Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

"Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is."

– Ernest Hemingway

“Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.”

–Franz Kafka

"Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom."

– Viktor E. Frankl

National Museum of Intelligence and Special Operations (12/24)

See the latest video from the OSS Society on the future National Museum of Intelligence and Special Operations (NMISO) at this link:

https://vimeo.com/1039013869/848cda22f6

It has been an honor to participate in this project. I have learned so much about how museums are developed and how they operate. But we still need everyone's help to raise the funds to complete this.

Congress has designated this a National Museum

In the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2023, the U.S. Congress officially recognized the planned National Museum of Intelligence and Special Operations. This museum, to be located in Ashburn, Virginia, is a private initiative by The OSS Society, an organization dedicated to preserving the legacy of the Office of Strategic Services. The NDAA's acknowledgment underscores the museum's significance in honoring the contributions of intelligence and special operations communities to national security.

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2023/01/20/defense-bill-oks-future-national-intelligence-museum/?utm

Congress awarded the OSS the Congressional Gold Medal

On December 14, 2016, the United States Congress awarded the Congressional Gold Medal to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in recognition of its members' superior service and significant contributions during World War II. The OSS, established in 1942, was the precursor to modern American intelligence and special operations agencies, including the CIA and U.S. Special Forces.

The Congressional Gold Medal is one of the highest civilian honors in the United States, bestowed by Congress to express national appreciation for distinguished achievements and contributions.

Wikipedia

The medal features silhouettes of three OSS agents—a woman in civilian attire, a paratrooper, and a man in a suit—symbolizing the diverse roles undertaken by OSS personnel. The reverse side displays the OSS spearhead insignia, inscribed with code words representing significant OSS missions.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/3929/cosponsors?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Download the image here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RR9-Tii9gkhEc9Z35OZ7iOvpAiy0ZgQJ/view?usp=sharing

1. Trump's pick for Joint Chiefs chairman vows to be apolitical and addresses Signal chat

2. Trump’s Pentagon Nominee Warns Against Sharing Military Plans on Unclassified Chat Apps

3. China’s Tariff-Dodging Move to Mexico Looks Doomed

4. When Good Intentions Kill: Why the World Must Abandon Bans on Landmines and Cluster Munitions

5. Are Beijing’s hypersonic anti-ship missiles in Taiwan Strait a warning for US?

6. Taiwan’s civil defence drills go big, but is there still a sense of urgency?

7. Why China needs ‘as many friends as possible’ to prevail in US rivalry

8. Russia says it cannot accept US peace plan for Ukraine ‘in its current form’

9. The dangerous myth of U.S.-China cold war tensions

10. Philippine military chief warns troops to ‘start planning’ in event of Taiwan conflict

11. U.S. Sends Warplanes, Ships to the Middle East in Warning to Iran

12. In Denied Areas: Lessons from the British Special Operations Executive and Jedburghs

13. Understanding Hybrid Warfare in the Russia-Ukraine Conflict

14. Nominee for Chairman: Military's Top Job is Creating Peace Through Strength

15. How To Deal With “Signalgate”—a Guide to the Perplexed

16. Golden Dome: Learning From the Past To Gild the Future

17. What Europe Should, Could, and Would do in a Great Pacific War

18. Washington: Declare Success and Lead (NATO)

19. How the Biden Administration Won Tactically but Failed Strategically in the Red Sea

20. Add special operators to the Joint Simulation Environment

21. Trump is redefining, not abandoning, American soft power

22. Serious Sanctions Time for Russia

23. Valor, Virtue, and Victory: Brasidas of Sparta in the Peloponnesian War

24. Staff Rides for Battles without Battlefields, from Cyberspace to the Information Environment

25. The Pentagon’s Endangered Brain Trust – Don’t Gut the Office That Outfoxed the Soviets and Predicted China’s Rise by Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr

1. Trump's pick for Joint Chiefs chairman vows to be apolitical and addresses Signal chat

While some of the Democrats used the hearing to make critical comments about the administration, the question and answer exchanges were professional and not at all heated. Lt Gen Caine was well prepared, articulate, confident but humble and I saw no evidence of any stumbles. I may have missed it, but I did not hear any Senator say they were opposed to Lt Gen Caine. Unless there is a Senator who wants to make a political statement I do not think there should be any holdup to confirmation and it sounded like many Democrats might vote for him as well.

I think he can do very well as the Chairman.

You can watch the entire hearing at this link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtQpV3-u5gA

Trump's pick for Joint Chiefs chairman vows to be apolitical and addresses Signal chat

AP · by TARA COPP · April 1, 2025

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s nominee to become the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Dan “Razin” Caine, told senators Tuesday that he understands he is an unknown and unconventional nominee — but that the U.S. is facing unconventional and unprecedented threats and he is ready to serve in its defense.

At his confirmation hearing to become the top U.S. military officer, he said he would be candid in his advice to Trump and vowed to be apolitical. While Caine stopped short of criticizing top leaders for using a Signal chat to discuss plans for an attack against Yemen’s Houthi rebels, he told senators during questioning that he always communicates in proper channels.

Caine, who was not part of the Signal chat and deferred on many questions about the controversy, said that if he found himself in situations where classified information was being posted inappropriately, he “would weigh in and stop it.”

Caine was nominated after Trump fired Gen. CQ Brown Jr., seen by the administration as endorsing diversity, equity and inclusion contrary to the president’s agenda. He had been the second Black general to serve as chairman. The firing raised concerns among Democrats that Trump was politicizing the military, and many of the questions Caine faced before the Senate Armed Services Committee centered on that topic.

He was asked how he would react if ordered to direct the military to do something potentially illegal, such as being used against civilians in domestic law enforcement. “Will you stand up and push back?” Michigan Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin asked.

“Senator, I think that’s the duty and the job that I have, yes,” Caine said.

Sen. Roger Wicker, Republican chairman of the committee, said he’s convinced Caine sees the job as nonpartisan.

“We can argue politics up here on the dais, but I expect General Caine to stay out of it no matter the subject,” he said.

Caine disputes MAGA hat story

Caine sought to assure lawmakers of his approach to readying the nation for future wars. He said his military experience, which included seeing fellow service members die, has shaped his views on when to use force and “the importance of carefully considering the use of that force.”

Caine also for the first time publicly denied that he had ever worn a MAGA hat. Trump has told a story about Caine saying he wore one of the hats when the two met some years ago.

When asked during the hearing, Caine said, “For 34 years, I’ve upheld my oath of office and my commitment to my commission. And I have never worn any political merchandise.”

He said Trump must have been “talking about somebody else.”

Questions on attack plans sent in Signal

Caine was asked about senior national security officials using a Signal chat to communicate about airstrikes against Yemen’s Houthis. In the chat, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted tactical details before the operation had launched. The chat mistakenly included a journalist but did not involve the acting head of the Joint Chiefs, Adm. Christopher Grady.

“From what I understand of that chat, it was a partisan political chat, and so the joint force should not have been represented,” Caine said.

Caine declined to comment on whether senior U.S. officials who were in the chat — among them the vice president, defense secretary, secretary of state and national security adviser — should have discussed battle plans on an unclassified, commercial application.

“What I will say is we should always preserve the element of surprise,” Caine said.

He’s asked about the military being used for law enforcement

Caine also was asked how he would prevent the military from getting drawn into domestic law enforcement missions, such as helping detain migrants in the country illegally.

The military has supported Trump’s effort to increase deportations and border protection by conducting flights and surveillance or bolstering sections of the border wall. Federal troops are prohibited by the Posse Comitatus Act from conducting civilian law enforcement except in some emergencies.

“I think that there’s strong systems in place, legal systems in place that prevent any missteps there,” Caine said. He said he has “no reason to believe at this point that those are insufficient in any way.”

Trump’s top military adviser

While Caine would be the military’s top uniformed officer, his chief duty would be serving as the president’s primary military adviser.

That role “starts with being a good example from the top and making sure that we are nonpartisan and apolitical and speaking the truth to power,” Caine said.

During his first term, Trump’s relationship with then-Chairman Gen. Mark Milley soured as Milley pushed back and took steps to try to prevent what he saw as an attempt to politicize the office. He would remind military service members that they took an oath to the Constitution, not to a president.

Within hours of Trump’s inauguration in January, Milley’s portrait as chairman of the Joint Chiefs was removed from the Pentagon. Milley’s security clearance and security detail also was revoked.

Because he retired in December, Caine would need to be sworn back into active duty. That would take place after he is confirmed, and then he would be promoted to four-star general, said a former U.S. official who has helped Caine prepare for the confirmation process and spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide details on Caine’s nomination.

Caine is a decorated F-16 combat pilot who served in leadership in multiple special operations commands, in some of the Pentagon’s most classified programs and in the CIA.

While Caine does not meet prerequisites for the job set out in a 1986 law — such as being a combatant commander or service chief — those requirements can be waived by the president and lawmakers noted his decades of service.

Caine has more than 2,800 flying hours in the F-16 and has earned the Distinguished Flying Cross and Bronze Star Medal with bronze oak leaf cluster, among other awards.

___

Associated Press writer Matt Brown in Washington contributed to this report.

TARA COPP

Copp covers the Pentagon and national security for the Associated Press. She has reported from Afghanistan, Iraq, throughout the Middle East, Europe and Asia.

twitter mailto

LOLITA C. BALDOR

Baldor has covered the Pentagon and national security issues for The Associated Press since 2005. She has reported from all over the world including warzones in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.

twitter mailto

AP · by TARA COPP · April 1, 2025

2. Trump’s Pentagon Nominee Warns Against Sharing Military Plans on Unclassified Chat Apps

He is not wrong. He could not defend the indefensible.

During his testimony I noticed he had a deep understanding of his role as the chairman.

I think everyone should drop the MAGA hat thing. If there was a photo or video I am sure the press would have found it by now.

Trump’s Pentagon Nominee Warns Against Sharing Military Plans on Unclassified Chat Apps

Lt. Gen. Dan Caine tells lawmakers he will give his best military advice as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, even if Trump disagrees

https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/trumps-pentagon-nominee-warns-against-sharing-military-plans-on-unclassified-chat-apps-c5e832fb?st=KdQk94&reflink=article_copyURL_share

By Nancy A. Youssef

April 1, 2025 2:36 pm ET

Retired Lt. Gen. Dan Caine, Trump’s nominee to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testifies in Washington. Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images

President Trump’s nominee to become the highest-ranking military officer said Tuesday that if he had been part of an unclassified text chain about imminent U.S. airstrikes he would have halted it.

The comments by retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Dan Caine, President Trump’s nominee to become chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, marked a divergence with Trump administration officials, who have defended a chat on the Signal app that they conducted about March 15 attacks inside Yemen, saying it included no classified information.

“I think I would weigh in and stop it if I was a part of it, but in this case I wasn’t,” Caine said at his Senate Armed Services Committee confirmation hearing in response to questions about how he would have responded to tactical information shared on an unclassified chat system.

Caine described the text thread, which the White House has called a “serious policy discussion,” as a “partisan political chat.” It was important to communicate military planning details securely, in part, to “preserve the element of surprise,” he added.

National security adviser Mike Waltz, who created the chat group, added Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg to the chat, apparently inadvertently, and the magazine subsequently shared details from the chat. Normally, such chats happen over secure government communications channels or in facilities designed for sharing classified information, like the Situation Room at the White House.

Trump nominated Caine in March to be chairman after firing Air Force Gen. CQ Brown without explanation. Caine is a retired three-star Air Force general, who would need a waiver to be confirmed by the Senate because he hasn’t held one of the previous senior jobs required by law before becoming chairman.

Caine emphasized that he would be an apolitical chairman and pledged to “provide the president with the best military advice, even when the president may have different feelings about it.”

Before the Yemen attack, in a text titled “Team Update,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth included details about the specific times that F-18s, MQ-9 drones and Tomahawk cruise missiles would be used in the attack. Hegseth has said that no war plans were part of the chat.

China’s Tariff-Dodging Move to Mexico Looks Doomed

Chinese firms invested billions of dollars in Mexican factories to make products for the American market, shipping goods tariff-free under a U.S. trade agreement now in peril

By Rebecca Feng

and Santiago Pérez

| Photos and Video by Alejandra Rajal for WSJ

April 1, 2025 9:00 pm ET

Su Xiuyong moved to Mexico from central China 20 months ago. He doesn’t speak Spanish or English, and finds that he hates the food, but the opportunity was too good to pass up.

Su’s employer, a Shenzhen-based construction company, helped set up Chinese factories south of the U.S.-Mexico border, part of a business boom triggered in 2018 by President Trump’s first round of tariffs on Chinese imports. Su said his firm, Jilian Engineering, can build a small factory in as little as seven months in Mexico.

Chinese companies have kept many goods flowing to the U.S. by manufacturing in Mexico, where products ship to the U.S. tariff-free under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement that Trump negotiated in his first term. Chinese firms have invested billions of dollars in hundreds of Mexican factories that make auto parts, electronics, home appliances, furniture, medical equipment and other products for the American market.

To Trump’s dismay, the U.S. trade deficit with Mexico has grown to nearly $172 billion last year from about $78 billion in 2018. His administration now wants to stop what it views as a major loophole in the trade agreement he signed with America’s closest neighbors.

Trump has repeatedly singled out Mexico’s auto industry and its ties with Chinese manufacturers. American automakers import more than 40% of their parts from Mexico, many from Chinese-owned factories.

On top of 25% tariffs on all imports of steel and aluminum—plus a 25% tariff on foreign cars that goes into effect this week—the Trump administration is weighing what kind of tariffs to impose Wednesday, including specific rates for U.S. trading partners or a broad tariff that would affect virtually every country.

Unwinding crucial parts of the global supply chain will be costly and cumbersome for everyone, from manufacturers to consumers. Yet as long as the current trade agreement holds, so will the Chinese-Mexican connection to the U.S. market, experts say.

Hofusan, one of Mexico’s new industrial parks, was built on a former cattle ranch, which is around 125 miles south of the U.S. border. There are more than 20 Chinese manufacturing firms stretching across land more than twice as big as New York’s Central Park and representing a combined investment of $1.5 billion since Hofusan opened in 2018.

The American, Mexican and Chinese flags outside one of the industrial plants at Hofusan industrial park in Mexico.

Bright red People’s Republic of China flags fly alongside those of the U.S. and Mexico at entrances to manufacturing plants in the industrial complex, which connects factories with wide boulevards.

“We are expecting the arrival of another 20 companies within the next two years with an estimated investment of $500 million,” said Cesar Santos, chairman of Hofusan. He used to raise livestock with his father on the land, which is still dotted with yucca trees.

“Many of my clients aren’t worried about unilateral U.S. tariffs on Mexican imports because they know that the product they manufacture isn’t available anywhere else,” said Santos. “It may just become more expensive.”

The Santos family has a 20% stake in Hofusan. The industrial park leases facilities or sells land to Chinese manufacturing firms aiming to set up shop in northern Mexico. China’s Holley Group, which operates industrial parks, has an 80% stake in the complex.

Cesar Santos, chairman of the Hofusan industrial park; Remnants of an old ranch building at Hofusan.

Tariffs announced so far on Mexico and Canada would add an average of $3,125 in costs per vehicle, analysts at JP Morgan said in a research note.

If all of Trump’s proposed tariffs are imposed, they will wipe out billions of dollars of industry profits and hurt the U.S. job market in the long run, said Jim Farley, chief executive of Ford Motor, during a February earnings call.

Few U.S. auto suppliers are considering moving production back to the U.S. from Mexico at the moment, said Dan Sharkey, a Detroit-area attorney who represents supply companies. Such moves take years and, given the uncertainty of the Trump administration’s trade policies, would be risky, he said. For nearly all of his law firm’s 90 or so clients, including U.S. auto-parts companies with Mexican factories, a 25% tariff would “take their profit margin and flip it upside down to make it a losing proposition,” he said.

“Most of our client base lived through the 08-09 crisis, got through Covid, and they are battle-hardened, and they’re saying, ‘I’m not going to pay for the tariffs,’ ” Sharkey said.

Ultimately, he said, the cost of tariffs will likely be passed to customers.

Open door

The first Trump administration’s tariffs hit thousands of Chinese products, from car parts to cheese. The levies were intended to boost U.S. manufacturing by making imports more costly.

It worked, in part. Imports from China fell sharply, accounting for only 14% of all imported goods in 2023, the lowest share in nearly two decades.

But rather than move production to the U.S., many American companies looked to countries that weren’t covered by the tariffs—and Chinese companies saw an opening.

Mexico was especially attractive. It was next door to the U.S., and the Trump administration’s 2018 trade agreement with Mexico and Canada guaranteed duty-free access to the American market, under certain rules. One requirement was that 75% of the finished products for vehicles and auto parts had to originate in North America.

The trade pact was designed to tighten rules of its predecessor, the North American Free Trade Agreement, and stimulate investment, production and employment. There remained, however, some wiggle room for Chinese companies to operate in Mexico, often at the invitation of U.S. companies seeking to avoid the new tariffs.

“A lot of companies came to Mexico because their clients told them to,” said Tao Zhang, an executive from the Chinese city of Xi’an. He moved to Mexico four years ago to work for Zhongke Construction Mexico, a firm that helps Chinese companies build factories there.

Bethel Automotive Safety Systems, a supplier of car-braking systems based in China’s Anhui province, sells to General Motors, Ford and Stellantis. The company said it started building factories in Mexico to soften the impact of U.S. tariffs, according to a January 2024 stock filing.

The company said its 215,000 square-foot Mexican factory, which began production in 2023, has created more than 500 local jobs. It is building a second, bigger factory in Mexico.

Another Chinese company, Elegant Home-Tech, which manufactures vinyl flooring, decided in July 2023 to invest $30 million to build a plant in Mexico, five years after its products were hit by 25% tariffs. The Jiangsu province-based company has since doubled its investment.

Setting up a factory in Mexico allowed the company to ship products to the U.S. without tariffs and evade uncertainties of the U.S.-China trade conflict, according to a company filing in August last year.

The rush to Mexico accelerated in 2023, after Tesla announced plans to build a gigafactory in the northern Mexican industrial hub of Monterrey. A month later, Ningbo Xusheng, a Zhejiang province-based producer of precision aluminum auto parts and a Tesla supplier, announced plans to invest $276 million to build a factory in Mexico.

A year later, Tesla said it was putting the Giga Mexico project on hold. Xusheng’s Mexico operation is nonetheless slated to start production this year. In January, it said it had secured a $262 million contract from an unnamed “major North American traditional carmaker” and planned to use the Mexico facility to fill orders.

Made in Mexico

Chinese investment has been a bonanza for Mexico, creating almost 135,000 jobs in the past four years, said Enrique Dussel, coordinator of the Center for China-Mexico Studies at Mexico’s National Autonomous University. The investments have helped Mexico surpass China to become America’s top trading partner in 2023, with two-way trade near $800 billion and rising to $840 billion in 2024.

An aerial view of San Pedro Garza García, an affluent municipality in the metropolitan area of Monterrey, Mexico.

Mexican officials say most of its exports to the U.S. have significant American content—meaning products made with components or commodities from both countries—particularly in the auto industry or, for example, American barley in Modelo beer.

Benefits from Hofusan industrial park extend to the nearby Mexican town of Salinas Victoria, where jobs used to be limited to agriculture and livestock.

“Now, only those who don’t want to work don’t work,” said Eusebio Delgado, an employee of a personnel transport company that provides services at Hofusan.

“Before, there was a lot of migration to the U.S.,” said Delgado, as he sat behind the wheel of his van, waiting for employees to finish shifts at a Chinese factory.

The municipal government of Salinas Victoria has doubled revenue from industrial property taxes and an influx of workers from other Mexican states, Mayor Raúl Cantú said.

“There was a lack of public services, from paving to trash collection to public spaces,” said Cantú. “We are addressing that problem.” One project is construction of a 5,000-seat baseball stadium.

Local officials and industry leaders say they are playing by the rules set in the current trade agreement.

“We welcome foreign investment from wherever it comes, as long as it complies with the rules of origin and with local sourcing requirements,” said Emmanuel Loo, the economy chief of Mexico’s state of Nuevo Leon, where Hofusan is located.

Mexico is under pressure from the Trump administration to show they can police Chinese investment and make sure companies comply with existing trade rules. Negotiations to renew the trade agreement, if it survives, are expected to start soon. The U.S. has been pushing Mexico to tighten investment restrictions on Chinese companies.

One concession floated by Mexico involved matching the U.S. on China tariffs, said people familiar with the negotiations. That would cost Chinese companies, which import nearly all their factory machinery and sophisticated components into Mexico from China.

Mexican officials have halted plans by Chinese electric-vehicle maker BYD to open a factory in the country, fearing such a move would anger Trump.

A showroom for Chinese electric vehicle maker BYD in San Pedro Garza García, Mexico.

“We prioritize trade with the countries with which we have trade agreements,” including the U.S., Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said last month. Her administration has noted that far more Chinese investment goes to the U.S. and Canada than to Mexico.

Economists say the Trump administration should have anticipated workarounds when it made the 2018 trade agreement. Expanded trade between China and Mexico was inevitable, said Scott Lincicome, an economics and trade expert at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.

Chinese companies poured $12.3 billion into Mexico from 2018 to 2024, according to the Center for China-Mexico Studies at Mexico’s National Autonomous University.

Su, who left a wife and children in China while he works to help build Mexican factories, said he was so busy late last year that he drove around 2,500 miles in one 11-day stretch.

“There were too many clients to meet,” he said.

Some Chinese companies have put Mexican expansion projects on hold. But those that have already invested heavily in the country are likely to try to weather the storm.

“Margins are thinner at home. They have nowhere to go,” said Guadalajara-based Huo Pugang, who has spent 14 years in Mexico working for a Chinese packaging company as a local manager. He now runs his own company serving Chinese clients.

“Of course my clients talk about impacts of tariffs, but there’s nothing they can do about it,” Huo said. “They just need to accept lower profitability.”

A residential complex for foreign workers, primarily Chinese, being built at Hofusan industrial park.

At the Hofusan industrial park, trucks transport cargo containers from China’s Cosco Shipping. A Chinese restaurant serves food to the approximately 200 expatriate managers and technicians who work nearby. At the industrial park’s entrance, an apartment complex of more than 100 units is under construction. There are plans for hotels, movie theaters, restaurants and a convenience store.

“All of this will be filled with factories next year,” said Santos, the chairman, pointing to a new area cleared of yucca trees. “It’s already sold out.”

Write to Rebecca Feng at rebecca.feng@wsj.com and Santiago Pérez at santiago.perez@wsj.com

4. When Good Intentions Kill: Why the World Must Abandon Bans on Landmines and Cluster Munitions

When Good Intentions Kill: Why the World Must Abandon Bans on Landmines and Cluster Munitions

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/04/02/when-good-intentions-kill/

by Dan Rice

04.02.2025 at 06:00am

When nations across the globe signed conventions banning landmines and cluster munitions, they acted with noble intentions but limited perspective. Most were far from geopolitical hotspots and never imagined their signatures could one day embolden aggression and cost innocent lives in distant lands.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine—Europe’s deadliest war since World War II—has tragically revealed the unintended consequences of these agreements. While distant nations showed symbolic solidarity—lighting buildings blue and yellow, waving flags—many also upheld treaty commitments that delayed Ukraine’s access to essential defensive weapons.

Cluster munitions and landmines, while controversial, have proven decisive in Ukraine’s defense. Over half of Russia’s nearly 900,000 casualties are reportedly due to cluster munitions, underlining their brutal effectiveness against massed infantry. At the same time, Russia’s extensive use of landmines has stalled Ukraine’s counteroffensives, revealing their strategic utility in defensive warfare.

Yet, for over a year and a half, Ukraine’s requests for cluster munitions were delayed—due in large part to pressure from treaty-bound nations. And it wasn’t until December 2024 that the United States began supplying landmines to Ukraine, acknowledging that they are needed in the face of an existential threat. Had the Ottawa Convention not existed, Ukraine might have received these tools earlier—saving lives and territory.

Of the thirteen countries that border Russia, only Norway and Afghanistan are signatories of the Cluster Munitions Convention. Lithuania originally signed, but last year realized the danger to their country had increased by signing it, not decreased Lithuania recently withdrew from the Cluster Munitions Convention. Not one country bordering China or North Korea signed. This is no coincidence. Nations on the front lines of potential aggression understand what distant signatories do not: these weapons, though imperfect, are often essential for survival.

Meanwhile, countries like Iceland, Costa Rica, and the Bahamas, far removed from immediate threats and some without standing armies, likely never imagined that their signatures would delay military aid and constrain a democracy under siege. But that is precisely what happened. Their adherence to these conventions—however well-meaning—effectively aided Russian aggression by restricting Ukraine’s options.

To avoid repeating this mistake, these nations must reconsider their commitment to these treaties. On April 4th, International Landmine Awareness Day, Ukraine should announce its withdrawal from the Ottawa Convention and call on all treaty members to do the same—following the leadership of the United States, Eastern Europe, Taiwan, and South Korea.

Several nations have already taken steps. Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Poland have declared their intent to withdraw. Others—particularly those facing existential threats—should follow. Democracies must be empowered to defend themselves without being obstructed by well-intentioned policies that ignore battlefield realities.

This is an urgent call to action. Conventions drafted in times of peace, by nations far from danger, should not determine whether democracies can defend their populations when war arrives. Your signature may have once felt like a gesture of peace. Today, it could cost lives.

Tags: cluster munition, Landmines, Russia-Ukraine War

About The Author

Dan Rice
Dan Rice is the President of the American University Kyiv and the Co-President of Thayer Leadership at West Point. He served as Special Advisor to the Commander Ukraine Armed Forces from May 2022-March 2023 (unpaid volunteer) He is the primary advocate who successfully obtained cluster munitions for Ukraine with 155mm DPICM, HIMARS Cluster rockets, HIMARS cluster ATACMs and JSOW cluster precision bombs for F-16s. Dan is the primary advocate to eliminate the Cluster Munitions Convention and the Ottawa Land Mine Convention, both of which weakened Europe’s defenses and harmed its deterrence against Russian aggression. Dan is a West Point graduate, Airborne-Ranger qualified artillery officer, qualified on both cannons and multiple launch rocket systems. Dan was re-commissioned as an Infantry Captain in 2004-2005 and was wounded in Samarra Iraq June 2005. He holds three masters degrees from Northwestern University (MBA and Master’s Marketing) and University of Pennsylvania (Master’s Education). He has completed his Doctoral classes in Leadership and is on sabbatical for the dissertation from University of Pennsylvania.

5. Are Beijing’s hypersonic anti-ship missiles in Taiwan Strait a warning for US?

Excerpts:

The YJ-21 hypersonic missile – which has a conical warhead similar to the Russian Kh-47 Kinzhal – has an estimated range of 1,000km to 1,500km (621-932 miles) with an average speed of Mach 6 and a terminal velocity of Mach 10.

No existing anti-missile system is capable of intercepting the YJ-21, which was first deployed as a ship-launched version in 2022 when the PLA released a video of it being fired from a Type 055, its largest and most advanced destroyer.

The air-launch variation of the YJ-21 made its first public appearance at the Zhuhai air show in November of the same year. It was officially confirmed to have been used in live-fire training in November at the PLA Air Force’s 75th anniversary celebration.

Are Beijing’s hypersonic anti-ship missiles in Taiwan Strait a warning for US?

Two YJ-21 missiles were on board an H-6K strategic bomber as it took off from an unidentified airfield in PLA video on opening day of drills

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3304842/are-beijings-hypersonic-anti-ship-missiles-taiwan-strait-warning-us?utm

Liu ZhenandEnoch Wong

Published: 4:00pm, 2 Apr 2025

The People’s Liberation Army appears to have deployed its new hypersonic anti-ship missiles during drills around Taiwan on Tuesday, in what analysts said was a signal to the US against any potential interference amid the rising tensions.

Two YJ-21 missiles – also known as Eagle Strike-21 – were visible on board an H-6K strategic bomber seen taking off from an unidentified airfield in a video posted on Tuesday to the PLA Eastern Theatre Command’s official social media account.

The video was released soon after the start of yet another large-scale surprise joint exercise in the waters and airspace to the north, south and east of Taiwan, which a Command spokesman described as “a serious warning and powerful deterrent”.

The YJ-21 hypersonic missile – which has a conical warhead similar to the Russian Kh-47 Kinzhal – has an estimated range of 1,000km to 1,500km (621-932 miles) with an average speed of Mach 6 and a terminal velocity of Mach 10.

No existing anti-missile system is capable of intercepting the YJ-21, which was first deployed as a ship-launched version in 2022 when the PLA released a video of it being fired from a Type 055, its largest and most advanced destroyer.

The air-launch variation of the YJ-21 made its first public appearance at the Zhuhai air show in November of the same year. It was officially confirmed to have been used in live-fire training in November at the PLA Air Force’s 75th anniversary celebration.

Mainland military commentator Zhang Junshe told state media on Tuesday that the YJ-21 missile could be expected to play a primary role in the event of any combat situation that might arise.

“As a missile with hypersonic penetration capability, the YJ-21 would play a key role in seizing comprehensive control of the battlefield, striking maritime and land targets, as well as blockading key areas and passages,” he said.

Together with its other “aircraft killers” – such as ground-based, nuclear-capable DF-21D and DF-26B ballistic missiles – the YJ-21 is seen as part of the PLA’s efforts to build up strong anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) capabilities to prevent foreign forces – mainly the US – from getting in the way of a potential military campaign against Taiwan.

Shandong aircraft carrier moves into Taiwan response zone ahead of PLA drills

Beijing regards Taiwan as part of its territory, to be reunified by force if necessary. The US, like most countries, does not recognise the island as an independent state. However, Washington is opposed to any attempt to take the island and is committed to supplying arms for its defence.

Timothy Walton, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute specialising in missile defence, said that the PLA’s publicising of the operational integration of the YJ-21 on the H-6K “likely signals an ability to engage distant targets”.

“This includes US and allied forces in the Republic of Korea, Japan, the Philippines, and beyond,” he added.

According to Walton, the YJ-21 poses a more formidable threat than the Russian Kinzhal. While aeroballistic missiles have been intercepted in Ukraine, the YJ-21 is “likely to be a more potent threat”, he said.

Military commentator Song Zhongping, a former PLA instructor, said the missile’s role in the Strait Thunder-2025A joint exercises which began on Tuesday underscored its strategic purpose.

“This kind of weapon is designed to strike large, slow-moving, high-value naval assets, including warships and even aircraft carriers,” he said.

The deployment of such a powerful missile revealed the PLA’s growing ability and intent to deter both “Taiwan independence” and foreign military interference, Song added. “It is aimed at the US military and external powers seeking to intervene.”

Chinese hypersonic weapons test ‘has all of our attention’, US General Mark Milley says

US aircraft carriers have been deployed in the Taiwan Strait at times of previous military confrontations, including in 1950, 1954 and 1996, which forced the PLA to stop its operations.

The latest surge in cross-strait tensions followed a statement by Taiwanese leader William Lai Ching-te on March 13 that labelled Beijing as a “foreign hostile force” and announced a tightening of national security measures on the island.

This week’s drills – which continued on Wednesday with the addition of live-fire rounds in the East China Sea – are the PLA’s second joint exercise near Taiwan in the past fortnight.

Eastern Theatre Command said that it had mobilised naval fleets, aircraft formations, conventional missile troops and long-range rocket launching systems for the drills, which are aimed at “testing the troops’ capabilities of carrying out integrated operations, seizure of operational control, and multidirectional precision strikes”.

Shahryar Pasandideh, a military technology scholar at the George Washington University, said the YJ-21’s deployment reflected a broader and fast-evolving arms race in the region.

“The US Navy appears to be resurrecting this capability with the AIM-174B,” he said, referring to the new – and even longer-range – air-to-air missile now deployed on American destroyers.

“We are witnessing a very dynamic – unstable – measure-countermeasure competition, and China’s deployment of an air-launched anti-ship ballistic missile … is unlikely to amount to the last move in this competition.”

Liu Zhen

Liu Zhen joined the Post in 2015 as a reporter on the China desk. She previously worked with Reuters in Beijing.

Enoch Wong

Enoch Wong joined the Post in 2024 as a Senior Reporter on the China Desk after over a decade with institutions like Tsinghua University and UN-affiliated organisations across Asia, Africa and

6. Taiwan’s civil defence drills go big, but is there still a sense of urgency?

Resistance and resilience. Do the Taiwan people have what it takes?

We cannot want to defend Taiwan more than they want to defend themselves.

Taiwan’s civil defence drills go big, but is there still a sense of urgency?

Simulations aim to prepare islanders for natural disasters and wartime, but real challenge is fostering sustained sense of crisis awareness, experts say

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3304797/taiwans-civil-defence-drills-go-big-there-still-sense-urgency?utm

Lawrence Chungin Taipei

Published: 10:01am, 2 Apr 2025

Taiwan has put its civil defences to a tougher disaster test, with an exercise last week to assess the public’s responses to emergencies such as a massive explosion and an incoming tsunami.

The exercise – dubbed “Whole-of-Society Defence Resilience Drill” – held last Thursday in the southern city of Tainan, was the first live, civilian-based exercise of its kind to test public responses to calamities amid growing security concerns and escalating threats from Beijing.

The drill tested coordination between central and local governments, emergency responders, civilian agencies, and ordinary citizens without prearranged scripts.

Unlike previous civil defence exercises, often criticised as ceremonial and lacking substance, this drill integrated a broader range of crisis scenarios, including emergency contingencies, civilian responses to large-scale disasters, and potential attacks on critical infrastructure.

Thursday’s exercises tested responses to a massive explosion and a natural disaster. Photo: EPA-EFE

Involving 1,500 participants, including 500 civilians, the exercise featured local and central government officials, volunteer firefighters, police officers, representatives from foreign missions stationed in Taipei, and local civil defence groups.

The event included two scenarios: one simulating a massive explosion at a tourist centre injuring hundreds, and another involving the evacuation of hundreds of residents gathering at a high school before a catastrophic tsunami hit the city.

The first scenario tested mass evacuation protocols and temporary shelter facilities for displaced residents, while the second simulation examined the protection of vital infrastructure and the rapid deployment of emergency medical facilities.

The dual-track approach allowed authorities to evaluate multiple critical response capabilities simultaneously, according to Taiwanese Interior Minister Liu Shih-fang.

Public participation was a major element, with residents actively engaging in evacuation and rescue operations.

“It is the first time I’ve taken part in a civil defence drill of this scale,” said a volunteer who identified himself only as Chen. “In the past, these drills were limited to small groups of police and emergency responders demonstrating procedures. This time, it felt more real, and it helped us understand how to react effectively.”

Another participant, Tsai Chin-tsui, stressed the importance of preparedness amid rising cross-strait tensions. “China has been harassing us with frequent military drills encircling Taiwan. Exercises like this are essential to ensure we’re ready if a conflict occurs.”

“The risk of war exists, and everyone should be prepared,” said a resident interviewed by Taiwan Television Enterprise. “Of course, we all hope war does not happen, but just in case, we need to know how to respond.”

Another key highlight was a military surgical team that is trained to perform on-site surgeries. While the military was not directly involved, it did send an advanced field medical team to help when casualties could not be transferred to medical centres in time or if hospitals were overwhelmed.

Beijing views Taiwan as part of China and has not ruled out the use of force for reunification. Since William Lai Ching-te, from the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party, took office in May, Beijing has intensified military pressure, branding him an “obstinate separatist” after his provocative remarks risked further escalating tensions.

On Tuesday, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) launched joint exercises around the island from “multiple directions” as a “stern warning and forceful deterrence against ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist forces”, according to the PLA’s Eastern Theatre Command.

Most countries, including the United States, do not recognise Taiwan as an independent state but oppose any attempt to seize the island by force. Washington remains committed to supplying arms for Taiwan’s defence.

Taiwanese leader William Lai Ching-te speaks during a civil defence drill in Tainan on Thursday. Photo: EPA-EFE

Lai, who inspected the first emergency exercise on Thursday, told participants that the drill aimed to “build the resilience of Taiwanese society”.

“These exercises will help us prepare for large-scale disasters and mass casualty events while strengthening our response to geopolitical crises,” he said.

“As the saying goes, prevention is better than a cure. We must not rely on the likelihood of the enemy not coming but on our own readiness to receive him.”

The “Whole-of-Society Defence Committee” was set up in June after Lai took power, and aims to coordinate a series of urban exercises from this month to build societal resilience.

According to Liu, eight local governments will each conduct similar drills between April and June, focusing on local areas and critical infrastructure. Additionally, three major municipalities in northern, central and southern Taiwan, as well as offshore islands, will conduct their own exercises.

Taiwan’s homeland security office will also stage drills at 11 critical infrastructure sites between April and July in coordination with the Han Kuang Exercise, Taiwan’s major annual war games scheduled for July.

Liu emphasised that expanding the scale of civil defence drills was essential to testing civilian response systems, especially since the military may be preoccupied with frontline threats during a crisis.

However, experts argued that beyond large-scale simulations, the real challenge was in cultivating long-term crisis awareness and bolstering the resilience of critical resources – not just improving public preparedness for emergencies, including war.

“Taiwanese people have grown accustomed to PLA threats, which have dulled their sense of urgency about war risks,” said Max Lo, executive director of the Taiwan International Strategic Study Society, a Taipei-based think tank.

Lo noted that the “whole-of-society” drill concept originated from US recommendations, urging Taiwan to prepare for potential cross-strait conflict.

Experts have raised questions about the premise and intensity of Taiwan’s civil defence drills. Photo: Reuters

“While raising public awareness is crucial, the Lai administration must also increase the intensity of these exercises with diverse scenarios, especially wartime contingencies, to tailor them to Taiwan’s specific needs rather than simply following US guidance,” Lo said.

Chang Yen-ting, a retired Taiwanese air force lieutenant general, criticised the premise of the exercises, arguing they were based on urban warfare scenarios.

“Urban warfare, essentially street fighting, would bring unimaginable destruction to local communities. Unlike Ukraine, Taiwan’s geographic constraints mean millions of displaced refugees would have nowhere to go, creating immense challenges,” he said.

Chang also warned that in the event of a conflict, a PLA blockade in the Taiwan Strait could severely disrupt Taiwan’s ability to import critical supplies like oil and gas. He said the Lai administration should not only improve civilian resilience but also fortify critical resources such as energy, transport, power grids, cyber networks and food supplies.

“The administration must also address the healthcare crisis, as Taiwan has been facing a severe shortage of medical resources in recent years. Many frontline medical workers are exhausted and leaving their positions, further weakening Taiwan’s overall defence preparedness,” he added.

Lawrence Chung

Lawrence Chung covers major news in Taiwan, ranging from presidential and parliament elections to killer earthquakes and typhoons. Most of his reports focus on Taiwan’s relations with China, specifically on the impact and possible developments of cross-strait relations under the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party and mainland-friendly Kuomin

7. Why China needs ‘as many friends as possible’ to prevail in US rivalry

This is a competition we should easily win. We should be able to develop and benefit from the "silk web" of friends, partners, allies especially when competing with China's "vision."

My assessment of China's "vision" is that China seeks to export its authoritarian political system around the world in order to dominate regions directly and/or indirectly through proxies, co-opt or coerce international organizations, create economic conditions favorable to China alone, while displacing democratic institutions through subversion. It takes a long term approach, employing unrestricted warfare and its three warfares to set conditions and achieve objectives, with the main objective being the unification of China (i.e., the recovery of Taiwan).

We should show the world a superior vision based on freedom and individual liberty, free market economic principles, the rule of law with a rules based international order, human rights, self determination of government and respect for sovereignty. (Perhaps a naive vision today but I can still hope)

The Cold War showed us the importance of how to "win friends and influence people." It was key to us winning the Cold War. Can we do it again (rhetorical question)?

Why China needs ‘as many friends as possible’ to prevail in US rivalry

Chinese international relations expert urges Beijing to partner with other countries as Donald Trump’s policy moves upend global order

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3304873/why-china-needs-many-friends-possible-prevail-us-rivalry?utm

Orange Wangin Beijing

Published: 2:00pm, 2 Apr 2025Updated: 3:31pm, 2 Apr 2025

China should cultivate more friends in global politics, as partnerships with other countries could be the trump card in Beijing’s rivalry with the US, according to a leading Chinese international relations expert.

Li Wei, a professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing, said on Saturday that whichever of the two powers could win support from the most third parties would “emerge victorious in the competition”.

He made the remarks during a virtual seminar hosted by the China Macroeconomy Forum think tank. The comments came amid growing debate over how Beijing should cope with US President Donald Trump’s blows to bilateral ties and the world order.

Li called for Beijing to “make as many friends as possible and as few enemies as possible” in its competition with Washington, evoking a slogan from former Chinese leader Mao Zedong.

Trade tensions are poised to worsen this week as US President Donald Trump is set to unveil “reciprocal tariffs” against countries with their own duties on American goods or other policies the White House views as unfair trade barriers. The measure is expected to unleash chaos for global businesses and escalate frictions between the US and dozens of countries, friends and foes alike.

Washington has continued to ratchet up pressure on Beijing. It imposed sanctions on Hong Kong’s departing police chief and five other officials on Monday, and last week it labelled China as its top military and cyber threat and blacklisted over 50 more Chinese tech firms.

China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, warned that the bilateral relationship was “at a critical juncture of where it is heading” and urged Washington to avoid misjudgment on ties. Wang made the comments last week when meeting Evan Greenberg, executive vice-chairman of the National Committee on US-China Relations, a non-profit advisory body.

However, there has also been growing debate about whether Trump’s upending of America’s role in international affairs and his alienation of US allies would give China leverage in its geopolitical chess game with Washington. His transactional approach to diplomacy has raised questions about the Western bloc’s unity and Washington’s reliability.

Against that backdrop, Beijing has stepped up engagement with other major players in the global arena. Recent examples include the first trilateral economic dialogue between China, Japan, and South Korea in five years on Sunday, as well as visits by French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot and European Union trade chief Maros Sefcovic last week.

Li argued that the Trump administration’s policy moves appeared chaotic while inflicting lasting and profound damage on American politics and its global leadership.

“I think we should reduce our attention on the US,” he said.

“Much of what Trump is doing now is self-sabotage. We should move at our own pace – developing ourselves well is the best response,” he said, adding that China should avoid being “led by the nose by the US”.

Speaking during the same webinar, Xu Qiyuan, deputy director of the Institute of World Economics and Politics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, agreed that China should avoid a tit-for-tat approach on tariffs.

Otherwise, he warned, it could play into the hands of some on Trump’s team who were pushing for decoupling.

“We should … not fall into the other side’s narrative,” Xu said.

He said that increasing domestic consumer demand was pivotal for China to improve its standing in the global economy.

“If China becomes a major global net importer like the US – providing demand to the whole world – our relationships with many economies would shift from being competitive to complementary,” he added.

Tao Dong, president of fund manager Springs Capital’s Hong Kong unit, agreed that in the Trump era, the success of China’s strategy would hinge on how it interacted with other nations to shape a new international order.

“We should engage in talks with the US but also improve our relations with Europe, Japan, South Korea and others while deepening cooperation with [Global] South countries,” Tao said.

“We have entered a new geopolitical era. The post-war order has undergone irreversible changes.”

Since taking office in January, Trump has imposed two rounds of tariff increases exclusively targeting Chinese imports. This led to retaliation by Beijing, which levied duties on certain American goods and sanctioned more than two dozen US firms.

However, some view China’s response as relatively restrained compared to Mexico and Canada’s reactions to Trump’s tariff plans. For example, Trump’s announcement of a 25 per cent tariff on imported cars last week sparked global backlash, but China has not responded with new countermeasures.

Orange Wang

Based in Beijing, Orange covers a range of topics including China's economy and diplomacy. He previously worked in Hong Kong and had a stint in Washington. Before joining the Post, Orange worked as a Shanghai Correspondent for ET Net, a Hong Kong financial news agency.

8. Russia says it cannot accept US peace plan for Ukraine ‘in its current form’

Excerpts:

“We take the models and solutions proposed by the Americans very seriously, but we can’t accept it all in its current form,” Ryabkov was quoted by state media as telling the Russian magazine International Affairs. It came after Trump on Sunday revealed his frustration with Putin, saying he was “pissed off” and threatening to impose tariffs on Russian oil exports.

“All we have today is an attempt to find some kind of framework that would first allow for a ceasefire – at least as envisioned by the Americans,” Ryabkov said.

“As far as we can see, there is no place in them today for our main demand, namely to solve the problems related to the root causes of this conflict.”

Russia says it cannot accept US peace plan for Ukraine ‘in its current form’

Moscow’s refusal highlights the limited progress Donald Trump has made on his promise to end the war

The Guardian · by Pjotr Sauer · April 1, 2025

Moscow has described the latest US peace proposals as unacceptable to the Kremlin, highlighting the limited progress Donald Trump has made on his promise to end the war in Ukraine since taking office in January.

Sergei Ryabkov, a foreign policy adviser to Vladimir Putin, said some of Russia’s key demands were not being addressed by the US proposals to end the war, in comments that marked a rare acknowledgment from the Russian side that talks with the US over Ukraine had stalled in recent weeks.

“We take the models and solutions proposed by the Americans very seriously, but we can’t accept it all in its current form,” Ryabkov was quoted by state media as telling the Russian magazine International Affairs. It came after Trump on Sunday revealed his frustration with Putin, saying he was “pissed off” and threatening to impose tariffs on Russian oil exports.

“All we have today is an attempt to find some kind of framework that would first allow for a ceasefire – at least as envisioned by the Americans,” Ryabkov said.

“As far as we can see, there is no place in them today for our main demand, namely to solve the problems related to the root causes of this conflict.”

Putin has repeatedly referred to what he claimed were the “root causes” of the conflict to justify his hardline position on any prospective deal to end the war in Ukraine.

As preconditions for a ceasefire, the Russian leader has insisted on terms that would, in effect, dismantle Ukraine as an independent, functioning state – pulling it firmly into Russia’s sphere of influence.

He has demanded that Kyiv recognise Russia’s annexation of Crimea and four partly occupied regions in the south-east, withdraw its forces from those areas, pledge never to join Nato, and agree to demilitarisation.

The ruins of a building in the abandoned Ukrainian city of Maryinka, which was destroyed during the invasion by Russian forces. Photograph: Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters

In recent weeks the Russian president has also been openly pushing for regime change in Ukraine, claiming that Volodymyr Zelenskyy lacks the legitimacy to sign a peace deal and suggesting that Ukraine needs external governance.

Trump appears to be growing increasingly impatient with his lack of progress in a war that he promised to end in 24 hours, expressing frustration with Russian and Ukrainian leaders as he struggles to forge a truce.

Trump’s comment that he was “pissed off” with Putin over the Russian leader’s approach to a potential ceasefire in Ukraine was a noticeable shift in tone from a leader who had previously expressed admiration for Putin. However, Trump later dialled back his rhetoric and by Monday was accusing Ukraine of trying to renegotiate an economic deal with the US.

The White House on Tuesday said Trump was frustrated with leaders on both sides of the war.

Despite a flurry of US-brokered meetings and parallel talks with Russia and Ukraine in Saudi Arabia that produced – on paper – a 30-day energy ceasefire, both sides have continued to strike each other’s energy infrastructure.

The Trump administration also attempted to broker a ceasefire in the Black Sea, but Moscow sought to attach several conditions to the deal, including the easing of European sanctions, a demand swiftly rejected by Brussels.

Grigory Karasin, who represented Russia at the talks with the US in Saudi Arabia, last week admitted that the sides had failed to make significant progress and that negotiations may drag into next year.

But Trump’s team has said it remains committed to halting the war, with the US leader telling NBC he and Putin planned to speak again this week.

The Finnish president, Alexander Stubb, who spent time with Trump over the weekend, said he proposed setting a deadline of 20 April for Putin to comply with a full ceasefire.

However, those close to the Kremlin believe Moscow is unlikely to accept a full ceasefire without securing some of its demands, which include the cessation of all arms and intelligence supplies to Ukraine from the US and other allies.

“We’re prepared to keep fighting for some time,” said Fyodor Lukyanov, a prominent Russian foreign policy analyst who heads a council that advises the Kremlin. “The continuation of the war, which we are slowly but surely winning, is in our interest. Especially considering that the main sponsor [the US] seems to be backing out … Why should we rush in a situation like this?”

The Guardian · by Pjotr Sauer · April 1, 2025

9. The dangerous myth of U.S.-China cold war tensions

My interpretation of Miles Yu's essay: Prepare for a hot war but fight the cold war.

Reflect on these points:

Yes, the United States still commands immense deterrent power, but deterrence depends overwhelmingly on perception. The CCP has never internalized the doctrine of mutually assured destruction, which defined and restrained U.S.-Soviet confrontation during the Cold War.

That’s why the Cold War stayed cold. China, misled by its geographic depth, ideological zealotry and a staggering disregard for human life on the part of its communist leaders, along with a conviction that a crippling aversion to casualty binds the U.S., continues to see American deterrence, nuclear or conventional, as a paper tiger.

...

Let us be clear: Preparing for war with the People’s Liberation Army and competing with China economically is essential but insufficient.

We also must engage in a real cold war. That means drawing red lines and enforcing them. It means confronting every incremental CCP escalation with calculated resolve to give American deterrence true credibility. It means full strategic decoupling from CCP-controlled supply chains. It means backing Chinese citizens not with bombs but with moral and diplomatic support as they seek regime change on their terms. It also means purging CCP influence from within our institutions. Our intellectual and corporate elites — those who chose profit over principle, comfort over courage — must be held accountable.

A cold war is not won through complacency.

The choice is not between confrontation and peace. The real choice is between a cold war now or a hot war later. The alternative is not coexistence; it is collapse: the disintegration of the democratic global order and its replacement with Beijing’s Orwellian vision, what the CCP euphemistically calls “a community of common destiny for mankind.”

We do not wish for a cold war, but we must fight one before it’s too late.

The dangerous myth of U.S.-China cold war tensions

Why current deterrence strategies fail against Beijing's hot war preparations

washingtontimes.com · by The Washington Times https://www.washingtontimes.com

By Miles Yu - Monday, March 31, 2025

A version of this story appeared in the daily Threat Status newsletter from The Washington Times. Click here to receive Threat Status delivered directly to your inbox each weekday.

OPINION:

The United States is not in a cold war with China, and that’s precisely the problem. Unlike the Soviet Union, the Chinese Communist Party has no interest in a stable, rules-based standoff. The CCP is preparing for something far more dangerous: a hot war.

China’s military wing, the People’s Liberation Army, is actively gearing up for a confrontation with the United States, whether over Taiwan, the South China Sea or elsewhere. The endgame is displacing American power and achieving global dominance.

Yes, the United States still commands immense deterrent power, but deterrence depends overwhelmingly on perception. The CCP has never internalized the doctrine of mutually assured destruction, which defined and restrained U.S.-Soviet confrontation during the Cold War.

That’s why the Cold War stayed cold. China, misled by its geographic depth, ideological zealotry and a staggering disregard for human life on the part of its communist leaders, along with a conviction that a crippling aversion to casualty binds the U.S., continues to see American deterrence, nuclear or conventional, as a paper tiger.

Hence, China’s relentless military brinkmanship: daily incursions near Taiwan, aggression against India, harassment of Japan and the Philippines. This pattern is not accidental.

The Sino-Soviet split in the 1950s and 1960s was triggered precisely by Mao Zedong’s disgust at Moscow’s unwillingness to fight a nuclear hot war with the United States. To Mao, the Soviets had gone “revisionist” and soft by embracing the mutually assured destruction doctrine and accepting American deterrence. That strategic contempt still echoes in Beijing.

The U.S. is not in a cold war with China for another, more structural reason. Unlike the Soviet Union, China is fully and foolishly integrated into the global free market.

The U.S. has handed the CCP a strategic gift — access to capital, technology and markets — without demanding adherence to reciprocal norms. The result? The CCP enriches itself by gaming the system through intellectual property theft, forced technology transfers, state-backed dumping and widespread espionage masked as “joint ventures.”

This never would have flown during the Cold War. The Soviet bloc was economically decoupled from the West, and that firewall was essential.

The prerequisite for a cold war between the U.S. and China — full decoupling between democratic capitalism and totalitarian command economies — does not exist.

The Cold War was a war of ideas. The United States promoted liberal democracy and human rights through powerful tools such as the U.S. Information Agency and the Helsinki Accords.

Today, we have reduced our strategic competition with China to a tech war, a trade war and a hypothetical battlefield confrontation, assuming that the rules of engagement will somehow hold. Meanwhile, we have dismantled our ideological infrastructure: Radio Free Asia is defunded, and institutions such as the National Endowment for Democracy are marginalized. As a result, we have surrendered the high ground of moral and ideological clarity. Our soft power is at half-staff.

Yet, the CCP is terrified of it. Just as the Soviets feared the power of American ideals, the CCP is haunted by “color revolutions,” “black hand” conspiracies and perceived plots to destabilize its regime. Beijing’s paranoid rhetoric about Washington’s “Cold War mentality” is proof of what it fears most: a real, ideological confrontation between freedom and authoritarianism.

During the Cold War with the Soviets, the West was unified. Policy coordination among allies was non-negotiable. Export controls were executed collectively, ensuring no Western nation could profit by breaking ranks.

Today, the U.S. leads a coalition riddled with opportunistic spoilers. Many U.S. allies refuse to “choose sides” and pretend that the outcome of U.S.-China competition has no bearing on their security or sovereignty.

They forget or ignore that the CCP’s model of techno-authoritarian governance is incompatible with liberal democracy. By refusing to confront it, they empower it.

During the Cold War, U.S. elites — Democratic and Republican, academic and political — recognized the moral rot of the Soviet system. Presidents including John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan and policymakers such as George Kennan and Richard Pipes were unequivocal.

They supported dissidents such as Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, Andrei Sakharov, Vaclav Havel and Lech Walesa, not because they romanticized them but because they understood the stakes.

Today, supporting Chinese dissidents is dismissed as irresponsible, even dangerous. The very idea of regime change is taboo in Washington circles. Meanwhile, the CCP’s United Front Work Department is conducting regime changes in America at all levels. It infiltrates our universities, cultivates proxies and co-opts thought leaders in institutions vandalized by smug and often phony “realists.” “Blame America first” professors at Columbia, Harvard, and Johns Hopkins universities, with their nauseating sycophancy to Beijing, lend legitimacy to a regime that would erase their freedoms if given the chance. The Soviets never enjoyed such luck.

Let us be clear: Preparing for war with the People’s Liberation Army and competing with China economically is essential but insufficient.

We also must engage in a real cold war. That means drawing red lines and enforcing them. It means confronting every incremental CCP escalation with calculated resolve to give American deterrence true credibility. It means full strategic decoupling from CCP-controlled supply chains. It means backing Chinese citizens not with bombs but with moral and diplomatic support as they seek regime change on their terms. It also means purging CCP influence from within our institutions. Our intellectual and corporate elites — those who chose profit over principle, comfort over courage — must be held accountable.

A cold war is not won through complacency.

The choice is not between confrontation and peace. The real choice is between a cold war now or a hot war later. The alternative is not coexistence; it is collapse: the disintegration of the democratic global order and its replacement with Beijing’s Orwellian vision, what the CCP euphemistically calls “a community of common destiny for mankind.”

We do not wish for a cold war, but we must fight one before it’s too late.

• Miles Yu is the director of the Hudson Institute’s China Center and a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution. His “Red Horizon” column appears every other Tuesday in The Washington Times.

washingtontimes.com · by The Washington Times https://www.washingtontimes.com

10. Philippine military chief warns troops to ‘start planning’ in event of Taiwan conflict

Everybody's involvement is inevitable. No one will be "sitting this one out" (to borrow from Red Dawn, IYKYK).

I am also reminded of Ambasador Romualdez' statement here:

“The West Philippine Sea, not Taiwan, is the real flashpoint for an armed conflict,”

– Ambassador Jose Manuel Romualdez February 28, 2024

Philippine military chief warns troops to ‘start planning’ in event of Taiwan conflict

Manila’s involvement ‘inevitable’ given large presence of Filipino workers in Taiwan and Philippines-US defence ties, analysts say

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3304803/philippine-military-chief-warns-troops-start-planning-event-taiwan-conflict?module=perpetual_scroll_0&pgtype=article

Raissa Robles

Published: 9:45pm, 1 Apr 2025Updated: 10:10pm, 1 Apr 2025

Philippine military chief General Romeo Brawner Jnr has warned his troops to be prepared for a possible invasion of Taiwan by mainland China, a directive analysts say underscores how Manila’s involvement would be “inevitable” given the large presence of Filipino workers there and the Southeast Asian nation’s defence ties with the US.

Speaking at an event marking the 38th anniversary of the Northern Luzon Command (Nolcom) on Tuesday, Brawner told the assembled soldiers to “start planning” for such a scenario, warning they would be at “the front line” of any rescue operation should mainland China attack the self-ruled island.

“If something happens to Taiwan, inevitably we will be involved. There are 250,000 OFWs [Filipino overseas workers] working in Taiwan and we will have to rescue them, and it will be the task of the Nolcom to be at the front line of that operation,” he said.

Beijing sees Taiwan as part of China to be reunited by force if necessary. Most countries, including the US, do not recognise Taiwan as an independent state, but Washington is opposed to any attempt to take the self-governed island by force and is committed to supplying it with weapons.

Philippine Army Chief of Staff Romeo Brawner Jnr says the country will be at “the front line” of any rescue operation should mainland China attack Taiwan. Photo: Reuters

Brawner’s statement came on the same day that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Eastern Command spokesman, Senior Colonel Shi Yi, announced more massive military drills near Taiwan.

According to Taiwan’s defence ministry, China’s Shandong aircraft carrier group had entered the self-governed island’s “response area”, a self-defined area tracked by its military.

US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth had on Saturday said “America is committed to sustaining robust, ready and credible deterrence in the Indo-Pacific, including across the Taiwan Strait”, according to a transcript posted on the Department of Defence’s website.

The Philippines is the only Asean country close to Taiwan and faces the island across the Bashi Channel, which Manila considers to be part of its territorial sea.

However, retired Supreme Court justice Antonio Carpio told This Week in Asia on Tuesday that while Washington and Manila had the 1951 Mutual Defence Treaty, which required either party to come to the other’s aid in case of any attack, “the MDT applies only to any armed attack against a party to the treaty”.

“Taiwan is not a party to the MDT, so neither the US nor the Philippines can invoke the MDT in case China invades Taiwan,” Carpio said.

In the event of an attack, the Philippines would need to be vigilant to ward off any attempts by China to block the Bashi Channel, he added.

Shandong aircraft carrier moves into Taiwan response zone ahead of PLA drills

For Max Montero, a Filipino-Australian defence analyst and military consultant, an invasion of Taiwan is “inevitable”.

Posting on his Facebook page on Tuesday, Montero said “any conflict in Taiwan will affect the Philippines, whether we like it or not. And we should be prepared for it”.

With the Philippines “right at the forefront being Taiwan’s closest neighbour”, an invasion would trigger the flight of thousands of Filipino OFWs from there and a “massive influx of Taiwanese refugees” to Philippine shores, Montero warned.

“There will definitely be intrusions by both Chinese and Taiwanese military forces, including potential fighting inside Philippine EEZ [exclusive economic zone] and Air Defence Zone, which might even see our Armed Forces of the Philippines having to prepare or defend itself from flare-ups,” Montero wrote on Facebook.

“The Philippines might even have to defend and shoot back against Chinese forces who might use the conflict to attack targets of interest in the Philippines including EDCA bases, Philippine military units, air, naval and air defence assets.”

EDCA bases refer to nine Philippine military facilities which host US troops in rotation as well as their military hardware.

Soldiers train during the annual Balikatan exercises last year. The drills this year will include an “island retaking exercise” and a “counter-landing exercise to prevent an invasion”. Photo: Jeoffrey Maitem

Chester Cabalza, founding president of the International Development and Security Cooperation think tank in Manila, warned that should war erupt, the Philippines could become a “geostrategic bullseye for competing powers” given the country’s proximity to Taiwan, its maritime dispute with mainland China and alliance with the US.

Cabalza told This Week in Asia on Tuesday that while Manila’s national interest, insofar as Taiwan was concerned, centred only on “our OFWs” there, any invasion would have “a seismic effect” on the country’s national security due to the proximity and be “a big test on … how reliable the Philippines is with the US in case Washington extends military support to Taiwan”.

Beijing’s heightened war drills around Taiwan come ahead of the joint Philippines-US 40th Balikatan exercises later this month.

The US military is set to deploy for the first time the NMesis (Navy Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System), an anti-ship missile system, and an undisclosed number of unmanned surface vehicles to northern Philippines for the drills.

The US Typhon missile system, which can launch the Standard Missile 6 and the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile, is expected to be redeployed for the exercises. This places the Taiwan Strait and part of China’s coastline within its range.

Army Brigadier General Michael Logico, executive agent for the Balikatan drills, told This Week in Asia last month that this year’s war drills would include an “island retaking exercise” and a “counter-landing exercise to prevent an invasion”.

Raissa Robles

Raissa Robles has written for the SCMP since 1996. A freelance journalist specialising in politics, international relations, business and Muslim rebellion, she has contributed to Reuters, the Economist Intelligence Unit, Daily Mail, Times of London, Radio Netherlands and Asiaweek.

11. U.S. Sends Warplanes, Ships to the Middle East in Warning to Iran

The Asia pivot is always a pirouette spinning 360 degrees back to the Middle East rather than 180 degrees to Asia. We cannot narrow our priorities to a single geographic location if we are to remain the dominant power in the world, a superpower. And if we do not wish to remain a superpower are we willing to accept the fallout that will come from that radical change?

U.S. Sends Warplanes, Ships to the Middle East in Warning to Iran

Military buildup comes amid ongoing U.S. strikes in Yemen.

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/u-s-sends-warplanes-ships-to-the-middle-east-in-warning-to-iran-f72fcaff

By Nancy A. Youssef

, Michael R. Gordon

and Benoit Faucon

April 1, 2025 7:50 pm ET

The USS Carl Vinson is usually assigned to Asia but is expected to arrive in the Middle East within a couple of weeks. Photo: Yonhap News/Zuma Press

WASHINGTON—The Pentagon is rapidly expanding its forces in the Middle East as the U.S. military continues airstrikes against Houthi militants in Yemen and steps up its pressure on Iran, the Pentagon said Tuesday.

President Trump has threatened in recent days to bomb Iran if Tehran doesn’t make a deal to roll back its nuclear program. But two officials said that the aim of the current deployment is to bolster the U.S. campaign in Yemen and deter Iran. The deployments aren’t preparation for an imminent Iran attack, the officials said.

The buildup includes F-35 combat jets, which are joining B-2 bombers and Predator drones in the region, according to U.S. officials familiar with the planning.

The U.S. will soon have two carrier strike groups in the region—the USS Harry S. Truman, which has been operating in the Middle East since last fall, and USS Carl Vinson, which is usually assigned to Asia and is expected to arrive within two weeks.

Along with the carriers, the strike groups include cruise missile-carrying destroyers and other warships. The U.S. also has sent Patriot antimissile batteries to defend U.S. air bases and nearby allies, the officials said.

The Trump administration launched an air campaign against the Houthis on March 15 and has continued daily strikes around the Yemeni capital of San’a and other locations, targeting the group’s leaders and military assets.

On Tuesday, the Houthis said they shot down a U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone amid ongoing U.S. strikes in Yemen. The Pentagon was aware of the claim but declined to comment. Earlier this week, the Houthis launched missiles toward Israel, which were intercepted.

In addition to threatening Iran with bombing if it doesn’t negotiate a nuclear agreement, the White House has warned it will hold Tehran accountable if the Houthis fire at U.S. forces.

Iran has provided arms and training to the Houthis. Talks between the U.S. and Iran on Tehran’s nuclear program have yet to be arranged.

“The United States and its partners…are prepared to respond to any state or nonstate actor seeking to broaden or escalate conflict in the region,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement Tuesday. “Should Iran or its proxies threaten American personnel and interests in the region, the United States will take decisive action to defend our people.”

Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Qalibaf on Friday said Iran would retaliate against any U.S. strike on Iran by attacking American interests in the Middle East.

“If the Americans attack the sanctity of Iran, the entire region will blow up like a spark in an ammunition dump,” Qalibaf said in a speech in Tehran.

An Iranian official said the response would be focused on U.S. bases in the Persian Gulf. “Each American soldier will be an individual target,” he said.

Some experts believe that Iran is wary of initiating a major conflict with Trump, who ordered the killing of Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the paramilitary Quds Force, in a January 2020 airstrike near the Baghdad airport.

A satellite photo from Planet Labs PBC shows four B-2 bombers at an air base in Diego Garcia over the weekend. Photo: Planet Labs PBC/Associated Press

Army Gen. Michael “Erik” Kurilla, the head of the U.S. Central Command, which is responsible for military operations in the Middle East, has long advocated for a more forceful U.S. response to Houthi attacks on ships transiting the Red Sea and nearby sea lanes, which began shortly after Israel’s war in Gaza began in 2023.

The Houthis, who control large swaths of Yemen, stopped their attacks earlier this year after a brief cease-fire in Gaza, but said they would resume them once the deal collapsed and Israel relaunched its military operation.

The Biden administration, which was trying to avoid a wider Middle East war as Israel and Hamas clashed, sent U.S. warships to try to protect international shipping and conducted strikes against the Houthis. But the Trump administration has been more aggressive and has expanded its list of targets to include Houthi military leaders.

The new deployments underscore that the Middle East remains a major focus of concern for the Pentagon, despite its multiyear push to shift forces to the Pacific region to deter threats from China.

U.S. bases in Europe and the Middle East have witnessed a flurry of activity in recent days as the U.S. and Iran traded warnings in recent days.

B-2 bombers have been deployed to an air base in Diego Garcia, an island in the Indian Ocean. The Biden administration also used B-2s to strike Houthi underground weapon storage sites in Yemen in October.

A steady stream of Air Force cargo planes and refueling tankers have been flying to the Middle East from Europe, Asia and the U.S., according to flight-tracking data.

Write to Nancy A. Youssef at nancy.youssef@wsj.com, Michael R. Gordon at michael.gordon@wsj.com and Benoit Faucon at benoit.faucon@wsj.com

12. In Denied Areas: Lessons from the British Special Operations Executive and Jedburghs

Access the complete paper at this link: https://sway.cloud.microsoft/qYaPyMv6FGmGnnul?ref=email

In Denied Areas: Lessons from the British Special Operations Executive and Jedburghs

https://www.jsou.edu/Press/PublicationDashboard/263

Authored by:

Major Mark Thomas, Benjamin Jensen, PhD

Occasional Papers

Published on 3/5/2025

Digital Only

“Surprise, kill, and vanish,” motto of the World War II Jedburgh teams, captures the essence of how units successfully operated in a location comparable to a modern-day police state.

The latest JSOU Press occasional paper, In Denied Areas: Lessons from the British Special Operations Executive and Jedburghs by Major Mark Thomas and Benjamin Jensen, PhD, thoughtfully explores how through proper preparation of environment and communications security, the Jedburghs’ mission—infiltrating deep into Nazi-occupied France to support the allied Normandy invasion—offers important historical examples for battlefield survival still applicable today.

Access as a web page by clicking here or on the image below.

In Denied Areas: Lessons from the British Special Operations Executive and JedburghsBy Major Mark Thomas and Benjamin Jensen, PhD

13. Understanding Hybrid Warfare in the Russia-Ukraine Conflict

Excerpts:

Conclusion

Russia’s attack on Ukraine on February 24, 2022, exemplifies a sophisticated form of hybrid warfare, reshaping global security perceptions. Russia has employed various strategies including disinformation, sabotage, and digital propaganda to weaken its adversaries without direct battlefield engagement. President Vladimir Putin views Western threats as the primary justification for these actions, reviving KGB era tactics to strengthen Russia’s strategic position.

Prior to the full-scale invasion, Russia had already launched a hybrid threat campaign, exploiting Western vulnerabilities through propaganda, diplomacy, and legal maneuvers. However, once the invasion commenced, these strategies encountered significant challenges, including military setbacks and internal leadership conflicts. As a result, the initially planned hybrid warfare evolved into a more conventional conflict that proved difficult to control.

Today, the Russia-Ukraine war serves as a key example of how modern warfare is evolving, particularly with the increasing use of cyber warfare and information manipulation. The world now faces new security challenges, where digital attacks can be just as devastating as conventional military strikes.

Konten dari Pengguna

Understanding Hybrid Warfare in the Russia-Ukraine Conflict

https://kumparan.com/muhammad-husen-1742838410855976692/understanding-hybrid-warfare-in-the-russia-ukraine-conflict-24my6GeY2Lw/full?utm

Husen Muhammad

Mahasiswa Hubungan Internasional 2022 Universitas Tanjungpura, Pontianak Memiliki ketertarikan dengan isu - isu dalam Hubungan Internasional. Menulis bagian dari kehidupan saya Email: huseinm022@gmail.com Instagram: @oohseenn

1 April 2025 9:49 WIB

waktu baca 8 menit

Tulisan dari Husen Muhammad tidak mewakili pandangan dari redaksi kumparan

Perbesar

illustration showing the dangers of cyber attacks in hybrid warfare (Sumber: istock/Artrotozwork)

The History and Definition of Hybrid Warfare

The concept of hybrid warfare is not a new phenomenon in the history of global conflicts. Although the term gained popularity in the 21st century, warfare strategies combining conventional and unconventional tactics have been employed since ancient times. Throughout history, many empires and states have utilized a combination of direct military engagements with methods such as sabotage, propaganda, infiltration, and the use of proxy groups to defeat adversaries without engaging in open battlefield confrontations.

One of the earliest examples of hybrid warfare tactics can be found in the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BCE) between Athens and Sparta. In this war, both sides relied not only on military strength but also on economic blockades, political manipulation, and strategic alliances to weaken their opponents. Similarly, during the Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815), French forces faced guerrilla warfare tactics from Spanish insurgents supported by Britain an early form of hybrid warfare that combined conventional battles with non-military resistance.

In the 20th century, hybrid warfare evolved significantly, particularly in conflicts involving non-state actors. The Vietnam War (1955–1975) serves as a crucial example, where the Viet Cong employed a combination of guerrilla warfare, propaganda, and political infiltration to combat the conventionally superior U.S. military forces. Additionally, during the Cold War (1947–1991), the United States and the Soviet Union avoided direct confrontation but engaged in various hybrid warfare methods such as proxy wars, covert operations, information warfare, and economic interventions to expand their spheres of influence.

The Contemporary Landscape of Hybrid Warfare

In today’s geopolitical landscape, conflicts between states and non-state actors no longer take the form of purely conventional military engagements. Hybrid warfare has become a new paradigm in conflict strategy, where multiple methods and instruments are used simultaneously to weaken adversaries without direct military confrontation. This form of warfare blends traditional military force with non-military tactics such as information warfare, cyberattacks, economic pressure, and the use of proxy groups to achieve specific political and strategic objectives.

A key characteristic of hybrid warfare is the difficulty in detecting its attack patterns, as it often operates below the threshold of conventional conflict. This strategy enables states or groups to exert pressure, disrupt, or dominate opponents without explicitly declaring war. Hybrid warfare also incorporates modern technologies such as cyber weaponry, digital propaganda, and psychological operations to create instability within enemy territories.

This approach is not limited to military tactics but also involves a series of asymmetric operations, including the spread of disinformation, manipulative political campaigns (black campaigns), and infiltration into the government or critical institutions of adversaries. Attacks can be carried out using unconventional weapons, including nuclear, biological, and chemical technology, as well as improvised explosive devices (CBRNE), creating unpredictable threats.

Frank Hoffman and the Definition of Hybrid Warfare

The concept of hybrid warfare was first introduced by Frank Hoffman, an American defense strategist. Hoffman originally defined hybrid war as being the incorporation of a, “range of different modes of warfare including conventional capabilities, irregular tactics and formations, terrorist acts including indiscriminate violence and coercion and criminal disorder” (Hoffman, 2007). While the definition of hybrid warfare remains diverse and continues to evolve, its essence highlights an adaptive and dynamic form of conflict capable of integrating multiple dimensions. This makes hybrid warfare a significant challenge for modern defense systems, requiring flexible, multidimensional responses that can adapt to continuously shifting threats.

The Hybrid Nature of Russia’s Attack on Ukraine

On February 24, 2022, Russia launched a sudden attack on Ukraine, shocking the Western world and altering global security perceptions. This event forced Western nations to confront a reality they had previously overlooked. Military strategists have long used the VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity) framework to describe challenging operational environments. Some have taken an even more pessimistic view, using the BANI (brittle, anxious, nonlinear, incomprehensible) model. Russia, whether intentionally or not, effectively created such conditions, placing the West in a state of uncertainty.

To understand Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it is essential to consider President Vladimir Putin’s historical perspective. According to Putin, Russia has fought against Western threats for over a thousand years, with World War II being the last conflict solidifying its power. He believes that since the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1990, the West has sought to diminish Russia’s status as a global power, fostering a persistent sense of threat. In pursuing his goals, Putin has revived old KGB-era methods, including:

1. Disinformation and Misinformation

Russia actively disseminates fake news through various media channels. With outlets like RT and Sputnik, the Kremlin has built its own media industry to influence public opinion abroad. This disinformation often involves reinterpretations of historical events or existing facts.

2. Sabotage

Russia employs strategies to destabilize adversaries and erode public trust in their governments. These tactics frequently involve collaboration with criminal organizations to weaken the target country’s stability.

3. Digital Fire Accelerators

Informasi penting disajikan secara kronologis

Lihat Breaking News

Unlike in the Soviet era, today’s internet and social media technologies are used to accelerate the spread of propaganda and cyberattacks.

Through these methods, hybrid warfare continues to evolve as a complex and flexible strategy. Conceptually, hybrid warfare can be seen as an antithesis to international law, which seeks to limit war through the United Nations Charter. However, in practice, states like Russia have exploited legal loopholes to achieve their strategic interests. The Hybrid CoE (Center of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats) identifies four key characteristics of hybrid warfare:

1. It does not occur as a single event but unfolds gradually.

2. It is conducted by actors with malicious intent to achieve specific goals.

3. It originates from authoritarian systems that challenge the democratic rule-based order.

4. It exploits the **gray zone**, where attackers take advantage of democratic nations’ reluctance to act decisively in defending their own legal frameworks.

Russia’s Hybrid Warfare in Ukraine

Before the full-scale military attack on February 24, 2022, Russia had already launched a sophisticated hybrid threat campaign against Ukraine and its neighboring countries. Initially, the United States, NATO, and the European Union were uncertain about Russia’s intentions, while the Baltic states, Sweden, and Finland grew increasingly anxious. Russia carefully sought weaknesses in the West and exploited them through a combination of legal, diplomatic, and propaganda tactics.

The prolonged military posturing around Ukraine further heightened global uncertainty. However, once the military invasion began, Russia encountered various strategic obstacles. Their forces failed to leverage the tactical agility they had previously relied upon. This was exacerbated by internal conflicts within Putin’s leadership circle, as seen when he publicly humiliated senior officials like Sergey Naryshkin and General Valery Gerasimov. As a result, Russia’s military structure suffered, leading to a more rigid approach that diminished the effectiveness of its ongoing hybrid warfare operations.

The Uncontrolled Evolution of Hybrid Warfare

Currently, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine can be understood as a form of hybrid warfare that has spiraled out of control. Initially, Russia relied on information and disinformation strategies to shape global opinion. However, following military setbacks in late February 2022, the conflict gradually shifted toward a more traditional conventional war. One of Russia’s primary propaganda objectives has been to degrade its opponents through systematic psychological operations.

Many political scientists argue that the Russia-Ukraine war has become a test case for modern warfare rules in unprecedented ways. As a global cyber power, Russia has not hesitated to employ information warfare, cyberattacks, and electromagnetic spectrum operations to weaken its adversaries. Western nations, including NATO and the European Union, are still grappling with how to counter this increasingly complex form of warfare.

The cyber domain has become a new battlefield, where digital attacks can be just as devastating as conventional military strikes. Warfare no longer occurs solely on land, sea, air, and space, but also within the information realm and cyberspace, presenting new challenges for global security in the future.

Conclusion

Russia’s attack on Ukraine on February 24, 2022, exemplifies a sophisticated form of hybrid warfare, reshaping global security perceptions. Russia has employed various strategies including disinformation, sabotage, and digital propaganda to weaken its adversaries without direct battlefield engagement. President Vladimir Putin views Western threats as the primary justification for these actions, reviving KGB era tactics to strengthen Russia’s strategic position.

Prior to the full-scale invasion, Russia had already launched a hybrid threat campaign, exploiting Western vulnerabilities through propaganda, diplomacy, and legal maneuvers. However, once the invasion commenced, these strategies encountered significant challenges, including military setbacks and internal leadership conflicts. As a result, the initially planned hybrid warfare evolved into a more conventional conflict that proved difficult to control.

Today, the Russia-Ukraine war serves as a key example of how modern warfare is evolving, particularly with the increasing use of cyber warfare and information manipulation. The world now faces new security challenges, where digital attacks can be just as devastating as conventional military strikes.

Muhammad Husen, International Relations Student, Tanjungpura University Pontianak

14. Nominee for Chairman: Military's Top Job is Creating Peace Through Strength

I would just add that we need access, influence, relationships, and irregular warfare capabilities in support of a national level political warfare strategy in the gray zone to demonstrate that our strength is full spectrum. If we cede the gray zone we will not have peace. Winning in the gray zone will contribute to peace through strength and deterrence of large scale combat operations.=/major theater war.

This is a powerful statement. We should all be able to embrace this.

Excerpt:

"[My] No. 1 concern is the passage of time and ensuring that the joint force is ready, properly armed, with the right capabilities out at the tactical edge, properly globally integrated with the services themselves, with the other elements of the interagency, with our allies and partners, and with the private sector, and ready to go tonight," Caine said. "And that means their families are ready, they're ready, [and] they're properly trained and equipped. So, we have much to do."

Nominee for Chairman: Military's Top Job is Creating Peace Through Strength

https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/4142512/nominee-for-chairman-militarys-top-job-is-creating-peace-through-strength/

April 1, 2025 | By C. Todd Lopez, DOD News |

The U.S. military must fight America's wars when needed. Still, the military's top priority is to prevent those wars by signaling to adversaries its readiness to fight and win in any scenario, said President Donald J. Trump's nominee for chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

"Our adversaries are advancing, global nuclear threats are on the rise and deterrence is paramount," said retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Dan Caine, speaking today before the Senate Armed Services Committee. "Our national defense requires urgent action and reform across the board. We must go faster. We must move with a sense of urgency. We can never forget that our No. 1 job is to create peace through overwhelming strength and, if need be, fight and win our nation's wars."

If confirmed, Caine, will return to military service and be promoted to general, taking on the role of the highest-ranking officer in the U.S. military.

As chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Caine will serve as the chief advisor to the president on military matters.

Pentagon reform, acquisition and modernization were all top priorities for lawmakers during Caine's hearing.

As the Trump administration calls for reforms across the government, inside the Pentagon Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been busy implementing those reforms.

Caine, who has a broad background in government and the private sector said he's on board with those changes, particularly in how the department can get after acquisitions so tools most needed by warfighters are delivered quickly to the battlefield.

"For me, we have to stop admiring the problem, and we have to start executing," Caine said. "We have to take an ownership and an entrepreneurial mindset to all of these reforms that are in front of us. And we can't do this alone. We have to do it with you here in the Congress in order to actually make these changes."

Caine comes from private sector work involving finance. Civilian leaders who have recently onboarded into the department share similar business backgrounds. Working with them to streamline the Pentagon, he said, is something he looks forward to.

"I'm encouraged by the leaders who are coming into the department who have deep, substantive business backgrounds that are not known as people who admire problems," he said. "If confirmed, I look forward to working with the various leaders in order to actually move the ball, and, of course, working with the Congress to execute these things without continuing to admire these challenges in front of us."

Speeding up acquisition so that the promise of new technology doesn't fade before it's finally delivered to the warfighter, sometimes years later, is also a priority.

"Technology is evolving so quickly that every time we field capabilities, they're obsolete, oftentimes when they hit the force," Caine said. "And that's not acceptable."

The department, he said, must have greater agility in developing requirements to take advantage of the latest technologies.

"If confirmed, I'll work with the joint staff, the joint chiefs and, of course, [the Office of the Secretary of Defense] to pick up the speed, pace and tempo of fielding the capabilities that we need that are not obsolete," Caine said.

New technology is in startup companies and small businesses, not just in existing prime defense contractors, Caine said. So, the department will need a mix of input from both. But when it comes to small businesses, it's long been a challenge to get on board with the government, and the department must work to ease that burden so the best technologies from the smallest and newest companies can end up in the hands of warfighters.

"The ability to bring advanced technologies from new companies, the startups, into the joint force and make it easier for them to bring their products and services into the military is something that I'm passionate about, given my background and experience," Caine said. "If confirmed, I think that'll be an area where I spend some time."

Maintaining America's strategic deterrent, the nuclear triad, is a top priority, Caine said, and he'll work with U.S. Strategic Command to make that happen. Additionally, continued partnerships with American allies remain important, including with NATO in Europe.

"Allies and partners are a critical component to our ability to protect and defend our values and virtues around the world. NATO is a key component to that," he said. "For me in particular, I value our allies and partners, and if confirmed, that'll be a significant portion of the job that I have ahead of me."

Caine has served in the Air Force and Air National Guard as an F-16 Fighting Falcon multirole fighter aircraft pilot, as an advisor at the Central Intelligence Agency, with the interagency at the White House, and as an entrepreneur and investor in the private sector. Taking on the role as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff will bring new challenges, with the top concern, he said, making sure the joint force is always ready to fight and win.

"[My] No. 1 concern is the passage of time and ensuring that the joint force is ready, properly armed, with the right capabilities out at the tactical edge, properly globally integrated with the services themselves, with the other elements of the interagency, with our allies and partners, and with the private sector, and ready to go tonight," Caine said. "And that means their families are ready, they're ready, [and] they're properly trained and equipped. So, we have much to do."

15. How To Deal With “Signalgate”—a Guide to the Perplexed

I always enjoyed Dr. Kass' thought provoking lectures when I was a student at the National War College and this essay is no different.

Excerpt:

“SignalGate” has become a distraction and a cudgel. It’s past time for the Administration to change the narrative and reclaim the moral high-ground—all in ten simple steps:

How To Deal With “Signalgate”—a Guide to the Perplexed

By Lani Kass

April 02, 2025

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2025/04/02/how_to_deal_with_signalgatea_guide_to_the_perplexed_1101407.html?mc_cid=8e6ca37ad0

Last week, The Atlantic published an explosive report claiming that its editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, was invited to a “Principals Committee (PC) Small Group” discussion on Signal, where Cabinet officials discussed plans to strike the Houthi rebels in Yemen. Sensitive details—including the iconic who, what, where, when, and how of military operations—were publicly disclosed.

Although the Administration denied that classified information was shared, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss. and Ranking Member, Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed, called for the Defense Department Inspector General (IG) to investigate the incident.

The story quickly gained “legs” beyond the Washington Beltway. According to the first poll out on the national security breach, 3 out of 4 Americans— including 60% of Republicans—believe the use of a Signal group chat to discuss military strikes is a serious problem.

Thus far, the Administration’s efforts to downplay the explosive report have failed to quell the controversy, even as White House officials initially said they believed it would die down.

President Trump, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard have all denied that classified information was leaked. Yet 74% of Americans believe that the discussion of impending strikes was a very (53%) or a somewhat (21%) serious problem. 28% of Republicans said it was a "very serious problem.”

Here’s a stunning statistic: A higher share of respondents said that “SignalGate” was “a serious problem” than those who, in past polls, considered Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server a “serious problem.”

“SignalGate” has become a distraction and a cudgel. It’s past time for the Administration to change the narrative and reclaim the moral high-ground—all in ten simple steps:

Signal is a commercial privacy app which, while encrypted, is not certified by the National Security Agency for secure government communications. The NSA is the sole authority regarding Communications Security (COMSEC).
Signal was introduced into government communications systems by the Biden administration in early 2021 due to misguided COVID isolation protocols. Its use continued after the pandemic ended, inculcating dangerous COMSEC habits which compromised Operational Security (OPSEC).
Consequently, for 4 years, highly sensitive and likely classified interactions took place on an unapproved platform, potentially causing irreparable damage.
This is a critical issue which must be promptly investigated to determine:
Was Signal used for all the Cabinet-level PC and National Security Council meetings that must have been held before, during and after the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan?
Was the Abbey Gate debacle due to a security breach? Thirteen brave Americans died, as did thousands of our Afghan allies. Billions of dollars’ worth of US equipment were left behind, arming the Taliban and adding to the global weapons black market.
Was Ukraine discussed on Signal? Were those “chats’ compromised by Vladimir Putin, as Russia planned and conducted its bloody invasion? Who else might have benefited from the Biden national security team’s lax OPSEC and COMSEC protocols?
Were the October 7th, 2023, Hamas invasion of Israel, the brutal massacre of 1,200 innocent civilians, and the ensuing war in Gaza also discussed on Signal? Were these “chats” compromised by Iran which, in turn, guided its proxies on seven fronts?
We simply don’t know who was looped into those sensitive “chats” by Biden’s team—deliberately or inadvertently—during the most perilous times since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Those debacles and their disastrous consequences must be investigated to determine if OPSEC and COMSEC breaches played a part.
Our administration has been in office for less than 100 days. Our Cabinet officials have been confirmed by the Senate even more recently. While we take full responsibility for the mistakes made, we inherited broken protocols. Mr. Goldberg, while failing to announce his presence and leave the chat—as any patriotic American would have done—inadvertently did us a favor by exposing this long-standing vulnerability. A vital lesson was learned; the security gap was plugged.
Fortunately, the operation against the Houthi terrorists was flawlessly executed. The only casualties were the intended targets.
This administration takes national security very seriously. From this point forward, all communications at the Cabinet level—as well as all classified discussions across the US Government—are to follow appropriate COMSEC and OPSEC protocols.
Principals Committee and National Security Council meetings will take place—as they have since 1948, except under the Biden regime—in the most secure place on the planet: the White House Situation Room.
Thank you, Mr. Goldberg, for alerting us to an ongoing national security vulnerability created by Team Biden. We have now fixed it. Let’s move on.

Dr. Lani Kass served at the Department of Defense for 28 years. These views are her own.

16. Golden Dome: Learning From the Past To Gild the Future

Excerpts:

The Golden Dome initiative represents America's most significant integrated missile defense undertaking since the Strategic Defense Initiative. But unlike SDI, today's effort benefits from mature technologies, battle-tested systems and proven capabilities, and decades of institutional knowledge within our defense industrial base.

Without focused leadership and integration expertise, the President's decree risks becoming like Coleridge's unfinished poem "Kubla Khan" - a grand vision interrupted. Just as the golden dome of Xanadu existed only as a fragmented vision in a dream, so too might America’s Golden Dome remain incomplete without the right military-industrial partnerships and strategic approach.

For Golden Dome to succeed where SDI faltered, it must incorporate the solidity of established defense primes with the liquid agility of newcomers, all while keeping costs in check and timelines tight. The DoD faces a daunting challenge, but with Guam as a proving ground and battle-tested technologies as building blocks, the initiative stands a fighting chance of fulfilling the President’s vision: a shield capable of protecting American power projection in an era of proliferating threats.

Golden Dome: Learning From the Past To Gild the Future

By Peter Mitchell

April 02, 2025

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2025/04/02/golden_dome_learning_from_the_past_to_gild_the_future_1101413.html?mc_cid=8e6ca37ad0

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately [golden] dome decree

- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Two months ago, President Trump directed the development of a national missile defense system initially dubbed “Iron Dome” and rebranded in February as “Golden Dome". Its stated purpose is to establish a layered and integrated defense shield to protect the United States against ballistic missiles, hypersonic weapons, advanced cruise missiles, and other emerging aerial threats.

The executive order acknowledges that similar ambitions are not new. It references President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, noting that while it “resulted in many technological advances,” the program was ultimately “canceled before its goal could be realized.”

However, the current order justifies renewed urgency, asserting that “over the past 40 years, rather than lessening, the threat from next-generation strategic weapons has become more intense and complex.” It specifically cites adversaries’ development of “next-generation delivery systems and their own homeland integrated air and missile defense capabilities.”

Success in realizing this monumental undertaking will depend on avoiding past pitfalls while leveraging existing technologies and institutional expertise.

Lessons Learned from the 1980s

President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) of the 1980s - "Star Wars" - sought to create a space-based shield against Soviet ICBMs. Despite its astronomical vision, SDI never fully materialized due to several critical factors: technological overreach, sky-high costs, lack of coordination, and unrealistic goals without clear, phased implementation plans. The SDI called for - among other things - directed energy weapons to defeat enemy ICBMs at a time when such weapons were either embryonic or still in the realm of science fiction. When the INF and START treaties were signed in 1987 and 1991 respectively, the need for SDI quickly faded along with the Cold War.

The need for missile defense however, did not. The Golden Dome executive order indirectly refers to the SDI when it says, “Over the past 40 years, rather than lessening, the threat from next-generation strategic weapons—including hypersonic—has become more complex with the development of next-generation delivery systems by our adversaries.” Hopefully, unlike Disney's recent efforts, this Star Wars sequel won't be a disappointment.

The key difference between 2025 and 1985 is that much of the technology required already exists and has been battle-tested - most notably by Israel, and to a lesser extent Ukraine. Keep in mind, in the 1980s, the new fielded Patriot wasn’t even rated to reliably engage short-range ballistic missiles, to say nothing of ICBMs. Even anti-satellite weapons were on the very cutting edge.

Building on Proven Technologies

Golden Dome is an opportunity to leverage existing, proven defense technologies rather than incurring the massive cost-reimbursement contracts of all-new development. The U.S. has been refining these capabilities over decades through AIAMD, THAAD, Patriot, Aegis BMD, and the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD), along with close, ongoing cooperation with the Israelis. These established systems provide the initial foundation upon which the Golden Dome can build. What is needed is to bring these systems all together with improved short-range sensors, and network them together on a scale like the planned Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) system.

The institutional air defense knowledge housed within major contractors like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon represents billions of dollars in prior investment and millions of engineering hours. Additionally, these companies possess large amounts of expertise in large-scale integration projects that will be crucial to the Golden Dome's success. Their experience with complex command and control architectures gives them unique capabilities to tackle the integration challenges ahead.

Lessons in Integration

America's defense challenges differ substantially from those of our allies and adversaries. But there are still valuable lessons to be drawn from successful past integration efforts. The development of layered defense networks by other nations demonstrates that combining technologies from multiple sources into a coherent system is possible with proper coordination and leadership.

For Golden Dome to succeed, the DoD must foster coordination between established defense contractors and innovative technology companies that reflect America's unique strategic position and continental scale. Given the vastly different geographic and threat profile facing the United States, Golden Dome will need to pioneer new approaches rather than attempting to replicate foreign models.

The Challenge

Bill Morani, undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, noted that Golden Dome is "[both a] monster systems engineering problem [and] a monster integration problem." The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) has established a phased Golden Dome timeline for capability delivery from 2026 to past 2030. Meeting these deadlines on a project of this scale will require an enormous amount of coordination between government agencies, stakeholders, and defense contractors.

Established defense prime contractors offer critical advantages to the U.S. industrial base in this area. Their decades of experience working with the MDA, U.S. Northern Command, the military services and other defense agencies have created institutional knowledge and networks difficult to replicate. These companies understand the complex regulatory environment, certification requirements, and interoperability standards needed to incorporate a defense system this vast. They also bring the ability to manufacture at scale.

At the same time, tech hyperscalers and defense innovators are essential to the Golden Dome's success. Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, and Google bring cloud infrastructure and advanced AI capabilities that will be critical for processing the massive data streams required for an integrated defense network. Companies like ShieldAI offer autonomous systems expertise, while Anduril and Palantir bring computational prowess and innovative approaches to data fusion. Their agility and fresh perspectives represent valuable additions to the defense industrial ecosystem.

The integration of these complementary capabilities is what will make Golden Dome possible. Large prime contractors bring irreplaceable experience in system integration, scaling production lines, and proven hardware platforms, while tech-focused firms contribute cutting-edge AI/software capabilities, cloud infrastructure, and novel approaches to data management needed for next-generation defense solutions.

Starting Small: Guam

Rather than beginning with the overly ambitious goal of covering the contiguous United States, Golden Dome would benefit from a focused approach similar to Israel's incremental development of its multi-tiered defense system. Guam presents an ideal testbed - a crucial and geographically contained area facing substantial threat from China, including thousands of drones and hundreds of cruise missiles and tactical ballistic missiles.

Ongoing and previous defense efforts on Guam have provided valuable data. A THAAD battery has been emplaced there since 2013. The temporary deployment of a U.S. Iron Dome battery to the island in 2021 demonstrated both possibilities and limitations of current technology when adapted to Guam's defense needs. The MDA successfully tested the Aegis Guam System in December of 2024. The U.S. Army is planning on building out the multi-capable Task Force Talon already deployed on the island into a larger Guam Defense System (GDS) task force with improved short-range air and missile defense capabilities. Starting with a fully integrated defense of Guam would provide measurable success criteria, help refine integration approaches and establish protocols that could later be scaled to larger areas such as the National Capital Region, Hawaii, and Okinawa.

The Way Ahead

Golden Dome needs clear, achievable milestones with tangible benefits at each stage. The defense of Guam represents an ideal first objective - strategically important, geographically defined, and facing concrete threats. Success there would validate the approach before expansion to other critical areas.

The Missile Defense Agency's phased approach shows a keen awareness of this need for incremental progress and gates. By leveraging existing technologies and industrial capabilities while incorporating innovative approaches from newer companies, the DoD can maximize returns on taxpayer investment in an era of increasing defense efficiencies while accelerating deployment timelines.

Conclusion

The Golden Dome initiative represents America's most significant integrated missile defense undertaking since the Strategic Defense Initiative. But unlike SDI, today's effort benefits from mature technologies, battle-tested systems and proven capabilities, and decades of institutional knowledge within our defense industrial base.

Without focused leadership and integration expertise, the President's decree risks becoming like Coleridge's unfinished poem "Kubla Khan" - a grand vision interrupted. Just as the golden dome of Xanadu existed only as a fragmented vision in a dream, so too might America’s Golden Dome remain incomplete without the right military-industrial partnerships and strategic approach.

For Golden Dome to succeed where SDI faltered, it must incorporate the solidity of established defense primes with the liquid agility of newcomers, all while keeping costs in check and timelines tight. The DoD faces a daunting challenge, but with Guam as a proving ground and battle-tested technologies as building blocks, the initiative stands a fighting chance of fulfilling the President’s vision: a shield capable of protecting American power projection in an era of proliferating threats.

Peter Mitchell is a strategist and air defense expert. You can follow him on X @peternmitchell.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Department of the Army or Department of Defense.

17. What Europe Should, Could, and Would do in a Great Pacific War

Europe can't "sit this one out." But...is this what we have to plan for?

Excerpts:

Assuming a Great Pacific War will require the USA to pull almost all its operational forces from Europe to the Pacific, there will be a significant—and smart—argument in Europe that they need to keep their forces at home to cover any threat from their east should it arise, and to secure the Atlantic that has largely been abandoned by the Americans.

As such, any fight in the Pacific would be lucky to get 50% of available operational units. That gives us… two SSN.

Not nothing, but a rounding error in a Great Pacific War. I would give it 2/3 odds that the national caveats would limit them to operations south of Singapore and east of Guam.

So, in the end, with the Great Pacific War, we should not count on much from Europe for this fight. Perhaps some security for Australian airspace and territorial seas, but that would be about it.

America, Japan, Australia would face the blunt of it, odds are over Taiwan, but maybe not. Probably bringing in The Philippines and if we are lucky, Vietnam. Even if the war expands into the Indian Ocean, the smart money would be that India would want nothing to do with it. If it did, you would have a completely different set of variables to examine. Consider India out of the fight as well.

That is what we should plan for.

What Europe Should, Could, and Would do in a Great Pacific Warfriends in need...may just have to deal with it

https://cdrsalamander.substack.com/p/what-europe-should-could-and-would?mc_cid=8e6ca37ad0

CDR Salamander

Apr 01, 2025

In the half-decade that I spent on the Continent, trying to help prod NATO to help in Afghanistan, I found it helpful when looking at what each troop contributing nation could or would do, to look at three things:

Will: Does that nation want to be part of the fight? Do they see this in their national interest? Are they willing to invest the blood, treasure, and risk to get in the fight?
Capacity: What can they really contribute? How large is their military? Is it trained for the mission? Do they even have the ability to deploy and sustain themselves in an expeditionary manner?
Desire: That may not be the best word for it, but it is as close as I can get. Perhaps the Germans have a word that fits, but what this manifests itself in from an operational point of view is in “national caveats” or just stick-to-itiveness. In it to win, but doing just enough to get your flag on the patch with a quick exit if needed?

Moving from the failed effort in Afghanistan to the events today in the Red Sea, we can see this playing out again. Those three cornerstones apply. Last year, the British did some strikes with us, but the strikes of the last few weeks? No, it is America alone. Even though the vast benefit of an open Red Sea goes to Europe, no European is to be seen.

That little chain of thought hit my mind when I first read the January article in War on the Rocks, Can Europe Fight for Taiwan? by Luis Simón and our friend Toshi Yoshihara.

It is a much broader article, than the small bit I will pull for today’s post, so please give it a full read. It is also a great companion piece to yesterday’s Substack, as it turns the table on the entering argument.

As opposed to what will America do to help Europe should it find itself in a bit of military bother to its east, what could Europe do to help the USA and should it find itself in a shooting war, again, against the People’s Republic of China? I like to call it a Great Pacific War, but good chance it would spread to the Indian Ocean as well.

Beyond the Western Pacific, the mostly likely theater of hostile contact would be the Indian Ocean, where the Chinese navy has kept a rotating naval flotilla since 2008, and where China maintains a permanent military base in Djibouti. The Chinese navy’s globalizing posture and its doctrinal intent to stage a global presence suggest that horizontal escalation that leads to a multi-theater conflict is a distinct possibility. Mike McDevitt suggests that if a cross-strait war involved the United States, the conflict would likely escalate rapidly into a global naval war, with the U.S. Navy and Chinese navy clashing wherever they met around the world. As Aaron Friedberg further observes, the Chinese navy’s relative weakness in the Indian Ocean might tempt it to “get in the first blow” to knock the United States off balance and thereby compel U.S. forces to divert resources from the central front in the Pacific to that secondary theater.

I’m with McDevitt here. Wars have their own logic, and unless one side or the other fails inside 180 days, momentum will draw more parties directly or indirectly into the fight. If it contains itself like the Russo-Ukrainian War of 2022 has so far, we would be lucky.

Even if it does, remember the three cornerstones at the top. Let’s assume that there would even be the Will and Desire to help the USA and her allies in the Pacific by a few nations. Some, like the UK, might feel obligated to do something because most likely her Commonwealth ally Australia—who has done so much to fight the UK’s 20th century wars—would be in the fight. Maybe New Zealand…maybe.

France would send forces into the Pacific as well, but though nice letters would be spent, the smart money would be that she would be focused on keeping her significant Pacific holdings secure. I wouldn’t even bet on USA having access to any of those territories. I’d give the odds at 50/50.

The rest of Europe? No Desire, no Will, and only marginal Capacity. Perhaps a token squadron or bespoke capability? Perhaps.

There is one area that a few could help with, but only the UK and France could offer.

Nuclear submarines.

Among the various exquisite systems that Europe could offer, its undersea capabilities, particularly nuclear-powered attack submarines and, to a lesser extent, diesel-electric attack submarines stand out. European navies boast a combined fleet of 66 submarines, among which are 7 British Astute- and 6 French Barracuda-class nuclear-powered attack submarines. The mobility, range, and endurance of nuclear-powered attack submarines would allow Britain and France to swing the attack boats from European waters to the Indo-Pacific, even if the persistence of the Russian threat in the North Atlantic may limit their availability. It is also worth noting that the weeks it would take for these submarines to reach their stations in Asia, if they began their transits in Europe, mean that the warring sides have likely settled into a protracted war.

A network of homeports and support facilities, especially those located outside the Chinese military’s weapons engagement zone, such as Hawaii and Diego Garcia, would be available to European nuclear-powered attack submarines. Although Guam and Yokosuka would almost certainly come under attack in a widened conflict, they may offer some degree of support in wartime. Moreover, starting in 2027, Australia’s HMAS Stirling will be home to Submarine Rotational Force-West, comprising forward-staged U.S. and U.K. nuclear-powered attack submarines. In other words, leaning more on submarines would build on existing infrastructure and ongoing initiatives, thereby reducing duplication of effort.

The Anglo-French SSN fleet numbers 13 boats. Using the optimistic “it takes three to make one” formula, that gives you four operational boats.

Assuming a Great Pacific War will require the USA to pull almost all its operational forces from Europe to the Pacific, there will be a significant—and smart—argument in Europe that they need to keep their forces at home to cover any threat from their east should it arise, and to secure the Atlantic that has largely been abandoned by the Americans.

As such, any fight in the Pacific would be lucky to get 50% of available operational units. That gives us… two SSN.

Not nothing, but a rounding error in a Great Pacific War. I would give it 2/3 odds that the national caveats would limit them to operations south of Singapore and east of Guam.

So, in the end, with the Great Pacific War, we should not count on much from Europe for this fight. Perhaps some security for Australian airspace and territorial seas, but that would be about it.

America, Japan, Australia would face the blunt of it, odds are over Taiwan, but maybe not. Probably bringing in The Philippines and if we are lucky, Vietnam. Even if the war expands into the Indian Ocean, the smart money would be that India would want nothing to do with it. If it did, you would have a completely different set of variables to examine. Consider India out of the fight as well.

That is what we should plan for.

18. Washington: Declare Success and Lead (NATO)

Conclusion:

In conclusion, NATO’s model of the past three decades is neither sustainable nor credible. NATO must adapt to new threat realities in a way that is sustainable and provides credible deterrence. This means that Washington must resist the vapid temptation to withdraw from leading the Alliance, on the condition that European allies step up seriously to the contemporary demands of collective security. They can no longer indulge in the luxury of lethargic defense preparations based on the illusion that there is no threat or on the presumption that America will automatically storm the beaches and roll back the aggressor for them. Such oblivious indulgence provides a tempting target for Moscow’s strategy of achieving a military fait accompli accompanied by coercive nuclear threats, with support from China, North Korea and Iran. Instead, a workable model for NATO must provide a credible deterrent to Russian aggression. It demands U.S. leadership, and that allies sacrifice much more for the defense of Europe than they have for decades. With these two pillars in place, Putin will be frustrated, but Europe and America will be safer.

Keith B. Payne, Washington: Declare Success and Lead, No. 621, April 1, 2025

https://nipp.org/information_series/keith-b-payne-washington-declare-success-and-lead-no-621-april-1-2025/?utm

Washington: Declare Success and Lead

Dr. Keith B. Payne

Dr. Keith B. Payne is a co-founder of the National Institute for Public Policy, Professor Emeritus at the Graduate School of Defense and Strategic Studies, Missouri State University, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, and former Senior Advisor to the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

NATO faces its most consequential internal test in decades. President Trump has insisted that European members must do more if the Alliance is to remain an American priority. Some allies have responded with fear and loathing as they interpret his intentions and guess what steps Washington will take next. Their expectations range from the ending of America’s extended nuclear deterrent “umbrella” for allies, to U.S. withdrawal from the Alliance. Some of this speculation clearly is meant for shock value, but there understandably is renewed discussion in Europe of a European Defense Community outside of NATO, including some form of a “Europeanized” nuclear deterrent. These are not new ideas, but they are once again taken seriously. Some allies seem enthusiastic about a new model of European security; others are much more skeptical.

Before much energy and emotion is invested in speculation about a post-NATO form of security, it is reasonable to coolly consider U.S. intentions and goals. For all the uncertainty and fear in Europe, the general contours of Washington’s intentions and goals are not mysterious, unreasonable, or unprecedented.

President Trump clearly believes that European NATO countries and Canada must spend more on defense and, as a consequence, provide more defensive capabilities for the Alliance. This is not a controversial view; it now appears to be shared throughout the Alliance. The remaining questions are: how much more spending, and over what timeframe? Is the responsible spending threshold at least two percent of GDP, as agreed by the Alliance in the far more benign threat context of 2006, or is it now five percent? Given contemporary threat conditions, closer to five percent is more reasonable than two: NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has said that, “considerably more than three percent” is needed.[1] But it is important to note that while most NATO members are now increasing their defense spending to over two percent of GDP, some wealthy allies still remain well below even that minimalist threshold, including Spain, Canada, Belgium, Italy and Portugal.[2]

Such lethargic, nonchalant defense spending may have been reasonable immediately after the Cold War when the general expectation in Europe and Washington was of an emerging “new world order” without great power war. Russia and China supposedly had abandoned revanchist, aggressive goals in favor of economic integration with the West. The United States and allies were quick to recoup a “peace dividend” in this easy context.

The past 15 years have shown, however, that the earlier expectation of an amicable “new world order” was hopelessly naïve. Russia’s horrendous 2022 invasion of Ukraine and related nuclear threats have simply confirmed, even for the most oblivious observers, contemporary harsh threat realities. Nevertheless, the United States and allies have been reluctant to give up their “holiday from history.”[3] As a consequence, very real threats now confront the liberal democracies in Asia and Europe, including nuclear threats and a steadily deteriorating balance of power.

This inconvenient threat reality has created the basic dilemma for NATO. When it is clear that great power war is not a thing of the past, the United States is compelled to consider the cost and risk of protecting those wealthy allies that choose to remain indolent. Washington cannot care more about lethargic allies’ security than they do. This “bottom line” is true regardless of who is in the White House.

Allies that remain negligent in their defense efforts run the two-fold risk of encouraging the aggression of expansionist, autocratic powers while discouraging U.S. willingness to prioritize their security. The North Atlantic Treaty allows each member to determine the scope and timing of its response to an attack against NATO. It does not oblige Washington to extend nuclear deterrence or intervene militarily regardless of an ally’s negligence.[4] Washington could send blankets and nigh vision goggles, and say “we wish you well,” or massive fighting forces. Both options are consistent with the Treaty. If allies want to be assured of their security through NATO’s collective defense and American power, they must step up to help repair the West’s fading power position. They must contribute seriously to restoring a Western power balance that helps make U.S. “ironclad” commitments credible. That is a reasonable “transatlantic bargain” fully consistent with Treaty obligations. In the absence of a restored balance of power, with greatly increased European conventional forces, “ironclad” commitments must be suspect.

Fortunately, along with Washington, key allies now appear to be recovering from the post-Cold War “holiday from history” and ready to support a Western power position that deters war and makes U.S. security guarantees reasonable and credible. Even Germany, until recently a wealthy defense shirker, has now passed legislation facilitating a large increase in military spending.[5] Allies that refuse to do so must live with the risks they have chosen to run. The allies’ options are clear: continue working with the United States in an increasingly dangerous environment or move in a separate direction. The latter option would entail far greater expense and risk. Mark Rutte has rightly said that, given the unprecedented contemporary global security challenges, “this is not the time to go it alone.”[6]

As allies become more responsible, Washington needs to clarify that it will not withdraw from NATO, fold the nuclear umbrella, stand idly by if responsible allies are attacked, surrender the position of Supreme Allied Commander, or permit Ukraine to be overrun. Such steps would give Putin what Moscow has been denied for over six decades, the collapse of NATO. That the United States will not take these steps is a truth that needs to be expressed, along with the sharp criticism and ostracization of allies that remain indolent and a collective burden. President Trump should, at this point, declare success. His tone and language have finally accomplished what past Presidents have unsuccessfully sought—for allies to increase their defense efforts to strengthen the deterrence of war. It has taken a Russian invasion and Washington’s disruptive language to get to this point. President Trump should recognize his success and, correspondingly, make obvious that Washington will continue to meet the demands of leadership.

In conclusion, NATO’s model of the past three decades is neither sustainable nor credible. NATO must adapt to new threat realities in a way that is sustainable and provides credible deterrence. This means that Washington must resist the vapid temptation to withdraw from leading the Alliance, on the condition that European allies step up seriously to the contemporary demands of collective security. They can no longer indulge in the luxury of lethargic defense preparations based on the illusion that there is no threat or on the presumption that America will automatically storm the beaches and roll back the aggressor for them. Such oblivious indulgence provides a tempting target for Moscow’s strategy of achieving a military fait accompli accompanied by coercive nuclear threats, with support from China, North Korea and Iran. Instead, a workable model for NATO must provide a credible deterrent to Russian aggression. It demands U.S. leadership, and that allies sacrifice much more for the defense of Europe than they have for decades. With these two pillars in place, Putin will be frustrated, but Europe and America will be safer.

[1] Quoted in Ivo Daalder, “NATO Without America,” Foreign Affairs, March 28, 2025 , available at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/nato-without-america.

[2] See NATO, Defence Expenditure of NATO Countries (2014-2024), June 17, 2024, available at https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_226465.htm.

[3] As labeled by former Defense Secretary Robert Gates in, “We face unprecedented peril,” The Washington Post, September 24, 2024, available at https://www.google.com/search?q=We+face+unprecedented+peril.+The+Pentagon+and+Congress+must+change+their+ways.&oq.

[4] As is suggested in, Daalder, “NATO Without America,” op. cit.

[5] See Ines Trindade Pereira, “How much do NATO members spend on defence as threat perceptions rise?” Euronews, March 28, 2025, available at https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/03/28/how-much-do-nato-members-spend-on-defence-as-threat-perceptions-rise.

[6] Quoted in, Barbara Erling and Liti Bayer, “’This is not the time to go it alone,’ NATO’s Rutte tells US and Europe,” Reuters, March 27, 2025, available at https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/this-is-not-time-go-it-alone-natos-rutte-tells-us-europe-2025-03-26/.

The National Institute for Public Policy’s Information Series is a periodic publication focusing on contemporary strategic issues affecting U.S. foreign and defense policy. It is a forum for promoting critical thinking on the evolving international security environment and how the dynamic geostrategic landscape affects U.S. national security. Contributors are recognized experts in the field of national security. National Institute for Public Policy would like to thank the Sarah Scaife Foundation for the generous support that made this Information Series possible.

The views in this Information Series are those of the author(s) and should not be construed as official U.S. Government policy, the official policy of the National Institute for Public Policy, or any of its sponsors. For additional information about this publication or other publications by the National Institute Press, contact: Editor, National Institute Press, 9302 Lee Highway, Suite 750, Fairfax, VA 22031, (703) 293- 9181, www.nipp.org. For access to previous issues of the National Institute Press Information Series, please visit http://www.nipp.org/national-institutepress/informationseries/.

19. How the Biden Administration Won Tactically but Failed Strategically in the Red Sea

Excerpts:

Operation Prosperity Guardian was motivated by admirable instincts consistent with the Biden National Security Strategy’s emphasis on defending sea, air, and space for global benefit. Freedom of movement of goods and services at sea has been an essential part of American prosperity and security since the country’s inception. Standing up for the norms of that system was morally righteous and strategically sound. The U.S. Navy proved more than capable of delivering sustained tactical excellence to meet the moment.

And yet, despite the strategic rationale and the Navy’s tactical acumen, the results for Operation Prosperity Guardian as a political project should be judged in a larger context. Measured against the restoration of merchant confidence and traffic in the Red Sea, the mission was unsuccessful. As we have seen, much of that failure follows from the countervailing incentives and priorities within which merchants operated, and which policymakers failed to fully anticipate. In any future scenario involving an assault on maritime commerce, perhaps in a Chinese quarantine of Taiwan, understanding how military power translates into effects in a commercial ecosystem will be essential. Taking the lesson from Operation Prosperity Guardian, policymakers should from here on understand defense of global shipping as a more expensive, more complex, and more multi-disciplinary affair than many initially assumed.

How the Biden Administration Won Tactically but Failed Strategically in the Red Sea - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Joshua Tallis · April 2, 2025

For 15 months, the U.S. Navy fought its fiercest battles since at least the Tanker War. The Navy racked up nearly flawless tactical victories in self-defense, defense of merchants, and defense of allied territory against the Houthis, a Yemeni militant group that sought to deny the Red Sea to global commerce. And yet if we take the goal of Operation Prosperity Guardian as being the resumption of commercial traffic through a key global artery in support of the rules-based international order, it can only be judged as a strategic defeat.

Protecting maritime commerce is the kind of global public good that I would expect a superpower to provision (and, apparently, the Trump administration agrees). So, the question of why Operation Prosperity Guardian failed to guard global prosperity is one worthy of further assessment. The military may one day be called upon to again defend the global economy, perhaps in the Western Pacific. Indeed, as I write this, another U.S. president is launching new, more aggressive strikes against Houthi infrastructure. Lessons from the Red Sea may thus prove valuable context for future policymakers, and perhaps the least understood but most important aspects of the crisis are the agency and incentives of the commercial shipping industry. In other words, what did the Biden administration miss about the “prosperity” part of Operation Prosperity Guardian?

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First, the Good

The stellar tactical performance of the U.S. Navy in the Red Sea from the end of 2023 to the beginning of 2025 is not in dispute here. U.S. sailors downed nearly 400 drones and missiles in the theater, and the service demonstrated praiseworthy firsts and innovations. We saw, for example, the first-ever use of a Standard Missile 3 in combat for ballistic missile defense. The Navy executed the first-ever naval air-to-air kill of a hostile drone. The service unveiled a new anti-drone “Murder Hornet” weapons configuration for the F/A-18 Super Hornet.

The Navy likewise made new use of the battle data from ships and aircraft. Information from platforms engaging in Red Sea combat were rapidly transmitted back to the homeland, where experts iterated tactics, techniques, and procedures to ensure optimal performance for the warfighter down range. Last July, the former chief of naval operations visited the destroyer USS Mason as it returned to Naval Station Mayport after a 263 day combat deployment, during which the crew defended 26 merchant vessels from suspected Houthi attacks. Onboard was an enlisted fire controlman, whom the chief of naval operations promoted during her visit. In the course of his duties operating the ship’s five-inch gun, this sailor recognized that his weapon could be effective against a new kind of unmanned threat. His deckplate adaptation was admirable on its own, but more impressive was that the Navy had constructed a functional apparatus to verify, disseminate, and reward that kind of initiative.

Events and Markets

USS Carney intercepted its first Houthi drones and missiles potentially en route to Israel on Oct. 19, 2023, but the first explicit attack on shipping came one month later, on Nov. 19, when Houthi forces seized the ship M/V Galaxy Leader, which was linked to Israel through one of its owners. Following a series of Houthi escalations, Maersk announced a pause for Red Sea-bound vessels on Dec. 15, 2023. On Dec. 18, the Department of Defense announced Operation Prosperity Guardian. Container shipping traffic passing through the Red Sea and Suez Canal soon plummeted and has remained consistently low ever since. Data from the International Monetary Fund’s PortWatch initiative shows Bab al-Mandeb daily transits from Nov. 2023 through Feb. 2025 persistently down by about two thirds.

Militia attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria, as well as continued Houthi strikes on global shipping, precipitated the first U.S. and U.K. strikes into Yemen on Jan. 11, 2024. More strikes followed, but the show of force did not bolster industry confidence. The price of war risk insurance in the Red Sea up to tripled in response to the hostilities, with quotes as high as 1 percent of the value of a ship. Factor in the Suez Canal’s roughly $500,000 transit fee per vessel and the increased cost of a Red Sea transit began to draw close to the estimated $2 million in added crew and fuel expenses that come with the route around the Cape of Good Hope. As overall insurance rates rose, some insurers even reportedly imposed a premium on U.S., U.K., and Israeli-linked vessels.

With the backdrop of continued U.S. strikes into February, we saw a second wave of shipping diversions, this one constituting tankers and bulkers. By mid-month, well over 100 tankers had shunned the Red Sea, alongside a rise in grain ship diversions. The Maersk CEO told an interviewer at the time that military operations were not sufficient to guarantee the safety of merchant ships, which would continue to avoid the Red Sea. Shortly after, a major seafarers union announced an agreement with operators to empower union crew to refuse to embark on Red Sea transits.

Little changed in merchant flows over the rest of 2024, as strikes and defensive actions failed to move war risk fees down, even as the European Union’s Operation Aspides sought a more substantial role in regional defense. In October, Maersk announced again its reluctance to reenter the Red Sea, this time not until “well into 2025.” Then this past January, one major headline pronounced, “Shippers wary of Red Sea routes despite Houthi pledge to end targeting.”

Supply and Demand

Separate from the obvious risk of harm to crew and property, an important part of shippers’ reluctance to return to the Red Sea only comes with an understanding of their underlying business incentives. One of the most consequential factors to consider when assessing Operation Prosperity Guardian’s impact on industry is not simply the safety of transit but the effects of diversions to carriers’ bottom lines. And the reality, as we will see below, is that many shippers were not hurt by the diversions — in fact, they were helped. Yes, longer routes meant some increased fuel and crew costs, plus potential delivery delays, but many of these expenses could be passed along to customers and consumers. What resulted was actually a financial boon for many shipping lines.

One way to measure the impact of the Red Sea crisis on many lines was the spike in freight rates that came shortly after the Houthis first took aim at commercial traffic. The rise in rates is best understood as a function of declining supply (ships taking longer routes reduced relative supply) held against steady consumer demand (people still wanted fast fashion, ovens, couches, etc.). The price of renting a spot for a container on a major line’s vessels therefore went up, earning operators more money despite the rise in operating costs going around the tip of Africa. Freight rates for both global averages and regional runs (whether they did or did not require a Red Sea passage) went and stayed well above pre-conflict prices.

In fact, the diversions to the Cape of Good Hope (or straight to U.S. West Coast ports) helped alleviate a looming threat for shipping lines — overcapacity. In the throes of the COVID-19 supply chain crunch, lines found efficiencies and ordered more ships. As supply and demand equalized after the pandemic, these changes risked pushing freight rates down dangerously low (from the perspective of operators). Instead, as the CEO of one maritime services company noted, the Red Sea disruptions were “a blessing in disguise, because the amount of ships you need to go around Africa is enormous.” Container shippers entered 2024 as among the best performing European stocks thanks in large part to those freight rate hikes. In August 2024, Maersk released updated financial guidance. Their assessment: supply chain disruptions (i.e., Houthi attacks), paired with continued high consumer demand for shipping services, meant business was going very well.

Free Riding

The description above focused on underlying incentives for private businesses. Yet an equally important part of the equation in understanding why Operation Prosperity Guardian failed to restore merchant confidence is the moral hazard that arose from the United States defending a system with very few other formal partners. This manifested in two underlying commercial dynamics: China capitalized on U.S. protection, and major maritime stakeholders largely avoided bearing any expenses to defend the ocean trading system they so rely on.

Despite U.S. requests for China to help intervene via Iran, the Asian export powerhouse was conspicuously absent from enforcement efforts in one of the world’s key maritime chokepoints. China may have had some larger strategic goals currying political favor in the Middle East. Yet consistent with our focus on market dynamics, it is equally worth noting that Chinese firms also reaped economic wins in the Red Sea while free riding on U.S. protections.

The drop in shipping lines willing to risk Red Sea transits opened an arbitrage advantage that some Chinese firms moved to fill, resulting in a net rise in Chinese regional tonnage led principally by smaller companies (larger lines like COSCO and OOCL often diverted their ships like other Western firms). Chinese shipping in the Red Sea went from around 15 percent of overall traffic at the end of November 2023 to 28 percent by the middle of January 2024. China United Lines even launched a new Red Sea express service, with a ship carrying an oversized Chinese flag for good measure. Houthi assurances and the promise of business gains seemed to have swayed many operators who remained active on the Red Sea route to advertise a Chinese affiliation. An analysis of automatic identification system data showed a dramatic spike in the number of vessels broadcasting Chinese crewmembers as the crisis accelerated into 2024. Some insurers even reportedly offered Chinese-linked vessels better terms than those owned or operated by Western firms, with Chinese customers paying as little as 0.35 percent, or about half as much paid by others.

Other, less adversarial countries also engaged in prosperity free riding, creating a divergence between those countries publicly aligned to the Operation Prosperity Guardian mission and those with regional or global equities in maritime commerce. Simply put, partner participation (United Kingdom, Bahrain, Canada, France, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Seychelles, and Spain — those made public in the December 2023 press release) did not reflect the key stakeholders in Suez traffic nor the vast majority of stakeholders in the business of maritime commerce.

Some (though by no means all) wealthy Western economies were active in Red Sea defense, particularly if we include the E.U. naval mission. Meanwhile, many of the states that were most materially affected by Red Sea disruptions (Sudan, Yemen, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia — for which the shares of GDP passing through the Suez are the highest in the world) were absent from the list of participants. Similarly, a look at the various stakeholders in the business of maritime trade shows notable gaps across a number of dimensions. Countries with major ship ownership (China, Greece, Japan), the dominant flag registry states (Liberia, Marshall Islands, Panama), and nations that provide the bulk of global seafarers (including the Philippines, Russia, Indonesia, and China — India being an exception) were largely absent from the U.S.-led effort to safeguard their property and personnel.

There are valid domestic political reasons why some of these countries would avoid a U.S. mission in the Middle East. There are likewise sound policy reasons why the U.S. should take an outsized leadership role in defense of global trade. And yet, the result of such free riding was an imbalance in which the United States bore costs, Chinese industry reaped gains, and critical maritime stakeholders benefited from whatever residual traffic passed under U.S. protection. The dearth of participating maritime states in Operation Prosperity Guardian meant fewer powerful voices in countries like Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, Japan, or South Korea advocating for major national maritime businesses to capitalize on the defense that Operation Prosperity Guardian offered.

Looking to the Future

What does this analysis imply for a future contingency — perhaps a Chinese quarantine of Taiwan, or a squeeze of the Philippines?

The boring, partial answer is that good military planning should always assess whether military means match the political objectives. In the case of Operation Prosperity Guardian, the Biden administration’s ends turned out to be much more a matter of commercial dynamics than strict security. It remains to be seen whether the latest, brute force approach to dealing with the Houthis will improve merchant confidence in the trade route — initial industry reactions have not changed. Moreover, simply applying more might will not always be a politically or strategically desirable option, particularly against more capable or nuclear armed adversaries.

When military means are insufficient or inappropriate to fully meet the political task, other levers of national power should be part of the equation, including diplomacy and economics. Here we reach another important, if obvious, conclusion — interagency partners (the State, Treasury, and Commerce Departments in this case) have important perspectives that are often unheard or underrepresented in defense planning. These voices get harder to hear the further down echelon the planning happens. Some military staffs may have embedded political advisers from the Department of State. Few have economic advisors from Treasury, fewer still from Commerce. Other agencies face massive staff overmatch when interacting with the Department of Defense, and so it is an imperative for defense planners to ensure their teams work hard to represent the most diverse array of expertise possible to minimize blind spots and strategic miscalculations. Non-defense participation in blockade-style wargames should also be understood as table stakes, not nice-to-haves.

There are, however, some more specific preparations to consider as well. The first is expanding and maintaining a senior dialogue between defense leaders and major Western shipping executives to ensure that commercial motivations are readily understood. This kind of dialogue exists at the tactical level, where U.S. Navy fleets have shipping liaison cells. Yet these are typically staffed by reservists, including strategic sealift officers, whose deep expertise is often contained to the watch floor and infrequently elevated into senior officer ranks in the active component. Such liaising is also focused on concerns over vessel security, not grand strategic intent. In addition to proposing some industry engagements with the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff (this should not strictly be a naval expertise), the Department of Defense should also consider sponsoring embedded fellowships for rising officers in companies like Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd to build expertise on how major lines assess and respond to geopolitical risk. Such assignments should prioritize unrestricted line officers, not logisticians, as the focus should be on expanding knowledge among those most likely to lead major formations and services.

One final consideration is to understand the limits of influencing commercial decision-making in private companies. Large container ships, not to mention the people and cargo they carry, are not risk-worthy assets. It is possible that there may be no measure of military support that will restore full merchant confidence during periods of high tension. In such a case, the focus for the Department of Defense should narrow to how the United States can incentivize the flow of critical resources to allies or partners. This includes pursuing many of the initiatives that have lately come to popularity, like revitalizing a domestic Merchant Marine and maritime industrial base to build and crew essential U.S.-flagged (maybe even nationalized) shipping. But the consideration should also be broader, particularly focusing on novel approaches to nationally insuring commercial vessels willing to take the added risk, as well as providing point defenses similar to those offered to U.S. and U.K. merchants in World War II.

Conclusion

Operation Prosperity Guardian was motivated by admirable instincts consistent with the Biden National Security Strategy’s emphasis on defending sea, air, and space for global benefit. Freedom of movement of goods and services at sea has been an essential part of American prosperity and security since the country’s inception. Standing up for the norms of that system was morally righteous and strategically sound. The U.S. Navy proved more than capable of delivering sustained tactical excellence to meet the moment.

And yet, despite the strategic rationale and the Navy’s tactical acumen, the results for Operation Prosperity Guardian as a political project should be judged in a larger context. Measured against the restoration of merchant confidence and traffic in the Red Sea, the mission was unsuccessful. As we have seen, much of that failure follows from the countervailing incentives and priorities within which merchants operated, and which policymakers failed to fully anticipate. In any future scenario involving an assault on maritime commerce, perhaps in a Chinese quarantine of Taiwan, understanding how military power translates into effects in a commercial ecosystem will be essential. Taking the lesson from Operation Prosperity Guardian, policymakers should from here on understand defense of global shipping as a more expensive, more complex, and more multi-disciplinary affair than many initially assumed.

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Joshua Tallis, Ph.D., is a senior research scientist at the Center for Naval Analyses and the author of The War for Muddy Waters: Pirates, Terrorists, Traffickers, and Maritime Insecurity.

Image: U.S. Navy

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Joshua Tallis · April 2, 2025

20. Add special operators to the Joint Simulation Environment

Concur.

However, this essay is focused on only one aspect of Special Operations: Air Force Special Operations.

The challenge to incorporating special operations into simulations, and I mean the full range of special operations, is that there are few, if any, models that can really incorporate the time required to achieve the effects of special operations. Yes air operations can be incorporated with relative ease as can hyper conventional direct action raiding and the capture and killing of high value targets.

But until simulations effectively incorporate the two SOF trinities, we will never be able to demonstrate the effects of the full range of SOF in a simulation environment.

The "SOF trinities:"

1) Missions: irregular warfare, unconventional warfare, and support to political warfare.

3. Comparative advantages of SOF: influence, governance, and support to indigenous forces and populations.

When a simulation is designed that can effectively illustrate the effects of these trinities then we will have a true joint force simulation model.

Add special operators to the Joint Simulation Environment

The X-Men have the right idea: training needs to include the whole team.

By Lt. Col. Justin Bañez

National Defense Fellow

April 1, 2025 04:07 PM ET

Commentary

Air Force

Special Operations

Training & Simulation

Navy

defenseone.com · by Lt. Col. Justin Bañez

U.S. Air Force and Army joint terminal attack controllers review a strike at a range in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility on Feb. 17, 2025. U.S. Air Force / Senior Airman Anneliese Kaiser

The X-Men have the right idea: training needs to include the whole team.

By Lt. Col. Justin Bañez

National Defense Fellow

April 1, 2025 04:07 PM ET

The 2006 film X-Men: The Last Stand opens with an action-packed battle in the Danger Room, the superheroes’ futuristic virtual training facility. Weapons seemingly flew through the air, explosions were felt, and the stress was palpable—a fitting way for the uncanny team to train to face their enemies.

The U.S. military’s air-combat warriors may lack mutant superpowers, but they have their own hyper-realistic training setup: the Joint Simulation Environment. As the joint Navy-Air Force program expands beyond fighter jets, it should include some ground-based superheroes as well: the tactical air control party, pararescue jumpers, and special tactics teams of Air Force Special Warfare.

Since 2023, JSE installations have offered high-fidelity simulations of friendly and adversary air and surface entities interacting in dense, high-threat scenarios. Touted as the “digital range for the high end fight,” JSE offers an unmatched, government-owned, physics-based synthetic environment for operational testing, tactics development, and advanced training. Each of the roughly $30-million facilities—one apiece at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Edwards and Nellis Air Force Bases, and soon, NAS Fallon—houses domed simulators with 4K projectors, realistic cockpits, weapons flyout models, and actual aircraft-operational flight-program software. (There’s even a shipboard version aboard the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln.) With simulated weather, electromagnetic spectrum, and validated adversary threat models, training does not get much better for Airmen, whose live-fly options are perennially limited by geography, safety, cost, and other concerns.

It is the Air Force’s stated goal to expand JSE to all current and future aircraft—but the service should think even bigger.

In 2018, the ground operators dubbed Battlefield Airmen were renamed Air Force Special Warfare to reflect their specialized nature and the complex environments they operate in. Today, tactical air control party, special tactics, pararescue, and special reconnaissance operators handle air-ground-space-cyber integration in hostile, denied, and politically sensitive environments to optimize the application of airpower. Enabled by unique access and placement, they can execute a host of missions, including allied multi-domain operations; reconnaissance and surveillance; forward airfield operations; resilient command and control; cyber and electromagnetic activities; personnel and equipment recovery; and delivery of kinetic and non-kinetic joint fires.

These operators’ capabilities are only becoming more important as China and other potential adversaries develop tactics and technology to counter the Air Force’s traditional playbook: large strike packages of fighters, bombers, refuelers, and airborne command and control. If service leaders are serious about regaining the advantage, they must develop new ways of fighting and of fully integrating their force’s capabilities—and that starts with training.

Today, Air Force special operators train with good, but limited systems. For example, Joint Terminal Attack Controllers and tactical command-and-control operators use localized virtual trainers to supplement live-fly operations with real aircraft. The Joint Terminal Control Training and Rehearsal System and Joint Theater Air-Ground Simulation System simulators are great for learning the procedures of joint fires and air-ground operations, but they cannot present the dense threats and signal-interfered environments of today and tomorrow. Nor do they facilitate exposure to the full range of possible contributions (e.g., special access programs) to a friendly kill chain. These shortfalls are mostly due to security-classification limitations in the systems’ architectures, which results in less integration and near-zero employment of advanced capabilities. No less than air crew, Air Force Special Warfare need the superior training enabled by JSE.

Fortunately, Air Force, Navy, and industry leaders are talking about ways to extend the simulation environment to more capabilities, users, and weapons. To be sure, program managers and service leaders will have hard decisions about what gets added to JSE and when.

But the service need not build a new sim or write a line of code to start bringing Air Force Special Warfare into the mix. The newest JSE is slated to come online later this year at Nellis, which is also home to the Weapons School and the Air Force’s best tacticians. Just add real special operators to the JSE exercises to plan, brief, decide, employ effects, assess, and debrief alongside their aviator counterparts. Start the conversations, build the relationships, and chart the path toward full integration.

Even before that technology arrives, we may find that including Special Warfare personnel in JSE training has already begun to unleash novel and irregular ideas that produce new advantages in the air domain. As the X-Men know, putting the whole team in the Danger Room today is the best way to ensure victory tomorrow.

Lt. Col. Justin “JB” Bañez is an active-duty Air Force Tactical Air Control Party Officer, currently serving as a National Defense Fellow in the National Capital Region. Before his fellowship, he served on the Joint Staff overseeing the Department of Defense’s largest Joint Integrated Air and Missile Defense modeling and simulation event series.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Air Force, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.

21.Trump is redefining, not abandoning, American soft power

Okay. I am very willing to give the administration the benefit of the doubt. But who is working on the plans for "redefining" soft power? Can soft power fit into a transactional foreign policy model? Can soft power effects be measured on a cost benefit balance sheet in the time desired versus the time necessary to achieve effects? Do we understand how soft power can be appropriately used to effectively support US national security as well as live up to our American values?

It all comes down to aligning strategic vision with appropriate assumptions to determine approaches with the right capabilities. Let's get to work on this.

But my criticism and fear aligns with the author's in the first sentence of the excerpt. He really describes two important criticisms: First is that the mirror imagining we are doing (the growth of podcasts, the internet, "citizen journalists" replacing the mainstream media and the plethora of information available to all free people) by thinking everything we see can be applied to denied areas in authoritarian regimes. That demonstrates a lack of understanding of (and lack of empathy for ) and naivete concerning oppressed people in denied areas. The second is the application of the business model toward these government agencies. The idea that they are buying distressed properties that can be broken up and sold for scrap while they search for something new and different that the entrepreneur and venture capital world is going to produce is again demonstration of mirror imaging and lack of understanding of the strategic environment. There is no profit in communicating with people in a denied area. You are not going to generate advertising revenues (at least not in the short time - probably after the authoritarian regimes fail there will then be a market). But applying the conventional business model to influence operations in denied areas is a bankruptcy waiting to happen (and has likely already happened as we have ceded to narrative and the information space to authoritarian regimes). Again it all comes down to our strategic vision and what we are trying to achieve. Obviously the priority is on the great reset of the US government -tearing down everything that doesn't fit into Elon Musk's business vision and then hopefully rebuilding it into a new more efficient government (are any governments really capability of being efficient)

Excerpts:

Abandoning platforms like Voice of America without replacement strategies surrenders the battlefield of ideas at a critical moment when America’s enemies will spend richly to ensure their narratives gain global traction.

While podcasts and new streams of communications dominate in the West, a large swathe of the world’s population still turns on the television, listens to the radio and picks up a newspaper for world news. To abandon those information spaces would be counterintuitive to American diplomacy.

Critics say Trump’s tenure is irreparably damaging traditional US soft power; the reality is it is exposing the need to modernize America’s approach to global influence.

Whether through economic incentives, technological leadership or reimagined alliances, America’s ability to attract and influence must evolve alongside an evolving geopolitical landscape.

The challenge for the Trump team and beyond is to reconstruct American soft power with a clearer strategy—one that recognizes both the limitations of past approaches and the opportunities of a new era.

Trump is redefining, not abandoning, American soft power - Asia Times

asiatimes.com · by Kurt Davis Jr · April 1, 2025

For decades, the United States projected global influence through what foreign policy experts call “soft power” – the ability to shape world affairs through cultural appeal, diplomatic engagement and ideological attraction rather than military force.

Under President Donald Trump’s administration, this traditional approach to international relations is undergoing a fundamental transformation.

Critics decry the shift as abandonment of American leadership. They’re missing the point. What we’re witnessing isn’t a reckless dismantling of American influence but rather a necessary recalibration for a world where the old rules no longer apply.

The traditional soft power model lacked clear metrics in today’s competitive global landscape. While previous administrations invested heavily in abstract notions of goodwill and long-term influence, Trump recognized that in a world where China and Russia wield economic leverage to expand their spheres of influence, America needed a strategy prioritizing tangible returns over ideological appeal.

This approach has manifested in several high-profile decisions: withdrawing from agreements like the Paris Climate Accord and the Iran nuclear deal, questioning the value proposition of NATO (in today’s form), and reconsidering America’s role in international organizations.

These moves signaled that US commitments would be subject to concrete national interests rather than abstract principles of global stability.

Take, for example, Trump’s critique of the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations’ global public health agency. While his numbers weren’t perfect (according to various fact-checking publications), his basic analysis was accurate.

Based on WHO estimates, American combined assessed and voluntary contributions to the WHO’s 2024-2025 budget is US$706 million, compared to $184 million for China.

Whatever the metrics, it is hard for American taxpayers to understand how the world’s second largest economy with a significantly larger population pays only 26% of what the US contributes to the WHO.

Trump’s critics have characterized these decisions as America retreating from global leadership. In reality, they represent a strategic pivot toward a more transactional form of influence.

Trump recognizes that foreign aid can be restructured to serve a more immediate geopolitical purpose, aligning with his broader “America First” doctrine. Aid and alliances are now treated as business arrangements with expectations of immediate returns – a sharp departure from past administrations that justified foreign assistance primarily as instruments for building goodwill and sowing benign influence.

Having deconstructed the old model, the challenge now is how to complete the redefinition of American soft power for this new era. Four key areas demand particular attention:

First, America must transition from viewing foreign aid as charity to embracing strategic economic engagement. China’s Belt and Road Initiative demonstrates how infrastructure projects can build influence while ensuring recipient nations see tangible benefits from alignment with a major power.

America should develop its own model of partnership that yields mutual advantages. It is not clear the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) is the vehicle to do this, thus Trump’s desire to create an American sovereign wealth fund.

Second, the US faces global threats on three key fronts: military, economic and technological. The Trump team has been extremely clear on the first two threats. The technological front can sometimes fall under the radar but is vital to success on all other fronts.

It is imperative that US technological leadership becomes a cornerstone of America’s global influence strategy. As digital connectivity reshapes international relations, US dominance in technology, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity offers powerful leverage to shape global norms and standards in ways that reflect democratic values.

Third, America needs resilient, flexible alliances rather than outdated treaty frameworks. The limitations of institutions like the UN and NATO have become increasingly apparent with the UN hamstrung by the Security Council and NATO struggling to balance the interests of all members ranging from Turkey to France.

The EU itself continually has a love-hate relationship with different members from Italy to Hungary. Interest-based coalitions that reflect contemporary geopolitical realities will prove more effective than rigid multilateral structures designed for a bygone era.

Finally, America must compete more effectively in the global information space. Nations are now shaping their own images through state-controlled media and digital diplomacy. The US must rethink how it communicates its values and interests to global audiences.

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Abandoning platforms like Voice of America without replacement strategies surrenders the battlefield of ideas at a critical moment when America’s enemies will spend richly to ensure their narratives gain global traction.

While podcasts and new streams of communications dominate in the West, a large swathe of the world’s population still turns on the television, listens to the radio and picks up a newspaper for world news. To abandon those information spaces would be counterintuitive to American diplomacy.

Critics say Trump’s tenure is irreparably damaging traditional US soft power; the reality is it is exposing the need to modernize America’s approach to global influence.

Whether through economic incentives, technological leadership or reimagined alliances, America’s ability to attract and influence must evolve alongside an evolving geopolitical landscape.

The challenge for the Trump team and beyond is to reconstruct American soft power with a clearer strategy—one that recognizes both the limitations of past approaches and the opportunities of a new era.

Kurt Davis Jr is a Millennium Fellow at the Atlantic Council and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He advises private, public and state-owned companies and their boards as well as creditors across the globe on a range of transactions.

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asiatimes.com · by Kurt Davis Jr · April 1, 2025

22. Serious Sanctions Time for Russia

Serious Sanctions Time for Russia

As Putin strings along Trump, the Senate can send a message to Moscow.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/russia-ukraine-ceasefire-sanctions-bill-lindsey-graham-senate-gop-donald-trump-7941e3a4?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

By The Editorial Board

April 1, 2025 5:34 pm ET

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday. Photo: grigory sysoev/sputnik/kremlin/p/Shutterstock

President Trump told a reporter over the weekend that he’s “angry” at Vladimir Putin, and the Commander in Chief’s exasperation is welcome. The Russian dictator is stringing the President along over a 30-day cease-fire that Ukraine has already accepted.

“If Russia and I are unable to make a deal on stopping the bloodshed in Ukraine,” the President told NBC News, “and if I think it was Russia’s fault—which it might not be—but if I think it was Russia’s fault, I am going to put secondary tariffs on oil, on all oil coming out of Russia.” Under those so-called secondary sanctions, anybody buying oil from Russia “can’t do business in the United States.”

The apparent impetus for Mr. Trump’s ire was Mr. Putin’s recent remark about introducing “temporary governance in Ukraine,” as the press reported it. He also told a crew at a base in Murmansk that “only recently, I said that we would squeeze” Ukraine “into a corner, but now we have reason to believe that we are set to finish them off.” That doesn’t sound like the desire for peace that Mr. Trump has been claiming on Mr. Putin’s behalf.

This isn’t a new refrain from Mr. Putin, who frequently portrays Ukraine’s government as illegitimate. If the former KGB man can’t swallow Ukraine by military force, he might settle for defenestrating Volodymyr Zelensky and setting up a satellite state with a sympathetic crony in charge. Belarus is the Putin model.

Mr. Putin still shows no signs he’s serious about a peace negotiation, even the mere 30-day pause. He has demanded sanctions relief and wants to absorb territory his military doesn’t even hold today, which should be a nonstarter. Now would be a good time to put some force behind Mr. Trump’s warning. Mr. Putin is economically vulnerable as he plows resources into his military to keep the war going.

GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina on Tuesday introduced a bill that would, as he put it recently, “sanction the hell out of” Russia, including “sanctions and tariffs on countries that buy Russian goods, including oil, gas and uranium.” The bill has more than 40 Senate co-sponsors. Passing the sanctions legislation would send a message to Moscow that there are still people in Washington who oppose a Putin victory in Ukraine.

Other Republicans are also finding their voice on Russia. “If Vladimir Putin lives up to a ceasefire or peace treaty with Ukraine, it will be the first time ever,” Roger Wicker of Mississippi said on the Senate floor. “We’re dealing with a tyrant who speaks the language of war and terror. We have to deal with him, but that’s who he is.”

Mitch McConnell was even more pointed, saying “the outcome we’re headed for today is the one we can least afford: a headline that reads ‘Russia wins, America loses.’” The two Senators are speaking for a large section of the GOP, a political reality that President Trump can’t ignore as he searches for a peace deal.

Mr. Trump isn’t the first President to discover that Mr. Putin’s actions contradict his promises. Bring on the secondary sanctions that Joe Biden was afraid to impose. Any hope of getting Mr. Putin to accept a deal that doesn’t subjugate Ukraine will require speaking a language the Russian dictator understands.

Valor, Virtue, and Victory: Brasidas of Sparta in the Peloponnesian War

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/04/02/valor-virtue-and-victory/

by Nathan Jennings

04.02.2025 at 06:00am

Introduction

In his seminal work, The Peloponnesian War, the ancient historian Thucydides employed numerous characters from that conflict as devices to reveal competing aspects of human nature. Among these varied political and military personalities, the Spartan general Brasidas emerged as a definitive figure who illustrated the strengths and weaknesses of not only his own city-state’s “national character,” but also that of his great maritime enemy, the Athenian Empire. As an energetic infantry officer who fought to secure Peloponnesian interests through irregular strategies during the initial Archidamian phase of the war, the innovative field commander personified the best aspects of his peoples’ martial education and piety. However, in a remarkable fusion of Hellenic qualities, he enhanced this conservatism with aspects of Athenian audacity and charisma that allowed him to achieve outsized strategic impact on the war.

The resulting portrayal of Brasidas facilitated a nuanced commentary on the extremes and excesses of a violent and bitter war that Thucydides called the “greatest movement known in history.” As defined by the two dominant city states’ leaders at the onset of conflict, the unorthodox commander shaped the early course of the war by combining Sparta’s tradition of “wise moderation” with Athens’s more ambitious “spectacle of daring.” Throughout the long chronical of this struggle for mastery of Hellas, Thucydides deployed Brasidas not only to juxtapose his distinctive qualities against friend and foe, but also to illustrate competing motivations that compelled Sparta and Athens to embrace hegemony. For the Spartans, also called Lacedaemons, his efforts to achieve what he called “liberation for the Hellenes” would serve his polis well and propel Sparta through its darkest days of the war.

Competing Societal Characters

Any understanding of Brasidas, as perhaps the most Athenian of the Spartans in Thucydides’ history, begins with a more expansive appreciation of the bitter confrontation of societal characteristics that defined and drove the course of the war. Reflecting a commentary on the nexus of imperial struggle and human nature, personalities like Brasidas, in addition to an array of statesmen, generals, and envoys from opposing sides, emerge as instructive characters in a larger drama that eventually encompassed and scarred all of Greece. Thus with Sparta ostensibly endorsing the ideal of Hellenic moderation and Athens representing the potential of Hellenic dynamism, the historian adeptly utilizes the Spartan commander to bring the competing energies and hard political interests of the dominant city-states into sharp relief.

Thucydides, who served as an Athenian strategos early in the war, emphasized the theme of Spartan traditionalism and deliberation in order to establish the contrast between Sparta and Athens. Throughout the work, the author consistently implied Sparta to be the just actor in his panoramic narrative, creating a sometimes hypocritical foil for the specter of Athenian naval imperialism that was increasingly dominating the peoples of the Aegean Sea. This description of traditionalism began with praise of cultural artifacts, where Thucydides associated the Spartans’ “modest style of dressing” and preference for “contending naked” in games with “modern ideas” that represented Hellenic propriety. He likewise lauded the Spartan elites’ attempts to “assimilate their way of life to that of the common people,” as if to separate them from the ostentatious Athenians and the even more opulent and notoriously despotic Persians.

The historian translates this individual modesty into societal character, citing the Lacedaemons as the only great power who “knew how to be wise in prosperity” while noting that “the more security” Sparta gained “the greater it grew.” Beginning in book one, Thucydides utilized speeches of the Spartan King, Archidamus, and his allies the Corinthians, to establish this conservative nature. In 432 B.C., as the Corinthians attempted to shame Sparta into declaring war against Athens for siding with their Corcyrean enemies, they accuse the famed warriors of being inclined to, “attempt less than is justified by your power,” and argued that they suffered from “a total want of invention.” As if to cement this idea, Thucydides then allowed the king to agree, but in a different context. When cautioning against hasty hostilities, Archidamus claimed that Spartans “alone do not become insolent in success” and lauded his society for suffering “less than others in misfortune.” He further explained that “it is our sense of order that makes us so.”

In a marked contrast with this Spartan moderation, Thucydides revealed the scope of Athenian dynamism with equal documentation. Intending to delineate the “wide difference between the two characters” of Hellas’s two greatest powers, he constructed an array of speeches to define Athens’s enterprising and aggrandizing nature. The Corinthians, as before, offered perhaps the most critical commentary on this subject. Again attempting to provoke Sparta, they warned of “the establishment in Hellas of a tyrant state” and declared that the Athenians, with their desire for imperial domination, “take no rest and allow none to anyone else.” As for Athenian audacity, the Corinthians described them as “addicted to innovation” and argued that their “designs are characterized by swiftness alike in conception and execution.” The envoy finally accused that the people of Athens were “adventurous beyond their power” and “daring beyond their judgment.”

From an opposing perspective, others justified Athens’ rise to power for well deserved excellence. The great statesman Pericles, architect of his city’s war strategy, offered a more admirable interpretation of his peoples’ innate nature. In his famed Funeral Oration, the “first citizen of Athens” proclaimed that his people had “forced every sea and land to be the highway of our daring” and boasted that, “in our enterprises we present the singular spectacle.” He then asserted that Athens was “the school of Hellas,” while lauding the individual Athenian citizen as “equal to so many emergencies” and “graced by so happy a versatility.” Pericles further defended his city’s ability to “provide plenty of means for the mind to refresh itself from business” and to “cultivate refinement without extravagance.” Later in the chronicle, the Athenian demagogue Cleon emphasized the fickle nature of the citizen assembly, perhaps hypocritically, by complaining that it was driven by “cleverness and intellectual rivalry.”

These competing national characters, those of traditional moderation and progressive dynamism, manifested in a vivid contrast of virtues associated with hegemonic rule. From the very commencement of the war, each of the great cities led and expanded their alliances under precarious, and often contradictory, justifications, bringing acute issues of morality between master and subject to the fore. With this tension defining the work, Thucydides subtly evoked Sparta as the “liberators of Hellas,” despite the self-serving and pragmatic nature of its foreign policy, and even asserted that the Lacedaemons had brought “freedom from tyrants” in the Persian Wars. Conversely, he recorded that the majority of Hellenic opinion moved against Athens by subjects “who wished to escape from her empire” or those who “were apprehensive of being absorbed by it.” The careers of Brasidas and his Athenian rivals, as generals who fought to extend liberation and domination, illustrated the tensions of imperial rule.

Brasidas and Martial Virtue

With such a rich landscape of contrasting ideals, motivations, and contradictions established by Thucydides as the foundational narrative of his work, Brasidas arrived to bring further definition to the Hellenic scene. Revealed as a man who risked everything for both his city’s benefit and the cause of liberty, a picture emerges of an energetic and perceptive field commander who personified many of the best Lacedaemon qualities while moving beyond Sparta’s traditional weaknesses. According to Thucydides’ own assessment, Brasidas demonstrated “moderation in all his conduct” and showed himself to be “so good a man at all points” that potential allies found him attractive and compelling, making him an idealized martial projection of Archidamus’ vision of the “warlike and wise” Spartan warrior.

As a leading strategos during the first decade of the war that began with his initial courageous service at Methone in 431 and ended with his Homeric death at Amphipolis in 422, Brasidas added the martial quality of audacity to buttress and improve the ideal of Lacedaemon deliberation. Portrayed as a man of heroic stature time and time again, his wartime exploits included impetuously preserving the allied city of Methone through a hazardous charge in the opening year of the conflict; valorously fighting Athenian troops in disadvantageous tactical positions at Pylos and Spakteria in 425; and selflessly defending the allied city of Amphipolis to the north of Athens just before the Peace of Nicias. Throughout these campaigns, Brasidas was notable for his insightful planning, decisive decisions, rapid marches, sudden attacks, and unique ability to train and inspire seemingly inferior allied troops to fight with conviction on behalf of the Peloponnesian League.

Further appreciation of Brasidas as a reflection of Spartan values must include closer examination of his personal military abilities. While Sparta’s intense warrior culture may at first glance appear extreme, especially in comparison with a more cosmopolitan and democratic polis like Athens, it actually represented the very heart of Lacedaemon moderation. Explained by Thucydides through the words of Archidamus in the introductory Archeology, the warrior king proclaimed that Spartans are not innately unique from other men, but rather that “superiority lies with him who is reared in the severest school.” He also emphasized that Lacedaemons were, “warlike because self-control contains honor as a chief constraint.” In this sense, Spartan discipline and resolve were contrasted with the Athenian propensity to become, as criticized by Thucydides, “insolently elated” or “victims to a panic” according to the fortunes of war.

Brasidas exemplified this theme of Spartan martial prowess when he imparted his stern education, gained in the brutal agora and in the ranks of the Spartan heavy infantry, to the allies that he recruited to weaken Athenian power in northern Greece. Speaking to a mix of helots, citizens, and mercenaries in 423 on the eve of battle in the Chalcidice region, the general explained how “bravery” stems not from superior numbers, but instead from “superiority in the field.” He then emphasized the “regular order” which their opponents lacked and criticized the adversary’s obsession with “outward appearance” and proclivity for “loud yelling.” In comparison, with a nod the attributes that made the Spartan corps of peers seemingly invincible in battle, Brasidas gave a final command to his phalanx of anxious infantrymen: “stand your ground therefore when they advance, and wait your opportunity to retire in good order.”

This talent for transforming lesser soldiers into quality troops by way of superior training and genuine inspiration revealed itself again as Brasidas prepared his coalition for what would be his final battle. As the Peloponnesian-led coalition prepared to repel an impending assault against Amphipolis by a vengeful Athenian force under the populist Cleon in 422, the Spartan commander first assured his men that they would “see me already upon them, as is likely, dealing terror among them.” He then exhorted the nervous troops to, “show yourself a brave man, as a Spartiate should,” and compelled them to recall that “zeal, honor, and obedience mark the good soldier.” Despite sustaining a mortal wound, Thucydides noted that Brasidas “lived long enough to hear of the victory of his troops,” allowing him to realize the triumph of the Spartan method, even when imparted to non-Lacedaemons, over the fear and chaos of war.

While Brasidas’s repeated instances of effective combat leadership personified the traditional Spartan strengths of discipline and resolve, he simultaneously overcame the persistent critique, as portrayed by Thucydides, of “slowness and procrastination” that often marked their military strategy and foreign policy. In contrast, as demonstrated in the rapidity and decisiveness of his campaigns across Hellas, the exceptional general embraced a very Athenian flavor of audacity that brought decisiveness to his peoples’ careful deliberation. Thus the historian, who described numerous characters in vivid detail, was drawn to praise Brasidas in terms not ascribed to any other Spartan in the book, writing that the newly gained allies were “eager to have a man so energetic as he,” and that “his service abroad proved of the utmost use to his country.”

Contrasting Hegemonic Narratives

This combination of Spartan education and Athenian daring invited several illustrative comparisons. On the Lacedaemon side, Brasidas’ improvised campaigns across northwestern Hellas, in addition to his audacious action at Pylos where he shouted for his fleet to “shiver their vessels and force a landing,” stood in marked contrast with the more conservative maneuvers of the main Spartan army. Time and time again, the Spartan kings Archidamus and Agis led their famous infantry phalanxes to “ravage the plain” of Attica without ever dissuading Athens from Pericles’s directive for his citizenry to, “not go out to battle, but to come into the city and guard it, and get ready their fleet.” If not for the plague that devastated Athens and the damaging ambitions of Cleon and Alcibiades, it is possible that the Spartan kings’ conventional strategy would have failed to yield ultimate victory over their well-fortified and seafaring adversary.

In a vivid contrast of both scope and effect, Brasidas’s economized campaigns in the Thracian region threatened to impede Athens crucial grain supply and remove tributary states from the empire—all without risking the integrity of the irreplaceable Spartan corps of peers. Through a combination of audacity, deception, and astute diplomacy, the general managed to bring several key Athenian subject cities into revolt while capturing others through force. At the culmination of the general’s career in 422 when he charged to victory and death at the city of Amphipolis, his final achievement was to shatter an Athenian expeditionary force under Cleon. In this manner, Brasidas, as Thucydides’ most dynamic Spartan, was perhaps more comparable to the energetic Athenian general Demosthenes than to his peer commanders at home.

In addition to combining discipline and audacity on the battlefield, Brasidas embodied the convergence of two other competing attributes: Spartan piety and Athenian charisma. Beginning with the former, the general publicly revered the deities, and even more importantly, portrayed an attractive modesty of character. In 424, as he stormed the Athenian controlled fortress of Lecythus in the Chaldician region, Brasidas proclaimed that he would give “thirty silver pieces” to the “man first on the wall.” Upon seizing the heights, however, he decided that the victory could not have been accomplished by “human agency” and instead donated the money to the temple of Athena. Brasidas then razed the town and declared it to be “consecrated ground.” The victorious Spartan then “put to the sword all he found,” revealing his capacity for ruthlessness.

While this reverence to Athena may have been calculated to produce the appearance of piety, Thucydides nevertheless juxtaposed Brasidas’s actions against other leaders who devolved into sacrilege. Foremost amongst these stood the political chameleon Alcibiades, an Athenian aristocrat who’s “private life” gave “offense to everyone.” In terms of sheer impiety, the charismatic military leader was indicted by the Athenian assembly while away with the Sicilian Expedition in 415 for, “sacrilege in the matter of the Mysteries and of the Hermae,” where accusers said that he profaned divine ceremonies and statues. The resulting dismissal of Alcibiades from shared command of the “most costly and splendid Hellenic force that had ever been sent out,” and his subsequent exile from Athens, stood in marked contrast with Brasidas, who’s public modestly coincided with a glorious victory at the height of his military career.

Despite this apparent lesson in the merits of humility and veneration, Brasidas’s appeal extended beyond sacred reverence and into the sphere of public reputation. When describing the admirable impression that the Spartan made on other Hellenes as he campaigned to expand the Peloponnesian confederacy in northeastern Greece, Thucydides wrote that he was already “known by experience to some” and “by hearsay to others,” and that it was this reputation that “mainly created an esteem for the Spartans among the allies of Athens.” In a rare instance of unequivocally lionizing a prominent personality, the historian, who personally observed many of the events of the Peloponnesian War, then argued that Brasidas engendered such admiration of his personal conduct “as to leave behind him the conviction that the rest were like him.”

This portrayal of Brasidas as a paragon of piety and modesty found further contrast with another Lacedaemon of great fame: the disgraced general Pausanias. Though Thucydides wrote that he was once “held in high honor by the Hellenes as the hero of Plataea” after he commanded the Hellenic alliance that defeated the massive Persian invasion of 479, the author carefully related how Pausanias swiftly fell from power and into corruption following his great victory. When given post-war command over a Pan-Hellenic confederacy at the strategically located Hellespont far beyond the restraining influence of Lacedaemon culture, the famous general “became prouder than ever,” developed a “violent temper,” and fell under Persian influence. Rival factions back in Sparta subsequently arrested the scandalized general, leading to an agonizing death by starvation when they imprisoned him in a temple where he had sought sanctuary.

More importantly, these character flaws served as “the principal reason why the confederacy went over to the Athenians,” thus setting Sparta’s great rival on its violent course for empire. In contrast to Pausanias, the less famous Brasidas was shown to be impervious to foreign corruption, and through his “valor and conduct,” had a beneficial influence on prospective allies. As the embodiment of Sparta’s best ideals, Thucydides deduced that his “just and moderate conduct towards the cities generally succeeded in persuading many to revolt.” With such adept diplomacy, the general convinced the strategically-positioned cities of Acanthus, Amphipolis, and Toroni, in addition to a network of lesser towns and villages across northern Greece, to abandon Athens in favor of a seemingly more benign military alliance with Sparta.

While Brasidas’s deployment of personal moderation under the gaze of potential allies arguably equaled the value of entire regiments, the Spartan strategos further enhanced his peoples’ character with another distinctly Athenian quality: demagogic charisma. Just before he delivered a moving speech to the Acanthians, who were a people on the Athos peninsula in northern Hellas that he had successfully enticed to join the Peloponnesian League, Thucydides described the commander as “not being a bad speaker for a Spartan.” This comment underscored how the author appreciated the famously laconic nature of Lacedaemon oratory and again placed the “seductive arguments of Brasidas” in direct comparison with the early, and ultimately unsuccessful, speeches of Archidamus that failed to keep Sparta out of the war.

Brasidas’s charismatic oratory is thus emphasized in several speeches where he skillfully motivated allied Hellenes to achieve his city’s military objectives. As before, this capacity for persuasion found the Spartan general in direct contrast with Alcibiades. At first glance, within the context of persuasive public speaking, both men were seen to be extremely capable at bringing audiences over to their agenda. Alcibiades, who learned rhetoric and logic from Socrates, demonstrated this ability by forming of the Argos alliance in 419, speaking in the assembly to propel the Sicilian Expedition four years later, and in his seminal speech at Sparta following exile from Athens. Brasidas, on the other hand, proved his rhetorical skills in his appeal to a potential ally called Acanthus, to his soldiers on the eve of battle in the Chalcidice region in 423, and finally at Amphipolis the next year when he convinced the city to fight.

The Spartan general’s longest oratory in the history, which he again delivered to the “popular party” of Acanthus, emerged as an example of particularly compelling address that had immediate political ramifications. As he made the case for accepting Spartan leadership, the general wove moral and civic themes of Hellenic liberation into a compelling argument to rise up against Athenian imperial domination. The following quote, in which Thucydides revealed the Spartan commander’s unique ability to describe new realities, concluded the speech: “Endeavor, therefore, to decide wisely, and strive to begin the work of liberation for the Hellenes, and gain for yourselves endless renown” in order to “cover your commonwealth with glory.”

Despite the similarly effective charismas of Brasidas and Alcibiades, the effects of their demagoguery had divergent results. For the Spartan commander, his speeches brought tangible benefits to his home city while creating immediate strategic crises for Athens. While he had been dispatched to ostensibly “free Hellas” from the yoke of Athenian imperialism, he practically inspired the northern cities to fight and sacrifice in ways that benefited Spartan geopolitical interests. Alcibiades, in contrast, instigated several major campaigns that ended in disaster for the Athenian people. When he helped create a coalition in 419 to challenge Spartan power on land, the Peloponnesians crushed the allied army at the Battle of Mantinea. Later, when Alcibiades inspired a massive armada to conquer Sicily, the unprecedented investment in ships and men by his city ended with “a destruction so complete not being thought credible.”

Valor, Virtue, and Victory

Given this panorama of narratives, Brasidas’s achievements and death emerged as an insightful commentary on the nature of human conflict. When describing the instability of Greece during the decades-long war between Sparta and Athens, Thucydides famously wrote that “war takes away the easy supply of daily wants and so proves a rough master that brings most men’s characters to a level with their fortunes.” It is likely then, as the historian employed Brasidas to illuminate the full spectrum of Hellenic values, that the Spartan’s career exemplified this timeless observation. As a traditional Spartiate, his severe education and cultural moderation allowed him to negotiate “many and terrible” sufferings as “the whole Hellenic world was convulsed.” As a charismatic field commander, his dynamism, when expressed within the limits of “self control,” demonstrated how personal excellence can coexist with reverent behavior.

It seems, then, that Thucydides established in the person of Brasidas a versatile literary foil that was simultaneously both disciplined and daring, both pious and charismatic. As the historian contrasted the unconventional Spartan general against the opposing societal characteristics described by Archidamus and Pericles, and subtly compared him to grasping leaders like Cleon and Alcibiades, the author revealed extremes of the “nature of mankind” as represented by Hellas’s competing powers. On one side, the traditional-minded Sparta was found to hold an admirable moderation, lacking only the potential of Brasidas’s daring and innovation to unleash its potential. On the other, Athens was shown to be afflicted by the extremities its own dynamism, needing the practical restraint of a figure like the Lacedaemon commander.

In the subsequent collision of values, Thucydides found his greatest tension within the competing narratives of imperial hegemony. While Brasidas’s leadership and sacrifice emerged as the polar opposite to the Athenian declaration at Melios that, “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must,” his relationship to his own city was more nuanced. Even as the general fought to “liberate” potential allies from the Athenian Empire, Thucydides wrote that the Spartan ephors planned to “offer in exchange” the very same cities for a negotiated peace and prisoner repatriation—revealing that Sparta valued its own interests over principles of freedom and justice. In this context, Brasidas was shown to be the personification of altruistic virtue, standing above the realism of geopolitical interests. Since the author never indicates that the general intended to betray his professed ideas, he is portrayed with a purity of intent that was absent from his more pragmatic and duplicitous home government.

This personal commitment to the ideals of Hellenic freedom culminated with Brasidas’s heroic demise at the Second Battle of Amphipolis in 422. The event occurred when, after a large Athenian force had landed to capture the important coastal city, the Spartan officer led his allied troops in a surprise attack that preempted the aggressors’ plans and resulted in a decisive Peloponnese victory. In a final endorsement, Thucydides wrote that the Amphipolians, seeking to honor the strategos who had trained, inspired, and led their soldiers with such distinction, “attended in arms and buried Brasidas at the public expense in the city.” Then, in an act of praise not allowed to any other Hellene in the history, the victorious allies deified the Spartan by committing to “ever afterwards sacrifice to him as a hero.” They finally granted to Brasidas “the honor of games and annual offerings,” bringing a measure of immortality to his legacy.

The resulting portrayal of the character Brasidas as the Spartan who had “been sent out to free Hellas” established the final juxtaposition for the narrative arc that defined the great contest between Sparta and Athens. Throughout Thucydides’ expansive history, he described how nearly every other general met with tragic deaths that symbolized either their own faults or the excesses or weaknesses of their people. For the Athenians, the intrepid Demosthenes and the virtuous Nicias found ignominious ends during Athens’s hour of greatest folly in Sicily. The demagogue Cleon, who was the “most violent man in Athens,” later died in the same battle as Brasidas, but without any virtue or significance to mark his death. And finally, Alcibiades, the personification of corrupt “license,” eventually died in Persia as a spurned expatriate at the hand of an assassin when both he and his defeated city paid the price for unbridled “aggrandizement.”

The symbolic deaths of these men, in addition to the uninspiring leadership of Archidamus and the meteoric fall of Pausanias, placed Brasidas’s Homeric ending in a singular light. While each of them at times matched the Spartan general in personal courage, dedication to piety, or sheer charismatic appeal, none of them measured against Thucydides’ more balanced portrayal of the “preserver” of Amphipolis. They and their societies found vivid contrast with the commander who brought the “severest school” to foreign helots and mercenaries; their imperialistic intentions paled against the general who came, “not to hurt but to free the Hellenes.” Thus in the illuminating life and death of Brasidas, the finest Spartan values of moderation were enhanced with the most useful aspects of Athenian dynamism. In the timeless reflection that emerged, perhaps we find the ideal representation of the most virtuous and valorous citizen-soldier.

Tags: Athens, Greece, Hegemony, International Affairs, International Relations, Peloponnesian War, Sparta, Thucydides

About The Author

Nathan Jennings
Lieutenant Colonel Nathan Jennings is an Army Strategist and Associate Professor at the US Army Command and General Staff College at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. With a background in armored warfare, he served in Operation Iraqi Freedom and the Resolute Support Mission in Afghanistan. Jennings previously taught history at the US Military Academy at West Point and in the Department of Military History at CGSC. He is a graduate of the School of Advanced Military Studies and earned a PhD in history from the University of Kent.

24. Staff Rides for Battles without Battlefields, from Cyberspace to the Information Environment

Staff Rides for Battles without Battlefields, from Cyberspace to the Information Environment - Modern War Institute

mwi.westpoint.edu · by Megan Wood · April 2, 2025

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The first time I really considered the cost of combat, I was standing on a hot, crowded Boston sidewalk. I was listening to my officer candidate school classmates reconstruct the Battle of Bunker Hill—a famous name in military history, although the bulk of the fighting took place on the nearby Breed’s Hill, and that’s where our eyes were fixed as we imagined the action of June 17, 1775. Britain won the battle that day, but at a cost of over a thousand troops lost, more than twice the tally of the colonists’ casualties. This was the first time I ever heard the phrase “Pyrrhic victory.” One of the presenters passed around a musket ball and the smooth, heavy metal seemed incredibly benign for all the damage it did. The battle rose from dusty history to become vividly real, its shocking toll impressing itself on my conception of war and the profession of arms.

The staff ride is a time-honored tool for the US military, one that provides opportunities to engage with historical context to inform leaders and shape better outcomes in combat. Using detailed analysis and physical presence to drive home lessons learned, the staff ride seeks to develop “critical thinking skills, essential creativity, and decision-making capabilities” in the participants. Quite literally, it uses the lessons of the past to shape the thoughts of the individuals preparing to fight modern conflicts.

Currently, Army University Press, which develops and conducts staff rides for Army organizations, offers two options for prepackaged staff rides. One is an in-person staff ride conducted using published guides and centered on physical visits to battlefields. The other is a virtual option, which replicates a battlefield’s terrain in a virtual environment. This two-category framework highlights a flaw in the staff ride methodology: Namely, how do you study battles that exist in no physical place or conflicts that are widely dispersed, unorganized, and unrestricted by the physical space of a named battle?

With the expansion of operational environments to include the cyber domain and with insurgencies that often lack set-piece battles as a significant form of twenty-first-century combat, we do ourselves an incredible disservice by restricting the staff ride to physical battlefields. We should study the southern resistance to post–Civil War Reconstruction with the same intensity as the battles that led up to it. We should aim to understand the journalism practices that fogged the prelude to the outbreak of World War I to better frame present-day disinformation practices that clog the virtual sphere, like those that obscure the Ukraine War. These and other historical examples are all ripe opportunities to prepare for future combat.

In 2014, the northern Iraqi city of Mosul fell to ISIS fighters with minimal resistance, in part, due to the #alleyesonISIS hashtag and its subsequent impact on morale of the defenders of Mosul. It is impossible to adequately study ISIS’s lightning seizure of the city without also studying its information dimension. We are missing the boat, leaving ourselves open to repeating historical mistakes because our pedagogy does not acknowledge their validity. The US military has shifted how we think about terrain, expanding its definition as we grow our warfighting concept. Staff rides should follow suit, expanding their topical range outside of physical locations exclusively.

The Center for Military History publication The Staff Ride allows for consideration of instances of conflict that are not based in a physical space as staff ride topics. It highlights the gap in our current perspective on military history, emphasizing that military professionals “must develop the capacity to think and comprehend in multidimensional, multifaceted, and strategic contexts, appreciating both principles and circumstances.”

The use of historical study for professional development is an essential aspect of building well-rounded, prepared leaders. This helps to fill experiential gaps and provide additional insight to developing critical thinking. Yet, the expansive, nebulous, and shifting contours of conflict are not restricted by physical terrain or limited to physical combat. Expanding comprehension of these other aspects could in the future prevent costly mistakes by US forces. Examples that can serve as sources of valuable lessons span military history and opportunities to learn are limited only by our own lack of curiosity and our attachment to the staff ride model we are used to.

These events are as important as the combat successes and failures during the Battle of Gettysburg and the invasion of Normandy. They can be examined with the same level of professional inquiry and would provide essential insights into future conflict, where the US military’s success or failure may rest on more than domination of the physical sphere of combat.

Expanding the concept of staff rides and publishing nonstandard staff rides enables leader development by building on historical concepts while incorporating the expanded operational environment. As we continue to grow, nurture, and expand our military’s thinking in preparation for future conflict, we must retain the lessons already learned while actively seeking the lessons overlooked.

Captain Megan Wood is a US Army public affairs officer with two overseas deployments to the Middle East and has previously served as a forward support company commander, logistics officer for Mission Training Complex Leavenworth, operations officer for current operations FORSCOM, and executive officer to the Army National Guard G3 directorate.

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

Image credit: Lt. Col. Jennifer Bocanegra, 1st Cavalry Division

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mwi.westpoint.edu · by Megan Wood · April 2, 2025

25. The Pentagon’s Endangered Brain Trust – Don’t Gut the Office That Outfoxed the Soviets and Predicted China’s Rise by Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr

Excerpts:

Nevertheless, since the office has often challenged the mainline views and priorities of the Pentagon’s civilian and military bureaucracy, there have long been those within the department who think their interests would be better served without it. This is not unique to the current administration. In past decades, as is the case with Hegseth, resistance to ONA has usually come closest to succeeding early in a defense secretary’s tenure, before the secretary has been able to develop an understanding of the office’s value. In 1997, for example, newly confirmed Defense Secretary William Cohen contemplated exiling ONA from the Pentagon and relegating it to a less prominent place at the National War College. Sixteen years later, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, shortly after his confirmation, explored shutting down ONA entirely. In both instances, however, former officials and strategists forcefully made the case for the office’s crucial value. In the latter case, six former defense secretaries from both political parties, each of whom had years of experience with the office, wrote to “strongly urge” Hagel “to retain this small but unique office and its function.” They underscored that the ONA had “repeatedly paid enormous dividends during some of the most challenging periods in our recent history.”

Hegseth has declared that his intent, after a 30-day review, is to rebuild ONA “consistent with my priorities.” Yet according to a source familiar with the office’s activities, ONA has already been at work on seven of Hegseth’s 17 top priorities. The idea of creating a new ONA, as Hegseth suggests, would undercut the very qualities that have made the office such a powerhouse. Combined with its independence and autonomy within the Pentagon, ONA’s secret recipe has always been its distinctive net assessment methodology that was first developed in the late 1960s and that has been refined and enhanced for over half a century. Once that recipe and tradition are lost, they will not be easily reestablished.

The Trump administration has come to office at a time when national security threats are arguably greater than at any time since the 1930s, and as the country’s fiscal posture is rapidly eroding. Meanwhile, the character of war, stimulated by relentlessly advancing technologies, is evolving more rapidly than ever. In this environment, sound assessments of emerging threats and new ideas to counter them will be especially vital. Hegseth might benefit from his predecessors’ experience and take the time to ensure he doesn’t break what isn’t broken. His 30-day review of ONA’s value offers an opportunity to avoid a mistake that would prove difficult, if not impossible, to fix.

The Pentagon’s Endangered Brain Trust

Foreign Affairs · by More by Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr. · April 2, 2025

Don’t Gut the Office That Outfoxed the Soviets and Predicted China’s Rise

Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr.

April 2, 2025

The Pentagon, Arlington, Virginia, March 2025 Kent Nishimura / Reuters

ANDREW F. KREPINEVICH, JR., is a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute and a co-author, with Barry Watts, of The Last Warrior: Andrew Marshall and the Shaping of Modern American Defense Strategy.

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In the 1990s, following the Soviet Union’s collapse, few in Washington were thinking about China as a potential future threat. During this “unipolar moment,” the conventional wisdom held that China would become a responsible stakeholder of the global community once it had become a fully integrated member. Inside the Pentagon, however, a group of analysts charged with assessing the strategic environment saw things differently. Focusing increasing attention on the Chinese leadership, they concluded that China was intent on creating the capabilities needed to overturn the U.S.-led international order. Their findings proved prescient, anticipating by several decades the return of active great-power competition and China’s growing military challenge to the United States.

These insights came from the Office of Net Assessment (ONA), a small arm of the Department of Defense that has, through its independent analyses, for decades played a vital role in informing senior Pentagon leaders’ strategic planning and policy priorities. Although it comprises only a dozen or so staff and commands a research budget of roughly $20 million—“budget dust” in Pentagon-speak—ONA has again and again provided crucial and often contrarian analysis that has reshaped U.S. strategic thinking.

Yet on March 13, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the “disestablishment” of ONA and directed Pentagon managers to reassign the office’s employees elsewhere. He also canceled all existing ONA research contracts. In announcing the closure, Hegseth also requested that the deputy secretary of defense devise a plan for “rebuilding” the office in a different form, to be structured “consistent with” the secretary’s priorities. But the message seems clear: ONA will cease to exist as an autonomous center for strategic thinking that has so often contributed crucial and sometimes paradigm-shifting insights by challenging conventional wisdom. As a review of the office’s extraordinary history makes plain, this decision needs to be urgently revisited.

THE MARSHALL PROJECT

ONA was established in 1973, the result of an agreement between Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger. The office was charged with providing the secretary of defense with independent assessments of the military competition between the United States and Soviet Union, to include the current status as well as trends in the competition, areas of comparative U.S. advantage and disadvantage, and sources of prospective problems and opportunities. “Net assessment,” a form of strategic planning unique to the office, was formulated and refined by its founding director, Andrew Marshall, known by defense cognoscenti outside the Pentagon as “the most famous man you never heard of,” and inside it simply as “Yoda.” Marshall would lead the office for over four decades, until his retirement in 2015. He directed his staff to be “relentlessly skeptical” of the current conventional wisdom. “We’re here to inform, not to please,” was his way of saying that ONA should always speak truth to power. To prevent its findings from being blocked or watered down by the defense department’s bureaucracy, ONA was instructed to forward them directly to the Pentagon’s senior leaders.

At the time ONA was created, U.S. defense policymakers confronted a key strategic issue in their open-ended struggle with the Soviet Union: Was time on America’s side, or the Kremlin’s? The intelligence community had concluded that the Russians, with an economy roughly half the size of the United States’ economy, was somehow fielding, maintaining, and modernizing a much larger military, even though it was spending the same percentage of its GDP, roughly six percent, as the United States. Put simply, if the CIA findings were correct, the long-term prognosis for the United States was bleak.

Given the issue’s strategic significance, ONA conducted its own assessment. Contrary to assumptions in Washington at the time, it found the Soviet buildup was placing a far greater burden on the Soviet economy than the CIA believed. As Marshall put it, rather than being “miracle makers,” Soviet leaders were devoting a far greater share of their country’s wealth to the military—a level of effort they would find difficult, if not impossible, to sustain over the long term. In other words, time was on the side of the United States, and so there was no need to negotiate with Moscow from a position of weakness. Thanks to ONA’s assessment, the CIA revised its estimates, reporting that the Soviet military burden was consuming between 16 and 18 percent of the country’s GDP. (In fact, Soviet economic data that emerged after the end of the Cold War showed that the level was even higher.)

Elon Musk and Hegseth at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, March 2025 U.S. Air Force Senior Airman Madelyn Keech / U.S. Department of Defense / Reuters

Within a few years, ONA’s at times counterintuitive findings—and careful consideration of how enemies would react to specific U.S. military programs—would have far-reaching influence on defense strategy. Take the B-1 bomber. In 1977, President Jimmy Carter canceled the program, in part owing to the logic that, thanks to its land- and sea-based nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles, the United States did not also need a strategic bomber that could penetrate Soviet air defenses. But an ONA analysis gave senior Pentagon leaders a different perspective: it pointed out that the Soviets, in exercising totalitarian rule over a country with a border exceeding 37,000 miles, were obsessed with the threat of an air attack and had established a separate military service, called PVO Strany, to field the world’s most extensive air defense network. In fact, the Soviets were often spending more on air defenses than on their nuclear forces.

By this logic, there was good reason for the United States to continue fielding the B-1: the strategic bomber program would reinforce Moscow’s predisposition to invest heavily in its air defenses at a cost that far exceeded what the United States spent procuring and maintaining a fleet of B-1s. In 1981, based in part on the ONA assessment, the Reagan administration revived the program. Years later, U.S. analysts calculated that the Soviets had spent around ten times as much on air defense as Washington had invested in bombers, and they still never achieved the ability to defeat a U.S. air attack. The Soviet air defense program was, in their words, a “hideously expensive failure.”

Over the course of its history, ONA has been equally adept at identifying disruptive changes in warfare that could be exploited to the United States’ advantage. A year before the Berlin Wall fell, the office brought together a group known as the Commission on Integrated Long-Term Strategy. Among its members were former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO Andrew Goodpaster, Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Fred Iklé, former National Security Adviser and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and nuclear strategist Albert Wohlstetter—a group reflecting ONA’s ability to attract the nation’s very best strategic minds. The commission found that the emergence of advanced sensors, precision-strike weapons, and rapidly improving computational power would enable a new, and far more effective, way of conducting military operations. The Soviets called this set of capabilities a “reconnaissance-strike complex,” while the Americans would come to label it “precision-strike.” The assessment anticipated within three years the U.S. military’s introduction of a “revolution in military affairs” in Operation Desert Storm. In the decades since, precision-strike operations have become a defining characteristic of almost all U.S. military campaigns. Although the United States at the time enjoyed a near monopoly in this form of warfare, ONA urged senior defense officials to consider how the military would need to adapt once its rivals acquired similar capabilities, anticipating by several decades the People’s Liberation Army’s success in doing so.

CHINA’S LONG GAME

Perhaps nowhere has the ONA’s analysis been more important than in raising awareness of the threat posed by China. A full four years before the Soviet Union’s collapse, ONA concluded that Moscow was in fundamental decline and that the United States needed to start thinking about Beijing. Senior defense leaders, the office wrote, would need to reorient the U.S. military’s principal focus toward the Pacific. Heeding its own advice, during the two decades that followed, ONA focused increased attention on China and sponsored a series of planning exercises revealing that the U.S. military had not developed a concept for defending U.S. allies in the event of Chinese aggression.

Paradoxically, despite this early head start, it would take years for the U.S. military to absorb these insights. Although ONA’s findings spurred the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy in 2010 to establish an Air-Sea Battle office to address ways of offsetting China’s rapidly expanding military capabilities in the western Pacific, the effort was obstructed by inter-service parochialism. Nevertheless, ONA pressed on, undertaking new assessments of military developments in the Indo-Pacific region. One result was “Archipelagic Defense,” a new concept for deterring Chinese aggression against U.S. allies and security partners situated along the so-called first island chain, which stretches from Japan through Taiwan and the Philippines and down to Indonesia and Singapore. The concept described, in unprecedented detail and across a range of contingencies, how U.S. and allied forces could be adapted to enhance deterrence and defense. Not only has Archipelagic Defense significantly influenced Japan’s defense planning, many of its elements now also feature in the U.S. military’s plans and programs aimed at preserving a favorable military balance in the western Pacific.

In 2016, ONA also assessed the challenges that the U.S. military would confront if a conflict with another major power, such as China or Russia, became protracted. When originally informed of the project, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter expressed surprise that the office would devote its resources to exploring what at the time seemed an odd topic—especially given the Obama administration’s desire to avoid describing China or Russia as a strategic competitor. Yet despite his reservations, Carter, who had benefited from ONA’s work going back to his time at the Defense Department during the Clinton administration, gave the go-ahead.

Among the findings emerging from the protracted war study, several stand out: One noted the need for the United States to begin establishing “deep magazines”—large stockpiles of munitions. Another called for an initiative to field strong NATO anti-access/area-denial defenses in eastern Europe, both to deter Russian aggression and to sustain a successful defense of the region should deterrence fail. The office also pointed to major problems with America’s “arsenal of democracy,” including a shortage of strategic materials such as rare earth metals, shortfalls in skilled labor, and an inability to rapidly surge production of critical weapon systems and munitions needed to resupply U.S. and allied forces as war progressed. Had Pentagon officials paid heed to these warnings when they were presented, the United States would have been far better prepared for Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine six years later, in 2022.

BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE

Given ONA’s track record, it should come as no surprise that for more than 50 years its assessments have been highly valued by senior defense officials from both political parties. Indeed, since most of the office’s assessments are highly classified, the examples cited above are merely a glimpse of the work that has provided the Pentagon’s leadership with a phenomenal return on its exceedingly modest investment.

Nevertheless, since the office has often challenged the mainline views and priorities of the Pentagon’s civilian and military bureaucracy, there have long been those within the department who think their interests would be better served without it. This is not unique to the current administration. In past decades, as is the case with Hegseth, resistance to ONA has usually come closest to succeeding early in a defense secretary’s tenure, before the secretary has been able to develop an understanding of the office’s value. In 1997, for example, newly confirmed Defense Secretary William Cohen contemplated exiling ONA from the Pentagon and relegating it to a less prominent place at the National War College. Sixteen years later, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, shortly after his confirmation, explored shutting down ONA entirely. In both instances, however, former officials and strategists forcefully made the case for the office’s crucial value. In the latter case, six former defense secretaries from both political parties, each of whom had years of experience with the office, wrote to “strongly urge” Hagel “to retain this small but unique office and its function.” They underscored that the ONA had “repeatedly paid enormous dividends during some of the most challenging periods in our recent history.”

Hegseth has declared that his intent, after a 30-day review, is to rebuild ONA “consistent with my priorities.” Yet according to a source familiar with the office’s activities, ONA has already been at work on seven of Hegseth’s 17 top priorities. The idea of creating a new ONA, as Hegseth suggests, would undercut the very qualities that have made the office such a powerhouse. Combined with its independence and autonomy within the Pentagon, ONA’s secret recipe has always been its distinctive net assessment methodology that was first developed in the late 1960s and that has been refined and enhanced for over half a century. Once that recipe and tradition are lost, they will not be easily reestablished.

The Trump administration has come to office at a time when national security threats are arguably greater than at any time since the 1930s, and as the country’s fiscal posture is rapidly eroding. Meanwhile, the character of war, stimulated by relentlessly advancing technologies, is evolving more rapidly than ever. In this environment, sound assessments of emerging threats and new ideas to counter them will be especially vital. Hegseth might benefit from his predecessors’ experience and take the time to ensure he doesn’t break what isn’t broken. His 30-day review of ONA’s value offers an opportunity to avoid a mistake that would prove difficult, if not impossible, to fix.

ANDREW F. KREPINEVICH, JR., is a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute and a co-author, with Barry Watts, of The Last Warrior: Andrew Marshall and the Shaping of Modern American Defense Strategy.

Foreign Affairs · by More by Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr. · April 2, 2025

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

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

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

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