Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

“A poem cannot stop a bullet. A novel can’t defuse a bomb. But we are not helpless. We can sing the truth and name the liars.”

– Salman Rushdie

“Much of what are called ‘social problems’ consists of the fact that intellectuals have theories that do not fit the real world. From this they conclude that it is the real world which is wrong and needs changing.”

– Thomas Sowell

“We believe politics is the way you live your life not who you support.”

– Abbie Hoffman

1. China Signals Openness to U.S. Trade Talks—but Not Under Duress

2. Rand Paul Fights Trump on Tariffs as Other Republicans Duck

3. Judge halts shutdown of Voice of America

4. RFA welcomes ruling ordering disbursement of funds

5. I survived the Iran hostage crisis. People in countries like Iran desperately need the VOA

6. Command from the Commander’s Perspective: Essential Case Studies in Civ-Mil Relations

7. Rubio Abruptly Cancels London Trip, As Ukraine, Europeans, Lay Out ‘Red Lines’

8. How a Lloyd Austin aide became Pete Hegseth’s ‘only guy standing’

9. Inside the vicious rivalries tearing apart Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon

10. My Old Warship Is Caught Up in the Battle Over DEI by James Stavridis

11. Want to Understand the New Cold War? Look to Huawei.

12. Opinion: US Blind Spot in the Drone War: Why Ukraine Holds the Key to America’s AI Supremacy

13. U.S. SOCOM inducts 18 SOF warriors into Commando Hall of Honor

14. China buyers selling knockoffs of Russian military gear back to Russia

15. Five Points of Pentagon Reform?

16. Why The State Department Needs To Maintain The Scope Of Its Human Rights Reports

17. Agentic Warfare Is Here. Will America Be the First Mover?

18. Vance Outlines U.S. Plan for Ukraine That Sharply Favors Russia

19. In Brief: How to Improve the Foreign Military Sales Process

20. CIA Veterans Alarmed by Rubio Plan to Close US Embassies in Africa

21. What if Bin Laden Was Killed in the Era of Generative AI?

22. Is the World Going to Deglobalize?

23. Peaceful Resolution: Reframing U.S. Defense Strategy Toward Taiwan

24. Indonesia and the Creeping Threat of ‘Military Operations Other Than War’

25. New Name, Expanded Mission for Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute

26. If You Want to Keep War Irregular and ‘Over There’ — Who You Gonna Call?

1. China Signals Openness to U.S. Trade Talks—but Not Under Duress

Is China blinking (but only if the US plays nice?)?

China Signals Openness to U.S. Trade Talks—but Not Under Duress

President Trump has said China tariffs ‘will come down substantially’

https://www.wsj.com/world/china/china-signals-that-door-to-u-s-trade-talks-is-open-but-not-under-duress-d03292d0

By Brian Spegele

Updated April 23, 2025 7:07 am ET

Few expect a quick resolution to China’s economic tensions with the U.S. Photo: Cfoto/Zuma Press

Key Points

What's This?

China is open to trade talks with the U.S., but warns it won’t negotiate under continued threats.
Trump said he was willing to cut tariffs and isn’t going “to play hardball” with China.
China has sought to shore up relations with friendlier nations closer to home.

BEIJING—China signaled it was open to trade talks with the U.S. a day after President Trump said he was willing to cut tariffs on Chinese goods, though Beijing warned it wouldn’t negotiate under continued threats from the White House.

“China’s attitude towards the tariff war launched by the U.S. is quite clear: We don’t want to fight, but we are not afraid of it. If we fight, we will fight to the end; if we talk, the door is wide open,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said at a daily press briefing on Wednesday.

While Chinese officials have used similar wording previously in discussing the possibility of trade negotiations with Trump, taken together the latest comments from Beijing and Washington appear to be part of efforts to seek an off-ramp from the recent spiral of tensions.

Wednesday’s comments came after Trump said that he isn’t going “to play hardball” with China, and that the two countries will ultimately reach a trade agreement.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Tuesday also told attendees of a closed-door JPMorgan investor gathering that he expects the trade conflict with China to de-escalate, according to people who were in the room for his remarks.

The expressions of openness to a deal from both sides represent a shift from much of the past month, as the world’s two largest economies exchanged reciprocal tariff increases and testy words, helping push stock markets around the world to their worst weeks in many years.

The shift in tone from the White House on China, combined with Trump’s softer language on Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, have helped spur a strong rebound in the stock market that continued Wednesday in Asia. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index closed 2.4% higher for a third straight day of gains.

Even if the U.S. and China return to the negotiating table, few expect a quick resolution to the countries’ economic tensions. In recent weeks, through increasingly strident messaging in state media, Beijing has been preparing its population for a prolonged struggle against the U.S.

Trust between both governments has also deteriorated, a complicating factor if and when trade talks get under way. And while Trump has signaled openness to discussing trade with China, the White House hasn’t shied away from aggravating other parts of the relationship, such as by recently revamping the government’s main websites about Covid-19 to promote the theory that the virus originated in a Chinese lab.

A priority for Xi is to avoid looking weak in the face of Trump’s tariffs, experts on Chinese politics say, especially at a moment when anti-American sentiment in China is running high. Publicly, Beijing has insisted that the White House tone down its attacks on China to lay the groundwork for talks, a point that the Foreign Ministry spokesman reiterated on Wednesday.

“If the U.S. really wants to resolve the issue through dialogue and negotiation, it should stop making threats and coercions and engage in dialogue with China on the basis of equality, respect and mutual benefit,” Guo said.

As China prepares for the potentially painful effects of Trump’s tariffs, it has sought to shore up relations with friendlier nations closer to home, including through a visit by leader Xi Jinping to Southeast Asia last week. While China presents itself as a defender of global trade and stability, many nations haven’t been convinced and share at least some of Washington’s concerns that Chinese exports harm their domestic industries.

In a meeting with Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev on Wednesday, Xi said tariffs and trade wars harm the legitimate rights and interests of all countries, undermining the global multilateral trading system and the world economic order, China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency said.

Separately on Wednesday, Guo, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, took a shot at the U.S.’s recent efforts to reassert control over the Panama Canal.

“No lies can cover up the U.S.’s ambition to control the Panama Canal,” Guo said, urging the U.S. to stop interfering with China’s exchanges and cooperation with Latin American countries, including Panama.

Xiao Xiao contributed to this article.

Write to Brian Spegele at Brian.Spegele@wsj.com

2. Rand Paul Fights Trump on Tariffs as Other Republicans Duck

My libertarian streak and free trade beliefs make me want to align with Senator Paul. (Afterall I did vote for John Anderson in 1980 and Ross Perot in 1992).

Rand Paul Fights Trump on Tariffs as Other Republicans Duck

Kentucky senator, who also voted against GOP budget plan, has spent years trying to rein in presidential power

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/rand-paul-trump-tariff-opposition-643aea6f

By Siobhan Hughes

Follow and Meridith McGraw

April 23, 2025 5:00 am ET

Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) Photo: Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images

Key Points

What's This?

Sen. Rand Paul is opposing President Trump’s tariffs, advocating for congressional control over trade policy.
Paul is co-sponsoring a measure to end Trump’s tariffs, despite expected opposition from fellow Republicans.
Paul argues tariffs are a form of tax that requires congressional approval, citing concerns for Kentucky’s auto industry.

WASHINGTON—Many Republican lawmakers lie low when they have differences with President Trump. Sen. Rand Paul has taken the opposite approach.

“Congress needs to grow a spine, and Congress needs to stand up for its prerogatives,” the Kentucky Republican told reporters, complaining that Trump relied on a national-emergency law to impose tariffs that Paul believes should be controlled by lawmakers. His comments came just days after he was one of only two GOP senators to vote against the party’s budget framework that is key to Trump’s tax cuts, saying it didn’t do enough to reduce the deficit.

The libertarian known for sometimes quixotic battles at the fringes of Capitol Hill is now at the center of the biggest fights in Washington. Paul’s moves have irritated the president, whom Paul never endorsed in the 2024 election, and now major parts of Trump’s agenda could hinge on whether the senator sticks to his guns or folds.

The conflict over tariffs could come to a head soon. A measure Paul is co-sponsoring to end Trump’s tariffs is set to come to the floor when the Senate returns next week. The effort is seen as having no chance of passing, but it will put fellow Republicans on the record as financial markets continue to reel and could pressure the administration to change course.

“I don’t have any bad feeling towards the president, but this is an issue that I’m not alone on,” said Paul. Noting the recent plunge in stock values, Paul said, “Millions of investors who are all self-interested have misgivings about tariffs.”

Sen. Rand Paul with Sen. Ted Cruz Photo: chip somodevilla/Reuters

Paul is digging in even as other Republicans who object to the levies have avoided directly criticizing the White House. Some GOP senators, notably Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, have warned of the dangers of tariffs if kept in place long term. But none have as directly criticized Trump’s actions.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.), a longtime opponent of tariffs, has said that Republicans should give Trump room to apply levies since the president campaigned on the issue. Sen. Mike Lee (R., Utah), who has repeatedly introduced bills to require congressional approval of unilateral trade actions, has indicated he wasn’t planning to do so this year.

“If Rand Paul’s not opposing tariffs in the Senate, nobody is going to be opposing tariffs in the Senate,” said Rep. Thomas Massie (R., Ky.), who has taken his own lonely stances opposing party leadership.

Judge halts shutdown of Voice of America

By Kyle Cheney

04/22/2025 03:57 PM EDT

Politico

The judge is ordering the Trump administration to immediately restore all employees and contractors to their news programs.

President Donald Trump and his allies have decried Voice of America as a bastion of “far-left” ideology and suggested it doesn’t serve U.S. government interests. | Bonnie Cash/AFP via Getty Images

04/22/2025 03:57 PM EDT

A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to restore Voice of America, saying the effort to gut the 80-year-old government-funded news service likely violated the law and Constitution.

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth said the administration’s rush to dismantle the VOA and related news organizations funded by the U.S. Agency for Global Media resulted in the suspension of hundreds of journalists and employees. It put some overseas correspondents at risk of being deported to their home countries, the judge noted. And Lamberth said the silencing of VOA — for the first time in 80 years — also deprived hundreds of millions of listeners of a reliable source of news in parts of the world that lack a free press.

Lamberth said the administration offered virtually no justification for the draconian cuts, suggesting it was working to comply with President Donald Trump’s March 14 executive order requiring a significant scaling back of the agency. Yet the cuts were so bone-deep, Lamberth said, that they likely violated even Trump’s command that the programs continue to operate at legally required minimum levels of service.

“They took immediate and drastic action to slash USAGM, without considering its statutorily or constitutionally required functions as required by the plain language of the [executive order], and without regard to the harm inflicted on employees, contractors, journalists, and media consumers around the world,” Lamberth said. “It is hard to fathom a more straightforward display of arbitrary and capricious actions than the Defendants’ actions here.”

The judge, a Reagan appointee, is ordering the Trump administration to immediately restore all employees and contractors to their news programs and unfreeze funding streams for other affiliated networks like Radio Free Asia and Middle East Broadcasting Networks. He also ordered officials to restore VOA programming to fulfill the legal mandate that it “serve as a consistently reliable and authoritative source of news.”

A spokesperson for USAGM did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The ruling is the latest legal blow to the administration’s effort to dramatically remake the federal bureaucracy, and one aimed squarely at one of the U.S. government’s most visible and widely known properties around the world. Other judges have grappled with lawsuits aimed at dismantling government agencies, such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and U.S. Agency for International Development, raising alarms that the administration appeared to be attempting to permanently obliterate them before courts could act.

Lamberth nodded to that concern, noting that had courts not stepped in multiple times, several of USAGM’s prominent news services might already be gone. He noted that as of now, the only operational news service under USAGM is a 33-person unit in the Office of Cuba Broadcasting.

Trump and his allies have decried Voice of America as a bastion of “far-left” ideology and suggested it doesn’t serve U.S. government interests.

Lamberth indicated in his ruling that the sweeping effort to break VOA appeared to be based in part on those views, despite claims that the administration was not targeting First Amendment-protected speech.

Lamberth also indicated that the effort was likely a direct breach of the Constitution, saying the administration’s “unwillingness to expend funds in accordance with the congressional appropriations laws is a direct affront to the power of the legislative branch.”

“VOA has been operating under statutory mandate and with steady congressional appropriations for over eighty years, and in so doing, has cultivated an audience of 425 million listeners who rely on VOA’s output — particularly in areas of the world where a free press is otherwise unavailable,” Lamberth wrote. “The Networks have contributed to U.S. international broadcasting by almost exclusively relying on their yearly congressional appropriations, which have been uninterrupted for decades before March 15, 2025. There is no sign that the defendants considered these longstanding reliance interests before taking the sweeping actions at issue here.”

Politico

4. RFA welcomes ruling ordering disbursement of funds

(Photo: RFA)

RFA welcomes ruling ordering disbursement of funds

https://www.rfa.org/english/about/releases/2025/04/22/rfa-welcomes-ruling-ordering-disbursement-of-funds/?utm

2025.04.22

WASHINGTON - Today, Radio Free Asia (RFA) President and CEO Bay Fang welcomed the ruling of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to grant a preliminary injunction, requiring the U.S. Agency for Global Media to disburse Congressionally appropriated funds to RFA. Following the termination of its grant by the USAGM, more than three quarters of RFA’s U.S.-based staff have been furloughed and almost all contracts ended with overseas freelance journalists. Fang issued the following statement:

“We welcome the ruling that USAGM must continue to fund RFA, as Congress intended. It’s now up to the U.S. Agency for Global Media to release RFA’s Congressional funding.

“While we want to resume our operations as they were before, for that to happen we need to receive timely disbursement of our funding on a consistent basis. Until then RFA unfortunately remains in the same position as last month when we began to furlough our journalists and staff.”

5. I survived the Iran hostage crisis. People in countries like Iran desperately need the VOA

An opinion piece published by Fox News. Thank you to Fox for doing so.

This is what Americans do. De Oppresso Liber: "help the oppressed free themselves" (my adapted version of "free the oppressed")

I survived the Iran hostage crisis. People in countries like Iran desperately need the VOA

Voice of America broadcasts offer Iranians a glimpse of a future free from tyranny

By Barry Rosen Fox News

Published April 11, 2025 5:00am EDT

foxnews.com · by Barry Rosen Fox News

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Over the 44 years since my release as a hostage of the Iranian regime, I have witnessed firsthand the unmet aspirations of the Iranian people and the vibrant, if often painful, struggles of the Iranian diaspora. Millions of Iranians have consistently and bravely reached for democracy, time and again defying a regime that has proven both unpopular and dangerous.

For decades, the Voice of America’s (VOA) Persian service stood as a beacon of hope amid darkness — a trusted conduit for uncensored news and independent analysis that empowered grassroots communities.

Whether during the Green Movement of 2009, the mass protests of 2017-18, the widespread demonstrations of 2019, or the Women Life Freedom protests of 2022 and 2023, VOA’s Persian broadcasts offered a glimpse of a future free from the tyranny of a regime desperate to cling to power and energy to women and men willing to risk life and limb by standing up for our shared values.

TIME IS RUNNING OUT TO STOP IRAN FROM MAKING NUCLEAR BOMB: 'DANGEROUS TERRITORY'

Yet today, that critical lifeline has been silenced by a recent executive order. The president’s directive has taken VOA off the air — a move that undercuts not only the aspirations of millions of Iranians but also a comparatively low-cost broader effort to cast off one of the world’s leading, antagonistic, anti-American forces that funds, trains and executes attacks against Americans and American interests around the world.

Barry Rosen, former press attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, answers questions at a news conference at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Jan. 27, 1981. Rosen was one of the 52 hostages held in Tehran for 444 days. (AP Photo)

This action is emblematic of a broader retreat: earlier this year, thousands of international assistance programs were dismantled, undermining investments in global stability and the promotion of democratic values among the global grassroots.

When VOA was on the air, it did more than inform — it challenged state propaganda and gave voice to a people yearning for change. Its silence is a setback not only for those who have long resisted an unjust regime but also for the United States, whose own security is intertwined with the stability of free and open societies.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE FOX NEWS OPINION

It’s no wonder that authoritarian states across the globe have publicly cheered for the end of VOA. Chinese state media celebrated the dismantling of VOA, with one state-owned media outlet writing, "The so-called beacon of freedom, VOA, has now been discarded by its own government like a dirty rag." Russia state TV broadcasters celebrated on air after the program’s termination, saying, "I'm addressing independent journalists: die, animals!"

Countries like China, Russia and Iran know that the loss of a trusted source of global information will enhance their own propaganda machines and allow them to further spread anti-democratic values at the expense of democracies like the United States. They know that the end of VOA is ultimately a win for authoritarianism.

Barry Rosen was one of the 52 American hostages were held in Iran for 444 days. (API/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)

Critics argue that domestic challenges should take precedence, particularly amid a faltering global economy, but the abandonment of VOA and international assistance programs surrenders influence to authoritarian forces like Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and terrorist groups like the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) with their own media presence inside the Islamic Republic, not to mention their allies in Russia and China. Yielding to these enemies is not smart, strategic or in America’s interests.

I have seen the cost of repression and the price of isolation. The Iranian regime that once held me captive continues to imprison the hopes of its citizens with an iron fist. And while the struggle for freedom remains arduous, the resilience of the Iranian people offers a clear mandate: they will not accept silence.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

For Republican policymakers, the choice is stark. Restoring a voice like VOA’s and remaining fully engaged around the world is not merely a matter of supporting international assistance; it is a strategic imperative. Re-establishing channels of free information, empowering those who dare to challenge authoritarian rule and supporting individuals and groups around the world who share our commitment to democratic values reflects our national interests and will demonstrate our commitment to standing with those who want to stand with us.

Now is the time to write the next chapter in America’s strategic support for international assistance programs that champion freedom, human rights and the free exchange of ideas. The prospects of a free, democratic Iran — and pro-democracy efforts worldwide — depend on it.

foxnews.com · by Barry Rosen Fox News

6. Command from the Commander’s Perspective: Essential Case Studies in Civ-Mil Relations

Two books I often refer to and go back and re-read parts of are Sir Lawerence Freedman's Strategy and this one in the book review below: Command: The Politics of Military Operations from Korea to Ukraine

Command from the Commander’s Perspective: Essential Case Studies in Civ-Mil Relations

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/04/23/command-from-the/

by Nathan Scherry

04.23.2025 at 06:00am

Lawrence Freedman’s Command: The Politics of Military Operations from Korea to Ukraine, comprehensively explores civil-military relations. Freedman, a prolific writer on international relations and strategy, is regarded as the “dean of British strategic studies” for his immense contributions to the field. Command, however, significantly differs from his earlier work. Instead of examining the concept of strategy through a historical lens, as he did in Strategy: A History, Freedman provides a broader and more concrete analysis of post-World War II military operations. Similar to Eliot Cohen’s Supreme Command, Freedman employs case studies to investigate the complex nature of civil-military relations. In each of Freedman’s fifteen examples, he details the tensions between military and civilian leaders, illustrating the complexity and intricacy of their relationship during conflict. Rather than emphasizing heads of state, as Cohen does, Freedman focuses on military commanders, revealing the decision-making process from their perspective. More importantly, he dismantles the notion that military officers must operate independently and remain non-political, offers valuable insights into military culture, and demonstrates that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to command.

While Freedom does not use the term “military culture,” his case studies provide insights into the unique beliefs and attitudes that shape the behavior of military organizations. Freedman emphasizes how the distinction between military culture, shared among generals, and political culture, influencing the statesmen, often leads to conflict. In the case of President Nixon, Freedman points out the fight Nixon had with his generals to implement his desired bombing strategy in Vietnam. To encapsulate Nixon’s struggle, Freedman claims “the dirty secret of American civil-military relations…the commander in chief does not command the military establishment; he cajoles it, negotiates with it, and, as necessary, appeases it.” Freedman echoes this sentiment with other cases, such as President Truman’s battle to restrain General MacArthur’s actions in Korea, which ended with MacArthur being fired. With this insight, Freedman shows how tensions—stemming from cultural differences—tend to arise between statesmen and generals and the difficulty in resolving these tensions.

Another insight into strategic culture comes from Freedman’s exploration of NATO’s military operations in Kosovo and Yugoslavia. When describing the personality of General Wes Clark, the Supreme Allied Commander at the time, he compares him to the fictional character Courtney Massengale. Massengale comes from the popular novel Once an Eagle, where he is depicted as a cold-hearted, self-serving politician who cultivates the right relationships to gain promotion without any care for his subordinates. Freedman emphasizes this novel’s immense impact on U.S. Army officers and how, to this day, being labeled “another Courtney Massengale” would exclude you from promotion. General Clark’s experience and ability to work with political leaders meant he was unfairly considered a “Massengale.” Senior officers antagonized him “as a self-promotor” for his political prowess, which led to clashes among the military leadership. This insight into the culture of the U.S. Army clarifies the natural revulsion of officers to being labeled “political.” Still, as Freedman later points out, politics and command are inextricably linked. American officers seem to have forgotten their Clausewitz.

Thus, Freedman dispels the myth that military officers must avoid being “political.” In the introduction, he notes how being called political is considered offensive in most militaries. To push back against that notion, Freedman cites Hew Strachan’s definition of political: being able to “negotiate as well as fight, to be sensitive to others’ culture as well as to the morale of their own units.” From there, he shows how political is not the derogatory word military leaders consider it to be; instead, it is a skill to be mastered. In each case study, from General MacArthur to East Pakistan’s General Yahya Khan, Freedman demonstrates how military officers must be astute politicians, dutifully aware of the personalities around them, and manage the competing interests in the room. When commanders could not navigate this environment, as occurred with the French in Algeria or General Khan in Pakistan, catastrophe ensued.

Freedman also dismantles the notion that military and civilian leaders exist independently and should not interfere in each other’s work. Samuel Huntington outlines this idea in his book, The Soldier and the State, in which he describes ideal civil-military relations as one of separate spheres. In other words, political leaders should give the military leaders an objective and then leave them alone to achieve the goal. Through the case studies, Freedman shows how Huntington’s ideal is fundamentally flawed. Political leaders must constantly be involved in military operations to ensure strategic objectives are met. Conversely, military leaders frequently suggest alterations to the political objectives based on the evolving military situation. Freedman proves this iterative relationship better characterizes how civilian and military leaders work in tandem rather than in Huntington’s separate spheres. In this respect, his conclusions echo those of Cohen’s in Supreme Command. Freedman differs from Cohen not in his findings but rather by the actor chosen for analysis: the head of state versus the commander.

Freedman’s work also illustrates there is no “cookie-cutter” model of a good commander. Through the various case studies, he shows the audience different approaches to command, some successful and some not. In the case of the Cuban Missile Crisis, President Kennedy took a hands-off approach to operational details, relying on the U.S. Navy to devise the Cuban quarantine, which he agreed with and approved. In contrast, President Nixon took a more hands-on approach in Vietnam, constantly overruling his generals and directing operational policy. Which style is correct? Both achieved their strategic goals: Kennedy avoided nuclear war, and Nixon forced the North Vietnamese to sign a peace treaty. Freedman lays out just how dynamic and complex effective command is. There is no playbook for success.

While historians and military enthusiasts will enjoy the well-written descriptions of military operations, this book is a must-read for those in or near high positions of command and authority. Whether you are about to take command of a military formation or are preparing for a senior role within the Department of Defense, Freedman’s case studies of command will guide your leadership. There is no simple answer to command effectively; the best we can do is learn from those who have gone before us.

Tags: Book review, civil-military relations, command

About The Author

Nathan Scherry
Nathan Scherry is a current master's candidate at Georgetown University's Security Studies Program, with a concentration in Intelligence. Nathan received his B.S. in History from the United States Naval Academy, during which he authored a thesis addressing the influence of the press on U.S. operations in Nicaragua during the interwar years.

7. Rubio Abruptly Cancels London Trip, As Ukraine, Europeans, Lay Out ‘Red Lines’

Rubio Abruptly Cancels London Trip, As Ukraine, Europeans, Lay Out ‘Red Lines’

It’s unclear whether Rubio’s absence at the UK-led talks today means any change in the White House’s expectation, but speaking to Kyiv Post, a former US official warned against “peace talk fatigue.”

by Alex Raufoglu | April 23, 2025, 10:17 am

kyivpost.com · by Alex Raufoglu · April 23, 2025

by Alex Raufoglu | April 23, 2025, 10:17 am

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio departs Paris, France, April 18, 2025. (Official State Department photo by Freddie Everett)

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday abruptly cancelled plans to attend the UK-hosted high-level talks, which will kick off this morning in London, aimed at ending Russia’s war in Ukraine, Kyiv Post’s Washington correspondent reports.

In a social media post, Rubio announced that he had “a productive conversation” with his British counterpart, David Lammy, ahead of what he described would be “substantive and good technical meetings with Ukrainian and UK counterparts.”

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Follow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official.

“I look forward to following up after the ongoing discussions in London and rescheduling my trip to the UK in the coming months,” Rubio noted on X.

State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce confirmed the move during a daily briefing, telling reporters that Rubio’s change of plans was not a reflection of Washington’s expectations of the London meetings. White House special envoy Lt. Gen. (ret.) Keith Kellogg will lead the American delegation in Rubio’s stead, she confirmed.

“In this particular instance, while the meetings in London are still occurring, [Rubio] will not be attending. But that is not a statement regarding the meetings. It’s a statement about logistical issues in his schedule,” Bruce insisted. “As we know, Secretary Rubio is a busy man,” she said.

US President Donald Trump, together with Rubio, “wants this to be solved diplomatically,” Bruce went on to add.

‘There’s Going to Have to Be Some Territorial Swaps’ - Vance Hints at Ceasefire on Contact Line in Ukraine Peace Proposal

The comment from the US vice president followed a similar, purported comment from Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

Today’s meeting in London follows the France-hosted similar gathering last week during which Rubio, along with Trump envoys Steve Witkoff and Keith Kellogg, presented the White House’s peace plan, with America’s top diplomat suggesting that they would walk away from attempting to facilitate a peace deal if there’s no progress on negotiations, even as the administration makes clear that Trump wants to end the violence.

Trump himself said Sunday that he hoped Kyiv and Moscow “will make a deal this week.”

It wasn’t immediately clear whether the absence of the Secretary of State meant any change in the White House’s expectation, but speaking to Kyiv Post Tuesday night, a former US official who until recently had been involved in Russia-Ukraine issues warned against, what the official called, “peace talk fatigue.”

“It should be noted that this [Trump] administration has a pretty limited attention span, and on top of all the other pressing world issues, this subject – Ukraine and Russia – might rapidly become very boring to the President himself,” the former official said.

Trump said repeatedly on the campaign trail that he would end the war “overnight” if he were elected. However, in the early weeks of his presidency, he grew critical of Ukraine, pressing Kyiv to agree to a ceasefire while easing many of the measures the Biden administration had taken to punish Russia for its full-scale invasion of its neighbour.

Rubio’s decision to cancel his trip to London also came just hours after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stated Tuesday that his country would not legally recognize Crimea’s occupation, commenting on media reports suggesting the US proposal might include recognizing Crimea as Russian.

“Ukraine will not legally recognize the occupation of Crimea,” Zelensky told reporters. “It is against our constitution.”

Similar statements were also issued by European leaders.

“Crimea is Ukraine,” AFP quoted EU’s chief diplomat Kaja Kallas as saying, and making it clear the EU would never recognize the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula as legally Russian.

Separately, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said in an interview with French public broadcaster FranceInfo that it was important to lay out Europe’s “red lines” to the US regarding any potential peace deal in Ukraine.

“The only objective that concerns us is the defense of French interests and European security. …That’s why, as the US decides to place itself in the mediator position, we are making them hear what our red lines are.”

The White House said Tuesday afternoon that while London talks continue, Trump envoy Witkoff plans to visit Moscow this week.

Speaking to reporters, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt described a meeting that she witnessed at the Oval Office between Trump and Witkoff, saying that they “wanted everyone to know that the negotiations are ongoing.”

“We feel again, we’re hopefully moving in the right direction” she concluded.

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Alex Raufoglu

Alex Raufoglu is Kyiv Post's Chief Correspondent in Washington DC. He covers the US State Department, regularly traveling with US Secretary of State. Raufoglu has worked extensively in the South Caucasus and Black Sea regions for several international broadcast outlets, such as VoA, BBC, RFE/RL, etc. He holds an MA in Interactive Journalism from American University, Washington DC.

8. How a Lloyd Austin aide became Pete Hegseth’s ‘only guy standing’

I did not see this one coming. A fascinating story.

One point that bothers me about the description of those in uniform and professional civil servants is the description that they are "holdovers" from the previous administration and thereby cannot be trusted. Technically, yes they have been "held over" from the previous administration but that should not be the pejorative description that it has come to mean. The vast majority of uniformed personnel and professional civil servants are first and always loyal to the Constitution by their oath, loyal to the mission they have been assigned and therefore "loyal" to the boss in charge. The unformed military and professional civil servants who are "held over" from the previous administration should at the very least be given the benefit of the doubt and should not be automatically distrusted though I understand that some people naturally operate from a position of distrust - but that is not a sound leadership trait.

Lastly, I would say that senior leaders choose their advisors based on two criteria, expertise and personality compatibility. Colonel Buria is certainly being given an opportunity to demonstrate his professional expertise but I would imagine that may be because of his personality compatibility with the SECDEF. And if the SECDE does decide to make him his chief of staff (despite the criticism from some) the White House "vetting office" should not deny him his choice.

How a Lloyd Austin aide became Pete Hegseth’s ‘only guy standing’

Defense News · by Noah Robertson · April 22, 2025

In early April, after Pete Hegseth returned from a trip to Panama, the last person to step off the plane before the defense secretary himself was a colonel wearing slacks and a pullover.

This was Ricky Buria, Hegseth’s junior military assistant and one of the only holdovers from the last secretary’s team.

Buria, who has sharp black hair with a gray streak in the front, has gained unique status in the last three months — not only in the secretary’s inner circle but perhaps the entire Pentagon. He was appointed under the last administration but has rapidly gained Hegseth’s trust, and with it newfound power.

Last week, Buria resigned his post in the Marine Corps and is now transitioning into a new role as one of Hegseth’s senior civilian advisors. Multiple sources who spoke for this story said he’s being considered for a higher position, potentially even chief of staff.

And yet, his ascendance remains a mystery to many current and former defense officials, some of whom were allowed to speak anonymously for this story to avoid retaliation.

Over the last week, Hegseth has fired two handpicked aides and longtime friends, ostensibly over a leaks investigation, which they deny. His chief of staff, Joe Kasper, will also soon transition to a new role, Hegseth said Tuesday.

In the meantime, Buria has gone from carrying the secretary’s bags to now attending meetings with foreign counterparts and giving Hegseth advice on matters from personnel to media strategy. Some current and former officials are wondering whether he’s qualified for the new job, and how a secretary so intent on removing Biden-era appointees came to trust one so much.

“Proximity is power,” a source familiar with the internal dynamics said. “He was around the secretary more than anybody else.”

‘Body man’

Buria started the year as the secretary’s junior military assistant, a post he took on last April for Hegseth’s predecessor, Lloyd Austin.

The role — abbreviated as “JMA” — is a prestigious assignment, often reserved for promising young officers destined for successful careers in the military services. But in practice much of the work is procedural.

Multiple sources described the job as a “body man,” tasked with shepherding the secretary’s documents and equipment nearly at all times. If Hegseth needs to take a call, for example, it’s Buria’s responsibility to get him the phone.

That’s where the role ends, though. Unlike more senior military or civilian aides, the JMA doesn’t usually shape the substance of the secretary’s work.

Two former defense officials described Buria as apolitical, industrious and professional, even if he at times showed interest in more senior jobs.

“He would have preferred other roles to the junior military assistant,” one former official said of Buria. “That much was clear.”

Still, the former official continued, working directly with the secretary of defense is a competitive environment that rewards ambitious people. It’s normal for those on the team, even at more junior levels, to want more.

His opportunity to do so came in January, when Hegseth was narrowly confirmed as Austin’s replacement.

Hegseth entered the job with no experience in government and a relatively junior military career, retiring as a major. As a media personality, he often argued that general and flag officers had themselves become political, obsessed with diversity under the Biden administration.

In February, when Hegseth began firing such officers — including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the chief of naval operations and Air Force vice chief of staff — he also removed his own senior military assistant, who was first appointed by Austin.

Buria survived the firings, and in a highly unusual move became the acting senior military assistant, normally reserved for three-star officers.

Buria, pictured to the right, regularly joins the secretary's workout sessions, like this one with Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard at Fort Myer-Henderson Hall, Va., April 17, 2025. (U.S. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Alexander Kubitza)

Heavy lifting

At the time, the rationale behind keeping him in the post was that Buria was relatively junior and the secretary couldn’t fire everyone from the former team.

Hegseth later tapped Lt. Gen. Christopher LaNeve, commander of the Eighth Army in South Korea, for the role. By serving in the position temporarily, Buria was filling an urgent gap.

“Ricky was only the SMA because he was the only guy standing,” a defense official said.

Still, the new role struck others as odd for a secretary who was firing so many officials promoted during the last administration.

“The biggest thing to note here is just how unusual it is for a Biden appointee, albeit a military officer, to be moved into this position,” the first source said.

That concern grew while Buria became closer to Hegseth. As an assistant, Buria traveled with the secretary almost everywhere. And in Hegseth’s many workout photos posted online, Buria is often right beside him — running nearby in one, standing behind an American flag in another.

In private, too, Buria took on more of an advisory role. The secretary’s senior military assistant is a crucial position, tasked with helping shape military strategy and serving as an ambassador to the Joint Chiefs, America’s board of top military officers.

Notwithstanding, Buria was offering input on a range of issues from personnel policy to public affairs to day-to-day operational plans, two sources said. In the secretary’s calls with U.S. combatant commanders, Buria would share ideas on military strategy, at times to their annoyance.

“When he was conveying orders from the secretary to the COCOMs and to the Joint Staff, there was a lot of friction,” said the first source.

During Austin’s time as secretary, Buria wouldn’t be in the room for most sensitive meetings, including those with foreign counterparts. That’s since changed.

On the trip to Panama, Buria was present for talks with the country’s government, including as the two sides discussed access to the Panama Canal. When El Salvador’s defense minister visited Washington last week, Buria sat at the main table, two seats from Hegseth.

Buria sits two seats to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's left during a meeting with El Salvador Minister of National Defense René Francis Merino Monroy, April 16, 2025. (U.S. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Alexander Kubitza)

Easter message

Buria’s status has risen so quickly in part out of need. Hegseth’s team has already been thin while waiting for new officials to be appointed or confirmed. Then, last week, the secretary fired his deputy chief of staff and a senior adviser, alongside the deputy secretary of defense’s chief of staff.

During a Tuesday interview with Fox & Friends, Hegseth’s former network show, he confirmed his own chief of staff is also soon changing jobs.

Multiple defense officials said Buria is being considered as a replacement, though some doubted that the White House personnel office — which has final say on staffing and vets appointees for disloyalty — would tap someone from the last administration to such a key job.

Others questioned whether a person so junior could handle the role. The chief of staff is one of the Pentagon’s most senior positions, advising the secretary on everything from policy to managing the media to working with Congress. Those who enter the job often have political acumen and extensive time in Washington.

Late last week, Buria began an early retirement from the Marine Corps, entering terminal leave that will last through June. Normally, officers have a “cooling off” period before they can enter civilian roles, which can span years for those who held more senior ranks. That said, the requirement can be waived, and Buria is already transitioning into an advisory position.

A spokesperson for Hegseth did not reply to questions asking whether Buria had already entered the job, who the current chief of staff is and whether Buria is a potential replacement. Buria couldn’t be reached for comment.

“I have never seen one of the military assistants make that shift” from a uniformed to a civilian adviser, the former defense official said.

On Sunday, two days after beginning leave, Buria opened an account on the social media app X, where many of the secretary’s advisers spend the day posting messages promoting their work at the Pentagon.

He has since reposted messages from President Donald Trump, Hegseth and several administration accounts that often target the media. Some labeled reports that the White House may replace Hegseth as “lies.”

On Sunday, Buria liked several messages posted for Easter, including one from his boss.

“He is Risen!” Hegseth wrote.

About Noah Robertson

Noah Robertson is the Pentagon reporter at Defense News. He previously covered national security for the Christian Science Monitor. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English and government from the College of William & Mary in his hometown of Williamsburg, Virginia.

9. Inside the vicious rivalries tearing apart Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon

No matter how you feel about the SECDEF if you work in the Pentagon it is your responsibility to support his policies. The irony here is that the rivalries seem to be among the political appointees and not the uniformed personnel or professional staff.

Inside the vicious rivalries tearing apart Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon

By Rachael Bade, Daniel Lippman, Jack Detsch and Paul McLeary

04/22/2025 07:15 PM EDT

Updated: 04/22/2025 08:36 PM EDT

Politico

A feud between the secretary’s advisers and his chief of staff created backbiting and distrust that has erupted into the open.

From left to right: Colin Carroll, Darin Selnick, Dan Caldwell, Pete Hegseth, Joe Kasper | Illustration by Bill Kuchman/POLITICO (source images via Getty Images, U.S. Marine Corps, Department of Defense)

04/22/2025 07:15 PM EDT

When President Donald Trump chose Pete Hegseth for Defense secretary, incoming officials knew they’d need to surround the inexperienced Fox News host with accomplished staff who could handle the nation’s largest bureaucracy. Hegseth would be the show horse, they figured, and others at the top would keep the Pentagon on track.

What happened was the opposite. Hegseth surrounded himself with advisers who quickly turned into vicious rivals for power — whose bitter brawl has now unraveled into revenge power plays, surprise firings, accusations of leaking and embarrassing headlines that are blowing up the Pentagon, distracting from Trump’s agenda and possibly jeopardizing Hegseth’s job.

Many administration feuds are driven by ideological or factional differences, splitting old-school conservatives from MAGA headliners and “America First” activists. That does not appear to be the case here: This one is all about personality conflict, according to interviews with nine current and former Defense Department officials as well as others close to the feud, granted anonymity to discuss a sensitive political issue. Hegseth’s closest advisers privately jockeyed for influence, creating festering distrust and gamesmanship that has rocked the world’s premier defense agency.

The extent of the feud, which has been previously unreported, helps explain the chaos that has eclipsed the Defense Department in recent weeks. And it affirms skeptics’ concerns that Hegseth lacked the management experience to run a large organization.

“There’s just a lot of tension, there’s a lot of bad blood,” said a person with knowledge of the feud. “And there’s a lot of people trying to assert dominance in an area where it’s very hard to do without cutting somebody else.”

The infighting became so ugly that Hegseth suspected the recent leaks to the media were an orchestrated attempt by his senior staff to make their rivals look bad, according to someone close to him, efforts that cast the secretary and his department in a negative light.

At the center was Joe Kasper, Hegseth’s departing chief of staff, who people familiar with the matter said created a toxic workplace culture and played an instrumental role last week in pushing out three top Pentagon officials. Those firings, they said, were an attempt to consolidate power. Kasper denied inappropriate behavior or having anything to do with the dismissals.

On the other side were the fired employees, trusted Hegseth allies. Those staffers — senior adviser Dan Caldwell, deputy chief of staff Darin Selnick and Colin Carroll, chief of staff to the deputy Defense secretary — were considered Hegseth’s closest advisers and maintain their innocence.

“We had people who had personal vendettas against us,” Caldwell told Tucker Carlson in an interview Monday night. “They weaponized the investigation against us.”

Kasper argued in an interview that he was doing what he was ordered to do by Hegseth: start an investigation into recent leaks.

The Pentagon denied a clash of personalities but otherwise declined to comment.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt insisted the fired officials leaked to the media and that there was a “smear campaign” within the Defense Department to harm Hegseth’s reputation.

“It’s been clear since day one of this administration that we are not going to tolerate individuals who leaked to the mainstream media particularly when it comes to sensitive information,” she said Tuesday at a press briefing.

Carroll, Caldwell and Selnick declined to comment.

Hegseth called Kasper a “great American” on Tuesday and affirmed his support for him. “He’s certainly not fired,” he said on Fox & Friends. “You make changes over time.”

The eruption of infighting at the Defense Department — an agency that traditionally avoids showing partisanship or straying from decorum — adds to a slew of brutal headlines for the Pentagon chief. Hegseth is still facing fallout for sending sensitive details about military strikes in Yemen to national security leaders in a Signal chat that accidentally included a journalist, a report this week that he also sent them to his own family, and several other high-profile gaffs.

“There is a complete meltdown in the building, and this is really reflecting on the secretary’s leadership,” said a person familiar with the matter. “Pete Hegseth has surrounded himself with some people who don’t have his interests at heart.”

Concerns about Kasper running the Pentagon started almost immediately.

A longtime aide and friend of indicted Rep. Duncan Hunter, Kasper was helping oversee his office when a series of scandals roiled the California Republican’s office. These included allegations that Hunter regularly drank heavily while serving in Congress. Investigators also inquired about relations he had with a young woman working in his office. He was eventually sentenced to 11 years in prison for misusing taxpayers funds. (He was pardoned by Trump in 2020.)

Kasper would later work at the Department of Homeland Security, the Navy and the Air Force in the first Trump administration and as a lobbyist. But critics say he quickly ran into trouble with his new job at the Pentagon.

He was often late to meetings and developed a reputation for dropping the ball on critical tasks with little follow-up, according to three people who witnessed his behavior. Another person familiar with his management said he “lacked the focus and organizational skills needed to get things done.”

While some who know him say he was fun and charming, three of the people said he frequently berated officials in meetings and repeatedly referred to military officials by a lower rank.

And at times, Kasper’s detractors say his leadership seemed almost juvenile. He graphically described his bowel movements to colleagues in one high-level meeting, according to two people who were in the meetings.

During that meeting, “he turned [and] he goes, ‘Can I just tell everyone around this table that I just took an enormous shit right before coming in here?’” according to two people who were present.

“People were like, ‘what? Like, this is a business meeting,’” the official said.

Kasper said the story was taken out of context, and that he instead joked that the team was “in major shit-con,” a play on words suggesting they were in trouble.

Selnick was brought on as deputy chief of staff in March to deal with perceived problems in Kasper’s leadership, according to three people familiar with the matter. These people thought Selnick, a MAGA loyalist who worked with Hegseth years ago when he ran a nonprofit group, Concerned Veterans for America, could run the front office in case things with Kasper went sideways.

Hegseth also began to lean more heavily on Caldwell, who also worked with him at the nonprofit and had a reputation as a no-nonsense, type-A executor.

The leadership change created tension between Kasper and the others, according to three people serving in the Pentagon around that time.

“Kasper did not like that those guys had the secretary’s ear,” said a person familiar with the dynamic. “He did not like that they had walk-in and hanging-out privileges in the office. He wanted them out. It was a knife fight.”

Kasper denied that he had any issues with the other senior advisers.

Tensions between the group only further spiked last month amid a series of leaks that set everyone at the Pentagon — but especially Hegseth — on edge. Kasper’s critics say he used the chaos to settle scores with other Hegseth advisers, pushing for an investigation into the leaks and pointing the finger at his colleagues.

“When Dan Caldwell and Darin Selnick took on many of his responsibilities at Hegseth’s direction, a rift deepened between Joe and them,” said one of the people. “After several weeks, Joe began trying to move them out apparently by bad-mouthing them to the secretary.”

Hegseth started to feel increasingly isolated and paranoid, according to two people close to him. Last week, it all caught up to the secretary. He fired some of his most senior staff, believing they were leaking.

Kasper emerged from the battle wounded. POLITICO reported Friday that he was stepping down from his top post for a new role.

While some who know him say he was fun and charming, three of the people said he frequently berated officials in meetings and repeatedly referred to military officials by a lower rank.

“People were like, ‘what? Like, this is a business meeting,’” the official said.

Kasper said the story was taken out of context, and that he instead joked that the team was “in major shit-con,” a play on words suggesting they were in trouble.

Hegseth also began to lean more heavily on Caldwell, who also worked with him at the nonprofit and had a reputation as a no-nonsense, type-A executor.

The leadership change created tension between Kasper and the others, according to three people serving in the Pentagon around that time.

Kasper denied that he had any issues with the other senior advisers.

Kasper emerged from the battle wounded. POLITICO reported Friday that he was stepping down from his top post for a new role.

Politico

10. My Old Warship Is Caught Up in the Battle Over DEI by James Stavridis

The problem is not "diversity." We need diversity. Our country is built on diversity. We are a diverse country by definition (e.g., we are a nation of immigrants).

The problem is "cancel culture." Those who embrace cancel culture on both sides of the political spectrum are the root cause of the problem because by definition cancel culture demonstrates a lack of respect for the "other." Cancel culture rests on the premise that you must be "canceled" if you do not believe the same ideals and values of the "canceller." And the problem with DEI programs is that "cancel culture" infiltrated these programs. And now the pendulum is swinging to remove any reference to DEI and this is another tragic form of "cancel culture."

Diversity + cancel culture = bad

Diversity – cancel culture = good.

My Old Warship Is Caught Up in the Battle Over DEI

The USS Barry has always had the motto “Strength and Diversity.” Now the latter word has been expunged from the Navy's website.

April 22, 2025 at 4:00 AM PDT

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-04-22/-diversity-has-been-purged-from-the-motto-of-a-us-navy-destroyer?accessToken=--sanitized--&leadSource=uverify+wall&sref=hhjZtX76

By James Stavridis

James Stavridis is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist, a retired US Navy admiral, former supreme allied commander of NATO, and vice chairman of global affairs at the Carlyle Group.

The USS Barry is entering the rough seas of the culture wars. Photographer: US Navy via Getty Images Europe

In 1992, the new Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer USS Barry was commissioned. A powerful warship of over 9,000 tons, she is still in service and carries a formidable array of offensive and defensive weaponry. The commissioning motto, which the crew selected and was put on the ship’s crest, was “Strength and Diversity.”

I was the second commanding officer of Barry, and without question that opportunity — to serve as captain of a marvelous crew and deploy to vital missions off the coasts of Haiti, the Balkans and the Persian Gulf — was central to my career. Many years later, when I was supreme allied commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 2011, she again served under my command in combat operations off the coast of Libya, conducting an arms embargo under UN Security Council guidance. Barry is now homeported in Everett, Washington after years assigned to Yokosuka, Japan. Even now, I still check in on the ship constantly.

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It was therefore a shock to see that on the website of Naval Surface Forces Pacific, the ship’s original motto has been changed, with the word “Diversity” scrubbed out. While an image of the ship’s crest with the full motto does appear, the site’s explanatory text describes it as: “On a scroll Azure, the motto ‘STRENGTH’ in Gold letters.” (An archived version of the page from last April shows “diversity” used in three places, now all wiped.) One has to assume the online erasing of history is part of the larger purge of all things associated with “diversity, equity and inclusion” programs in the Department of Defense.

But here’s the irony: When the motto was selected, “Diversity” was referring — quite correctly — to the wide-ranging combat power of the ship across all domains of warfare. Barry can conduct combat operations against land targets with her Tomahawk missiles; shoot down incoming cruise missiles with the formidable AEGIS air defense system; find and destroy submarines; attack enemy warships with guns and missiles; and use powerful electronic warfare to jam the enemy. Her lethality is incredibly diverse.

The author aboard the USS Barry off the coast of Normandy during the 50th anniversary of D-Day.

Changing the motto would be unfortunate in two ways. First, the ship has proudly served with both strength and diversity for decades, winning the Battenberg Cup as the top ship in the Atlantic Fleet three times, conducting combat operations around the globe, and serving as home to thousands of sailors over the years.

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A second irony is that when I was commanding officer in the mid-1990s, Barry was selected as one of the first destroyers to have a mixed-gender crew. Roughly 20% of the company — officers, chief petty officers and enlisted sailors — were female. With this crew, Barry won not only the Battenberg Cup in 1994, but also the Battle Effectiveness Award, the Golden Anchor for crew retention, and numerous other fleet-wide commendations. We demonstrated that gender diversity is a proven winner.

Barry will always be a ship that embodies both strength and diversity to me. I suspect the vast majority of my former shipmates feel the same way. Let’s hope the original motto can hold fast in this period of uncertainty at the Pentagon. I don’t plan to scratch any words off my ship’s plaque anytime soon. Sail proud, USS Barry.

Stavridis is dean emeritus of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University . He is on the boards of Aon, Fortinet and Ankura Consulting Group, and has advised Shield Capital, a firm that invests in the cybersecurity sector.

Want to Understand the New Cold War? Look to Huawei.

The Nation · by Brett Christophers · April 22, 2025

For all the security concerns, however, the fact that Huawei is regarded as such a threat has to do with much more than “just” geopolitics. Equally important, and perhaps even more so, is the brute fact of Huawei’s staggering commercial success. One suspects that, consciously or otherwise, anxiety about Huawei’s competitive accomplishments is sometimes dressed up as a concern with “safety”: Far easier for the American mind to invoke a surveillance bogeyman than to admit to trepidatious reverence at Chinese business prowess.

As late as the turn of the millennium, the international telecommunications hardware market—Huawei’s home turf—continued to be dominated by Western firms such as Alcatel, Ericsson, Lucent, and Nortel. But the first decade of the new millennium began to see a changing of the guard. A seminal moment, as Dou tells it, came with Huawei’s first major breakthrough in the West, when, in 2005, the company won a lucrative bid to upgrade the network of BT, Britain’s largest supplier of telephony services. Opening the door to, among others, the French and Spanish markets, the BT deal was the “beginning of the end for several of Huawei’s Western rivals,” who simply couldn’t compete with the company at its “budget price points.” By 2012, Huawei was the world’s largest vendor of telecommunications networking hardware. Having also successfully made the move into consumer electronics—branded household gadgets “could help Huawei soften its image overseas,” Dou notes—the Chinese firm was, for good measure, now the world’s third-largest smartphone maker, behind only Apple and Samsung.

Huawei has succeeded internationally despite America’s best efforts, especially in the past decade, to prevent it from doing so. The company had been on Washington’s radar since the late 1990s, not least because of its expansion in those years into markets presided over by what the US deemed “rogue” regimes, among them Iraq and Russia. The result was that, even after Huawei successfully made big sales in other Western territories after establishing its foothold in Britain, America would remain the one major market in which it failed to make significant inroads, having to satisfy itself there with sales to second- or third-tier network operators. As a potential supplier, the Chinese company was simply beyond the pale for America’s telephony market leaders, for whom political optics and relationships are considered just as important as capital costs and network quality.

During the first Trump administration, the US expanded its campaign against Huawei on two new fronts. It imposed export controls, specifically by banning US companies from supplying Huawei with critical components, as they had been doing since as early as 1993, when Huawei established its first US subsidiary in California. And, with some notable successes, the US government also began applying substantial pressure on countries like Australia, Britain, and Canada to follow its lead in blackballing Huawei in their domestic markets, focusing on those countries’ tendering of contracts to build 5G networks. Huawei, however, has prevailed nonetheless, even as there is no doubt that America’s resistance has crimped the scope of its achievements. “The West was continuing to grow more inhospitable toward Huawei,” Dou says by way of bringing her story up to the time of her writing, in 2024. “Yet—almost incredibly—Huawei was still number one in the world in 5G gear sales.”

Huawei’s prevailing in the face of the United States’ concerted opposition shows that America is not as powerful or persuasive as it certainly likes to imagine that it is: Not everyone, even its (erstwhile) “friends,” kowtows to its demands. Furthermore, and perhaps more significantly still, the Huawei story demonstrates that in the 21st century, non-Western companies are able to be enormous commercial successes—to be, in fact, world leaders in their chosen industry sectors—while having the US and several other leading Western markets essentially closed off to them. That, in itself, is a profound statement on the shifting of the world economic order, and one that Trump and his cronies evidently seem to be ignoring—or perhaps are unable to understand—as they set about alienating long-time commercial and political allies, in addition to the list of long-time adversaries, by unleashing an all-encompassing trade war the likes of which the world has not seen since the early 20th century. In the postwar era, it would have been unthinkable that a company could have ascended to global market leadership in any area of the economy without a major presence in the United States, Europe, or (more likely) both. That is no longer true. Alongside East Asia and Africa, it is the Middle East, with all its natural-resource-based riches, that represents, in Dou’s words, “the beating heart of Huawei’s global empire.”

What is also maddening to Huawei’s American critics is that it has done all this while thumbing its nose at American-style capitalism. For many years, there was widespread expectation around the world, and among many in China itself, that Huawei would proceed to an IPO. This was assumed to be its “natural” evolutionary terminus, the inevitable result of the company’s inculcating, and eventually adopting, the Western gospel of shareholder value. But Huawei never did become a public company, and it never prioritized shareholder value to the exclusion of all else. It was, and is, something else entirely—and that something else has proved a great commercial success. What do we know about the model?

Huawei began life as a contract manufacturer. That is, at the start, it did not have its own products, but manufactured those of others—including, most notably, simple analog telephone switches capable of routing and connecting, at most, a few dozen phone calls, which were sold to the likes of small offices and hotels. Huawei was initially a private company, controlled top to bottom by Ren Zhengfei himself and capitalized with the princely sum of 21,000 yuan provided by Ren and five private investors. Five years after its founding, by which time it had developed and begun to sell a first switch of its own (the BH-03), Huawei converted in 1992 to a “collectively owned enterprise,” a company structure that furnished both a degree of political patronage and a set of broader financing opportunities—and which, in Huawei’s case, appeared to entail a more democratic form of management in the shape, in particular, of a powerful workers’ committee.

A stimulus for further change came in 1994, a landmark year for China’s corporate landscape, when the country’s new Company Law introduced limited-liability companies (LLCs) with the aims of encouraging greater investment, aligning China’s corporate governance with international standards, and facilitating an accelerated transition to a market economy. Ren was intrigued but not immediately convinced, electing to hire a team of Beijing business professors to help him strategize restructuring opportunities and map out a new future for the firm. Huawei did become an LLC (and remains one today), but only in 1997, at which point the existing employee shareholdings, of which there were a large number, were consolidated into a single “trade union” holding. Meanwhile, the professors’ much-anticipated blueprint, the “Huawei Basic Law,” was adopted the following year. Profit would be just one objective among many; more important was the reinvestment of that profit to drive growth—fully 10 percent of sales were to go into R&D.

Dou argues that Huawei is ultimately best understood as a company made in the image of the nation. Its goal is not to increase shareholder value so much as “to ensure its own long-term survival,” as is also true, she points out, of the ruling Communist Party. The secret of Huawei’s success, Dou writes, is its “ability to accomplish titanic tasks at almost impossible speeds by getting everyone to pull in unison.” Reading these words, one can’t help but think, yet again, of China’s titanic ongoing achievements in rolling out renewable energy capacity on a gargantuan scale and at almost impossible speeds.

But Dou is also forthright about the considerable downsides of this business approach. Success achieved in the manner of Huawei, she observes, “can come at crushing costs for the individuals involved.” Huawei “fetishized long work hours”—the company’s engineers were accustomed to keeping mats by their desks so they could nap on the floor rather than going home at night. Perhaps worse was that an aggressive, survival-of-the-fittest “wolf culture” was encouraged not just externally, in the rivalry with competitors, but internally, among colleagues. And it surely did not help employees’ mental health to know that the prospect of involuntary redundancy constantly hovered in the background: Huawei, Dou notes, “repeatedly pressured its staff into mass resignations.”

In any case, enough is known about the psychological effects to leave the reader in no doubt about the sheer corrosiveness of the Huawei model from a social perspective. Dou reports a “string of ‘unnatural’ deaths,” including suicides, among employees. She also cites the finding of a scholarly study that some two-thirds of Huawei’s senior management were suffering from a stress-related illness. Such figures hint at a milieu beside which even Wall Street’s famously pitiless working culture would likely look positively tranquil.

Huawei is a creature of Shenzhen, a city in the coastal province of Guangdong in South China. After the decommissioning of his military unit, the Engineering Corps, a thirtysomething Ren Zhengfei moved to Shenzhen in the early 1980s, initially assigned a job there at a subsidiary of the state-owned South Sea Oil Corporation, which was building a harbor to support offshore oil production. Following a “short and undistinguished” time in this position, Ren—who had made something of a name for himself in the military by building a precision air-pressure generator that he subsequently worked to commercialize—established Huawei. He was 42. He is still the company’s CEO today.

It is possible, perhaps even probable, that Huawei could not have become what it did except in Shenzhen. Abutting Hong Kong to its immediate south, Shenzhen was designated as China’s first-ever “special economic zone” in 1980. At the time, it had a population of around 30,000. Physically walled off from the rest of China by barbed-wire fences, it was also walled off figuratively: While the post-Mao reformism of Deng Xiaoping initially proceeded slowly in the country at large, everything was on fast forward in the “wild west” that was late-20th-century Shenzhen, where the normal rules did not apply and an “anything goes” approach prevailed. The city was “ground zero,” Dou writes, for China’s “grand experiment with capitalism.” Ren and Huawei exploited this business environment maximally, as did many others. In the 1980s through the 2010s, Shenzhen was one of the fastest-growing cities in the world: By 2020, its 30,000 inhabitants had become 17.4 million, making the city by then China’s third-largest.

Of course, the Chinese “capitalism” with which Ren and others experimented in booming Shenzhen was and is a very special version, and Dou does a wonderful job of picturing its sheer foreignness and oddness, when seen through Western eyes. In no respect, perhaps, is the foreignness of Chinese capitalism more striking than in terms of the relation between firms and the Chinese Communist Party. All companies with a certain proportion of employees who are party members are required to establish an internal party “committee” that gives the CCP a formal role in the company. Huawei set up its committee in 1996, with Ren himself serving as the first secretary. Huawei’s committee infused the company with the CCP’s signature themes of “patriotism, struggle for the greater cause, and self-sacrifice”—no doubt the mats by the engineers’ desks and the surging mental health problems were justified accordingly—and its influence appears only to have grown with time. In 2007, the committee was granted veto power over Huawei’s executive appointments.

Indeed, as Western observers have never tired of remarking, Huawei’s fortunes were bound up with the party, and with the state more generally, from the start. The mistake that those observers have made, however, is to think about the Chinese state primarily, and sometimes only, in terms of Beijing, which is to say the central government. To do so, Dou shows us, is to miss one of the most important parts of the Huawei story.

The specific products that were key to making Huawei a major commercial force both nationally and internationally were digital telephone switches. Able to route and connect thousands (or even millions) of calls at once compared with the mere dozens handled by analog versions, digital switches constitute the nerve centers of modern public communications networks, directing and managing the flow of data as well as voice packets. When Huawei began working in the early 1990s on the development of digital switches, that work was financed by a joint-venture company called Mobeco, established in 1993. The money behind Mobeco was provided by Huawei’s equity partners in the venture—namely, 17 provincial and municipal (that is, public) telecom bureaus.

When Huawei’s first proprietary digital switch (C&C08) went into production in 1995, the same public telecom bureaus that had helped finance its development were now in charge of buying it for their local telephone exchanges. Not only that, but, indirectly at least, they also found themselves manufacturing it: Huawei outsourced the production of C&C08 to Mobeco. In short, what Western observers might understand as conflicts of interest abounded. And Huawei then doubled down, as the success of Mobeco prompted it to expand the model: It set up more such joint ventures with local governments around the country. Dou characterizes these as “Huawei’s ‘marriage’ to the state.” This is not to say that Huawei didn’t have close and efficacious relationships with other arms of the state—for example, “in 2005,” Dou writes, “the China Development Bank, a Beijing-controlled policy bank, allocated a whopping $10 billion to fund Huawei’s overseas expansion.”

Despite documenting these various linkages between the company and the state, this is also, paradoxically, where House of Huawei is at its weakest. As Dou observes, amid the 1990s ferment of productive innovation in China, Huawei was one of four major domestic producers of telecom equipment to come to the fore, the others being Datang, Great Dragon, and ZTE. Why, out of these four, did Huawei emerge as the undisputed leader both domestically and, ultimately, internationally? Dou doesn’t—and arguably can’t—answer that question, because despite hinting that Huawei won simply by virtue of outcompeting its rivals, she never actually gets at the question of what “competition” means in the context of Chinese capitalism, saturated as that system is in political influence.

Scholars, however, have been exploring this question. The sociologist Kyle Chan, for instance, has examined the nature of competition in sectors of the Chinese economy in which state-owned enterprises (SOEs) play a significant role. His research is highly relevant to the case at hand: Datang, Great Dragon, and ZTE are all owned wholly or mainly by the state. Chan found that industries with a substantial SOE presence, telecommunications included, are characterized by what he calls “managed competition,” representing a blend of state oversight and competitive forces and combining innovation and efficiency, on the one hand, with control and planning on the other. In order to maintain a balance of competitive capabilities among industry actors and thus prevent the formation of monopolies, the state intervenes where necessary, Chan argues, to redistribute resources, personnel, and contracts.

There is very little analysis of this kind in House of Huawei. Dou has written a book that is much more interested in personalities, subterfuge, and geopolitics than it is in economics and competitive practice. She helps us understand why Huawei vaulted to the top of US policymakers’ fearful protectionist agenda, but less about how and why it vaulted to the top of the telecommunications industry against both national and international competitors. We are left with much still to understand about Huawei as a particular corporate embodiment of what is, in the Chinese case, a very particular type of capitalist social formation.

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12. Opinion: US Blind Spot in the Drone War: Why Ukraine Holds the Key to America’s AI Supremacy

Excerpts:

Just days ago, Russia launched a brutal missile attack on civilians in Sumy, on Palm Sunday. Over 30 were killed, and dozens more were wounded. This is not a regime interested in peace. It is a regime exploiting every hour of war to upgrade its military machine. And the longer we hesitate, the more dangerous that machine becomes.

The United States has the platforms, the capital, and the ambition. What we lack is the battlefield wisdom Ukraine has earned with blood. If we do not act now, the drone war will evolve without us. In the next war, we will find ourselves outpaced by adversaries who learned from Ukraine while we watched from the stands.

It is time to step up to the plate – not just for Ukraine’s freedom, but for America’s survival in the age of autonomous warfare. Because make no mistake, the coalition of enemies we face is real: Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. The longer we delay, the stronger they grow.

Opinion: US Blind Spot in the Drone War: Why Ukraine Holds the Key to America’s AI Supremacy

kyivpost.com · by Bill Cole · April 22, 2025

The US military is way behind both Ukraine and Russia in drone tactics and applicable technology. The Pentagon needs to partner with Kyiv if it wants to resist China’s growing edge.

By Bill Cole

April 22, 2025, 1:02 pm

DJI Matrice 300 reconnaissance drones, bought in the frame of program 'The Army of Drones' are seen during test flights in the Kyiv region on August 2, 2022, prior to being sent to the front line. 'The Army of Drones' is a project initiated by the General Staff of the Armed Forces and the Ministry of Digital Transformation which is a comprehensive program in which organisation purchases drones, repair them, and train operators. (Photo by Sergei SUPINSKY / AFP)

To use a great American sport as an analogy, baseball, the United States is playing tee-ball when it comes to drones, while Ukraine and Russia are the Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Yankees battling it out in the World Series of drone warfare.

Washington is sleepwalking through the most significant military transformation of our generation. Ukraine is not just defending its territory; it is rewriting the rules of combat in real time. This is not theory. It is raw, adaptive, high-stakes drone innovation playing out daily over Sumy, Kherson, and Kharkiv. Over the past two and a half years, I have been on the ground in Ukraine, cutting my teeth by studying and understanding battlefield technology firsthand and forming close relationships with those serving at the front. These experiences have fundamentally reshaped my understanding of modern warfare and the pivotal role drones now play.

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After returning from key meetings on Capitol Hill earlier this month, where I presented the Peace Through Strength Plan: Win for Ukraine, Defend America at Home, I launched the Peace Through Strength Institute to help fill the policy vacuum in Washington. One of our most urgent findings is this: drone warfare is not a footnote, it is the main event, and the United States is dangerously unprepared to compete unless we begin learning directly from the Ukrainian front.

This is no longer just Russia’s war. China is in the fight – arming Putin.

This week, that reality became even more stark. It is now official that China has been supplying weapons to Russia, and all signs point to drone technology being central to that transfer. Chinese military officers were captured inside Ukraine last week, where they were apparently studying battlefield drone tactics firsthand. This is no longer just Russia’s war. China is in the fight – arming Putin, gathering battlefield intelligence, and shaping tactics for its own planned assault on Taiwan. Ukraine is not just defending Europe; it is the front line in the coming war with China, and Beijing knows it.

Russia Hammers Major Ukraine City Transformer Station, Multiple Cities, ‘Ceasefire’ Is Over

The bloodiest drone attack hit a passenger bus in the Dnipropetrovsk region, killing nine. A Russian glide bomb hit an apartment building in the Zaporizhzhia region, killing one and injuring four.

Let me be clear: if we allow Russia to prevail in Ukraine with Chinese backing, we will be fighting a war against China ourselves – in Taiwan, in the Pacific, and eventually, face-to-face. And unlike Ukraine’s volunteers, that war will put American troops in body bags. Every conservative I speak with, from grassroots voters to MAGA-aligned leaders, agrees on one thing – China is our greatest enemy. If that’s true, and it is, then failing to stop this Chinese-Russian military partnership now is an act of betrayal to our own national security.

This is not theoretical. It is already triggering alarms at the highest levels of American leadership. Vice President JD Vance recently warned that any future attack from the Arctic region would likely come in ways we are not prepared to counter, and his remarks clearly implied a drone-based assault as the most probable threat vector. Senator Lisa Murkowski has issued similar warnings about Alaska’s vulnerability. China and Russia are testing Western weakness together – probing where they can strike next. The next war will not be tanks crossing borders; it will be swarms of autonomous systems launched from unexpected fronts.

Meanwhile, Ukraine is moving at the speed of war. Out of its 900,000-strong military, approximately 200,000 are drone specialists. Their development cycle, from concept to deployment, takes just two to three months. In contrast, traditional US and allied aerospace timelines often stretch into years. This agility gap is no longer a theoretical disadvantage. It is an immediate threat to our strategic edge.

Ukraine is not just deploying drones. It is reinventing drone warfare across every dimension. The scale and sophistication of their ecosystem is staggering. From FPV (first-person view) kamikaze drones that strike with pinpoint accuracy, to fiber-optic tethered drones that remain electronically invisible to Russian jamming systems, to various multi-use bomber drones, loitering munitions with extended range and payload, Ukraine is fielding platforms faster than the Pentagon can review a memo.

Distances are expanding, payloads are evolving, and real-time adaptation is accelerating. Ukrainian operators are not only innovating under fire, they are mastering velocity, acceleration, maneuverability, and accuracy in ways that rival any formal Western drone program. These battlefield engineers are taking $400 drones and outmatching multi-million-dollar systems with sheer creativity and tactical brilliance.

Failing to stop this Chinese-Russian military partnership now is an act of betrayal to America’s own national security.

If America had the strategic clarity to help Ukraine fully expel Russian forces, not pause, not freeze, but win, we would gain far more than a moral or geopolitical victory. We would secure the future of military technology and global deterrence. Here is what is at stake:

Shut down Russia’s drone innovation engine.

Every inch of occupied territory is a live testbed for Russian drone development, AI targeting, and electronic warfare adaptation. If Russia is allowed to dig in, it will export these learnings to its partners and proxies, from Iran to North Korea. Helping Ukraine win decisively is not just right, it is smart containment.

Train with the best in the world.

No US military program comes close to what Ukraine’s drone operators are doing daily under fire. They are innovating, adapting, and iterating in ways that outpace any Western war game or simulation. These are the warfighters we should be partnering with, not observing from afar.

Build the world’s most important drone-tech alliance.

A robust US-Ukraine economic partnership would unlock supply chain innovation, joint manufacturing, and scalable drone development, outside of China’s influence. Ukraine is a battlefield-tested R&D lab, and America should be its primary partner.

Just last week, the United States and Ukraine signed a Memorandum of Intent (MOI) to finalize a formal agreement on an economic partnership and reconstruction investment fund. While the signing is an important step forward, what is deeply concerning is how little clarity there is on the inclusion of drone technology in this agreement. For a war defined by UAV innovation, and for a postwar economy poised to lead in drone manufacturing, this silence is glaring. If drones remain an afterthought in these negotiations, we risk repeating the very mistake this op-ed is warning against: letting the most transformative military technology of our generation fall outside our strategic planning.

Access the crown jewel: petabytes of real-world flight data.

Ukraine has amassed the largest and most valuable dataset in the history of drone warfare. Every takeoff, every maneuver, every loss and success has been logged, analyzed, and refined. But access to this crown jewel is not something the United States can simply write into a bilateral agreement. This battlefield wisdom is not held solely by the Ukrainian government – it lives in the hands of frontline warriors, private drone firms, volunteers, and battlefield engineers. Any true partnership must reflect that. If Ukrainians see America as a loyal ally, not a transactional opportunist, they will share what no contract can compel. And if they do not, that knowledge stays locked – or worse, falls into the hands of our enemies.

Because here is the risk: if Russia is allowed to remain in Ukrainian territory under any ceasefire or “frozen conflict,” they and their partners in China, Iran, and North Korea will inevitably gain access to this trove of battlefield data. They will learn from it, adapt it, and turn it against us. A ceasefire that leaves Russia in place is not peace. It is an open pipeline of warfighting innovation flowing straight to America’s enemies.

And if we continue to underestimate this threat, we may soon find ourselves living in the same conditions Ukrainians endure every day. Europeans and Americans could very well be downloading phone apps that alert them to air raid sirens, watching skies overhead instead of ball games, and asking if their cities are next. The line between distant warzones and our own neighborhoods is getting thinner by the day.

Ukraine is reinventing drone warfare across every dimension. The scale and sophistication of their ecosystem is staggering.

Just days ago, Russia launched a brutal missile attack on civilians in Sumy, on Palm Sunday. Over 30 were killed, and dozens more were wounded. This is not a regime interested in peace. It is a regime exploiting every hour of war to upgrade its military machine. And the longer we hesitate, the more dangerous that machine becomes.

The United States has the platforms, the capital, and the ambition. What we lack is the battlefield wisdom Ukraine has earned with blood. If we do not act now, the drone war will evolve without us. In the next war, we will find ourselves outpaced by adversaries who learned from Ukraine while we watched from the stands.

It is time to step up to the plate – not just for Ukraine’s freedom, but for America’s survival in the age of autonomous warfare. Because make no mistake, the coalition of enemies we face is real: Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. The longer we delay, the stronger they grow.

The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.

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Bill Cole

Bill Cole is a prominent American public activist and tech executive from San Jose, California, who has dedicated much of his career to supporting Ukraine. Leveraging decades of high-tech business development experience in Silicon Valley, he actively engages with policymakers in Washington, DC and provides on-the-ground humanitarian aid. He has organized and funded major initiatives, including a healthcare summit in Kyiv, and personally delivers evacuation vehicles and medical supplies to frontline communities.

13. U.S. SOCOM inducts 18 SOF warriors into Commando Hall of Honor

U.S. SOCOM inducts 18 SOF warriors into Commando Hall of Honor

https://www.dvidshub.net/news/495835/us-socom-inducts-18-sof-warriors-into-commando-hall-honor

By Michael Bottoms dvidshub.net2 min

April 21, 2025

View Original

MACDILL AIR FORCE BASE, Fl. -- U.S. Special Operations Command inducted 18 former special operators to include nine Medal of Honor recipients into the U.S. SOCOM Commando Hall of Honor located at the U.S. SOCOM headquarters, April 16, 2025, the 38th anniversary of the command. More than 100 people attended the ceremony and watched as each inductee received a medal from U.S. Army Gen. Bryan P. Fenton, commander of U.S. SOCOM, and U.S. Army Sgt. Maj. Shane Shorter, command senior enlisted leader of U.S. SOCOM.

The Commando Hall of Honor was established in 2010 by former commander of U.S. SOCOM U.S. Navy Admiral Eric T. Olson. and the award recognizes individuals who have served with distinction within the special operations forces community. These individuals embody the skills, values, spirit and courage of a SOF warrior. The award gives a notable place in history for those whose efforts and careers will forever remain unknown to the public and do not seek recognition for their accomplishments. The inductees joined the storied ranks of those who preceded them.

2025 Medal of Honor inductees:

U.S. Army Maj. Drew Dix

U.S. Air Force Col. James Fleming

U.S. Marine Corps Pvt. 1st Class Henry Gurke

U.S. Air Force Col. Joe Jackson

U.S. Navy Capt. Thomas Kelley

U.S. Army Master Sgt. Leroy Petry

U.S. Army Lt. Col. Ronald Ray

U.S. Army Master Sgt. Jose Rodela

U.S. Army Capt. Humbert Versace

2025 inductees:

U.S. Army Chief Warrant Officer 4 William Donovan

U.S. Army Maj. Gen. William Garrison

U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Jerome Klingaman

U.S. Army Maj. Christian Lambertsen

U.S. Army Col. Robert Mabry

U.S. Navy Fleet Master Chief Roy Maddocks

U.S. Army Col. Louis Mason

U.S. Air Force Maj. Gen. Robert Patterson

U.S. Army Col. Rodger Slaughter.

These members will join other recognized warriors in the Commando Hall of Honor, which includes such legendary names as Col. Aaron Bank, Col. Charles Beckwith, Maj. Gen. Sidney Shacknow, Brig. Gen. William Darby and Col. Ralph Puckett, Jr., for their contributions and legacies to the special operations community and the Nation.

“Humans are without question more important than hardware, and today is a reminder of that,’ said Fenton. “The legacy of extraordinary people in SOF extends back to the very inception of modern Special Operations in 1942, well beyond the 38 years that SOCOM has existed. Inducting these 18 heroes into our Commando Hall of Honor means that their contributions, their stories and their legacies will forever be enshrined as a part of the very foundation of this SOF community.”

14. China buyers selling knockoffs of Russian military gear back to Russia

What goes around comes around.

China buyers selling knockoffs of Russian military gear back to Russia

Newsweek · by Micah McCartney · April 21, 2025

Micah McCartney is a reporter for Newsweek based in Taipei, Taiwan. He covers U.S.-China relations, East Asian and Southeast Asian security issues, and cross-strait ties between China and Taiwan. You can get in touch with Micah by emailing m.mccartney@newsweek.com.

Chinese nationals have been caught smuggling Russian military gear out of the country before reselling knockoffs back to Russia, authorities have told Russia's Izvestia newspaper.

The items included bulletproof vests and uniforms that had been reversed-engineered and reproduced with inferior material, customs officials said.

Why It Matters

The West has accused China of keeping Russia's sanctions-hit economy afloat since President Vladimir Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, with bilateral trade reaching record highs thanks to a spike in oil and gas deals. The United States and European Union also alleged that China is supplying dual civilian-military use goods that support Russia's wartime industries.

While China has in recent decades surpassed its northern neighbor in military might, it had long studied Russian military systems—from missiles and jets to air defenses platforms—to modernize the People's Liberation Army.

Newsweek reached out to the Russian and Chinese foreign ministries by email for comment.

What To Know

Cross-border shipments of dual-use goods soared following the start of the Russia-Ukraine war, prompting Moscow to place a ban on the export of products with military applications, according to Izvestia. The restriction carries criminal charges of up to seven years in prison.

Earlier this month, a 25-year-old Chinese man was arrested in Moscow after law enforcement seized two tactical vests he had attempted to send home by mail, the paper said. Another student was detained in December after being found with body armor, armored plates, bullet casings and other equipment in his university dormitory. The man claimed he had purchased the gear through online ads.

An officer of the Russian National Guard Troops takes part in an operation to check drivers' documents in Melitopol, Zaporozhie region, on April 9, 2025. Konstantin Mihalchevskiy An officer of the Russian National Guard Troops takes part in an operation to check drivers' documents in Melitopol, Zaporozhie region, on April 9, 2025. Konstantin Mihalchevskiy Sputnik via AP

Ruslan Shapiev, head of Russian defense contractor RUSARM, attributed the spike in illegal exports to growing demand for counterfeit goods and pricing disparities between countries, according to Izvestia.

The market for military goods is saturated due to international trade and postal loopholes, Shapiev said. Cheaper Chinese knockoff equipment and uniforms have also been found in the possession of Ukrainian troops, he said, suggesting the items were flowing to both sides of the conflict.

What People Are Saying

Ruslan Shapiev, general director of RUSARM, told Izvestia: "There's nothing wrong with [China's] helmets, but their body armor is questionable. The design and ergonomics leave much to be desired. Russian gear is more expensive but better, and people will always choose quality."

"China views Russia as a country with deep military experience. They watch everything—our gear, our processes. Russian uniforms on the market today can rival or exceed foreign models."

Guo Jiakun, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, told reporters: "China welcomes all efforts towards a ceasefire, which is a necessary step towards peace. It is hoped that the parties concerned will continue to resolve the crisis through dialogue and negotiation."

What's Next

Despite President Donald Trump's pledge to end the war in Ukraine within his first 100 days in office, negotiations have stalled, with Putin rejecting a U.S.-proposed 30-day ceasefire.

Following talks in Paris with Ukrainian and European officials, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Friday that the administration may have to "move on" if no breakthrough is reached.

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Micah McCartney

Micah McCartney is a reporter for Newsweek based in Taipei, Taiwan. He covers U.S.-China relations, East Asian and Southeast Asian ...

Newsweek · by Micah McCartney · April 21, 2025

15. Five Points of Pentagon Reform?

The five:

Over at The American Spectator last week, retired USMC Colonel Gary Anderson put out an article, Real Military Reform Begins: Will Pete Hegseth be able to reverse our military’s decline?

It’s not a long article, and as the balance of it aligns with positions we’ve argued here for years, I found myself nodding my head for much of it.

Though he states four, I found it best to break his recommendations into five areas:

Shipbuilding/Maintenance

Re-reform the USMC

Goldwater-Nichols

Learn from the Russo-Ukrainian War of 2022

Chinese soft power is eating our lunch

Let’s take some pull quotes from each.

Five Points of Pentagon Reform?

...you can work with this...

https://cdrsalamander.substack.com/p/five-points-of-pentagon-reform?utm

CDR Salamander

Apr 23, 2025

Everyone has their ideas about where they would like the new administration and its Secretary of Defense—and here at CDR Salamander our Secretary of the Navy too—to focus on reforming our military.

Regulars here, especially those who were readers at the OG Blog, and listeners to the Midrats Podcast have a good fix on my ideas, so let’s take today to look at another person’s ideas.

Over at The American Spectator last week, retired USMC Colonel Gary Anderson put out an article, Real Military Reform Begins: Will Pete Hegseth be able to reverse our military’s decline?

It’s not a long article, and as the balance of it aligns with positions we’ve argued here for years, I found myself nodding my head for much of it.

Though he states four, I found it best to break his recommendations into five areas:

Shipbuilding/Maintenance
Re-reform the USMC
Goldwater-Nichols
Learn from the Russo-Ukrainian War of 2022
Chinese soft power is eating our lunch

Let’s take some pull quotes from each.

Shipbuilding/Maintenance

First, the attack submarine fleet must be expanded to the point that it can simultaneously deter a war with China, maintain commitments to NATO, and ensure freedom of the seas in the Persian Gulf.

Additionally, there are not enough large-deck amphibious ships to provide a 24/7 Navy–Marine Corps presence in the world’s most likely trouble spots (the Mediterranean, Persian Gulf, and the Indo-Pacific regions). The Marine Corps is equally responsible here, as it released the Navy from its commitment to maintain thirty-eight amphibious ships, reducing the number to thirty-one; this did not account for the chronic maintenance problems that now limit the Navy to twelve to thirteen operationally ready amphibious ships at any given time. A minimum of eighteen combat-ready amphibious ships are needed at all times — nine on station and nine working — to maintain the required 24/7 presence worldwide.

The submarine issue is almost intractable at this point. It will take a decade of hard work to get both production—not even going through AUKUS requirements—and maintenance to an acceptable point. We could make progress faster in getting maintenance up on step. Less times in the yards will get you more time underway.

As for the large-deck amphibs, like with the submarine industrial base, those leaders who are responsible for the failure of stewardship and for their silence on the neglect of the last two decades should be held to account in the court of public opinion if nothing else. Again, without drastic action, significantly more funding and executive priority, it will be hard to improve things in the short term—but effort should be made nonetheless.

Remember, like it or not, if we have to go to war with the People’s Republic of China in the next decade, we will largely go to war with the Navy we have, not the Navy we wish we had.

Re-reform the USMC

The Marine Corps’ entire Force Design 2030 project, which aims to transform the branch “into a more agile, efficient, and technologically advanced force,” is based on questionable war games and shoddy analysis, much of which has been discredited by legitimate games conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies as well as the Marine Corps Times and the Wall Street Journal. Despite all this and the strong objections of virtually every former Marine Corps commandant, Generals David M. Berger and Eric M. Smith have repeatedly refused to revisit the flawed assumptions that underlie the concept. Unless Smith and the coterie of three-star generals who have enabled him are removed, the Marine Corps will degenerate from the world’s foremost maritime assault force into a bizarre combination of light infantry and coastal artillery.

A lot of people I respect have endorsed Force Design 2030. Likewise, a lot of people I respect oppose it. I like a lot of the motivation and desire that begat FD2030, but I don’t think it was helped by the USMC’s laudable pack mentality and no small bit of lack of humility of its senior leadership.

I’ve never been a fan of, “I see the future clearly” mindsets that move from there to exquisite designs to meet that perceived crystal clear view. It tends to be a brittle force that cracks then pressures come from unexpected directions. You can weight towards what you expect, but you must be humble enough to hedge, balance, and be flexible. As a species, we suffer from an overconfidence in our own wisdom and a blinkered view of the past. We have to maintain a diverse tool set because one thing we do know is that fate likes to laugh at our plans and assumptions. Be flexible. Have options.

The fact remains—and has only been reinforced by recent events—that the only way to be able to effectively project national will ashore on a global basis is with a large and capable naval force that can carry enough sovereign power to operate at its own will, to its own end.

Our Marine force at sea is a unique tool no other nation has on its own. We have taken it for granted to the point of fragility by people who are driven by theory and military fiction while keeping an intentional blind eye to practical experience and recent history.

Goldwater-Nichols

The Goldwater–Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986 has not aged well. Its original intent of improving joint warfighting capabilities has yielded unintended consequences. For instance, its requirement that any officer aspiring to flag and general officer rank (FOGO) complete a tour has led to a bloated system, with far more FOGOs and staffs, even as the number of troops in uniform has been reduced.

Military education has suffered as well. Our command and staff colleges should be the places where majors and their naval counterparts learn the real skills of high-level military tactics. Today, due to the military education reforms of Goldwater–Nichols, these schools are more concerned with granting second-rate political science master’s degrees. Additionally, our war colleges place greater emphasis on civil-military relations than on strategy and military history.

I could not state it better myself. We are coming up on the 40th Anniversary of Goldwater-Nichols. In the name of all that is holy, someone buy it a gold watch and send it into retirement.

The Russo-Ukrainian War

If we have learned anything from the Russo-Ukrainian War in the sky, it is that quantity has a quality of its own. In the immediate future, the side that can best integrate human decision-making with swarms of armed unmanned aerial systems and inexpensive “kamikaze” drones will control the air. This is a competition we cannot afford to lose. Currently, the Russians, Chinese, and even the Ukrainians are producing large quantities of relatively cheap, “good enough” drones — far outpacing our overly engineered and expensive systems. In World War II, large numbers of cheap, easily produced U.S. and Russian tanks overwhelmed the smaller numbers of technologically superior German Panzers. A similar dynamic threatens to play out in the sky today, but this time, we’re on the losing end. We must rethink the production of unmanned aerial systems and develop tactics to effectively take advantage of AI.

I know good, smart, people in hard jobs know this and are doing their best, but our acquisition system and risk-adverse bureaucracy still moves at the speed of smell. This warfare area especially is moving too fast for our present, un-reformed system to respond in a timely manner.

Small Islands Matter

It is so good to see more and more people…and not just Cleo Paskal and her friends…seeing clearly what is happening on the small islands of the Southwest Pacific.

This is a political-military challenge. With the combination of their Belt and Road Initiative and coercive diplomacy, the Chinese are challenging us for control of the Indo-Pacific Region, and they are making significant inroads. They are constructing resort hotel complexes with adjoining airfields (some of which we built in World War II) in Micronesia and Melanesia that can quickly be converted to military purposes. In the strategically significant Solomons, the Chinese co-opted the corrupt and authoritarian government to serve their interests while the Biden administration slept.

The U.S. has slowly begun to recognize the issue, but our military and diplomatic influence in the region has been severely under-resourced.

There is a broad 80/20 consensus on these issues. I also have confidence that a lot of people brought into the Trump Administration and Congress are aligned with the ideas to address them…the key will be if that shared Executive and Legislative Branch concerns can be translated into funding and action.

16. Why The State Department Needs To Maintain The Scope Of Its Human Rights Reports

Excerpt:

The integration of human rights into U.S. foreign policy has been widely endorsed by Republicans and Democrats over the years. Republican leaders, in particular, have strongly supported the publication of the Human Rights Reports. In March 2008, Condoleezza Rice, who served as Secretary of State under George W. Bush, described the reports in these terms: “This document is collected and written with the confidence that no corner of the Earth is permanently condemned to tyranny. Change may take time, but change will come. As long as citizens around the world champion the universal values of human rights, there is hope.”

Why The State Department Needs To Maintain The Scope Of Its Human Rights Reports

Forbes · by Michael Posner · April 22, 2025

... MoreAnadolu Agency

In March 1974, the U.S. House of Representatives Committee of Foreign Affairs published a report entitled, “Human Rights in the World Community: A Call for U.S. Leadership.” Based on 15 hearings in which more than 40 witnesses testified, the report made the case for linking U.S. aid and trade policies to the human rights performance of countries that are beneficiaries of U.S. support. Congress subsequently adopted a series of laws formalizing this linkage, laws that were the underpinning for President Jimmy Carter’s early leadership on human rights and for the integration of human rights into U.S. policymaking, under Republican and Democratic administrations, for the last 50 years. Now the Trump administration is reportedly poised to reverse this commitment.

An important tool in integrating human rights into U.S. diplomacy has been the congressionally mandated Country Reports on Human Rights Practices (often called the Human Rights Reports). First produced in 1977, these reports evaluate the human rights records of countries around the world. Covering conditions in more than 190 countries and territories, they have become the single most comprehensive assessments of human rights conditions around the world.

Over time, the Human Rights Reports have become an essential tool not only for the State Department and Congress, but also for representatives of other governments, intergovernmental organizations, judges, scholars, journalists, and activists around the world. They also serve as an indispensable tool for business leaders and consultants assessing risks where they do business or are contemplating new investments. For years, the online version of the Human Rights Reports have generated the largest number of user views on the State Department’s website.

The reports have also helped educate the State Department itself. In order to compile the necessary information, American foreign service officers meet with a wide range of people in the countries where they serve, including government officials, representatives from intergovernmental organizations, journalists, religious leaders, and human rights activists. The relationships they develop has helped to shape and strengthen U.S. diplomacy and policymaking.

According to news reports, the Trump administration is planning to scale back these congressional mandated reports by removing sections examining harsh prison conditions, discrimination and violence against women, children and people with disabilities, LGBTQI+ persons and other minorities, arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy, official corruption, and on restrictions on free speech, assembly, access to the internet, and participation in the political process. The primary responsibility for producing the Human Rights Reports rests with the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, which I led from 2009 through 2013.

The integration of human rights into U.S. foreign policy has been widely endorsed by Republicans and Democrats over the years. Republican leaders, in particular, have strongly supported the publication of the Human Rights Reports. In March 2008, Condoleezza Rice, who served as Secretary of State under George W. Bush, described the reports in these terms: “This document is collected and written with the confidence that no corner of the Earth is permanently condemned to tyranny. Change may take time, but change will come. As long as citizens around the world champion the universal values of human rights, there is hope.”

In 2013, then-Senator Marco Rubio, who now serves as Secretary of State, praised the human rights reports as an important tool to document "foreign governments' failure to respect citizens' fundamental rights … from the sexual exploitation of women and children to the denial of political rights to minorities." He emphasized that these reports help to demonstrate that "the United States will stand with freedom-seeking people around the world."

In March 2020, then-Secretary of State Michael Pompeo endorsed the Human Rights Reports as producing “carefully researched, factual, and objective information on actions foreign governments are taking–or not taking–to demonstrate observance of and respect for internationally recognized human rights and fundamental freedoms. By publishing these reports, we reaffirm the United States’ longstanding commitment to advancing human rights and fundamental freedoms. “

Today, this commitment to promoting human rights around the world is being sorely tested, for example, when President Trump ignores Viktor Orban’s increasingly autocratic rule in Hungary and calls him "a great man and a great leader in Europe." Or when he fails to strongly condemn Russia’s brutal attack on Ukraine. As we look to commemorate the 250th anniversary of our independence next year, this is a pivotal moment for Americans, with views that cut across the political spectrum, to rally to defend the bedrock human rights ideals that have been core to our success as a nation.

Forbes · by Michael Posner · April 22, 2025

17. Agentic Warfare Is Here. Will America Be the First Mover?

"Agentic warfare" is a new term for me.

Excertp:

The world is about to enter the era of agentic warfare. In this article, we outline a theory of agentic warfare and use it to define what the United States should do to maintain its military power in this era. Although the United States may have embraced the potential of AI in the aftermath of World War II, its future is up for grabs. As two of us are executives at Scale AI, a privately held AI company that does substantial business with the Defense Department, we have both a commercial as well as patriotic interest in the United States remaining preeminent. The other author is just sick of losing wars and wants to get the next one right. Failing to adapt to agentic warfare will make the fiasco of horse cavalry fighting tanks seem like sound military judgment.

Agentic Warfare Is Here. Will America Be the First Mover? - War on the Rocks

Benjamin Jensen, Dan Tadross, and Matthew Strohmeyer

warontherocks.com · by Benjamin Jensen · April 23, 2025

It is 02:35:01Z, March 22, 2026, inside a dimly lit Forward U.S. Joint Operations Center. Screens pulse in gentle waves each a second long, reflecting streams of updated data. Unseen beneath layers of code, an advanced military logistics AI agent combs through decades of global supply chain records, hunting for subtle patterns in what looks like chaos. Abruptly, it pauses: an anomaly. Historical pricing data on iron, copper, and coal — echoes reminiscent of the lead-up to Japan’s surprise assault on Port Arthur in 1904 — begin aligning with current market movements.

The AI agent triggers an alert, activating intelligence and planning agents that begin to work in parallel. The intelligence AI is cautious, finding evidence insufficiently conclusive. Yet the planning AI senses urgency. It swiftly activates dormant reserve computational agents, mobilizing them to run accelerated scenario testing with real-time data streams. At exactly 02:38:05Z, fresh correlations solidify — a ghostly premonition given form by intricate digital cross-checks. The system now hungers for further open-source logistics data to reinforce its predictions.

Moments later, the planning agent elevates a priority alert to the human war planners, urging immediate updates to crisis response strategies and enhanced protection for critical supply lines. Simultaneously, it discreetly signals strategic-level AI assets, prompting them to initiate national-level countermeasures — digital smokescreens designed to safeguard operational secrecy and strategic advantage.

In mere minutes, this sophisticated dance of machine intuition, historical insight, and decisive anticipation has shaped a crucial, actionable insight, silently demonstrating a fraction of the relentless autonomous effort orchestrated by AI to fortify America’s readiness.

The novelty of having large language models summarize documents and generate white papers is about to give way to AI agents that support deeper analysis and planning across joint warfighting functions. The military stands on the cusp of the next major revolution, defined by transforming computational power and algorithms into initiative and tempo. Mission command will change. Planning will undergo a transformation. Smaller staffs will aggregate and act on larger volumes of information than their Napoleonic predecessors, leveraging AI to gain a strategic advantage. In essence, the AI revolution readers of War on the Rocks have been imagining for 10 years may have finally arrived.

The world is about to enter the era of agentic warfare. In this article, we outline a theory of agentic warfare and use it to define what the United States should do to maintain its military power in this era. Although the United States may have embraced the potential of AI in the aftermath of World War II, its future is up for grabs. As two of us are executives at Scale AI, a privately held AI company that does substantial business with the Defense Department, we have both a commercial as well as patriotic interest in the United States remaining preeminent. The other author is just sick of losing wars and wants to get the next one right. Failing to adapt to agentic warfare will make the fiasco of horse cavalry fighting tanks seem like sound military judgment.

We seek here to lay out how the United States can embrace this moment to drive military innovation, specifically by deploying agentic capabilities during exercises, making infrastructure investments to ensure data is ready for AI, and rethinking the military staff structure for an agentic reality.

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The Revolution

Agentic warfare is here, whether we welcome it or not. The era of military planners manually gathering limited data and compiling static crisis response options on briefing slides is over. In the next few years, the defense community will see the emergence of AI agents representing military planners, logisticians, intelligence officers, and operators that harness centuries of stored experience in real-time digital collaboration, generating uniquely effective crisis solutions for human decision-makers in seconds. This is not just an incremental improvement — it is a seismic shift. First-mover advantage in leveraging this capability will not merely ensure battlefield dominance — it will be overwhelmingly decisive at every level of warfare. It could herald the dawn of a new defense paradigm, supplanting the outdated defense-industrial complex with an agile, AI-driven agentic base. The stakes could not be higher: If the United States and free nations do not seize this first-mover advantage, they will be outpaced and outmaneuvered by adversaries who may impose their authoritarian control on a global scale.

Much has been made of the advent of generative AI since the rollout of OpenAI’s GPT-2 in 2022. Silicon Valley visionaries have told of a future where AI would dramatically reduce human workload or even allow the reprioritization of humans to higher-order tasks, leaving the mundane to machines. And yet, even with the very impressive releases of new models, most professionals do not leverage them beyond the role of a college-level chatbot used to summarize tasks or write short reports. Even in defense circles, models curated for military planning and report generation on classified networks merely augment basic human tasks — the focus of military early adopters and living on the fringes of day-to-day workflows. The close of 2024, however, introduced a new AI capability because of three critical factors: scaling computing, algorithmic efficiencies, and new methods of AI training and employment. The result is not just unprecedented models that can consistently beat the best benchmarks but a new paradigm for AI: models autonomously working together, recursively reflecting and iterating ideas between models to create new ideas outside the most educated human thinking. These collaborative models with extended memories, tied to applications and workflows, result in autonomous AI agents: generative AI models that can consider, collaborate, and create content and options for human decision. Rather than rely on a few years of a single human’s experience, one polymath AI agent incorporates a millennium of human knowledge to create new ideas and then war games these ideas with several other AI agents. Each agent has access to similar knowledge but evaluates it from different perspectives and incentives, resulting in truly unique perspectives that eclipse any individual.

AI agents, acting with human oversight, could enable the joint battle networks of today that connect global sensors to call on capabilities that can deliver force and others that can delivery other effects, such as cyber tools. Just like the analysts and scouts of the past, tomorrow’s AI agents won’t just gather information — they’ll steer sensors, track enemy movements across every domain, and flag patterns that hint at hostile intent, giving humans a critical edge before the fight begins.

Embracing the Revolution

Achieving agentic warfare first-mover advantage will require not only the adoption of new technology, but the relegation of outmoded ways of warfighting. If the U.S. military takes first-mover advantage, in the coming months generative AI agents will not simply act as chatbots for planners and operators. They will operate in parallel with warfighters. These parallel operations can occur at speeds orders of magnitude faster than humans, digesting and reflecting on petabytes of information across different military functions. Machine speed will augment human judgment. AI agents focused on intelligence tasks will iterate with planning, logistics, and operator agents to digitally and dynamically provide indications and warnings alerts of adversary changes in intent to humans — changes that would normally be far below the noise level for human observation. Hostile actions that adversaries take in the “gray zone” will be more observable and identified before the realization of the fait accompli that they so often seek to realize. If the United States moves to agentic warfare, war plans will be dynamic, with agents iterating through the night with other agents and real-world data to provide recommended planning changes and notifications of new risk tradeoffs to humans in the morning. These workflows will be complete in seconds, rather than the traditional days and weeks. Planning agents will constantly reflect on adversary strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities, in view of specific war plans that could harm the interests of the United States and its allies. These agents will recursively iterate with intelligence and logistics agents, identifying new potential indications, warnings, and deterrence options all day, every day. New options will be debated between agents, with some rejected and some selected for forwarding to humans for consideration as updates to the dynamic war plan.

Risk changes will be understood instantly, reflecting live data that is beyond human capability to synthesize. Potential response options in a crisis, generated within seconds of the earliest indications and warnings, will not be drawn from static plans, but from the history on effective options to deter adversaries based on case studies and data sets. Many of these options will be well outside the traditional paradigms of defense planners. That means an agentic force will spot what the enemy plans to do before they even act — and move first, taking steps to deter or disrupt them before they can get off the starting line. This will confound expectations and instill grave doubt about the security of adversary plans, the competence of their military planners, and the likelihood of their desired outcomes.

The implementation of AI agents will also require the development of new doctrine and staff processes. Agentic warfare could provide the moment to finally rethink antiquated staff structures, which still resemble their Napoleonic forebearers. Agentic staffs could allow for scalable oversight beyond standard test and evaluation approaches. This new approach could integrate a human-on-the-loop framework as well as automated tools to monitor agentic systems as they operate across systems. In other words, planning and operating at machine speed doesn’t mean humans are inherently “off-the-loop.”

This is just at the operational level of war at combatant commands. At the tactical level, if the U.S. military adopts agentic warfare, agents deployed to the edge could autonomously monitor sensors and signals for slight variations that could indicate an adversary’s presence before conscious detection by a human. Agents could autonomously write, review, and gain human approval of code for military tasks and cyber effects. Agentic alerting could elevate humans from observers of screens to managers of decisions and effects. Agents could monitor expenditures of munitions and fuel distribution across a battlefield recommended replenishment and resupply in advance of the felt human need heard over the radio.

Battle damage assessment will be autonomously tasked and assessed by agents making recommendations to humans and dramatically shortening the time to reattack or move to the next target. Forces operating in close proximity but lacking a common knowledge of capabilities across the services will suddenly speak the same language. Tactical planners will select an effects area and agents will recommend efficient and effective joint solutions. Tactical losses and expenditures will autonomously be compiled and communicated to higher headquarters agents with recommendations for human reinforcement decisions before humans identify a gap.

If the United States is the first mover, these tactical agentic insights will flow autonomously to the strategic level. Feeding a new defense agentic base that not only sees critical capability gaps before they are a risk in crisis but also iteratively considers new options for capabilities that are outside immediate human imagination. Gaps, seams, and solutions for global defense transportation networks will emerge from agents who not only deeply understand the warfighting requirement, but who also iterate with like agents steeped with live insights into every commodity, every port, every wind pattern.

Military resupply orders will be recommended by agents days in advance of the felt human need. Autonomous deep cyber scans will reveal previously unforeseen vulnerabilities — those of both the United States and its adversaries. With agents performing at levels above the best biochemist, the best quantum physicist, the best AI researcher, novel technologies for communications, air defense, strategic attack, and far more will emerge from these agents who think in interdisciplinary wholes at the level beyond Ph.D.s. If adopted, this dizzying flywheel of advancements will fuel a new defense agentic base to quickly render irrelevant the industrial complexes of the past.

But what if the United States and its allies do not seize first-mover advantage? The opportunity cost, in this case, is existential for the West. The same agentic capabilities employed by adversaries, even before they elevate to the level of artificial general intelligence, will dramatically outperform traditional Western paradigms of 24- to 72-hour decision cycles and wartime initiative. Once adversaries learn how to employ these capabilities and move to the level of artificial general intelligence — and, eventually, superintelligence — there will be no ability to recover lost ground. With agents guiding their military effects, these adversaries will easily outthink, outmaneuver, and dominate the West — imposing their agentic-based authoritarian control on all life. The implications for the free world are terrible to ponder. Seizing first-mover advantage in agentic warfare is a top national security concern and it is not optional.

Conclusion: Meeting the Moment

Agentic warfare represents the next military revolution and one which the United States and its democratic partners and allies can ill afford to cede to authoritarian states like China. This shift demands not only the integration of advanced AI agents into military operations but also a cultural and structural adaptation within defense organizations. It is hard to imagine waging agentic warfare through legacy military organizations effectively. Training, doctrine, and procurement processes should be reimagined to support an AI-driven paradigm that emphasizes agility, collaboration, and real-time decision-making. The time to act decisively is now. Waiting risks ceding the high ground to adversaries prepared to exploit the transformative potential of AI, thereby threatening the stability and security that the free world values and strives to protect.

To make agentic warfare a reality, the United States should to field these systems and adopt an agile approach now. Theory alone won’t cut it. The U.S. military and its industry partners need practical insights drawn from experimentation in real-world conditions. At the same time, the U.S. military should build the backbone: more computing power and infrastructure, better data, and streamlined pipelines. AI agents are only as good as the information they process. That means treating data as a weapons system — organized, accessible, and combat-ready as opposed to crap on a shared drive.

This shift also demands new thinking about military staff structures. The U.S. military should move beyond humans-only planning cells and start designing teams where AI agents act as true collaborators. That means new roles, new battle rhythms, and new doctrine. Adapting to this paradigm isn’t optional. It’s how we stay ahead in a world where AI is changing the character of war.

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Benjamin Jensen is the Frank E. Petersen chair at the School of Advanced Warfighting, Marine Corps University and the director of the Futures Lab at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Dan Tadross leads the public sector business for Scale AI.

Matthew Strohmeyer is a retired U.S. Air Force officer who leads public sector strategy and agentic warfare development for Scale AI.

The views here are those of the authors and not those of the Marine Corps, the Department of Defense, or any part of the U.S. government.

Image: Midjourney

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Benjamin Jensen · April 23, 2025

18. Vance Outlines U.S. Plan for Ukraine That Sharply Favors Russia

Sigh....

How does this happen.

Vance Outlines U.S. Plan for Ukraine That Sharply Favors Russia

Vice President JD Vance said the cease-fire plan would freeze territory along the current front lines of the Russia-Ukraine conflict and that the U.S. would “walk away” if both parties did not agree.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/23/world/europe/ukraine-cease-fire-talks-london.html?referringSource=articleShare&smid=nytcore-ios-share&utm_source=pocket_shared

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“We’ve issued a very explicit proposal to both the Russians and the Ukrainians, and it’s time for them to either say yes or for the United States to walk away from this process,” Vice President JD Vance said on Wednesday in India.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times

By Michael D. Shear and Mark Landler

Reporting from London

April 23, 2025Updated 12:03 p.m. ET

Vice President JD Vance on Wednesday called on Ukraine to accept an American peace proposal that closely mirrors longstanding Russian demands, including a “freeze” of territorial lines in the three-year war, acceptance of the annexation of Crimea by Russia and a prohibition on Ukraine becoming part of the NATO alliance.

It was the first time a U.S. official had publicly laid out a cease-fire deal in such stark terms and the comments appeared designed to increase pressure on Ukraine, which has long refused to accept Russia’s claims on its lands, particularly in Crimea.

Mr. Vance, speaking during a trip to India, said the United States would “walk away” from the peace process if both Ukraine and Russia refused to accept the American terms. But President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine was clearly the target.

“We’ve issued a very explicit proposal to both the Russians and the Ukrainians, and it’s time for them to either say yes or for the United States to walk away from this process,” Mr. Vance told reporters. “The only way to really stop the killing is for the armies to both put down their weapons, to freeze this thing and to get on with the business of actually building a better Russia and a better Ukraine.”

The vice president’s comments came just hours after Mr. Zelensky said his country will never accept Russia’s 2014 occupation of Crimea as legal, adding that doing so would violate Ukraine’s Constitution. He also said that Ukraine could not accept any prohibition against becoming part of NATO.

“There is nothing to talk about. This violates our Constitution. This is our territory, the territory of the people of Ukraine,” Mr. Zelensky told reporters in a news conference.

On Wednesday afternoon, Yulia Svyrydenko, the Ukrainian economy minister, also vowed that her country “will never recognize the occupation of Crimea.” Writing on X, the social media site, she said that “Ukraine is ready to negotiate — but not to surrender. There will be no agreement that hands Russia the stronger foundations it needs to regroup and return with greater violence.”

The threat by Mr. Vance to walk away from peace talks were similar to comments last week from Secretary of State Marco Rubio and from President Trump, who said in the Oval Office that if the two sides don’t agree quickly to a deal, “we’re just going to say, ‘You’re foolish, you’re fools, you’re horrible people, and we’re going to just take a pass.’”

On Wednesday, Mr. Vance told reporters in India that under the American proposal, “We’re going to freeze the territorial lines at some level close to where they are today.”

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“The current lines, or somewhere close to them, is where you’re ultimately, I think, going to draw the new lines in the conflict,” he added. “Now, of course, that means the Ukrainians and the Russians are both going to have to give up some of the territory they currently own.”

The vice president did not say what territory Russia would have to give up.

A peace plan that would leave Russian forces deep inside eastern Ukraine would be welcome news in Moscow, where President Vladimir V. Putin has said for almost year that he would accept a cease-fire in which Ukraine withdraws troops from the four regions that Moscow has claimed as its own and drop its aspirations to join NATO.

Russia currently occupies 18.7 percent of Ukraine, according to DeepState, an online research group with ties to the Ukrainian army.

A freeze would essentially force Ukraine to effectively surrender huge swaths of land to Russia and would violate the principles of self-determination and borders that has animated the United States and European nations to support Ukraine since Russia’s invasion.

A Kremlin spokesman on Wednesday welcomed Mr. Vance’s remarks.

“The United States is continuing its mediation efforts, and we certainly welcome those efforts,” Dmitri S. Peskov, the spokesman, said. “Our interactions are ongoing but, to be sure, there is a lot of nuances around the peace settlement that need to be discussed.”

The aggressive push for a deal by Mr. Trump’s administration is a blow to European leaders, who have spent the last several weeks attempting to support Ukraine by brokering peace talks. The first effort convened last week in Paris and another session was set to start on Wednesday in London before Mr. Rubio announced on Tuesday night that he would no longer attend.

His decision to pull out prompted Britain’s foreign secretary, David Lammy, to decide that he, too, would not attend — though Mr. Lammy met separately with Ukraine’s foreign minister in London.

Lower-level diplomats from Britain, France, Germany, Ukraine, and the United States still gathered for technical talks. But the absence of the United States raised fears that Ukraine and Europe were being marginalized as the Trump administration seemed to be working primarily with Russia to formulate a cease-fire plan.

Those still meeting are expected to discuss details of the Trump administration’s proposed plan, which calls on Ukraine to recognize Russia’s annexation of Crimea — a move that much of the international community deemed illegal — and accept that its NATO aspirations will go unmet.

But expectations that the talks might produce progress toward a cease-fire had plummeted after Wednesday’s developments, which served to push European diplomats to the sidelines of the discussions between the United States and Russia.

Andriy Yermak, the Ukrainian president’s chief of staff, arrived in London Wednesday morning for the scaled-back talks along with his country’s ministers of defense and foreign affairs.

“Despite everything,” he wrote on X, the social media platform, after arriving, “we continue working for peace.”

Even before his comments Tuesday, Mr. Zelensky had conveyed his opposition to the American demands in a conversation with the Secretary General of NATO, Mark Rutte, according to an official familiar with the conversation. Mr. Zelensky laid out his positions on Crimea and NATO, the official said, and Mr. Rutte later called Mr. Trump and conveyed Mr. Zelensky’s answer.

A British official said the decision to scale back the meeting was made during a call between Mr. Rubio and Mr. Lammy, with the two men concluding that further technical talks were necessary before the foreign ministers met again. But Mr. Rubio’s decision to cancel clearly caught the British off guard, according to a second official who said Mr. Lammy had fully expected the secretary of state in London on Wednesday.

Instead of participating in a larger meeting, Mr. Lammy met one-on-one with the Ukrainian foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, while the British defense secretary, John Healey, met his Ukrainian counterpart, Rustem Umerov, according to the British official. Mr. Lammy also dropped in on a lunch that included senior national security advisers from Britain, France, and Germany, as well as the Ukrainian delegation and General Kellogg.

Mr. Peskov on Wednesday told Russian news agencies that the London meeting fell through because of an apparent lack of progress in the negotiations before that.

“As far as we understand, they did not manage to move closer on some of the issues, that’s why that meeting did not take place,” he said.

Ségolène Le Stradic contributed reporting from Paris. Steven Erlanger contributed from Berlin. Nataliya Vasilyeva contributed from Istanbul.

Michael D. Shear is a White House correspondent for The Times. He has reported on politics for more than 30 years.

Mark Landler is the London bureau chief of The Times, covering the United Kingdom, as well as American foreign policy in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. He has been a journalist for more than three decades.

19. In Brief: How to Improve the Foreign Military Sales Process

In Brief: How to Improve the Foreign Military Sales Process - War on the Rocks

Jennifer Kavanagh, Jonathan Caverley, William D. Hartung, and Jen Spindel

https://warontherocks.com/2025/04/in-brief-how-to-improve-the-foreign-military-sales-process/

April 22, 2025

Members

In an April 9 executive order, the president directed his administration to “improve speed and accountability in the defense sales system.” The order aims to ensure that the United States has a “rapid and transparent foreign defense sales system” that provides support to key U.S. partners and boosts the country’s own defense industrial base. We asked four experts to identify key steps that the U.S. government should take to improve the foreign defense sales process.

Excerpts:

“The point of diplomacy is having person-to-person contacts with these people to build up enough trust so you can persuade them to do something that’s not in their interest. You can’t do that without being there. . . There’s nothing that can replace the sight, sound, smell, taste and feel of being in-country,” he said in an interview. “That’s more true of Africa than in other places. In a lot other places, you can teleconference over Zoom and use modern technology in ways that most governments are comfortable with. In Africa, a lot depends on personal friendship and trust. “

And, he added, “Without embassies or consulates in an African country, our intelligence officers would lose access to third-party nationals that they might want to recruit.”

A former top CIA official emphasized both the agency’s past recruitment success in Africa and the importance of a personal touch in convincing someone to spy for the United States.

“Africa is a rich source of hard target recruitments,” this former official said in an email, asking not to be identified. “And you can't recruit someone via FaceTime.”

CIA Veterans Alarmed by Rubio Plan to Close US Embassies in Africa

Rubio calls draft executive order 'fake news' but the New York Times got a copy

https://www.spytalk.co/p/cia-veterans-alarmed-by-rubio-plan

Jeff Stein and Jonathan Broder

Apr 22, 2025

A draft plan to close several American embassies and consulates across a wide swath of sub-Saharan Africa has alarmed U.S. intelligence veterans with deep experience on the continent, one of whom called it “the greatest single threat to the United States and its closest allies in my lifetime.”

Terrorist hotspots in Africa (Irish Sun graphic).

“By ceding this continent to China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and global terrorist organizations, the Trump Administration risks losing inroads that have kept the U.S. intelligence community abreast and ahead of threats from these nation-states and terrorists since the National Security Act of 1947,” said Darrell Blocker, a retired former senior CIA operations official who once headed the agency’s Africa Division. “The national security implications of closing U.S. embassies and consulates on the African continent represents the greatest single threat to the United States and its closest allies in my lifetime.“

In a 2012 memoir, former top CIA and State Department counterterrorism official Henry Crumpton described Africa as a kind of happy hunting ground for agency operatives seeking to recruit North Korean, Russian, Chinese and other foreign personnel who would be virtually unapproachable in their own police-state countries. American embassies in Africa provide much needed diplomatic cover—and protection—for CIA personnel to operate.

“You close embassies and consulates, then you’re also closing CIA stations,” former senior CIA operations official John Sipher told SpyTalk.

Sipher, deeply experienced in operations against the Russians, also noted how U.S. embassy and consulate closures in Africa would hurt recruitment of third party assets, especially Russians who are disaffected by the war in Ukraine and willing to talk. “But the White House doesn’t want to hear Russian intelligence. So recruiting Russians and spending money on it — [CIA Director] Ratcliffe understands. He’s not going to go out on a limb to do Russian operations when Trump will just cut his neck off.”

Diplomatic Retreat

The New York Times reported on Sunday that the draft of a Trump administration executive order said all “nonessential” embassies and consulates in sub-Saharan Africa would be closed by Oct. 1. Diplomats would be sent to Africa on “targeted, mission-driven deployments” instead, the document said, according to the Times. As it prepared its article, “neither the State Department nor the White House National Security Council replied to requests for comment,” the Times said. But after it was published, Secretary of State Marco Rubio called it “fake news” in a social media comment.

“One of the most drastic proposed changes is to eliminate the Bureau of African affairs, which oversees policy in sub-Saharan Africa,” The Times reported. “It would be replaced by a much smaller special envoy office for African affairs that would report to the National Security Council. The office would focus on a handful of issues, including ‘coordinated counterterrorism operations’ and ‘strategic extraction and trade of critical natural resources.’”

The status of the draft order remains murky and could go through multiple changes en route to the president’s desk. Washington Post diplomatic reporter John Hudson noted on X Tuesday morning that amid Rubio’s State Department reorganization plan, the “Bureau of African Affairs still exists.”

“It doesn’t seem credible that they’d be closing embassies and consulates in Africa. I really have a hard time swallowing that document,” Timothy Gill, who held leadership positions in both the CIA and FBI during the post-9/11 counterterrorism campaigns, told SpyTalk in an interview.

“The State Department may be doing size reduction at various embassies in Africa or moving assets to somewhere else, but not shutting them down completely. That would leave a huge black hole as to what’s going on there,” added Gill, now a senior national security advisor at CSRA, Inc, a Beltway firm which provides information technology services to U.S. defense agencies.

It wouldn't be the first time the CIA took an axe to its Africa outposts. John Bennett, a former head of the National Clandestine Service who served as chief of station in a number of places on the continent, recalled that “half of our stations in Africa were closed as part of the ‘peace dividend’ at the end of the Cold War only to reopen many after 9/11 to work on CT.”

“My bottom line is we do not need to be everywhere but we should keep enough infrastructure to cover what is really important and have a base to respond to unforeseen crisis,” he told SpyTalk in an email—places like “Nigeria for energy and Boko Haram, Angola for energy, the Congo for rare earth minerals, Kenya as reliable platform for monitoring CT in Somalia, events in Southern Sudan and the Great Lakes, [and] of course South Africa as the regional power.” The thing is, he added, “unforeseen” crises too often become seen and go south with little warning. “Think Somalia for Bush 41, the Rwandan genocide for Clinton, or the Congo, or even going further back the collapse of government in Liberia.”

The draft proposal names U.S. embassies in Lesotho, Eritrea, the Central African Republic, The Gambia, and South Sudan as among 30 embassies under consideration for closure according to Malawi’s leading newspaper, the Maravi Post. “In addition, U.S. consulates in Durban, South Africa, and Douala, Cameroon, would be shut down, with their responsibilities transferred to neighboring countries.”

“The Democratic Republic of Congo is not confirmed in all sources but some sources specify Republic of Congo so clarification may be needed on this,” it added. Malawi, which is rich in strategic minerals and metals like uranium, was exempted from the proposed closures.

“Ratcliffe’s not going to go out on a limb to do Russian operations when Trump will just cut his neck off.”

Gill notes that after 9/11, several U.S. embassies in Latin America were reduced to skeleton staffs to allow the transfer of most of their people to the Middle East.

Espionage Options

“If [the proposed closures] were true, the CIA also would be collecting clandestinely through front companies or other cut-outs. It’s been done before. It also can be done through other measures. You don’t have to have the expense of a full-time brick-and-mortar station,” he said. “But closing down the U.S. embassy presence in countries where there are such active threats against our interests and equities would be irresponsible. And I don’t think Rubio would take such measures.”

Retired former U.S. Ambassador Richard Roth, who had extensive experience as a senior diplomat in Africa and the Middle East, said there’s no substitute for having feet on the ground in places under pressure from terrorist groups and other threats like the Wagner Group, the Russian paramilitary organization that is providing military support, security services, and protection for several corrupt governments across the continent.

“The point of diplomacy is having person-to-person contacts with these people to build up enough trust so you can persuade them to do something that’s not in their interest. You can’t do that without being there. . . There’s nothing that can replace the sight, sound, smell, taste and feel of being in-country,” he said in an interview. “That’s more true of Africa than in other places. In a lot other places, you can teleconference over Zoom and use modern technology in ways that most governments are comfortable with. In Africa, a lot depends on personal friendship and trust. “

And, he added, “Without embassies or consulates in an African country, our intelligence officers would lose access to third-party nationals that they might want to recruit.”

A former top CIA official emphasized both the agency’s past recruitment success in Africa and the importance of a personal touch in convincing someone to spy for the United States.

“Africa is a rich source of hard target recruitments,” this former official said in an email, asking not to be identified. “And you can't recruit someone via FaceTime.”

21. What if Bin Laden Was Killed in the Era of Generative AI?

A very interesting thought piece that we should think about.

Conclusion:

Generative AI is not just a tactical threat; it is a strategic disruptor that challenges the foundations of belief, perception, and reality in modern warfare.

What if Bin Laden Was Killed in the Era of Generative AI? - Modern War Institute

mwi.westpoint.edu · by Matthew J. Fecteau · April 23, 2025

Generative AI is poised to reshape the landscape of military operations, particularly in the battle over truth and narrative that surrounds any modern conflict. By leveraging machine learning to produce AI-generated content, adversaries can weaponize synthetic media, making fact and fiction nearly indistinguishable. The death—or not—of combatant leaders is prime example of the magnitude of the challenge this emerging reality poses.

A leader’s removal from the battlespace—through targeted killing, capture, or even natural causes—does not guarantee the end of hostilities but can significantly influence the course of conflict. Among the various dimensions of the information environment, cognition is most deeply affected by symbolism and belief. A charismatic leader can galvanize a movement; his or her removal can cause belief to waver.

Decapitation strategies must prioritize leaders whose removal will create lasting disruption—those who are both critical to operations and difficult to replace. Effective targeting focuses on high-value targets and high-payoff targets whose absence materially degrades an adversary’s capabilities. The killing of Osama bin Laden, for example, was strategically more impactful than that of his successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri, due to bin Laden’s symbolic importance and irreplaceability.

Historical examples like the bin Laden raid highlight the importance of public perception in leadership targeting operations. A missile strike on his compound was ruled out due to the potential for denial and misinformation. Although photos of his body existed, they were withheld to avoid exploitation as propaganda. While cheap fakes circulated online, they were easily discredited—something that may not be possible in the future.

As generative AI technology improves, it could erode the effectiveness of leadership decapitation. Synthetic media may allow terrorist organizations to simulate the continued presence of deceased leaders, undermining public belief in their deaths—even in the face of hard evidence like DNA. For example, the Taliban denied the death of its leader from COVID-19 to preserve cohesion and morale. Symbolism plays a critical role for nonstate actors, and generative AI can be used to artificially preserve that symbolic presence.

The case of Anwar al-Awlaki illustrates how generative AI may complicate future confirmation of a target’s death. Killed in 2011, al-Awlaki’s identity was confirmed using facial recognition, but no DNA evidence was made public and the confirmation was simply made by the United States government. In a future saturated with synthetic content, such limited transparency could invite doubt and allow disinformation to take hold. Generative AI will likely raise the evidentiary threshold required to confirm battlefield deaths, making traditional methods of verification insufficient.

The implications of synthetic media manipulation are not limited to terrorist networks, extending beyond nonstate actors and into the realm of authoritarian regimes. In states such as North Korea, AI could be used to extend the perceived rule of a leader like Kim Jong Un beyond death, preserving regime stability. Proof of life holds strategic value—both domestically and internationally—in maintaining credibility and suppressing dissent.

Recent events demonstrate that even the perception that content has been generated by AI can destabilize governments and challenge the legitimacy of leadership. One real-world warning sign came from Gabon, where a video of President Ali Bongo—delivered after a health crisis—was met with widespread belief that it was produced by AI, triggering a coup attempt. Although forensic testing later confirmed the video’s authenticity, public perception alone nearly led to regime collapse. Imagine the consequences of such an event in a nuclear-armed state.

Events like this highlight the growing need for military institutions to adapt to a rapidly evolving information landscape. The implications of generative AI introduce new urgency for the US military and intelligence community. They must prepare for an information environment where visual proof cannot be trusted. False narratives fueled by synthetic media can go viral, undermining US operations before a coherent response can be mounted. AI-enabled deception could neutralize the strategic impact of a successful strike.

In an age where seeing is no longer believing, adversaries will exploit generative AI to craft persistent falsehoods that shape global narratives. While tools like blockchain may aid in detection today, future advancements in AI may render even these safeguards obsolete. Intelligence agencies may be forced to declassify sensitive information to maintain credibility—but even that may be insufficient without dedicated information operations personnel to identify and correct flawed narratives.

Generative AI is not just a tactical threat; it is a strategic disruptor that challenges the foundations of belief, perception, and reality in modern warfare.

Lieutenant Colonel Matthew J. Fecteau is an information operations officer and a PhD researcher at King’s College London studying how generative AI will impact combat zones.

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: Hamid Mir (adapted by MWI)

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mwi.westpoint.edu · by Matthew J. Fecteau · April 23, 2025

22. Is the World Going to Deglobalize?

Good for the environment and good for national security.

Excerpts:

RA: Elisabeth, to expand on this, are there areas that deglobalization might help, like workers who’ve been left behind or environment? In your research on this topic, are there any upsides to deglobalization?

EB: I’m glad you mentioned the environment, Ravi, because those who built globalization did so without any consideration for the environment. The COP meetings, as we know, were an afterthought and a very laudable effort to address climate change and CO2 emissions, which were largely ignored when policymakers and business leaders built globalization starting in the late ’80s. If we get a chance to build Globalization 2.0, I hope and assume that climate change will be part of it if for no other reason than the fact that climate change will have become so dramatic.

But yes, bringing manufacturers closer to wherever the consumer is will be good from an environmental point of view because we are transporting things far too much. The supply chains are globe-spanning, and that’s enabled by the amazing shipping industry that can transport anything at very low cost. But that’s unnecessary.

As for bringing jobs back, which is an attractive thought, it’s expressed by people who haven’t worked in factories. I wonder how many participants in the deglobalization debate would work in a factory if one were to return to their hometown. It’s really hard work. And yes, we lost the whole generation of factory workers when factories closed, either due to automation or because they were moved overseas. But that generation is not of a working age anymore. So we would have to train new factory workers, and train them in new skills because manufacturing is much more sophisticated today. My point is, we should establish whether we have enough people willing to work in these factories that we are hoping to set up in our home countries before launching this massive effort to bring the factories back. But if we do, then we will benefit.

And, of course, national security will benefit. It is perilous to have so much manufacturing based in countries that are no longer reliable friends.

Is the World Going to Deglobalize?

Foreign Policy · by Ravi Agrawal

Trump’s tariffs come on top of a recent loss of faith in free trade and interconnectedness.

By Ravi Agrawal, the editor in chief of Foreign Policy.

Prefer to listen? Follow the FP Live podcast for the entire conversation, plus other in-depth discussions, wherever you get your podcasts.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs have spurred intense discussions about the future of globalization. Will giant conglomerates be forced to localize manufacturing and production? How long will that take, and what will it do to the price of everyday goods?

While Trump’s tariffs represent a serious shock to the system, the reality is that the world has been stepping back from globalization for several years now, with reasons that include U.S.-China competition, the COVID pandemic, competition over technological supremacy, and nationalism. On the latest episode of FP Live, I explored how a more accelerated process of deglobalization might impact countries, especially smaller economies that don’t get as much media attention. Two expert guests joined us: Eswar Prasad, a professor of trade policy at Cornell University, and Elisabeth Braw, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, an FP columnist, and the author of Goodbye Globalization: The Return of a Divided World. Subscribers can watch the full discussion on the video box atop this page, or follow the FP Live podcast. What follows here is a lightly edited and condensed transcript.

Ravi Agrawal: Eswar, how will Trump’s tariffs impact global trade?

Eswar Prasad: It’s worth thinking about what the promise of globalization was in the first place. It was the idea of broader trade and financial integration that would lift everybody up. Now, of course, there were distributional consequences within each country. All Americans may have been made better off by globalization, but try telling that to the Detroit auto manufacturers. Backlash about globalization took on a significant life of its own. Many developing countries ended up taking on too much debt, and their populations are suffering as a consequence.

Now, it’s not quite right to blame globalization for all of this. There were policy mistakes; there were issues of certain countries not playing fair. Of course, a lot of what Donald Trump says is not true, but there is sometimes a kernel of truth. Some countries did not entirely play fair. So today, trade, let alone finance, is no longer seen as a positive-sum game, where everybody benefits. It is seen as a zero-sum game. And certainly, there were some changes already coming, but Trump’s tariffs are really going to make a big difference.

The question is, how do firms or countries respond? The big theme will be a shift away from efficiency, meaning exchanging mean and lean supply chains for diversification. Because the geopolitical risks have increased, climate-related risks that could affect supply chains have increased, and now we have policy-induced risks such as tariffs. So I wouldn’t quite call it the end of globalization yet, but it’s certainly going to morph into a very different form.

RA: Elisabeth, you wrote a book called Goodbye Globalization, and you’ve been arguing that there’s been a shift away from open borders, from free trade, from globalization. Why was that shift underway? How was it manifesting itself, even before Trump?

Elisabeth Braw: Over the past decade or so, faith in globalization has plummeted. We started seeing ordinary citizens voicing unhappiness with globalization. We saw it in the U.K. with Brexit. Even though voters were told that the U.K. financially benefited from being in the European Union, they just didn’t like the concept. And we saw that in the U.S. as well, even though many elected politicians made the financial case that trade allows for cheaper goods. Many people still didn’t like that.

And then I started really realizing that something was changing fundamentally when Western companies operating in Russia and China started saying, “Well, it’s just not the same. It’s starting to become too risky.” One aspect was increasing authoritarianism there. For example, a decade ago, the CEO of a paper and pulp company told me they were not investing in Russia anymore. And that was an outlier at the time. But if you’re in the paper and pulp business, you grow trees, and that means you have a very long perspective because a tree takes up to 100 years to grow. He decided that Russia was just not going to be stable enough for the next 100 years. And then in China, Western companies felt it was less safe for them to do business there. Chinese authorities raided some businesses. And others were edged out of the country because they were no longer part of the Chinese plan to position itself away from low-end manufacturing to high-end manufacturing. And if you’re a business, you see those risks developing, whereas statistics only see developments in hindsight. So I started seeing increasing concern among Western businesses and executives about Russia and China in particular. Those were the two crown jewels of globalization, and it’s no longer desirable or safe enough to do business there.

And then, of course, the third element was voters at home. Globalization started losing adherents very rapidly and from very different quarters.

RA: Eswar, on that note, you once ran the [International Monetary Fund] IMF’s China division. How much of an impact did the so-called China shock have on all this? How did it affect manufacturing in other countries?

EP: China had a very big impact on manufacturing, especially in the U.S. One might argue that it was inevitable that a relatively high-wage economy like the U.S. would be competitively disadvantaged relative to lower-wage countries. And when China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in the early 2000s, it got access to U.S. and other foreign markets. But there was a sense that China did not play by the rules. It gained access to markets in many countries, including the United States, but did not give foreign companies, including U.S. companies, the same access.

Now, many American companies started using China as an important part of their supply chains and wanted to sell into that rapidly expanding market. So, they wanted China and the U.S. to maintain a good relationship. In my view, one of the critical components in keeping this relationship stable, at least on the economic front, is that American companies worked to keep things on an even keel.

That balancing force has disappeared in the last few years. Businesses came to believe China had no intention of upholding the commitments to open its markets. If a Chinese firm was going to take American investment, it was going to require technology transfers from that company. German and Japanese companies investing in joint ventures also felt that their Chinese partners took their technology and then became super competitive. So China really did sway the debate in a very important way. I wanted to mention China’s role in the current conjuncture as well because the U.S. is throwing up tariffs, and the logical response from other countries might be to band together and trade more among themselves. The problem is that the Chinese economy has done moderately well in the last three or four years, but only because state-owned companies and state-financed investment built up an enormous production capacity in China, while household consumption has not kept up.

So now the rest of the world is terrified because on the one hand, U.S. tariffs will prevent countries’ exporters from reaching the largest consumer market in the world, and at the same time, the second-largest power in the world is desperate to push out its exports. No one wants Chinese exports to wash up on their shores and dominate their industry. So now we are caught in a very difficult trap: Perhaps we should talk about a China shock 2, which will really affect global trade realignments.

RA: Elisabeth, through much of the 1990s, American companies were lobbying for free trade and an open relationship with China. And now, they’re facing an environment where they have to de-risk and potentially even decouple. What does that look like for a major conglomerate that spent years building supply chains that involve China? And then add in the pressure that the Trump administration may put on third countries, so not China, to also de-risk and decouple from China. What does that do to big companies?

EB: It gives them a massive headache.

When American and other Western companies realized they should reduce exposure to China, they learned that it is an extremely complicated and cumbersome process, with lots of forms and endless practical steps. It’s not going to be quick, but Western companies have been looking at countries to move to for several years now. Even if you move a factory, though, where are your suppliers going to come from? And what if your suppliers remain in China because of how you’ve built up your supply chains? Where will you find other suppliers? That was already happening when the Trump administration added this extra layer of trade war to the situation.

And it’s not just a matter of economics; it’s a matter of geopolitics. We have seen increasing confrontations between Russia and the West, obviously, but also China and the West. This is the fundamentally problematic reality for companies. Ordinarily, you do business in a country that’s safe. China and Russia were safe. And now, suddenly, they are ideological adversaries. So the goalposts are shifting as to which countries are safe. Setting up operations, including suppliers and factories, takes a long time. So Western companies are essentially operating behind the front lines in this ideological confrontation that we are in.

What’s more, even if you do find another country to move your operations to, no one country will replace China. So we’ll probably see alliances or groupings, like Vietnam teaming up with other countries to offer attractive solutions to Western companies. But will it come quickly enough? For companies operating in Russia, it didn’t. They left Russia, with billion-dollar losses, but at least they managed to get out of the country. The ones that didn’t move quickly are stuck and still losing money. But China is several times more important.

industrial-policy-globalization-developing-countries-doug-chayka-illustration-hpindustrial-policy-globalization-developing-countries-doug-chayka-illustration-hp

The World Will Regret Its Retreat From Globalization

Trade and financial flows have fallen well below their peaks, and poorer countries will bear the brunt.

This article has an audio recording

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

What’s the Cost of Doing Business Under Trump?

Firms are starting to look at political risk insurance.

RA: Eswar, I’m curious whether you think countries can bypass China or the United States in trading. I am thinking about agreements like the one that the EU did with Mercosur. How long does it take for other blocs and partnerships like that to emerge?

EP: It’s a very complicated scenario today, where the two largest economies are pulling back from trade, but in different ways. China talks about how important trade is, about being a protector of globalization, but wants to proceed with globalization on its own terms. So we are going to see shifts. At the margin, companies are starting to focus more on resilience and move their production and supply chains toward geopolitical allies of their home countries. India, for instance, is seen as more of a Western ally, so Apple is shifting some manufacturing there. But India cannot quite match China’s scale. So we will not see enormous changes immediately, but at the margin certainly change is coming.

It’s a near certainty that trade alliances will pop up among other countries. There is one problem which will be particularly difficult for smaller countries to face: The rules of the game have now been completely shredded. The World Trade Organization was very important in holding both small and large countries to the same set of rules. One can argue that some of the larger countries were not necessarily applying those rules, but now the world’s largest economy has basically disengaged from the WTO. So we’ve entered a world without broad rules of the game to follow, and without an enforcer of these rules, which is a role the U.S. has played to some extent or the other over the years.

I really worry about lower-income countries. Countries like India and Brazil rely on trade but are big enough to stand on their own. But a large swath of countries, including many African countries, are blessed with better demography and younger populations. They need globalization to build up their manufacturing sectors and create vibrant middle classes. And suddenly they are emerging into a world where the trade landscape has shifted fundamentally. So for those countries in particular, it will be a very hostile environment.

RA: Eswar, I’m reflecting on your point that a deglobalizing world hurts smaller countries disproportionately, as bigger countries can afford to insulate and survive. Let’s apply that same framework to within countries; what happens to lower-income families and workers in a world that is less globalized? Many economists argue tariffs are a regressive tax. And economists who are favorable to Trump argue that the return of manufacturing will make up for that through job creation. So how does globalization impact lower-income families in general?

EP: So it’s worth going through a thought experiment, Ravi. You could make tariffs very effective by essentially shutting yourself off from the rest of the world. So everything that was consumed in the U.S. would be produced in the U.S. Then manufacturing would have to come back to the U.S. Now, certainly that would mean jobs in certain sectors. We would start producing toys here; we would start producing clothes and footwear. The difficulty, though, is because American workers want relatively higher wages for this, things like footwear and clothes would become very expensive, making it harder for people to afford those goods, so demand would start being compressed. So we would certainly have jobs in sectors of the economy where we have lost jobs, but the overall effect on the U.S. economy would be very negative. This is why economists think that globalization is a good thing. Globalization essentially shifted production in a manner that is most efficient worldwide.

But the real challenge, of course, is making sure that everybody in the economy still feels there’s opportunity. In my view, what is really concerning about how globalization played out is while the benefits are very large, there is a sense that it lacked policies to protect those who’ve been disrupted. And disruption is inevitable in a market economy, but especially with globalization. So if you don’t protect those who feel that their jobs have been disrupted, if you increase uncertainty through policies like tariffs, and then make a lot of people feel that they lack opportunities and miss out on the benefits of globalization which go to the economic and political elites, that’s a very toxic mix.

So instead of focusing on globalization as the problem, think about policies that are necessary, like income support policies. It’s difficult to create a sense of equality of opportunity, that people need to be protected from hardship that may be temporary. It’s very easy to ignore the very difficult work that goes into those policies and instead say, “This is all China’s fault.” Unfortunately, that is where we are politically.

RA: Elisabeth, to expand on this, are there areas that deglobalization might help, like workers who’ve been left behind or environment? In your research on this topic, are there any upsides to deglobalization?

EB: I’m glad you mentioned the environment, Ravi, because those who built globalization did so without any consideration for the environment. The COP meetings, as we know, were an afterthought and a very laudable effort to address climate change and CO2 emissions, which were largely ignored when policymakers and business leaders built globalization starting in the late ’80s. If we get a chance to build Globalization 2.0, I hope and assume that climate change will be part of it if for no other reason than the fact that climate change will have become so dramatic.

But yes, bringing manufacturers closer to wherever the consumer is will be good from an environmental point of view because we are transporting things far too much. The supply chains are globe-spanning, and that’s enabled by the amazing shipping industry that can transport anything at very low cost. But that’s unnecessary.

As for bringing jobs back, which is an attractive thought, it’s expressed by people who haven’t worked in factories. I wonder how many participants in the deglobalization debate would work in a factory if one were to return to their hometown. It’s really hard work. And yes, we lost the whole generation of factory workers when factories closed, either due to automation or because they were moved overseas. But that generation is not of a working age anymore. So we would have to train new factory workers, and train them in new skills because manufacturing is much more sophisticated today. My point is, we should establish whether we have enough people willing to work in these factories that we are hoping to set up in our home countries before launching this massive effort to bring the factories back. But if we do, then we will benefit.

And, of course, national security will benefit. It is perilous to have so much manufacturing based in countries that are no longer reliable friends.

Foreign Policy · by Ravi Agrawal

23. Peaceful Resolution: Reframing U.S. Defense Strategy Toward Taiwan

Download the 106 page PDF at this link: https://csbaonline.org/uploads/documents/CSBA8397_(Peaceful_Resolution_Report)_final_web.pdf

Studies

Peaceful Resolution: Reframing U.S. Defense Strategy Toward Taiwan

https://csbaonline.org/research/publications/peaceful-resolution-reframing-u.s-defense-strategy-toward-taiwan?utm

April 17, 2025 Jack Bianchi

Resources: Strategy & Policy

America’s strategic approach to Taiwan is ripe for reevaluation. Although Washington’s sensitivity to Taipei’s security dilemma has increased markedly in recent years, U.S. policy toward Taiwan remains bound by a series of outdated historical understandings. As a result, American policymakers have focused narrowly on arms sales to the island, rather than developing and articulating a new vision for United States-Taiwan security cooperation.

In Peaceful Resolution, CSBA Fellow Jack Bianchi argues that the United States has maintained an interest in peace across the Taiwan Strait since the early 1950s. This interest should remain the basis of U.S. policy toward Taiwan. American policymakers, therefore, should clearly and explicitly reframe U.S. policy not only to ensure continuity with enduring American interests, but also to catalyze new operational-level military efforts that could enhance stability in the Taiwan Strait.

The outcome of a future cross-strait conflict is likely contingent on American military intervention. Yet if war broke out today, U.S. and Taiwanese forces would be engaging in the military equivalent of parallel play—enacting their own independent plans and operations to defeat Chinese forces. To strengthen deterrence and increase the odds of successfully defending Taiwan, Washington and Taipei should aim for greater operational-level coordination via heightened interoperability, combined exercises, and an operationally relevant U.S. military presence on the island.

Authors

Jack Bianchi

Fellow

24. Indonesia and the Creeping Threat of ‘Military Operations Other Than War’

I have not seen MOOTW used in a long time. I miss it and OOTW and LIC.

The author asks an important question here. And here is a provocative question for us in the US? Are we faced with a similar dilemma with the use of US military force domestically?

Excerpts:

The question confronting governments is no longer whether militaries are useful in peacetime. In many cases, they are the only institutions capable of coordinating national responses to disaster or dislocation. Rather, the question is whether their growing domestic roles are enhancing democratic governance or replacing it. The difference lies in how military involvement is defined, constrained, and eventually unwound.

Examples like Chile show that it is possible to harness the logistical strength of the armed forces without sacrificing civilian authority. There, the military has responded to natural disasters, supported humanitarian logistics, and provided critical infrastructure – but always under civilian command, with a clear legal mandate and a defined exit strategy. In contrast, countries where MOOTW is used to institutionalize military participation in civil administration tend to experience slow erosion in political accountability, ministerial capacity, and democratic contestation.

Indonesia’s recent military law revision illustrates the stakes of that choice. But the pattern it reflects is far more widespread. In authoritarian and democratic systems, MOOTW has become a policy language that obscures political consequences behind a façade of pragmatism. It allows governments to sidestep difficult debates about institutional reform, public investment, and civilian resilience. It also gives militaries an increasingly central role in national security and governance.

Doctrine, like law, is never neutral. It serves as both justification and design. If MOOTW is to remain a framework for peace rather than a pretext for encroachment, it must be demilitarized in practice – not just symbolically, but structurally. That means returning it to its original intent: a doctrine for what the military can do in times of crisis, not what it is allowed to become in times of peace.

Indonesia and the Creeping Threat of ‘Military Operations Other Than War’

Jakarta’s revised TNI law illustrates the danger of the “MOOTW” doctrine – a worrying concept that is not unique to Indonesia.

https://thediplomat.com/2025/04/indonesia-and-the-creeping-threat-of-military-operations-other-than-war/

By Azifah Astrina

April 23, 2025

Credit: Indonesian Ministry of Defense

On March 20, 2025, Indonesia’s parliament passed a quiet but far-reaching revision to its military law. The new statute allows active-duty officers to serve in 14 government ministries and agencies without retiring from military service – reversing a post-authoritarian norm in place since 2004. The ministries include agencies responsible for cybersecurity, disaster management, narcotics control, and the judiciary.

The military’s role, lawmakers insisted, was evolving. Indonesia’s armed forces, they argued, were not returning to politics but modernizing for a more complex security environment. Their justification rested on an increasingly global doctrine: “Military Operations Other Than War,” or MOOTW.

In Indonesia, MOOTW (Operasi Militer Selain Perang) has long provided a post-reform rationale for preserving military roles in peacetime. But the new legal codification signals a deeper shift – one that is not unique to Indonesia. From Manila to Canberra, and even in Washington and Brussels, MOOTW has become a widely accepted answer to the question of what soldiers should do when they are not fighting wars. Peacekeeping, disaster response, infrastructure, counterterrorism, and even economic coordination have all been folded into the military’s domain under this label.

MOOTW is not just a policy framework. It is a conceptual tool, a vocabulary that allows states to expand the military’s domestic presence without invoking martial law or raising alarms about democratic backsliding. What was once a doctrine of operational restraint has become a means of political normalization. Understanding its origins – and how far it has drifted – is key to recognizing why military roles in peacetime are becoming harder to delimit and why democracies and authoritarian states alike are increasingly turning to soldiers for solutions that civilians once managed.

From Flexibility to Permanence

The term “Military Operations Other Than War” originated in the United States in the early 1990s, during a period of strategic uncertainty. After the Cold War, the U.S. military faced missions that did not fit traditional combat models: humanitarian interventions, peacekeeping, civil support, and noncombatant evacuations. In response, the Department of Defense codified MOOTW in Joint Publication 3-07 in 1993, emphasizing restraint, civilian coordination, and legitimacy as central principles. These were not meant to be permanent military roles but politically bounded interventions in exceptional circumstances.

From the outset, however, the doctrine was vulnerable to conceptual overstretch. As Jennifer Morrison noted in her early critique of U.S. MOOTW planning, the term’s greatest strength – its flexibility – was also its greatest liability. Nearly any operation not involving conventional warfare could be categorized as MOOTW, from riot control to foreign internal defense to pandemic logistics. The doctrine’s breadth made it useful but also dangerously elastic. This ambiguity was not merely semantic; it had real institutional consequences. It allowed militaries to expand their operating mandates under the guise of necessity while bypassing the democratic debate about the limits of their authority.

Over time, MOOTW evolved from a niche doctrine into a broad rationale for military involvement in civil affairs. In fragile states, it became a lifeline for overwhelmed governments. In more stable democracies, it offered an expedient tool for rapid response. However, in both contexts, it gradually weakened the distinction between civilian and military spheres.

Abroad and at Home

The appeal of MOOTW is twofold. Internationally, it allows militaries to participate in peacekeeping, humanitarian relief, and stabilization operations – roles that boost prestige and professional image. Indonesia’s Garuda Contingents, deployed to Lebanon, South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, are widely praised. These missions embody the benign face of MOOTW: disciplined, time-limited, and multilateral.

Domestically, however, the doctrine takes on a different meaning. In Indonesia, the same legal logic that authorizes peacekeeping abroad also enables the military to operate disaster response units, assist in counterterrorism, and, increasingly, serve inside ministries.

Elsewhere, the same pattern appears. In the Philippines, military units have been central to domestic counterinsurgency, rural development, and disaster relief, often taking over governance functions in underserved regions. In South Korea, military intelligence and cybersecurity units have played expanding roles in civilian spheres, with growing concern over transparency and legal boundaries. In Australia, the Australian Defense Force (ADF) has taken on increasingly central roles in bushfire response, pandemic logistics, and border protection – raising debates over whether such roles should be civilian-led.

Even the United States, where the doctrine originated as a limit on military engagement, has seen MOOTW become a staple of domestic crisis response. During the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. military logistics were vital in vaccine distribution. Following natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina, the Department of Defense supported overwhelmed local authorities. These deployments were necessary, but they also reveal the normalization of military presence in domestic life – even in a system with strong civilian oversight.

MOOTW’s duality – legitimizing peace abroad while embedding power at home – explains its utility and its danger. What appears as competence can become a cover for consolidation.

The Politics of Professionalism

MOOTW is so politically attractive because it masks power as professionalism. It offers a narrative in which militaries appear not as political actors but as reliable public servants – disciplined, efficient, and above the fray of partisan squabbles. Governments can deploy the military in peacetime without invoking a state of emergency, and citizens can welcome military involvement without acknowledging its long-term institutional implications. Soldiers laying asphalt or delivering aid seem to embody a national ethos of duty and order. Especially in countries where civilian institutions are seen as corrupt, fragmented, or incapable, military actors enjoy a comparative advantage in legitimacy, if not legality.

But this image of competence is often constructed and strategically deployed. What appears apolitical is often deeply political. As Muhamad Haripin demonstrated in the Indonesian context, MOOTW has not depoliticized the armed forces; it has reauthorized their presence through legal and bureaucratic means. The military’s territorial command system – established under Suharto’s authoritarian rule – allows the military to project influence at every administrative level; it did not fade with the end of Suharto’s authoritarian regime but was rebranded as essential to local resilience and rapid response. This shift has not been accompanied by equivalent investments in civilian capacity, meaning the military fills voids it has helped maintain.

Elsewhere in the region, similar patterns are emerging. In the Philippines, the armed forces’ involvement in development projects under “whole-of-nation” counterinsurgency approaches risks displacing local civilian governance. In South Korea, recent controversies over military surveillance and data-sharing with civilian ministries have raised concerns about institutional overreach. Although widely supported in Australia, the ADF’s growing role in disaster and pandemic response has prompted debate about whether such authority is appropriate for an institution with limited public accountability.

Thailand follows a similar logic. Military coups are routinely justified as acts of national correction necessary to restore stability and reset dysfunctional civilian rule. The Thai military’s framing of its repeated interventions as temporary, professional, and reluctant belies the long-standing reality of political tutelage. MOOTW-like justifications are implicit in the military’s rhetoric: the armed forces are not seizing power, they claim – they are safeguarding the state.

Even in more robust democracies, the illusion of military neutrality under MOOTW can be problematic. In the United States, the Department of Defense’s domestic deployments under Defense Support to Civil Authorities (DSCA) have increased in both frequency and scope. During natural disasters and the COVID-19 pandemic, military logistics and planning were essential. But as Jennifer Morrison and the RAND Corporation noted early on, expanding military roles in civil domains – even under conditions of consent – can weaken civilian initiative and delay reform. When the military becomes the go-to solution for everything from vaccine distribution to border surveillance, it subtly erodes incentives to build up independent, accountable civilian capacity.

The broader risk is a quiet institutional displacement. Ministries grow dependent on military resources and decision-making frameworks. Legislatures defer to generals on matters that require civilian judgment. Civil society and the media become hesitant to scrutinize the military’s expanding roles for fear of being perceived as undermining national unity. In many states, military involvement in education, policing, or disaster relief is normalized – not as an exception but as an unremarkable extension of state power.

This transformation carries long-term costs. It confuses the division of labor between institutions, blurs chains of command, and dilutes the ethos of both soldiering and public administration. When the military manages agricultural subsidies, customs enforcement, or digital infrastructure, it stops being a defense institution and becomes a parallel state. When civilian leaders and the public accept this drift without contestation, they constrain the democratic capacity to set limits. The consequence is not always overt authoritarianism, but a hollowing out of civilian governance that can be just as corrosive.

Drawing the Line

None of this is to say that militaries should play no role in crisis response or peacetime support. In many countries, especially those with limited state capacity or fragmented bureaucracies, the armed forces are often the only institutions with the discipline, reach, and logistical capacity to manage large-scale emergencies. In disaster zones, health crises, and border regions, the military’s ability to act quickly and at scale is not just desirable – it is indispensable. To deny this would be both unrealistic and ahistorical.

The challenge, then, is not the presence of the military in non-combat roles but the permanence and institutional ambiguity that often accompany that presence. MOOTW was initially designed as a doctrine of restraint: a recognition that military force could serve political ends beyond war, but only under defined, time-bound, and legally accountable conditions. That foundational logic has too often been lost. Instead of exceptional deployments, MOOTW has increasingly become a structural strategy – an embedded feature of governance rather than a temporary supplement to it.

Reclaiming MOOTW’s original purpose demands more than rhetorical caution. It requires legal specificity: clearly articulated missions, sunset clauses, and statutory definitions that distinguish military from civilian tasks. It requires institutional independence: even where militaries provide support, command, and strategic direction must remain with civilian agencies. It also requires robust oversight: parliaments, independent auditors, and watchdog organizations must be empowered not just to monitor outcomes but also to contest and potentially revoke military roles that overstep their mandates.

Some countries have demonstrated that this model is not just theoretical. In Chile, the armed forces have long been involved in earthquake relief, forest fire containment, and infrastructure support in remote areas. Yet, these roles are tightly bound by law and subject to civilian command. The 2010 earthquake and tsunami, which displaced over 1.5 million people, required large-scale military assistance. However, the Chilean armed forces remained under the direct control of civilian authorities, and once the immediate emergency subsided, they withdrew without political friction. The episode is often cited in Latin American civil-military studies as a rare example of effective military professionalism within a healthy democratic framework – proof that militaries can serve the state without substituting for it.

Such successes, however, remain the exception. In most countries, the expansion of MOOTW into domestic governance has not been accompanied by equivalent growth in civilian capacity or democratic oversight. In Indonesia, the revised TNI law illustrates the danger. By embedding MOOTW into the legal architecture of the state – expanding both the number of institutions that active-duty officers may lead and the duration of their service – the country has crossed a threshold. It is no longer simply asking the military to support civilian authorities; it is institutionalizing the military’s role within the civilian state itself.

That shift may appear pragmatic. It may even seem necessary. But it sets in motion a gradual redefinition of governance itself, one in which the logic of command displaces the logic of consent. Over time, the symbolic line between soldier and citizen, between service and sovereignty, fades. And when it does, the nature of power changes with it.

Civilian Rule, or Rule by Soldiers?

MOOTW was born in a moment of post–Cold War uncertainty, a time when militaries were being asked to do more with less, and the boundaries between war and peace were increasingly blurred. The doctrine was intended to bring order to that ambiguity – a framework to guide military involvement in operations that were political, humanitarian, or preventive rather than overtly combative. It was supposed to be a doctrine of discipline, one that recognized the utility of military force while reaffirming its subordination to civilian leadership and its limited place in public life.

Today, however, MOOTW risks becoming something else entirely: not a tool of flexibility but a doctrine of quiet permanence. The term once meant to signal bounded exceptions now increasingly justifies the military’s continuous presence in civilian affairs – managing pandemics, overseeing infrastructure, supervising border enforcement, and even filling the roles of bureaucrats, judges, and development planners. In such cases, professionalism is no longer a virtue of military restraint but a rationale for political absorption.

Authors

Guest Author

Azifah Astrina

Azifah Astrina is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Political Science, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and a lecturer at the Department of Politics and Government, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia.

25. New Name, Expanded Mission for Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute

Adapt or die.

Now I am trying to work on a pronunciation for the acronym 'SFASID." I am soliciting ideas. :-)

New Name, Expanded Mission for Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute

https://www.dvidshub.net/news/495964/new-name-expanded-mission-peacekeeping-and-stability-operations-institute

Photo By Jason Bortz | The Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute (PKSOI) was recently redesignated... read more

UNITED STATES

04.24.2025

Story by Jason Bortz

U.S. Army Combined Arms Center

(FORT LEAVENWORTH, Kansas) -- The Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute (PKSOI) was recently redesignated as the Security Force Assistance and Stability Integration Directorate (SFASID), and with the name change comes an expanded mission set.

Since its creation in 1993, SFASID has undergone SEVERAL significant restructuring events. Recognizing the need and requirements for forces able to conduct peacekeeping operations, the U.S. Army Peacekeeping Institute was formed to directly address the operating environment our forces were involved at the time such as Haiti, the Balkans, and Africa.

“There is a universal understanding of why the United States Army must be prepared for combat, but there is an equally compelling reason why the Army, the Joint Force, and our allies and partners must also prepare for stability activities that include consolidation gains during combat, setting the theater in competition, and conducting peace operations for collective conflict management,” said T.J. Moffatt, SFASID deputy director. “These DOTMLPF-P requirements all reside now in one Army organization.”

In 2005, after action reports from Iraq and Afghanistan helped the Army recognized the need for doctrine, training, and expertise in stability operations. The institute was renamed to PKSOI, and stabilization doctrine was added to their portfolio. PKSOI was reorganized again in 2019 to consolidate Irregular Warfare (IW) and Security Force Assistance (SFA) at Fort Leavenworth. PKSOI was realigned as a Direct Report Unit to the United States Army Combined Arms Center Commander, but remained at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, to continue its work as the formal, Secretary of Defense and Secretary of the Army directed lead as the Joint and Army Proponent for Stability and Peace Operations.

In 2022, IW Proponency was reassigned to the United States Army Special Operations Command, aligning the Security Forces Assistance Proponency (SFAP) under Mission Command Center of Excellence. With PKSOI and SFAP working in complimentary mission sets, the SFA Proponency was assigned to PKSOI. This reorganization shifted manpower back to Carlisle Barracks while creating an organization that more effectively supported the SFA Command, the Brigades, Theater Army Commanders, and the Geographic Combatant Commanders.

With the addition of this new mission, PKSOI underwent an internal reorganization in late 2024 that reflected a focus on SFA and Stability Operations concepts, doctrine, training, education, exercises, and policy. Peacekeeping is still in the portfolio and remains as one of the primary missions under stability operations, but the culmination is a name change to SFASID that accurately reflects the organization’s new mission.

26. If You Want to Keep War Irregular and ‘Over There’ — Who You Gonna Call?

Not SOF.

Mr. Furnish might not be on SOF's Christmas card list this year.

The Untouched Elephant in the Room

One problematic issue the senators didn’t touch was legislation passed in late 2023, titled “Support of special operations for irregular warfare” (10 USC §127d).

...

The CIA and its ilk have been engaging in enough black missions. Do we really want SOF enabled to go and do likewise?

If You Want to Keep War Irregular and ‘Over There’ — Who You Gonna Call?

https://stream.org/if-you-want-to-keep-war-irregular-and-over-there-who-you-gonna-call/

U.S. Navy

By Timothy Furnish Published on April 23, 2025

Timothy Furnish

It’s been almost a quarter-century since the United States last fought a conventional war. That was when we invaded Iraq in 2003.

Since then, American military operations have been dominated by “low-intensity conflict” (LIC), which is “political-military confrontation between contending states or groups below conventional war and above the routine, peaceful competition among states.” LIC more often than not involves “irregular warfare,” which is “a violent struggle among state and non-state actors for legitimacy and influence over the relevant populations.” (This excludes aircraft and drone strikes, which this millennium the US has conducted well over 14,000 times.)

Which units engage in such operations? Army Green Berets, Delta Force, and Rangers; Navy SEALs; MARSOC (Marine Corps Special Operations Command); Air Force Pararescue Jumpers; and several others, totaling about 70,000 personnel.

So when the DoD officials who command these Special Operations Forces (SOF) — the ones tasked with engaging in LIC — testify before Congress, we should take note.

On April 8, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Colby Jenkins (civilian head of Special Ops) and General Bryan P. Fenton (commander of US Special Operations Command, or USSOCOM) testified before the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities. They provided a 17-page written statement to accompany their oral testimony.

Here are the main takeaways.

Their Major Points

SOF had 5,000 personnel cut in the last year of the Biden administration, despite a 200% increase in missions in the last three years; they’re now trying to restaff.
Currently, about 7,000 SOF personnel are deployed in over 80 countries.
Three main missions are deterring Great Power conflict, counterterrorism, and crisis response.
Deterrence means “to win without fighting conventional war,” so SOF works with South Korea, Japan, and other southeast Asian countries to deter China; it also is involved in preventing weapons of mass destruction (WMD) from proliferating.
Counterterrorism currently encompasses direct engagement with groups like ISIS, al-Qa`ida, al-Shabab and the Houthis overseas; and indirect (so far) operations, supporting Homeland Security and other agencies, against Mexican and South American drug cartels designated as terrorist organizations.
Crisis response has included the likes of hostage rescue and embassy security.
USSOCOM is investing in AI as “the big bet and principal to the success of future warfighting.”
Countering “VEOs” (Violent Extremist Organizations) is a key SOF mission.
SOF is also finding ways to field cheaper anti-drone systems. “Million-dollar missiles cannot be used to shoot down thousand-dollar drones,” they said, as we’ve been doing in Yemen.
This year, a Space Force Special Operations Command was set up.
SOF do all this “for less than 2% of the DoD budget and 3% of its force.”

Mostly a Senatorial Lovefest

The open testimony was mostly uneventful and friendly, with both Republicans and Democrats strongly supporting Jenkins and Fenton. Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) chaired the meeting. Ranking Member Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) asked penetrating and informed questions — as would be expected of a former CIA analyst. Specifically, she pressed Jenkins on whether the terrorist label for the Mexican cartels gave SOF carte blanche to use lethal force against them.

He replied with a firm “no,” stating that USSOCOM was currently limited to providing intelligence to other government agencies. She also asked about Taiwan vis-à-vis China, but was told that answer could only be provided in the closed session.

Senator Ted Budd (R-NC) inquired about the situation in Ukraine. Fenton pointed out that since Russia enjoyed overwhelming conventional warfare superiority, Ukraine had had to resort to unconventional means — but, once again, said he could only reveal details in closed session. Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS) asked about specific examples of countering China, and Jenkins responded that SOF had been instrumental in reducing Beijing’s influence in South America.

The only discordant note in this otherwise cordial hearing came from Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), whose initial reasonable question about information operations (IO) — what we used to call “propaganda” — turned into attacks on the Trump administration for firing the head of the National Security Agency and Cyber Command, General Timothy Haugh, and gutting the Voice of America budget. Jenkins and Fenton wisely sidestepped that political hot potato.

The Untouched Elephant in the Room

One problematic issue the senators didn’t touch was legislation passed in late 2023, titled “Support of special operations for irregular warfare” (10 USC §127d).

It states that

the Secretary of Defense may…expend up to $20,000,000 during any fiscal year to provide support to foreign forces, irregular forces, groups or individuals engaged in supporting or facilitating ongoing and authorized irregular warfare operations by United States Special Operations Forces.

This made it easier to provide quick funds, in particular, to Ukraine. But as one expert has warned, this authority might well “be used in a similar fashion to conduct kinetic operations against Russia, China, Iran, or their proxies with virtually no congressional oversight and precisely zero public transparency or debate.”

The CIA and its ilk have been engaging in enough black missions. Do we really want SOF enabled to go and do likewise?

Please Support The Stream: Equipping Christians to Think Clearly About the Political, Economic, and Moral Issues of Our Day.

I worked for over five years as an analyst at USSOCOM. I know firsthand the immense value of our SOF warfighters. They have been the tip of the American spear for most of this millennium, and barring a major conflagration in, say, Taiwan, will remain so for the foreseeable future.

USSOCOM’s budget should certainly be more than its current $14 billion. President Donald Trump has proposed spending $1 trillion on defense next year, a 14% increase. Surely we can find more funding for the snake-eaters in that massive tranche, which is more than the next nine countries spend, combined. (How about we bring home some of the 60,000 troops we have in Europe?)

As the Statement for the Record points out, “SOF provide an outsized return on investment to the nation. With all due respect to our brave military volunteers in tanks, aircraft, and on ships — when terrorists come calling, who you gonna call?

Timothy Furnish has a PhD from Ohio State in Islamic, World & African history. He’s been an Arabic interrogator in the 101st Airborne, a US Special Operations Command analyst, an author and professor. Furnish is the military/security affairs writer for The Stream.

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

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

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

Access NSS HERE

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04.24.2025

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If You Want to Keep War Irregular and ‘Over There’ — Who You Gonna Call?