Ukraine’s partners will continue providing support.
“We are not a salad or a compote to be on Putin’s menu, despite his appetites,” President Zelensky said.
11. JFK assassination files released, sending history buffs hunting for new clues
Someone please give us the short version answers?
Is there a smoking gun?
Did the Russians do it?
Did the Mafia do it?
Did the CIA do it?
Inquiring minds want to know.
JFK assassination files released, sending history buffs hunting for new clues
By JAMIE STENGLE
Updated 1:23 AM EDT, March 19, 2025
AP · March 18, 2025
DALLAS (AP) — More than 63,000 pages of records related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy were released Tuesday following an order by President Donald Trump, many without the redactions that had confounded historians for years and helped fuel conspiracy theories.
The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration posted to its website roughly 2,200 files containing the documents. The vast majority of the National Archives’ collection of over 6 million pages of records, photographs, motion pictures, sound recordings and artifacts related to the assassination have previously been released.
Larry J. Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics and author of “The Kennedy Half-Century,” said it will take time to fully review the records.
Part of a file, dated Nov. 24, 1963, quoting FBI director J. Edgar Hoover as he talks about the death of Lee Harvey Oswald, is photographed in Washington, Oct. 26, 2017. (AP Photo/Jon Elswick, File)
“We have a lot of work to do for a long time to come, and people just have to accept that,” he said.
Trump announced the release Monday while visiting the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, saying his administration would be releasing about 80,000 pages.
“We have a tremendous amount of paper. You’ve got a lot of reading,” Trump said.
Secret servicemen standing on running boards follow the presidential limousine carrying President John F. Kennedy, right, rear seat, and first lady Jacqueline Kennedy, left, as well as Texas Gov. John Connally and his wife, Nellie, in Dallas, Texas, Nov. 22, 1963. (AP Photo/Jim Altgens, File)
Before Tuesday, researchers had estimated that 3,000 to 3,500 files were still unreleased, either wholly or partially. And just last month the FBI said it had discovered about 2,400 new records related to the assassination.
Jefferson Morley, vice president of the Mary Ferrell Foundation, a repository for files related to the assassination, said in a statement posted on the social platform X that the release is “an encouraging start.” He said much of the “rampant overclassification of trivial information has been eliminated” from the documents.
The National Archives said on its website that in accordance with the president’s directive, the release would encompass “all records previously withheld for classification.” But Morley said what was released Tuesday did not include two-thirds of the promised files, any of the recently discovered FBI files or 500 Internal Revenue Service records.
This Nov. 22, 1963 file photo shows President John F. Kennedy riding in motorcade with first lady Jacqueline Kenndy in Dallas, Texas. (AP Photo, file)
“Nonetheless, this is the most positive news on the release of JFK files since the 1990s,” Morley said.
Interest in details related to Kennedy’s assassination has been intense over the decades, with countless conspiracy theories spawned about multiple shooters and involvement by the Soviet Union and mafia.
He was killed Nov. 22, 1963, on a visit to Dallas, when his motorcade was finishing its parade route downtown and shots rang out from the Texas School Book Depository building. Police arrested 24-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald, who had positioned himself from a sniper’s perch on the sixth floor. Two days later nightclub owner Jack Ruby fatally shot Oswald during a jail transfer.
A year after the assassination, the Warren Commission, which President Lyndon B. Johnson established to investigate, concluded that Oswald acted alone and that there was no evidence of a conspiracy. But that didn’t quell a web of alternative theories over the decades.
Oswald was a former Marine who defected to the Soviet Union before returning home to Texas.
Files in the new release included a memo from the CIA’s St. Petersburg station from November 1991 saying that earlier that month, a CIA official befriended a U.S. professor there who told the official about a friend who worked for the KGB. The memo said the KGB official had reviewed “five thick volumes” of files on Oswald and was “confident that Oswald was at no time an agent controlled by the KGB.”
The memo added that as Oswald was described in the files, the KGB official doubted “that anyone could control Oswald, but noted that the KGB watched him closely and constantly while he was in the USSR.” It also noted that the file reflected that Oswald was a poor shot when he tried target firing in the Soviet Union.
In the early 1990s, the federal government mandated that all assassination-related documents be housed in a single collection in the National Archives and Records Administration. The collection was required to be opened by 2017, barring any exemptions designated by the president.
Newly-elected President Kennedy posed for first pictures at his White House desk, Jan. 21, 1961, before plunging into a busy round of conferences. (AP Photo/Bill Achatz, File)
Trump, who took office for his first term in 2017, had said that he would allow the release of all of the remaining records but ended up holding some back because of what he called the potential harm to national security. And while files continued to be released during President Joe Biden’s administration, some remained unseen.
Sabato said that his team has a “long, long list” of sensitive documents it is looking for that previously had large redactions.
“There must be something really, really sensitive for them to redact a paragraph or a page or multiple pages in a document like that,” he said. “Some of it’s about Cuba, some of it’s about what the CIA did or didn’t do relevant to Lee Harvey Oswald.”
Some of the previously released documents have offered details on the way intelligence services operated at the time, including CIA cables and memos discussing visits by Oswald to the Soviet and Cuban embassies during a trip to Mexico City just weeks before the assassination.
___
Associated Press writer John Hanna contributed from Topeka, Kansas.
AP · March 18, 2025
12. US Army rapidly ridding itself of old weapons requirements
The Army can be a learning, adapting, and anticipating organization.
This seems like a very important initiative.
Excerpts:
The service’s new process is essentially an Army Requirements Oversight Council, or AROC, event — but in reverse. Instead of approving new requirements, as the panel usually does, the service approves their removal. The Army is calling it CORA, which is coincidentally a backwards “AROC,” but stands for Continuous Objectives Requirements Analysis.
“What we are doing is we are actually using some automated tools to go back and take a look and see what’s still relevant with all these requirements documents,” Gingrich said at the McAleese Defense Programs conference in Arlington, Virginia. “Often, old requirements are still associated with some operations and sustainment funding, which can be allocated elsewhere.”
US Army rapidly ridding itself of old weapons requirements
Defense News · by Jen Judson · March 18, 2025
In its process of weeding through nearly 2,000 weapons requirements documents amassed over decades within the U.S. Army, the service has removed over 400 outdated requirements to free up funds and clean up its books, said Lt. Gen. Karl Gingrich, the Army’s deputy chief of staff G-8.
The Army embarked on an effort last year to weed through its mountain of formal requirements for any equipment or resources, from networks to weapons, that it might want to discard due to their stale or outdated nature.
Requirements describe desired capabilities that the military wants to have. There’s a sizable bureaucracy in the armed forces devoted to creating and refining requirements, passing them to acquisition specialists as the basis for eventual programs. Lousy requirements have led to billions of dollars wasted in the Army and elsewhere in the U.S. military.
The service’s new process is essentially an Army Requirements Oversight Council, or AROC, event — but in reverse. Instead of approving new requirements, as the panel usually does, the service approves their removal. The Army is calling it CORA, which is coincidentally a backwards “AROC,” but stands for Continuous Objectives Requirements Analysis.
“What we are doing is we are actually using some automated tools to go back and take a look and see what’s still relevant with all these requirements documents,” Gingrich said at the McAleese Defense Programs conference in Arlington, Virginia. “Often, old requirements are still associated with some operations and sustainment funding, which can be allocated elsewhere.”
As the Army validates new requirements coming online, the service is looking to identify requirements on the books that are rendered invalid as a result of new or changing requirements, Gingrich explained.
“We are becoming more sophisticated,” Gingrich noted. The service is now able to — when writing new requirements — dive into old requirements using the CORA process and align resources from old requirements that are tied to new ones.
For instance, the Army is working to completely overhaul its command and control architecture through an effort called Next-Generation Command-and-Control. The previous capability consisted of a variety of essentially disparate systems. The Army was able to identify old requirements that established those “vertical systems” and off-ramped the money applied to those requirements.
“We will bring it into Next-Gen C2 in the future so that we ensure there’s no money out there going toward legacy systems,” Gingrich said.
About Jen Judson
Jen Judson is an award-winning journalist covering land warfare for Defense News. She has also worked for Politico and Inside Defense. She holds a Master of Science degree in journalism from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Kenyon College.
13. Report to Congress on The Army’s Multi-Domain Task Force
The 3 page CRS report can be downloaded here: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25590848-the-armys-multi-domain-task-force-mdtf-march-17-2025/
I think the Army should experiment with a combined multi-domain task force in Korea with Korean and US military units.
Report to Congress on The Army’s Multi-Domain Task Force
U.S. Naval Institute Staff
March 18, 2025 10:12 AM
The following is the March 17, 2025, Congressional Research Service In Focus report: The Army’s Multi-Domain Task Force (MDTF).
From the report
The Significance of the Multi-Domain Task Force (MDTF)
Congress has expressed concern about the threat to U.S. national security posed by Russia and China. The Army believes to address this threat, it must be able to operate in a multi-domain (air, land, water, space, cyber, information) environment, requiring new operational concepts, technologies, weapons, and units. The Multi-Domain Task Force (MDTF) is the Army’s self-described “organizational centerpiece” of this effort.
What Is a Multi-Domain Task Force?
The Army’s Chief of Staff Paper #1: Army Multi-Domain Transformation Ready to Win in Competition and Conflict dated March 16, 2021, describes the Multi-Domain Task Force (MDTF) as “theater-level maneuver elements designed to synchronize precision effects and precision fires in all domains against adversary anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) networks in all domains, enabling joint forces to execute their operational plan (OPLAN)-directed roles.”
What Is Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD)? Anti-Access is any action, activity, or capability designed to prevent an advancing military force from entering an operational area. Area Denial is any action, activity, or capability designed to limit an adversarial force’s freedom of action within an operational area. Threat A2/AD defenses are composed of layered and integrated long-range precision-strike systems, littoral anti-ship capabilities
MDTF Organization
The diagram at Figure 1 depicts a notional generic MDTF.
The Army notes each MDTF is to be tailored to Combatant Commander requirements, so it is possible the notional MDTF in Figure 1 may contain more, fewer, or other types of units depending on the requirements of its assigned theater of operations.
Army Plans for MDTFs
The Army originally planned to build five MDTFs: two aligned to the Indo-Pacific region; one aligned to Europe; one stationed in the Arctic region and oriented on multiple threats; and a fifth MDTF aligned for global response
1st MDTF
The 1st MDTF is headquartered at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, WA and aligned to the U.S. Army Pacific. Since its 2017 activation, it has participated in a variety of exercises. In February 2023, the 1st MDTF’s long-range fires battalion, 5th Battalion, 3rd Field Artillery Regiment, deployed a LRHW system over 3,100 miles from Joint Base Lewis-McChord to Cape Canaveral, FL, during Thunderbolt Strike, a full rehearsal of expeditionary hypersonic launch capabilities.
2nd MDTF
On April 13, 2021, the Army announced it would station its 2nd MDTF in Germany. The Germany-based MDTF is to support U.S. Army Europe and Africa. On September 16, 2021, the Army activated the 2nd MDTF at Clay Kaserne in Wiesbaden, initially consisting of a headquarters element; an intelligence, cyberspace, electronic warfare, and space detachment; and a brigade support company.
14. China conducts air and sea drills near Taiwan in response to US and Taiwanese statements
Words have meaning. Actions create consequences.
China conducts air and sea drills near Taiwan in response to US and Taiwanese statements
By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN
Updated 5:54 AM EDT, March 18, 2025
AP · March 18, 2025
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — An unusually large number of Chinese military ships, planes and drones entered airspace and waters surrounding Taiwan between Sunday and Monday, the self-governing island’s Defense Ministry said.
China said the drills were a response to recent statements and actions by the United States and Taiwan. Beijing launches such missions on a daily basis, seeking to wear down Taiwanese defenses and morale, although the vast majority of the island’s 23 million people reject its claim of sovereignty over Taiwan.
Taiwanese Defense Minister Wellington Koo told legislators the drills were further evidence China was a “troublemaker” endangering peace in the region.
The ministry on Tuesday published on social media images of Chinese drones and ships. It said 43 out of 59 entered Taiwan’s air defense identification zone but that no confrontations were reported. Taiwan monitored the situation and deployed aircraft, navy ships and coastal anti-ship missile defenses in response, the ministry said.
It’s unclear what prompted the large Chinese deployment. Daily figures often vary widely based on statements by the Taiwanese authorities or their U.S. partners.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said Monday that the drills were “a resolute response to foreign connivance and support for Taiwan independence, and a serious warning to Taiwan separatist forces.”
China’s military actions are “necessary, legal and justified measures to defend national sovereignty, security and territorial integrity,” Mao said.
“The United States deleted the literal expression that reflected the one-China principle and that did not support Taiwan independence on the website of the U.S. Department of State, which indicates wrong signals to Taiwan separatist forces,” Mao was quoted as saying.
Taiwanese President William Lai Ching-te also raised Beijing’s hackles last week when he said that Taiwan law designates mainland China as a “foreign hostile force” and said tougher measures were being taken to prevent Chinese subversion through the media and civic exchanges. Lai also warned of the danger of influential figures and current and retired military members selling secrets to China.
The Taiwan Strait is an international body of water and one of the most important channels for global trade. While China does not interfere with civilian shipping in the Strait — or in the South China Sea to the south that it claims almost in its entirety — it routinely objects to actions by the U.S. and other foreign navies in the area.
China on Saturday lashed out at accusations by top diplomats from the Group of 7 industrialized democracies who said Beijing is endangering maritime safety.
The G7 in a joint statement condemned China’s “illicit, provocative, coercive and dangerous actions that seek unilaterally to alter the status quo in such a way as to risk undermining the stability of regions, including through land reclamations, and building of outposts, as well as their use for military purpose.”
China said the statement was “filled with arrogance, prejudice and malicious intentions.”
Faced with the rising threat from China, Taiwan has ordered new missiles, aircraft and other armaments from the U.S., while revitalizing its own defense industry.
Taiwan and China split amid civil war 76 years ago, but Chinese leader Xi Jinping has continued to make bringing the island to heel a top priority of his administration even as it faces economic headwinds and a race for high technology with the West.
AP · March 18, 2025
15. Putin just called Trump’s bluff on Ukraine, with the Russian art of the ‘no’ deal
Deals over doctrine.
When the bluff is called then you have to act or you will never be able to bluff again in the future.
Putin just called Trump’s bluff on Ukraine, with the Russian art of the ‘no’ deal | CNN
CNN · by Nick Paton Walsh · March 18, 2025
Journalist on Russia's 'wanted list' breaks down 'alpha male' message from Putin to Trump
02:01 - Source: CNN
Journalist on Russia's 'wanted list' breaks down 'alpha male' message from Putin to Trump
02:01
CNN —
A “no” is not a “yes” when it is a “maybe,” a “probably not,” or an “only if.”
This is the painfully predictable lesson the Trump administration’s first real foray into wartime diplomacy with the Kremlin has dealt. They’ve been hopelessly bluffed.
They asked for a 30-day, frontline-wide ceasefire, without conditions. On Tuesday, they got – after a theatrical week-long wait and hundreds more lives lost – a relatively small prisoner swap, hockey matches, more talks, and – per the Kremlin readout – a month-long mutual pause on attacks against “energy infrastructure.”
This last phrase is where an easily avoidable technical minefield begins. Per US President Donald Trump’s post and that of his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, the agreement concerned “energy and infrastructure.” These are two entirely different sets of ideas.
Russia says it will not attack Ukraine’s electricity grids and gas supplies, as it has mercilessly over the past years, to the extent that Ukraine’s winters have always been a dicey dance with icy families and reserve power sources. The White House, confusingly – in a disagreement, typo or translation nuance – has extended this truce to potentially every part of Ukraine that is considered infrastructure: bridges, perhaps key roads, or ports, or railways. It has created conditions that are almost impossible for Russia’s relentless pace of air assaults – which resumed, as they do every night, on Tuesday night – to adhere to.
Arguably, with summer close and the urgent need for Ukrainians to have heating reduced, Moscow ceasing energy infrastructure attacks is less of a concession. For Kyiv, however, the demand they stop hitting Russia’s energy infrastructure removes one of the most potent forms of attack Ukraine has. For months they have used long-range drones and missiles to strike Russia’s oil refineries and pipelines, causing serious damage to the Kremlin’s main fundraising tool: the export of its hydrocarbons, principally to China and India. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appeared amenable to the idea of a pause Tuesday, but said he still needed to know the “details.”
Workers fix a thermal power plant damaged by a Russian missile strike in Ukraine on November 28, 2024.
Gleb Garanich/Reuters
It is important to emphasize that Trump’s long-heralded call with Russian President Vladimir Putin yielded almost nothing bar the predictable fact that the Kremlin head feels he can outmaneuver his counterpart effortlessly. The swap of 175 prisoners and return of 23 seriously wounded Ukrainians is a minor arrangement, and smacks of something already in the works, given the frequency of similar past swaps and the fact it is due to happen as quickly as Wednesday.
Outside of this and the pause in attacks (whichever ones they agreed), Russia used this week-long delay and phone call to emphasize it wants all foreign aid and intelligence sharing halted as part of a deal and a series of “working groups” on Ukraine and Russia-US relations established. “Working groups” is a Russian diplomatic euphemism for fervid disinterest. Putin evidenced as much by apparently executing a pause in energy attacks immediately, but leaving all the stuff he didn’t want to do to another set of meetings at an undefined time. Putin seems set on returning to the idea that all aid to Ukraine be stopped, something which Trump has already done once, for about a week. It will return to their conversation again.
CNN/Reuters
Related live-story Putin agrees to pause attacks on some Ukraine targets after Trump call
Some of these technical traps were laid by the basic nature of the initial Jeddah statement by the US and Ukraine. It was admirable but wildly simplistic to demand an immediate month-long stop to all hostilities in a three-year savage war. The proposal did not take into account how long such a step would take to enact with soldiers often cut off from their command, and made no mention of who would monitor adherence to it.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested “satellites” could provide all the surveillance needed. That is almost certainly true, but as an idea it assumes Moscow would be happy with the United States poring over its front-line positions in great detail and being the arbiter of who violated what. A cynic might say the Jeddah proposal was geared to pander to Trump’s simplistic, yet desirable, demand for immediate peace, but also allow Moscow’s customary and pedantic search for loopholes to get ensnared on its lack of technicalities. And Putin immediately sought to dangle the deal’s feet into these plentiful weeds.
Ultimately, the Kremlin did not seek to discuss “nuances” – the finer points, for example, of whether the OSCE or the UN would police the front line – but instead offered as few concessions as it could without providing Trump with a flat “no.”
Ukrainian servicemen fire a howitzer towards Russian positions at the front line near Donetsk, Ukraine on March 2.
Roman Chop/AP
But a flat “no” is what Trump has received. It is packaged as a “partial ceasefire,” but that is simply the first phase of Russia renewing its decade-long deceptive diplomacy. They have agreed to a pause in attacks that – largely from now on – will damage Moscow’s bank balance. Indeed, the initial and amateur confusion over what was agreed has opened a chasm in any future peace deal wide enough for Putin to drive another full-scale invasion through. Did both sides not set staffers aside after the call to prepare an identical readout of what was agreed?
The vaudeville theater of the past month should provide little comfort that the war is suddenly headed toward peace. Yes, the Trump administration has talked peace in a way that nobody has done so far in this war. But they have also managed to confirm, in short shrift, that Moscow looks for cracks of weakness and mercilessly drives a tank through them.
DOBROPILLIA, UKRAINE - MARCH 10: Devastation is seen after a large scale Russian attack on a residential complex on March 7th that killed 11 people and injured 47 on March 10, 2025 in Dobropillia, Ukraine. U.S. President Donald Trump's recent decision to pause intelligence sharing with Kyiv has sparked concerns in Ukraine that Russian missile strikes could now strike cities without prior warning. (Photo by Paula Bronstein / Getty Images)
Paula Bronstein/Getty Images
Related article Trump’s dream of peace in Ukraine now must meet Russian reality
Trump felt he could either persuade, coax, or outsmart Putin. He has yet to do any of that. He has palpably lost in their first direct diplomatic face-off. For millions of Ukrainians his next choice defines their lives. Does he lose interest, apply pressure, or again provide concessions? It is a dizzying prospect.
His adversary is focused not on improved relations with Russia’s decades-long adversary, the United States, or with its current president, Donald Trump, but instead on victory in its most existential conflict since the Nazis.
These are not two similar perspectives to the deal. The art of one is more applied than the other.
CNN · by Nick Paton Walsh · March 18, 2025
16. Strategic Affairs no. 47: Trump Is Damaging U.S. National Security by Joseph Collins
Strategic Affairs no. 47
Trump Is Damaging U.S. National Security
https://josephcollins77.substack.com/p/strategic-affairs-no-47?utm
Joseph Collins
Mar 18, 2025
Strategic Affairs no. 47
Trump’s Damaging U.S. National Security
March 18, 2025
U.S. National Security requires a lot more than ready forces and powerful rockets. It is not just about achieving greater lethality. It’s about securing the national interest at home and abroad. It requires all the tools of statecraft: Diplomacy, Informational, Military, Economic, Financial, Intelligence, and Law Enforcement. In his first 60 days, the Trump administration has damaged each of these instruments and national security policy, as well.
On the diplomatic front, the President and his team have damaged our alliances, the cornerstone of U.S. national security policy. He has picked on our partners in Panama, Mexico, and Canada. He has dissed our core Alliance, NATO, pushing it aside on Ukraine peace making and demanding that it increase defense spending to levels greater than our own.
Alliances are based on power and interests, but they are governed by trust. Our standing among our allies has fallen sharply and the efforts of this Administration have pushed our allies to consider a world without the United States as the lead nation in NATO, an important role given the size of the Russian nuclear arsenal. Yes, the efforts of this Administration have spurred the allies to increase their defense spending, but that has come at the expense of the fabric of the Alliance. Trust takes decades to develop but can erode in months, as we have witnessed in the first 60 days of this chaotic Administration.
Another key aspect of our diplomacy is foreign assistance. Foreign assistance, about 60 billion dollars per year or 1 percent of the federal budget, is key for humanitarian and development work overseas. Much of U.S. foreign assistance went to food and medicine for the poorest or most conflict prone areas of the world. It not only produced good will, but it also produced influence. It provided a counterweight to increased efforts by China.
Early on, Trump cost cutters at DOGE, ignorant of how foreign policy and the separation of powers are supposed to work, zeroed out the entire U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), cancelling its programs and firing most of the foreign service officers and civil servants who administered two-thirds of all American foreign assistance. Food and medical programs were abruptly halted, and the White House even tried to withhold payment of 2 billion dollars for executed contracts. In an embarrassing decision, the Supreme Court ordered the White House to pay the contractors for their work.
The informational instrument is used by every state to tell its own story. The United States chose not to broadcast propaganda, but to tell the world what free journalists saw as the truth. Our vehicle was the Voice of America, which included Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Marti, Radio Asia, and more.
DOGE cost cutters also zeroed out this important entity and are attempting to fire all its employees. Since the end of World War II, the captive nations, which still include Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran could hear the truth, if they didn’t play their radios too loudly. Now, the Voice of America will be silent, removing a counterweight to communist propaganda and disinformation. (Oddly, Tulsi Gabbard, our new Director of National Intelligence, straying from her broad lane, applauded this move, characterizing VOA as leftist and unfair to right-wing parties in East Europe.)
On the military side, there have been cuts to civilian personnel, but there has also been a modest increase in the defense budget and renewed interest in fixing our shipbuilding program. Our CENTCOM forces continue to excel in bringing the fight to the enemy in the Middle East.
At the same time, guided by anti-DEI zealotry, we have seen the firing of a Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, a Commandant of the Coast Guard, and the Chief of Naval Operations. While wrapping this in old saws like “the President needs his own people,” or “they weren’t right for the moment,” it was not lost on observers that these experienced flag officers were all on fixed terms, had no specific failures on their record, and one was Black and the other two, female. A retired three-star general with limited active-duty experience has been nominated to be the new Chairman. Stay tuned for some interesting hearings. In any case, Team Trump has further politicized the high command of the Armed Forces.
Compounding these personnel moves, we now see quasi-Stalinist efforts to erase, not just DEI programs, but diversity in DoD history. Web pages on Black, Hispanic, and Asian Medal of Honor winners and distinguished units have disappeared from DoD-related websites. Even minority recruiting events have been curtailed in the name of anti-DEI zealotry.
This all flies in the face of one fact: before diversity was a human relations program, it was a fact of life in the armed forces. DoD’s uniformed personnel are about 18 percent female and over 30 percent minority. The anti-DEI efforts of the Trump Administration may well create morale problems in the Armed Forces. Are anti-DEI efforts about creating a level playing field, or are they trying to whitewash the force and its history?
Economic and financial instruments underpin the entire national security effort. With the budget set until September 2025, the focus now is on our tariff policy, which has been very much of a moving target. If tariffs come to fruition, it is likely that they will increase the price of everything coming from Canada, Mexico, and China, our three largest trading partners. Higher tariffs will further complicate relations with Europe, which is already reeling from its treatment by the Trump Administration. Throughout this bit of turmoil, our President seems not to believe that tariffs are ultimately a tax on consumers. Talk of a possible recession and continued inflation dominate the financial news channels. Oddly, inflation was the top issue in the election, but President Trump has done next to nothing to combat it.
The Intelligence and law enforcement instruments are more difficult to assess. The FBI and and DOJ have bled much of their senior talent. The FBI Director, Kash Patel is focused on law enforcement, but seems uninterested in intelligence. DoJ and the FBI are now in harness with the White House. This has involved them in a number of partisan witch hunts, to borrow a phrase from the Trump campaign. FBI agents who worked on January 6 insurrection, law firms that allegedly supported Jack Smith, universities, and the House Committee that investigated January 6th, are all under some sort of legal or professional investigation.
As I am typing this, CNN is going on and on about how the White House ignored a court order to return Venezuelan gang members who were being flown without due process to an El Salvadorian supermax prison. Another Tuesday in Washington, another Constitutional crisis.
It would be fine if all of what I have written here was just a case of ‘new team trying to get its feet on the ground.’ Unfortunately, it does not look that way. Some of the biggest errors, like increasing tariffs, are highly valued by the President. The anti-DEI thing --- another sacred cow --- has already gone off the rails. The poor treatment of allies and sympathy for Putin and Russia seem to be a default setting for this crew, annoying our allies and increasing disapproval of the Administration at home.
If I had to wager, I would bet that the second Trump Administration will continue to do severe damage to our national security and the instruments that we need to carry it out. Today, only the courts stand in their way. Only a significant Democratic victory in the mid-term elections can reverse the politics of this sad state of affairs.
Joseph J. Collins is a retired Army Colonel and senior civil servant. He’s been thinking about policy and strategy since the 1970s.
17. Actions create consequences: assumptions about the configuration – Vlad, Xi, and POTUS by Cynthia Watson
Actions create consequences
assumptions about the configuration
https://cynthiawatson.substack.com/p/assumptions-about-the-configuration?utm
Cynthia Watson
Mar 19, 2025
I salute the clarity with which my colleague of four decades, Joe Collins, discussed the fundamental national security differences between this administration and its predecessors. If you follow the link below, you can read Joe's column. I recommend you sign up to read his work regularly.
At the heart of any strategy is examining assumptions. The administration assumes our investment in a world built on an order supporting participatory democracies rather than autocratic, self-gratifying regimes was wasteful and misplaced because lethality in our armed forces will suffice to deter anyone from upending the world. Further, the leadership assumes we can trust the Russian leader to make a good faith commitment to a negotiated peace both sides can support, unquestionably requiring concessions. Finally, the administration assumes China is an enemy, though this is not as clearly defined as it might have seemed during the campaign.
I was party to a phone call yesterday where a professional colleague was highly optimistic that the announced partial ceasefire between Vlad the Impaler and Vlodomir Zelenskyy (despite the latter not being a direct party to the relevant conversations) would isolate Beijing on the global scene. He did not spell out the step-by-step change in relationships (we used to label this step the "theory of the case") but projected massive power shifts would result. To remind us: Vlad and Xi Jinping are still in a strategic embrace previously unseen. Xi provides financial and military assistance to the ever-sagging Russian national security apparatus, allowing Vlad and Xi to meet regularly to proclaim their undying affection for one another in the face of American threats. My colleague assumed a ceasefire indicated Russia would realign with the West, leaving China in the lurch.
Perhaps he is correct, but we are definitely not there now.
I have different assumptions. I cannot envision Putin abiding by any negotiated agreement short of his goal of dismantling Ukraine as a sovereign state. His ties with Zhongnanhai are expeditious for his current needs as a marriage of convenience between two states with a long border and little else in common. Further, Vlad views the relationship with Xi as vital for his aspirations to create a world empowering his range of actions. I don't see Putin's assumptions leading to a reconfiguration of global ambitions to constrain Beijing by allying with us, in other words.
Neither Putin nor Xi ever embraced a world where the United States could dictate behavior to limit their choices. It didn't matter whether Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, or Joe Biden was president: these foreign leaders feared conditions allowing the United States to constrain their actions because we disdain how they both ruled countries.
We, on the other hand, thought their weaknesses (China for almost all of the twentieth century while in Russia after 1989) were permanent rather than what I assume was an aberration in great power status. It would seem that we haven't recalibrated that assumption in Vlad's case.
This is why I often harp on the relevance of time in strategy. Russia and China are willing to let relationships and agreements play out over decades while we are so impatient. We assume we can "fix" the world (this is a bipartisan assumption, by the way) if we offer "rational"—as we see it—options to parties involved, be they in the heart of Europe, the Middle East, or Asia.
The problem is that others, particularly those seeing themselves as great powers, chafe at the assumption that we can dictate their behavior. Americans invariably seek permanence, while the overwhelming understanding elsewhere is that impermanence allows freedom of movement in a moment. Those two sets of assumptions do not mesh.
I hope we all take a moment to consider our friends, allies, and adversaries' assumptions about their particular situations as we should ponder our own. We would rue skipping that vital part of national security strategy-making. If we learned nothing from Vietnam or the War on Terror, we would have assumptions wildly different from those on the ground in those conflicts.
We are rethinking instruments for national security. It's unsurprising that the White House relies on President Trump's phone calls with the Kremlin, as he sees himself as a negotiator of the highest rank through his business expertise. I would remind everyone that his predecessor also engaged in personal diplomacy because Biden assumed his half-century Senate career provided him with special knowledge of interlocutors.
As Joe Collins noted last night and as I have mentioned repeatedly, dismantling other tools precludes some options in the future. The lack of those alternatives does not mean failure in meeting our objectives but likely will make us work far harder. Tariffs are a tool, but they do nothing to augment the messaging that the Voice of America's Radio Free Asia provided, for example. The armed forces deliver massive strikes against Houthi allies of Iran but do not address the desperation that USAID humanitarian aid provided in the Horn of Africa. At its heart, however, is the reality that the administration assumes we can do without these tools; time will tell.
What are your assumptions about the role of the U.S. national security? Vlad's or Xi's? How do you see the various configurations of opportunities changing? One does not need specialization to think through the conditions we see, despite professors or specialists often thinking we have a monopoly on knowledge. Systematic thinking is healthy, regardless of who does it.
I would enjoy hearing your thoughts, questions, comments, or rebuttals. I acknowledge I may be wrong but I can provide you with my whys and why nots so please share yours.
I appreciate you taking time to read Actions today. I especially thank those of you who support the column as paid subscribers. I am considering an audio column for paid subscribers as a thank you so let me know if you would find it valuable.
Yesterday afternoon was magical in the Chesapeake. Please forgive one more shot of the hyacinths but they are in peak beauty these days.
This morning isn’t bad, either.
Be well and be safe. FIN
Joseph Collins, Strategic Affairs no. 47, 18 March 2025, retrieved at Substackhttps://substack.com/embedjs/embed.js" charset="utf-8">
18. China’s Xi Is Angered by Panama Port Deal That Trump Touted as a Win
China’s Xi Is Angered by Panama Port Deal That Trump Touted as a Win
Beijing leader’s displeasure finds outlet in critical commentaries, but his tools to block sale by Hong Kong company are limited
https://www.wsj.com/world/china/chinas-xi-is-angered-by-panama-port-deal-that-trump-touted-as-a-win-9a0c22fe?mod=latest_headlines
By Lingling Wei
Follow, Rebecca Feng
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Updated March 18, 2025 1:16 pm ET
The Xi leadership originally planned to use the Panama port issue as a bargaining chip. Photo: enea lebrun/Reuters
Chinese leader Xi Jinping is angry about a Hong Kong company’s plan to sell Panama Canal ports to a U.S.-led group, in part because the company didn’t seek Beijing’s approval in advance, people familiar with the matter said.
The Xi leadership had originally planned to use the Panama port issue as a bargaining chip in negotiations with the Trump administration, according to people close to Beijing’s decision-making, only to see the rug pulled out from under it.
President Trump, who in the first minutes of his administration called for the U.S. to reassert control over the canal, celebrated the deal as a victory over Chinese interests in America’s backyard, turning Panama into a symbol of the U.S.-China battle for global influence.
Xi’s unhappiness suggests he, too, sees the canal that way and doesn’t like to be painted as the loser. His government republished a commentary last week describing the deal as a betrayal of the Chinese people.
Xi’s unhappiness suggests he sees the Panama canal as a symbol of the U.S.-China battle for global influence. Photo: Kyodonews/Zuma Press
Under the deal, announced March 4, CK Hutchison, a conglomerate controlled by the family of 96-year-old Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing, would sell global port assets to investors led by U.S. asset manager BlackRock for $22.8 billion. Among those assets are majority ownership and operational control of two ports in Panama, one at each end of the Panama Canal.
In Beijing, several Chinese authorities including the State Administration for Market Regulation and the Ministry of Commerce have been told to study the deal with the aim of reviewing what Beijing can do to hinder it, according to a person familiar with the matter. Bloomberg earlier reported the Beijing authorities’ review.
Despite Beijing’s unhappiness, it doesn’t have a simple way to halt the deal. The assets to be sold are all outside mainland China and Hong Kong, and the parties to the transaction have expressed confidence that it can be completed.
The deal puts Xi in a tricky position. On one hand, Beijing has had to make clear its anger over the Hong Kong company’s move, which came without advance notice, to protect Xi’s strongman image, the people close to decision-making said. On the other, they said, Beijing is aware that any significant effort to torpedo the deal risks escalating tensions with the Trump administration. So far, China has been relatively restrained in its retaliation against Trump’s new tariffs on China, suggesting its desire to keep tensions under control.
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President Trump has threatened to ‘take back’ the Panama Canal, saying Panama is violating a decades-old treaty that ceded U.S. control of the waterway. WSJ breaks down his strategy and the risks that come with it. Photo Illustration: Fred Ramos for WSJ/Getty Images
Last week, a vice minister of a Communist Party agency traditionally charged with building ties with other Communist states led a delegation to Panama aimed at deepening relations, according to the official Xinhua News Agency. “Beijing knows it isn’t in a strong position right now, so it sent a low-level delegation to Panama,” one of the people said.
Trump touted the deal in an address to Congress hours after it was announced. “My administration will be reclaiming the Panama Canal, and we’ve already started doing it,” he said.
The president said in his inaugural address Jan. 20 that “China is operating the Panama Canal,” an apparent reference to the Hong Kong company’s role there.
The $22.8 billion deal isn’t yet final. The companies have said they hope to sign definitive documents by April 2, after which various regulators would need to give consent.
Xi was steaming over the deal because he believed Hutchison’s Li was acting against Beijing’s interests, the people close to decision-making said. Beijing hasn’t been happy with Li for years, they said, as the Hong Kong tycoon has reduced his reliance on mainland China and Hong Kong.
An article Tuesday in Hong Kong’s pro-Beijing newspaper Ta Kung Pao said Chinese ships might face restrictions, surcharges and sanctions if the sale goes through and the operation of the Panama Canal becomes politicized. “If Hong Kong companies turn a blind eye to this, it is tantamount to passing the knife to rivals at this strategic juncture,” the article said.
An earlier commentary in the same paper said the transaction and those pursuing it were “betraying and selling off” all Chinese people. The commentary was republished on the joint website of the Chinese Communist Party’s Hong Kong and Macao Work Office and a government website, indicating it reflected Beijing’s official position.
Since the first commentary was republished last Thursday, CK Hutchison’s share price in Hong Kong has fallen 8.5% after rising sharply on the announcement of the deal.
The Chinese commentary’s contention that American control of the Panama ports could threaten Chinese interests is the mirror image of Trump’s argument that under the current arrangement, China could force the two terminals to restrict American-bound ships. The terminals handled 40% of the containers that crossed the waterway last year.
Panamanian officials manage transits through the waterway and have said that the Chinese facilities don’t represent a military threat or breach the canal’s neutrality.
As of June 2024, CK Hutchison brought in 12% of its revenue from mainland China and Hong Kong, down from more than 26% in 2015, according to its financial statements. Around half of its revenue came from Europe and the U.K.
On Tuesday, Hong Kong’s chief executive, John Lee, said the Hong Kong government opposed “the abusive use of coercion or bullying tactics in international, economic and trade relations.” He said Hong Kong would handle the deal in accordance with the laws and regulations.
A U.S. Coast Guard ship at a naval base along the Panama Canal. Photo: Matias Delacroix/Associated Press
Write to Lingling Wei at Lingling.Wei@wsj.com, Rebecca Feng at rebecca.feng@wsj.com and Raffaele Huang at raffaele.huang@wsj.com
19. It’s Time for Ukraine to Accept an Ugly Peace
I think this is what gives Putin hope. It is what emboldens him. And it is what makes him call POTUS' bluff.
I I know I will receive comments from people who will say I stopped reading after seeing the former CJCS named in the first paragraph. So I will provide these excerpts that are not from the former CJCS but from Professor Allison. The first 5 Putin probably agrees with (half and half on the 4th). He will cheat on the 6th and the 7th is what he really opposes.
Excerpts:
Rather than attempting to deny brute facts, persuade an unpersuadable Trump to change his mind, or wait for a European Godot, Zelensky should now focus on what he and his brave compatriots have won. They have defeated Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attempt to erase their country from the map. Ukraine’s army has fought the second-most powerful military on Earth to a standstill. At this point, Zelensky’s team should make its best efforts to use the few cards that it has left to negotiate an ugly but sustainable peace.
As Zelensky begins to accept this reality, I would suggest seven pointers.
First, he needs to understand that the most important player at the table is Trump—and that the U.S. president’s views are unlikely to change.
...
Second, Zelensky should accept the geographical fact that Ukraine shares a roughly 1,400-mile border with a great power.
...
Third, Ukraine’s alternative to hot war cannot be the “just and lasting peace” that Zelensky dreams of.
...
Fourth, to achieve the best insurance that he can get against Putin using a cease-fire as a respite to rearm before launching another invasion, Zelensky should forget about NATO.
...
Fifth, Zelensky should be realistic about the security commitments that may be available to him.
...
Sixth, the key issue on which Zelensky and Trump agree is that peace (or the absence of hot war) must be sustainable—not simply a respite for Putin to rearm.
...
Finally, Ukraine’s larger hope for a viable future lies in its relationship with Europe.
It’s Time for Ukraine to Accept an Ugly Peace
Seven things for Zelensky to keep in mind as cease-fire negotiations start.
By Graham Allison, a professor of government at the Harvard Kennedy School.
Foreign Policy · by Graham Allison
March 18, 2025, 2:23 PM
As Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky awaits cease-fire talks and negotiations to end Russia’s war in his country, he should reflect on an earlier chapter in this tragic conflict. In November 2022, just nine months after Moscow’s armies invaded Ukraine, Mark Milley, then the U.S. chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, gave a talk at the Economic Club of New York. His insights were controversial, but they offer clues about how to bring this war to an acceptable end.
Milley understood a brute fact about war: However entertaining the theatrics and the memes, outcomes in conflicts are determined on the battlefield—not by the narratives that politicians spin about them. Dismissing Ukraine’s rhetoric about recovering all the territory Russia had seized, Milley insisted that “victory is probably not achievable through military means” and offered a detailed analysis explaining why Kyiv’s surprise counteroffensive had reached its limits. According to Milley, Ukraine now found itself bogged down in a stalemate, and its best option was to seize a “window of opportunity for negotiation.”
Milley’s analysis recalled Prussian Gen. Carl von Clausewitz’s oft-quoted explanation of the moral justification for the use of violence against other states: War is the continuation of politics by other means. Unless sending one’s citizens to kill and be killed advances a viable political purpose, it is not a worthy use of the military instrument of power. If Ukraine had reached the limits of what it could achieve through violence, then how could it justify continuing the war?
Then-U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration distanced itself from Milley’s remarks, and nothing came of his proposal. But a year later, another outstanding military commander came to the same conclusion. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, then Milley’s Ukrainian counterpart, led the army that defeated Russian forces attempting to seize Kyiv in the early days of the war and drove them back in Ukraine’s counteroffensive. By late 2023, though, Zaluzhnyi reluctantly concluded that the time had come to say what in Kyiv was a forbidden word: “stalemate.”
After months of attempting to get Zelensky to recognize this reality, in an initiative for which I can find no precedent in the annals of military history, Zaluzhnyi went public. In a lengthy November 2023 interview with the Economist that was accompanied by an essay, he explained his position. As he put it, “the war is now moving to a new stage: what we in the military call ‘positional’ warfare of static and attritional fighting, as in the first world war. … This will benefit Russia, allowing it to rebuild its military power, eventually threatening Ukraine’s armed forces and the state itself.” Three months later, he was no longer the commander of Ukraine’s troops.
As this war enters its fourth year, U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance are confronting the same ugly realities. Assessing the facts, they seem to agree with Milley and Zaluzhnyi. If the initiative that Milley envisaged had been undertaken and succeeded in ending the war by early 2023, what would be different in Ukraine today?
More than 300,000 Ukrainian soldiers who have been killed or seriously wounded may have been spared. Thousands more civilians would still be alive. Some of the more than 2 million houses and apartments that have been damaged or destroyed might still be occupied, and around one-seventh of the country’s energy infrastructure, more than half of which is now in ruins, would still be heating and lighting homes.
After three years of war, Ukraine’s economy remains almost 10 percent smaller than prewar levels. Meanwhile, nearly a quarter of its citizens remain displaced, with some 15 percent of them having left the country entirely.
As Trump told Zelensky bluntly in the White House last month, “you’re not winning this.” Although Trump’s rhetoric was harsh, it captured the basic truth that without the vital lifeline of supplies from the United States, Zelensky’s forces simply cannot sustain the war. “You don’t have the cards right now,” Trump added.
The Trump administration’s position is not up for debate. The president stated repeatedly on the campaign trail, “I want the war to stop.” Last week, Elon Musk—whom Trump has tasked with overhauling the federal government—said on X, “What I am sickened by is years of slaughter in a stalemate that Ukraine will inevitably lose.” Every month that the war continues, Ukraine finds itself in a worse position.
Rather than attempting to deny brute facts, persuade an unpersuadable Trump to change his mind, or wait for a European Godot, Zelensky should now focus on what he and his brave compatriots have won. They have defeated Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attempt to erase their country from the map. Ukraine’s army has fought the second-most powerful military on Earth to a standstill. At this point, Zelensky’s team should make its best efforts to use the few cards that it has left to negotiate an ugly but sustainable peace.
As Zelensky begins to accept this reality, I would suggest seven pointers.
First, he needs to understand that the most important player at the table is Trump—and that the U.S. president’s views are unlikely to change. Specifically, Trump disdains Zelensky (whom he believes provoked an unnecessary war and tricked Biden into paying for it); likes Putin (whom he sees as a strong leader); and doesn’t really care about Ukraine. The only surprise in Trump and Vance’s attack on Zelensky at the White House in late February was that the world got to see it because it occurred on TV. Zelensky will now have to earn a second audience with Trump, which will require a lot more than his recent public statement that he “regretted” what happened. He will have to demonstrate respect—with a capital R—for the United States and its president.
Were I counseling Zelensky, I would suggest that he practice groveling in a way that would make Mark Zuckerberg’s version of that act seem dignified. He should also take lessons from NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte’s masterclass in flattery during his meeting with Trump in mid-March.
Second, Zelensky should accept the geographical fact that Ukraine shares a roughly 1,400-mile border with a great power. It cannot escape the shadow of Russian power any more than Canada or Mexico can with the United States. It must therefore seek to survive within the de facto sphere of influence of its hostile neighbor. For perspective, Zelensky should review the history of relations of Canada or Mexico with the United States—not just recently, but also in the past three centuries, when Washington seized portions of both countries. Closer to home, he could study Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and Finland—all of which offer lessons in deference.
Third, Ukraine’s alternative to hot war cannot be the “just and lasting peace” that Zelensky dreams of. Instead, it will likely have to be an end to the killing in an extended cease-fire or possibly an armistice similar to the agreement that ended the Korean War. That would leave Ukraine in a relationship with Russia analogous to the Cold War between the U.S.-led NATO and the Soviet Union from the late 1940s until the end of the 1980s. Putin will not give up his goal of dominating Ukraine, and Ukrainians will not give up their aspiration to recover the nearly 20 percent of their territory that Russian troops now control. In this version of cold war, avoidance of provocations, credible deterrence, and persistent vigilance will be the price of survival.
Fourth, to achieve the best insurance that he can get against Putin using a cease-fire as a respite to rearm before launching another invasion, Zelensky should forget about NATO. For Trump, NATO membership for Ukraine is simply off the table.
Fifth, Zelensky should be realistic about the security commitments that may be available to him. Europeans are actively talking about commitments from individual countries—but, of course, talking is what Europeans do best. The strongest proposal so far has come from U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who expressed Britain’s willingness to commit boots on the ground in Ukraine. Careful listeners will have noted, however, that Starmer insisted that this would only be possible if the United States commits to back up those forces—a prospect that U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ruled out when he told NATO that Europe must take the lead in providing for Ukraine’s postwar security. As Hegseth put it, any security guarantees “must be backed by capable European and non-European troops. If these troops are deployed as peacekeepers to Ukraine at any point, they should be deployed as part of a non-NATO mission, and they should not be covered under Article 5.”
If stretching for alternatives, Zelensky should consider Trump’s earlier suggestion that “China can help.” A peace agreement whose signatories and guarantors include not just Ukraine and Russia but also the United States, Europe, and China would be significant.
Sixth, the key issue on which Zelensky and Trump agree is that peace (or the absence of hot war) must be sustainable—not simply a respite for Putin to rearm. Trump is planning for a long legacy for his “Make America Great Again” movement. If he were to declare a “beautiful” peace deal that then exploded on his watch or that of his successor, that would be a major failure for him. It will be both a challenge and opportunity for Zelensky to make a case for specific elements of the agreement that could ensure sustainability.
Finally, Ukraine’s larger hope for a viable future lies in its relationship with Europe. A peace agreement should confirm its right to strengthen economic relations with the European Union on a path to membership. Over the next decade or two, the EU’s trajectory—from its economic growth to its military development to its role as a rising geopolitical player—vis-à-vis that of Putin’s authoritarian, security-first Russia will shape the chessboard on which Ukraine, caught between the two, can operate. If a lasting peace is achieved, Ukraine can hope to follow in the footsteps of West Germany, South Korea, and Finland to become a miracle of the 21st century.
Foreign Policy · by Graham Allison
20. PLA Factions and the Erosion of Xi’s Power Over the Military
PLA Factions and the Erosion of Xi’s Power Over the Military
Publication: China Brief Volume: 25 Issue: 5
https://jamestown.org/program/pla-factions-and-the-erosion-of-xis-power-over-the-military/
March 15, 2025 12:09 AM Age: 4 days
Xi attending a gala held by the CMC for retired military officers of Beijing-based, Jan. 29, 2024. (Source: Xinhua)
Executive Summary:
- Two waves of recent purges in the People’s Liberation Army have focused on Xi Jinping’s two major bases of support, the Shaanxi Gang and the Fujian Clique, likely eroding his power over the military.
- A series of articles in the PLA Daily in late 2024 written by people aligned with Central Military Commission Vice Chair Zhang Youxia advocate for collective leadership and more internal democratic decision-making, in a rebuke to Xi’s call for centralized and unified leadership.
- Xi likely does not face any genuine rival, but internal power struggles nevertheless remain fierce.
A year-long anti-corruption campaign has purged major senior personnel from the ranks of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). While graft is endemic to the Chinese military, purges in Leninist regimes also serve a political purpose. Fierce internal power struggles are another feature of such regimes, with control over the military seen as vital to consolidating power. In the Chinese military system, Xi Jinping is not the only person who has power over personnel. Recently, some observers have suggested that his vice chair on the Central Military Commission (CMC), Zhang Youxia (张又侠), may have ordered recent purges in the PLA Navy. If this is true, it could suggest that Xi Jinping’s traditional bases of support in the PLA are weakened and that his authority over the PLA is far from absolute (People’s Report, October 11, 2024; X/@yanmingshiping, November 28, 2024).
Two Purges Have Targeted Two Xi Factions
The current CMC consists of five men besides Xi, according to the Ministry of National Defense website. These individuals are pulled from Xi’s two major bases of support in the PLA, the Shaanxi Gang (陕西帮) and the Fujian Clique (福建系). The former stems from Xi’s family connections as a princeling—both Zhang Youxia and Zhang Shengmin (张升民) hail from Shaanxi Province. Zhang Youxia also has close familial ties to Xi, as the two men’s fathers served in the same unit during the civil war. The latter group is composed of He Weidong (何卫东) and Miao Hua (苗华), who worked with Xi when he was an official in Fujian Province. This leaves Liu Zhenli (刘振立), who is more aligned with the Shaanxi Gang by virtue of his relationship with Zhang Youxia. Both men served in the same campaign during the Sino-Vietnamese War (VOA Chinese, October 24, 2022; MND, accessed March 3). [1]
The current anti-graft campaign in the PLA can be divided into two distinct waves, the first beginning in 2023 and ending in mid-2024, and the second beginning in November 2024 and continuing to the present. Officials connected to the Shaanxi Gang and the Fujian Clique, respectively, were caught up in these two waves, likely resulting in an erosion of Xi Jinping’s base of support.
The first wave primarily targeted the PLA’s aerospace apparatus, eliminating key leaders in the PLA Rocket Force, Air Force, Strategic Support Force, and the aerospace industry. Those who were purged often had ties to Shaanxi Gang leaders via superior-subordinate relationships. This wave centered around Defense Minister Li Shangfu (李尚福) and his predecessor Wei Fenghe (魏凤和). The probes traced Li’s misconduct to the Equipment Development Department, where he succeeded Zhang Youxia as director. In December 2023, the National People’s Congress announced the removal of nine senior military officials. Of these, five were associates of Li in the Rocket Force, and two, Zhang Yulin (张育林) and Rao Wenmin (饶文敏), were officials in the Equipment Development Department (Xinhua, December 29, 2023). They likely had a hand in the misconduct that also ensnared Li (Lianhe Zaobao, July 29, 2023, December 29, 2023). While Zhang Youxia himself was not implicated, the removal of his former subordinates damaged the standing of the Shaanxi Gang. Li was replaced by a member of the Fujian Clique, Dong Jun (董军), confounding months of speculation that he would be succeeded by the more closely aligned Liu Zhenli (Lianhe Zaobao, October 12, 2023; Radio Free Asia, November 24, 2023). This suggests that factional interests were at play in the personnel reshuffle.
Following a brief hiatus, the purges ramped up again in November 2024 with rumors that Dong Jun was under investigation and the announcement that Miao Hua was suspended. The PLA Navy became the principal focus of investigations, with suggestions that Miao was the patron of all those under scrutiny (China Military Online, November 28, 2024; National People’s Congress, December 25, 2024). [2] The Fujian Clique, the beneficiary of the previous round of purges, now finds itself in the probes’ crosshairs. Speculation abounds that Zhang Youxia is flexing his political muscle following the downfall of his supporters. This is supported by a series of meetings Zhang hosted with senior PLA officers in late 2024, from which Xi was conspicuously absent (MND, September 13, 2024, October 22, 2024; China Brief, December 3). Even if this analysis is correct, however, it remains unclear what Zhang’s motives might be.
Whose Authority? Xi Versus the System
Party literature hints at this unfolding PLA power struggle. In December 2024, Xi penned an article in the Party’s theory journal Qiushi, emphasizing that the first step of revolution is to “adhere to the centralized and unified leadership of the Party Central Committee as the fundamental guarantee” (以坚持党中央集中统一领导为根本保证) (Qiushi, December 16, 2024). By contrast, other parts of the PLA leadership have been advocating for collective decision-making. In other words, control should remain within the Party but not under a particular apparatus (such as the central committee) that Xi directly controls.
Several commentaries published in 2024 in the PLA Daily newspaper stressed the importance of “adhering to collective leadership” (坚持集体领导) and maintaining “democratic centralism” (民主集中制). These include an article from July and a series of five further pieces published in September and December (PLA Daily, July 9, 2024, September 13, 2024; December 9, 2024, December 11, 2024, December 16, 2024, December 18, 2024). A majority of the authors can be traced back to organizations Zhang Youxia’s faction previously had ties to, including three connected to the Joint Logistics Support Force (JLSF) and one from the Aerospace Force. [3]
The article from July emphasizes collective leadership under “each level of party organization” (各级党组织). It states that “only if secretaries and deputy secretaries adhere to collective leadership and focus on developing democracy will they extract the correct views on how to conform to the laws of development and to the basic interests of the masses and create scientific policy” (书记、副书记只有坚持集体领导，注重发扬民主，才能把符合事物发展规律、符合广大人民群众根本利益的正确意见提炼出来，作出科学决策). It goes on to discuss the need for “multiple voices” (多种声音) in any debate, saying that this is the basis for adhering to collective leadership and scientific decision-making, especially during the current phase of military modernization where such decision-making is becoming increasingly complex.
The September 13 piece is the first in a five-part series and is titled “Consciously Set an Example of Upholding Democratic Centralism” (自觉做坚持民主集中制的表率)—a phrase that also serves as the subtitle of the subsequent articles. The main titles of the other four articles all take the form of exhorting readers to “Take the Lead and …” (带头 …), which is followed by “Uphold Collective Leadership” (坚持集体领导), “Develop Democracy Within the Party” (发扬党内民主), “Protect Group Unity (维护班子团结), and “Seek Reality, Deal With Reality, and Implement Based on Reality” (求实务实落实), respectively. Several themes emerge across these pieces.
First, the articles often emphasize the importance of the “democratic” side of the “democratic centralism” equation. One article writes, “in a system of democratic centralism, first comes democracy, then comes centralism” (民主集中制，先有民主，后有集), while another similarly argues that “democracy comes first and then centralism” (先民主后集中). A third notes that intra-party democracy is “the life of the Party; it is the important basis for the Party’s positive and healthy internal political life” (是党的生命，是党内政治 生活积极健康的重要基础). In this context, democracy refers to ensuring collective decision-making, deemphasizing the power of individuals, and encouraging internal debate.
Collective leadership and decision-making are mentioned in three of the articles. One describes the former as “the core and basis” (核心和本质) of democratic centralism and “one of the highest principles of the Party’s leadership” (党的领导的最高原则之一). It goes on to note that “Party leadership is the leadership of the party committee collective” (党的领导是党委集体的领导). Another argues that “Collective leadership should give prominence to the roles of team members” (‘集体领导’要突出发挥班子成员作用), while a third piece notes that, “when discussing issues, everyone must have an equal voice and decision-making power” (在讨论决定问题时具有平等的发言权和表决权).
In contrast, the notion that individuals should have outsized power is repeatedly rejected. One formulation appears identically across three separate articles: “Individuals ‘do not set the tone’ before meetings, ‘do not make the final decision’ in discussions, and ‘do not settle things conclusively’ when drafting resolutions” (个人在开会前‘不定调’，讨论中‘不定音’，形成决议时‘不定局’，做到正确集中、集中正确). This message is reiterated amply elsewhere. One piece writes that Party leadership “is not the leadership of one or two people” (而不是一个、两个人的领导) and that “individuals must submit to the organization; the minority must submit to the majority, and individuals must not put themselves above the collective leadership” (个人要服从组织，少数要服从多数，个人绝不能凌驾于领导集体之上).
In this understanding, leaders are still seen as crucial, but mainly as people who take responsibility for decisions and facilitate “a democratic atmosphere” (民主氛围) within their respective groups or party committees. This entails making sure that “various views are articulated and collide and various bits of knowledge and insight are actively triggered” (各种意见交流碰撞，各种真知灼见积极迸发), or that “committee members dare to talk straight … and the wisdom and strength of the group can be gathered to the greatest extent” (委员敢于直言 … 最大限度地凝聚一班人的智慧和力量). This “relaxed, democratic atmosphere” (宽松民主的氛围) should “encourage everyone to speak freely and equally while carefully listening to and respecting every suggestion, especially from those who hold differing opinions” (鼓励大家畅所欲言、平等交流，认真倾听尊重每份建议，特别是对那些和自己意见相左的同志).
Focusing on the roles of the secretary and deputy secretary, one article notes that it is “extremely important” (非常重要) for them to be “broad-minded and tolerant” (容人雅量和宽广胸襟). Another writes that secretaries “are ‘the head of the team,’ but absolutely should not regard themselves as ‘the head of the family’” (是‘一班之长’，但决不能把自己当作‘一家之主’); while a third argues that secretaries should be “good at accepting advice” (善于纳谏). While a level of vigorous internal debate is called for, the articles nevertheless are clear that maintaining unity is “an important expression of party spirit and moral fiber” (党性、品德 … 的重要体现) for “leading cadres, and especially high-level cadres” (领导干部尤其是高级干部). However, they also make clear that unity has its “basis” (基础) and “root guarantee” (根本保证) in democratic centralism.
The series is intended, at least in part, as a rebuke of Xi Jinping’s leadership style. Xi himself is mentioned in each article and is sometimes quoted, but only briefly, and only by the title “chairman” (主席), with no additional epithets or descriptors. By contrast, other former leaders are quoted and praised. Two of the articles refer to Deng Xiaoping. One in particular praises his close relationship with military strategist Liu Bocheng (刘伯承) as an example to show that “whether a team works or not depends on the top two people” (班子行不行，就看前两名). The piece uses a language pun—that the term “comrades” (同志) comes from having a “common” (共同) “ambition” (志向)—to suggest that unity does not derive from a single person but rather a common goal under the ideology of the Party. Another phrase, which implies that Xi’s position today depends on the work of numerous others and advocates for listening to diverse voices, comes from a Qin dynasty advisor: “If Mount Tai does not accept small soil hills, how can it grow bigger? If the river and sea do not accept small streams, how can they become deeper?” (泰山不让土壤，故能成其大；河海不择细流，故能就其深). This is perhaps the closest the series comes to a direct critique of Xi. Mao is also quoted as saying that “the secretariat are the equals of the commission members” (书记是党的委员会中平等的一员)—a stark contrast with Xi’s Qiushi piece, which emphasizes Party-CMC unity but omits discussion of the necessity of avoiding a single decision-maker or the commission’s equal role.
This line of criticism signals a narrative shift from the period just before the purges and through their first wave. In speeches delivered in April and September 2023, respectively, Zhang Youxia and He Weidong discussed understanding and implementing various tenets of Xi’s ideological formulations. [4] However, as the second wave of purges began in late 2024, both leaders began placing greater emphasis on rooting out corruption and political loyalty, but with diverging undertones. In a speech given on January 10, 2025, He Weidong explicitly identified loyalty with adherence to Xi’s directives while calling for efforts to fight corruption (Xinhua, January 10). Soon after, Zhang made a similar speech but instead emphasized the need to “ensure obedience to party directives and loyalty to the Party” (进一步铸牢听党指挥、对党忠诚的政治品格) (Xinhua, January 26). In other words, Zhang focused on acting in accordance with the CCP itself, without mentioning Xi. These statements coincided with purges affecting leaders within Zhang’s and He’s circles, weakening the Shaanxi Gang and the Fujian Clique, respectively. However, the language used could indicate growing tension between senior PLA leaders and Xi Jinping as well as among PLA officers. While both Zhang and He have made public statements in support of anti-corruption campaigns spearheaded by Xi, Zhang Youxia’s remarks, in particular, appear to align with a sentiment espoused by the PLA Daily articles that emphasizes the importance of collective leadership in the Party over Xi Jinping’s personal authority.
Conclusion
The purging of PLA officials in Xi Jinping’s two bases of military support weakens his political power, irrespective of the intentions behind the actions of Zhang Youxia or any other CMC member. Zhang, for his part, is unlikely to attempt to rebel against Xi given the institutional culture of the PLA and his advanced age (China Brief, January 17).
When analyzing PLA discourse, much remains unknowable, and inferences are often speculative. Nevertheless, the developments hinted at in the PLA Daily series merit further investigation and careful observation for clues as to what may come next. At a minimum, it seems that Xi’s power over the PLA is far from absolute and that the PLA’s leadership is not monolithic. Instead, the PLA contains a collection of factions, each with patronage networks and their own interests, and these have the potential to come into conflict with each other and with Xi.
Notes
[1] The makeup of the CMC has changed since its unveiling in 2022. Former Minister of Defense Li Shangfu (李尚福) disappeared from public view in 2023. His replacement, Admiral Dong Jun (董军), has not been added to the CMC (nor has he been made a State Councilor). Dong was allegedly put under investigation in late 2024, while Miao Hua was dismissed in a new wave of anti-corruption probes, though his name still appears on the ministry’s website.
[2] Dong Jun received career assistance from Miao Hua, as did Southern Theater Navy Commander Li Pengcheng (李鹏程), who has since been sacked. For more on those in the PLA Navy who are supposedly under suspicion, see Erickson, Andrew S., and Christopher H. Sharman. “Admiral Miao Hua’s Fall: Further Navy Fallout?” CMSI Note 11 (Newport, RI: Naval War College China Maritime Studies Institute, 28 November 2024). https://digitalcommons.usnwc.edu/cmsi-notes/11/.
[3] Jin Jiliang (金继亮), Wu Chenggang (武成刚), and Wang Jun (王军) have ties to the JLSF, while Wu Zhibao (吴之保) is from the Aerospace Force. The current commander of the JLSF, Wang Liyan (王立岩), once held a command within the Second Artillery Corps, the Rocket Force’s predecessor organization, and the former Rocket Force commissar Xu Zhongbo (徐忠波), once served in the JLSF (The Paper, May 31, 2015, August 7, 2018). Xu was one of the first to be caught up in the initial wave of purges targeting the Rocket Force (The Diplomat, January 3, 2024). The creation of the Aerospace Force following the dissolution of the Strategic Support Force directly followed the removal of the latter’s commander and space component commander during the first wave of purges (Lianhe Zaobao, August 3, 2023). Among the other authors of the PLA Daily series, Chen Qinghua is from the CMC Reform and Organization Office (中央军委改革和编制 办公室), Shao Tianjiang (邵天江) is a commander of a People’s Armed Forces unit in Henan Province, and Liu Huibin (刘会宾) is a staff writer for the PLA Daily.
[4] These include the “two establishes” (两个确立) and the “two upholds” (两个维护) and implementing the CMC Chairman’s “responsibility system” (席负责制) (People’s Daily, April 11, 2023; Xinhua, September 15, 2023). Note that the “two establishes” are:
- Establish Comrade Xi Jinping as the core of the Party Central Committee and the core position of the entire Party; and
- Establish the guiding position of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.
The “two upholds” are:
- Resolutely uphold General Secretary Xi Jinping’s core status as the core of the Party Central Committee and the entire Party; and
- Resolutely uphold the authority and centralized and unified leadership of the Party Central Committee.
21. Opinion | Pete Hegseth’s dark vision for the U.S. military
Does this really describe the SECDEF's vision?
The subtitle really pisses me off - it is typical of those who do not think the military is concerned with war crimes and civilian casualties.
Opinion | Pete Hegseth’s dark vision for the U.S. military
The defense secretary's moves illustrate a desire to make the military even less concerned about war crimes and civilians than it already is.
msnbc.com · by Zeeshan Aleem, MSNBC Opinion Writer/Editor · March 18, 2025
In February, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fired the top lawyers for the Army, Navy and Air Force in a bid to ensure “they don’t exist to be roadblocks to anything that happens.” Rosa Brooks, a professor at Georgetown Law, wrote on X at the time: “It’s what you do when you’re planning to break the law: you get rid of any lawyers who might try to slow you down.”
Now the Guardian, citing “two people familiar with the matter,” reports Hegseth is planning a “sweeping overhaul of the judge advocate general’s corps as part of an effort to make the US military less restricted by the laws of armed conflict.” (The report has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News.) The Guardian also says that, according to the same sources, the overhaul of the JAG corps is designed to retrain military lawyers “so that they provide more expansive legal advice to commanders to pursue more aggressive tactics and take a more lenient approach in charging soldiers with battlefield crimes.”
Considering the U.S. military’s long track record of documented human rights abuses and disregarding civilian life, Hegseth’s maneuvering looks like he wants to make the military more vicious and callous than it already is. And while the U.S. military is far from the only one in the world that shows negligence toward civilian life in combat zones, its conduct is the most highly scrutinized and influential in the world given its unrivaled reach, power and interventionism since World War II.
Atop all this, Hegseth is also cutting jobs and offices focused on reducing civilian deaths from U.S. combat operations. Though the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Office and the Civilian Protection Center were set up during Trump’s first term, in his second term these offices are being framed as an obstacle to the U.S.’ ability to wage war. But retired U.S. Army Gen. Joseph Votel told NPR last week that he believed that it would be harmful to the military’s functioning to remove them. “I don’t think this is designed to be more constricting on commanders. I think it’s really designed to be more informative in helping us be a better educated and smarter force.”
These changes are all consistent with what we know about Hegseth’s draconian and primitive attitudes toward combat. The former Fox News host — who has been dogged by allegations of sexual assault, excessive drinking and mismanagement in his previous jobs — is obsessed with the narrative that the U.S. military has gone soft and needs to be reignited with a “warrior ethos.” In particular, Hegseth insists that the military is held back by “wokeness.”
In his book “The War on Warriors,” Hegseth wrote of his experience as a soldier with the Army National Guard during the George W. Bush administration, “In some cases, our units were so boxed in by rules and regulations and political correctness, we even second-guess ourselves. That needs to end.”
Keep in mind that Hegseth was deployed in the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. In both conflicts, the U.S. carried out morally and strategically catastrophic wars that resulted in hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths — often due to overly permissive rules of engagement — and torture of locals. The problem wasn’t too many rules, it was too few of them.
In a breach of norms, Hegseth has appointed his personal lawyer and former naval officer, Timothy Parlatore, as a Navy commander in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps. Jason Dempse, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and a former U.S. Army officer, wrote in The Atlantic that Parlatore’s appointment reflected “an odious philosophy of warfare”:
Like his new boss at the Pentagon, Parlatore has a pattern of providing support to soldiers accused of grave misconduct, even war crimes. He notably represented Eddie Gallagher, a Navy SEAL court-martialed on charges including the murder of a captured fighter (though he was found guilty only of one, lesser charge), along with a second SEAL accused of serious sexual offenses. Elevating a lawyer with this record does not bode well for the armed services Hegseth hopes to build.
Moreover, as my colleague Steve Benen recently reminded us: Parlatore “had another very high-profile client: Parlatore was part of Donald Trump’s legal defense team after the president was charged with multiple felonies in the classified documents/Mar-a-Lago scandal.” It’s safe to predict that Parlatore isn’t going to be elevating the already-beleaguered moral stature of the U.S. military.
Hegseth’s vision for American defense policy is consistent with Trumpism more broadly — an appetite for strong man rule and a disregard for rule of law and decency. It certainly doesn’t bode well for Trump’s increasingly preposterous claims that he wants to be a president “of peace.”
msnbc.com · by Zeeshan Aleem, MSNBC Opinion Writer/Editor · March 18, 2025
22. What Korea Means for Ukraine
Korea and the Korean War and its aftermath continue to be relevant to security issues around the world.
Perhaps we should spend a little more effort in studying and understanding it.
What Korea Means for Ukraine
G. Patrick Lynch
The Korean War provides an unappreciated look at some of the dynamics of US foreign policy playing out today.
lawliberty.org · by G. Patrick Lynch · March 17, 2025
As the Russian invasion of Ukraine drags into its third year, there are reports from credible sources that North Korean troops are fighting for Russia. Russian President Putin has consciously avoided imposing the full costs of this conflict onto the upper and middle classes of his country, particularly in Moscow and St. Petersburg. He has chosen instead to call in favors from his allies for cannon fodder, and this has trickled in all the way from the outlying parts of Russia and now from arguably the worst country on earth and one long beholden to Russia, North Korea.
Military cooperation between Moscow and North Korea dates back to the end of World War II when the Soviets re-armed their comrades in the northern part of the peninsula, which helped precipitate the Korean War. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, we now know that Stalin and the Soviets were not only arms suppliers to the North Koreans; they were also encouraging the regime to attack and continue the war, extending its violence and destruction to fit the USSR’s global goals and ends.
So it is not at all a coincidence that North Koreans are now dying for another Russian geographic expansion, but I think that it might be very useful for the West to consider the case of Korea when we think about the conflict in Ukraine. The fallout from the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, both of which are now widely viewed as failures, have tainted the case of American intervention abroad, and of course the shadow of Vietnam still looms large over American foreign policy. But interestingly, Korea is rarely mentioned by hawks or doves, even though it bears a remarkable resemblance to the Ukraine conflict, and offers a different lesson than those widely cited as foreign policy failures.
Similar to the conclusion of the Korean War, in Ukraine it increasingly looks as if both sides will have to accept something neither wanted—a divided country (although one can perhaps argue Russia will get more of what it desired albeit several significant, embarrassing failures along the way). This division will obviously come at an extremely high material, psychological, and existential cost to Ukraine and Ukrainians, but it will end the war. And perhaps most importantly, it will give Ukraine the opportunity to achieve the same economic and political miracle that South Korea accomplished while living side-by-side with a totalitarian regime.
Beginning with Washington’s Farewell Address, there has been a long line of American political thought that argues for a much less active US foreign policy. And certainly our recent experiences in places like Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan to steer previously totalitarian, anti-American regimes towards freer and more open societies have much to do with that now increasingly popular view. Those interventions were in countries that lacked the popular will or basic capacity to improve their governance and economic performance. And yet the US is not very much involved in Ukraine, albeit without boots on the ground. If we wish to avoid a similar embarrassment to the one the US experienced as we rushed out of Afghanistan, we might well consider whether there is any hope of making Ukraine a better place in the long term, considering the enormous economic resources we have invested there.
We all bring an ideological lens to these discussions, and if one clips the data from Vietnam to the present, it does look as if the US is unable to do much good by intervening. World War II is one of those cases that still stands the test of time (despite Tucker Carlson’s best efforts). But what exactly are we to make of Korea?
South Korea is an undeniable success in the history of American foreign policy. That should give us hope for Ukraine.
The ground-level contexts look strikingly similar. The Korean peninsula and the Ukraine/Russian frontier and cultures were both historically fluid and without sharp distinctions. Odessa was and is neither Russian nor Ukrainian, and even today, many on both sides of the 38th parallel would like to see a unified Korea; they have essentially shared languages and had long-standing religious and ethnic ties. Pushing the comparison even further, throughout Korea there were many individuals in the south and north who supported the idea of a collective society, just as in Ukraine there was much more sympathy for Russia prior to the invasion.
One side in each conflict had recently gone through an extensive military upgrade and sensed weakness in their targets. The North Koreans had received Soviet armor and aircraft giving them a technological advantage over their cousins to the South. In the lead up to the Ukraine invasion, the Russians had recently completed a very public project of allegedly modernizing their military, which they seemed anxious to display to the world against a target.
Globally, the East and West were both sending very mixed and easily mistaken signals to each other prior to the Korean and Ukraine wars. Recall the various analysts, journalists, and politicians who swore Russia would not invade Ukraine even as troops were massed on the border? Advocates of non-interventionism now claim that the US had been provocative, but many in the US were bewildered to discover that the Russians believed this. Clearly not everyone was on the same page.
The same was true in Korea. The US had internally and publicly spent little time worrying about a communist action on the peninsula and the US was in the midst of winding down its military, although a hawkish wing of the foreign policy establishment was looking for a reason to reverse that stance. They were about to be given a strong argument for rearmament.
Both wars began in a similar fashion with the aggressors enjoying early and seemingly invincible successes. The Russians marched to Kiev and the North Koreans punched past the 38th parallel conquering Seoul and essentially isolating the remnants of the South Korean military and the initial flow of US troops in a tiny area on the southern tip of Korea. In both instances, the conventional wisdom was that the winning side would complete its victory in no time and resistance was both futile and wasteful.
And yet, neither conflict has ended as it began. From the moment President Zelensky in Ukraine (who shares a number of personality traits with former South Korean president Syngman Rhee) uttered his famous line about not needing a ride but a gun and some ammunition, the Russians began to suffer numerous public setbacks. In Korea, the audacity of General MacArthur, along with Western aid and military assistance, eventually stemmed the North Korean advances, along with bravery and tremendous sacrifices by the two nations that were attacked. While the initial resistance of the South Korean military was feeble and futile as the war progressed, they became more professional and stouter. Surprisingly, the South Korean military today is widely viewed as superior to the conventional forces in the North.
Over the past several years, we have seen the Ukrainian military and intelligence forces essentially revolutionize modern warfare. Whether it was their early, wildly successful embrace of drone warfare or their bold strikes into Russia itself, the Ukrainians have shown themselves to be worthy, if outnumbered, adversaries.
Intervention should be a last resort, but we have to accept that US support for regimes fighting off totalitarianism has had some success.
While both the Ukrainians and international forces in South Korea would reverse their initial losses and push well into the captured territory and even into the aggressor’s land, both wars have settled into bloody grinds. In the remarkably sad case of Korea, this coincided with a protracted negotiation over prisoner exchanges and the specifics of the settlement to the conflict. That delay cost tens of thousands of lives.
Of course, merely identifying parallels and comparisons doesn’t really tell us much about how the Ukraine conflict will end or how the next several decades will go for its social, political, and economic future. But because of the stunning natural experiment between North and South Korea, we can say a few things.
First, it’s entirely possible that Ukraine can regroup, rebuild, thrive, and prosper. Negotiating for its safety and autonomy will be critical, and either NATO or the US will have to guarantee that security for this to work. That’s no small ask, but the case of Korea shows that it is possible. Korea has grown into a mature, albeit quirky, democracy and a showcase for economic development and cultural success. Ask any young person to name their favorite K-Pop band or K drama and you’ll be surprised by the diversity of the answers. South Korea is an undeniable success in the history of American foreign policy. That should give us hope for Ukraine.
Second, Ukraine may have had a shared and somewhat warm view of Russia throughout its history, but today those feelings are buried in the rubble of destroyed buildings and the blood shed by its people. The war has made Ukraine a more unified nation, and one that needs a chance to recover and see what it can do unburdened by a war against a much larger and more powerful neighbor. While the US may want this war to end, we did lengthen it. I would argue Ukraine has earned the right to at least try to build a freer, democratic, pro-market country under the rule of law. The Ukrainians have sacrificed more than enough for that opportunity.
And while many of us who support liberty are right to be skeptical about the ability of the US and its military to reshape the world, in some instances, it has made things “better.” World War II was catastrophic for Europe and Japan, and yet those two parts of the world have been lynchpins for freedom and the Western way of life. In Korea, the South is clearly a successful experiment, especially when compared to the prison camp on its northern border. Even the former Yugoslavia is now peaceful after the US and UN helped facilitate a complicated, bloody transition.
It’s not clear how well Ukraine will do after this war ends, and how long its current leadership will survive. But with some sort of a security commitment from the West, reconstructing Ukraine might very well work. We’ve seen it work under equally challenging circumstances. Intervention should be a last resort, but we have to accept that US support for regimes fighting off totalitarianism has had some success. Even direct military intervention is not always a messy failure. We shouldn’t ignore all of the evidence merely to satisfy our priors. We do so at the risk of errors and the costs of millions who would otherwise live under tyranny and oppression. That’s an empirical, not a normative statement. Using a more rational approach might help us stem the bloodshed and promote the development of a better regime in Europe. The war should end, but perhaps that really is just the beginning.
lawliberty.org · by G. Patrick Lynch · March 17, 2025
23. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, March 18, 2025
Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, March 18, 2025
https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-march-18-2025
Russian President Vladimir Putin did not accept the US-Ukrainian proposal for a temporary ceasefire along the frontline and reiterated his demands for a resolution to the war that amount to Ukrainian capitulation. Putin and US President Donald Trump held a phone call on March 18. The Kremlin's official readout of the call stated that Putin emphasized the need to address the "root causes" of the war. Russian officials have repeatedly defined these root causes as NATO's eastward expansion and Ukraine's alleged violations of the rights of Russian-speaking minorities in Ukraine. Russian officials’ calls for the elimination of these "root causes" amount to Russian demands for Ukraine's permanent neutrality and the installation of a pro-Russian government in Kyiv.
Putin demanded on March 18 that Ukraine stop mobilizing (i.e. recruiting and training) forces during a potential temporary ceasefire. Putin also called for a halt to all foreign military aid and intelligence sharing with Ukraine but did not discuss Russia's military support from North Korea, the People's Republic of China (PRC), and Iran. Putin claimed that Russia and the United States should continue their efforts toward a peace settlement in "bilateral mode," excluding Ukraine or Europe from future negotiations about the war in Ukraine. Putin's demands on the March 18 call parallel the demands he made on March 13.
ISW continues to assess that Putin is attempting to hold the temporary ceasefire proposal hostage in order to extract preemptive concessions ahead of formal negotiations to end the war. ISW also continues to assess that Putin's demands for the removal of the legitimate government of Ukraine, the weakening of the Ukrainian military such that it cannot defend against future Russian aggression, and the denial of Ukraine's sovereignty and independence remain unchanged. The persistence of Putin's demands for Ukraine's capitulation demonstrates that Putin is not interested in good-faith negotiations to pursue Trump's stated goal of achieving a lasting peace in Ukraine.
Trump and Putin agreed on a temporary moratorium on long-range strikes against energy infrastructure, but the exact contours of the moratorium remain unclear at this time. The Kremlin stated that Putin accepted Trump's proposal for a 30-day moratorium on strikes against "energy infrastructure" and that Putin "immediately gave the Russian military the corresponding order," whereas the White House stated that Putin and Trump agreed to "an energy and infrastructure ceasefire." It is unclear which targets are explicitly prohibited under the 30-day moratorium given the difference in language between the two readouts of the call.
The Kremlin also stated that Putin "informed" Trump that Russia and Ukraine will each exchange 175 prisoners of war (POWs) on March 19 and that Russia will also transfer 23 seriously wounded Ukrainian soldiers, whom Putin claimed are currently undergoing medical treatment in Russian hospitals, as a "gesture of goodwill." The March 11 US-Ukrainian temporary ceasefire proposal stated that Ukrainian and American delegations discussed POW exchanges as part of the peace process, particularly during a potential temporary ceasefire on the frontline. The White House stated on March 18 that Russia and the United States will "immediately" begin negotiations in an unspecified country in the Middle East about a temporary maritime ceasefire in the Black Sea, a "full ceasefire," and a permanent peace settlement. The Kremlin stated that the United States and Russia are creating "expert groups" to continue efforts to achieve a peace settlement "in bilateral mode."
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky endorsed the Trump-Putin energy strikes moratorium agreement on March 18 and said that Ukraine expects to receive additional information from Trump about the proposal. Zelensky stated that Ukraine would not accept a situation in which Russia strikes Ukrainian energy infrastructure and Ukraine is unable to respond.
Key Takeaways
- Russian President Vladimir Putin did not accept the US-Ukrainian proposal for a temporary ceasefire along the frontline and reiterated his demands for a resolution to the war that amount to Ukrainian capitulation.
- Trump and Putin agreed on a temporary moratorium on long-range strikes against energy infrastructure, but the exact contours of the moratorium remain unclear at this time.
- Putin continues to hold the temporary ceasefire hostage, likely to extract further concessions from US President Donald Trump and delay or spoil negotiations for an enduring peace in Ukraine.
- Russian forces recently advanced in western Zaporizhia Oblast amid intensified Russian offensive operations in the area, likely as part of efforts to leverage Russia's deliberate stalling of the temporary ceasefire proposal to make battlefield gains.
- Ukrainian forces recently advanced near Kurakhove, and Russian forces recently advanced in Kursk Oblast and near Borova.
- The Russian military is reportedly increasing the number of its information and psychological operations units.
24. Iran Update, March 18, 2025
https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-march-18-2025
Recent tit-for-tat sectarian killings and local support for pro-Assad insurgent cells will likely hamper Syrian interim government efforts to promote security and community reconciliation in coastal Syria. Assadist insurgent cells attacked Syrian interim government personnel across Latakia, Tartous, and Homs provinces in early March, which caused a spate of violence and extrajudicial killings across coastal Syria. Revenge killings and kidnappings have continued to take place in coastal provinces over the past week even as coordinated insurgent attacks and extrajudicial sectarian killings by interim government forces have decreased. The kidnappings have targeted both interim government forces and civilians from Alawite, Sunni, and Ismaili communities. Tit-for-tat sectarian killings increase fear and feelings of insecurity among members of targeted communities. This fear makes it less likely that community members will disarm or turn in insurgent leaders because they do not have guarantees from the interim government that government forces will prevent future attacks on the community.
Local notables in Tartous villages have gathered hundreds of weapons to surrender to the interim government but it is difficult to determine what percentage of village residents retain weapons. Local Alawite villages in the same area have refused to turn in around 40 insurgent leaders, which indicates that the residents of these villages support the insurgents or at least are willing to cooperate with them. This support may be predominantly driven by fear that Sunni interim government forces could conduct extrajudicial killings if insurgents are not present to protect villagers rather than by ideological support for the deposed Assad regime.
Alawite insurgent leaders likely designed the early March 2025 attacks to trigger sectarian violence against their community in order to stoke fear among Alawites and thereby increase support for the insurgency. Insurgencies attempt to control local populations by stoking fear and reducing a community’s faith in government forces. The coordinated and violent Assadist insurgent attacks in early March were likely intended to cause interim Defense Ministry deployments to the coast and trigger violent government reprisals.
The Ismaili Shia-majority town of Qadmus and its surrounding Alawite villages in Tartous Province had established a positive working relationship with interim Interior Ministry units since mid-December 2024 but did not have the same positive relationship or trust with interim Defense Ministry units. Extrajudicial killings and violence committed by rogue interim Defense Ministry units in Tartous and Latakia provinces increased panic and fear in local communities and erased the goodwill and trust that interim Interior Ministry units had established with these communities.
The majority of interim Defense Ministry forces have withdrawn from coastal Syria, but some forces continue to guard checkpoints and harass local Alawite communities. The interim Defense Ministry forces’ continued presence in Alawite areas will likely increase local support for the insurgency in coastal areas. Increased local support will allow the insurgents to sustain their operations and will drive recruitment for insurgent groups beyond the group's initial power base and community. Failure to hold perpetrators of extrajudicial killings during the recent clearing operations accountable will similarly exacerbate fears that government forces are targeting civilians and further drive support for insurgent cells.
Key Takeaways:
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Insurgency in Syria: Recent tit-for-tat sectarian killings and local support for pro-Assad insurgent cells will likely hamper Syrian interim government efforts to promote security and community reconciliation in coastal Syria. Revenge killings and kidnappings have continued to take place in coastal provinces over the past week even as coordinated insurgent attacks and extrajudicial sectarian killings by interim government forces have decreased. Tit-for-tat sectarian killings increase fear and feelings of insecurity among members of targeted communities. This fear makes it less likely that community members will disarm or turn in insurgent leaders because they do not have guarantees from the interim government that government forces will prevent future attacks on the community.
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IDF in Syria: The IDF Air Force conducted over 30 airstrikes on March 17 targeting former Syrian Arab Army (SAA) positions in southern Syria that unspecified actors sought to repurpose. The IDF was likely referring to Syrian interim government forces’ attempts to repurpose former SAA positions in southern Syria as part of the interim government’s efforts to rebuild the Syrian army in the south.
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Houthi Attacks: The Houthis have reportedly rejected Iranian requests to halt attacks on international shipping and to reduce tensions with the United States and Israel. The Houthis launched several drones and cruise missiles targeting the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier and a US destroyer in the Red Sea on March 17. The Houthis separately resumed their attack campaign against Israel on March 18 by launching two ballistic missiles at the Nevatim Air Base in central Israel.
25. China Watches, Taiwan Learns: Ukraine’s War and the Indo-Pacific
Conclusion:
By adapting a denial defense posture, strengthening its regional partnerships, and proactively shaping global narratives, Taiwan can enhance its deterrence while reinforcing broader Indo-Pacific security. The critical challenge now for Taipei is not just to learn from Ukraine, but also to act on it before it is too late.
China Watches, Taiwan Learns: Ukraine’s War and the Indo-Pacific
https://thediplomat.com/2025/03/china-watches-taiwan-learns-ukraines-war-and-the-indo-pacific/?utm
thediplomat.com
Over the course of a year-long study, we analyzed the campaign in Ukraine, comparing it with Taiwan’s military strategies and defense posture. Here’s what we found.
By Benedetta Girardi, Davis Ellison, and Tim Sweijs
March 18, 2025
Taiwan’s military conducts the 32nd Han Kuang military exercises, Aug. 25, 2016.
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China’s coercive campaign against Taiwan has escalated in recent years. Beijing’s approach has evolved from putting political and economic pressure on the island’s leadership and now includes expansive military exercises considered by many to be rehearsals for forced unification. It has sparked debate amongst political and military experts about what form such forced unification could take: Will the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) services seek to strangle the island’s economy through a semi-permanent blockade? Will they boil the frog over time through an on-and-off blockade? Or will they land a knock-out punch in a Sea Land Invasion?
If one thing is certain, it’s this: Beijing’s calculation will be shaped by whether Taiwan is ready to defend itself. For Taiwan to do so successfully, it will have to learn lessons from the war against Ukraine, a country that failed to deter an attack from a much more powerful neighbor, yet has been able to successfully defend itself since.
From the Steppes of Ukraine to the Shores of Formosa
Though distinct in terms of geography, size, and military doctrine, Taiwan and Ukraine share many parallels. Both are democracies with strong national identities threatened by authoritarian neighbors that claim historical sovereignty over their territories. They are strategic hotspots in their respective regions. Ukraine serves as a buffer between Russia and NATO, while Taiwan is a critical component of the Indo-Pacific security and trade architecture. Last but not least, Kyiv and Taipei both face overwhelming military asymmetry against their adversaries.
While it is not possible to claim full transferability of lessons learned from the Ukrainian theater to the Taiwanese one, dismissing the comparison between the two would also be a mistake. The PLA’s strategists are in fact closely watching the developments in Ukraine and adapting accordingly. Taipei is well advised to do the same.
Over the course of a year-long study, we analyzed the campaign in Ukraine, comparing it with Taiwan’s military strategies and defense posture. We combined scenario-based exercises related to Taiwan with on-the-ground fieldwork on the island. During our time in Taipei, we met with officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of National Defense (MND), engaging in discussions with policy planners and military strategists about Taiwan’s position vis-à-vis China and its preparedness for a potential military confrontation. While awareness in Taipei is at an all-time high, our study found that Taiwan still has much it can learn from the Ukrainian battlefield.
Still, if asked about the one key lesson Taiwan should take away from the war in Ukraine, it is the necessity for the island to recognize that its ability to withstand an invasion depends on fortifying its denial-based strategy. The conflict has shown that advanced military hardware alone does not determine outcomes; rather, success hinges on a combination of robust strategy, resilient command structures, and effective logistics. Taiwan’s ability to adapt its military strategy will be a decisive factor in shaping the outcome of any potential conflict over the island.
With the stakes so high, the question remains: how can Taiwan ensure its defense strategy evolves in time to counter China’s growing military pressure?
From Conventional Deterrence to Asymmetric Denial: Practice What You Preach
Taipei needs to double down on a strategy centered around denial. For many decades, Taiwan relied on conventional deterrence, heavily investing in fighter jets and warships, to dissuade Beijing from military adventurism and raise the perceived costs of military actions. Ukraine’s experience has underscored the need for agility and asymmetric warfare capabilities when facing a superior adversary.
This has not been lost on military decision makers. Since February 2022, Taiwan has ostensibly recalibrated its posture to one aimed at denial, prioritizing the combination of gradual air denial with asymmetric warfare means such as cyber, drone technology, and resilient battlefield communication – key factors in Ukraine’s ability to counter Russian advances.
The idea of investing in asymmetric warfare capability to increase the cost of aggression for a possible invasion from China is not new to the Taiwanese military. In 2018, Admiral Hsi-min Lee proposed in the Overall Defense Concept (ODC) to shift the definition of “winning the war” from “totally destroying enemy forces” to “fail[ing] the enemy’s mission to occupy Taiwan” by complementing traditional platforms with asymmetric assets.
Yet progress in this field has been slow. Chronic underinvestment in the military, low troop quality, and the MND’s ambivalence toward asymmetric warfare have delayed the realization of the concept outlined in the ODC, creating shortcomings in Taiwan’s self-defense.
Resistance to fully embrace a denial posture still persists within the Taiwanese MND. Yet, a deterrence-by-punishment strategy for Taiwan is likely infeasible due to escalation risks, especially against a nuclear power. In contrast, denial is more viable as it relies less on conditions that weaken punishment strategies. Taiwan can effectively communicate its denial capabilities through exercises and demonstrations, reducing the risk of misinterpretation by China. Additionally, if deterrence fails, a denial strategy can support Taiwan’s actual defense by countering attacks across multiple domains.
Arming for Denial: Taiwan’s Key Investments
It is time for Taiwan to further prioritize the adoption of a denial posture. Key investments span across the sea, land, and air domains. They include acquiring a mix of aerial capabilities such as drones and integrated air and missile defense (IAMD), enhancing naval strike capabilities through the procurement and indigenous development of anti-ship missiles and land-attack cruise missiles, building up stockpiles of sea-denial assets like mines and unmanned surface vehicles, and accommodating engineered defensive fortifications and infrastructure on the island.
Investments in a mix of conventional and asymmetric aerial capabilities, such as IAMD and drones, enhanced Ukraine’s success rate. At sea, Ukrainian use of unmanned underwater and surface vessels and aerial drones proved to be a game-changer to deny Russian control of the seas. On land, the increased battlefield transparency provided by drones has been vital in upkeeping Ukrainian operations.
As there is no scenario in which Taiwan can go toe-to-toe with China in terms of conventional advanced military capabilities, Taipei needs to seek other ways by leveraging its asymmetric advantages. Learning from the Ukrainian battlefield, Taiwan should thus build up its arsenal while keeping in mind that a force posture based on a denial strategy should be increasingly asymmetric in nature.
Know Your Enemy, Know Yourself
Awareness, understanding, and the ability to communicate and trust one another in the battlefield are key components of a successful denial strategy. Taiwan must ensure a coherent command structure across its military services, preventing inter-service rivalries and inefficiencies through pre-war exercises and clear operational coordination. Resilient communication systems, including terrestrial and space-based backups, are crucial to maintaining connectivity during conflict, alongside a robust cyber defense and electronic warfare strategy. Intelligence operations must be streamlined by breaking down bureaucratic processes and fostering collaboration among services and decision-makers to prevent miscalculations. Finally, Taiwan should invest in cyber capabilities, counter-electronic warfare assets, and a broad network of sensors, including drones of various sizes, to improve intelligence gathering and targeting capabilities while minimizing reliance on foreign sources.
The Russia-Ukraine conflict has shown the importance of keeping communication nodes active on the battlefield, as well as the vital role of anticipating strategic surprise. Command failures, faulty communications, and poor intelligence plagued Russia’s initial campaigns. At the same time, Ukraine benefited from stable coverage and secure and accessible military/government functions, aided by foreign-supported cloud and intelligence services.
Quantity Is a Quality of Its Own
Taiwan should recognize that while quality can compensate for numerical inferiority, it cannot do so indefinitely. In the initial stages of a PLA attack on the island, a well-trained force with robust intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, as well as high-tech weaponry can outperform a larger, less prepared adversary. However, over time, quantity matters.
Ukraine has been able to avoid being out-produced and out-mobilized thanks to the uninterrupted supply of foreign assistance that replenished its depots where domestic production could not keep up. Sustaining prolonged resistance requires a deep reserve of manpower, munitions, and logistical resilience, even more so in an insular context such as Taiwan’s. Taipei must establish stockpiles and prioritize voluminous and disposable assets that can be replaced at lower costs and be manufactured on the island if it wants to be able to sustain wartime efforts in the long run.
With Enemies Like These, You Need Powerful Friends
Yet, the most vital lesson from Ukraine is not military but geopolitical: international support and alignments are indispensable. Ukraine would have not resisted as long as it did without the global endorsement it received. From economic sanctions on Russia to military aid, from intelligence to medical equipment, Ukraine has largely benefited from its international network. While a part of this support was motivated by humanitarian reasons, another was definitely driven by the strategic considerations of other countries.
Taiwan’s denial strategy is a calculated approach to deterrence, leveraging asymmetric capabilities to counterbalance China’s military superiority. However, it hinges on external backing, especially from the United States. Military aid, arms transfers, intelligence cooperation, trade – all are vital factors if a smaller, insular actor is to deter a far superior adversary in the long run. While the island’s geopolitical position might grant some of the same assistance Ukraine received, the threat of an escalation with China is a powerful deterrent for many countries.
Taiwan’s adoption of a so-called “hedgehog denial strategy” – making itself as indigestible as possible to China – has broader implications for international dynamics and alignments in the region. By enhancing its deterrence posture, Taiwan will contribute to collective security in the Indo-Pacific, aligning with the strategic interests of countries such as the United States, Japan, Australia, and South Korea. However, this approach requires careful diplomatic navigation to avoid escalating tensions with China.
Once more, Ukraine’s experience comes in useful as it demonstrates the critical importance of a support base that is not only international but also diversified. Taiwan must cultivate diversified alignments, engaging not only with the “usual suspects” but also with other regional actors through multilateral forums such as the Quad and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. Strategic communication is a vital component of this. Ukraine successfully leveraged strategic messaging to portray itself as a defender of democratic values, garnering international support. Taiwan should similarly utilize its democratic identity to build international solidarity, influencing global political relations and public opinion.
Strength Through Strategy: Taiwan’s Path Forward
While Taiwan’s geography and strategic context differ from Ukraine’s, the core insights remain clear: a robust denial-based strategy, bolstered by asymmetric capabilities and resilient command structures, is essential for deterring aggression. However, military preparedness alone is insufficient. Ukraine’s experience underscores the indispensable role of international support, diversified alliances, and strategic communication in sustaining long-term resistance.
By adapting a denial defense posture, strengthening its regional partnerships, and proactively shaping global narratives, Taiwan can enhance its deterrence while reinforcing broader Indo-Pacific security. The critical challenge now for Taipei is not just to learn from Ukraine, but also to act on it before it is too late.
Authors
Guest Author
Benedetta Girardi
Benedetta Girardi is a strategic analyst at The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies (HCSS) and principal researcher for the HCSS “Europe in the Indo-Pacific Hub.” Her primary research interests regard the geopolitics and geoeconomics of the Indo-Pacific, European defence and security policy, and the interactions and ties between Europe, China, and the United States.
Guest Author
Davis Ellison
Davis Ellison is a strategic analyst at The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies (HCSS) specializing in security and defense affairs and chair of the HCSS Initiative on the Future of Transatlantic Relations. His primary focus areas include deterrence, arms control, and strategy. He joins HCSS from NATO Allied Command Transformation, where he served for over three years as a strategist. Davis is currently a Ph.D. Candidate at the King’s College London Department of War Studies, where he is writing his dissertation on civil-military relations in NATO.
Guest Author
Tim Sweijs
Dr. Tim Sweijs is the director of research at The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies (HCSS) and a senior research fellow at the Netherlands’ War Studies Research Centre of the Netherlands Defence Academy. He is the scientific adviser to the Secretariat of the Global Commission on Responsible Artificial Intelligence in the Military Domain, an initiative of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Dr. Sweijs is also a Research Affiliate at the Center for International Strategy, Technology and Policy in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at the Georgia Institute for Technology in the United States. His most recent book is a volume on future war titled ”Beyond Ukraine: Debating the Future of War” (Hurst, 2024).
thediplomat.com
26. Why Do Skeptics Ignore the Evidence of Russian Influence Operations in Africa?
(probably for the same reason they ignore Chinese and north Korean influence operations in South Korea - they can't see it and don't understand it).
It is the same kind of thinking that leads to eliminating VOA , et. el.
Conclusion:
While skepticism is healthy in seeking to understand any emerging phenomenon, it should not cloud the reality of Russia’s efforts to manipulate public opinion and destabilize democratic processes in Africa. The evidence is clear that Russian influence operations are real, pervasive, and growing. Addressing this threat requires a coordinated and multifaceted approach, focusing on strengthening information resilience, supporting genuinely democratic governance, and countering foreign interference through both local and international efforts.
Why Do Skeptics Ignore the Evidence of Russian Influence Operations in Africa? - Modern War Institute
mwi.westpoint.edu · by Jason Warner · March 19, 2025
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Since 2019, academics, government analysts, and civil society watchdogs from across the world have increasingly raised alarms about Russia’s expanding disinformation campaigns in Africa. These Kremlin manipulations aim to advance authoritarian narratives, deepen societal divisions, and erode trust in democratic institutions—all in service of Russia’s objectives. The most urgent of these concerns are voiced by African governments, heads of state, African-authored studies, African fact-checking websites, and civil society organizations, documenting Russia’s growing influence through digital platforms and covert media operations.
Despite this, some remain skeptical about the magnitude and impact of these efforts. But as Russia’s influence operations expand across the continent, the skepticism risks becoming an inadvertent assist to Moscow’s denials of its underhanded influence efforts. Moreover, it risks blinding observers to the tangible effects of Russian disinformation in Africa. Only once a consensus view of Russian efforts and their impacts is reached can practical steps for countering this growing threat be developed.
The Growing Threat of Russian Influence Operations
In recent years, Russia has steadily increased its efforts to influence African politics and societies through disinformation and covert information manipulation. These operations are part of a broader strategy by Russia to undermine democracy in Africa and promote authoritarian alternatives. From fake articles and social media manipulation tactics to covert media networks, Russia’s campaigns target African countries with a clear agenda: to amplify social divisions, foster distrust in democratic systems, and brand Russia as a friend of Africa.
For example, the US State Department recently uncovered a secret Russian campaign involving RT (formerly Russia Today) and its African Stream network, which used platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube to reach millions of African users. This operation was part of a broader set of Kremlin campaigns—now numbering at least eighty—to influence political discourse, promote anti-Western narratives, and elevate Russian-backed authoritarian figures in Africa.
In another case, Russia’s influence operations in the Central African Republic began as a shadow campaign to manipulate public sentiment but have since evolved into a deeply entrenched and ruthlessly effective system. Ephrem Yalike, a former Central African journalist turned Russian-paid disinformer, recently exposed how Wagner-linked disinformation networks infiltrated local media, spreading pro-Kremlin narratives through hidden intermediaries, financial incentives, and intimidation. These efforts have not only destabilized the country but also fostered deep anti-Western sentiment and further entrenched authoritarian rule.
The scale and growing sophistication of these campaigns are deeply concerning. Russia has invested heavily in developing a network of radio stations, television networks, doppelgänger websites, social media accounts, paid influencers, and on-the-ground support groups to push its agenda across Africa. These assets produce, plant, and continually cross-circulate false and inauthentic content, including cartoons, TikTok videos, AI-generated voiceovers, articles purporting to be by African journalists, and staged conspiracies. The content they generate is not only deceptive but also strategically designed to exploit local grievances, inflame tensions, and weaken democratic institutions. These efforts are clearly having an impact, as seen in the increasing acceptance of Russian-backed narratives in certain African countries, which is undermining the ability of citizens to engage in constructive discourse.
Misconceptions and Misplaced Skepticism
Despite the mounting evidence, a vocal segment of scholars and policy analysts has raised doubts about the extent of Russia’s influence in Africa. These skeptics argue that Western emphasis on Russian disinformation is overblown or misdirected.
One camp criticizes the focus on Russian activities as a distraction from the region’s real problems and drivers of instability: a lack of democratic governance, violent extremist groups, and unjust economic practices, among others. They suggest that Western powers are using the Russia narrative to deflect attention from their own historical shortcomings in Africa’s challenges. Moreover, this group tends to argue that the Western view of Africa is too often through the lens of Russian activities rather than through a bilateral or multilateral lens.
Another group of critics, particularly from within Africa, views the focus on Russian disinformation as condescending. They argue that it underestimates the agency and political sophistication of African nations, portraying them as passive victims of foreign manipulation rather than active agents shaping their own futures. These critics often point to longstanding discontent with Western powers, particularly France, as evidence that anti-Western sentiments are not new or entirely shaped by external actors.
Finally, some Russian sympathizers dismiss the idea that Russia’s information operations in Africa represent a unique threat. They claim that Russia’s influence in Africa is merely an extension of traditional power dynamics, and that Moscow enjoys far less influence in Africa than commentators believe.
As recent history around Ukraine has shown, too many observers have underestimated Russia’s capacity to manipulate and obfuscate. By dismissing the impact of Russian interference campaigns, these observers now risk playing into the hands of Russia in Africa, naively giving Vladimir Putin a pass while remaining unaware of the complexities of contemporary influence tactics.
Addressing the Disconnect: Why Russian Influence Operations Matter
Skepticism about Russian influence operations in Africa often stems from misunderstandings about the evolving nature of influence campaigns and how experts study them. Critics who dismiss Russian manipulation fail to grasp the full scope of foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI) tactics. Unlike a comparatively narrower focus on traditional disinformation or propaganda, the comprehensive FIMI framework allows for a more complete analysis of foreign-backed influence operations—encompassing deceptive content, coercive tactics, and algorithmic amplification. By drawing concepts from cybersecurity and hybrid warfare, FIMI shifts the focus from isolated falsehoods to the broader strategies that enable foreign actors to manipulate information ecosystems at scale.
The field has moved beyond early debates over terminology to a more standardized approach, with clear definitions and taxonomies that facilitate systematic documentation of FIMI attacks. Yet, many still conflate disinformation with misinformation and FIMI with conventional democratic influence tactics, a misunderstanding that obstructs productive discussions on the issue.
Recent developments in FIMI research have revealed a shift in how Russia’s campaigns operate. Key findings show how Kremlin attacks are less about convincing with falsehoods and more about shifting discourse through their algorithmic muscle toward “simplistic, populist narratives, paving the way for extreme, authoritarian ideologies.” Whereas early disinformation efforts relied heavily on “coordinated inauthentic behavior” the latest operations have moved to employing more deniable methods, such as the use of spreader accounts and locally recruited influencers to amplify narratives while disguising state involvement. This shift makes it harder to trace the true origins of these campaigns and more difficult for governments to counter them effectively. Recent research is beginning to show how these spreader networks are burrowing in across Africa, using local languages and deeply embedding pro-Russian and antidemocratic messages into the political landscape of multiple African nations.
These influence methods are incremental, often taking years to fully unfold, and require advanced training in computational networks to track. Depending on the political structure of a target country, some of these campaigns target protest movements while others are more narrowly tailored to reach and influence a country’s online political elites. These subtle and calibrated forms of influence that Russia is deploying in Africa have already destabilized governments, harmed public health initiatives, and perpetuated authoritarian agendas. It must be addressed as part of any strategy to support democracy and uphold sovereignty in Africa.
Steps to Counter Russian Influence Operations
The response to Russian influence operations in Africa should expand to match the scale of the threat. African governments, civil society organizations, and media outlets are working to build capacity to identify and resist foreign interference, but they need sustained support. This requires investing in a community of African counter-FIMI professionals trained to detect, analyze, and expose campaigns before they take root. These practitioners—journalists, fact-checkers, cybersecurity experts, and media literacy educators—can serve as frontline defenders of their countries’ information ecosystems, equipping both policymakers and the public with the tools to make informed decisions.
A practical approach to countering FIMI involves bolstering professional training with structured collaboration, data-driven analysis, and public engagement. African researchers, journalists, and civil society organizations are already leading these efforts, working to uncover influence campaigns and assess their local impact. However, expanding and formalizing these networks—through regional training hubs, cross-border investigative partnerships, and shared analytical frameworks—would enhance their ability to rapidly track and counter evolving Russian tactics. Meanwhile, strengthening multilateral cooperation, particularly through African Union and regional political organization initiatives and partnerships with democratic allies, can help ensure a more coordinated, adaptive response to foreign influence campaigns.
The security sector has a role to play but must operate within clearly defined boundaries to avoid politicization and overreach. African military and law enforcement agencies can contribute by securing communication channels, monitoring FIMI threats, and developing strategic communication capabilities to preempt and counter security-related disinformation. However, their involvement should be limited to safeguarding the information space from foreign manipulation rather than engaging in content moderation or narrative control of authentic content. To ensure their contributions are effective and appropriately scoped, security forces should develop a strategic understanding of threats in the information environment, emphasize multistakeholder countermeasures, and receive regular training on emerging FIMI tactics. Counter-FIMI efforts will remain more effective when they are civilian led, with security actors supporting rather than leading the response.
While technical expertise is vital, long-term resilience requires investment in democratic institutions that can withstand external manipulation. This includes supporting independent media, promoting civic engagement, and ensuring African-led governance strategies are at the forefront of counter-FIMI efforts. With US policies and aid under review, prioritizing resources for these initiatives would not only help counter Russian influence but also reinforce stable, self-sustaining information environments in one of the world’s most strategically significant regions.
Prioritizing the Threat
While skepticism is healthy in seeking to understand any emerging phenomenon, it should not cloud the reality of Russia’s efforts to manipulate public opinion and destabilize democratic processes in Africa. The evidence is clear that Russian influence operations are real, pervasive, and growing. Addressing this threat requires a coordinated and multifaceted approach, focusing on strengthening information resilience, supporting genuinely democratic governance, and countering foreign interference through both local and international efforts.
It is time to move the debate beyond the existence of this threat and focus on the practical steps needed to safeguard the future of African democracy and sovereignty from foreign manipulation.
Dr. Mark Duerksen is a counter-FIMI expert advisor for Africa, with experience mapping, analyzing, and mitigating foreign malign influence in the information space. He has guided and worked with NATO StratCom, the EU’s European External Action Service, Code for Africa, GhanaFact, and dozens of other African counter-disinformation organizations to develop partner-led strategies that strengthen information resilience across the continent.
Dr. Jason Warner is the director of research, a senior Africa analyst, and a senior terrorism analyst at the US Army’s Foreign Military Studies Office, part of the US Army’s Training and Doctrine Command. He is a nonresident fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Africa Program.
The views expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.
Image credit: WwJLaik (modified by MWI)
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mwi.westpoint.edu · by Jason Warner · March 19, 2025
27. North Korean troops key to Russian advances in Kursk, says Ukraine
AI summary of comments to this article:
The involvement of North Korean troops in Kursk has introduced a foreign element to the conflict, with many commenters suggesting that this reflects Russia's desperation. Some argue that North Korea's participation is part of a broader strategy by autocrats like Putin, Xi, and Kim to destabilize global order. There is significant criticism of Donald Trump for allegedly undermining U.S. support for Ukraine, which some believe aids Russia and North Korea. The presence of North Korean troops is seen as a double standard, as Ukraine is not similarly supported by foreign troops.
Excerpts:
Though a combination of factors ultimately hastened Ukraine’s retreat‚ including the loss of supply routes and control of the airspace, the reappearance of North Korean troops — who had withdrawn from the battlefield in January to regroup amid heavy losses — had a “painful effect,” said a lawmaker connected to the Ukrainian military and Korean affairs.
“We are talking about well-trained and well-motivated soldiers in one particular place,” said the lawmaker, who isn’t authorized to speak publicly about the matter. “I cannot say that the Kursk current situation happened because of North Koreans, but the effect of their participation is quite substantial.”
Moscow and Pyongyang have both denied the deployment of troops from North Korea to the battlefield, despite evidence indicating otherwise, including Ukraine’s capture of two soldiers who are now in detention in Kyiv. Last week, a spokesman for the Ukrainian army, Dmytro Likhovy, said that North Korean troops were “one of the main attacking forces of Russian troops in Kursk” and were operating with greater effectiveness than they had over the winter, when they incurred heavy losses.
The return of foreign troops to the front lines in Russia comes as Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to argue against the deployment of foreign peacekeepers to Ukraine, describing it as a threat to Russia.:
North Korean troops key to Russian advances in Kursk, says Ukraine
Superior numbers and attacks on supply lines slowly choked off the Ukrainian forces holding the town of Sudzha and forced their retreat.
UpdatedMarch 18, 2025 at 9:15 a.m. EDTyesterday at 9:15 a.m. EDT
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Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces operate a 120mm mortar aimed at Russian positions on March 9 in the Sumy region of Ukraine. (Diego Fedele/Getty Images)
By Lizzie Johnson, Kostiantyn Khudov and Catherine Belton
KYIV — A fresh supply of North Korean troops, command of the air and a crushing superiority in numbers helped Russia last week retake the town of Sudzha, Ukraine’s last stronghold in western Russia, according to interviews with Ukrainian soldiers and officials familiar with the battles of the last few weeks.
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Russia’s heavy use of North Korean troops and equipment to retake nearly all of the Kursk region after seven months of Ukrainian control demonstrated the Kremlin’s desire to reclaim the land at any cost and prevent Kyiv from forcing a territorial exchange as part of future negotiations. Russia occupies around 20 percent of Ukrainian territory.
By Monday, Ukrainian troops had almost entirely withdrawn from Kursk, said a soldier familiar with drone operations in the region — who like the others interviewed for this story wasn’t authorized to speak publicly — describing the parts of Kursk still under Ukrainian control as “a tiny patch, practically nothing. Just some border zones.”
On a map from Deep State, a Ukrainian volunteer project that tracks changes on the front line, Ukrainian troops are now shown occupying about 10 percent of the more than 500 square miles that they once held.
“Without North Korean troops, Russia cannot even hold onto its own territories with its own army,” said Ruslan Mykula, the co-founder of Deep State. “These were massive waves of reinforcements, much larger than our group. And the harsh reality is, we simply didn’t have enough ammunition and drones to eliminate them all.”
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Though a combination of factors ultimately hastened Ukraine’s retreat‚ including the loss of supply routes and control of the airspace, the reappearance of North Korean troops — who had withdrawn from the battlefield in January to regroup amid heavy losses — had a “painful effect,” said a lawmaker connected to the Ukrainian military and Korean affairs.
“We are talking about well-trained and well-motivated soldiers in one particular place,” said the lawmaker, who isn’t authorized to speak publicly about the matter. “I cannot say that the Kursk current situation happened because of North Koreans, but the effect of their participation is quite substantial.”
Moscow and Pyongyang have both denied the deployment of troops from North Korea to the battlefield, despite evidence indicating otherwise, including Ukraine’s capture of two soldiers who are now in detention in Kyiv. Last week, a spokesman for the Ukrainian army, Dmytro Likhovy, said that North Korean troops were “one of the main attacking forces of Russian troops in Kursk” and were operating with greater effectiveness than they had over the winter, when they incurred heavy losses.
The return of foreign troops to the front lines in Russia comes as Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to argue against the deployment of foreign peacekeepers to Ukraine, describing it as a threat to Russia.
While the arrival of North Korean troops last fall prompted the United States to allow Ukraine the use of guided missile systems known as ATACMS, their reappearance has not prompted any new action among Ukraine’s allies.
Military analysts said that Ukraine losing its foothold in Kursk resulted in a retreat that at times bordered on chaotic — but which was better organized than previous withdrawals, such as from Avdiivka last year.
“Kursk was always going to be difficult to hold,” said Michael Kofman, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “It was simply a matter of time before Russia could take back the salient.”
Death from above
The beginning of the end came when Ukraine lost the sky.
As December tipped into January, Russian drones peppered the skies above Kursk — piercing the calm that Vitalii Ovcharenko had previously experienced that fall on the front line. Ovcharenko, who had arrived with his unit in August, said that on New Year’s Eve drones swarmed six Ukrainian military vehicles as they entered Sudzha, quickly destroying them.
The Russians “moved not just troops but their best UAV operators to this part of the front line,” he said. “We did not have enough artillery shells or missiles to hit their rear.”
Entering and leaving the region became more challenging — even at night — as massive numbers of Russian troops began flanking the rear of Ukraine’s operation, further narrowing their territory and attempting to sever Ukrainian supply routes into Sudzha, cutting off the delivery of ammunition and reinforcements and the evacuation of the dead and wounded.
Ekaterina Panova, 35, second from left, with a child, and Yelena Sudzhenko, 63, second from right, walk with a Red Cross volunteer in Fatezh, Kursk region, on Sunday after evacuating the village of Martynovka. (Tatyana Makeyeva/AFP/Getty Images)
“Russia controlled Ukrainian logistic lines going into Kursk,” said Konrad Muzyka, director of the Poland-based Rochan defense consultancy. “So for the past couple of months, Russians were able to … [make] it incredibly difficult for Ukrainians to sustain their presence in the region.”
The soldier — familiar with drone operations in the Kursk region — described how Russian troops had “superiority in manpower and weaponry,” relying on powerful glide bombs and unjammable fiber-optic drones to disrupt logistics. But they never managed to completely encircle Ukrainian troops, as President Donald Trump falsely claimed in a post on TruthSocial last week, echoing claims made by Putin, according to battlefield maps and military analysts.
“We held on for as long as we could,” the soldier said, describing escape routes that fell under heavy fire. “Once the left flank started collapsing, all efforts should have been focused on holding it. … It’s just heartbreaking to see so much effort wasted, so many lives lost, and now we’re losing ground again.”
Once logistics were cut off, “it became clear that an army without supplies would suffocate. And that’s exactly what happened,” Mykula of Deep State said. “Ukraine didn’t lose the battle on the battlefield. Our forces weren’t driven out. They were simply put in a position where remaining in that salient, with that number of troops and those conditions, became impossible.”
Better prepared
Then, early last month, the North Koreans returned.
While they’d initially operated as simple rifle units, these new brigades included the 91st and 92nd Special Forces and now had their own command structures and attack plans sharpened by previous missions.
Operating in small groups on either flank, they joined elite Russian forces and outnumbered the Ukrainians by a ratio of about 2 to 1 — helping seize the key stronghold of Sverdlikovo near Ukraine’s main logistics routes.
“We’ve found their maps: hand-drawn, extremely detailed,” said Artem, a soldier in Sumy who is familiar with the Kursk operation. “Every movement was written down by hand, perfectly marked. Nobody does that anymore. It felt like something from a bygone era — like a Soviet-style, ultra-structured military approach. Each line was meticulously drawn, as if by someone who had spent their entire life training for this.”
The North Korean soldiers were well equipped with gear that made it difficult to spot them with night-vision goggles, said Oleksandr, 40, an officer who has overseen intelligence operations in the Kursk region since August.
They “made a difference,” he said. “Russians have strong and good allies. They came just in time. … Our infantry is not as fast as it was at the beginning of the war. … Both of our armies are tired.”
Now on the retreat, Oleksandr says he feels only relief.
While some have questioned whether the Kursk operation was worth it, at a meeting with journalists last week President Volodymyr Zelensky said that it had “fulfilled its task” by diverting Russian troops from other fronts, including Pokrovsk and Kharkiv. Still, he admitted that conditions in the region were “very difficult.”
Next steps
The nearly complete Russian operation in Kursk comes at a very symbolic moment — just ahead of the 80th anniversary of Russia’s Victory Day, marking the Soviet Union’s triumph over Nazi Germany, celebrated on May 9.
A Ukrainian official expected a “major concentration of Russia’s efforts” to finish the operation before the big day, which will see world leaders such as China’s Xi Jinping and India’s Narendra Modi attending the celebrations in Moscow. Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov went as far as to invite North Korean troops to participate in the May 9 parade.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, left, welcomes Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Qingdao in eastern China's Shandong Province on June 10, 2018. (Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP)
As Russian troops approach the Ukrainian border of its Sumy region, what happens next “will depend on how Russian leadership sets its priorities,” said Mykula of Deep State.
“They will have to choose: Either they focus on establishing a buffer zone, securing some kind of political victory, or they reinforce their existing offensive axes to increase the territory they control and use that as leverage in negotiations,” he said.
Though he didn’t know what would happen next, Oleksandr said, Sumy had been well fortified with trenches and infantry. Plus, he added: “All the experienced guys in Kursk will be waiting for them on Ukrainian soil.”
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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
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