Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

“The world is full of frightened little children. Being frightened, they frighten each other. Try to understand.”

– William Saroyan

“The library book had been burning a hole in his rucksack; at Oklahoma City he noticed a postal box at the freight depot and, on impulse, dropped the book into it. After he had mailed it, he had a twinge of worry that he might have given a clue to his whereabouts which would get back to Montgomery, but he suppressed the worry – the book had to be returned. Vagrancy in the eyes of the law had not worried him, nor trespass, nor impersonating a licensed teamster – but filching a book was a sin.”

– Robert A. Heinlein – Starman Jones

"There are three ways of arriving at an opinion on any subject. The first is to believe what one is told; the second is to disbelieve it; in the third is to examine the matter for oneself. The overwhelming majority of mankind practise the first method; of the remainder, the overwhelming majority practise the second; only an infinitesimal remnant practise the third."

– Bertrand Russell

1. Special operations are becoming the Pentagon’s future ‘normal’

2. Mike Waltz Fell Into an Age-Old Trap in Political History

3. Putin’s Plan to Outlast Ukraine and the U.S.

4. China Fills the U.S. Void in the Americas

5. Special Operations News – Monday, May 19, 2025

6. On this Day in History: Lawrence of Arabia dies

7. Rare-Earths Plants Are Popping Up Outside China

8. Tariff War De-Escalation: Prelude To Geopolitical Rebalancing – OpEd

9. Trump’s actions are pushing thousands of experts to flee government

10. The possibilities and pitfalls of unorthodox diplomacy

11. A Time to Act: Japanese Security Between the United States and China

12. In the Future, China Will Be Dominant. The U.S. Will Be Irrelevant.

13. The Moody’s Downgrade Is an Alarm. Washington Better Pay Attention.

14. Americans are getting wise to the left’s chicanery

15. Book Review | The Russian Understanding of War: Blurring the Lines Between War and Peace

16. Opinion: The China threat was always real. The American response never was.

17. Opinion | By eroding US soft power, Trump is ceding the contest to China

18. Tariffs Create Markets — Just Not the Ones Policymakers Want

19. The New Cold War with China

20. Defend Taiwan: The Reason Why

21. The Inequality Myth: Western Societies Are Growing More Equal, Not Less

22. Distorting a Legacy — The Misrepresentation of General William J. Donovan in “Secrets Declassified”

1. Special operations are becoming the Pentagon’s future ‘normal’

But SOF is NOT a one size fits all solution. We need to use the right forces for the right national security missions.

Everyone focuses on the"hero missions." But are we going to blame SOF for our failure in Afghanistan (and by that measure perhaps Vietnam as well)?

“SOF is floated as a one-size-fits-all solution for a lot of problems,” said the second defense official, speaking about the long U.S. engagement in Afghanistan. An unwillingness to engage in those problems beyond hero missions led to “a lot of our biggest foreign-policy failures.”

Said the first defense official: ”With Afghanistan, we never lost a fight. We never lost an engagement. But we lost the war. And that, I think, is the challenge that we run into with special operations.”

But rather than the "hero missions" most of SOF, and in particular Army SOF, are focused on the "two SOF trinities" which have the most relevant for the future in the 21st Century beyond crisis responses.

The Two SOF Trinities:

1. Missions:

– Unconventional Warfare

– Irregular Warfare

– Support to Political Warfare

2. Comparative Advantages of SOF:

– Influence

– Governance

– Support to indigenous forces and populations.

(While maintaining the no-fail national missions of CT and CP and crisis response)

Special operations are becoming the Pentagon’s future ‘normal’

“SOF is floated as a one-size-fits-all solution for a lot of problems,” said one former official.

By Patrick Tucker

Science & Technology Editor

May 19, 2025 09:42 AM ET

defenseone.com · by Patrick Tucker

TAMPA, Florida—Today’s special operators are rapidly becoming the model for the rest of the U.S. military, disrupting how the Defense Department does everything from buying gear to responding to global crises.

You might not notice that trend in Washington, D.C., where the Pentagon and the congressional armed services committees generally project predictable continuity. Perhaps that’s why Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, the new Joint Chiefs chairman, came to the Global SOF Foundation’s conference here to outline a new, special-operations-like vision for the U.S. military: smaller teams, quicker equipping, faster operations, more autonomy.

“Special operations forces have long operated like a tech startup,” Hegseth told a crowd of elite tactical operators on May 6. “You're agile and nimble, lean and lethal. You leverage innovation…in ways that conventional formations just cannot.’”

Caine, who has spent years in special-operations assignments, said that his membership in the SOF “tribe” had prepared him to lead—and reform—the U.S. military with a startup mentality.

“You taught me how to integrate things. You taught me the importance of relationships. You taught me the importance of being an entrepreneur,” he told the audience, which reportedly included operators from more than 60 countries.

This mindset may help the U.S. military contend with a wider array of threats more quickly, from non-state actors to proxy forces. But some former members of the community said that over-reliance on special operations—without broader changes, more money, and new strategies—will prolong conflicts and undermine U.S. strength.

An American fascination

U.S. special operations forces comprise about 3 percent of the active-duty force, but are disproportionately represented in movies, TV shows, and video games. The idea of small teams of men and women carrying out secret missions behind enemy lines lends itself to cinematic adaptation in ways that less dramatic aspects of military activity—say, hauling supplies, maintaining fighter jets, and even conducting exercises—simply do not.

President Trump is hardly immune to this attraction. During his first term, he described SOF missions with a teenager’s enthusiasm for his favorite, violent movie. He reserved some of his highest public praise for “daring” and “dangerous” special-operations missions, such as the SEALs’ 2017 raid in Yemen; the 2019 killing of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, an event he recounted in generous detail; and the SEALs’ 2020 hostage rescue in Nigeria. Meanwhile, Trump had harsh criticism for high-ranking leaders of the conventional forces, whose counsel he routinely resisted and whom he accused in 2020 of wanting “to do nothing but fight wars” to enrich defense contractors.

And while Trump is perhaps the loudest presidential booster of SOF capabilities, he’s hardly the first. “That's been a phenomenon since at least the Obama administration,” said one former defense official who spent decades working with U.S. and other special operations forces.

For presidents, one of SOF’s most appealing features is that they can be deployed more flexibly and quickly, a fact that figures into how Trump has projected military power to reach his geopolitical objectives, fast, targeted action and a distaste for long-term foreign deployments (with the exception of the U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan, re-shoring U.S. troops from foreign shores has been more difficult.) One month into his second term, the Trump administration designated several international criminal drug organizations as terrorist groups, opening up the possibility of military action against them. In January, the president publicly floated the idea of sending special operations forces into Mexico, despite the idea’s questionable legality and wisdom.

In February, Trump unceremoniously sacked the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Air Force Gen. CQ Brown. Brown would ultimately be replaced by Caine, who was noted during Trump’s first term for arguing that more authority should be given to on-the-ground commanders during Operation Inherent Resolve—the actions against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. That resulted in more strikes against ISIS targets. Trump credited Caine as “instrumental” in the collapse of the Caliphate’s control over parts of Syria and Iraq. (A RAND report from February 2021 concluded that the intensification of airstrikes may have “slightly accelerated” the defeat of ISIS.)

Moving quickly

Whatever you may think of Trump’s motives or policies, one retired Army Special Forces colonel said, rapid deployment has become essential to countering modern-day threats. A move toward a more SOF-like model is not only necessary but overdue. The pace of conflict has eclipsed the ability of the United States to deploy large conventional forces quickly.

“Let’s say you want to deploy an armor division out of El Paso to Kuwait,” said the retired colonel. “The command takes 30 to 45 days where they're walking around; they convert their gymnasiums into processing centers to make sure [the departing troops] all have their will and testaments, that their health records are updated, that they’ve all got their family support plans. Then they have to drive that, like, Army graveyard from El Paso to the Port of Beaumont, outside of Houston. And then they put them on [roll-on, roll-off] ships. That takes another month and that depends on the availability of ships. Then they arrive at a port of disembarkation where [the Army] builds out man camps, tent cities, fuel depots, brings in the ammo. Months later, they’re ready to go. Tell me, if you were China, would you feel deterred?”

A high-end adversary like Russia and China has a variety of means to make large deployments more difficult or dangerous, such as network-enabled attacks on civilian transportation infrastructure.

“They're not going to let you permissively go from point A to point B in mass. But we haven’t changed anything” from when that system was invented, the retired colonel said.

Masses of U.S. forces also present easy targets in the era of ever-cheaper, more precise missiles, particularly when dealing with a well-supplied adversary like China, they said. That, in part, is why the Army is training to break up large formations into smaller, more enabled and autonomous groupings.

A second former defense official who has years of experience working with U.S. and allied special operators said, “The U.S. is catching up with the nature of the threats that we face right now. Like a brigade combat team is not going to really help you solve them…We're not really fighting any conventional wars. And our adversaries don't necessarily want to escalate to that point.”

Indeed, adversaries are turning to hybrid warfare tactics, highly empowered non-state actors, and proxy forces.

A “start-up” approach to buying

Special operations are also becoming more of a model for the way the Pentagon can acquire technology: buying things, trying them out, and then deploying them—all in a fraction of the time it takes the Army or Navy to create a program of record.

Like the services, U.S. Special Operations Command has purchasing authority under Title 10 of federal law. But it generally buys items in relatively small quantities. “With these smaller efforts, the statutory and regulatory requirements are considerably less, allowing greater flexibility and speed of execution,” former SOCOM acquisition executive James Geurts said in 2016.

They buy things off-the-shelf, “to hasten delivery and mitigate risk” Geurts wrote. As GAO reported in February 2023, other services are struggling to use the same authorities to purchase what are often called “mature” and “proven” technologies. Proven technologies also pass more easily through the hurdles of foreign military sales, as SOCOM plays a role in outfitting other, partner SOF forces as well.

SOF also makes much broader use of alternative contract vehicles like OTAs, thanks largely to the smaller number of units they purchase.

Sometimes SOCOM simply modifies existing gear, like transforming C-130 airlifters into close-air-support gunships.

But the real strength of SOF acquisition is that it relies on a small, close team of program office executives who work together much more closely than do the services’ offices, said Melissa Johnson, SOCOM’s acquisition executive.

In his SOF Week address, Hegseth said SOCOM’s approach is better suited to today’s era of rapidly evolving weaponry.

“You adopt advanced technologies early. You make them better and then you help them spread to the rest of the joint force. You are willing to experiment and fail while learning from each failure and each success. We need you to keep doing that,” he said. “You are acquisition reform.”

The Defense Department has already taken a step in that direction, mandating wider use of alternative contract mechanisms and buying things that already exist, rather than assigning companies to build them according to rigid and quickly obsoleted requirements.

The second former defense official cautioned that the SOCOM’s acquisition model can’t just be imposed on broader services, in part because SOCOM is reliant on those big services to buy things that SOCOM can later modify. SOCOM’s buying is “more agile, mainly because historically it hasn't had to build things from scratch,” they said. “Should [the services]...make decisions faster, do a little bit less testing? Yeah, but it’s a bit apples-to-oranges to say that this SOF system is the gold standard for what the services need to do.”

Typecasting the SOF action hero

Demand for more special operations is rising, Gen. Brian Fenton, the current commander of SOCOM, testified in March 2024. At the recent conference here, Lt. Gen. Michael Conley, the head of Air Force Special Operations Command, said that trend has continued into this year. “Crisis response in general is up. If you look across, again, just what's happening in the broader Middle East right now … We've got a lengthy commitment over there. So those type of things keep us pretty busy.” Despite this, special operations forces still face potential cuts.

The second former defense official said SOF has, in part, become a victim of its own success: because they can do a lot with a little, they are expected to do as much with less. Part of the problem is that neither the White House (across administrations) nor Congress appreciates the role that SOF can play outside of rapid kinetic action.

The first former official said using SOF for quick strikes makes for good press conferences but doesn’t help SOCOM develop into a force that can deter large-scale conflict or match Chinese or Russian hybrid-warfare activities. Like an actor who achieved success playing an action hero, SOF increasingly finds itself typecast as the door-kicker. But SOF is uniquely structured to perform another type or role: irregular warfare, which is increasingly relevant in the competition against China and Russia but in which there has historically been little interest.

“The community is bifurcated into two different things,” they said. “One of those is direct action, which is the easy button. This is what the Obama administration loved in Afghanistan, which was, ‘How many people did we kill today? Who are those people? How many more can we kill tomorrow?’ I spent a lot of time in Afghanistan. That was basically the conflict.”

SOF forces are uniquely set up to conduct long-term irregular warfare. Consider the Russian use of irregular forces leading up to the 2014 invasion of Ukraine, or acts of sabotage and attempted assassination across Europe, China’s harassment of Taiwanese and Filipino vessels in the South China Sea, or the use of proxy forces in CENTCOM’s area.

“Irregular warfare is a long and slow capability, " said the first former defense official.

The United States has used it well in Columbia against drug cartels but it doesn’t show up in the contest with China or Russia. While irregular warfare is a unique SOF capability, it’s also a tool that various administrations failed to prioritize.

“I don't think that it’s gotten much traction because if you go to a President Biden or President Trump, or pick your president, and you say, ‘I can fix this problem. Just give me 10 years.’ They’ll say ‘I don't have 10 years. What can you give me by Saturday?’”

People we spoke to disagreed about how to fix that problem. There was broad support for the idea of raising the assistant secretary of special operations/low-intensity conflict to something more like an undersecretary position, an idea that has been floated for years. But absent a broad, national strategy for irregular warfare that outlines key objectives and budgets, it’s not clear what that person would do with that extra authority.

Likewise, said the second former defense official, just giving SOCOM more money would not necessarily empower them to do more, not without a clear sense from lawmakers and the White House of what “more” would mean.

The ties that don’t break

The importance of SOF is also rising in another important dimension, as one of the last and most enduring elements of U.S. diplomacy.

From trade wars to traded insults in the Oval office, critics have called Trump’s belligerent attitude toward U.S. friends “ruinous,” “disruptive,” and “tragic” for America’s alliances.

Beneath the headlines, however, U.S. military-to-military relationships remain robust, at least judging by the variety of global attendees from the world who attended the Global SOF event, including the King of Jordan. A senior U.S. intelligence official told Defense One that partner militaries were actually requesting more opportunities to work with the United States, especially around information and intelligence sharing, despite the appearance of antagonism between the U.S. and other countries that permeates international news coverage.

One of the strengths of the U.S. special operations community is the deep ties that they form with partner forces around the globe, a strength that Caine called essential to U.S. military operations.

“We always fight with teammates and partners….with our allies and partners.” He described those international bonds as particularly important now and declared that strengthening them would be one of his top priorities as Joint Chiefs chairman.

That seems like a stark divergence from Trump’s efforts to extract concessions from longstanding friends.

So why are these SOF alliances growing stronger while others are fracturing? The first former defense official credited a binding feeling of professionalism and shared mission that stretches well beyond larger command structures.

“They endure beyond politics. I mean, we have lots of [U.S. and foreign] military officers who have been doing exercises together for 25 years”

The second former official said that SOF partnerships allow diplomatic engagements that other efforts don’t. “In certain parts of the world, military engagement is probably an effective substitute for other forms of economic, political, informational, types of relationship building, based really upon partner preference.”

The idea that affections and loyalties formed in the field transcend larger national notions of identity animates much modern literature and thought, from English writer Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness to Frank Herbert’s Dune to Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus. To see its power over the military mind, look to the resignation of Trump’s first defense secretary, retired four-star general Jim Mattis, who left the White House in December 2018 over what he perceived as Trump’s abandonment of U.S. allied Kurdish forces in Syria and Iraq.

The stability of such bonds is likely to endure beyond the Trump White House, people said. But the recent pullback in U.S. diplomatic activity, such as the shuttering of USAID and the trimming of the State Department, will likely increase burdens on the special operations community, said the first former official.

“I don't think that our ambassadors are less effective. Is our national message less clear? Possibly,” they said. The White House’s reduction of diplomacy “will drive a tendency to rely upon military capabilities to try to replace these things when we come into a crisis.”

The retired colonel said that the best use of SOF’s diplomatic muscle is to arm and equip partner militaries.

“The Ukrainians wanted M1 [Abrams] tanks,” the retired colonel said. “We will never, ever, ever use those tanks. [The Ukrainians] will. It'll cost us more to demilitarize them than to give them to the Ukrainians at half price.”

Afghanistan 2.0

While special operators do offer faster ways to deploy forces, hit targets, and buy things, several people at SOF Week worried about an overreliance on “daring” strikes.

It’s not a new concern.

“The likelihood that the introduction of a handful of dozen of U.S. soldiers, regardless of how skillful they are—the likelihood of that making any meaningful difference in the course of events is just about nil,” Andrew Bacevich, a historian and retired Army colonel, said in 2015.

In 2017, then-SOCOM commander Gen. Raymond Thomas, told lawmakers, “We are not a panacea…We are not the ultimate solution to every problem, and you will not hear that coming from us.”

At that same hearing, Theresa Whelan, then acting assistant defense secretary for special operations, said the high tempo of SOF operations was at the expense of readiness and capability development. SOF was being forced to "eat our young,” Whelan said. “We've mortgaged the future in order to facilitate current operations.”

Back in Tampa, former officials said that an overreliance on SOF would lead to the return of a familiar historical pattern: U.S. engagement in conflicts that persist precisely because the United States refuses to address their causes with different, non-military tools.

“SOF is floated as a one-size-fits-all solution for a lot of problems,” said the second defense official, speaking about the long U.S. engagement in Afghanistan. An unwillingness to engage in those problems beyond hero missions led to “a lot of our biggest foreign-policy failures.”

Said the first defense official: ”With Afghanistan, we never lost a fight. We never lost an engagement. But we lost the war. And that, I think, is the challenge that we run into with special operations.”

defenseone.com · by Patrick Tucker

2. Mike Waltz Fell Into an Age-Old Trap in Political History

We must never forget that every government position up to and including the President is about service to the nation and defense of the Constitution. Seemingly simple concepts but...

Despite the article, I believe Mike was/is a man of service to the nation.

Mike Waltz Fell Into an Age-Old Trap in Political History

Politico · by Lincoln's God: How Faith Transformed a President and a Nation

Executive-branch positions offer former elected officials power — at a price.

Then-National Security Adviser Michael Waltz participates in a TV interview at the White House on May 01, 2025 in Washington, D.C. | Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

By Joshua Zeitz

05/18/2025 12:00 PM EDT

Joshua Zeitz, a Politico Magazine contributing writer, is the author of (May 2023). Follow him @joshuamzeitz.

In the end, it wasn’t Signalgate that toppled Mike Waltz, the former national security adviser whom President Donald Trump abruptly fired, though as a concession prize, the onetime congressman was nominated to serve as United Nations ambassador. Instead, according to the Washington Post, the president’s increasing ire at Waltz also owed to Waltz’s hawkish stance on Iran, a position that placed him out of step with the administration.

Waltz “wanted to take U.S. policy in a direction Trump wasn’t comfortable with because the U.S. hadn’t attempted a diplomatic solution,” an anonymous person told the Post. “It got back to Trump and the president wasn’t happy with it,” that person said.

But there was something more fundamental at play in the rise and fall of Waltz. “He’s a staff[er], but he was acting like a principal,” said a person close to the White House who was granted anonymity to discuss internal dynamics.

Waltz wasn’t the first, nor is he likely to be the last. It’s practically a tradition in American politics: Former elected officials, accustomed to being bosses, leap at the prospect of powerful jobs in the executive branch — only to find themselves bristling at their subservience to the awesome power of the president. It’s happened again and again, going back to the Civil War. And again and again, just like with Waltz, it leads to ruin.

A three-term member of Congress and one-time subcommittee vice chairman, Waltz fell into the same trap as earlier officeholders from both parties who had trouble making the transition from principal to supporting role. From his imperious manner to his direct conversations with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Waltz forgot the cardinal rule: Staff members are seen, not heard.

The warning for other electeds pondering a second act as administration officials is clear. There is only one principal in the administration. If you want to be that person, run for president.

Principals struggling to settle into roles as supporting actors is an old trope in American history. In the 19th century, Abraham Lincoln’s first Cabinet was famously fractious, populated with former officeholders and presidential aspirants who were uncomfortable in their new subordinate roles. Secretary of State William Seward, a former governor of New York, famously attempted to assert unilateral control over U.S. foreign policy and, incredibly, provoke a foreign war to unite the North and South against a common enemy. He also implied that Lincoln was being passive and that “someone” — he meant himself — needed to “direct the administration.” Lincoln shot that idea down immediately.

Seward got the message and quickly course corrected. Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase, the former senator and governor of Ohio, did not. A friend later observed that Chase was “possessed by the desire to be president even to the extent of honestly believing that he owed it to the country and the country owed it to him.” He conspired relentlessly against Lincoln, who eventually accepted his resignation.

In a day and age when presidents had two, perhaps three staff members, Cabinet members were the closest approximation to a fuller presidential staff as then existed. But over time, the makeup of the executive branch would evolve.

With the growth of the administrative state during the New Deal and World War II eras — part and parcel of the new “imperial presidency” that continues to this day — two things happened: Cabinet departments swelled in size, making Senate-confirmed Cabinet members more important, at least on paper; and the White House staff grew, again, both in size and power. Whereas presidents as recent at Theodore Roosevelt claimed fewer than a dozen or two White House staffers, by the 1960s, over 250 people worked directly in the West Wing, and another 1,350 in the Executive Office of the President. It wasn’t always clear where the real center of gravity was located. But the old dynamic persisted. When former officeholders took administration jobs, either as department heads or staff members, they didn’t always adjust well to the supporting nature of those roles.

Not everyone was cut out for the transition. As former governors, both Abraham Ribicoff (a Democrat from Connecticut) and John Connally (a Democrat-turned-Republican from Texas) entered the Cabinet with strong executive instincts and independent political profiles — traits that clashed with the hierarchical, president-centered nature of White House governance.

Ribicoff, appointed Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare by President John F. Kennedy, quickly grew frustrated with bureaucratic constraints and the limited autonomy of a Cabinet role, resigning after just over a year. Connally, by contrast, thrived as President Richard Nixon’s treasury secretary, leveraging his political clout and business-friendly persona. But even he chafed at operating within a system where real power flowed through the West Wing rather than the departments. Ribicoff and Connally’s discomfort underscored a broader truth: Governors accustomed to leading often struggle with the supporting role of a Cabinet officer, where influence depends more on proximity to the president than on portfolio size or résumé.

In 1973, in the aftermath of Richard Nixon’s purge of the Justice Department, dubbed the “Saturday Night Massacre,” the embattled president appointed William Saxbe as attorney general. The former senator from Ohio was seen as a stabilizing figure with bipartisan credibility — someone Nixon hoped could help calm the waters following the Watergate scandal. But Saxbe, used to the independence and public profile of a senator, quickly grew frustrated with the limited influence of the role, the expectation that he clear all statements with the West Wing and the political maneuvering within the White House. He resented being treated as a figurehead and felt isolated from key decision-making.

Saxbe’s blunt style and discomfort with the court-like atmosphere of the executive branch made him an awkward fit, and he left the position in early 1975 to become the ambassador to India — an elegant exit that removed him from the post-Watergate fallout but underscored his misalignment with the expectations of a Cabinet subordinate. Not unlike Waltz’s face-saving nomination to the UN ambassadorship, he was given a golden parachute that landed far from the corridors of power.

It was a tough row to hoe for Ribicoff, Conally and Saxbe. But at least they were Cabinet members. Former electeds who became mere staffers had it even worse.

Former Rep. Donald Rumsfeld (D-Ill.) had been a rising star in Congress and was accustomed to operating independently and commanding media attention — traits that didn’t always translate well to the more deferential role of a White House aide. As Nixon’s director of the Office of Economic Opportunity, he clashed with other administration figures and bristled at micromanagement from the White House. Later, as President Gerald Ford’s chief of staff, he operated more effectively but remained wary of being seen as a mere executor of someone else’s vision. Even in his more senior roles, Rumsfeld projected the instincts of a principal — rather than the loyalty-first posture traditionally expected of presidential staff.

Rumsfeld left his role as Ford’s chief of staff in late 1975 and was appointed secretary of defense. It was a decent end to a bumpy tenure.

Less so for David Stockman, a former U.S. representative from Michigan whom President Ronald Reagan appointed as director of the Office of Management and Budget in 1981. A committed supply-sider, Stockman brought intellectual rigor and ideological zeal to the job, but he struggled with the discipline and discretion expected of a Cabinet position — especially one so close to the president. Accustomed to legislative independence and policy advocacy, he chafed at having to defend budgetary compromises and political messaging that deviated from his supply-side convictions.

Stockman’s downfall came in his very first year, when he sat for a lengthy interview with The Atlantic for an article ultimately entitled “The Education of David Stockman.” That was mistake number one: making himself the subject of a profile. Mistake number two: openly criticizing the administration’s fiscal policy and admitting that its tax-cutting strategy was based more on political momentum than economic certainty. “None of us really understands what is going on with all these numbers,” he told journalist William Greider. It was, he conceded, “pure trickle-down theory.” It was Christmas come early for congressional Democrats. House Speaker Tip O’Neill (D-Mass.) crowed, “On each point the architect of the administration’s economic program is admitting exactly what I and other critics have been saying for six months.”

Chief of Staff James Baker forced Stockman to apologize to the president over lunch. “The menu is humble pie,” he told Stockman. “You’re going to eat every last motherfucking spoonful of it.” But the episode ended his influence in the White House — Stockman resigned in 1985. His troubled tenure underscored how difficult it can be for ex-legislators to subordinate personal ideology and public profile to the role of policy executor within a president-centered system.

The same dynamic was on sharp display during the first Trump administration. Former South Carolina Rep. Mick Mulvaney initially faced challenges as director of the Office of Management and Budget, where he had to implement policies at odds with his prior fiscal hawkishness in Congress — like Trump’s tax cuts, which ballooned the deficit. Similarly, former North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows, who became Trump’s chief of staff, often blurred the boundaries of his role. Take for example the October 2020 episode shortly after Trump was admitted to Walter Reed Medical Center for Covid-19. The White House physician gave a rosy public assessment of Trump’s condition. But immediately afterward, an anonymous senior official later identified by multiple outlets as Meadows told the press that Trump’s vitals were concerning and that the president wasn’t out of the woods. Trump was reportedly furious when he learned his chief of staff had spoken to reporters off the record and contradicted the party line.

These former legislators were accustomed to autonomous decision-making and public-facing leadership, but found that staff roles required deference, behind-the-scenes maneuvering and alignment with the president’s often unpredictable directives — conditions that complicated their effectiveness and influence.

Today, this long and storied history of former elected politicians stepping into positions that serve the president — only to fall flat on their faces — presents a paradox for people like Waltz.

White House staff jobs sometimes confer even greater power and authority than Cabinet positions. As presidents of both parties, from Reagan to Barack Obama, moved the center of gravity from the far reaches of Foggy Bottom and Arlington into the West Wing, positions like national security adviser became eminently more important than, say, UN ambassador, despite the trappings that come with those jobs.

But former electeds in those roles suffer a fatal disability: Accustomed to the autonomy and deference of their former offices, they find it hard to subvert their egos for the greater good of the presidency. And all are not up to the task. Waltz, like many who came before him, learned that lesson the hard way.

Politico · by Lincoln's God: How Faith Transformed a President and a Nation

3. Putin’s Plan to Outlast Ukraine and the U.S.

Putin’s Plan to Outlast Ukraine and the U.S.

Russia’s leader ‘blossoms whenever he talks about war’ and hopes Trump will give up on a peace deal.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/putins-plan-to-outlast-ukraine-and-the-u-s-russia-europe-war-e0dcb3c8

By Amy Knight

May 18, 2025 3:43 pm ET

Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin in Moscow, May 15. Photo: Alexander Kazakov/Kremlin Pool/Zuma Press

After all the speculation about how Russian President Vladimir Putin would respond to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s offer to meet for peace talks in Istanbul, it isn’t surprising that Mr. Putin declined. Instead he sent a low-level delegation, headed by the ultraconservative former culture minister Vladimir Medinsky.

Having repeatedly declared Mr. Zelensky’s government illegitimate, Mr. Putin would have made a huge concession—and appeared weak—if he had met with Mr. Zelensky. More important, a meeting between the two, which President Trump had suggested he might attend as well, wouldn’t have achieved much. Mr. Putin relishes being a wartime leader and is determined to continue the conflict until Ukraine is coerced into becoming a “friendly” neighbor.

In keeping with Mr. Trump’s stance that Russia isn’t the aggressor in the Ukraine war, a White House proposal to end the conflict, crafted last month, made major concessions to the Kremlin, legitimizing Russia’s occupation of Crimea and granting Russia all the territory it has gained since the war began. The plan also proposed a gradual lifting of the economic sanctions against Russia that were imposed in 2014, as well as a promise that Ukraine won’t join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. When Mr. Zelensky rejected the deal, Mr. Trump accused him of being “inflammatory” and suggested that he—not Mr. Putin—was the problem.

Mr. Trump began to change his tune after Russia’s deadly April 24 missile and drone attack on Kyiv, saying the strikes were unnecessary and “very bad timing.” Then, following a meeting with Mr. Zelensky before the funeral of Pope Francis, Mr. Trump questioned Mr. Putin’s interest in a peace deal and raised the possibility of new sanctions against Russia. He also said Russia had stolen Crimea from Ukraine. The sudden signing of an economic partnership agreement between the U.S. and Ukraine, announced April 30, further suggested that Mr. Trump was shifting to a more favorable stance toward Ukraine as he grew frustrated with Russia’s response to peace proposals.

Meanwhile, top officials in Mr. Putin’s government began talking tough. On April 24 the head of Russia’s security council, former Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, addressed proposals for a Western peacekeeping contingent in Ukraine to monitor compliance with a future cease-fire. Stating that Russia had invaded Ukraine because of the threat of NATO military deployment in Russia’s “historical territory” inside Ukraine, Mr. Shoigu said that the introduction of foreign troops in Ukraine could lead to a direct military conflict between Russia and NATO countries.

In an interview with the Russian news agency TASS on April 29, Mr. Shoigu’s predecessor and Putin ally Nikolai Patrushev, now an adviser to the Russian president, claimed that NATO was conducting naval exercises with nuclear-armed submarines and working out scenarios for a “nuclear apocalypse” with strikes on Russian bases that house nuclear weapons. In an April 28 interview Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov laid out Russia’s maximalist demands for peace negotiations that went well beyond those in the Trump proposal.

Against this backdrop Mr. Putin made an offer for Ukrainian and Russian negotiators to meet directly in Istanbul, without accepting a proposal for a 30-day truce supported by Ukraine, the U.S. and the European members of NATO as a precondition for further peace talks. Mr. Trump jumped on Mr. Putin’s proposal, leaving the Europeans and Ukrainians at a loss. Mr. Zelensky took a gamble and not only agreed but said he would attend, putting Mr. Putin in a difficult position.

The day before the talks began, Mr. Putin and his top security and defense team met with Mr. Medinsky to prepare for the negotiations. If these men were concerned that Mr. Putin’s absence would reinforce Mr. Trump’s doubts about their leader’s intentions for peace, they were probably reassured by Mr. Trump’s subsequent statement: “Nothing’s going to happen until Putin and I get together”—suggesting that the two can still reach a peace deal without including Mr. Zelensky.

Mr. Trump apparently doesn’t understand that Mr. Putin isn’t ready to end hostilities. He said on Fox News Friday that “Putin is tired of the war.” But, as Russian commentator Maksim Katz pointed out on May 13, Mr. Putin seems to enjoy the conflict: “Putin blossoms whenever he talks about war. Instead of an aging dictator, he appears as a military leader, a character in some exciting movie that is playing in real time 3D right around him.”

Having rallied his people to support a patriotic struggle against Western enemies and fueled Russia’s economic growth with massive military spending, Mr. Putin wants Mr. Trump to cut off arms deliveries and crucial intelligence to Ukraine so that Russian troops can move beyond their snail’s-pace offensive and gain substantial swaths of Ukrainian territory. With this goal in mind, Mr. Putin is going along with the negotiations in the hope that Mr. Trump eventually will give up on a peace settlement and walk away from the conflict altogether.

As expected, Friday’s talks between Russian and Ukrainian delegations failed to make progress because the Russians put forth their usual maximalist demands. The next day Mr. Trump announced that he will be talking by phone with Mr. Putin on Monday, and plans to call Mr. Zelensky after. Mr. Trump should make clear to Mr. Putin that if Russia doesn’t agree to a 30-day cease-fire and back off from its demands, the U.S. will keep providing Ukraine with the military aid necessary to defend itself against Russian aggression.

Ms. Knight is author, most recently, of “The Kremlin’s Noose: Putin’s Bitter Feud With the Oligarch Who Made Him Ruler of Russia.”

China Fills the U.S. Void in the Americas

Beijing is making the most of Trump’s trade war by cozying up to Latin nations.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/china-fills-the-u-s-void-in-the-americas-tariffs-protectionism-trade-deals-debt-453d9f80

By Mary Anastasia O’Grady

May 18, 2025 3:44 pm ET

Xi Jinping delivers a keynote speech at the fourth ministerial meeting of the China-CELAC Forum in Beijing, May 13. Photo: Xie Huanchi/Zuma Press

Chinese dictator Xi Jinping hosted his fourth annual Latin American and Caribbean ministerial meeting in Beijing last week. His message to the more than 30 countries represented was simple: As the U.S. retreats from trade with the Americas, China is ready to step into the void.

China has been methodically working toward greater political influence in the region for more than two decades. But Mr. Trump’s tariff increases have opened new inroads for the Middle Kingdom. In July I noted that JD Vance’s selection as Mr. Trump’s running mate raised the odds that a second Trump presidency would “double down on Biden protectionism.” As I pointed out, that would be “nothing but upside” for Mr. Xi. And here we are.

Mr. Xi’s Latin gathering was no free-trade bonanza. Rather, China made a point to publicize its preference for Latin suppliers over Americans and its intention to continue influence-buying with loans. Given Chinese corruption, this isn’t likely to end well. But in the meantime, U.S. security risks will go up.

Brazil is so far the biggest Latin American winner in the Trump trade war. To punish the U.S. for higher tariffs on its imports, China is cutting back on its purchases of U.S. farm exports and buying more from Brazil. During his visit to Beijing, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva signed more than a dozen bilateral trade deals and discussed more than two dozen potential new ones, according to Infobae, an Argentine news outlet.

In exchange for buying more Brazilian exports, China is supposed to gain greater access to the Brazilian market for its cars and machinery. How much is unclear. Domestic Brazilian manufacturers, which have substantial political power, are already complaining about threats to their protected markets. The opening between the two countries may be less than advertised.

Still, excitement among politicians like Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro, a left-wing former terrorist, around the reported Chinese offer of $9.2 billion in new lines of credit for the region can’t be overstated. The unreconstructed Marxist has dollar signs in his eyes.

More trade with China doesn’t threaten Latin sovereignty, and in the absence of U.S. openness, it might even be a positive. But it won’t happen in any significant way without infrastructure upgrades. That’s where the danger for the Western Hemisphere appears, as China uses its Belt and Road Initiative to increase poor countries’ indebtedness, send thousands of workers to the Americas, and become a player in ports, railways and communications.

Ecuador learned the costs of such entanglements the hard way with the Coca Codo Sinclair Dam, a hydroelectric project built by Chinese contractor Sinohydro. Initially financed with a $1.7 billion loan from Beijing and inaugurated in 2016, its final price tag, with delays and cost overruns, was about $3 billion. Design flaws, shoddy construction and alleged corruption have kept it from meeting its promised capacity. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been called in to try to fix the dam while Ecuador has spent a decade selling discounted oil to China to repay the loan. Ecuador borrowed an estimated $14 billion from China during a decade of rule by Rafael Correa, its leftist anti-American president from 2007-17. Servicing that debt has been a burden for the little country and only after much renegotiation has it slowly recovered.

Countries with stronger institutions may fare slightly better. The Peruvian deep-water port of Chancay, completed last year, is 60% owned by China’s Cosco Shipping. The port is an emblem of China’s ambitions in the region. It can handle ultralarge container vessels that can’t unload elsewhere on South America’s Pacific coast. The modern facility is good for trade. But it also gives China a place to dock military ships.

The Chinese agricultural conglomerate Cofco International and China’s state-owned port developer are already investing heavily in Brazil, as is China Railway. Both countries, along with Peru, talk of connecting Chancay to Brazil’s Atlantic coast by rail, a journey of about 2,700 miles. China is offering to finance the project.

Brazil’s recent history in building railways isn’t encouraging. The first 333-mile phase of a 950-mile rail line crossing the state of Bahia, begun in 2011, was supposed to be completed by 2014. But the project has been repeatedly delayed by financial, legal and logistical problems. In March it was put on hold indefinitely.

As Diogo Costa, president of the Foundation for Economic Education in Atlanta and the former head of Brazil’s National School of Public Administration, puts it: “When it comes to building infrastructure, Brazil’s problem isn’t money. It’s execution.” That’s true for most of Latin America, where transparency and the rule of law are foreign concepts, and piling on Chinese debt will inflict more pain. It isn’t too late for the U.S. to push back by re-engaging commercially.

Write to O’Grady@wsj.com.

Special Operations News – Monday, May 19, 2025

https://sof.news/update/20250519/

May 19, 2025 SOF News Update 0

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

Photo / Image: 308th Rescue Squadron pararescumen climb into the back of a 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment MH-47G Chinook helicopter into Banana River, Florida, Feb. 15, 2023, during combat search and rescue training. The 160th SOAR’s mission is to organize, equip, train, resource and employ Army special operations aviation forces worldwide in support of contingency missions and combatant commanders. (Staff Sgt. Darius Sostre-Miroir)

Do you receive our daily newsletter? If not, you can sign up here and enjoy it 2 or 3 days a week with your morning coffee (or afternoon tea depending on where in the world you are).

SOF News

Skyraider II Planes. An L3Harris executive states that US Special Operations Command could request more of the prop planes than orginally planned. Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) has already received five of the OA-1K Skyraider II close air support planes. Breaking Defense, May 9, 2025.

JTF-Micronesia and a Navy SEAL. A new commander for Joint Task Force-Micronesia has taken charge of a unit that oversees U.S. military operations across the southwestern Pacific Ocean. Rear Adm. Joshu Lasky took command of the unit that was founded last year with the mission of coordinating defense and humanitarian missions in the region. Lasky completed Basic Underwater Demolition / SEAL training with Class 223 in June 1999. He has served in several SEAL units as well as in higher commands. “Navy SEAL takes command of year-old Joint Task Force-Micronesia”, by Alex Wilson, Stars and Stripes, May 15, 2025.

International SOF Commander’s Forum. During Special Operations Forces Week 2025 in Tampa, Florida a forum was held with 311 participants from 61 countries that was designed to foster generational relationships within the global SOF community. (DVIDS, May 12, 2025).

Next USSOCOM Commander? A Navy SEAL and current commander of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) may soon be the commander of United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM). Vice Admiral Frank “Mitch” Bradley is being considered for the job by the White House. Prior to leading JSOC Bradley was the commander of Naval Special Warfare Development Group (SEAL Team Six). “JSOC commander likely to be SOCOM pick, sources say”, by Patrick Tucker, Defense One, May 13, 2025.

Preparing Advisors for Conflict. Maj. Robert G. Rose, U.S. Army, uses the experiences of advisors from the Korean Military Advisory Group (KMAG) during the Korean War as well as other conflicts in a discussion on how to prepare advisors for their training and advising missions. “Awake Before the Sound of the guns: Preparing Advisors for Conflict”, Military Review, May-June 2025.

Article on JSOC. Jordan Smith has penned an article that traces the history, purpose, organization, and past operations of the Joint Special Operations Command. Read it at “JSOC: America’s Joint Special Operations Command”, Grey Dynamics, May 16, 2025.

Nominee for ASD SO/LIC Withdrawn. The White House has withdrawn the nomination of Michael Jensen to be the next Assistantant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict (SO/LIC). Retired Air Force Lt. Col. Michael Jensen served in leadership positions in the SOF community during his military career. He was a Special Warfare officer in the U.S. Air Force. “Trump withdraws nomination of Air Force veteran to oversee special operations forces”, Defensescoop, May 16, 2025.

International SOF

NK SOF and Japan. In the event of a large scale conflict on the Korean peninsular there is the possibility that North Korean special operations forces could be inserted into Japan to attack strategic targets. Dr. Ju Hyung Kim, CEO at the Security Management Institute, explains in “Deploying North Korean Special Forces to Japan: A Potential Game Changer in the Korean Crisis”, Small Wars Journal, May 12, 2025.

Fuerzas Especiales (FES). The Mexican Navy’s special mission unit was officially established in 2001. The FES is part of the Mexican Naval Special Warfare Command. Read more in this article published by Grey Dynamics, May 15, 2025.

SOF History

On May 19, 1935, T.E. Lawrence died. He was one of the first practitioners of modern unconventional warfare during World War I and is referred to in the history books as ‘Lawrence of Arabia’. He was a British archaeologist, diplomat, writer, and military officer. He played a crucial role as a liaison during the Sinai and Palestine Campaign and Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire during World War I.

On May 17, 1944, the Battle of Myitkyina began. In the spring of 1944 the Allies were on the offensive in the liberation of Burma. The 5307th Composite Unit, a reinforced U.S. Army regiment known as “Merrills Marauders”, had circled and began attacking Myitkyina. The Japanese defenders were caught completely by surprise.

On May 20, 1960, the 7th Special Forces Group was activated. It was reorganized from the 77th Special Forces Group at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

On May 19, 2002, 50 Green Berets from the 10th Group, commanded by Lt. Col. Robert M. Waltemeyer, landed at Tbilisi, Georgia, a former Soviet republic. The SF Soldiers trained 2,000 elite Georgian troops as part of a counterterrorism effort that sent thousands of allied and partner nation troops to Afghanistan.

OSS OGs – Operational Group – Percy Red. This OG, comprised of 18 men, was the first one to be air dropped into France in the summer of 1944. Its mission was to act as a highly-trained military cadre for the French Marquis and assist them in conducting attacks on the Germans in occupied-France. Article in the May 2025 issue of Sentinel.

https://www.specialforces78.com/oss-ogs/

Ukraine Conflict

Post-War Ukraine? More and More Drones. No matter what type of concessions Ukraine will be forced to make for a ceasefire and truce to happen and last; one thing is a certainty. Ukraine will rely heavily in investing in drones (articles of drones in Ukraine conflict) of all types to deter even further Russian agression in the future. Ukraine will need to continue its comparative advantage in drone warfare. Read more in “Fewer Soldiers, More Drones: What Ukraine’s Military Will Look Like After the War”, by Benjamin Jensen, Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS), April 28, 2025.

Sea of Azov. Until 2014, Ukraine had access to the Sea of Azov and ships on the Ukrainian coast could transit the Kerch Strait with little problem. That is, until Russia invaded Crimea. With peace talks possibly on the horizon one question that seemingly has not been addressed has been the Sea of Azov. “Carving up Ukraine: What About the Azov Sea?”, by Martin Fink, Articles of War, May 13, 2025.

U.S. Ambassador Resignation. The former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, who resigned from the role in April, has said that she quit the post because she disagreed with President Donald Trump’s foreign policy. Ambassador Bridget Brink, who served as ambassador to Ukraine from May 2022 until her departure last month published her reasons in an OP-ED. Reuters, May 16, 2025.

References:
Interactive Map. Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine by the Insitute for the Study of War and Critical Threats. On storymaps.arcgis.com See also https://www.national-security.info/ukraine/maps.html
U.S. Security Assistance to Ukraine, Congressional Research Service, CRSIF12040, periodically updated, PDF, 3 pages. https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF12040
Ukraine Conflict, National Security Info. https://www.national-security.info/ukraine-conflict.html

Sudan Conflict

The Sudan conflict, over two years old now, is continuing. The conflict between the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Force (RSF) has caused a huge humanitarian crisis. Each of the combatants have received external support. The primary supporter of the RSF is the United Arab Emirates (UAE); providing various weapons systems to include advanced munitions from China. The SAF receives assistance in the form of money, advanced weaponry, and more from Turkey, Russia, Egypt, and Iran. Both sides are receiving drones and using them to great effect.

National Security and Commentary

‘Golden Come’ Missile Threat Assessment. The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) has released an infographic that depicts threats a sophisticated missile defense system for the United States would defend against. Follow the link within the article for the infographic. “DIA releases ‘Golden Dome’ missile threat assessment”, DIA.mil, May 13, 2025.

Army’s Birthday Parade. On the occasion of the Army’s 250 anniversary there will be a massive military parade that will involve thousands of soldiers from across the country. Some service members will be housed in the Agriculture Department and General Services Administration buildings for days. “Price tag for Trump’s military festival could reach $45 million”, The Washington Post, May 15, 2025.

Bring Back the OSS? J.R. Seeger, a former CIA intelligence officer, argues that establishing a new organization similar to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) – a World War II era organization – is not needed. Over the past 80 years the idea of an OSS-like organization could be the answer to serving as a instrument of policy during the Cold War – and now in Cold War 2. Seeger says that the current construct of USSOCOM and the CIA is perfectly suited to the task. The two organizations just need to work a little more closely together. “A New Office of Strategic Services?”, Center for Intelligence and Nontraditional Warfare, Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI), May 1, 2025.

DOD Guidance on Gender Dysphoria. The Department of Defense issued guidance to military leaders on how to proceed with separating, voluntarily or involuntarily, service members with a diagnosis or history exhibiting symptoms consistent with gender dysphoria. “DOD Issues Implementation Guidance on Separation of Service Members With Gender Dysphoria”, DOD News, May 16, 2025.

Information Operations

1st Information Operations Command Deactivated. The Army is trying to consolidate capabilities and has deactivated its only active-duty information operations command. In its place will be three Theater Information Advantage Detachments; each composed of 65 personnel focused on synchronizing information capabilities at the theater level. Read more in “Army officially deactivates only information operations command”, DefenseScoop, May 9, 2025.

VOA Gutted. The layoffs of personnel from the Voice of America amounted to over a third of the media organization’s staff. This has happened as the VOA federal building is being put up for sale. The ability of the United States to advanced its narrative to counter the disinformation campaigns of our adveraries is being severely diminished. Read more in “Trump Adiminstration Fires Hundreds of Voice of America Employees”, The New York Times, May 15, 2025.

DoD Leaders Warn on Cyber Threats. High ranking officers testified before Congress on the sophisticated cyber threats that face the nation. China, Russia, Iran, and North Korean are all posing significant danger to U.S. infrastructure – both structural and digital. The nation is engaged in cyberwarfare every day – defending the nation and security DOD networks. “DOD Leaders Urge Congress to Bolster Cyberdefenses”, DOD News, May 16, 2025.

U.S. Fighting Disinformation? Not So Much. Foreign information manipulation is a refined art that Russia and China have mastered. Both are continuing their targeted malign information operations in the United States as well as around the world. However, despite the growth of disinformation operations by our adversaries, the U.S. continues to dismantle U.S. government assets that have been dealing with the problem. “Is the U.S. Abandoning the Fight Against Foreign Information Operations?”, by Ambassador Daniel Fried, Just Security, May 13, 2025.

Afghanistan

TPS for Afghans Ends. Temporary Protective Status (TPS) was introduced by the Biden administration in March 2022 to help the more than 70,000 Afghans who had entered the U.S. as part of the U.S. government’s “Operation Allies Welcome”, after the Taliban’s capture of Kabul. The Afghans had flown to the United States during the Kabul airlift of August 2021. Thousands of Afghans were flown on U.S. military transport aircraft to Middle East “lily pads” where they were vetted for security and medical issues. They were then flown by U.S. government chartered aircraft to U.S. military bases in the U.S. where they underwent a further vetting process sometimes lasting several months in Operation Allied Refuge (OAR). Now their “protective status” is ending as the Trump administration has decided to terminate the Temporary Protective Status for Afghans. This means thousands of Afghans who had left Afghanistan to escape retaliation by the Taliban for working with the U.S. military may soon be repatriated by the U.S. back to Afghanistan. “US Homeland Security Department ends protected status for Afghans”, Jurist News, May 13, 2025.

Strategic Competition

GPC and Trump. In the mid-2010s a new era of competition took place in the international arena. Russia and China became more competitive and at the same time more agressive. The U.S. in 2017 under the first Trump admnistration released its updated National Security Strategy which outlined how the U.S. would move from a CT/COIN focus to one of matching up against “Great Powers” such as Russia and China. This focus was labeled “Great Power Competition”; however, it is now known as “Strategic Competition”. Now the second Trump administration is redefining the international landscape. Read more in “The Rise and Fall of Great-Power Competition”, by Stacie E. Goddad, Foreign Affairs, April 22, 2025 (subscription).

Security Force Assistance and Strategic Competition. Maj. Erin Lessons, PdD, U.S. Army and Maj. Ben Jeb, U.S. Army write on how Security Force Assistance (SFA) has been an indirect tool of competition that has often been used during periods of heightened strategic rivalry throughout history. They describe the goals of SFA, how it is a tool of influence, and different approaches to SFA. Read more in “Security Force Assistance as a Tool of Strategic Competition”, Military Review, May-June 2025.

CIA Recruitment Videos. A few years back the agency put out some videos aimed a trying to get Russians to spy for the CIA. Now there are a couple of CIA videos aimed at recruiting Chinese sources. Read more in “The CIA is opening calling on Chinese officials to spy for the U.S. Will they listen?”, CBC.CA News, May 18, 2025.

Cutting SFABs. The Army has announced that two Security Force Assistance Brigades (SFABs) may soon go away. The SFABs field advisor teams to train, advise, and mentor foreign forces. They were instrumental in the advisory effort during the Iraq and Afghan conflicts and in later years as well. Some critics of the cuts say that it will adversely affect our partnerships around the world; others say that it will help bring the combat formations to a higher personnel level of fill. (Task & Purpose, May 13, 2025).

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

Latin America – Caribbean

Need for a Regional Security Force? Ana Janaina Nelson and Benjamin Gedan argue that Latin America and the Caribbean need to develop a regional response to the organized criminal groups that are increasingly overwhelming local authorities and out-maneuvering national governments. Criminal violence is now a regional crisis. “To Fight Organized Crime, Latin America Needs a Regional Security Force”, Americas Quarterly, May 6, 2025.

Is Haiti Doomed? The country’s security situation grows more serious with every passing week. To defeat anarchy action must be taken on weapons trafficking and illicit finances. The capital, Port-au-Prince, and other major cities are not controlled by powerful gang coalitions. The country’s government is floundering with constant infighting and corruption. “Flows of Guns and Money Are Dooming Haiti”, by Robert Muggah, Americas Quarterly, May 12, 2025.

SOF News Book Shop

View our selection of books about special operations forces at the SOF News Book Shop.

Africa

CRS Report – Burkina Faso. The Congressional Research Service (CRS) has updated a report entitled “Burkina Faso: Conflict and Military Rule”, IF 10434, by Alexis Arieff, May 15, 2025. Topics include the history of military rule, terrorism and insurgency problems plaguing the country, shifting international relations, humanitarian issues, U.S. policy and aid, and more.

https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF10434

Exercise African Lion. U.S. and Royal Moroccan Armed forces officially began the Morocco portion of African Lion 25, the largest annual joint military exercise on the African continent, with training events beginning this week across multiple regions of the Kingdom of Morocco. (AFRICOM, May 12, 2025).

Paper – Russian Mercenary and Paramilitary Groups in Africa. “Russian mercenaries serve as an important mechanism by which Moscow seeks to reduce its growing international economic and political isolation. Mercenaries help accomplish this by expanding Russia’s global footprint and influence at a relatively low cost.” RAND Corporation, May 1, 2025, PDF, 62 pages.

https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA2613-1.html

CRS Report – Sudan. The war in Sudan has past the two-year mark with no sign of resolution between the two warring parties and no indication that either side will win over the other. The conflict has feuled the world’s largest humanitarian crisis. Read more in “The War and Humanitarian Crisis in Sudan”, by Lauren Ploch Blanchard, Congressional Research Service (CRS), IF 12816, May 16, 2025, PDF, 3 pages.

https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF12816

Publications

Sentinel. The May 2025 issue is now posted online. Topics on Agent Orange Legacy Project, 2025 SFA Convention, IMO of Major Clyde Sincere, OSS OGs, book reviews, and more. (PDF, 24 pages)

https://www.specialforces78.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/0525-Sentinel-News.pdf

“Commando Comics”. A behind the scenes look at the Commando comic book series. “Creating Commando Comics: ‘For You the War is Over’ – a Writer’s Commentary”, downthetubes.net, May 10, 2025.

Miltary Review. The May-June 2025 issue is now available online.

https://www.armyupress.army.mil/journals/military-review/english-edition-archives/may-june-2025/

Upcoming Events

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October 13-16, 2025

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Las Vegas, Nevada

October 14-17, 2025

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November 17-20, 2025

2025 Modern Warfare Week – Fort Bragg

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6. On this Day in History: Lawrence of Arabia dies

Also a second article below on "10 Things You May Not Know About ‘Lawrence of Arabia’"

1935

Lawrence of Arabia dies

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/may-19/lawrence-of-arabia-dies

HISTORY.com Editors

Bettmann Archive

Published: November 24, 2009

Last Updated: March 05, 2025

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T.E. Lawrence, known to the world as Lawrence of Arabia, dies as a retired Royal Air Force mechanic living under an assumed name. The legendary war hero, author and archaeological scholar succumbed to injuries suffered in a motorcycle accident six days before.

Thomas Edward Lawrence was born in Tremadog, Wales, in 1888. In 1896, his family moved to Oxford. Lawrence studied architecture and archaeology, for which he made a trip to Ottoman (Turkish)-controlled Syria and Palestine in 1909. In 1911, he won a fellowship to join an expedition excavating an ancient Hittite settlement on the Euphrates River. He worked there for three years and in his free time traveled and learned Arabic. In 1914, he explored the Sinai, near the frontier of Ottoman-controlled Arabia and British-controlled Egypt. The maps Lawrence and his associates made had immediate strategic value upon the outbreak of war between Britain and the Ottoman Empire in October 1914.

Lawrence enlisted in the war and because of his expertise in Arab affairs was assigned to Cairo as an intelligence officer. He spent more than a year in Egypt, processing intelligence information and in 1916 accompanied a British diplomat to Arabia, where Hussein ibn Ali, the emir of Mecca, had proclaimed a revolt against Turkish rule. Lawrence convinced his superiors to aid Hussein’s rebellion, and he was sent to join the Arabian army of Hussein’s son Faisal as a liaison officer.

Under Lawrence’s guidance, the Arabians launched an effective guerrilla war against the Turkish lines. He proved a gifted military strategist and was greatly admired by the Bedouin people of Arabia. In July 1917, Arabian forces captured Aqaba near the Sinai and joined the British march on Jerusalem. Lawrence was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel. In November, he was captured by the Turks while reconnoitering behind enemy lines in Arab dress and was tortured and sexually abused before escaping. He rejoined his army, which slowly worked its way north to Damascus, which fell in October 1918.

Arabia was liberated, but Lawrence’s hope that the peninsula would be united as a single nation was dashed when Arabian factionalism came to the fore after Damascus. Lawrence, exhausted and disillusioned, left for England. Feeling that Britain had exacerbated the rivalries between the Arabian groups, he appeared before King George V and politely refused the medals offered to him.

After the war, he lobbied hard for independence for Arab countries and appeared at the Paris peace conference in Arab robes. He became something of a legendary figure in his own lifetime, and in 1922 he gave up higher-paying appointments to enlist in the Royal Air Force (RAF) under an assumed name, John Hume Ross. He had just completed writing his monumental war memoir, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, and he hoped to escape his fame and acquire material for a new book. Found out by the press, he was discharged, but in 1923 he managed to enlist as a private in the Royal Tanks Corps under another assumed name, T.E. Shaw, a reference to his friend, Irish writer George Bernard Shaw. In 1925, Lawrence rejoined the RAF and two years later legally changed his last name to Shaw.

In 1927, an abridged version of his memoir was published and generated tremendous publicity, but the press was unable to locate Lawrence (he was posted to a base in India). In 1929, he returned to England and spent the next six years writing and working as an RAF mechanic. In 1932, his English translation of Homer’s Odyssey was published under the name of T.E. Shaw. The Mint, a fictionalized account of Royal Air Force recruit training, was not published until 1955 because of its explicitness.

In February 1935, Lawrence was discharged from the RAF and returned to his simple cottage at Clouds Hill, Dorset. On May 13, he was critically injured while driving his motorcycle through the Dorset countryside. He had swerved to avoid two boys on bicycles. On May 19, he died at the hospital of his former RAF camp. Britain mourned his passing.

10 Things You May Not Know About ‘Lawrence of Arabia’

Check out 10 surprising facts about the man known as “Lawrence of Arabia.”

https://www.history.com/articles/10-things-you-may-not-know-about-lawrence-of-arabia

Christopher Klein

Published: August 15, 2013

Last Updated: February 26, 2025

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Born out of wedlock, Lawrence only learned his true identity after his father’s death.

In 1879, 18-year-old Sarah Lawrence arrived at the opulent Irish estate of Sir Thomas Chapman to begin work as a governess for his four daughters. The Victorian aristocrat and his domestic servant began an affair, and she secretly gave birth to their illegitimate son in 1888. When the scandal was discovered, Chapman left his wife and moved to Britain with his new love. Although the couple never wed, they adopted the last name Lawrence and pretended to be man and wife. T.E., who was the second of the couple’s five children, only learned the true identities of his parents after his father’s 1919 death.

The real “Lawrence of Arabia” was a man of short stature.

While six-foot, three-inch Peter O’Toole cut a towering figure as the lead in the 1962 epic biopic “Lawrence of Arabia,” the real Lawrence was only five feet, five inches tall. Lawrence remained self-conscious about his height, which may have been caused by a childhood case of mumps.

He first traveled to the Middle East as an Oxford archaeology student.

Lawrence spent the summer of 1909 traveling solo through Syria and Palestine to survey the castles of the Crusaders for his thesis. He walked nearly 1,000 miles and was shot at, robbed and badly beaten. In spite of the arduous journey, the new graduate returned to Syria the following year as part of an archaeological expedition sponsored by the British Museum. His years in the region deepened his knowledge of Arabic and his affinity for the Arabs.

He never had a single day of battlefield training.

In 1914, the British military employed Lawrence on an archaeological expedition of the Sinai Peninsula and Negev Desert, a research trip that was actually a cover for a secret military survey of territory possessed by the Ottoman Turks. Once World War I began, Lawrence joined the British military as an intelligence officer in Cairo. He worked a desk job for nearly two years before being sent to Arabia in 1916 where, in spite of his nonexistent military training, he helped to lead battlefield expeditions and dangerous missions behind enemy lines during the two-year Arab Revolt against the Turks.

Lawrence lost two brothers who also served in World War I.

Within months of each other in 1915, two of Lawrence’s younger brothers, Frank and Will, were killed fighting on the Western Front. The guilt Lawrence felt about his safe desk job in Cairo as millions died on the front lines spurred him to the field at the outbreak of the Arab Revolt in 1916.

Lawrence’s fame did not come until after the war.

Overshadowed by the millions of lives lost on the Western Front, Lawrence’s exploits were largely unheralded by the end of World War I in 1918. He was such an unknown figure that even the Turks, who had a bounty on his head, did not know what he looked like. However, when the American war correspondent Lowell Thomas launched a 1919 lecture tour recounting his assignment in the Middle East, his photographs and films of “Lawrence of Arabia” transfixed the public and transformed the British colonel into both a war hero and an international celebrity.

He refused a knighthood.

King George V summoned Lawrence to Buckingham Palace on October 30, 1918. Lawrence hoped that the private audience was to discuss borders for an independent Arabia, but instead, the king wished to bestow a knighthood on his 30-year-old subject. Believing that the British government had betrayed the Arabs by reneging on a promise of independence, Lawrence quietly told the befuddled monarch that he was refusing the honor before turning and walking out of the palace.

Lawrence worked for Winston Churchill.

In 1921, the future prime minister became Colonial Secretary and employed Lawrence as an advisor on Arab affairs. The two men grew to admire each other and became lifelong friends.

After World War I, he re-enlisted under assumed names.

After completing his diplomatic service under Churchill, Lawrence returned to the military in 1922 by enlisting in the Royal Air Force. But in an attempt to avoid the glare of celebrity, he did so under a pseudonym: John Hume Ross. Months later, the press revealed his secret, and he was discharged. Lawrence subsequently enlisted as a private in the Royal Tank Corps, but under the assumed name Thomas Edward Shaw, a nod to his friend, the famed Irish writer George Bernard Shaw. Lawrence subsequently published an English translation of Homer’s Odyssey under the pen name of T.E. Shaw and maintained the assumed name until his death.

10.

Lawrence died in a motorcycle crash.

Lawrence was an avid motorcyclist; he owned seven different Brough Superiors, dubbed the “Rolls-Royces of Motorcycles.” On the morning of May 13, 1935, Lawrence sped through the English countryside on his Brough Superior SS100 motorbike. He suddenly saw two boys on bicycles on the narrow country road and swerved to avoid them. However, he clipped one of the bikes and was thrown forward over the handlebars. Lawrence never recovered from his massive brain injuries and died at the age of 46 on May 19.

7. Rare-Earths Plants Are Popping Up Outside China

I hope this is good news.

Rare-Earths Plants Are Popping Up Outside China

U.S., Brazil are among countries building capacity to mine and refine metals for EVs and smartphones

https://www.wsj.com/business/us-brazil-rare-earth-mineral-plants-7ea22068

A technician trains workers at Aclara’s pilot plant in Brazil.

By Samantha Pearson

and Jon Emont

/ Photographs by Tommaso Protti for WSJ

May 18, 2025 11:00 pm ET

Key Points

What's This?

Brazil is emerging as a rare-earths source, holding the second-largest reserves after China.
Aclara Resources is opening a rare-earths mine in Brazil to supply a U.S. processing plant.
Geopolitical tensions and new tariffs are fueling interest in non-China rare earth alternatives.

GOIÂNIA, Brazil—In a warehouse deep in Brazil’s savanna, machines churn through piles of red clay to produce chalky rocks packed with metals critical for making electric cars, smartphones and missiles.

But what is particularly precious about these minerals is their intended destination: They are bound for the U.S., not China.

China mines some 70% of the world’s rare earths, the 17 metallic elements primarily used in magnets needed for civilian and military technologies. But its 90% share of processing for rare earths mined around the world is what really concerns officials from other countries working to secure their supply.

“China is a formidable competitor,” said Ramón Barúa, chief executive of Canada’s Aclara Resources, which is opening a rare-earths mine to supply a processing plant it plans to build in the U.S. Aclara said it plans by August to decide where in the U.S. to build its plant for separating rare-earths deposits into individual elements.

It also has a buyer lined up. Aclara signed an agreement last year to supply rare earths to VAC, a German company that is building a factory in South Carolina with $94 million in Pentagon funding to make magnets for clients including General Motors.

“We’re seeing a tsunami of demand,” Barúa said.

Aclara aims to extract and process both light and heavy rare earths from its plants in Brazil and Chile.

Geopolitical tension is fueling interest in Brazil’s minerals. After the U.S. set new tariffs on China last month, China tightened restrictions on the export of rare-earth materials, worrying U.S. manufacturers including Tesla and redoubling their hunt for non-China alternatives. Exports of rare earths restarted this month for some companies.

“Hopefully, we’ll get a license to use the rare-earth magnets,” Tesla CEO Elon Musk said on the company’s April earnings call.

Brazil has the world’s second-largest rare-earth reserves after China, some 21 million tons, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. That represents more than a fifth of known global reserves—and more than 10 times those in the U.S.

Occurrences of rare-earth and other critical minerals in Brazil

Rare-earth elements

Other critical minerals*

Colombia

Brazil

Aclara

Project Carina

Peru

state of Goiás

Brasília

Bolivia

Goiânia

Pacific Ocean

Paraguay

Atlantic Ocean

Argentina

500 miles

500 km

*Includes cobalt, copper, niobium, nickel, lithium, tantalum, tin, titanium, tungsten, vanadium

Source: Geological Survey of Brazil

Daniel Kiss/WSJ

Brazil is also rich in a scarcer subset of heavy rare earths, including dysprosium and terbium, silvery metal elements that stop magnets from losing their strength at high temperatures. They are important in electric vehicles, where magnets power the motor even as it heats up.

Despite its huge reserves, Brazil has been a small player in rare earths because of its complex mining regulations and the difficulty of attracting financing from companies willing to confront entrenched Chinese competitors.

Costs to mine and process Brazilian rare earths are estimated to be around three times China’s, meaning Western buyers would likely pay a substantial premium for Brazilian minerals. Only a few companies outside China have mastered rare-earth processing, and the learning curve is steep.

While it can’t beat China on prices, Aclara says that its mining processes are more eco-friendly.

Brazil has the world’s second-largest rare-earth reserves after China.

Brazil is mapping potential rare-earths deposits and searching for traces of them in waste from other mines, said Alexandre Silveira, the country’s minister of mines and energy.

“This potential presents a significant opportunity,” he said.

Brazil’s first big rare-earths mine opened last year some 90 miles west of the town of Nova Roma, where Aclara plans to produce. Backed by Denham Capital, a Boston-based private-equity firm, the project is one of the few outside Asia to produce dysprosium, terbium, neodymium and praseodymium—elements used to create high-power magnets. But the mine is contracted to ship most of its production to China.

The U.S. has dedicated hundreds of millions of dollars over the past five years to reviving rare-earth processing plants and magnet factories closed during decades of Chinese dominance.

President Trump declared a national emergency in 2020 over U.S. dependence on foreign critical minerals, including rare earths, and has made the sector a priority since returning to office.

Europe has worked to reduce its reliance on China. The European Union aims to process 40% of the critical raw materials it needs and has agreed that no outside country should supply more than 65% of Europe’s annual consumption of a list of designated materials that includes rare earths.

After opening a pilot plant to perfect the refinement process near Goiânia, Aclara plans to invest some $600 million to complete work on a larger plant next to the mine in Nova Roma to start full production in 2028.

The plant will partially process the rare earths, creating rare-earth carbonates: white rocks containing all the elements that will be separated into individual elements in the U.S.

A German company building a U.S. magnet factory has agreed to buy rare earths from Aclara.

While Aclara can’t compete with China on price, it markets its mining practices as more environmentally friendly.

Brazil’s record on mining is far from perfect. The collapse of a tailings dam owned by iron-ore miner Vale killed 272 people in 2019, four years after another dam it owned jointly with BHP Group ruptured.

Even so, Brazilian regulations are tighter than regulations are in China. Aclara’s mining process also poses fewer risks, analysts said.

China typically mines rare earths by drilling holes into clay and flushing out rare earths with ammonium sulfate solution, a common fertilizer. The process is relatively cheap, but risks contaminating surrounding soils and the water supply.

Instead of following suit, Aclara plans to excavate its clays from depths of up to some 30 meters, or nearly 100 feet, and transport them to the plant for treatment.

“Their clay is right at the surface, so you don’t have to dig deep,” said Erik Eschen, CEO of VAC, the company planning to buy rare earths from Aclara.

Sacks of clay inside an Aclara plant await processing into rare-earth concentrate.

The residual clay is washed and returned to the ground, eliminating the need for tailings dams. Lugging truckloads of earth that typically contain less than 3 pounds of rare earths in each ton is expensive. But it reduces contamination at the site of the mine.

“The attention to environmental concerns is the biggest difference between what is done in China and what Aclara plans to do in Brazil,” said Jon Hykawy, a rare-earths expert who recently inspected Aclara’s pilot plant and mine.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

What steps should the U.S. take to ensure a reliable supply of critical minerals? Join the conversation below.

Write to Samantha Pearson at samantha.pearson@wsj.com and Jon Emont at jonathan.emont@wsj.com

8. Tariff War De-Escalation: Prelude To Geopolitical Rebalancing – OpEd

A view from Malaysia.

Excerpts:

In conclusion, a broader trade agreement between the U.S. and China has the potential to be a significant positive force and game changer in geopolitics by reducing tensions, strengthening the global political and economic order, fostering cooperation on global challenges, and providing more stability for the rest of the world.

The optimistic scenario also sees it as helping prevent a further descent into a “new Cold War” where other countries are compelled to choose sides. This would allow for the emergence of a more stable, flexible and pragmatic international relations.

However, the specific effects of such an agreement are still uncertain. Whether it ends up as a positive in improving geopolitics will also depend heavily on its effective implementation and enforcement by both sides.

It is also evident that even with a broad agreement, new trade, economic and geopolitical controversies could arise in the future, requiring ongoing dialogue, adjustments and pragmatic leadership to overcome.

Tariff War De-Escalation: Prelude To Geopolitical Rebalancing – OpEd

https://www.eurasiareview.com/19052025-tariff-war-de-escalation-prelude-to-geopolitical-rebalancing-oped/?utm

May 19, 2025 0 Comments

By Lim Teck Ghee

The agreement between the United States and China in Switzerland providing a temporary de-escalation of trade conflict between the two countries has produced an upturn in global share markets and a measure of relief to businesses and the millions of workers on both sides of the Pacific who have borne the brunt of the economic pain of Trump’s tariff war.

Announcing the agreement, China’s representative called it an “important step” to resolve differences between China and the U.S. He also stressed that it aligned with the interests of both nations and global economic stability. Vice Premier He Lifeng, leader of the Chinese delegation further described the discussions as “candid, in-depth, and constructive”.

On the American side, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Trade Representative Jamieson Greer emphasized that “substantial progress” had been made. Bessent described the discussions as “productive and constructive” whilst Greer noted that “It’s important to understand how quickly we were able to come to agreement, which reflects that perhaps the differences were not so large as far as may be thought.”

Both delegations highlighted the establishment of a longer process “trade consultation” and expressed the optimistic hope that this could open the door to a broader agreement.

Trade and Geopolitical Rivalry

This preliminary consensus should not detract from the fact that both sides are aware that trade is not merely an economic tool. In Asia especially it is a fundamental pillar of geopolitical strategy underpinning alliances, projecting influence and shaping the regional balance of power.

The U.S.Treasury Secretary’s assertion that the U.S. does not want “generalized decoupling” from China but only strategic breaks; and his most recent statement that “we could do a big, beautiful rebalancing” of economic ties with China and the “dream scenario” would be if the US and China could work together to unlock access to Chinese consumers, and China buys more American-made products” may well reflect his team’s concern for a better balance of the U.S. and China in the trade arena. However, he will undoubtedly be pushed to ensure the U.S. uses it as a key lever to maintain its dominant position in global politics and economics.

The two teams of negotiators need a reminder that there can be more positive impacts from a broad based trade agreement which benefits not just the two countries if they can take into account the right geopolitical considerations. The following is a listing.

Geopolitical Impact

Trade disputes have become a major source of larger and even systemic friction between the US and China, impacting their overall relationship. A comprehensive agreement that addresses trade and other economic concerns of discriminatory or unfair policies can reduce these tensions. As seen recently, even a temporary agreement leading to tariff reductions has been welcomed and has calmed global markets and politics.
Multilateral Institutions: The U.S. and China trade and economic disputes have undermined the authority and effectiveness of multilateral trade institutions such as the World Trade Organization (WTO). An agreement could potentially revitalize the WTO by reinforcing multilateral dispute resolution. This could also lead to a renewed commitment to a fairer and more effective rules-based international order that both countries claim to support.
The negotiation and implementation of a trade agreement necessitates sustained dialogue and cooperation. This initial meeting has already built a degree of confidence and trust. It should help open more channels for communication on other critical geopolitical issues to foster a stable and predictable international environment.

Economic Impact

A comprehensive agreement would likely involve significant tariff reductions and the resolution of key trade disputes. This could lessen the risk of greater fragmentation of the global trade system. The lowering of tariffs can help to restore confidence, encourage investment, and boost global economic activity.
While some decoupling of supply chains has occurred, a major trade deal could lead to stabilization of supply chains and reverse some of the inflationary pressures and disruptions caused by the trade war. This will benefit consumers and businesses in the two countries and worldwide.
Global Economic Growth: A comprehensive agreement will boost global trade and investment, leading to higher growth rates worldwide. The recent temporary tariff reduction has been cited as a factor that can improve the odds of avoiding a recession in the U.S. It should also help China in dealing with the slowdown affecting its economic growth.

Global Governance Impact

Cooperation between the two countries is crucial for addressing global challenges such as climate change, pandemics, and nuclear proliferation. A broader trade agreement could foster a more conducive environment for cooperation including on joint research, technology transfer, and the implementation of sectoral agreements.
Standards and Norms: The agreement could influence the development of international standards and norms in areas such as artificial intelligence, space exploration and even weaponry and military technology proliferation. Given the size and influence of both economies, any alignment or divergence in these areas could have global repercussions.

Technological Impact

The agreement could address issues related to technology transfer, intellectual property rights, and competition in emerging technologies. This can positively reshape the dynamics of technological competition between the two nations and have implications for global innovation.
Transnational issues such as cybersecurity and nuclear proliferation require a degree of cooperation among major global powers. Reduced tensions from a trade agreement could make it easier for the US and China to find common ground and work together on these challenges, thus benefitting the rest of the world.

In conclusion, a broader trade agreement between the U.S. and China has the potential to be a significant positive force and game changer in geopolitics by reducing tensions, strengthening the global political and economic order, fostering cooperation on global challenges, and providing more stability for the rest of the world.

The optimistic scenario also sees it as helping prevent a further descent into a “new Cold War” where other countries are compelled to choose sides. This would allow for the emergence of a more stable, flexible and pragmatic international relations.

However, the specific effects of such an agreement are still uncertain. Whether it ends up as a positive in improving geopolitics will also depend heavily on its effective implementation and enforcement by both sides.

It is also evident that even with a broad agreement, new trade, economic and geopolitical controversies could arise in the future, requiring ongoing dialogue, adjustments and pragmatic leadership to overcome.

Lim Teck Ghee

Lim Teck Ghee PhD is a Malaysian economic historian, policy analyst and public intellectual whose career has straddled academia, civil society organisations and international development agencies. He has a regular column, Another Take, in The Sun, a Malaysian daily; and is author of Challenging the Status Quo in Malaysia.

9. Trump’s actions are pushing thousands of experts to flee government

Is this leading to a declining desire to serve our nation? What does that mean for our future? Who will serve?

Trump’s actions are pushing thousands of experts to flee government

The U.S. DOGE Service’s push for early retirement and deferred resignation is leading to a federal brain drain, longtime staffers fear.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/05/17/trump-administration-brain-drain-doge/?utm

Updated

May 17, 2025 at 10:33 a.m. EDTMay 17, 2025

10 min

2978

President Donald Trump leaves the Oval Office on May 1. Offers of early resignation and voluntary separation are pushing thousands of experienced staffers out of the federal government. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)

By Hannah Natanson, Dan Diamond, Rachel Siegel, Jacob Bogage and Ian Duncan

At the National Institutes of Health, six directors — from institutes focused on infectious disease, child health, nursing research and the human genome — are leaving or being forced out.

At the Federal Aviation Administration, nearly a dozen top leaders, including the chief air traffic officer, are retiring early.

And at the Treasury Department, more than 200 experienced managers and highly skilled technical experts who help run the government’s financial systems chose to accept the Trump administration’s resignation offer earlier this year, according to a staffer and documents obtained by The Washington Post.

Across the federal government, a push for early retirement and voluntary separation is fueling a voluntary exodus of experienced, knowledgeable staffers unlike anything in living memory, according to interviews with 18 employees across 10 agencies and records reviewed by The Post. Other leaders with decades of service are being dismissed as the administration eliminates full offices or divisions at a time.

The first resignation offer, sent in January, saw 75,000 workers across government agree to quit and keep drawing pay through September, the administration has said. But a second round, rolling out agency by agency through the spring, is seeing a sustained, swelling uptick that will dwarf the first, potentially climbing into the hundreds of thousands, the employees and the records show.

Follow Trump’s second term

The Post could not determine the exact number of second-round resignations, which is tightly held within each agency. But the employees and the records suggest that disproportionately older, more senior and experienced employees are heading for the exit — in part because they fear being fired or having their positions reclassified as political, at-will jobs under a new Trump program, federal workers said in interviews. Others are leaving simply because they are tired of the chaos, mismanagement and poor treatment they say they have faced under the new administration.

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Jeffrey Grant, a senior official at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, left federal service after 42 years in February because he saw the “writing on the wall,” he said in an interview, as he watched the new administration prepare to fire civil servants. Now, he is noticing many talented colleagues follow in his footsteps, he said, including senior CMS staffers who ran core components of the agency’s strategy and operations. CMS administers more than $1 trillion a year in health insurance, covering over 130 million Americans.

“We’re losing some really smart people and really senior people,” Grant said. “Those will be the people that can easily get jobs outside the government … they will disappear, and they may never come back. Maybe they’ll come back under a different administration, but it’s a huge loss for the government.”

The scores of departures will have immediate consequences, government employees said, slowing or halting work such as the Food and Drug Administration’s issuance of food safety warnings and the Treasury Department’s disbursement of payments. Other effects will be felt over coming months and years, employees predicted, as agencies lose people representing decades of institutional knowledge — imperiling the quality of work done and services provided.

Asked for comment, a White House spokesperson referred questions to the Office of Personnel Management. OPM did not respond to emails.

Proponents of downsizing the government say it’s a long overdue chance to thin the ranks of aging, ossified senior management. Some have argued for years that the government is due for a spike in retirements, as waves of baby boomers age out and leave. Avik Roy, a former adviser to leading GOP policymakers and chairman of the right-leaning Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, said he sees both sides of the argument.

Losing people with highly specific knowledge about how agencies work could make government more inefficient, Roy said, counter to the stated goal of billionaire Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service, or Department of Government Efficiency, which has been spearheading efforts to reduce spending and staff. The federal government is more complex than Twitter, where Musk slashed staff after buying the company in 2022, Roy said: Federal employees with years of specialized experience may not be as easily replaced as software engineers.

At the same time, he said, the departures could lead to much-needed reforms.

“I’m sure there are some cobwebs being cleared out,” Roy said. “People who are, let’s say, status-quo-biased.”

‘We’re going to lose some knowledge’

High-profile officials are fleeing in bunches across agencies.

The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, part of the Transportation Department which coordinates responses to gas leaks and chemical spills, lost more than half of its senior executives to the first resignation offer, according to an email obtained by The Post. Departures include the executive director, the deputy chief counsel, the head of the Office of Pipeline Safety, two associate administrators and two top advisers, the email says.

Multiple employees described deep brain drain throughout the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Nearly all of the executive leadership for the chief information officer retired or resigned. The Office of Public and Indian Housing — which oversees public housing and rental assistance programs nationwide — lost its highest-ranking civil servant, two deputy assistant secretaries, a chief strategy officer and multiple directors.

At the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or NHTSA, a small, specialized team focused on autonomous vehicles has lost most of its staff, according to two former agency employees. Comprised mostly of staffers with engineering and technical experience from the private sector, the Office of Automation Safety was dedicated to developing new safety and regulatory standards for self-driving cars — something the new administration has labeled a priority.

In the second-round resignation offer, the FAA is losing not only its chief air traffic officer but its associate administrator for commercial space, his deputy, the director of the audit and evaluation office, the assistant administrator for civil rights and the assistant administrator for finance and management, The Post reported. The Air Traffic Organization, which is responsible for the safety of U.S. airspace as the operational arm of the FAA, is losing the vice presidents and deputy vice presidents of five major programs including mission support, and safety and technical training. The agency is already confronting a series of crises including a fatal January crash at Reagan National Airport, which left 67 dead, and communications outages in recent weeks at Newark Liberty International Airport.

The Internal Revenue Service, meanwhile, has lost senior staff representing hundreds of years of government experience. The agency has gone through four commissioners since the start of the year as well as two chief counsels. The agency’s chief of staff, chief procurement officer, acting chief procurement officer, chief human capital officer, chief transformation and strategy officer and numerous senior advisers have departed.

Contacted for comment, a range of agencies vowed that reductions in staff will not affect their missions or operation.

A Treasury spokeswoman said in a statement that the departures from the IRS will leave the agency with about the same level of staffing it had before President Joe Biden expanded its ranks from 79,431 to 102,309 employees. The infusion of new staff was meant to help cut into the agency’s backlog of tens of millions of unprocessed paper returns, which taxpayer advocates and lawmakers had complained about for years, and collect more tax revenue. The spokeswoman said the vast majority of departures are voluntary and predicted the staff losses will “improve both efficiency and quality of service.”

The FAA said in a statement that it has “a large, professional and resilient workforce” with “a deep reserve of experienced talent.” HUD said “service to the American people will not be impacted,” and that the department is looking at how recent resignations are shaping personnel. NHTSA said it is planning to grow its automation safety office, not shrink it. “Our teams are built to ensure efficiency initiatives will not compromise safety,” the vehicle agency said in a statement.

Still, during a recent town hall, Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy acknowledged significant losses, according to a recording obtained by The Post. After an official said about 2,500 employees were taking the second resignation offer, Duffy added that the departures had not fallen evenly across the department.

“We’re going to lose some knowledge, right? We’re going to lose some expertise as we go through this process,” Duffy said. “Hopefully you all will do the best you can, those who are staying, to try to get the best points from those who are leaving.”

The list of vacated jobs can be mind-numbing, federal workers said. It is hard for the public to understand what many government employees did, or why they were crucial, especially if they do not number among the highest-ranking leaders with easy-to-grasp titles like “director” or “administrator.”

Those exiting government, employees said, are people who entered public service right after college and never left. Who spent decades becoming experts in their small slices of America’s sprawling federal bureaucracy. Whose names were never known to more than a handful of colleagues, but who made the government run.

“These are the people who know why things have been done a certain way for years and years and years,” said an employee with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. “Not all of this is written down, or able to find. With them gone, we won’t know what the history is, so we’re liable to make mistakes or to do things in an inefficient way.”

One tiny corner of the General Services Administration is losing about a dozen staffers who’ve been there for 20 or 30 years each, in unglamorous roles oiling the gears of the U.S. bureaucracy, said an employee there. Their job titles include a sea of acronyms impenetrable to most people — such as “COOP,” for “Continuity of Operations” — but it all adds up to getting things done, the employee said.

“We’re losing people who know how to navigate bureaucracies and red tape, to make things happen somewhat effectively and efficiently,” the GSA employee said. “They were the doers.”

At the Justice Department, an attorney who joined government in the 1980s is ending her career earlier than planned, said an employee there, depriving the office of an indispensable source of institutional knowledge. Whenever staff encountered an unfamiliar case, she’d say something like: “Oh, I did that 18 years ago,” the employee said. “And then a task that would have taken us three days of work to reinvent the wheel, we’d be able to get done in half the day, because she had seen it before.”

And Treasury is losing a senior staffer who worked for decades on one program centered on one particular country, said an employee there, who spoke on the condition that neither he nor his workplace be named for fear of retaliation. Usually the staffer toiled quietly — but whenever there was some incident or flare-up related to the country this person studied, the employee said, everyone in the office would make a beeline for them.

“We’d be all sitting there, trying to figure this out, and this person would say, ‘Oh, I remember in 2003 we had a similar problem, I’ll find the [records],’” the employee said. “That’s what we’re losing. It will be the difference between reading through legal briefs from a trial and just being able to go straight to the judge.”

10. The possibilities and pitfalls of unorthodox diplomacy

Unconventional diploamcy.

It is still too soon to make a definitive judgment.

Excerpts:

There were also positive diplomatic shifts. Trump announced that the United States would lift all economic sanctions on Syria. This is a laudable move; the sanctions had been strangling the country’s economy, making it harder for interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa to consolidate power after the December ouster of longtime dictator Bashar al-Assad. Trump even met with Sharaa, a man who was once considered a terrorist with links to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. Trump called him a “young, attractive guy.”

More pivotal still, on this trip, Trump changed his tone toward Iran. Just weeks after threatening the country with “bombing the likes of which they have never seen before,” he extended an olive branch to the ayatollahs, remarking that America has no “permanent enemies.”

To be sure, the past week also revealed certain pitfalls in Trump’s unorthodox style of diplomacy — specifically his desire for quick wins, his seeming impatience with the long and often arduous work of negotiating complex agreements, and his preference for personal relations over grand policy.

Opinion

Editorial Board

The possibilities and pitfalls of unorthodox diplomacy

Trump’s improvisational style of dealmaking forges personal ties and scores quick wins.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/05/17/trump-diplomacy-gulf-states-saudi-arabia-qatar-uae-ukraine-talks/?utm

May 17, 2025 at 7:30 a.m. EDTMay 17, 2025

4 min

154

President Donald Trump shakes hands at the U.S.-UAE Investment Forum in Abu Dhabi on Friday. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

“I can settle anything,” Donald Trump declared Thursday in Qatar. He was talking about the conflict between India and Pakistan. But his boast alluded to other global flash points, from the war in Ukraine to the conflict in Gaza to America’s dispute with Iran over its nuclear ambitions. During a week of overseas diplomacy, the president made good progress on Iran and Syria and secured a series of commercial deals and investments. But his unconventional style was unable to bring Gaza or Ukraine closer to peace.

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Trump’s unswerving faith in his own abilities as a master dealmaker was on display during the first extended overseas foray of his second term — to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. At home, the trip might have been largely overshadowed by the Qatari government’s offer to gift Trump a luxury Boeing 747 to use as Air Force One. But the week nonetheless showcased the possibilities in Trump’s improvisational approach to diplomacy.

Coming after a ceasefire that averted an escalating clash between nuclear neighbors India and Pakistan — a pause for which Trump claimed credit (though India denied it) — his Middle East trip focused on securing commercial deals and investment. Plenty of deals were made, including Qatar’s commitment to buy 160 new Boeing jets, a pledge from gulf nations to finance data centers for artificial intelligence, and sales of more advanced semiconductor chips to help make the Middle East an AI powerhouse.

There were also positive diplomatic shifts. Trump announced that the United States would lift all economic sanctions on Syria. This is a laudable move; the sanctions had been strangling the country’s economy, making it harder for interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa to consolidate power after the December ouster of longtime dictator Bashar al-Assad. Trump even met with Sharaa, a man who was once considered a terrorist with links to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. Trump called him a “young, attractive guy.”

More pivotal still, on this trip, Trump changed his tone toward Iran. Just weeks after threatening the country with “bombing the likes of which they have never seen before,” he extended an olive branch to the ayatollahs, remarking that America has no “permanent enemies.”

To be sure, the past week also revealed certain pitfalls in Trump’s unorthodox style of diplomacy — specifically his desire for quick wins, his seeming impatience with the long and often arduous work of negotiating complex agreements, and his preference for personal relations over grand policy.

He was, for instance, impatient with Iran. The 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which Trump abrogated, took 20 months to negotiate. Now, he wants a similar deal made in a hurry. Trump warned that the Iranians “know they have to move quickly or something bad is going to happen.”

When his administration failed to achieve a breakthrough in negotiations to end the conflict in Ukraine — the first meeting between Ukrainian and Russian officials in Istanbul fizzled after less than two hours — Trump nevertheless touted his own dealmaking ability. He said on Air Force One, “Nothing is going to happen until Putin and I get together.” Trump said he was eager for a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin “as soon as we can set it up.” This would reverse the Biden administration’s policy of no high-level contact with Russia and upend the Europeans’ push for higher sanctions on Russia, but it reflects Trump’s preference for personal relations in diplomacy.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once was assumed to have a rapport with Trump. But on this trip, the president pointedly skipped the Jewish state. Trump officials negotiated directly with Hamas for a deal to release American Israeli hostage Edan Alexander from Gaza, leaving Netanyahu on the sidelines. Trump officials also spoke directly with the Houthis in Yemen about ceasing U.S. airstrikes in exchange for a halt in Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping. And now the United States is in direct talks with Tehran, despite Netanyahu’s overtures for joint military strikes on Iranian nuclear sites.

Unlike the wealthy Gulf Arab states, Israel has little to offer the transactional president. What’s more, Netanyahu’s bellicose insistence on airstrikes against Iran runs counter to Trump’s wariness about overseas military adventures.

And Netanyahu is unwilling to give Trump what he and his Gulf Arab hosts most want, which is an end to Israel’s 1½-year-old war against Gaza. (While Trump was touring the Middle East, Israel was ramping up its airstrikes, killing more than 100 people on Thursday.)

Trump is a president who eschews carefully planned diplomacy. More often than not, he appears to be winging it, and this sometimes leads to progress. The past week has demonstrated the possibilities, as well as the pitfalls.

11. A Time to Act: Japanese Security Between the United States and China

Excerpts:

The security landscape surrounding Japan has dramatically shifted since the end of World War II, presenting increasingly complex and serious challenges. The PRC’s rapid military modernization is a key driver of regional instability, and has heightened concerns about a potential conflict over Taiwan. Simultaneously, the bedrock of Japan’s defense, the Japan-US Security Treaty, faces uncertainty stemming from ongoing discussions about defense spending and base burden-sharing. Domestically, Japan grapples with a declining birthrate and aging population, straining its ability to maintain a robust defense posture, while low food self-sufficiency introduces additional vulnerabilities.

Addressing these multiple threats means that Japan must fundamentally change its approach to national security. Both the government and the public must embrace a stronger sense of ownership of Japan’s defense. This requires a comprehensive reassessment of the Japan’s self-defense system. To ensure peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region, Japan must cultivate a more robust and reliable partnership with the United States and actively engage in international cooperation. Crucially, Japan must also undertake significant reforms to its defense structure, addressing personnel shortages, enhancing defense capabilities, and bolstering food self-sufficiency. Strengthening national defense capabilities to enhance deterrence is paramount. This will enable Japan to secure itself, contribute to regional stability, and strategically reduce its reliance on the United States.

A Time to Act: Japanese Security Between the United States and China

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/05/19/a-time-to-act-japanese-security-between-the-united-states-and-china/

by Ian Murphy, by Aira Yoshida

05.19.2025 at 06:00am

Introduction

The United States has taken action and increased pressure on European allies indicating a limited tolerance for perceived insufficient contributions to collective security efforts. Japan has also been the recipient of criticism for insufficient collective security contributions in a region the United States is keenly paying attention to… the Indo-Pacific. Japan remains susceptible to shifts in US attitudes and expectations regarding burden-sharing on defense, as well as more fundamental geopolitical shifts that will require Japan to fundamentally rethink its approach to defense. Japan must not become complacent. The United States recently upgraded its force structure in Japan by installing a Joint Force Command, but it can easily downgrade its force structure and shift resources to address other security priorities in the future. This necessitates a critical reassessment of Japan’s long-standing reliance on US support and underscores the need for Japan to take greater ownership of its own defense.

Evolving regional challenges increasingly reveal the inadequacy of Japan’s current security posture. Japan’s limited capacity for independent defense and power projection leaves it ill-equipped to protect vital regional interests, including the security of Taiwan and sea lines of communication. Addressing this gap in the coming years requires Japan to not only increase its defense commitments and make bold strategic adjustments but also to contend with domestic pressures like a chronically low birthrate and declining economic growth. These internal vulnerabilities are compounded by the primary external threats of a growing and increasingly aggressive Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and the uncertainty surrounding future US defense commitments to Japan. To fully grasp the imperative for Japan to act, the subsequent sections of this analysis delve into Japan’s anxieties concerning China’s military advancements and the Taiwan issue, followed by an examination of the evolving expectations from the United States that are compelling Japan to adapt its security posture. This article will then conclude by offering concrete recommendations for Japan to navigate this complex geopolitical landscape to strengthen its national security position.

Japan’s Deepening Concerns about China’s Military and Taiwan

China’s rapid military modernization and increasingly assertive behavior have long posed a challenge to Japan’s security, but this issue is now taking on a new sense of urgency. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has been significantly increasing its defense spending and rapidly expanding its military capabilities with a critical lack of transparency. This military buildup is coupled with the PRC’s assertive actions in the East and South China Seas. The PRC actively intrudes into Japan’s territorial waters around the Senkaku Islands using both its conventional forces (Air Force and Navy) and gray zone assets (Coast Guard and maritime militia). The PLA’s military actions in the Sea of Japan threaten to reach the Pacific Ocean, which would effectively encircle Japan, similar to the PLA strategy around Taiwan. This demonstrates the PRC’s growing regional ambitions and the direct implications for Japan’s security.

Chinese Activities in the East China Sea, The International Military Environment on 2025 January Japan Ministry of Defense

This chart depicts Chinese military activities in the region and includes information on the type of vessel and aircraft, date of activity, type of activity, and location. This chart concludes that Chinese military vessels are constantly operating in the waters close to the Senkaku Islands and that Chinese military aircraft are also active in the airspace around the Nansei Islands, Senkaku Islands, and Okinawa.

A key factor elevating the urgency of this challenge is the growing convergence of Japan’s security concerns with the situation around Taiwan. While Japan has traditionally acknowledged the PRC’s position on Taiwan and follows a One China Policy, like the United States, it also recognizes Taiwan as an important partner with shared values and close economic ties. The PRC’s increasing military activities near Taiwan, including unannounced live-fire military drills, gray zone warfare, and Xi Jinping’s refusal to rule out the use of force, are seen by Japan as a rapidly growing concern. There is a recognition that a conflict in the Taiwan Strait will have a direct and severe impact on Japan’s security.

Japan’s vulnerability to a conflict over Taiwan is underscored by several critical factors. Its geographic proximity to Taiwan and heavy reliance on the sea lines of communication traversing the Taiwan Strait means that any conflict in the region would disrupt trade vital to Japan. A Taiwan conflict will disrupt Japan’s access to energy supplies, food imports, and outbound trade. Beyond these immediate concerns, Japan increasingly views Taiwan’s security as intrinsically linked to its own, recognizing that a Chinese takeover of Taiwan would significantly alter the regional balance of power. If the PRC is able to successfully takeover Taiwan, it will enable the PRC to project power further into the Pacific, threatening Japan’s Ryukyu Island Chain, and potentially leading to Japan’s isolation. Taiwan’s role as a key component of the First Island Chain further amplifies this risk. Control by the PRC would weaken the Indo-Pacific’s security architecture, reduce deterrence against Chinese expansionism, and potentially trigger a domino effect of destabilization in the region.

The growing threat posed by PLA military modernization and the potential for Japan to be drawn into a conflict over Taiwan highlight the acute security challenges facing Japan. However, Japan’s strategic calculations must now account for a changing landscape where relying on unwavering US support can no longer be assumed. This necessitates a fundamental shift in Japan’s defense planning, moving towards a posture of greater self-reliance and independent capability development.

Changing US Expectations Force Japan to Adapt

The security environment in East Asia is further complicated by the evolving expectations and increasing pressure from the United States for greater burden-sharing in the defense of the Indo-Pacific. The United States has consistently called for increased defense spending by its allies, including Japan. Some analysts have even categorized Japan as being in a “danger zone” concerning its defense spending relative to its GDP and trade balance with the United States, suggesting that Japan could face increased pressure for higher defense expenditures and potential tariffs. The Japanese government has set a goal to increase defense spending from less than 1% to 2% of GDP by 2027 according to its Defense White Paper 2024. Despite improvement, there are concerns that even this may not be sufficient to satisfy US expectations since it falls significantly short of the 5% target advocated by the Trump administration for NATO members, raising the possibility of similar demands being placed on Japan in the near future.

Elbridge Colby, Trump’s nominee for Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, further underscored this concern by publicly stating that Japan’s military capabilities, in both quality and quantity, currently fall short for effective self-defense and regional collective defense through a strategy of denial. A strategy of denial is one that is designed to prevent any power from dominating one of the world’s critical regions, especially its most important region, which is Asia. The primary aim of this strategy is to ensure that no single state becomes so predominant that it could control the US economy, threaten its physical security, and undermine American interests. Colby’s nomination, as a key architect of the 2018 US National Defense Strategy, which prioritized competition with China, and author of “The Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict,” thus signals a heightened US focus on Japan’s role within its broader denial strategy.

“Japan should be spending at least 3% of GDP on defense as soon as possible and accelerating the revamp of its military to focus on a denial defense of its own archipelago and collective defense in its region. The best way for the United States to support this shift is to make these priorities and urgency clear to Tokyo in a constructive but pressing fashion.”

Senate Armed Services Committee Advance Policy Questions for Elbridge Colby, Nominee for Appointment to be Under Secretary of Defense for Policy

The challenge for the United States is that it cannot deter PLA aggression unilaterally as it has done in the past, so now a more robust strategy of denial must include allies like Japan. However, since deterring PLA aggression is the America’s top national security priority, it is willing to use both economic and security leavers to get alignment among its allies. As Colby directly states, the most likely strategy the Trump administration will take toward Japan is an urgent consultative strategy, where it prioritizes constructive dialogue and cooperation.

However, if the Trump administration feels that earnest progress is not being made, the United States has other options. They could use tariffs. As a large automobile producer and exporter, Japan is particularly vulnerable to tariffs that target its automotive sector. A second option would be to increase the cost of stationing US forces in Japan, forcing the Japanese to provide economic concessions. Finally, they could threaten to remove US forces from Japan altogether, forcing the Japanese government to make up for the loss of military capabilities.

This threat of looming pressure from the United States creates a significant concern for Japan. It introduces uncertainty into historic guarantee of being under the US security umbrella, which has been a cornerstone of Japan’s defense strategy since the end of World War II. Japan can no longer afford to assume that the United States will automatically bear the primary responsibility for its defense. In the interim, Japan will likely respond to this uncertainty by seeking closer cooperation with the United States while strengthening its domestic defense industry, increasing its defense budget, and diversifying its security partnerships.

Internal Considerations for Japan, Conclusion, Recommendations

The security landscape surrounding Japan has dramatically shifted since the end of World War II, presenting increasingly complex and serious challenges. The PRC’s rapid military modernization is a key driver of regional instability, and has heightened concerns about a potential conflict over Taiwan. Simultaneously, the bedrock of Japan’s defense, the Japan-US Security Treaty, faces uncertainty stemming from ongoing discussions about defense spending and base burden-sharing. Domestically, Japan grapples with a declining birthrate and aging population, straining its ability to maintain a robust defense posture, while low food self-sufficiency introduces additional vulnerabilities.

Addressing these multiple threats means that Japan must fundamentally change its approach to national security. Both the government and the public must embrace a stronger sense of ownership of Japan’s defense. This requires a comprehensive reassessment of the Japan’s self-defense system. To ensure peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region, Japan must cultivate a more robust and reliable partnership with the United States and actively engage in international cooperation. Crucially, Japan must also undertake significant reforms to its defense structure, addressing personnel shortages, enhancing defense capabilities, and bolstering food self-sufficiency. Strengthening national defense capabilities to enhance deterrence is paramount. This will enable Japan to secure itself, contribute to regional stability, and strategically reduce its reliance on the United States.

Tags: alliances, INDO-PACIFIC, Military Expenditures

About The Authors

Ian Murphy
Ian Murphy works as a China Subject Matter Expert at SecuriFense Inc., where he helps organizations understand developments in China’s economy and foreign policy. He is currently a PhD student in International Studies at Old Dominion University.
View all posts
Aira Yoshida
Aira Yoshida is a Master's student in International Studies at Old Dominion University, specializing in security with a particular focus on the intersection of domestic and Japanese international relations.

12. In the Future, China Will Be Dominant. The U.S. Will Be Irrelevant.

A sober assessment.

The question is can we make the right policy choices?

Excerpts:

Yet Mr. Trump remains fixated on tariffs. He doesn’t even seem to grasp the scale of the threat posed by China. Before the two countries’ announcement last Monday that they had agreed to slash trade tariffs, Mr. Trump dismissed concerns that his previous sky-high tariffs on Chinese goods would leave shelves empty in American stores. He said Americans could just get by with buying fewer dolls for their children — a characterization of China as a factory for toys and other cheap junk that is wildly out of date.

The United States needs to realize that neither tariffs nor other trade pressure will get China to abandon the state-driven economic playbook that has worked so well for it and suddenly adopt industrial and trade policies that Americans consider fair. If anything, Beijing is doubling down on its state-led approach, bringing a Manhattan Project-style focus to achieving dominance in high-tech industries.

...

If each nation’s current trajectory holds, China will likely end up completely dominating high-end manufacturing, from cars and chips to M.R.I. machines and commercial jets. The battle for A.I. supremacy will be fought not between the United States and China but between high-tech Chinese cities like Shenzhen and Hangzhou. Chinese factories around the world will reconfigure supply chains with China at the center, as the world’s pre-eminent technological and economic superpower.

America, by contrast, may end up as a profoundly diminished nation. Sheltered behind tariff walls, its companies will sell almost exclusively to domestic consumers. The loss of international sales will degrade corporate earnings, leaving companies with less money to invest in their businesses. American consumers will be stuck with U.S.-made goods that are of middling quality but more expensive than global products, owing to higher U.S. manufacturing costs. Working families will face rising inflation and stagnant incomes. Traditional high-value industries such as car manufacturing and pharmaceuticals are already being lost to China; the important industries of the future will follow. Imagine Detroit or Cleveland on a national scale.

Avoiding that grim scenario means making policy choices — today — that should be obvious and already have bipartisan support: investing in research and development; supporting academic, scientific and corporate innovation; forging economic ties with countries around the world; and creating a welcoming and attractive climate for international talent and capital. Yet the Trump administration is doing the opposite in each of those areas.

Whether this century will be Chinese or American is up to us. But the time to change course is quickly running out.

In the Future, China Will Be Dominant. The U.S. Will Be Irrelevant.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/19/opinion/china-us-trade-tariffs.html

May 19, 2025

Credit...Jack X. Zhou

Listen to this article · 6:45 min Learn more

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By Kyle Chan

Mr. Chan is a researcher at Princeton University who focuses on Chinese industrial policy.

阅读简体中文版閱讀繁體中文版

For years, theorists have posited the onset of a “Chinese century”: a world in which China finally harnesses its vast economic and technological potential to surpass the United States and reorient global power around a pole that runs through Beijing.

That century may already have dawned, and when historians look back they may very well pinpoint the early months of President Trump’s second term as the watershed moment when China pulled away and left the United States behind.

It doesn’t matter that Washington and Beijing have reached an inconclusive and temporary truce in Mr. Trump’s trade war. The U.S. president immediately claimed it as a win, but that only underlines the fundamental problem for the Trump administration and America: a shortsighted focus on inconsequential skirmishes as the larger war with China is being decisively lost.

Mr. Trump is taking a wrecking ball to the pillars of American power and innovation. His tariffs are endangering U.S. companies’ access to global markets and supply chains. He is slashing public research funding and gutting our universities, pushing talented researchers to consider leaving for other countries. He wants to roll back programs for technologies like clean energy and semiconductor manufacturing and is wiping out American soft power in large swaths of the globe.

China’s trajectory couldn’t be more different.

It already leads global production in multiple industries — steel, aluminum, shipbuilding, batteries, solar power, electric vehicles, wind turbines, drones, 5G equipment, consumer electronics, active pharmaceutical ingredients and bullet trains. It is projected to account for 45 percent — nearly half — of global manufacturing by 2030. Beijing is also laser-focused on winning the future: In March it announced a $138 billion national venture capital fund that will make long-term investments in cutting-edge technologies such as quantum computing and robotics, and increased its budget for public research and development.

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The results of China’s approach have been stunning.

When the Chinese start-up DeepSeek launched its artificial intelligence chatbot in January, many Americans suddenly realized that China could compete in A.I. But there have been a series of Sputnik moments like that.

The Chinese electric carmaker BYD, which Mr. Trump’s political ally Elon Musk once laughed off as a joke, overtook Tesla last year in global sales, is building new factories around the world and in March reached a market value greater than that of Ford, GM and Volkswagen combined. China is charging ahead in drug discoveries, especially cancer treatments, and installed more industrial robots in 2023 than the rest of the world combined. In semiconductors, the vital commodity of this century and a longtime weak point for China, it is building a self-reliant supply chain led by recent breakthroughs by Huawei. Critically, Chinese strength across these and other overlapping technologies is creating a virtuous cycle in which advances in multiple interlocking sectors reinforce and elevate one another.

Yet Mr. Trump remains fixated on tariffs. He doesn’t even seem to grasp the scale of the threat posed by China. Before the two countries’ announcement last Monday that they had agreed to slash trade tariffs, Mr. Trump dismissed concerns that his previous sky-high tariffs on Chinese goods would leave shelves empty in American stores. He said Americans could just get by with buying fewer dolls for their children — a characterization of China as a factory for toys and other cheap junk that is wildly out of date.

The United States needs to realize that neither tariffs nor other trade pressure will get China to abandon the state-driven economic playbook that has worked so well for it and suddenly adopt industrial and trade policies that Americans consider fair. If anything, Beijing is doubling down on its state-led approach, bringing a Manhattan Project-style focus to achieving dominance in high-tech industries.

China faces its own serious challenges. A prolonged real estate slump continues to drag on economic growth, though there are signs that the sector may be finally recovering. Longer-term challenges also loom, such as a shrinking work force and an aging population. But skeptics have been predicting China’s peak and inevitable fall for years, only to be proved wrong each time. The enduring strength of a state-dominated Chinese system that can pivot, change policy and redirect resources at will in service of long-term national strength is now undeniable, regardless of whether free-market advocates like it.

Mr. Trump’s blinkered obsession with short-term Band-Aids like tariffs, while actively undermining what makes America strong, will only hasten the onset of a Chinese-dominated world.

If each nation’s current trajectory holds, China will likely end up completely dominating high-end manufacturing, from cars and chips to M.R.I. machines and commercial jets. The battle for A.I. supremacy will be fought not between the United States and China but between high-tech Chinese cities like Shenzhen and Hangzhou. Chinese factories around the world will reconfigure supply chains with China at the center, as the world’s pre-eminent technological and economic superpower.

America, by contrast, may end up as a profoundly diminished nation. Sheltered behind tariff walls, its companies will sell almost exclusively to domestic consumers. The loss of international sales will degrade corporate earnings, leaving companies with less money to invest in their businesses. American consumers will be stuck with U.S.-made goods that are of middling quality but more expensive than global products, owing to higher U.S. manufacturing costs. Working families will face rising inflation and stagnant incomes. Traditional high-value industries such as car manufacturing and pharmaceuticals are already being lost to China; the important industries of the future will follow. Imagine Detroit or Cleveland on a national scale.

Avoiding that grim scenario means making policy choices — today — that should be obvious and already have bipartisan support: investing in research and development; supporting academic, scientific and corporate innovation; forging economic ties with countries around the world; and creating a welcoming and attractive climate for international talent and capital. Yet the Trump administration is doing the opposite in each of those areas.

Whether this century will be Chinese or American is up to us. But the time to change course is quickly running out.

The Moody’s Downgrade Is an Alarm. Washington Better Pay Attention.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/19/opinion/moodys-downgrade.html

May 19, 2025, 5:03 a.m. ET

Credit...Jay Turner Frey Seawell

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By Rebecca Patterson

Ms. Patterson is an economist who has held senior positions at JPMorgan Chase and Bridgewater Associates.

It may be a cliché, but Ernest Hemingway’s quip about going bankrupt “gradually and then suddenly” feels very much on point if you look at America’s spending and debt situation — deteriorating, with momentum building toward a crisis.

The latest step along that path came Friday, when Moody’s Ratings removed the final major Triple-A credit rating for the federal government. That means America’s debt is officially no longer considered pristine by any of the main companies that rate it. Moody’s cited successive bipartisan failures to reverse the growing U.S. budget deficit, which it estimated could increase to 9 percent of the gross domestic product within the coming decade, from the 6.4 percent it hit last year. It has previously reached those levels only during times of global crisis: World War II, the 2008 financial crisis and the Covid pandemic.

It’s easy to downplay these fears after decades of hand-wringing that have come to naught. In 1988 — 37 years ago — when U.S. federal debt was less than half what it is today, measured as a percentage of G.D.P., the Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, warned of the country’s fiscal situation. He said that “the long run is rapidly turning into the short run.” He added that “the effects of the deficit will be increasingly felt and with some immediacy.”

It turned out that domestic and foreign investors were willing to buy ever-larger amounts of government debt to finance America’s overspending. Investors even continued to buy debt after America’s first credit downgrade, by what’s now known as S&P Global Ratings, in 2011. The coming week seems unlikely to repeat such a rosy scenario.

Dynamics today are changing in ways that finally make Mr. Greenspan’s warnings urgent. Some investors are questioning how much exposure they want in U.S. financial assets. Politicians clinging to increasingly thin majorities in Congress are more willing to encourage voters with spending or tax cuts than they are to tackle the problem. The combination will lead to investors demanding higher interest rates to buy U.S. debt, which slows economic growth by raising borrowing costs for households and businesses. It also eats into the cash available for the government itself, worsening the underlying budget math. Wash, rinse, repeat.

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Politicians from both parties have tried to meet that challenge not directly, but by fussing with the arcane way Congress accounts for spending. Take a look at the budget legislation recently released by the House Ways and Means Committee. Several of the tax cuts would not last through the typical 10-year time frame, but instead would expire at the end of President Trump’s term. They include a removal of taxes on tips and overtime pay, and increases in standard deductions and child tax credits.

By making tax cuts temporary, the overall cost of the 10-year plan is reduced, which makes it easier to pass. It also puts the burden on the next administration and Congress to choose between extending the cuts, which would add further to the deficit, or letting them expire, which to most voters would feel like a tax increase — something most lawmakers would want to avoid.

Voters don’t have a strong grasp on how fiscal math works. In a recent poll by the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank associated with Stanford University, 75 percent of respondents said they were concerned about the growing federal debt and thought Congress should tackle it. However, only 17 percent thought Social Security was the largest federal spending program (it is) and only 27 percent thought that extending Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act for another decade would push deficits higher (it would). This perception contrasts sharply with analysis from the Yale Budget Lab, a nonpartisan research center. It estimates that making the 2017 tax cuts permanent would push the bill’s total cost to $5 trillion over the coming decade.

As long as politicians and voters aren’t on the same page about how to get the federal debt on a sustainable path, which increasingly points to Social Security reform and selective tax increases, both parties are likely to indulge in more and more fiscal accounting tricks. Anything described in Washington as temporary rarely turns out that way.

So what would this do to America’s fiscal outlook? The Yale Budget Lab, as a thought experiment, assumed that the temporary tax provisions under consideration becomes permanent. Even including some potential tariff revenue to help offset the lost tax revenue, the cost would be $2.5 trillion over the coming decade. At the end of 30 years, the size of America’s debt would represent 180 percent of its G.D.P. The only countries with higher debt ratios today are Japan and Sudan.

Moody’s decision tells us that this fiscal path has costs. One is the willingness of investors to buy Treasury debt without getting a higher interest rate to reflect the growing fiscal risks. A report by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, a think tank that favors deficit reduction, showed that foreign ownership of publicly held U.S. debt had risen to about 30 percent of the total by the end of last year, from about 5 percent of the total in 1970. Some of those investors may be more motivated to trim their bond holdings now that the U.S. is no longer a Triple-A rated financial asset.

A jump in interest rates for the U.S. 10-year Treasury was one reason Mr. Trump paused his reciprocal tariff plan. And they continue to have the administration’s attention. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told lawmakers this month that “the debt numbers are indeed scary,” and a crisis would involve “a sudden stop in the economy as credit would disappear.”

The growing debt burden risks making bond buyers nervous and thus America’s debt more expensive to maintain. To put numbers to this spiraling scenario, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan nonprofit group focused on fiscal policy, estimates that a sustained 10-year Treasury interest rate of 4.4 percent, which is where it was Friday morning, would add an extra $1.8 trillion to the debt even beyond what’s currently forecast for the coming decade.

Sadly, it seems unlikely the Moody’s rating downgrade will be the catalyst for Congress to change its current policy path. But lawmakers should know that the potential for America to shift from a gradual, albeit unsustainable path to a sudden financial crisis is surely increasing.

More on America’s finances under the Trump administration.

Opinion | Rebecca Patterson

The Sagging Dollar Will Usher in a World of Pain

May 5, 2025

Opinion | Oren Cass, Jason Furman, Rebecca Patterson and Lawrence H. Summers

‘I Hope I Am Wrong, but I Am Pretty Pessimistic’: Four Economists Dissect Trump’s Tariffs

April 11, 2025

Opinion | Jason Furman

Proof Trump Has No Idea How the Trade Deficit Works

May 3, 2025

Rebecca Patterson is an economist and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who has held senior positions at JPMorgan Chase and Bridgewater Associates.

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14. Americans are getting wise to the left’s chicanery

A conservative critique on the media.

Americans are getting wise to the left’s chicanery

When the gaslighting begins to fail

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2025/may/18/americans-getting-wise-lefts-chicanery/?utm

washingtontimes.com · by Robert Knight

By - Sunday, May 18, 2025

OPINION:

The only good thing to come out of COVID-19 is the public’s awakening to the fact that government officials will lie to us and the media will help them do it.

We might have suspected it, but it had never been so blatantly obvious, at least not since the Vietnam War or the vanishing weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

If they lied to us six ways from Sunday about a pandemic and reasons to invade other countries, it’s a sure bet they have been lying to us about many other things.

Gaslighting the public is the media’s favorite sport.

A case in point is their patently absurd attempt to pin the cover-up of President Biden’s mental collapse on unidentified White House sources. Anybody, that is, but the White House reporters who saw it up close every day for years.

Ample footage exists of various network personalities insisting that Mr. Biden was sharp, even though millions of Americans knew otherwise, even before his disastrous meltdown in the 2024 presidential debate.

Jake Tapper, the CNN anchor who had pointedly dismissed the notion that Mr. Biden was mentally challenged, is shamelessly shilling his new book exposing the cover-up. As usual, the satirical Babylon Bee nails it: “Jake Tapper Uncovers Startling Evidence That Biden’s Decline Was Covered Up By Jake Tapper.”

“‘These allegations regarding Jake Tapper are disturbing,’ said Jake Tapper. ‘The idea that someone would use their power as a journalist to lie and withhold essential information from the American public is beyond the pale. This Jake Tapper guy, whoever he is, should be ashamed of himself,’” the Bee reported.

Several more such self-serving books are reportedly in the pipeline.

The media aren’t the only ones gaslighting the public. Dozens of federal district judges are telling Americans that they no longer have a republic but are instead living under a 667-member judicial oligarchy. Anyone who says otherwise is not respecting “the rule of law.” Even when holding court thousands of miles from Washington, some judges are issuing opinions overruling the president of the United States on foreign policy, border security and other matters reserved by the Constitution for the chief executive.

In fact, of the more than 220 lawsuits filed in federal courts against the Trump administration during the first three months of Mr. Trump’s second term, 60 have involved immigration policy. Judges blocked President Trump’s order to remove birthright citizenship, to defund sanctuary cities, to deport noncitizen gang members and to remove temporary protected status from thousands of illegal immigrants.

Meanwhile, Mr. Trump has secured the border. Illegal alien encounters with the Border Patrol have dropped 99% from the Biden years. No new law was needed.

As soon as Mr. Trump was inaugurated, the lawsuits and rulings in Democrat-friendly courtrooms came thick and fast. There were 20 lawsuits in January, about 70 in February, another 70 in March and more than 50 in April, according to ABC News. The left-leaning network calls it an “unprecedented legal blitz.”

The Trump administration has not been fazed and has won quite a few reversals. These include the policy barring transgender people from military service, something that the fictional Section 8-seeking Cpl. Klinger would appreciate.

Speaking of reversals, the media were crowing that Mr. Trump’s reduction of tariffs was a “huge reversal” and a terrible embarrassment for the administration. They could not bring themselves to acknowledge that it might well have been part of Mr. Trump’s shock-and-awe style of deal-making.

I’m not predicting where the stock market will go next, but it has recovered smartly and headed up. Even if you’re not watching the ticker, you can tell by the glum faces on Democrats who were hoping to shed crocodile tears over “Trump’s recession.”

As for the media, it’s hard to gaslight people about impending economic doom when jobs are being created, companies are announcing billion-dollar investments in American manufacturing, gas and egg prices are coming down and the market is roaring.

It’s also getting hard to gaslight the public about the need to turn morality upside down, such as pretending that males are really females and vice versa. People used to be afraid to challenge it lest they be accused of bigotry or even hate.

Inspired by swimming champion Riley Gaines and fencer Stephanie Turner, who took a knee rather than compete with a male opponent, teen girls are courageously confronting woke school boards and ignoring the disapproving media.

As common sense comes back into play, the trans charade is coming apart.

Now that X and other media have broken the legacy media monopoly, we seem to be experiencing a sort of reverse-1960s phenomenon. During that wild decade, everything, even the permanent things, came into question. Today, more and more people are questioning the faux values from that upheaval that soft-headed baby boomers had institutionalized. The anti-establishment left had morphed into the Man, and a weird, sex-crazed, authoritarian one at that.

When you’re lying to people about essential things, such as the value of faith, family and freedom, gaslighting will work only so long. It will take some time to undo the damage, but I’d venture that, God willing, we’re on the right track.

• Robert Knight is a columnist for The Washington Times. His website is roberthknight.com.

washingtontimes.com · by Robert Knight

15. Book Review | The Russian Understanding of War: Blurring the Lines Between War and Peace

A view from Romania.

Book Review | The Russian Understanding of War: Blurring the Lines Between War and Peace

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/05/19/russian-understanding-of-war-review/?mc_cid=7a718e5680

by Ciprian Clipa

05.19.2025 at 06:00am

The Russian Understanding of War: Blurring the Lines Between War and Peace. By Oscar Jonsson. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2019. ISBN 978-1626167339. Maps. Photographs. Glossary. Notes. Sources Cited. Index. Pp. vii, 208. $26.14.

Oscar Jonsson’s The Russian Understanding of War is a well-timed and thought-provoking explanation of how Russian military thinking has developed to integrate non-military state tools—such as information warfare and ideological subversion—into its understanding of war. By systematically exploring this evolution from the Soviet period to today, Jonsson presents a convincing case: Russia no longer sees war solely in terms of armed conflict but views nonviolent actions as part of a continuous spectrum of conflict. This book is a must-read for policymakers, academics, and armed forces members struggling with today’s geopolitical conflicts and the challenges of so-called hybrid warfare.

Oscar Jonsson, a Swedish security analyst and political scientist, presents in this book the core question of whether Russia’s understanding of the nature of war has evolved to incorporate nonmilitary tools into its conception of warfare. Jonsson’s methodology examines Russian military writing, security policy documents, and public declarations of high-level officials, such as General Valery Gerasimov. The book is chronological in format, starting with the Soviet inheritance and concludes with extensive discussions of information warfare and the Color Revolutions. Throughout, Jonsson’s core argument is that Russia’s concept of war has extended beyond traditional armed conflict to include nonmilitary tools, such as propaganda, cyber operations, and political subversion, as essential components of warfare.

The book’s fresh approach is among its strongest points. Instead of merely analyzing Russia’s military capabilities or official doctrine, Jonsson aims to understand how the Russian thinkers themselves frame the nature of war. This closes an important gap in the literature and introduces a new analytical lens to the subject. The depth of Jonsson’s research is matched by its specificity; he relies extensively on Russian primary materials, everything from military journals and doctrinal texts to speeches, many of which remain untranslated or underutilized in Western scholarship. He also clarifies overused and inadequately defined Western concepts like Gerasimov Doctrine and hybrid warfare, explaining how these terms tend to overgeneralize or misrepresent the Russian perspective. Most thoughtfully, Jonsson highlights — much like other well-versed strategic thinkers, such as Lieutenant General (Retired) H.R. McMaster — that “U.S. leaders tend to mirror adversaries and define future war as they might prefer it to be.” Jonsson underscores the strategic dangers of misunderstanding Russia’s expanded understanding of warfare, stressing that such misinterpretations can result in grave Western policy and deterrence mistakes.

While the book does a solid job covering Russian military theory, incorporating opposing views or alternatives from within Russia’s own strategic and academic circles would provide extra valuable information to support its core argument. Although information warfare and Color Revolutions are central to the book’s argument, their repeated discussion in the later chapters begins to feel repetitive, as these themes are revisited without offering much new insight. Last but not least, taking a more comparative approach could make the analysis even more compelling. Looking at how countries like China and Iran are using non-military tools in their strategic planning would offer fresh insight and help clarify which aspects of Russia’s approach are unique and which it shares with others.

In the end, the book is a valuable resource for security and defense experts involved in NATO and European defense policy or shaping U.S. strategic policies, since it offers a deep insight into how Russia conceptualizes conflict. It is also very useful for scholars and students of international relations, security studies, or Russian affairs, offering a well-researched perspective on Russian military thought. Lastly, policymakers and journalists could also benefit from its subtle analysis that goes above the general clichés found in popular media, such as hybrid warfare, a catch-all term that, according to the author, conflates everything from propaganda and subversion to conventional armed conflict. This conflation, Jonsson argues, obscures Russia’s consistent strategic thought.

Tags: Book review

About The Author

Ciprian Clipa
LCDR Ciprian Clipa is a Romanian Special Operations Forces officer with over a decade of distinguished SOF service and is currently pursuing a Master of Science in Defense Analysis, majoring in Irregular Warfare, at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. His research focuses on the role of SOF in countering Russian hybrid threats in the Black Sea region, with particular emphasis on Romania.

16. Opinion: The China threat was always real. The American response never was.

Excerpts:

While we rehearse cliches about China’s long game, Beijing continues to make the cliché true — by matching ambition with execution.

Beijing doesn’t win by being perfect. It wins by being consistent. It declares a goal, funds it, adapts along the way and recalibrates its institutions to deliver. It doesn’t always succeed. But it has internalized a lesson we’ve discarded: Long-term strength is built through continuity, coordination and patience.

China can direct capital to a strategic sector without waiting for a committee markup. It can fund five-year initiatives to dominate electric vehicle manufacturing or become indispensable in solar panel supply chains. Its leadership doesn’t worry about a change in control of the legislature halfway through an investment cycle. It mandates. It finances. It builds.

We announce initiatives, hold press events and promise resilience — while designing policies that expire with the next election.

The danger isn’t just that this administration pursues a strategy of grievance instead of a strategy of victory; it’s that we have allowed our politics to unlearn how to build at all.

Opinion: The China threat was always real. The American response never was.

https://www.ajc.com/opinion/opinion-the-china-threat-was-always-real-the-american-response-never-was/5I7OPKFPNZCFRMVZB435XIAVFA/?utm

ajc.com · by Brian O'Neill – guest columnist

17. Opinion | By eroding US soft power, Trump is ceding the contest to China

Excerpts:

In a WeChat conversation, a US-educated economist in China confided that he now finds China’s political system more attractive when juxtaposed with America’s. Coupled with a narrowing technological gap – highlighted by China’s breakthroughs in artificial intelligence – Trump’s policies may inadvertently enhance China’s appeal, not only in the Global South but also among American elites seeking innovation and stability.

While negative views of China persist among Americans, unfavourable opinions have fallen from 81 per cent last year to 77 per cent this year, suggesting a subtle shift in perceptions amid US domestic challenges.

Equally important, Washington’s disinterest in projecting soft power reduces the cost and enhances the return on Beijing’s strategic investments, allowing China to fill the void. For instance, Chinese universities and research institutes are actively recruiting American scientists, with prominent chemist Charles Lieber joining Tsinghua University.

The dismantling of USAID and abrupt US retreat from global health initiatives create opportunities for China. China is providing replacement funding in Southeast Asia and may extend similar support to Latin America, further expanding its influence.

At the Yalta Conference 80 years ago, as the story goes, Joseph Stalin dismissed suggestions that the Soviet Union heed the Vatican’s moral authority by quipping: “How many divisions does the Pope have?”

This disdain for soft power, rooted in his belief that military might alone secured dominance, blinded Stalin to the allure of democratic values. His miscalculation (and those of his successors) hastened the Soviet collapse as disillusioned citizens embraced the freedoms of the West.

The US is risking a parallel mistake in its strategic rivalry with China. By neglecting soft power – as evidenced by its reduced global engagement and wavering commitment to democratic norms – Washington may repeat Stalin’s fallacy and inadvertently cede leadership to Beijing in this consequential contest of attractiveness.

Diplomacy

Opinion World Opinion

Yanzhong Huang

Opinion | By eroding US soft power, Trump is ceding the contest to China

Trump 2.0 has boosted China’s charm offensive, making its assertive foreign policy and unapologetic authoritarianism look less threatening

https://www.scmp.com/opinion/world-opinion/article/3310052/eroding-us-soft-power-trump-ceding-contest-china

Yanzhong Huang

Published: 8:30pm, 18 May 2025

In the grand theatre of international politics, soft power – the art of attraction without coercion or payment so eloquently defined by the late Joseph Nye – was long considered the gleaming crown jewel of American influence and the glaring deficiency in the Chinese arsenal amid the countries’ rivalry for pre-eminence.

Yet since US President Donald Trump’s return to office, the balance of international attraction has been shifting remarkably in Beijing’s favour.

On the domestic front, the US administration’s actions have profoundly compromised America’s soft power reservoir. Its attacks on academic freedom and termination of student visas weaken the allure of American higher education, a key soft-power asset that fosters global appreciation for US values.

Cuts to federal research grants, such as those for the National Institutes of Health, threaten America’s technological leadership. A recent Nature survey of scientists in the US revealed an alarming finding – 75 per cent of respondents were considering relocating amid funding instabilities – a potential brain drain that would severely impair the nation’s capacity to attract and retain talent.

According to Nye, liberal democracies typically score high in national attractiveness because they are generally perceived as more legitimate and trustworthy than their non-democratic counterparts.

Trump’s authoritarian tendencies – his expressed admiration for autocratic leadership styles, prioritisation of loyalty over expertise in staffing his administration and efforts to bend news coverage to his will – undermine the rule of law, a cornerstone of US soft power, tarnishing its image as an exemplar of democracy.

US officials accidentally share Yemen war plans with journalist in apparent security breach

On the international front, the administration has accelerated America’s soft power erosion through what Nye called its “myopic transactionalism”, as well as its strident “America first” approach. This multifaceted diplomatic retreat manifests in three critical dimensions.

First, America’s withdrawal from multilateral frameworks – including the World Health Organization and Paris climate accord – diminishes its reputation as a collaborative leader and undermines US moral authority.

Second, and perhaps more alarmingly, Trump’s policies systematically dismantle the very instruments of American soft power, with institutions like the US Agency for International Development (USAID), Voice of America and Radio Free Asia facing existential funding threats or outright dissolution.

Third, the administration has adopted an adversarial diplomatic posture – as seen in Trump’s peculiar intimidation of Denmark over Greenland and Vice-President J.D. Vance’s derogatory comments about Chinese “peasants” – that undermines America’s carefully cultivated image as a benign hegemon.

In contrast to the Trump administration’s dismissal of soft power, China under President Xi Jinping has strategically bolstered its influence through targeted diplomatic initiatives. Since 2021, Beijing has launched three major programmes – the Global Development Initiative, Global Security Initiative and Global Civilisation Initiative – designed to project soft power by promoting economic cooperation, security partnerships and cultural dialogue, respectively.

Can China claim the leadership mantle after the US quits the WHO and Paris Agreement?

In 2023, Xi furthered these efforts by announcing plans to invite 50,000 young Americans to China for exchange and study programmes over the next five years. Together with the Belt and Road Initiative and soft power endeavours like Covid-19 vaccine diplomacy, these initiatives have yielded mixed results.

High-income countries such as the United States, Japan and Australia maintain overwhelmingly negative views of China, with favourability ratings as low as 11 per cent in a Pew survey last year.

But middle-income countries in the Global South, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa (Nigeria: 75 per cent favourable, Kenya: 73 per cent) and Southeast Asia (Thailand: 80 per cent, Malaysia: 64 per cent), exhibit significantly more positive attitudes, driven by infrastructure investments and diplomatic engagement.

Trump’s return is giving a boost to China’s charm offensive. Against the backdrop of eroded US democratic institutions and America’s retreat from international commitments, China’s assertive foreign policy and unapologetic authoritarianism appear less threatening in comparison.

Xi Jinping says China, Russia have ‘special responsibility’ to stand up to power politics

In a WeChat conversation, a US-educated economist in China confided that he now finds China’s political system more attractive when juxtaposed with America’s. Coupled with a narrowing technological gap – highlighted by China’s breakthroughs in artificial intelligence – Trump’s policies may inadvertently enhance China’s appeal, not only in the Global South but also among American elites seeking innovation and stability.

While negative views of China persist among Americans, unfavourable opinions have fallen from 81 per cent last year to 77 per cent this year, suggesting a subtle shift in perceptions amid US domestic challenges.

Equally important, Washington’s disinterest in projecting soft power reduces the cost and enhances the return on Beijing’s strategic investments, allowing China to fill the void. For instance, Chinese universities and research institutes are actively recruiting American scientists, with prominent chemist Charles Lieber joining Tsinghua University.

Why are more Chinese scientists leaving the US to return to China?

The dismantling of USAID and abrupt US retreat from global health initiatives create opportunities for China. China is providing replacement funding in Southeast Asia and may extend similar support to Latin America, further expanding its influence.

At the Yalta Conference 80 years ago, as the story goes, Joseph Stalin dismissed suggestions that the Soviet Union heed the Vatican’s moral authority by quipping: “How many divisions does the Pope have?”

This disdain for soft power, rooted in his belief that military might alone secured dominance, blinded Stalin to the allure of democratic values. His miscalculation (and those of his successors) hastened the Soviet collapse as disillusioned citizens embraced the freedoms of the West.

The US is risking a parallel mistake in its strategic rivalry with China. By neglecting soft power – as evidenced by its reduced global engagement and wavering commitment to democratic norms – Washington may repeat Stalin’s fallacy and inadvertently cede leadership to Beijing in this consequential contest of attractiveness.

Yanzhong Huang

Yanzhong Huang is a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, and a professor at the School of Diplomacy and International Relations, Seton Hall University.

18. Tariffs Create Markets — Just Not the Ones Policymakers Want

Excerpts:

The current U.S. administration’s policy aspirations discount the realities of labor markets, capital efficiency, and decades of industrial disinvestment. America didn’t just offshore production. It has evolved into a service-based economy, which values scale over proximity. Tariffs alone won’t reverse that. You can’t rebuild industry with nostalgia and heavy-handed, erratic policies that disrupt how the U.S. economy is currently structured. And illicit actors at the margins of the licit economy are no unwitting pawns.

When political theater introduces new chaos in markets, the most adaptable players profit first. Actors with business models unbound by policy coherence or institutional reform are built to thrive in environments with little legal accountability. Transnational criminal organizations and terrorists fit that profile. Then, unsurprisingly, goods including fentanyl find new, easier transit pathways tucked in with legal imports that are seemingly innocuous, like cheap tube socks and TVs in high demand.

The image of the man on the motorcycle emerging from the bush and carrying bags of cheap Thai rice lingers — dodging tariffs and the wishful thinking that enables them. Tariffs alone do not magically revitalize markets unless they are accompanied by sustained structural reforms. They can, however, create markets — just not the ones that policymakers intend.

Tariffs Create Markets — Just Not the Ones Policymakers Want - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Melissa Lloyd · May 19, 2025

Panic wouldn’t help. Anger would make things worse. So, I stared out at the endless fields of northern Nigeria and thought, “I’m a pawn in their chess game. They were never rooks in mine.”

In 2014, I served as an embedded advisor to Nigeria’s minister of agriculture and rural affairs, tasked with building agricultural markets to support stabilization. I flew north with a plan to win over the former minister of agriculture — a powerful businessman who I thought was my rook in the game of market reform. But after landing in the northern city of Kano, my host met me with a smile and a borrowed police guard armed with a rifle. “You’re on my territory now, not the capital’s,” he laughed. He then informed me he had cancelled my hotel reservation and flight back to Abuja.

This was not exactly a threat, but the message was unambiguous. My work to rebuild markets was now secondary. My host wanted a pawn — a foreign mouthpiece to push his political agenda back at the U.S. Embassy and the World Bank. I wasn’t even a good pawn. I was just an early sacrifice in a political game I was only starting to understand.

I learned that being played had its advantages. Over the next week, I observed a new 110 percent rice import tariff take effect, imposed by the Nigerian president but not endorsed by my boss. The tariff rewarded those quickest to adapt beyond the law: smugglers, traffickers, and terrorists who already knew how to turn bad policy into good opportunity.

Tariffs, subsidies, and trade deals aren’t solutions to structural problems that make local markets uncompetitive. Rather, they’re bargaining chips in markets shaped by leverage, not economic principles. I came north to discuss rice and left with a crash course in shadow economies — the margins where real power plays out.

Become a Member

“Here, We Manage”

Nigeria’s favorable growing conditions should render it a net exporter of rice. However, in 2014, it ranked second globally in rice imports, behind only China. The tariff policy crafted in Abuja — and supported in Washington — imposed import tariffs to stimulate domestic production. The theory went that markets would naturally adjust and shield local growers from cheaper rice imports from India and Thailand.

On the third day of the trip, my host paraded me past one farcical corruption scheme after another. This included grain silos that had sat empty since the 1980s. Between our stops, with only two CDs for company — ABBA and a baffling Dutch folk-techno mix — I only cared about getting back to Abuja. Then I saw a man on a motorcycle drive out of the bush onto the main road, weighed down with three 50 kg bags of rice imprinted with Thai script, not Hausa — the dominant local language. I asked, “That rice isn’t local. Isn’t it too expensive with the tariff?” My host waved. “The tariff is an Abuja problem. Here, we manage.” At our next market stop, piles of empty rice bags from India lay beside freshly re-packaged rice marked “Made in Nigeria.”

Once my host was confident that I’d been won over to his agenda, he dropped the canned stump speeches and rambled about how the rice tariff had changed the smuggling business. Of course, he was also involved in a low-grade smuggling game himself. In Nigeria, some level of smuggling in the north isn’t uncommon. In any place where rules are selectively enforced and compliance costs exceed the cost of bribery, smuggling becomes a rational choice. Because my mission on the trip was not to research smuggling, it cost my host nothing to tell the truth.

On that trip, it became clear that a tariff can’t clear a field or fix a broken value chain. Despite protectionist policies to shield local farmers from low-cost imports, growing, milling, and shipping rice from India or Thailand to Lagos remained cheaper than producing it domestically. The Indian and Thai governments subsidize fertilizer and irrigation and guarantee low prices. In Nigeria, those costs fall on the producer. And Nigeria’s neighbors unsurprisingly responded. Benin dropped its rice import tariffs from 35 percent to 7 percent, and Cameroon reduced its tariffs from 10 percent to zero. Soon, warehouses in Cotonou and Douala became filled with rice bound for Nigeria.

It was never a fair fight. No tariff could overcome systemic challenges without decimating local economies.

After plenty of Star Lager on my last night, my host revealed another unsettling truth. “We are Nigerian businessmen. We find our ways. But now there are new men — militants from the north. If the militants keep making money smuggling rice, it will be trouble as these new men build here.”

At the time, “militant” was code for Boko Haram, the U.S.-designated terrorist organization. A few months later, Boko Haram militants kidnapped more than 250 schoolgirls from Chibok in Borno State, east of Kano. The operation garnered widespread international attention.

A notoriously adaptable organization, Boko Haram was capable of expanding operations quickly in new territory — I knew that much. But I hadn’t realized until that moment how tariff-distorted rice markets had turned a low-profit margin staple crop into a lucrative income stream. “Wait, now rice smuggling is funding Boko?” My host, who’d granted me a bit of respect over the past few days, tilted his head, confounded by my ignorance. “Why are you surprised? But now drivers want danger pay. The border guards keep changing their prices for bribes for us, legitimate businessmen.”

Of course, an organization like Boko Haram would exploit whatever the system handed them — power vacuums, margins, neglected roads — where others might only see dysfunction. Criminal organizations see cash flow.

Eventually, I was allowed to return to Abuja after several staged photos of me holding a bag of “local” rice, clearly repackaged, smuggled stock.

When I landed in the capital, I didn’t narrate my host’s script as promised. I did, however, report what I learned about Boko Haram — information obvious in the field but wildly illuminating in the capital. A week later, my report added urgency to growing complaints about the unintended effects of the rice tariff.

The agriculture minister soon called a press conference to announce several policy changes. The tariff on imported rice would be reduced from 110 percent to 30 percent. A new quota system would be developed for importers that invested in local production. Dropping the tariff to 30 percent narrowed the price gap enough that smuggling lost its pricing advantage over cheap, legal imports. The government shifted policies which ultimately left local producers struggling without enough support to expanding production capacity — channeling private sector financing into training and delivering improved seed and fertilizer.

Rice, Smugglers, Terrorists, and the Real Cost of Economic Protectionism

In 2025, as the Trump administration doubles down on tariffs without broader reforms, I find myself thinking back to that dusty, eye-opening trip to Kano — where experience taught me what no white paper ever has about the limits of protectionism.

Of course, the U.S. and Nigerian economies differ greatly. The United States has a capital-rich economy with relatively stable institutions. By contrast, Nigeria’s economy is less developed and has weak institutions. Yet both countries rely on imports to sustain key sectors and keep prices stable — whether for food, fuel, or manufactured goods. Just as President Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria imposed steep rice tariffs against expert advice, President Trump has done the same — prioritizing political optics over economic counsel.

After working across more than 40 countries experiencing varying degrees of economic turmoil and amid political tensions, I’ve seen consistent patterns in how both formal and informal markets respond to pressure, policy, and profit. Nigeria has the arable land and demand to export rice, but not the infrastructure or policy consistency to compete globally. In a similar vein, the United States has the capital and technology to revive manufacturing, but not the labor cost advantage or tolerance for the higher consumer prices and disruption needed to become globally competitive.

The current U.S. administration’s policy aspirations discount the realities of labor markets, capital efficiency, and decades of industrial disinvestment. America didn’t just offshore production. It has evolved into a service-based economy, which values scale over proximity. Tariffs alone won’t reverse that. You can’t rebuild industry with nostalgia and heavy-handed, erratic policies that disrupt how the U.S. economy is currently structured. And illicit actors at the margins of the licit economy are no unwitting pawns.

When political theater introduces new chaos in markets, the most adaptable players profit first. Actors with business models unbound by policy coherence or institutional reform are built to thrive in environments with little legal accountability. Transnational criminal organizations and terrorists fit that profile. Then, unsurprisingly, goods including fentanyl find new, easier transit pathways tucked in with legal imports that are seemingly innocuous, like cheap tube socks and TVs in high demand.

The image of the man on the motorcycle emerging from the bush and carrying bags of cheap Thai rice lingers — dodging tariffs and the wishful thinking that enables them. Tariffs alone do not magically revitalize markets unless they are accompanied by sustained structural reforms. They can, however, create markets — just not the ones that policymakers intend.

Become a Member

Melissa Lloyd spent over 15 years on the ground advising, planning, and implementing security efforts in support of U.S. foreign policy and interagency operations across multiple combatant commands. Her current writing and research engage leaders of semi-autonomous regions navigating the friction between policy and reality.

Image: Chukwukajustice via Wikimedia Commons

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Melissa Lloyd · May 19, 2025

19. The New Cold War with China

Excerpts:

Consider China’s involvement with United Nations environmental organizations and how it has been able to silence criticism and prevent investigations of the activities of its maritime militia. China pillages fish stocks around the globe and often destroys reefs and harasses other national fishing fleets. It has also done much to downplay the PRC’s significant contributions to air pollution and how its development projects worldwide, as part of its Belt and Road Initiative, destroy the environment. Finally, it consistently seeks to reduce Taiwan’s role on the world’s stage and delegitimize its political system and exclude it from international forums.

While the leaders of the People’s Republic of China publicly call for peaceful relations with the United States, they are relentlessly pursuing a campaign to challenge the United States in virtually every economic, political, diplomatic, and military sphere of activities. It consistently seeks advantages using a sustained, long-term campaign of relentlessly expanding its influence using all of the resources of its government.

In many respects, our country is involved in a new Cold War with China requiring a similarly enduring approach that enlists not just the resources of the United States Government but our own civil society, allies and partners, and freedom-loving people across the world. We must do a better job of making America first and China last.

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

The New Cold War with China

By Daniel R. Green

May 19, 2025

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2025/05/19/the_new_cold_war_with_china_1111015.html?mc_cid=7a718e5680

The threat to the United States from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is multifaceted, long-term, and aggressive. Whether it’s from military modernization to economic coercion, cyber warfare to space competition, the PRC’s national security challenge is global, and it targets U.S. interests, values, security, and standing in the world.

While much of the focus of U.S. policymakers has been on the military threat from China, the communist country has also implemented a multi-pronged approach to weaken the United States economically, politically, culturally, and diplomatically. It is enlisting a whole-of-government strategy blending civil and military approaches with tactics short of war to expand its influence and improve its geopolitical position.

Their determined plan uses economics, media, education, politics, culture, diplomacy, and information, among many other approaches, in a highly integrated and orchestrated fashion. Its actions take place within the U.S. domestically, they seek to undermine the U.S. regionally and globally, while sowing doubt in the minds of U.S. allies.

In short, in many respects, the U.S. is involved in a Cold War with China, and it urgently needs to do more to stop their aggressive actions.

A central component of the Cold War with China are the efforts of its government to influence American public opinion and culture. The Chinese Government has a veritable army of anonymous social media accounts which it uses to not only present its views but to foment division among our people while silencing critics of its regime. It also distributes government-funded newspapers within the U.S., little more than propaganda broadsheets, and invests in key media infrastructure to not only support its views but to also mute criticisms of its policies.

Additionally, through massive state support, it also seeks to shape American culture through supporting select movies, such as the 2019 movie Midway, to create division between the alliance of the United States and Japan, as well as prompting the temporary removal of the flag of Taiwan from the jacket of the actor Tom Cruise in the 2022 movie Top Gun: Maverick. Much like the Soviet Union during the Cold War, China uses all of its resources to challenge, coerce, silence, and divide opinions about its policies and actions. It uses cultural influence as much as any other capability at its disposal.

There is no better example of this than what China has done to expand its capabilities in space. Through robust state-funded support, economic espionage, theft, and coercion, China has aggressively grown its constellation of satellites and other capabilities giving its military and intelligence services as well as its state-run industries significant advantages. To this end, it has even tried to replicate Elon Musk’s reusable rocket concept, the Starship, as well as its Mechazilla Catching Tower.

These are just the latest examples of Chinese economic espionage which has been going on for decades and done great harm to our commercial space companies. Even as they have advocated for peaceful uses of space, China has also aggressively militarized space creating advantages that could be used in a future conflict. The U.S. needs to do a better job at confronting this sustained threat.

The Chinese Government has also sought to systematically expand its power and take over international institutions affiliated with the United Nations and other global and regional organizations. These efforts are made not only to expand its control but to also mute international criticism of the PRC’s actions and to create diplomatic and other complications for the U.S. and its allies.

Consider China’s involvement with United Nations environmental organizations and how it has been able to silence criticism and prevent investigations of the activities of its maritime militia. China pillages fish stocks around the globe and often destroys reefs and harasses other national fishing fleets. It has also done much to downplay the PRC’s significant contributions to air pollution and how its development projects worldwide, as part of its Belt and Road Initiative, destroy the environment. Finally, it consistently seeks to reduce Taiwan’s role on the world’s stage and delegitimize its political system and exclude it from international forums.

While the leaders of the People’s Republic of China publicly call for peaceful relations with the United States, they are relentlessly pursuing a campaign to challenge the United States in virtually every economic, political, diplomatic, and military sphere of activities. It consistently seeks advantages using a sustained, long-term campaign of relentlessly expanding its influence using all of the resources of its government.

In many respects, our country is involved in a new Cold War with China requiring a similarly enduring approach that enlists not just the resources of the United States Government but our own civil society, allies and partners, and freedom-loving people across the world. We must do a better job of making America first and China last.

Daniel R. Green, Ph.D., is a Research Fellow at The Heritage Foundation. He served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy and Force Development from 2019-2021. He is the co-editor of "Confronting China: U.S. Defense Policy in an Era of Great Power Competition" (Bloomsbury, 2024). These views are his own and do not necessarily represent the U.S. Department of Defense.

20. Defend Taiwan: The Reason Why

Excerpts:

Lose Taiwan and Asia will turn “red” overnight. Every country in the region will cut a deal with Beijing. The Japanese might resist but it will just be a question of how much freedom China allows Tokyo to pretend to have — and how much territory Japan can keep.

The Australians? Distance won’t save them. And Australia is a big place. So a million or two Chinese immigrants might be part of the deal too. Beyond Asia, every country anywhere that was counting on explicit or implicit promises of American protection would have serious doubts.

The United States’s reputation would be shot. It would have trouble hanging on in the Asia-Pacific, and gradually it would be forced back to Hawaii and the American west coast. Globally it will be on the ropes.

Even in the United States a constituency could be expected to declare that America must manage its decline gracefully. Taiwan is not the hill to die on, they’ll say. They never say which one is.

Mr. Colby may think Taiwan isn’t existential for America, but it is terrifying for Beijing. A vibrant Taiwan democracy puts the lie to Beijing’s claim that only it can govern China, since according to the Party, and Jackie Chan, Chinese people can only be ruled with a boot on the neck.

How does the CCP explain Taiwan — consensually governed, with all the freedoms Americans take for granted, and economically prosperous? It can’t. And what about Taiwan and semiconductors? It produces about 60 percent of the world’s chips and 90 percent of the highest-end ones.

Ultimately, it’s freedom that is at stake here. For just about everyone alive, America has always been freedom’s backstop. That was never guaranteed. John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan knew defending freedom was defending America. Taiwan is the bellwether.

Defend Taiwan: The Reason Why

The free Republic of China on Taiwan is a bellwether for the fate of freedom in Asia.

GRANT NEWSHAMPublished: May. 16, 2025 09:34 AM ETUpdated: May. 17, 2025 09:46 AM ET

nysun.com

https://www.nysun.com/article/defend-taiwan-why?member_gift=CUZ5qwd3crq4pmz-xrd&utm

Sometimes it’s worth thinking about why you think what you think. Take the Republic of China on Taiwan. Defending Taiwan is an article of faith in some quarters. Yet not everywhere.

A year-and-a-half ago an Asia security expert advising the American military and reportedly now under consideration for a job in the Trump administration told a small group, including me, that Taiwan should not be defended.

The argument? The Chinese military is too strong, so we’d lose if we tried to save Taiwan. The American military would be savaged and our standing worldwide as well. Thus, we must let Taiwan go. Can’t be helped. That’s a handsome way to describe preemptive surrender.

America’s undersecretary of defense for policy, Elbridge Colby, now drafting our national defense strategy, doesn’t go quite as far, but in his confirmation hearing he remarked that Taiwan is important but not “existential” for America. So it’s worth reviewing why Taiwan’s freedom matters.

Elbridge Colby. Via the Marathon Initiative

Let Taiwan fall under Chinese Communist control and several things happen — none of them good for America or the free world, not to mention the Taiwanese themselves. Militarily, it’s a huge advantage for the Communist China’s People’s Liberation Army.

For starters, the First Island Chain is broken. The PLA will have solved a longstanding strategic problem of how to penetrate the chain of islands stretching from Japan down to Malaysia that obstructs easy access to the Pacific. Properly defended, the islands hem in the PLA.

Taiwan is right in the middle. Imagine a castle wall being breached. Operating from Taiwan, the PLA swings to the north and surrounds Japan. Move down to the south, and Australia is cut off.

The PLA gets ready access to the Central Pacific and beyond.

This includes the hitherto “safe” zone formed by the Freely Associated States — Palau, Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands. This east-west “corridor of freedom” is the main logistics route for Yanks operating in the Western Pacific. Everything gets harder, or impossible, if the American military has to fight its way to the fight.

A member of the Taiwan coast guard monitors a China coast guard boat as it passes near the coast of Matsu islands, Taiwan, October 14, 2024. Taiwan coast guard via AP

PLA objectives extend across the entire Pacific Ocean — all the way to Latin America. China is laying in the needed port and airfield infrastructure in South America. The new port at Chancay, Peru, is just one example.

Looking beyond the military aspect there’s a huge political and psychological effect from 23 million free people coming under Chinese Communist domination.

First, it demonstrates that American military power could not prevent a free people’s enslavement. American financial and economic power and pressure against the PRC couldn’t either. As ominously, American nuclear weapons couldn’t stop the PRC.

Lose Taiwan and Asia will turn “red” overnight. Every country in the region will cut a deal with Beijing. The Japanese might resist but it will just be a question of how much freedom China allows Tokyo to pretend to have — and how much territory Japan can keep.

The Australians? Distance won’t save them. And Australia is a big place. So a million or two Chinese immigrants might be part of the deal too. Beyond Asia, every country anywhere that was counting on explicit or implicit promises of American protection would have serious doubts.

Republic of China military exercises aimed at repelling an attack from Communist China at Hsinchu County. AP/Chiang Ying-ying, file

The United States’s reputation would be shot. It would have trouble hanging on in the Asia-Pacific, and gradually it would be forced back to Hawaii and the American west coast. Globally it will be on the ropes.

Even in the United States a constituency could be expected to declare that America must manage its decline gracefully. Taiwan is not the hill to die on, they’ll say. They never say which one is.

Mr. Colby may think Taiwan isn’t existential for America, but it is terrifying for Beijing. A vibrant Taiwan democracy puts the lie to Beijing’s claim that only it can govern China, since according to the Party, and Jackie Chan, Chinese people can only be ruled with a boot on the neck.

How does the CCP explain Taiwan — consensually governed, with all the freedoms Americans take for granted, and economically prosperous? It can’t. And what about Taiwan and semiconductors? It produces about 60 percent of the world’s chips and 90 percent of the highest-end ones.

Ultimately, it’s freedom that is at stake here. For just about everyone alive, America has always been freedom’s backstop. That was never guaranteed. John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan knew defending freedom was defending America. Taiwan is the bellwether.

21. The Inequality Myth: Western Societies Are Growing More Equal, Not Less

Excerpts:

Misreading inequality courts several risks. It diverts energy from the real challenges to Western economies, which include lax productivity growth, aging populations, and the imperatives of climate adaptation. These problems will strain public budgets. But excessive state-centrism and confiscatory wealth taxes impede capital formation and make financing those tasks harder, not easier. Misunderstanding inequality also breeds regressivity: taxing housing wealth indiscriminately can hit asset-rich but cash-poor retirees; taxing private firms can force sales to multinational giants with cheaper credit. And it corrodes trust: when citizens hear that capitalism benefits only the elite—even as their own living standards rise—they may grow cynical about official statistics and susceptible to populist cures worse than the disease.

A more accurate reading of the data supports a balanced agenda. To be clear, excessive wealth concentration poses risks—most notably to political integrity. Transparent rules for campaign financing and party contributions are essential to minimize the undue influence of money. Core welfare services, such as education and health care, should not become overly dependent on private funding, otherwise they would tie the quality of care to personal wealth—and in the process deepen inequality. The solution is not to curb wealth itself but to safeguard the integrity of political institutions and ensure equitable access to public goods.

States should celebrate entrepreneurial success and foster competition by reducing regulatory burdens—especially those that disproportionately affect smaller and younger firms. Taxation on labor income should be modest enough to incentivize hard work and also allow for the accumulation of new wealth, while capital taxation should target income rather than wealth or inheritances. Public investment should focus on building the capabilities that let households become stakeholders—education, infrastructure, and a rules-based climate that rewards risk-taking. Such an agenda accepts that inequality can coexist with, and even flow from, broad prosperity. Frustration with privilege should be channeled into reforms that expand opportunity rather than cap success.

This agenda advances neither laissez-faire complacency nor egalitarian maximalism. It is an acknowledgment that the West’s most remarkable achievement is not the fortune of a Jeff Bezos or Bernard Arnault but the mundane riches enjoyed by millions whose grandparents lived without antibiotics, central heating, or college degrees. Policymakers would do well to remember that progress before they diagnose calamity—and nurture the conditions that make it possible: secure property rights, open markets, and an efficient public sector powered by the very economic growth its advocates sometimes disparage.

The Inequality Myth

Foreign Affairs · by More by Daniel Waldenstrom · May 19, 2025

Western Societies Are Growing More Equal, Not Less

Daniel Waldenstrom

May 19, 2025

Shoppers in New York City, December 2022 Eduardo Munoz / Reuters

DANIEL WALDENSTROM is Professor of Economics at IFN Stockholm and the author of Richer and More Equal: A New History of Wealth in the West.

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Spend a few minutes browsing political commentary or scrolling social media and you will discover a seemingly settled truth: inequality in the West is soaring, the middle class is being hollowed out, and democracies stand on the brink of oligarchy. The idea is seductive because it fits everyday anxieties in many Western countries—housing has grown increasingly unaffordable, billionaire wealth mushrooms unfathomably, and the pandemic exposed yawning gaps in social safety nets. Yet the most influential claims about inequality rest on selective readings of history and partial measurements of living standards. When the full balance sheet of modern economies is tallied—including taxes, transfers, pension entitlements, homeownership, and the fact that people move through income brackets across their lives—the story looks markedly different. Western societies are not nearly as unequal as many believe them to be.

This is not a call for complacency. Concentrated economic power can distort markets and politics; pockets of deep poverty persist in rich countries; and in the United States, the top of the distribution has indeed sprinted ahead of the rest. But focusing only on the eye-catching fortunes of tech founders or hedge-fund managers obscures a quieter, broader transformation: households across the income spectrum now own capital on a scale unimaginable to earlier generations, and basic measures of well-being in Western societies—including life expectancy, educational attainment, and consumption possibilities—have improved for nearly everyone.

Getting the facts right matters because bad diagnosis breeds bad prescriptions. If governments assume that capitalism is inexorably recreating the disparities of the Gilded Age, they will reach for wealth confiscations, price controls, or ever-larger public sectors funded by fragile tax bases. If, instead, the evidence shows that free-market economies have enriched middle classes by expanding asset ownership, that entrepreneurs’ fortunes are associated with advances shared with the broader public, and that much of the post-1980 rise in recorded inequality reflects methodological quirks, then a different agenda follows: states should encourage ambition, protect competition, widen access to wealth-building, and ensure that public services complement—not smother—private prosperity. In short, before treating inequality as an existential crisis, it is worth double-checking the thermometer.

THE TALE OF RUNAWAY INEQUALITY

The prevailing narrative about inequality—popularized by the economist Thomas Piketty in his bestselling 2014 book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century—depicts a U-shaped curve. In this view, the extreme concentration of income and wealth among a narrow elite in the early twentieth century was broken only by the world wars and taxes on capital. The turn toward market liberalization around 1980 unleashed a second wave of plutocracy. Charts of top-income shares appear to confirm the story: since 1980, the top one percent’s slice of pretax income has surged, especially in the United States and the United Kingdom. Add the proliferation of celebrity billionaires, the stagnation of median wages, and the eruption of high-profile corporate scandals, and the picture seems complete.

Three kinds of evidence underpin this interpretation. First are tax-return data that track pretax market income: salaries, dividends, and realized capital gains. These show widening gaps because high earners captured disproportionate gains from globalization and digital technology. Second are surveys of household wealth that measure who owns stocks and real estate; when asset prices boom, wealthy portfolios balloon. Third are particular statistics that make headlines—the many CEOs paid hundreds of times more than average workers, or the eight men who together are richer than half the world—and feed public outrage.

But such evidence has limits. Starting the clock in 1980 is rhetorically convenient because inequality was then unusually low, following decades of steep taxation and stringent regulation that had dampened entrepreneurship and curtailed many ambitious career paths. Today’s levels, although higher than those of the late 1970s, are far below those of the pre–World War II era when taxes were much lower than they are today. In addition, most estimates of income inequality have actually plateaued in the last two decades. Likewise, focusing on pretax income ignores the consequences of progressive taxation and, crucially, the vast public spending on health care, education, and pensions that disproportionately benefits lower- and middle-income households. Finally, wealth surveys often exclude mandatory pension assets and undercount owner-occupied housing—the two largest stores of middle-class wealth.

Recent work on U.S. income distribution by the tax economists Gerald Auten and David Splinter shows that correcting for underreported income at the bottom, income shifted into tax-deferred retirement accounts, and welfare transfers flattens the trend dramatically: in the United States, the top one percent’s share of after-tax income is only slightly higher today than it was in 1960, nowhere near the doubling implied by estimates presented by Piketty and his co-authors. Europe’s picture is flatter still, thanks to heavier redistribution and less winner-take-all compensation at the top of the corporate ladder.

A RISING TIDE

The canonical data tell only part of the story, and the least flattering part at that. A growing body of scholarship reassesses the long-run distribution of wealth by adding what earlier studies neglected. Three findings stand out.

First, private wealth has exploded—but so has broad ownership of it. Reconstructed national balance sheets for France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States show real per-adult wealth roughly tripling since 1980 and rising more than sevenfold since 1950. Crucially, an increasing share of that capital sits in the homes and pension funds of ordinary households. In 1900, assets held by the elite—agricultural domains and shares in industrial or financial corporations—dominated; today, residential property and funded retirement accounts represent the majority of private assets. That shift parallels mass homeownership: in most Western countries, 60 to 70 percent of households now own the roof over their heads—an equity stake unavailable to their great-grandparents. Most workers hold pension claims in mutual funds or index funds, granting them the high returns of stock markets at low risk—what amounts to financial democratization.

Second, wealth concentration has fallen—not risen—over the past century. In Europe, the top one percent now owns barely a third of the share it held in 1910, right before the beginning of the transformative era of world wars, democratization, and the growth of governmental capacity, and since the 1970s that share has been essentially flat, even as real wealth—that is, wealth adjusted for inflation—has tripled with rising asset prices. The United States shows a clearer uptick beginning in the 1970s, most visible among the spectacular fortunes of tech and finance titans, whose gains have outpaced even the impressive wealth growth of the middle class. Yet U.S. concentration remains closer to its 1960 level than to its pre-1914 peak. The dominant quantitative fact of the century, therefore, is not a new Gilded Age but a dramatic wealth equalization propelled by mass asset ownership.

Third, the fact that people move through different income brackets over the course of their lives should temper typical measures of inequality. So, too, should the effects of welfare payments. Annual snapshots lump graduate students with retirees living off savings, making income and wealth gaps appear wider than lifetime consumption gaps. When studies in different countries instead follow individuals over time, they typically find that within only a few years, half the households in the bottom income decile have climbed to higher levels. Many top-decile households can drop to lower rungs of the ladder after business or investment setbacks. Government welfare programs further compress differences. In Sweden, when public pension entitlements are capitalized and added to assessments of personal wealth, this alone cuts the measured wealth inequality—known as the Gini coefficient—by almost half. In the United States, the market’s redistributive role is smaller, but when Social Security, Medicare, and employer-provided health insurance are treated as in-kind income, median households fare far better than raw wage data suggest.

These facts undermine the image of an inexorably widening chasm between a plutocratic elite and the rest. Yes, superstar entrepreneurs have amassed fortunes measured in tens of billions. But that outcome signals success, not failure: they furnished goods and services that millions freely bought. Their booming companies also supply jobs, higher wage earnings, and substantial tax revenue—directly through profits and payrolls and indirectly by raising the broader tax base. Over the past four decades, life expectancy in advanced economies (including in the United States despite the much-noted increase in “deaths of despair”) rose roughly six years, high school completion became nearly universal, and personal computers once reserved for elites went mainstream.

Those who typically bemoan the rise of inequality don’t correctly weigh the size and division of the pie. Rising real incomes and higher asset values are preconditions for mass prosperity and for a well-funded public sector. Even advocates of government intervention should champion efficient growth: every percentage point of GDP adds billions to tax revenue. The West’s most durable path to fairness, then, is to scale up the channels through which ordinary households acquire assets—including affordable housing supply, portable retirement accounts, and low-fee index funds—and to keep markets open so new firms can challenge incumbents.

That perspective should also moderate calls for annual taxes on the stock of net wealth, which have recently been proposed by some politicians and researchers, and have even been discussed officially at G-20 and UN meetings. These so-called wealth taxes are problematic because they hit illiquid assets, forcing entrepreneurs or farmers to borrow or liquidate. Scandinavian experience of such taxes shows that they produce meager revenues, come with high administrative costs, and encourage capital flight. If capital is to be taxed, a more efficient and equitable way is to tax capital income—such as dividends, realized gains, and corporate profits.

DIAGNOSING CALAMITY

Misreading inequality courts several risks. It diverts energy from the real challenges to Western economies, which include lax productivity growth, aging populations, and the imperatives of climate adaptation. These problems will strain public budgets. But excessive state-centrism and confiscatory wealth taxes impede capital formation and make financing those tasks harder, not easier. Misunderstanding inequality also breeds regressivity: taxing housing wealth indiscriminately can hit asset-rich but cash-poor retirees; taxing private firms can force sales to multinational giants with cheaper credit. And it corrodes trust: when citizens hear that capitalism benefits only the elite—even as their own living standards rise—they may grow cynical about official statistics and susceptible to populist cures worse than the disease.

A more accurate reading of the data supports a balanced agenda. To be clear, excessive wealth concentration poses risks—most notably to political integrity. Transparent rules for campaign financing and party contributions are essential to minimize the undue influence of money. Core welfare services, such as education and health care, should not become overly dependent on private funding, otherwise they would tie the quality of care to personal wealth—and in the process deepen inequality. The solution is not to curb wealth itself but to safeguard the integrity of political institutions and ensure equitable access to public goods.

States should celebrate entrepreneurial success and foster competition by reducing regulatory burdens—especially those that disproportionately affect smaller and younger firms. Taxation on labor income should be modest enough to incentivize hard work and also allow for the accumulation of new wealth, while capital taxation should target income rather than wealth or inheritances. Public investment should focus on building the capabilities that let households become stakeholders—education, infrastructure, and a rules-based climate that rewards risk-taking. Such an agenda accepts that inequality can coexist with, and even flow from, broad prosperity. Frustration with privilege should be channeled into reforms that expand opportunity rather than cap success.

This agenda advances neither laissez-faire complacency nor egalitarian maximalism. It is an acknowledgment that the West’s most remarkable achievement is not the fortune of a Jeff Bezos or Bernard Arnault but the mundane riches enjoyed by millions whose grandparents lived without antibiotics, central heating, or college degrees. Policymakers would do well to remember that progress before they diagnose calamity—and nurture the conditions that make it possible: secure property rights, open markets, and an efficient public sector powered by the very economic growth its advocates sometimes disparage.

DANIEL WALDENSTROM is Professor of Economics at IFN Stockholm and the author of Richer and More Equal: A New History of Wealth in the West.

Foreign Affairs · by More by Daniel Waldenstrom · May 19, 2025

22. Distorting a Legacy — The Misrepresentation of General William J. Donovan in “Secrets Declassified”

Prime Minister Winston Churchill said: “You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something sometime in your life.”

Gen. Donovan said he had greater enemies in Washington than Hitler had in Europe.

And he still does.

Distorting a Legacy — The Misrepresentation of General William J. Donovan in “Secrets Declassified”

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/distorting-legacy-misrepresentation-general-william-j-ken-robinson-o62jc/?trackingId=WxzWSyySGP4kCMZ8JRgMug%3D%3D

Ken Robinson

National Security, Counter Terrorism, Cyber Security, and Multi-Media Entertainment Professional

May 18, 2025

The History Channel’s episode of Secrets Declassified, hosted by David Duchovny, purports to reveal shadowy truths about America’s early intelligence history by spotlighting a little-known organization known as “The Pond.” However, in its attempt to dramatize clandestine operations and suggest buried secrets, the episode profoundly distorts the historical record—particularly by diminishing and misrepresenting the towering contributions of Major General William J. “Wild Bill” Donovan, the father of American intelligence and founder of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS).

This essay will expose in detail the factual inaccuracies, intellectual laziness, and thematic misdirections of the program, especially where it repositions “The Pond” as a central, pioneering force in U.S. intelligence—at the expense of Donovan’s rightful place in history. We will examine how these distortions not only discredit a complex and consequential legacy, but also undermine public understanding of the true birth of modern American intelligence.

⸻

I. Mischaracterizing Donovan’s Role and Impact

1. Ignoring the Founding Role of Donovan and the OSS

The documentary implies or even suggests that “The Pond” was a rival or predecessor to the CIA. In fact, The Pond was a small, ultra-secret, privately run intelligence project under U.S. Army G-2 (military intelligence), created in 1942—after the OSS had already been established by Donovan earlier that same year. The OSS, by contrast, was the nation’s first centralized, coordinated civilian intelligence agency. Under Donovan’s visionary leadership, it conducted espionage, sabotage, guerrilla warfare, and psychological operations across multiple theaters of World War II.

Donovan’s OSS laid the foundational concepts, doctrines, and institutional frameworks for what would become the Central Intelligence Agency in 1947. It established America’s first true strategic intelligence capability. Yet the program barely mentions this legacy, and instead positions “The Pond” as the more secretive and thus more ‘effective’ organization—when, in fact, the Pond was fringe, experimental, and never operated on the scale, breadth, or complexity of the OSS.

2. Omitting Donovan’s Global Diplomatic and Operational Reach

Under Donovan, the OSS operated in over 50 countries, recruited thousands of agents (many behind enemy lines), and created networks that helped win the war in Europe and Asia. Donovan personally coordinated with Churchill and SOE, Chiang Kai-shek, de Gaulle, and resistance networks from Norway to Burma. He stood atop a vast transnational machine of wartime intelligence—and this is simply omitted. The program’s failure to even mention his direct involvement in operations like Jedburgh Teams, the Detachment 101 campaign in Burma, or the partnership with the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) is a travesty of omission.

⸻

II. Glorifying “The Pond” at the Expense of Historical Context

1. Elevating a Sideshow

“The Pond” was a boutique intelligence-gathering operation, focused primarily on counterintelligence and developing sources through foreign business and diplomatic connections. Run by John Grombach, it remained intentionally small, secretive, and was never institutionalized the way OSS was. The History Channel incorrectly inflates the significance of The Pond as a foundational intelligence body. In reality, the Pond never rivaled the OSS in budget, manpower, or strategic impact. It was often viewed with suspicion by other agencies for its secrecy and personalistic management.

The glorification of the Pond stems largely from its obscurity and a handful of recently declassified documents, not from any meaningful assessment of its historical weight. That obscurity, far from being proof of effectiveness, was often a function of institutional distrust.

2. Misrepresenting Interagency Conflicts

The show leans on the tired trope of bureaucratic turf wars to frame Donovan and the OSS as “too visible” or “too political,” and The Pond as the “real” spies operating in the shadows. While interagency conflict certainly existed—particularly with J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI and parts of the Pentagon—this narrative is overplayed and misleading. The OSS’s public profile was a function of its scale and success. President Roosevelt directly empowered Donovan to unify and professionalize U.S. intelligence gathering. That mandate, not ego or publicity, is why Donovan clashed with insular bureaucrats like Hoover and military conservatives.

⸻

III. Undermining the Origins of the CIA

1. Falsely Attributing the CIA’s Origin to The Pond

The central falsehood of the program is its implication that The Pond was the precursor to the CIA. This is patently false. When President Truman dissolved the OSS in October 1945, he retained its Research and Analysis (R&A) branch and handed its clandestine capabilities to the State Department and War Department temporarily. But these functions—and the intelligence professionals who carried them out—would become the spine of the CIA in 1947, built largely upon OSS veterans. Donovan had lobbied hard for a permanent, centralized intelligence agency, and while Truman distrusted him personally, his blueprint was followed.

Notably, Allen Dulles, Richard Helms, William Colby, and other future CIA directors were all OSS men. “The Pond” was shut down by 1955, after being deemed unreliable, redundant, and too secretive even for the Cold War intelligence establishment.

2. Historical Erasure by Suggestion

The documentary makes a subtle but insidious suggestion that Donovan’s legacy is somehow discredited, or that he was an amateur in comparison to shadowy Grombach. This is historical erasure by omission and tone. Donovan was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the Medal of Honor, and over 20 foreign decorations. Churchill called him “the best man America sent to the war.” Truman would later call the creation of the CIA “a direct result of Donovan’s efforts.” To minimize his contributions is not only historically wrong but intellectually dishonest.

⸻

IV. A Final Note on Style Over Substance

This episode of Secrets Declassified commits the all-too-common sin of modern pseudo-history: it substitutes mood for truth. Dramatic music, dark visuals, and secretive whispers about long-buried files seduce viewers into thinking they’re hearing forbidden truths, when in fact they’re being fed selective distortions. This tabloid approach to history may drive ratings, but it obliterates the facts. General Donovan deserves better—and so does the American public.

⸻

Conclusion

General William J. Donovan was not merely the founder of the OSS—he was the intellectual and moral architect of modern American intelligence. His vision, forged on the battlefields of both world wars and in the corridors of international diplomacy, birthed a professional intelligence service capable of defending a democratic state in an age of global ideological conflict. By distorting that legacy, the History Channel’s Secrets Declassified trades truth for cheap intrigue. The Pond, interesting as it may be, was not the center of American intelligence history. Donovan was. And no amount of selective editing or dramatic narration should be allowed to obscure that fact.

History remembers Donovan not because he was secretive, but because he was right.

Ken Robinson, OSS Society Member

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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Special operations are becoming the Pentagon’s future ‘normal’

“SOF is floated as a one-size-fits-all solution for a lot of problems,” said one former official.

Mike Waltz Fell Into an Age-Old Trap in Political History

Putin’s Plan to Outlast Ukraine and the U.S.

Russia’s leader ‘blossoms whenever he talks about war’ and hopes Trump will give up on a peace deal.

China Fills the U.S. Void in the Americas

Beijing is making the most of Trump’s trade war by cozying up to Latin nations.

Special Operations News – Monday, May 19, 2025

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Lawrence of Arabia dies​

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/may-19/lawrence-of-arabia-dies

10 Things You May Not Know About ‘Lawrence of Arabia’

Born out of wedlock, Lawrence only learned his true identity after his father’s death.

The real “Lawrence of Arabia” was a man of short stature.

He first traveled to the Middle East as an Oxford archaeology student.

He never had a single day of battlefield training.

Lawrence lost two brothers who also served in World War I.

Lawrence’s fame did not come until after the war.

He refused a knighthood.

Lawrence worked for Winston Churchill.

After World War I, he re-enlisted under assumed names.

Lawrence died in a motorcycle crash.

Rare-Earths Plants Are Popping Up Outside China

U.S., Brazil are among countries building capacity to mine and refine metals for EVs and smartphones

Tariff War De-Escalation: Prelude To Geopolitical Rebalancing – OpEd

Trade and Geopolitical Rivalry

Geopolitical Impact

Economic Impact

Global Governance Impact

Technological Impact

Trump’s actions are pushing thousands of experts to flee government

‘We’re going to lose some knowledge’

The possibilities and pitfalls of unorthodox diplomacy

A Time to Act: Japanese Security Between the United States and China

Introduction

Japan’s Deepening Concerns about China’s Military and Taiwan

Changing US Expectations Force Japan to Adapt

Internal Considerations for Japan, Conclusion, Recommendations

About The Authors

In the Future, China Will Be Dominant. The U.S. Will Be Irrelevant.

The Moody’s Downgrade Is an Alarm. Washington Better Pay Attention.

Americans are getting wise to the left’s chicanery​

Book Review | The Russian Understanding of War: Blurring the Lines Between War and Peace

About The Author

Opinion: The China threat was always real. The American response never was.

Opinion | By eroding US soft power, Trump is ceding the contest to China

Trump 2.0 has boosted China’s charm offensive, making its assertive foreign policy and unapologetic authoritarianism look less threatening

https://www.scmp.com/opinion/world-opinion/article/3310052/eroding-us-soft-power-trump-ceding-contest-china

Tariffs Create Markets — Just Not the Ones Policymakers Want - War on the Rocks

Defend Taiwan: The Reason Why

The free Republic of China on Taiwan is a bellwether for the fate of freedom in Asia.

GRANT NEWSHAMPublished: May. 16, 2025 09:34 AM ETUpdated: May. 17, 2025 09:46 AM ET

nysun.com

https://www.nysun.com/article/defend-taiwan-why?member_gift=CUZ5qwd3crq4pmz-xrd&utm

Sometimes it’s worth thinking about why you think what you think. Take the Republic of China on Taiwan. Defending Taiwan is an article of faith in some quarters. Yet not everywhere.

A year-and-a-half ago an Asia security expert advising the American military and reportedly now under consideration for a job in the Trump administration told a small group, including me, that Taiwan should not be defended.

The argument? The Chinese military is too strong, so we’d lose if we tried to save Taiwan. The American military would be savaged and our standing worldwide as well. Thus, we must let Taiwan go. Can’t be helped. That’s a handsome way to describe preemptive surrender.

Elbridge Colby. Via the Marathon Initiative

Let Taiwan fall under Chinese Communist control and several things happen — none of them good for America or the free world, not to mention the Taiwanese themselves. Militarily, it’s a huge advantage for the Communist China’s People’s Liberation Army.

For starters, the First Island Chain is broken. The PLA will have solved a longstanding strategic problem of how to penetrate the chain of islands stretching from Japan down to Malaysia that obstructs easy access to the Pacific. Properly defended, the islands hem in the PLA.

Taiwan is right in the middle. Imagine a castle wall being breached. Operating from Taiwan, the PLA swings to the north and surrounds Japan. Move down to the south, and Australia is cut off.

The PLA gets ready access to the Central Pacific and beyond.

A member of the Taiwan coast guard monitors a China coast guard boat as it passes near the coast of Matsu islands, Taiwan, October 14, 2024. Taiwan coast guard via AP

PLA objectives extend across the entire Pacific Ocean — all the way to Latin America. China is laying in the needed port and airfield infrastructure in South America. The new port at Chancay, Peru, is just one example.

Looking beyond the military aspect there’s a huge political and psychological effect from 23 million free people coming under Chinese Communist domination.

First, it demonstrates that American military power could not prevent a free people’s enslavement. American financial and economic power and pressure against the PRC couldn’t either. As ominously, American nuclear weapons couldn’t stop the PRC.

Lose Taiwan and Asia will turn “red” overnight. Every country in the region will cut a deal with Beijing. The Japanese might resist but it will just be a question of how much freedom China allows Tokyo to pretend to have — and how much territory Japan can keep.

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