Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

"Truth exists, only lies are invented."

– Georges Braque

“Victory is not won by arms alone, but by the slow weaving of trust with those who fight beside you.”

– T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom

“Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all the unifying agents. Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a god, but never without a belief in a devil.”

– Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements

1. I Fought in Ukraine and Here’s Why FPV Drones Kind of Suck

2. For Iran’s Nuclear Program, a Month Is Longer Than It Sounds

3. The winners and losers in a trillion-dollar US defence budget

4. Trump Lifts Sanctions on Syria as It Holds Talks on Diplomatic Ties With Israel

5. Five Errors About Iran’s War on Israel, America, and the West

6. Trump’s Diplomatic Model

7. Trump Seeks to Remake the World

8. The Great Budget Baseline Con

9. FM 3-05 Army Special Operations (June 2025)

10. Thousands of State Department Workers Brace for Layoffs

11. A Strait Comparison: Lessons from the Dardanelles for a Strait of Hormuz Closure

12. Taiwan’s President Takes on China, and His Opponents, in Speaking Tour

13. SOUTHCOM’s TMPI: Towards Integrated Deterrence in the Americas by Building Maintenance Capacity

14. Tolstoy’s Complaint: Mission Command in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

15. Exploring African Perspectives on Irregular Warfare

16. They Demanded Democracy. Years Later, They Are Still Paying the Price.

17. Ukraine Can Still Win: Western Half Measures Have Prolonged the War, but Decisive Action Now Could End It

18. The Arctic Great Game: And Why America Risks Losing It

19. An Industrial Policy With American Characteristics: To Compete Like China, America Should Build Like China

20. There’s a Race to Power the Future. China Is Pulling Away.

21. America owes its Afghan partners more than this

22. China’s new graphite bomb signals shift to silent siege of Taiwan

23. Give the A-10s to Taiwan and they can stop a Chinese sea invasion

24. China is not alone in building a new cult of heroes and martyrs

25. I’m a Conservative Evangelical. I’m Done With the Army.

1. I Fought in Ukraine and Here’s Why FPV Drones Kind of Suck

I missed this essay last week. This is not a perspective that I have read anywhere else.

Excerpts:

All that said, if a member of a NATO military were hypothetically to ask me whether NATO countries should acquire first-person view drone capabilities, based on my experience and given the current state of the technology, I would probably say no, whether they are radio-controlled or fiber-optic. The vast majority of first-person view drone missions can be completed more cheaply, effectively, or reliably by other assets. Furthermore, other authors have noted that drones still do not come close to matching the effects that can be achieved by massed artillery fires. Additionally, experts on artillery systems consistently note the greater reliability and range of artillery.

Scaling up drone use would also involve scaling up the drones’ logistical tail. This means more complicated and expensive logistics for drones that would compete for resources with other types of weapons. For the time being, first-person view drones are unlikely to fully replace other weapons systems. No military leader is yet seriously advocating doing away with artillery completely in favor of first-person view drones. This means that the military will have two competing logistical tails: one for first-person view drones and one for artillery.

For sophisticated NATO militaries, instead of investing heavily in the development of first-person view drone capabilities, I would, first of all, recommend ensuring that troops in the field have well-trained organic mortar support with an ample supply of ammunition. Mortars, like artillery, can’t be stopped by bad weather, jamming, or crowded frequencies. Nor can they be impeded by the dark. A well-trained mortar crew can reliably put rounds on a target in less than five minutes. Our first-person view sorties took about 15 minutes from the initial request to the moment the drone struck the target, and that was only when conditions were optimal. A mortar’s price per shot is lower than a first-person view drone. Drones can nominally have an advantage over mortars in range, but this is variable and depends on the terrain, the specific location of the mortars relative to the drone launch site, and the deployment of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets that find the targets for drones or mortars. In practice, I don’t remember a single case when we struck a target that was beyond the range of mortars, and we certainly never struck a target that was beyond the range of artillery.

Secondly, for the rare cases when troops actually need tactical-level, organic precision-strike capability, and when actually carrying out such a strike is feasible, I would recommend something a little bit more high-end than a first-person view drone. NATO countries and their allies already produce high-quality loitering munitions, like the Switchblade. Such loitering munitions provide greater precision in day and night, more ease of use, and higher resistance to electronic interference than first-person view drones. They are also more expensive, but their cost is, like first-person view drones, coming down. The investment in quality seems to justify the greater expense, especially since, at most, one in ten first-person view sorties is a precision strike.

I Fought in Ukraine and Here’s Why FPV Drones Kind of Suck – War on the Rocks

Jakub Jajcay

June 26, 2025

warontherocks.com · June 26, 2025

In 2024 and 2025, I served for six months as an international volunteer on a first-person view attack drone team in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. My team was deployed in the Donbas region, in one of the hottest sectors of the front. When I joined the team, I was excited to work with a cutting-edge tool. By the end of my deployment, I was a bit disillusioned. Let me tell you why.

First-person view drones are unmanned aerial vehicles with four propellers located at the four corners of the craft, roughly in the shape of a square of seven to 12 inches in length on each side. They are controlled by an operator wearing virtual-reality goggles that receive the image from the drone’s forward-facing camera (hence the name first-person view). The most common types of first-person view drones are single-use: They fly directly into their target, where they detonate an explosive charge of up to 1.5 kilograms. These drones are touted as a cheap and accessible solution that can give troops on the tactical level their own organic precision-strike capability. They can supposedly react quickly and strike moving targets or targets in difficult-to-reach locations, such as bunkers, basements, or inside buildings. Proponents of first-person view drones often repeat the claim that as much as 60 to 70 percent of all battlefield casualties in the Russo-Ukrainian War are now caused by drones. This statistic is probably broadly accurate, though it does not differentiate between casualties caused by first-person view drones and other types of uncrewed aerial systems.

Some authors, including experienced military officers writing in these pages, go even further and claim that first-person view drones will precipitate a revolution in how wars are fought, akin to the introduction of muskets. Among other things, they will make concealment and the massing of troops and equipment in the combat zone nearly impossible. Any concentration of troops or vehicles will supposedly be observed immediately and butchered by swarms of cheap, fast drones. Proponents of drones, especially in Silicon Valley, have claimed that drones might completely replace artillery.

Whether or not we believe these far-reaching claims, we’ve certainly all seen the videos on social media of these drones performing impressive, highly precise attacks. We’ve seen them striking a Russian tank on the move, flying through the open back hatch of an infantry fighting vehicle, or entering a building to surprise the enemy, sometimes literally, with their pants down. But those impressive strikes are rare exceptions. The cases when first-person view drones actually do that are few and far between.

BECOME A MEMBER

During my time in Ukraine, I collected statistics on the success of our drone operations. I found that 43 percent of our sorties resulted in a hit on the intended target in the sense that the drone was able to successfully fly all the way to the target, identify it correctly, hit it, and the drone’s explosive charge detonated as it was supposed to. This number does not include instances when our higher command requested a sortie but we had to decline because we knew that we could not strike the target for reasons such as weather, technical problems, or electronic interference. If this type of pre-aborted mission is included in the total, the success rate drops to between 20 and 30 percent. On the face of it, this success rate is bad, but that is not the whole story.

I began to notice that the vast majority of our sorties were against targets that had already been struck successfully by a different weapons system, most commonly by a mortar or by a munition dropped by a reusable drone (in other words, not a first-person view drone). Put differently, the goal of the majority of our missions was to deliver the second tap in a double-tap strike against a target that had already been successfully prosecuted by a different weapons system. The proportion of missions when we successfully carried out a task that only a first-person view drone can fulfill — delivering a precision strike on a target that could not be hit by other means — was in the single-digit percent.

There are two reasons why these drones rarely successfully do what they were designed to do. The first has to do with how commanders choose to employ first-person view drones. Presumably, our commanders decided that they had first-person view drones as a capability, so they might as well use them, even if there were other weapons systems that could also do the job. There is a certain logic to this, and the commanders were not paying for the expended drones out of their own pockets. They were more focused on the immediate mission. While first-person view drones are cheap, they are usually not the cheapest option available to commanders. This is the problem with using them in double-tap strikes or for missions that can be achieved by other systems. One of these drone sorties costs about $500 in materiel. A mortar shell costs less than $100. A munition dropped from a reusable drone, usually also something like a modified mortar shell or 40-millimeter grenade, also costs less than $100.

The second reason why these drones rarely do what they were designed to do is technical. They are finicky, unreliable, hard to use, and susceptible to electronic interference. Few first-person view drones have night-vision capability. Those that do are in short supply and cost twice as much as the base model. In Ukraine, in the winter, it’s dark for 14 hours a day. Wind, rain, snow, and fog all mean a drone cannot fly.

A solid quarter of all these drones have some sort of technical fault that prevents them from taking off. This is usually discovered only when they are being prepped for launch. The most common is a fault in the radio receiver that receives inputs from the control panel, or in the video transmitter that transmits the signal to the operator’s virtual-reality goggles. Sometimes this fault can be fixed through a software update in the field. Often, it cannot. Many faulty drones are simply cannibalized for spare parts, because there is no better use for them. Even once a drone is airborne, batteries often die mid-flight. In about 10 percent of sorties, the drone hits the target, but its warhead does not detonate.

Once airborne, operating a first-person view drone successfully is not easy. These drones were originally designed to be toys for rich people. Before they were press-ganged into service as tools of war, they were used either in aerobatic displays or in races where a group of operators would compete in flying through an obstacle course. In either case, the drones were not meant to be easy to fly. They were meant to be highly maneuverable, but also unstable. First-person view drones cannot really hover, fly slowly, or linger above a target. The assumption among hobbyists is that enthusiasts will invest the time and money to become proficient at flying. As a result, training a highly proficient operator can take months. A standard, base-level course for Ukrainian drone pilots takes about five weeks. The quality of operators it prepares is questionable, and graduates of the course need extra on-the-job experience to become truly proficient. Most drone pilots I encountered did not go through this course. Instead, they learned to fly drones on the job. Even experienced operators routinely miss their targets and crash into trees, power lines, or other obstacles.

To keep costs down, the first-person view drones used by Ukrainian forces have no navigational aids, such as a compass, a GPS receiver (though it should be noted that using GPS often would not be possible anyway due to widespread GPS signal jamming), or an inertial navigation system. The operator relies on their knowledge of the local terrain and on verbal instructions from a navigator, who usually has access to the video from the first-person view drone itself and from other reconnaissance assets that are tracking the target.

But the greatest obstacle to the successful use of these drones by far is the unreliability of the radio link between the operator and the drone. One of the reasons why hitting a target at ground level with precision is difficult is that when first-person view drones get close to the ground, due to obstacles, they start to lose their radio connection to the operator, often located up to 10 kilometers away. In some cases, drones cannot attack a target if it is simply on the wrong side of a tall building or hill because the building or hill blocks the line of sight between the drone and the operator. Sometimes, the operator can work around the loss of signal close to the ground by climbing, pointing the drone at the target, and hoping inertia will take it to its target once they have lost control. When striking a small target like a doorway, a window, or the entrance to a basement, this degrades precision significantly.

Drones also operate in a cluttered segment of the electromagnetic spectrum. First-person view drones use unencrypted analog radio signals, and in hot parts of the front, as many as a dozen drone teams may be competing for use of a handful of frequencies (a consequence of using cheaper components). This results in the need for sophisticated de-confliction procedures that, quite simply, do not always work. Even when de-confliction works, sometimes a team must wait as long as half an hour for a frequency to become available before takeoff. If it does not work and two drones find themselves in the air on the same channel at the same time, they will interfere with each other’s signals, usually resulting in a crash. On top of that, the enemy’s drones also fly on the same frequencies, which can also result in interference and a crash. Interference from another drone, whether friendly or hostile, resulted in the failure of at least three percent of our missions.

In addition to interference and the physical limitations of radio communication, first-person view drones are also highly susceptible to electronic-warfare jamming. Both sides of the Russo-Ukrainian War make extensive use of jamming. When our side turned on its jammers, they usually informed us in advance. That meant our drones simply could not take off, sometimes for a period of several hours. About three percent of our sorties failed because we did not get advanced warning that our own jamming systems would be operational, causing our drones to fall out of the sky. On top of that, sometimes, even the best efforts at de-confliction were not enough, simply because Ukrainian infantry or individual vehicles are often equipped with small portable jammers. When they heard a drone, they simply activated the jammer without waiting to find out whether the drone was friendly or not.

Of course, when the other side activated its jammers, we got no advance warning whatsoever. Enemy electronic warfare downed a full 31 percent of our sorties. This number could have been lower, but for our command’s occasional stubborn insistence that we fly even though it was almost certain that enemy jammers were operating in the target area. When enemy jammers were operating, the enemy’s own drones also could not fly, putting them in the same dilemma that our side also suffered. Nevertheless, when jammers were available and switched on, first-person view operations became effectively impossible.

Some of the problems with first-person view drones will eventually be resolved as technology matures. Better production standards will ensure that a larger percentage of drones actually take off. In Ukraine, there are countless assembly lines that build drones from cheap, off-the-shelf components sourced from dubious suppliers. A single unit often sources its drones from numerous organizations, each with its own production processes. More standardization, better quality control, and less reliance on cheap components could improve reliability. Better transmitters and receivers that are more resistant to interference will improve the connection between drone and operator. Digital signal transmission and frequency hopping are starting to appear in some first-person view drones, though these are still rare. Putting re-translators that amplify the drone’s signal on a second drone that hovers somewhere between the operator and the first-person view drone can also improve the quality of the connection. Improved and standardized procedures for training operators would cut down the time needed to become proficient.

To be sure, the technology has already evolved since I left the battlefield. Today, some Ukrainian and Russian units are also using drones controlled by fiber-optic cable, rather than radio, though I had no personal experience with this type of drone in my unit. This technology is often touted as the next step in the evolution of drone warfare. It would seem to address some of the major problems with radio-controlled drones I experienced, and compared to radio-controlled drones, fiber-optic drones may indeed have a number of advantages. Fiber optics make jamming impossible and deconflicting frequencies unnecessary. The absence of an energy-guzzling radio transmitter can extend battery life and even allow for some innovative tactics, such as landing the drone next to a road and waiting for several hours until a vehicle passes by.

Fiber optic drones do, however, have a number of drawbacks that mean they might not fully replace radio-controlled drones. The wire that connects the drone to the operator limits the maneuverability of the drone. Snagging it on any kind of obstacle can result in a loss of control. Fiber-optic drones cannot really double back over their route or circle a target, as this could tangle their control wire and also result in a loss of control. As a result, fiber-optic drones are said to be even more difficult to fly than radio-controlled drones. Because of these limitations, several drone operators I spoke to actively resist using fiber-optic drones. Furthermore, though cost will probably come down, at present the cost of the cable means that a fiber-optic drone with 10 kilometers of cable costs about twice as much as a radio-controlled model of similar range. Finally, production capacities available to Ukraine for fiber-optic cables are, at present, fairly limited compared to radio-controlled drones, meaning they are chronically in short supply.

All that said, if a member of a NATO military were hypothetically to ask me whether NATO countries should acquire first-person view drone capabilities, based on my experience and given the current state of the technology, I would probably say no, whether they are radio-controlled or fiber-optic. The vast majority of first-person view drone missions can be completed more cheaply, effectively, or reliably by other assets. Furthermore, other authors have noted that drones still do not come close to matching the effects that can be achieved by massed artillery fires. Additionally, experts on artillery systems consistently note the greater reliability and range of artillery.

Scaling up drone use would also involve scaling up the drones’ logistical tail. This means more complicated and expensive logistics for drones that would compete for resources with other types of weapons. For the time being, first-person view drones are unlikely to fully replace other weapons systems. No military leader is yet seriously advocating doing away with artillery completely in favor of first-person view drones. This means that the military will have two competing logistical tails: one for first-person view drones and one for artillery.

For sophisticated NATO militaries, instead of investing heavily in the development of first-person view drone capabilities, I would, first of all, recommend ensuring that troops in the field have well-trained organic mortar support with an ample supply of ammunition. Mortars, like artillery, can’t be stopped by bad weather, jamming, or crowded frequencies. Nor can they be impeded by the dark. A well-trained mortar crew can reliably put rounds on a target in less than five minutes. Our first-person view sorties took about 15 minutes from the initial request to the moment the drone struck the target, and that was only when conditions were optimal. A mortar’s price per shot is lower than a first-person view drone. Drones can nominally have an advantage over mortars in range, but this is variable and depends on the terrain, the specific location of the mortars relative to the drone launch site, and the deployment of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets that find the targets for drones or mortars. In practice, I don’t remember a single case when we struck a target that was beyond the range of mortars, and we certainly never struck a target that was beyond the range of artillery.

Secondly, for the rare cases when troops actually need tactical-level, organic precision-strike capability, and when actually carrying out such a strike is feasible, I would recommend something a little bit more high-end than a first-person view drone. NATO countries and their allies already produce high-quality loitering munitions, like the Switchblade. Such loitering munitions provide greater precision in day and night, more ease of use, and higher resistance to electronic interference than first-person view drones. They are also more expensive, but their cost is, like first-person view drones, coming down. The investment in quality seems to justify the greater expense, especially since, at most, one in ten first-person view sorties is a precision strike.

BECOME A MEMBER

Jakub Jajcay is a former officer in the Armed Forces of the Slovak Republic, where he served in a number of elite units. He is currently working on his Ph.D. in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies of Charles University in Prague.

Image: Ukrainian Ministry of Defense photo by Vitaliy Pavlenko

warontherocks.com · June 26, 2025

2. For Iran’s Nuclear Program, a Month Is Longer Than It Sounds

Interesting analysis and perspectives I had not considered.

Excerpts:

If Iran were to make the decision to build a nuclear weapon, it would be betting that it can complete the job and establish deterrence before the U.S. and Israel intervene—through military action, economic pressure or diplomacy—to stop it.

A longer timeline increases the risk of being spotted or struck again, which could dissuade Iran from taking such a gamble in the first place. So measured on the Iranian nuclear clock, a delay of a few months could translate into a lot longer than it sounds if it keeps Tehran from moving ahead.

“If they start their breakout effort, and it takes them three more months, that’s a lot of time to respond. It gives you time to detect it. It gives you time to mount a response,” said Michael Singh, managing director at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a former senior official at the National Security Council. “It’s not nothing.”

The 2015 international nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration, which granted Iran sanctions relief in exchange for limits on its nuclear program, was designed to keep Iran a year away from being able to produce enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon.

...

“This process of actually making a warhead is not just a physical process. It also comes down to the engineering,” the Washington Institute’s Singh said. “There’s a little bit more art, rather than just science, to that part of it.”

The office of the U.S. Director of National Intelligence assessed in March that Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei hadn’t reauthorized the program to develop a nuclear weapon he suspended in 2003.

What Khamenei decides in the wake of the attacks is now the biggest consideration in any timeline.

“We don’t know if that is an actively running clock,” said Eric Brewer, a deputy vice president at the Nuclear Threat Initiative and a former senior official at the White House National Security Council and National Intelligence Council. “These timelines are in some ways evolving, and they depend upon what choices Iran makes next.”

For Iran’s Nuclear Program, a Month Is Longer Than It Sounds

Some of the most important considerations for Tehran on the road to a nuclear weapon are political, not technical, and every delay complicates its calculations

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/for-irans-nuclear-program-a-month-is-longer-than-it-sounds-7bfaa5cd

By Jared Malsin

and Laurence Norman

June 30, 2025 11:00 pm ET

Residential buildings were damaged in Tehran by Israeli airstrikes. Photo: Majid Saeedi/Getty Images

Key Points

What's This?

Debate over Iran’s nuclear program overlooks Iran’s political calculation regarding the risks of building a nuclear weapon.
Analysts are concerned that recent attacks may strengthen Iran’s resolve to develop nuclear weapons as a regime preservation strategy.
Iran’s options include diplomacy or advancing its program secretly while engaging in diplomacy.

The furious debate over whether U.S. strikes obliterated Iran’s nuclear program or only delayed its progress toward being able to build a nuclear weapon by a few months skips over a key component in the equation: Iran’s political calculation.

If Iran were to make the decision to build a nuclear weapon, it would be betting that it can complete the job and establish deterrence before the U.S. and Israel intervene—through military action, economic pressure or diplomacy—to stop it.

A longer timeline increases the risk of being spotted or struck again, which could dissuade Iran from taking such a gamble in the first place. So measured on the Iranian nuclear clock, a delay of a few months could translate into a lot longer than it sounds if it keeps Tehran from moving ahead.

“If they start their breakout effort, and it takes them three more months, that’s a lot of time to respond. It gives you time to detect it. It gives you time to mount a response,” said Michael Singh, managing director at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a former senior official at the National Security Council. “It’s not nothing.”

The 2015 international nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration, which granted Iran sanctions relief in exchange for limits on its nuclear program, was designed to keep Iran a year away from being able to produce enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon.

You may also like

Embed code copied to clipboard

Copy LinkCopy EmbedFacebook Twitter

Click for Sound

In his first public comments since the cease-fire last week, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei claimed victory in the conflict and said the U.S. was overstating the success of its attacks. Photo: Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

President Trump pulled the U.S. out of that agreement in his first term. Iran scaled up its nuclear work a year later and by May this year, it was producing enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon every month.

Before the war, the general assumption was it would take Iran a few months to make a crude weapon as powerful as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima and deliverable by truck or ship, and one to three years to make a warhead that could be fit atop a missile.

Some analysts are concerned the attacks by Israel and the U.S. may have convinced hard-liners in Tehran that the only way to preserve the regime is to make a run at developing nuclear weapons.

“If Iran decides to weaponize, it will take more time than it would have otherwise,” said Alan Eyre, a former State Department official and member of the U.S. negotiating team under the Obama administration that worked on the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. “But, paradoxically, we might have strengthened their resolve to seek a nuclear weapon now.”

“They’re going to be figuring out how to reconstitute some sort of defensive strategy, or at least create a new one, because the one they had doesn’t work anymore,” he said.

Nuclear experts and U.S. officials say Iran could have stashed away enough centrifuges and material to race for a bomb. Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in an interview with CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, said Iran has the industrial and technological wherewithal to resume enriching uranium in a few months.

U.N. atomic energy agency chief Rafael Grossi said Iran can resume enriching uranium in a few months if it wants. Photo: joe klamar/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

“The capacities they have are there,” Grossi said. “They can have, you know, in a matter of months, I would say, a few cascades of centrifuges spinning and producing enriched uranium, or less than that. But as I said, frankly speaking, one cannot claim that everything has disappeared and there is nothing there.”

Grossi’s agency is responsible for inspecting Iran’s nuclear sites but hasn’t been able to visit the sites since the Israeli strikes on Iran began June 13.

Iran’s options now include trying to reconstitute a covert nuclear program and produce a bomb as fast as possible. A second option would be to agree to a diplomatic path that limits their ability to build a weapon by ending its enrichment of uranium, which the Trump administration has pushed.

Iran could also try to split the difference: engage in nuclear diplomacy while quietly advancing its nuclear program. That would mean working in secret at sites hidden from international inspectors, which would make the task more cumbersome.

Trump and his administration say the U.S. airstrikes using 14 30,000-pound bombs and a salvo of cruise missiles have destroyed the facilities at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan. If so, Iran would need new, hidden enrichment sites, as well as facilities to turn enriched uranium into metal for a bomb core and manage a covert program that can get nuclear scientists to the site without being spotted.

“Iran will never obtain a nuclear bomb, because Operation Midnight Hammer obliterated their nuclear capabilities,” White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly said when asked about Iran’s prospects for rebuilding its nuclear program.

Iran has worked for decades on know-how relevant to developing nuclear weapons and has mastered most of the aspects of building a bomb, according to the IAEA and Iranian and Israeli officials.

The Trump administration says it destroyed Iran’s nuclear facilities at Fordow. Photo: maxar technologies/Reuters

Before the war, Iran had amassed a large stockpile of highly enriched uranium large enough for 10 nuclear bombs if further enriched. It would have taken about a week to convert enough of the 60% material into 90% weapons-grade enriched uranium for one nuclear weapon, according to the IAEA.

Iran had also tested out many of the components needed to build a bomb and kept that knowledge alive for a new generation of scientists through experiments and studies ostensibly designed for peaceful purposes.

The fate of the fissile material stockpile and how many centrifuges Iran still has remain unclear. Some may have been moved from Iran’s nuclear sites before the U.S. attack.

The IAEA’s inspectors lost the ability to track Iran’s manufacturing of centrifuges due to restrictions Iran imposed in response to Trump’s withdrawal from the 2015 deal.

Inspectors have also spent six years seeking the whereabouts of a vast array of equipment from Iran’s decades-old nuclear weapons program that Tehran dispersed in 2018. It could include lines for making uranium metal and equipment for testing high explosives and other key equipment for making a bomb.

Iran’s pre-2003 nuclear program aimed to produce a small arsenal of nuclear weapons deliverable by missile. Experts believe Iran has yet to seriously work on miniaturizing a nuclear weapon and integrating it onto a missile, which could take one to three years.

“This process of actually making a warhead is not just a physical process. It also comes down to the engineering,” the Washington Institute’s Singh said. “There’s a little bit more art, rather than just science, to that part of it.”

The office of the U.S. Director of National Intelligence assessed in March that Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei hadn’t reauthorized the program to develop a nuclear weapon he suspended in 2003.

What Khamenei decides in the wake of the attacks is now the biggest consideration in any timeline.

“We don’t know if that is an actively running clock,” said Eric Brewer, a deputy vice president at the Nuclear Threat Initiative and a former senior official at the White House National Security Council and National Intelligence Council. “These timelines are in some ways evolving, and they depend upon what choices Iran makes next.”

Write to Jared Malsin at jared.malsin@wsj.com and Laurence Norman at laurence.norman@wsj.com

Appeared in the July 1, 2025, print edition as 'Iran’s Risky Calculation: To Build, or Not to Build, a Nuclear Bomb'.

3. The winners and losers in a trillion-dollar US defence budget

Excerpts:

Divided across the DoD, the proposed budget breaks down to $197.4bn for the US Army, $292.2bn for the US Navy, $301.1bn for the US Air Force (USAF) and $170.9bn defence-wide, according to the senior defence official.

Included in the USAF’s proposed budget is $40bn toward the Space Force, which represents a 30% increase in funding from FY25.

The winners and losers in a trillion-dollar US defence budget - Army Technology

The US was not forecast to hit the trillion-dollar defence budget for a number of years, according to analysis.

army-technology.com · by Richard Thomas · June 27, 2025

An aerial view of the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. Credit: Air Force Staff Sgt. John Wright/US DoD.

The US Department of Defense (DoD) has outlined the proposed FY26 national defence budget from US President Donald Trump, a more-than $1tn package intended to provide investment into key capabilities across the country’s military services.

According to a 26 June release from the DoD, the request, which represents a 13.4% increase from FY25, includes $848.3bn for the discretionary budget and $113.3bn in mandatory funding through congressional reconciliation.

Additional elements take the FY26 budget request to $1.01tn, by some margin the largest defence budget on the planet.

In comparison, the next largest defence budget is China’s, which although not publicly available is thought to be in excess of $300bn, according to analysis conducted by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

“This historic defence budget prioritises strengthening homeland security, deterring Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific [region], revitalising the defence industrial base and maintaining our commitment to being good stewards of taxpayer dollars,” a senior defence official told reporters, according to the US DoD news service.

The official added the $113bn in mandatory reconciliation funding would address President Trump’s priorities, including shipbuilding, missile defence, munitions production and quality-of-life initiatives for service personnel.

GlobalData Strategic Intelligence

Divided across the DoD, the proposed budget breaks down to $197.4bn for the US Army, $292.2bn for the US Navy, $301.1bn for the US Air Force (USAF) and $170.9bn defence-wide, according to the senior defence official.

Included in the USAF’s proposed budget is $40bn toward the Space Force, which represents a 30% increase in funding from FY25.

According to the US DoD, other notable elements in the budget proposal include:

$25bn initial investment on the Golden Dome missile defence system
$60bn on nuclear enterprise modernisation, including all three legs of the nuclear triad
$3.1bn for continued F-15EX Eagle II fighter production
$3.5bn in funding for the USAF’s F-47 Next Generation Air Dominance fighter
Funding for 19 new US Navy battle force ships, maintaining 287 ships
$2.5m for nuclear shipyard productivity enhancements
$6.5bn invested in conventional and non-hypersonic munitions and $3.9bn in hypersonic weapons
$15.1bn invested in cybersecurity
$1.3bn for industrial base supply chain improvements
$2.5bn for missile and munitions production expansion
$1.2bn for the Office of Strategic Capital’s loan program, meant to attract private investment in national security projects

The budget proposal also includes a 3.8% pay increase and $5bn investment in unaccompanied housing for service personnel.

Winners and losers: the trillion-dollar question

It is difficult to imagine that a share of $1trn could leave winners and losers in the President Trump’s proposed FY26 budget, which will now head to the US House of Representatives and Senate for debate and approval.

However, virtually all US President budget proposals are amended in some form, as US politicians lobby to secure or preserve defence interests in their constituency.

Critically, the FY26 budget recommends to cancellation of the E-7 Wedgetail early warning and control aircraft – a type currently in service in Australia and being delivered to the UK – due to apparent concerns over its survivability in a contested environment.

The proposal also recommends reducing the number of F-35 Lightning II stealth fighter from 74 aircraft in FY26 down to 47 airframes.

Despite this, the USAF comes out with the largest individual share among the US military’s services, with big ticket programmes such as the under-construction B-21 Raider fleet and planned F-47 sixth-generation fighter.

According to Fox Walker, defence analyst at GlobalData, a notable omission was any information on defence research, development, testing, and evaluation (RDT&E) stood out in a era market by steep RDT&E cuts across the US government.

In May, US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth said the results of an internal review identified “redundant, non-essential, non-statutory functions” within Office of the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation that “do not support operational agility or resource efficiency”.

As a result, a series of cost cutting measures, including reduction in staff, would save “more than $300 million” per year, Hegseth said.

Meanwhile, Walker said it was “curious” the US DoD would not highlight how much it spends on artificial intelligence given the area is a cornerstone of the country’s competition with China.

“I would suggest the DoD itself as a big winner. Congress was not set to allocate $1 trillion annually in military spending until 2030,” said Walker.

Sign up for our daily news round-up!

Give your business an edge with our leading industry insights.

Army Technology Excellence Awards - Have you nominated?

Nominations are now open for the prestigious Army Technology Excellence Awards - one of the industry's most recognised programmes celebrating innovation, leadership, and impact. This is your chance to showcase your achievements, highlight industry advancements, and gain global recognition. Don't miss the opportunity to be honoured among the best - submit your nomination today!

Nominate Now

army-technology.com · by Richard Thomas · June 27, 2025

4. Trump Lifts Sanctions on Syria as It Holds Talks on Diplomatic Ties With Israel

Trump Lifts Sanctions on Syria as It Holds Talks on Diplomatic Ties With Israel

Middle East adversaries Israel and Syria have held discussions for weeks about normalization, officials say

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/israel-interested-in-expanding-normalization-treaties-to-syria-lebanon-d583d184

By Anat Peled

, Summer Said

and Dov Lieber

Updated June 30, 2025 4:52 pm ET

Gift unlocked article

Listen

(8 min)

Israel has annexed part of the Golan Heights and wants sovereignty over the territory in any deal with Syria. Photo: Shir Torem/Reuters

Key Points

What's This?

President Trump lifted sanctions on Syria, aiming to support its government as it explores ending hostilities with Israel.
Israel seeks to broaden regional peace treaties to include Syria and Lebanon, following normalization deals with other Arab nations.
Normalization faces challenges, including a dispute over the Golan Heights and Syrian President Sharaa consolidating power.

President Trump removed punishing economic sanctions on Syria, seeking to bolster the fledgling government in Damascus as it considers an end to hostilities with Israel.

Trump signed an executive order on Monday to formally dismantle much of the decades-old U.S. sanctions program on Syria, unwinding sweeping economic and financial restrictions on the country.

The order preserves targeted sanctions on ousted Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, his inner circle and designated terrorist groups. Some sanctions were rolled back last month, after Trump pledged during a trip to the Middle East to give the country “a chance at greatness.”

Israel is looking to expand regional peace treaties to include Syria and Lebanon, its foreign minister said on Monday, recent comments by Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggesting Israel could normalize relations with more Arab or Muslim countries after its war with Iran.

Israel and Syria have been holding discussions for months about ending hostilities between the two countries, according to people briefed on the negotiations. There are currently no direct discussions between Lebanon and Israel, and a deal is less likely, the people said.

Netanyahu’s senior confidant, Ron Dermer, is in Washington to discuss a deal that would create formal relations between Syria and Israel among other issues, said people briefed on the trip. Syria and Israel have been bitter enemies for decades and fought three major wars against each other. Netanyahu plans to visit Trump at the White House on July 7, an administration official said.

You may also like

Embed code copied to clipboard

Copy LinkCopy EmbedFacebook Twitter

Click for Sound

In May, President Trump announced the plan to end U.S. sanctions against Syria during a foreign-policy address in Saudi Arabia’s capital. Photo: Molly Riley/Zuma Press

Trump suggested Sunday that other countries could join the Abraham Accords, a 2020 set of agreements struck during his first term that normalized relations between Israel and Arab countries including the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. Netanyahu said last week that the war with Iran opened up opportunities for Israel to normalize relations with other countries.

U.S. officials on Monday said that while Trump’s decision to lift the sanctions comes with no formal conditions, they are optimistic that normalization with Israel would be a likely outcome.

An expansion of treaties with Arab or Muslim countries could further shift the balance of power in the Middle East away from Iran and in Israel’s favor. The opportunity to improve relations comes after the fall of al-Assad, who was aligned with Iran. Israel has attacked and weakened Iran and its allies around the region in the wake of the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023 attack. Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa has taken a hard line against Iran, driving Iranian forces from the country and banning Iranian citizens from entering Syria.

But any agreement would have to contend with a more than 50-year dispute over the Golan Heights, which both countries claim and challenges facing Sharaa, who is still consolidating his grasp on power.

“Israel is interested in expanding the Abraham Accords circle of peace and normalization,” said Gideon Sa’ar, Israel’s foreign minister, at a press conference Monday. “We have an interest in adding countries, such as Syria and Lebanon, our neighbors, to the circle of peace and normalization—while safeguarding Israel’s essential and security interests.”

Lebanon

Demilitarized

buffer zone

GOLAN

HEIGHTS

SYRIA

Haifa

Irbid

Mediterranean Sea

Nablus

Tel Aviv

WEST

BANK

Amman

Jerusalem

Hebron

Dead

Sea

GAZA

STRIP

Jordan

Beer Sheva

Israel

He also laid down an Israeli red line: maintaining Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, part of which Israel annexed in 1981, and a move the U.S. recognized in 2019 under President Trump. Much of the world considers it occupied territory. Israel occupied further territory in Syria beyond a former United Nations-controlled demilitarized zone between the two countries following the fall of Assad’s regime in December.

Any deal with Israel would come with risks for Sharaa, who took over in Damascus only about six months ago in a country where most people view Israel as an occupying power. Sharaa enjoys support from many Syrians for his role in pushing Assad from power but also faces skepticism over his government’s treatment of minorities and the slow pace of reconstruction and reform.

Sharaa also faces an array of challenges to his rule including from elements loyal to the old regime. He also must finish implementing a pact signed in March designed to integrate Kurdish militias into the military.

Trump’s executive order assigned Secretary of State Marco Rubio to review Syria’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism.

“Today’s actions will end the country’s isolation from the international financial system, setting the stage for global commerce and galvanizing investments from its neighbors in the region, as well as from the United States,” said Brad Smith, the undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence at the U.S. Treasury.

Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa Photo: khalil ashawi/Reuters

Last month, the European Union similarly lifted a range of sanctions on Syria.

If a deal were struck with Syria and Lebanon, it would mean Israel would be at peace with all its Arab bordering nations, even as its conflict with the Palestinians remains unsolved. It currently has peace deals with Jordan and Egypt. Israel has fought major wars against all four countries. It has been the longstanding position of Arab countries that there would be no normalization with Israel until there was a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Saudi Arabia, which was close to normalizing relations with Israel before the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack derailed those efforts, is insisting on a pathway toward a Palestinian state before agreeing to a peace deal.

The foreign minister’s announcement Monday follows repeated comments from Trump and Netanyahu saying the war with Iran had created opportunities to expand normalization between Israel and Arab countries.

Backchannels between Israel and Syria were created several months ago at the encouragement of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, according to Arab officials. A Syria-Israel deal isn’t being tied to a cease-fire in Gaza, Arab officials said.

Israeli officials have previously conveyed deep suspicion over Sharaa because of his past ties to al Qaeda, which he renounced in 2016. Sa’ar has been one of the most vocal detractors of Sharaa, publicly calling him “the leader of radical Islam” who can’t be trusted.

A torn poster of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad with Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in Damascus, Syria. Photo: amr alfiky/Reuters

“They were Jihadists and remained Jihadists, even if some of their leaders have put on suits,” Sa’ar said March 10.

After the fall of Assad, Israel launched a series of aggressive strikes on Syria targeting military infrastructure and equipment to prevent it from falling into the hands of extremists, Israeli officials said. The bombing campaign has since stopped. Israeli troop presence in areas in southern Syria has at times led to protests and has angered much of the local population, which the Israeli military said it aimed to disarm.

The change in tone is likely due to Trump’s embrace of Sharaa and his desire to work with him, say officials briefed on the negotiations. Trump called Sharaa a “young, attractive guy” after he met the Syrian leader in early May.

Write to Anat Peled at anat.peled@wsj.com, Summer Said at summer.said@wsj.com and Dov Lieber at dov.lieber@wsj.com

Appeared in the July 1, 2025, print edition as 'U.S. Removes Syria Sanctions as Israel Looks to Expand Treaties'.

5. Five Errors About Iran’s War on Israel, America, and the West

Excerpts:

First, Israel’s military operation did not involve an illegal “preventive war,” but rather constitutes a legal act of self-defense in response to Tehran’s decades-long effort to eliminate the Jewish state.

...

Second, though few of Israel’s critics seem to notice, Iran commits war crimes with the vast majority of the approximately 1,000 ballistic missiles that it has launched at the Jewish state since April 2024.

...

Third, President Trump did have constitutional authority to strike Iran. Top Democrats, including House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, swiftly condemned Trump for unlawfully bypassing Congress. With characteristic rashness, progressive favorite Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez claimed that the attacks constituted grounds for impeachment. But as National Review columnist Andrew McCarthy pointed out, the American commander in chief had two independent legal grounds to hit Iran.

...

Fourth, Israeli and American military operations against Iran benefit not only Israel but also moderate Gulf Arabs, America, and the West. In 2018, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman reaffirmed to Norah O’Donnell on “60 Minutes” that Ayatollah Khamanei was “the new Hitler of the Middle East.”

...

Fifth, the considerable risks did not undermine Israel’s rationale for striking Iran.

Five Errors About Iran’s War on Israel, America, and the West

COMMENTARY

By Peter Berkowitz

June 29, 2025

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2025/06/29/five_errors_irans_war_on_israel_america_and_west_152970.html

On June 22, in the early morning local time, the United States inflicted “severe damage” – confirmed by the International Atomic Energy Association – on the Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear installations at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan. This marked a turning point in Iran’s war against Israel, the United States, and the West. One day later Iran and Israel agreed to a ceasefire following a 12-day battle in which Iran incurred extensive military setbacks and Israel – while suffering 28 civilian deaths and more than 3,000 civilians wounded, and incurring more than a billion dollars in property damage – did not lose an aircraft or a fighter.

Many critics of Israel and the Trump administration remain unwilling or unable to grasp that Iran is the aggressor. This contributes to the critics’ failure to appreciate the lawfulness of Israel’s and the United States’ strikes on Iran. And it renders the critics oblivious to how Israel and the United States have advanced the free world’s interest in thwarting the pursuit of nuclear weapons by the world’s leading state-sponsor of terrorism, and the world’s leading state-sponsor of anti-American terror.

On June 21, more than a week after the expiration of President Donald Trump’s 60-day deadline for reaching a negotiated settlement, Iran reiterated its rejection of talks with the United States unless Israel agreed to a ceasefire. By the time the sun rose the next day on Tehran, Iran found the third of its three key bargaining chips, like the other two, greatly diminished.

Building on Israel’s Operation Rising Lion – which since June 13 had eliminated most of Iran’s air-defense systems, damaged its nuclear installations, hit command and control centers belonging to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and killed top nuclear scientists and military commanders – America’s Operation Midnight Hammer inflicted devastating blows on three key Iranian uranium enrichment facilities. Over the previous nine days, Israel also had substantially degraded Iran’s capacity to produce ballistic missiles and had blown up more than half of Tehran’s missile launchers and a sizeable portion of its missile stockpile. And since Iran-backed Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in southern Israel, Israel had significantly diminished the “ring of fire” that Tehran had built over decades to destroy the Jewish state. The Israel Defense Forces not only battered Hamas in Gaza but also struck forcefully against Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon, targeted Iran-backed Houthi assets in Yemen, and contributed to the downfall of Iran’s Syrian client, dictator Bashar al-Assad.

The dismantling of much of Iran’s nuclear program, missile program, and ring of fire strengthens Washington’s position for further negotiations – now in their 12^th year – with Iran.

Despite these achievements, several errors – of commission and omission – hamper appreciation of Israel’s bold military operation against Iran and of the justification for America’s decisive intervention.

First, Israel’s military operation did not involve an illegal “preventive war,” but rather constitutes a legal act of self-defense in response to Tehran’s decades-long effort to eliminate the Jewish state. The critics, however, contend that Tehran did not pose an “imminent threat” to Israel, which would have justified a permissible “preemptive war,” since Supreme Leader of Iran Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had not ordered the assembly and deployment of a nuclear weapon to attack the Jewish state.

That, though, is a preposterous way to assess imminence regarding the development of a weapon of mass destruction by a fanatical Islamist dictatorship that for more than 40 years has resolutely pursued its oft-repeated vow to wipe out the Jewish state. One doesn’t wait for a self-declared assassin in a suite overlooking a presidential speech to assemble his weapon, load his bullets, aim his gun, and put his finger on the trigger to neutralize him.

Recent Israeli intelligence determined that Iran had achieved the ability to “enrich enough uranium to weapons-grade level for 15 bombs ‘within days.’” This comports with recent IAEA findings.

“This year the IAEA accused Iran of operating three other sites that were covert bases for uranium enrichment, to which inspectors had no access,” according to John Miller in the Wall Street Journal. In addition, troubling developments occurred at official sites to which the inspectors had access. “The IAEA reported that Iran had exceeded the agreed limits, quantity of uranium, enrichment levels, the number and types of centrifuges, and the continuing research and development of metal compounds used in missile development,” writes the former New York City Police Department deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism. “No country without a nuclear-weapons program,” he added, “operates facilities buried under remote mountains and strives for faster centrifuges and more-highly enriched uranium. None of that makes sense for civilian energy programs.”

Furthermore, building a nuclear weapon was only one part of Iran’s multi-year and multi-front war against the Jewish state.

Since the Islamic Republic of Iran’s 1979 founding, its leaders have been calling for Israel’s annihilation. Tehran has funded, armed, and trained proxies – in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen – to execute the genocide. In November 2024, Israel agreed to a ceasefire with Hezbollah in Lebanon, but the situation is fragile and hostilities frequently flare up. The Houthis in Yemen continue to fire missiles at Israel. And the Jewish state is still fighting Hamas in Gaza. Weakening the military capabilities of Hezbollah’s, the Houthis’, and Hamas’ chief benefactor is a vital part of Israel’s exercise of its fundamental right of self-defense, affirmed by Article 51 of the UN Charter, against Iran’s decades-long efforts to eliminate it.

Second, though few of Israel’s critics seem to notice, Iran commits war crimes with the vast majority of the approximately 1,000 ballistic missiles that it has launched at the Jewish state since April 2024. They lack Israeli munitions’ pin-point accuracy, but Iran’s missiles are accurate enough for Tehran to distinguish unlawful civilian targets from lawful military ones, which Iran does by choosing to overwhelmingly target civilians and civilian infrastructure. The international legal scholars and pundits who promptly and wrongly decried as unlawful Israel’s surgical strikes on military targets in Iran have shown scant interest in Iran’s blatantly unlawful scattershot attacks on Israeli noncombatants and urban areas.

Third, President Trump did have constitutional authority to strike Iran. Top Democrats, including House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, swiftly condemned Trump for unlawfully bypassing Congress. With characteristic rashness, progressive favorite Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez claimed that the attacks constituted grounds for impeachment. But as National Review columnist Andrew McCarthy pointed out, the American commander in chief had two independent legal grounds to hit Iran. First, “Trump had authority under Congress’s post 9/11 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (September 18, 2001) in light of Iran’s aiding, abetting, and harboring of al-Qaeda jihadists.” Second, “with Iran’s proxies, the Houthis in Yemen, firing at U.S. military targets just a few weeks ago, the president had authority to strike at their sponsors, Iran, which has a long history of using proxies to murder Americans.”

Fourth, Israeli and American military operations against Iran benefit not only Israel but also moderate Gulf Arabs, America, and the West. In 2018, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman reaffirmed to Norah O’Donnell on “60 Minutes” that Ayatollah Khamanei was “the new Hitler of the Middle East.” MBS added that “Saudi Arabia does not want to acquire any nuclear bomb. But without a doubt if Iran developed a nuclear bomb, we would follow suit as soon as possible.” The UAE and other Gulf monarchies would probably do the same, perhaps also Turkey. Nuclear proliferation in the Persian Gulf – through which flows 20% of the world’s oil – and the wider Middle East can only harm America’s interest, and that of friends and partners, in global order. Consequently, keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of an Iranian theocracy that for decades, aided by proxies, has attacked Americans and America’s friends and partners in the Middle East and has plotted to assassinate President Trump and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo protects American security and prosperity.

Fifth, the considerable risks did not undermine Israel’s rationale for striking Iran. Israel knew it would face sustained missile barrages. Iran might have closed the Straits of Hormuz or ignited a regional war by attacking Gulf Arab states. If the United States does not negotiate effectively, Iran may well redouble its determination to obtain nuclear weapons as regime hardliners will insist that if Iran already had a bomb, Israel and America would have been deterred. Iran may activate sleeper cells in Europe, the United States, and elsewhere. And other nations could supply Iran with nuclear warheads.

The costs of inaction, Israel concluded, outweighed the costs of action. As Israeli journalist Ari Shavit emphasized in a Yedioth Ahranoth column that appeared hours after the American strike, Israel’s campaign against Iran was a necessary war in response to an existential threat. A nation-state undertakes such necessary wars, writes Shavit, “not in order to accomplish a national goal but rather in order to preserve the nation’s existence.”

In determining whether to honor his longstanding promise to ensure that Iran would not acquire nuclear weapons, President Trump also was compelled to consider the tradeoffs. He chose lawfully and well.

Peter Berkowitz is the Tad and Dianne Taube senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. From 2019 to 2021, he served as director of the Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. State Department. His writings are posted at PeterBerkowitz.com and he can be followed on X @BerkowitzPeter.

6. Trump’s Diplomatic Model

It is unconventional diplomacy.

Conclusion:

These are only a few cases, but they are important ones. Conventional diplomacy works to build stable and predictable relations between nations and eschews surprises and threats, viewing them as disruptive. Trump’s model of diplomacy turns these conventions on their head by introducing shock and uncertainty as a basis for diplomacy and includes explicit and implicit threats, both military and economic, as the foundation of diplomacy. The case of Russia and Ukraine is still uncertain, and the economic dimension is still in its early stages. But it can be said that a model of Trump’s approach to diplomacy is emerging.

Trump’s Diplomatic Model

https://geopoliticalfutures.com/trumps-diplomatic-model/

By George Friedman -

June 30, 2025

Open as PDF

U.S. President Donald Trump has developed a clear model for exercising diplomacy. He begins by making demands of other nations, then calls for negotiations. If the negotiations do not take place or fail to produce some kind of accommodation, he takes punitive action. All the while, he alternatively issues threats meant to intensify the process or encourages action by praising his antagonist.

This model was on full display during the recent episode with Iran. Trump demanded that Iran abandon its nuclear weapons program, threatening consequences if it failed to do so. He then engaged in indirect negotiations with Iran, noting publicly that the negotiations showed promise. At a certain point, he set a date for the negotiations’ completion, and when that date passed, he took dramatic military action.

A similar process is underway with regard to NATO. He began by saying NATO was not living up to its military obligations and that this failure shifted the primary burden to the United States. He made clear that this situation could not continue, implying that the U.S. could withdraw from the alliance if Europe didn’t pay its way in the future. Extensive negotiations took place, punctuated by periodic warnings from Trump. At last week’s NATO meeting, European countries agreed to increase their defense spending to 5 percent of gross domestic product. Trump praised his negotiating partners and made it clear that the U.S. remained committed to NATO.

In both cases, there was a radical demand followed by a period of negotiation and signals of willingness to take drastic action if talks failed, or to reconcile if talks succeeded. In Iran, this process resulted in airstrikes. With NATO, it resulted in accommodation.

A similar pattern developed in Trump’s efforts to reshape the global trading system. First came the shock of imposing dramatically higher tariffs globally. He then showed an openness to engage in negotiations on a nation-by-nation basis.

Then there is the case of Russia and Ukraine. The negotiation process started with yet another shock – this time to Ukraine, when Washington said it was prepared to reduce, if not abandon, its support for Kyiv. Trump then sought to open negotiations with Russia with a stunning desire for a settlement at Ukraine’s expense. The purpose of the shock was to ease Russia’s anxieties over its performance in Ukraine and to indicate that the United States was not going to take advantage of those anxieties. In fact, Washington wanted Moscow to know it was prepared to offer economic benefits to Russia. Trump demanded talks to end the war. Russian President Vladimir Putin learned three things from this initial volley: that the U.S. was indifferent to the future of Ukraine, that Putin’s military failure in Ukraine was unacceptable, and that Trump’s indifference to Ukraine’s future (and his hostility toward NATO) gave Putin time to improve his position in Ukraine. In other words, Putin could not allow the war to end based on his meager successes. He regarded the U.S. stance on NATO (and Trump’s eagerness to settle) as an opportunity.

Importantly, efforts to end the war in Ukraine dovetail with the changes happening in NATO. One of the dimensions to Trump’s reconciliation with the alliance is fear – Moscow’s fear that NATO could act against Russia, and fear among NATO members of Russian aggression. In this sense, Trump’s reconciliation with NATO could easily change the dynamics of the Ukraine war, placing Russia in a position where it could face a united NATO intervention or massive and coordinated aid for its adversary. Putin’s refusal to negotiate an end to the war (partly because of the fragmentation of NATO) has been replaced by the need to consider what NATO, now including the U.S., will do. With the recent NATO love fest, Putin might be forced into the negotiations Trump wanted.

These are only a few cases, but they are important ones. Conventional diplomacy works to build stable and predictable relations between nations and eschews surprises and threats, viewing them as disruptive. Trump’s model of diplomacy turns these conventions on their head by introducing shock and uncertainty as a basis for diplomacy and includes explicit and implicit threats, both military and economic, as the foundation of diplomacy. The case of Russia and Ukraine is still uncertain, and the economic dimension is still in its early stages. But it can be said that a model of Trump’s approach to diplomacy is emerging.

Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email

George Friedman

https://geopoliticalfutures.com/author/gfriedman/

George Friedman is an internationally recognized geopolitical forecaster and strategist on international affairs and the founder and chairman of Geopolitical Futures. Dr. Friedman is also a New York Times bestselling author. His most recent book, THE STORM BEFORE THE CALM: America’s Discord, the Coming Crisis of the 2020s, and the Triumph Beyond, published February 25, 2020 describes how “the United States periodically reaches a point of crisis in which it appears to be at war with itself, yet after an extended period it reinvents itself, in a form both faithful to its founding and radically different from what it had been.” The decade 2020-2030 is such a period which will bring dramatic upheaval and reshaping of American government, foreign policy, economics, and culture. His most popular book, The Next 100 Years, is kept alive by the prescience of its predictions. Other best-selling books include Flashpoints: The Emerging Crisis in Europe, The Next Decade, America’s Secret War, The Future of War and The Intelligence Edge. His books have been translated into more than 20 languages. Dr. Friedman has briefed numerous military and government organizations in the United States and overseas and appears regularly as an expert on international affairs, foreign policy and intelligence in major media. For almost 20 years before resigning in May 2015, Dr. Friedman was CEO and then chairman of Stratfor, a company he founded in 1996. Friedman received his bachelor’s degree from the City College of the City University of New York and holds a doctorate in government from Cornell University.

7. Trump Seeks to Remake the World

Excerpts:

China and Russia are the two great powers that most want America’s might and its ambitious president restrained. Both these revisionist powers see how Mr. Trump has asserted American dominance in Europe and strengthened the U.S. role in the Middle East. China and Russia perceive Trumpian ambition as a threat and will look to derail any project that would diminish their global clout.

The outcomes of this competition are impossible to predict, but one thing is clear. Donald Trump is no shrinking violet, and as long as he sits in the Oval Office, the U.S. is unlikely to retreat from the world.

Trump Seeks to Remake the World

He wants as much executive power as possible and the U.S. the top global player.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/trump-seeks-to-remake-the-world-foreign-policy-4e41c836

By Walter Russell Mead

June 30, 2025 4:06 pm ET

President Donald Trump at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit in The Hague, June 25. Photo: piroschka van de wouw/Reuters

Five months into the most consequential foreign-policy presidency since Richard Nixon left the White House, Donald Trump’s approach to the world is taking on a definitive shape.

Newsletter Sign-up

Morning Editorial Report

All the day's Opinion headlines.

Preview

First and foremost, restraint isn’t part of Mr. Trump’s political method. He seeks to accumulate as much executive power as possible at home; he wants the same thing internationally. Far from limiting America’s world role, Mr. Trump intends to place the country at the center of international affairs. What Alice Longworth said of her father, Theodore Roosevelt, is true of Mr. Trump, at least as far as his approach to international and domestic politics. He wants to be the corpse at every funeral, the bride at every wedding, and the baby at every christening.

That doesn’t mean he is a neoconservative or a liberal internationalist. The 47th president loathes crusades for democracy, despises multinational institutions, and treats international courts with the contempt he believes they deserve. While he genuinely hates war, Mr. Trump believes in pressing America’s economic, technological and military advantages as far as he can in pursuit of an expansive vision of the national interest.

His presidency is about the concentration of power for maximalist goals. His trade policy, whatever economists may say about it, has concentrated unprecedented power in his hands at home and abroad. At home, he can affect the profitability of almost every company in the U.S. by setting tariffs.

Mr. Trump’s opponents criticize him for blowing up the multilateral trading system. In their view, that system better safeguarded American economic interests than a chaotic and fluid system resting more on bilateral and political agreements. We shall see whether Mr. Trump’s gamble that he can get better deals bilaterally than the U.S. got through the multilateral system pays off. But what isn’t in doubt is that his goal is to maximize rather than to restrain American economic power.

Mr. Trump’s Europe policy shows every quality except restraint. From laying claim to Greenland and repeatedly interfering in European elections to ripping up the trade relationship and threatening to walk away from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, everything this administration has done has been intended to increase American power in Brussels and beyond. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has been condemned for comparing Mr. Trump to “daddy,” who sometimes has to get tough. But America’s president is Europe’s daddy now—and he has gotten the Old World to jump through more hoops than any of his predecessors in the past 50 years.

In the Middle East, Mr. Trump has similarly flouted the restrainers’ advice and engaged in a free-wheeling and far-reaching policy aimed at reasserting American hegemony while avoiding long-term military engagements. From bombing Iran and threatening the life of its supreme leader to proposing the mass removal of Palestinians from Gaza and threatening Israel with a dramatic suspension of aid, the president has been a hyper-activist in the region.

That Secretary of State Marco Rubio was celebrating the signing of a peace deal between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda last week highlights the immense ambition that drives Trumpian foreign policy. The world is a stage, and Mr. Trump intends to stand in its limelight.

The Congo-Rwanda agreement, which may or may not succeed on the ground, illustrates a hallmark of Trumpian diplomacy: an unconventional and amplified reliance on American economic power to achieve international goals. Whether it is the mining deal with Ukraine, the critical minerals agreement in central Africa, or the spate of artificial-intelligence deals with the Gulf countries, President Trump and his diplomats seek to unite American security and economic interests.

Landing disabling blows against Iran, the weakest of the major revisionist powers, both strengthens the American global position and telegraphs warnings to Moscow and Beijing. So does forcing Europe to rearm. It remains to be seen whether and how Mr. Trump will deploy his preferred elements of American power to assert his primacy over Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.

China and Russia are the two great powers that most want America’s might and its ambitious president restrained. Both these revisionist powers see how Mr. Trump has asserted American dominance in Europe and strengthened the U.S. role in the Middle East. China and Russia perceive Trumpian ambition as a threat and will look to derail any project that would diminish their global clout.

The outcomes of this competition are impossible to predict, but one thing is clear. Donald Trump is no shrinking violet, and as long as he sits in the Oval Office, the U.S. is unlikely to retreat from the world.

You may also like

Embed code copied to clipboard

Copy LinkCopy EmbedFacebook Twitter

Click for Sound

Journal Editorial Report: Europe commits to a big defense-spending increase.

Appeared in the July 1, 2025, print edition as 'Trump Seeks to Remake the World'.

8. The Great Budget Baseline Con

Excerpts:

The Senate bill, for all its faults, is the first serious attempt at entitlement reform in nearly two decades. The Senate bill will slow spending growth in Medicaid, food stamps and student loans. It will also roll back subsidies that have become entitlements for the renewable-energy industries. Yet Democrats oppose all of these changes that really would reduce the deficit in future years.

There is much in the GOP bill that deserves criticism, but the $3.3 trillion deficit critique is phony—like Beltway accounting.

The Great Budget Baseline Con

The tax cuts don’t add $3.3 trillion to deficits under current tax policy.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/senate-budget-bill-baseline-deficit-cbo-gop-tax-cuts-2acb565b

By The Editorial Board

June 30, 2025 5:50 pm ET

Pedestrians walk past the National Debt Clock in New York on June 4. Photo: Liu Yanan/Zuma Press

The Senate on Monday began its “vote-a-rama” on amendments to the tax bill, and it was scheduled to go deep in the night. But before we see the final product, it’s worth rehearsing one more time one of the greatest distortions of this budget debate—to wit, that the Senate bill is a fiscal blowout because it will increase the federal deficit by $3.3 trillion over 10 years.

That’s the official Congressional Budget Office “score” of the bill, but it’s only true if you assume that Congress was going to tolerate a $4.5 trillion tax increase. That would be the result if the 2017 tax reform expired at the end of this year, as most of the individual tax provisions are scheduled to do.

Congress was never going to allow that. Even Democrats support extending most of the 2017 individual cuts except the lower 37% top marginal rate. Senate Republicans correctly argue that the bill’s cost should be measured against a more realistic baseline, which assumes that existing tax rates and policy continue.

In any rational world, changes in the law would be scored against current policy. But in Washington they are scored against CBO’s current-law “baseline,” which assumes that the 2017 tax cuts will expire. Voila, $3.3 trillion in new deficits over 10 years.

Based on current policy, however, CBO estimates that the Senate bill would save $500 billion over 10 years. Spending reductions would offset increased costs from President Trump’s new tax carve-outs for overtime, tips, and auto-loan interest, as well as the increase in the state-and-local tax deduction to $40,000. The higher SALT cap reduces revenue by $140 billion over 10 years. All of those changes are bad tax policy, but they don’t add up to $3.3 trillion.

But get this. Under CBO’s current-law baseline, the SALT deduction cap disappears at the end of this year, so the new $40,000 cap has the effect of reducing the deficit by $944 billion over 10 years. Only under Beltway accounting can a bigger tax subsidy reduce the deficit.

By the way, even Barack Obama’s advisers argued that Congress in 2012 should use a current policy baseline to extend most of the George W. Bush tax rates that were set to expire at the end of that year. “The relevant point of comparison isn’t current law, it is ‘current policy,’” wrote Jeff Zients, the Obama Office of Management and Budget director.

The larger SALT cap and tax breaks for special interests create distortions in the code and will do nothing for economic growth. Republicans also made them temporary to reduce their cost on paper, knowing that they will invariably be extended. Democrats have played similar budget tricks with “temporary” spending increases.

CBO’s baseline forecast is also misleading because it builds in annual spending increases. This lets Democrats claim that reforms that slow spending growth such as Medicaid work requirements are a spending “cut.” CBO projects that Medicaid spending will increase by about 4.5% annually over the next decade. The Senate bill slows the growth to about 2% a year. This isn’t a real cut.

The Senate bill, for all its faults, is the first serious attempt at entitlement reform in nearly two decades. The Senate bill will slow spending growth in Medicaid, food stamps and student loans. It will also roll back subsidies that have become entitlements for the renewable-energy industries. Yet Democrats oppose all of these changes that really would reduce the deficit in future years.

There is much in the GOP bill that deserves criticism, but the $3.3 trillion deficit critique is phony—like Beltway accounting.

You may also like

Embed code copied to clipboard

Copy LinkCopy EmbedFacebook Twitter

Click for Sound

Free Expression: The specifics of President Trump’s fiscal agenda are less important than the overall picture of political dysfunction and economic ineptitude.

Appeared in the July 1, 2025, print edition as 'The Great Budget Baseline Con'.

9. FM 3-05 Army Special Operations (June 2025)

Time to dig into this. I had not seen any previous work on this.

Note:

The principal audience for FM 3-05 is Army commanders and staffs working with or employing Army special operations forces. This manual provides the foundation for training and Army education system curricula and future capabilities development across doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership and education, personnel, facilities, and policy. This Service doctrine is consistent with joint doctrine.

This is the first time I have seen this construct:

"command and control, computing, communications, cyber, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and targeting capabilities (C5ISRT)"

What a great quote here:

LTG (ret.) Don Holder, a lead author of the 1982 and 1986 versions of FM 100-5 (AirLand Battle), ultimately fought as the covering force commander for Third Army’s main effort during the Persian Gulf War. Years later, he recalled the significance of that experience: “While writing doctrine, I had to deliberately think about the difference in the levels of war and what those meant for leadership and organization… [the experience] gave a good foundation for [higher-level] command.” I challenge all of you to do the same. Without equal! Sine Pari.

FM 3-05 Army Special Operations (June 2025)

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/06/30/fm-3-05-army-special-operations-june-2025/

by SWJ Staff

06.30.2025 at 11:24pm

FM 3-05 Army Special Operations (JUN25)

FM 3-05 provides U.S. Army planners and forces with the principles, tactics, and procedures to execute Army special operations and related activities.

Foreword

Since the days of the Revolutionary War, Army Special Operations Forces (ARSOF) have been persistently irregular in their approach. Our organizations have always provided outsized impact to the larger Army and Joint Force. While the adversaries, threats, and locations have changed, this impact has endured. However, we have not updated our doctrine since 2014. Now, as we face new threats and challenges, this doctrine will guide our transformation.

When we last updated our doctrine, ARSOF were in a generational fight against terrorism. During that time, we demonstrated our unique value to the Army and the Joint Force in the mountains of Afghanistan, the deserts of Iraq, and other austere and politically sensitive regions. We are now in a new generational fight, and it is time once again to transform our doctrine.

Our doctrine must describe how ARSOF contribute across the competition continuum—remaining threat informed, strategically driven, operationally focused, and tactically prepared. The character of warfare has changed and requires new tools and techniques to operate in all domains. Yet war’s nature endures; it ultimately changes human behavior—it is a contest of wills. Special operations remain an Army core competency because ARSOF enhance the ability of the Army and the Joint Force to gain, maintain, and exploit advantage—from competition through crisis and conflict.

ARSOF provide the backbone of joint SOF’s ability to conduct counterterrorism and crisis response missions vital to preserving policymakers’ decision space and defending the Nation. In competition, ARSOF conduct irregular warfare to ensure the Joint Force has placement, access, influence, and partners in regions vital to our national interests—enabling our Nation to prevent high-end conflict while setting conditions to prevail when and if it occurs.

In conflict, ARSOF operate in the strategic deep and denied areas and along the enemy’s strategic periphery to integrate effects between domains with joint, interagency, inter-governmental, and multinational partners. The SOF-Space-Cyber TRIAD enhances friendly, and degrades enemy, command and control, computing, communications, cyber, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and targeting capabilities (C5ISRT). ARSOF are the eyes, ears, and teeth of the Army in the strategic deep area during large-scale combat operations. We create dilemmas for the enemy where they are weakest. Our persistent presence and transgenerational relationships generate whole-of-society resilience, enable resistance forces in protracted conflict, and ensure the Joint Force retains and exploits information advantage.

LTG (ret.) Don Holder, a lead author of the 1982 and 1986 versions of FM 100-5 (AirLand Battle), ultimately fought as the covering force commander for Third Army’s main effort during the Persian Gulf War. Years later, he recalled the significance of that experience: “While writing doctrine, I had to deliberately think about the difference in the levels of war and what those meant for leadership and organization… [the experience] gave a good foundation for [higher-level] command.” I challenge all of you to do the same. Without equal! Sine Pari.

This publication is available at the Army Publishing Directorate site and the Central Army Registry Site.

Preface

FM 3-05 provides U.S. Army planners and forces with the principles, tactics, and procedures to execute Army special operations and related activities. Subordinate Army techniques publications describe specific special operations activities. Army special operations forces include all personnel assigned to the United States Army Special Operations Command (USASOC) and its subordinate units: 1st Special Forces Command, 75th Ranger Regiment, United States Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School, and United States Army Special Operations Aviation Command.

Note. USASOC and all its subordinate elements are designated as airborne and special operations units. These unit designations are intentionally omitted in text to facilitate readability. Army special operations forces, as used throughout FM 3-05, refers to more than one type of unit present or conducting operations. When the discussion is about 1st Special Forces Command units conducting operations, it is referring to Civil Affairs, Psychological Operations, or Special Forces.

The principal audience for FM 3-05 is Army commanders and staffs working with or employing Army special operations forces. This manual provides the foundation for training and Army education system curricula and future capabilities development across doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership and education, personnel, facilities, and policy. This Service doctrine is consistent with joint doctrine.

Commanders, staffs, and subordinates ensure that their decisions and actions comply with applicable United States, international, and in some cases host-nation laws and regulations. Commanders at all levels ensure that their Service members operate in accordance with the law of armed conflict and the rules of engagement. (See FM 6-27 for legal compliance.)

FM 3-05 uses joint terms where applicable. Selected joint and Army terms and definitions appear in both the glossary and the text. Terms for which FM 3-05 is the proponent publication (the authority) are marked with an asterisk (*) in the glossary. When first defined in the text, terms for which FM 3-05 is the proponent publication are boldfaced and italicized, and definitions are boldfaced. When first defining other proponent definitions in the text, the term is italicized with the proponent publication designator and number at the end of the definition. Subsequent uses of the term are not italicized.

FM 3-05 applies to the Active Army, Army National Guard/Army National Guard of the United States, and United States Army Reserve unless otherwise stated.

The proponent of this publication is the United States Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School, United States Army Special Operations Center of Excellence. The preparing agency is the Joint and Army Doctrine Integration Division; Directorate of Training, Doctrine, and Proponency; United States Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School. Send comments and recommended changes on DA Form 2028 (Recommended Changes to Publications and Blank Forms) to Commander, United States Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School, 3004 Ardennes Street, Stop A, Fort Bragg, NC 28310-9610.

Tags: Army Doctrine, Army Field Manual, Army Special Operations Forces (ARSOF), doctrine, Field Manual 3-05, influence operations, Information and influence activities, Military Doctrine, Special Operations, Special Operations Forces, SWJ Documents and Reports, US Army Special Operations Command

About The Author

SWJ Staff
SWJ Staff searches the internet daily for articles and posts that we think are of great interests to our readers.

10. Thousands of State Department Workers Brace for Layoffs

What are we losing? Current expertise? "Seedcorn" for our diplamtic fture?

Thousands of State Department Workers Brace for Layoffs

By Susan Crabtree

RCP Staff

June 28, 2025

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2025/06/28/thousands_of_state_department_workers_brace_for_layoffs__152975.html

State Department employees already bracing for mass layoffs faced another blow Friday in the Supreme Court’s ruling that district courts cannot issue universal injunctions against President Trump’s policies.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other top agency officials have been gearing up to issue layoffs ahead of a self-imposed July 1 restructuring deadline, readying official “reduction in force” notices that could go out at any moment.

On the chopping block are the jobs of hundreds of Foreign Service officers currently stationed in D.C. The Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, which designs and implements educational and professional exchange programs with other countries, is expected to be one of the hardest hit divisions with nearly 90 employees set to be fired, according to State Department sources.

The bureau facilitates visiting scholars and professional from other countries to cultivate “people-to-people ties among current and future global leaders that build enduring networks and personal relationships and promote national security and values,” its website states.

While the bureau manages the long-standing Fulbright Visiting Scholar Program, first established in 1946, it also plays a role in overseeing exchange visitor visas. In May, Rubio raised concerns that Chinese exchange students pose a national security risk and announced he would “aggressively” revoke visas for Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying certain fields, such as semiconductor engineering and aerospace. The secretary also has revoked hundreds of foreign students’ visas as part of Trump’s efforts to crack down on pro-Palestinian protesters on university campuses.

Earlier this year, Rubio released a State Department reorganization plan that detailed a widescale restructuring, including slashing more than 100 offices. In a more detailed version sent to Congress, Rubio outlined plans to downsize the “bloated, bureaucratic” department that he said was “beholden to radical political ideology” by firing roughly 2,000 people. Coupled with an estimated 1,500 who voluntarily left the government this year, the staff reductions will amount to roughly 3,500 out of the department’s 19,000 employees.

Until the high court intervened Friday, the State Department appeared to be holding its fire on the layoffs, abiding by a federal judge’s June 13 injunction ordering it not to move forward with the staff reductions.

State Department deputy press secretary Tommy Pigott said on Tuesday the agency “has no plans here at the department to violate a court order.”

The Supreme Court’s Friday decision in Trump v. CASA, Inc. significantly curtailed the authority of federal district courts to issue nationwide injunctions, ruling that such determinations exceed the authority granted by Congress to federal courts. The decision impacts past and future legal challenges against executive actions, including those related to federal workforce reductions.

While Trump hailed the high court ruling as a “monumental decision” that returns power to Congress and the presidency, it doesn’t automatically permit the State Department to proceed with all planned workforce reductions. As of Friday afternoon, attorneys on both sides of the issue were assessing just how broadly the high court’s decision could be interpreted.

Still, earlier in the week, the agency took technical steps that would allow the layoffs to move forward if and when the Supreme Court overturned the lower court injunction. Those provisions included changes to a section on “reduction in force” policies in the Foreign Affairs Manual, which covers the terms of employment for career diplomats. The changes made it easier for Rubio to fire foreign service officers assigned to the United States, versus those working abroad, without considering merit.

“The FAM hasn’t been updated in decades and necessitates an update to allow the department to tailor its reductions and the ability for the secretary to implement the proposed changes,” a senior official told RealClearPolitics.

That move sent nervous shockwaves through the agency this week. In response, the State Department stood its ground, releasing an internal memo explaining that the changes would allow it to make “foreign service reductions” among “specific offices which are duplicative, noncore or where organic efficiencies can be found.”

Some employees are already seeing an end date of July 1 on their human resources files, and orders have been given for extra security, burn bags, moving boxes, carts, and even extra boxes of tissues, NBC News reported Thursday.

The union representing Foreign Service officers is one of the group of plaintiffs fighting the layoffs in court. On Wednesday the organization issued a statement demanding that the State Department abide by the court ruling and delay the layoffs.

“Sources inside the department tell us that layoffs will be announced as soon as the end of this week or early next week,” Tom Yazdgerdi, president of the American Foreign Service Association, said in a statement. “Unless the Supreme Court intervenes, the department is legally barred from taking any actions outlined in its reorganization plans.”

More than 60 Democratic lawmakers on Friday sent a letter to Rubio urging him to refrain from moving forward with “large-scale” layoffs within the U.S. diplomatic workforce, including an estimated 700 foreign service officers.

Led by Rep. Don Beyer, a Democrat representing Northern Virginia, the lawmakers said firing so many seasoned foreign service officers would drain the diplomatic corps of critical subject area and institutional knowledge at a time of heightened tensions in the Middle East. The lawmakers also took issue with an expected targeting of D.C.-assigned foreign service officers, which usually operate in areas around the world but often rotate into Washington.

“Reporting that FSOs will effectively be penalized for their present duty domestic stations is especially concerning, and not conducive to a thoughtful, priorities-driven reorganization process that retains the best talent and recognizes the unique nature of the Foreign Service,” the lawmakers argued.

Hundreds of foreign service officers – part of the 1,600 staffers who previously worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development – are already facing summer layoff deadlines. The Trump administration cut 90% of USAID foreign assistance contracts and shuttered the agency after DOGE and others produced numerous egregious examples of agency’s waste, fraud, and abuse.

The lawmakers also urged Rubio to reinstate the administration of the Foreign Service officer test, which is usually offered three times a year and is well-known filter for prospective foreign service officers.

The federal judge in California who froze the planned firings was responding to Rubio’s decision to lay off 40 Civil Service employees who worked in a State Department office that purported to counter foreign disinformation. Rubio accused the office, the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference office, previously known as the Global Engagement Center, of censorship and wasting taxpayer funds.

Republicans in Congress had already shut down the GEC in December 2024 after widespread criticism from the right that it was engaged in censoring Americans and discounting conservative media. Democratic lawmakers and some Republicans countered that it played a key role in combating Russian and Chinese disinformation.

Billionaire Elon Musk, during his time leading DOGE’s effort to shrink the federal government, accused the center in a 2023 X post of being the “worst offender” in U.S. government censorship and manipulation. Investigative reporter Matt Taibbi said the GEC “funded a secret list of subcontractors and helped pioneer an insidious – and idiotic – new form of blacklisting” during the pandemic.

In exposing the Twitter Files, Taibbi wrote that the GEC “flagged accounts as ‘Russian personas and proxies’ based on criteria such as ‘Describing the Coronavirus as an engineered bioweapon,’ blaming ‘research conducted at the Wuhan institute,’ and ‘attributing the appearance of the virus to the CIA.’”

In April, Rubio called out the GEC for spending millions of dollars “to actively silence and censor the voices of Americans they were supposed to be serving.”

“This is antithetical to the very principles we should be upholding and inconceivable it was taking place in America,” he added.

Susan Crabtree is RealClearPolitics' national political correspondent.

11. A Strait Comparison: Lessons from the Dardanelles for a Strait of Hormuz Closure

Excerpts:

The story of the Dardanelles is a cautionary tale about the consequences of mismatched ends and means, underappreciated asymmetric threats, incoherent messaging, and sluggish decision-making. These are not novel observations; if they ring close to home, it is because the U.S. military exhibited the same pathologies in its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is not a stretch to worry about their recurrence in a future crisis.

The Strait of Hormuz may look very different from the Dardanelles on a map, but from a strategic and operational standpoint, they rhyme in ways that demand attention. The British failure at the Dardanelles was not inevitable. Rather, it was an institutional failure to align strategy, capacity, and narrative. Today, if the Strait of Hormuz were to be contested, the same dynamics would be in play — but with exponentially higher stakes and speed.

Under Trump’s orders, the United States struck aggressively at Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. Iran responded with closure threats and missile attacks. What comes next is not inevitable, but it will be shaped by whether we can avoid the mistakes of history’s tragedies. Lessons from the Dardanelles can help ensure that today’s strategic chokepoint doesn’t become tomorrow’s strategic catastrophe.

A Strait Comparison: Lessons from the Dardanelles for a Strait of Hormuz Closure - War on the Rocks

Jonathan Schroden

June 30, 2025

warontherocks.com · June 30, 2025

On June 22, the United States launched precision airstrikes as part of Operation Midnight Hammer against Iran’s nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan. In the wake of those strikes, President Donald Trump said the operation had “totally obliterated” those facilities, while Tehran’s parliament voted to grant the government authority to close the Strait of Hormuz. Such a move, if successfully carried out, could instantaneously disrupt nearly one-fifth of the world’s oil shipments and cause substantial and potentially cascading economic harm to countries across the globe.

Iran threatening to close the Strait of Hormuz is not new. It has periodically issued statements to that effect and has been building capabilities to do so for several decades. In 2011, while serving as an advisor to U.S. Central Command, concern over this possibility led command leaders to ask me to conduct a comparative analysis of a potential Strait of Hormuz closure with Britain’s historic failure to reopen the Dardanelles Strait in 1915. While the two scenarios have substantial geopolitical and technological differences, both episodes center on maritime chokepoint warfare, layered and asymmetric threats, and the importance of political-military alignment and strategic communications when economic and kinetic warfare combine.

Here, I will update and summarize the lessons I previously identified for U.S. military leaders. As I stated in my paper then, “Although it may seem unlikely that a near-perfect-storm of errors and misjudgments would doom the U.S. to disaster in the [Strait of Hormuz] as it did the British at the Dardanelles, it is still better to eschew faith in the odds and apply the lessons of the past than to leave open such a possibility.”

BECOME A MEMBER

The British Failure at the Dardanelles

By December 1914, opposing European forces were largely deadlocked along the Western Front of World War I, as the German march toward Paris had been halted and massive armies stood trench-to-trench, each side daring the other to attempt a charge in the face of withering machine gun fire. By this time, Britain and France had lost more than a million men, casualties that seem unfathomable by today’s standards but were hardly the final toll of the war.

In early 1915, British leaders — including the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill — conceived of a plan to break this stalemate by opening a new front against the Ottoman Empire. The Dardanelles Strait, a two-to-four-mile-wide waterway linking the Aegean Sea to the Sea of Marmara, was a strategically vital economic and military chokepoint. Seizing it, London believed, would allow Allied navies to threaten Constantinople, force the Ottomans out of the war, and open a key supply route to Russia, which was increasingly isolated and under strain on the Eastern Front.

The Turkish defenses at the Dardanelles were constructed in three layers. The entrance was guarded by four old forts, containing a total of 16 heavy and seven medium-range guns. Past the entrance, the second layer of defense consisted of numerous permanent batteries of six-inch guns. Following an ill-advised preliminary shelling of the forts by British ships in November 1914, this second layer was fortified with mobile six-inch howitzer batteries of four guns each along with numerous searchlights. At the aptly named “narrows” was the third layer of defense, consisting of 324 sea mines and two huge ancient fortresses armed with 72 guns of various calibers. Thus, the Ottomans had in place a complex, integrated defense: The mines would block passage of the strait; the mobile howitzers would prevent sweeping of the mines; and the larger guns of the forts would protect the howitzers by keeping Allied ships at bay.

The Dardanelles campaign began in February 1915 with a naval-only strategy. British and French battleships bombarded Ottoman coastal defenses, intending to suppress artillery batteries while trawlers manned first by fisherman and later by British Navy volunteers cleared the heavily mined waters of the strait. Allied bombardments, however, proved ineffective, as the Ottoman guns were well-camouflaged, dispersed, and able to quickly recover or redeploy. Minesweeping operations were hampered by poor intelligence and visibility, enemy observation and fire, and wildly differing views of acceptable losses by senior leaders and the men manning the boats. The Allies underestimated the extent and effectiveness of the Ottoman minefields, assuming that dominance of the sea alone could force a breakthrough. After several unsuccessful attempts, on March 18 the Allies mounted a major push to drive through the strait. While the initial bombardments appeared successful this time, a line of undetected mines laid just days earlier by Ottoman defenders who had studied the Allies’ tactics sunk three battleships and damaged three more in a single day. The loss of these ships and many of the men aboard them shocked Allied leaders and led them to abandon the naval-only approach.

To avoid loss of prestige from this debacle, the British government authorized a land invasion to seize the Gallipoli peninsula and neutralize the shore defenses controlling the strait. Beginning on April 25, British troops, along with cadres from Australia and New Zealand, landed at multiple beaches. The landings were poorly coordinated, met with stiff resistance, and quickly bogged down into brutal trench warfare. The Gallipoli campaign dragged on for nine more months in appalling conditions, with mounting casualties, logistical failures, and no breakthrough. Inter-service rivalry, indecisive leadership, and shifting political direction compounded the stalemate. Ultimately, the Allies withdrew in early 1916, having suffered more than 250,000 casualties with no strategic gains. The Dardanelles and Gallipoli campaigns became symbols of military overreach and strategic failure, shaping British civil-military relations and operational planning for years to come.

Iran and the Strait of Hormuz

The Strait of Hormuz is universally considered one of the key economic maritime chokepoints in the world, largely due to the amount of oil that flows through it and the geopolitical tensions that surround it. The strait, which separates the Gulf of Oman to the east from the Persian Gulf to the west, is approximately 170 miles long and 35 miles wide at its narrowest point. Water depth in the strait varies from 130 to 660 feet, with an average depth of about 160 feet. The internationally accepted transit lanes through the strait consist of two-mile-wide channels for inbound and outbound traffic, with a two-mile-wide buffer zone in between. The water in these channels is less than 160 feet deep.

To bolster the credibility of its threat to this strategic chokepoint, Iran has been developing applicable military capabilities for many years. These capabilities include conventional ones such as navy ships (e.g., corvettes, drone carriers), submarines, torpedoes, and various anti-ship drones and missiles, as well as asymmetric capabilities, such as missile- and explosive-laden fast attack boats, sea mines, and unmanned underwater vessels. In the same way that the Ottomans employed a layered defense in the Dardanelles, Iran would likely use mines as the centerpiece of its approach to closing the Strait of Hormuz, with overlapping layers of threat coverage from its other capabilities.

The question of whether Iran would ever actually use these capabilities to close the strait and the extent to which it might be successful in doing so has been debated for over a decade. Among the vectors that have shaped the debate are the extent to which Iran’s leadership would feel strategically cornered enough to sacrifice its own economic and political interests to inflict global economic harm, the degree to which the United States could detect impending actions to close the strait and act pre-emptively to stop them, and the effectiveness of U.S. capabilities to re-open the strait if its intelligence fails to provide adequate indications and warning.

Applying Lessons from the Dardanelles

There are notable geographic and technological differences between the two scenarios that render most tactical comparisons of little contemporary help. But Britain’s failure at the Dardanelles was so spectacular because its shortcomings transcended tactical errors into the operational and strategic realms. There are, therefore, at least four applicable lessons for a Strait of Hormuz scenario.

Mine Warfare and the Modern Asymmetric Threat

One of the key reasons the British naval assault on the Dardanelles failed was the unexpected effectiveness of Ottoman minefields. Despite achieving initial success in suppressing coastal artillery, the Allies lost several warships to mines in a single day, halting the campaign’s momentum and forcing a costly pivot to land operations at Gallipoli.

In a Strait of Hormuz crisis, the United States would likely face a similar threat: naval mines and other asymmetric sea denial systems. Iran has a sizable inventory of sea mines, some capable of being delivered by submarines or disguised commercial vessels. While mines can be cleared and the U.S. Navy has four dedicated mine countermeasures ships stationed in Bahrain, the service has a generally strong distaste for the mine-clearing mission and has commensurately under-resourced and under-maintained these ships for many years. As such, they would likely only be effective in an environment free of non-mine threats, which is the exact opposite of what Iran would seek to establish in and around the Strait of Hormuz as part of a closure operation. Clearing mines from its shipping channels would take time, put U.S. sailors at risk, and require capabilities that are scarce and slow to deploy.

The British misjudged the threat of mines at the Dardanelles, and it is possible the United States could do the same in the Strait of Hormuz. If a closure event happened in the near term, the U.S. Navy might discover that its mine-clearing capabilities are too little, too late.

Strategic Overreach and the Danger of Wishful Thinking

The Dardanelles campaign began with high hopes and vague objectives — the historical analog of today’s “strategy by vibes.” British and French leaders believed they could force open the strait with naval power alone, destabilize the Ottoman Empire, and perhaps even bring it to surrender. What followed was a series of operational missteps rooted in faulty assumptions and a deep disconnect between political aims and military means.

The lesson for U.S. leaders is to recognize the risk of similar overreach in the context of a Strait of Hormuz conflict. While the operational goal — reopening or keeping open a vital maritime chokepoint — may appear straightforward, the political objectives surrounding such an action could quickly become overwhelming. To what extent, for example, would the United States need or want to degrade Iran’s capabilities to enable mine-clearing operations? If a U.S. Navy mine countermeasures ship was struck by Iran, how much further would the United States be willing to escalate? Would reopening the strait be sufficient, or would the United States feel compelled to “teach Iran a lesson”? Would calls for regime change gain traction if the conflict persists? And would U.S. allies and partners support these actions, oppose them, or push Washington along? The answers to these questions would logically determine the scale and nature of the military response, yet such inquiries often go unarticulated until operations are underway. In the absence of political clarity, operational actions could escalate into a broader regional war without clear purpose or attainable goals — precisely the path that doomed the British effort in 1915.

Dominating the Narrative

The Dardanelles campaign was also a failure of strategic communication. British leaders initially oversold the ease of the operation, then struggled to manage public expectations as the campaign stalled. A lack of transparency and inconsistent messaging undermined public support and complicated diplomatic efforts with allies and neutral states.

Iran has repeatedly demonstrated its skill in shaping favorable narratives, portraying itself as the victim of Western aggression and using regional media to stoke anti-American sentiment. The United States, conversely, tends to view strategic communications as an afterthought to kinetic action. If the U.S. military was compelled to respond to Iranian actions in the strait, it would do well to anticipate the Iranian state information campaign that would inevitably follow. Countering that campaign — or better yet, seizing the information initiative — would require prior planning, coordination across government agencies, and the empowerment of communicators at all levels. A Strait of Hormuz crisis would be as much a battle of narratives as a military engagement. History shows that winning the latter is no guarantee of success in the former.

Command Friction and the Tempo of Decision

The final lesson from the Dardanelles is perhaps the most institutional. The British campaign was plagued by indecision, unclear command relationships, and a painfully slow operational tempo. Senior military leaders lacked unity of effort, and political authorities wavered between alternative courses of action. The result was a muddled campaign that squandered initiative and compounded losses.

As has played out over the past few weeks, a crisis in the Strait of Hormuz would likely unfold in a time-compressed and politically charged environment. It is a geopolitical powder keg where an incident could escalate within hours. In such a context, command clarity and decision speed are essential. The U.S. military would need preplanned concepts of operation, well defined rules of engagement, and a rapid feedback loop between operational commanders and national-level decision-makers in Washington. Coordination with regional partners — some of whom may be hesitant or divided — would also be critical.

Avoiding the kind of command friction that hobbled the Dardanelles campaign would require not only well-defined command structures, but also shared expectations about decision timelines, escalation thresholds, and delegated authorities. In this environment, hesitation could be fatal — to forces, to credibility, and to deterrence.

Conclusion

The story of the Dardanelles is a cautionary tale about the consequences of mismatched ends and means, underappreciated asymmetric threats, incoherent messaging, and sluggish decision-making. These are not novel observations; if they ring close to home, it is because the U.S. military exhibited the same pathologies in its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is not a stretch to worry about their recurrence in a future crisis.

The Strait of Hormuz may look very different from the Dardanelles on a map, but from a strategic and operational standpoint, they rhyme in ways that demand attention. The British failure at the Dardanelles was not inevitable. Rather, it was an institutional failure to align strategy, capacity, and narrative. Today, if the Strait of Hormuz were to be contested, the same dynamics would be in play — but with exponentially higher stakes and speed.

Under Trump’s orders, the United States struck aggressively at Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. Iran responded with closure threats and missile attacks. What comes next is not inevitable, but it will be shaped by whether we can avoid the mistakes of history’s tragedies. Lessons from the Dardanelles can help ensure that today’s strategic chokepoint doesn’t become tomorrow’s strategic catastrophe.

BECOME A MEMBER

Jonathan Schroden, Ph.D., is the chief research officer at the CNA Corporation, a not-for-profit, nonpartisan research and analysis organization based in Arlington, Virginia. He is also a non-resident senior fellow with the University of South Florida’s Global and National Security Institute. You can find him at www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanschroden and @jjschroden.bsky.social.

The views expressed here are his and do not necessarily represent those of the CNA Corporation, the University of South Florida, the Department of the Navy, or the Department of Defense.

Image: Diyarbakırlı Tahsin Bey via Wikimedia Commons

warontherocks.com · June 30, 2025

12. Taiwan’s President Takes on China, and His Opponents, in Speaking Tour

Excerpts:

In his first speech, Mr. Lai emphasized Taiwan’s history as a Pacific Ocean island, not as a sometime outpost of imperial China. The People’s Republic of China that Mao Zedong founded in 1949 had never occupied Taiwan, he said. With its own government, military and foreign policy, he added, “of course, Taiwan is a country.”

Mr. Lai’s declarations have set off an escalating war of words with Beijing. Zhu Fenglian, a spokeswoman for the Chinese government office that deals with Taiwan, said on Monday that Mr. Lai had “completely abandoned his heritage and was betraying the nation.” The Global Times, a Chinese Communist Party newspaper, said that Mr. Lai was treating the island’s 23 million people as “cannon fodder for Taiwan independence.”

And while Mr. Lai has been making his speeches, China has been hosting Taiwan’s former president, Ma Ying-jeou of the main opposition Nationalist Party, who supports an eventual peaceful merger between China and Taiwan. Last week, Chinese officials took Mr. Ma to Dunhuang, an ancient Buddhist site in northwest China, a gesture designed to make the point that Taiwan is a part of China’s heritage.

Taiwan’s President Takes on China, and His Opponents, in Speaking Tour

Lai Ching-te is ramping up his warnings about China’s threat to Taiwan. Critics say he is stoking divisions, and risking blowback from Beijing.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/30/world/asia/taiwan-china-identity.html

President Lai Ching-te of Taiwan attending the coast guard annual drill in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, in June.Credit...Ann Wang/Reuters

By Chris Buckley and Amy Chang Chien

June 30, 2025

阅读简体中文版閱讀繁體中文版

President Lai Ching-te of Taiwan has been on a speaking tour that he says is aimed at uniting the island against threats from China. But critics say the campaign risks backfiring, deepening political divisions at home while provoking an angry response from Beijing.

Mr. Lai is battling on two fronts: China, which claims Taiwan as its territory and threatens to take it by force, and Taiwan’s opposition parties, which control the legislature and have tried to curb his administration’s policies and powers.

The president’s response has been what he calls “Ten Speeches on National Unity,” but the campaign and the heated responses that it has generated are exposing the very divisions that Mr. Lai says he wants to heal. The contention reflects rifts over Taiwan’s identity, its fraught relationship with China, and how to keep the island secure.

In the three speeches that Mr. Lai has made so far, he has argued that Taiwan’s history, culture and democratic politics are incompatible with Communist-ruled China.

China threatens to “blur the national identity of our people,” Mr. Lai said in his latest speech on Sunday. “China exploits Taiwan’s good will and opportunities for exchanges to carry out united front work and infiltration,” he said, using terms that refer to China’s efforts to advance Beijing’s agenda in the world.

Want to stay updated on what’s happening in China and Taiwan? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

In his first speech, Mr. Lai emphasized Taiwan’s history as a Pacific Ocean island, not as a sometime outpost of imperial China. The People’s Republic of China that Mao Zedong founded in 1949 had never occupied Taiwan, he said. With its own government, military and foreign policy, he added, “of course, Taiwan is a country.”

Mr. Lai’s declarations have set off an escalating war of words with Beijing. Zhu Fenglian, a spokeswoman for the Chinese government office that deals with Taiwan, said on Monday that Mr. Lai had “completely abandoned his heritage and was betraying the nation.” The Global Times, a Chinese Communist Party newspaper, said that Mr. Lai was treating the island’s 23 million people as “cannon fodder for Taiwan independence.”

And while Mr. Lai has been making his speeches, China has been hosting Taiwan’s former president, Ma Ying-jeou of the main opposition Nationalist Party, who supports an eventual peaceful merger between China and Taiwan. Last week, Chinese officials took Mr. Ma to Dunhuang, an ancient Buddhist site in northwest China, a gesture designed to make the point that Taiwan is a part of China’s heritage.

China has furiously denounced Mr. Lai, who has been in power since May last year, accusing him of pursuing outright independence for Taiwan — a red line for Chinese leaders. The stakes are high: Beijing, which already conducts regular air and naval operations near Taiwan, may use Mr. Lai’s speeches to justify increasing its military pressure on Taiwan.

Editors’ Picks

Do I Really Need an Air Purifier?

What Makes Someone Cool? A New Study Offers Clues.

3 Salad Dressings You Should Memorize

The president’s critics in Taiwan are also harsh, accusing him of stoking divisions and jeopardizing the fragile status quo with China.

“He’s not only failing to unite Taiwan’s various ethnic groupings; on the contrary, I think he’s actually increasing and heightening divisiveness and polarization,” Weng Hsiao-ling, a law professor who is also an opposition lawmaker, said in an interview.

The bitter rhetoric reflects the deadlock between Mr. Lai’s Democratic Progressive Party and the Nationalist Party, which favors building ties with Beijing. A smaller party, the Taiwan People’s Party, is also hostile to Mr. Lai, and together the two opposition parties control the majority in the 113-member legislature. They have repeatedly blocked Mr. Lai’s proposals, including the budget.

In response, Mr. Lai’s party has endorsed a recall campaign against Nationalist members in Taiwan’s legislature.

Political experts say Mr. Lai is hoping to energize his supporters to win back control of the legislature after recall votes scheduled for late July. Up to two dozen Nationalist Party lawmakers may lose their seats if the recall votes gather enough support, and special elections for fresh candidates would follow.

“He is trying to fire up his base of support as much as possible in order to ensure the recalls are successful,” said Lev Nachman, a political scientist at National Taiwan University in Taipei. He added that for now “Lai’s only weapon is his microphone. He is unable to pass policy, and the policy changes he can make are all very limited. Truly, the only meaningful agency he has as president is when he is making a speech.”

The divisions reflect longstanding disagreements about Taiwan’s history and identity.

Mr. Lai and his supporters in the “green” camp emphasize that Taiwan is separate from China, historically and politically. Mr. Lai has also accused Taiwan’s opposition of eroding Taiwan’s security and democracy. The Nationalists and their supporters in the “blue” camp argue that stronger links with China can be help maintain peace.

The rival views of Taiwan’s status are difficult to reconcile, said Wang Horng-luen, a scholar at Academia Sinica, a Taiwanese research institute.

“Because of Taiwan’s special historical context and international setting, the narratives about Taiwan’s sovereignty are very hard to describe clearly,” he said. “No matter whether it’s the Taiwan-centered one, or the China-centered one, they both exclude the other group.”

Chris Buckley, the chief China correspondent for The Times, reports on China and Taiwan from Taipei, focused on politics, social change and security and military issues.

Amy Chang Chien is a reporter and researcher for The Times in Taipei, covering Taiwan and China.

A version of this article appears in print on July 1, 2025, Section A, Page 7 of the New York edition with the headline: Taiwan Leader’s Speeches Irk Rival Parties and China. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

13. SOUTHCOM’s TMPI: Towards Integrated Deterrence in the Americas by Building Maintenance Capacity

SOUTHCOM’s TMPI: Towards Integrated Deterrence in the Americas by Building Maintenance Capacity

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/07/01/southcom-integrated-deterrence-tmpi/

by Samuel Oquendo-Marrero

07.01.2025 at 06:00am

US Navy photo by Colbey Livingston The appearance of US Department of Defense (DoD) visual information does not imply or constitute DoD endorsement.

The escalating great-power competition, coupled with persistent instability and transnational threats, underscores the critical need for the United States (US) to advance integrated deterrence in the Western Hemisphere. As competitors like the People’s Republic of China (PRC) rapidly expand their influence, particularly in Latin America, the convergence of homeland security and national defense priorities becomes undeniable. To directly address these challenges and strengthen regional security, the US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) has launched the Theater Maintenance Partnership Initiative (TMPI), a pivotal effort to bolster partner nations’ military capabilities and foster collective defense.

This article proposes that the TMPI is essential for strengthening integrated deterrence and directly countering malign influence across the Western Hemisphere. It is designed to achieve this by enhancing the maintenance capabilities of partner nations and institutionalizing a culture of readiness. The initiative intends to leverage strategic partnerships and align various instruments of national power, complementing military readiness with economic engagement, diplomatic collaboration, and proactive strategic communication.

Integrated Deterrence: The Role of TMPI

The imperative for robust integrated deterrence in the Western Hemisphere is increasingly evident, driven by evolving global dynamics and the growing influence of strategic competitors. In a message outlining future strategic priorities, Secretary of Defense (SECDEF) Pete Hegseth articulated a commitment to advancing deterrence by securing the US homeland across multiple domains. He underscored the importance of collaborating with Allies and partners to counteract aggression, while prioritizing the President’s objective of responsibly concluding conflicts and redirecting focus to key threats. This strategic outlook is acutely relevant in Latin America, where escalating competition demands a broader approach to deterrence that transcends unilateral military intervention to encompass multilateral diplomatic, informational, military, and economic dimensions. China’s rapid expansion of influence in the Western Hemisphere, potentially surpassing the US as the region’s top trading partner by 2035, unmistakably highlights the convergence of homeland security and national defense priorities. This convergence necessitates a modernized integrated deterrence strategy that leverages strategic partnerships and aligns all instruments of national power to secure vital interests.

To effectively achieve integrated deterrence, the US must acknowledge and address the operational readiness challenges faced by many partners throughout the Western Hemisphere, particularly in Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. Despite often being equipped with US-manufactured military hardware, partner nations frequently face operational readiness issues, meaning their equipment isn’t consistently ready for use. This stems from several factors: they have underdeveloped local maintenance frameworks, limited knowledge of the complex US Joint Logistics Enterprise (JLEnt), which manages military supplies and services, and frequent supply chain disruptions that prevent timely repairs and the procurement of spare parts.

SOUTHCOM has directly responded to these challenges by initiating the TMPI. TMPI aims to strengthen collaboration, interoperability, and collective maintenance efforts by improving partner nation maintenance capabilities from tactical to operational levels through comprehensive training and fostering a culture of maintenance readiness. At the operational and strategic levels, TMPI promotes North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) standardization and education regarding Life Cycle Management and logistics operations. NATO standardization, in particular, aims to counter adversaries’ pervasive malign influence by facilitating the exchange of Soviet-era equipment for newer, NATO-interoperable, US-made equipment. This multi-year effort builds partner capacity in equipment maintenance, lifecycle management, and supply chain activities, setting conditions for Theater Logistics integration in the long run. Indirectly, it also bolsters regional security cooperation, standardizes tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), promotes procedural and technical interoperability, and cultivates sustainable partnerships, reinforcing the framework of integrated deterrence across the Western Hemisphere.

A pivotal element of TMPI is establishing regional maintenance “centers of excellence” (CoE) within strategically selected partner countries. These centers, modeled after US Government (USG) CoEs, are crucial for developing specific military competencies by standardizing TTPs and enhancing professionalism in particular fields. Through TMPI, SOUTHCOM identifies regional organizations that excel in maintenance to establish these CoEs. These centers will facilitate collaboration on TTPs and offer professional military education to regional partners, enhancing maintenance capabilities through targeted training in aviation, maritime, electronics, and ground vehicle operations. They are vital in crafting operational doctrine, conducting applied research, delivering targeted training, and generating readiness across multiple operational domains.

The USG has several legal avenues, specifically under Title 10 and Title 22 of the US Code (USC), to establish these CoEs in partner nations within SOUTHCOM’s area of responsibility. Title 10 of the USC broadly governs the organization, roles, and missions of the US armed forces, including many security assistance activities. In contrast, Title 22 primarily addresses foreign relations and policy, encompassing broader foreign assistance programs. These legal authorities essentially define how the US can provide crucial training, equipment, and resources to strengthen allied military capabilities. The choice of which legal authority to use depends on specific objectives, the host nation’s needs, and the desired level of Congressional oversight. Generally, Title 10 offers broader flexibility for military-to-military engagement, while Title 22 involves more structured scrutiny, often for broader foreign policy goals.

Currently, SOUTHCOM’s TMPI primarily leverages legal authorities under Title 10 of the USC, specifically Section 333, to achieve many of its goals. Section 333, funded by Congressional appropriations, directly supports enhancing partner capacity. It does this by facilitating hands-on training for personnel in partner nations on maintenance procedures for US-provided equipment. This vital initiative often involves deploying US experts to train local technicians and supplying specialized tools and essential manuals.

At the same time, TMPI also utilizes Section 332 of Title 10, which is also supported by Congressional appropriations. This section aims to build institutional capacity within partner nations and develop regional CoEs for maintenance training. Building this kind of friendly foreign defense institutional capacity helps create sustainable maintenance systems within partner nations’ defense forces, supporting the establishment of their own local training programs. By strategically integrating both Section 333 and Section 332 authorities, TMPI builds the operational capacity of partner units, directly supporting US objectives in the Western Hemisphere.

Nevertheless, TMPI encounters notable preliminary challenges, especially in establishing sustainable funding mechanisms for multiple partners and ensuring the initiative’s long-term viability while addressing the diverse maintenance requirements of participating nations. A robust commitment to capacity-building is essential, involving training for local personnel, developing resilient supply chains, and ensuring access to specialized technical expertise.

Lessons from the Land of the Morning Calm: Enhancing SOUTHCOM Sustainment through US Forces Korea’s Interoperable Model

SOUTHCOM can gain critical insights from sustainment operations within the US Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM), particularly by analyzing US Forces Korea’s (USFK) methodologies. USFK focuses on interoperability through joint and combined training exercises, TTPs, and integrated logistics frameworks. The 19th Expeditionary Sustainment Command (ESC) plays a key role in this effort, integrating and synchronizing strategic sustainment capabilities with operational and tactical requirements. At multiple echelons, USFK and its subordinate units utilize local direct-hire personnel, contractors, and paramilitary forces to improve the operational effectiveness of joint and combined forces on the Korean Peninsula. Direct-hire personnel maintain continuity, reduce English-Korean language barriers, and provide essential cultural and bureaucratic insights. This aids in planning and resource management while mitigating the impact of frequent US military turnover. This collaborative approach fosters a shared operational understanding and unity of action, thereby boosting the capacity of the joint and combined forces to uphold regional security through comprehensive training, coordinated operations, and robust host-nation support initiatives.

Despite USFK’s effective strategies tailored to the complex operational landscape of the Korean Peninsula, unique challenges necessitate innovative solutions. The 19th ESC, in tandem with the US Army Materiel Support Command-Korea (MSC-K), is pivotal in developing these innovative strategies for operational-level sustainment. MSC-K oversees various units, prominently the Korean Service Corps (KSC), which consists of approximately 20,000 paramilitary personnel ready for sustainment missions, and the Combat Power Generation Center (CPGC), a vital military-industrial entity specializing in equipment maintenance and repair. The CPGC conducts daily military-industrial maintenance operations, serving as the primary readiness driver for the Eighth Army and USFK by providing essential below-depot and field maintenance support.

The KSC is a critical enabler within the MSC-K framework, providing non-combatant support to USFK and enhancing operational capabilities during both armistice and contingency scenarios. The KSC is instrumental in logistical and administrative support across the theater, significantly bolstering operational readiness and efficiency. Beyond logistics, the KSC also plays a crucial role in bridging sociocultural gaps by employing bilingual Koreans.

The CPGC is essential for maintaining the readiness of Army Forces-Korea (ARFOR-K) and supporting joint forces across the Indo-Pacific region. As the largest US Army military-industrial operation outside the continental US, the CPGC is key to generating and sustaining combat power. Staffed by over 600 Korean nationals, the CPGC conducts critical functions, including below-depot sustainment, field-level maintenance, and expedited equipment repairs. Moreover, it extends support to coalition and joint forces, operates maintenance support teams, and repairs battle-damaged equipment, underscoring its vital contribution to maintaining operational readiness and sustaining military operations in the region.

Navigating the Shifting Sands: SOUTHCOM’s Challenges in a Volatile Latin American Landscape

Although the USFK’s successful efforts demonstrate widely applicable methods and procedures for maintenance cooperation with partners, SOUTHCOM faces some notably distinct challenges from the Korean Peninsula. The TMPI must navigate various developmental stages and security priorities among partner nations while grappling with regional logistical complexities due to significant geographical distances and inadequate infrastructure. The region’s intricate political and security dynamics further complicate capability development.

Capability development is crucial because it ensures that Allies and partners can effectively utilize and sustain the resources provided through security cooperation activities. Security cooperation activities, in turn, strengthen their defense capabilities and promote regional stability, ultimately supporting US national security interests. By helping partners develop the necessary infrastructure, training, and logistics, capability development initiatives foster self-reliance and reduce long-term dependence on external support. Self-reliance enhances the effectiveness of security cooperation efforts and builds trust and interoperability, leading to more substantial and sustainable partnerships.

However, there is an intrinsic link between capability development, resources, funding, and politics. The availability of financial and material resources directly impacts the scope and sustainability of capability development programs. Funding priorities and political considerations often influence the allocation of resources, shaping the types of capabilities developed and the pace of implementation. Moreover, domestic politics within partner countries can affect their willingness to engage in capability development initiatives and their ability to absorb and implement new capabilities. Successfully navigating these intertwined factors requires careful planning, coordination, periodic reevaluation, and a nuanced understanding of the partner nation’s context, ensuring that capability development efforts align with US interests and the partner’s needs and priorities.

Analyzing Ecuador’s foreign policy trajectory over the past two decades is pertinent to illuminating the region’s evolving political and security landscape. During President Rafael Correa’s administration between 2007 and 2017, Ecuador pivoted by severing its military relations with the US. This comprehensive shift included ordering the closure of the security cooperation office in the US Embassy and honoring but not renewing the lease term for the Manta Air Base, causing the withdrawal of approximately 300 US military personnel stationed there.

However, this period of strained relations was followed by the re-establishment of the Office of Security Cooperation (OSC) in 2018, signaling a potential shift that ultimately materialized with new military cooperation agreements signed with the US in 2023 under President Lasso and ratified in 2024 by President Daniel Noboa. This policy shift highlights the volatility inherent in international relations and underscores how changes in domestic leadership can markedly alter foreign policy trajectories. The re-establishment of military cooperation reflects Noboa’s assessment of Ecuador’s national security imperatives and recognizes the strategic benefits of reinvigorating closer ties with the US.

Correa’s strategic maneuvering indicates a broader trend in Latin America, where transitions between left- and right-leaning administrations frequently impact US security cooperation dynamics. Shifts in the region’s dominant political ideologies, such as the rise of left-wing leadership prioritizing alternatives to neoliberalism and later the ascendance of right-wing administrations, can have a substantial impact on these relationships. While the long-term presence of the US at Manta Air Base in Ecuador and China’s operations in Argentina show continuity of security cooperation activities despite left-leaning and right-leaning political shifts in Latin America, these changes add complexity to the region’s geopolitics, influencing initiatives like TMPI.

TMPI must navigate the complex political landscape of the Western Hemisphere. Geographic Combatant Command (GCC) and Theater component planners require a nuanced understanding of each partner nation’s security priorities and relationship with the US. While some countries may embrace closer military cooperation, others may have reservations. TMPI should prioritize flexibility and adaptability, offering tailored maintenance programs that address the specific needs of the partner nation and build trust. Understanding the partner nation’s needs necessitates comprehensive partner assessments to ensure capabilities align with their absorption capacity and build self-reliance rather than creating dependency. Drawing parallels with USFK’s interoperability model, select partner nations could stand up regional maintenance support corps and transform their CoEs into robust maintenance hubs that provide localized logistical support, bridge cultural gaps, and foster industry partnerships, enhancing partner self-sufficiency.

Furthermore, TMPI can be a tool to address broader security concerns at the strategic and national levels. By enhancing partner nations’ capacity for maintenance and sustainment, the initiative can address key mission areas as directed by the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), such as counter-illicit drug trafficking, counter-transnational organized crime, maritime and border security, and air domain awareness operations which justify security cooperation and activity funding. Indirectly, TMPI enhances non-key mission areas such as disaster response and critical infrastructure protection. As the TMPI enhances operational readiness rates and strengthens partner nations’ logistics and maintenance capacities, its impacts will become more evident in OSD-directed key mission areas, disaster response, and critical infrastructure protection, further bolstering political and public support for this initiative.

Operationalizing the TMPI: Regional Deployments Through the National Guard State Partnership Program

Another recommendation is to adopt aspects of INDOPACOM’s Pacific Pathways program, which offers a practical operational framework conducive to SOUTHCOM’s TMPI. This program facilitates combined and joint training exercises with partner militaries during regional deployments, promoting interoperability and strengthening bilateral relationships. By adopting this model and focusing on regional partnerships while leveraging the distinctive capabilities of the National Guard State Partnership Program (SPP), SOUTHCOM can significantly enhance the operational readiness of partner forces throughout Central and South America and the Caribbean. The SPP can be instrumental in this adaptation. The Florida National Guard’s partnership with Guyana, a country with significant oil resources and increasing maritime needs, could be leveraged to provide specialized training in port security and maritime law enforcement. By integrating these partnerships into a “Pathways” model, TMPI can create a recurring cycle of engagement that fosters interoperability and strengthens relationships.

GCC and Theater component planners should seamlessly incorporate SOUTHCOM’s TMPI into ongoing combined exercises, such as Southern Vanguard, the last iteration of which occurred in Belém, Macapá, and Oiapoque, Brazil, from November 6 to 16, 2023, in collaboration with the Brazilian Army. Additionally, TMPI would greatly benefit from participation in exercises such as Southern Fenix 2024, conducted with the Chilean Army from April 1 to 5, 2024, in Iquique, Chile. This incorporation would reinforce integrated deterrence within the Western Hemisphere. By leveraging TMPI’s specialized capabilities in maintenance operations, logistics, and overall sustainment functions, US forces and partner nations can enhance the effectiveness and realism of training scenarios.

Figure 1: An Ecuadorian sailor fires an M2A1 .50 caliber machine gun during Southern Seas 2024

GCC and Theater component planners should comprehensively analyze training objectives within Air Forces Southern (AFSOUTH) and US Naval Forces Southern Command (NAVSOUTH) exercises, such as the recent Southern Seas 2024 deployment, to identify synergistic opportunities for TMPI incorporation from an operational standpoint. Southern Seas 2024 exemplifies the type of exercise where TMPI can be incorporated into training scenarios to operationalize the initiative. Potential opportunities include broader training in maintenance management encompassing essential areas such as logistics planning, equipment readiness, and automation of maintenance operations. Integrating TMPIs into these exercises would improve training outcomes and strengthen partnerships between US forces and partner nations.

Figure 2: South Carolina Army National Guard Soldiers work with Colombian aviation military members to load a UH-60 Black Hawk in an aircraft

The South Carolina National Guard played a key role in developing aspects of SOUTHCOM’s TMPI before its establishment under the leadership of former Commander GEN Laura Richardson. The South Carolina National Guard achieved this through a strong partnership with Colombia, formally established through the SPP in 2012, with one principal line of effort for aviation maintenance. By enhancing the maintenance competencies of the Colombian military, the South Carolina National Guard has contributed to regional stability and security in the Andean Region. For example, from April 1 to 7, 2014, in Bogota and Melgar, Colombia, South Carolina Army National Guard aviation personnel conducted combined training with the Colombian Army. The exercise involved the logistics of loading Black Hawk helicopters onto cargo aircraft, thereby augmenting the Colombian Army’s disaster response capabilities.

Figure 3: Relámpago VII focused on training techniques, tactics, and procedures and strengthening interoperability between the US and Colombian Air Forces

More recently, during Relámpago VII, a combined exercise held in Barranquilla, Colombia, from August 26 to September 11, 2022, the South Carolina Air National Guard’s 169th Fighter Wing provided specialized training on various aircraft to the Colombian Air Force’s 111th Fighter Squadron. This included maintenance protocols, troubleshooting methodologies, and familiarization with specialized tools and equipment. These initiatives bolstered the Colombian Air Force’s operational capabilities and reinforced bilateral security cooperation.

Forging a Stronger Western Hemisphere: Towards Integrated Deterrence Through Partner Nation Readiness

The SOUTHCOM TMPI has significant potential to enhance the maintenance proficiency of partner nations in Central and South America and the Caribbean, improve interoperability, and develop integrated deterrence. By drawing upon the proven success of USFK’s sustainment model, particularly the KSC and the CPGC, SOUTHCOM can strategically optimize its TMPI. Optimizing TMPI involves a dual approach: first, establishing regional maintenance support corps in select partner nations to provide essential logistical support and bridge cultural gaps, and second, expanding select CoEs into robust maintenance and repair hubs, akin to the CPGC, to foster self-sufficiency through advanced capabilities and strategic industry partnerships. These enhancements and the implementation of sustainable ‘train-the-trainer’ programs and standardized TTPs in CoEs will ensure long-term capacity development and bolster interoperability and regional cooperation.

Additionally, by adopting aspects of the Pacific Pathways program, SOUTHCOM can effectively operationalize the TMPI by incorporating the program into combined and joint training exercises. This targeted approach, reinforced by a commitment to regional security cooperation, will strengthen partner nation maintenance proficiency, establish shared logistics platforms, enhance collective readiness, and solidify integrated deterrence, ultimately contributing to enduring stability throughout the Western Hemisphere and fostering a more secure and cooperative environment.

Tags: Integrated deterrence, Latin America, NATO, Security Cooperation, SOUTHCOM, U.S. Forces Korea (USFK)

About The Author

Samuel Oquendo-Marrero
Captain Samuel Oquendo-Marrero is a Foreign Area Officer specializing in the Western Hemisphere. He has served key leadership and staff assignments in the United States Indo-Pacific Command area of responsibility, working as a Company Commander, Battalion S3, Executive Officer of the Commanding General, and Chief of Protection. He has also participated in Disaster Response, Law Enforcement Operations, and joint military exercises in the United States Southern Command and the United States Northern Command areas of responsibility, including Tropical Storm Irene and Hurricane Irma Recovery Operations in Puerto Rico, Operación Seguridad Compartida in Puerto Rico, Beyond the Horizon in the Dominican Republic, and Vibrant Response in the Continental United States. He is a recent Command and General Staff College graduate with a Master of Arts in Business Organizational Security Management from Webster University. He is a certified International Society of Logistics Demonstrated Logistician.

14. Tolstoy’s Complaint: Mission Command in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Conclusion:

Even then, Army leaders must never forget what Tolstoy teaches us: that command is a contingent, human endeavor. Often battles represent idiosyncratic problems of their own, liable to defy patterns. Well-trained young leaders’ proximity to those problems is an asset rather than a liability. For that proximity they can spot on the battlefield infinitesimally small things that great data ingests cannot capture. A philosophy of mission command, however fickle and at times frustrating, best accommodates the insights that arise from that proximity. Only then can the Army see war’s Tolstoyan infinitesimals through the gun smoke and have any hope of integrating them.

Tolstoy’s Complaint: Mission Command in the Age of Artificial Intelligence - Modern War Institute

mwi.westpoint.edu · by Theo Lipsky

What will become of battlefield command in the years ahead? This question is at the heart of the US Army’s once-in-a-generation reforms now underway. In search of answers, the Army looks to Ukraine. Events there suggest at least two truths. One is that decentralized command, which the US Army calls mission command and claims as its mode, will endure as a virtue. A second is that future commanders will use artificial intelligence to inform every decision—where to go, whom to kill, and whom to save. The recently announced Army Transformation Initiative indicates the Army intends to act on both.

But from these lessons there arises a different dilemma: How can an army at once preserve a culture of decentralized command and integrate artificial intelligence into its every task? Put another way, if at all echelons commanders rely on artificial intelligence to inform decisions, do they not risk just another form of centralization, not at the top, but within an imperfect model? To understand this dilemma and to eventually resolve it, the US Army would do well to look once again to the Ukrainian corner of the map, though this time as a glance backward two centuries, so that it might learn from a young redleg in Crimea named Leo Tolstoy.

What Tolstoy Saw

Before he became a literary titan, Leo Tolstoy was a twenty-something artillery officer. In 1854 he found himself in besieged port of Sevastopol, then under relentless French and British shelling, party to the climax of the Crimean War. When not tending to his battery on the city’s perilous Fourth Bastion, Tolstoy wrote dispatches about life under fire for his preferred journal in Saint Petersburg, The Contemporary. These dispatches, read across literate Russia for their candor and craft, made Tolstoy famous. They have since been compiled as The Sebastopol Sketches and are considered by many to be the first modern war reportage. Their success confirmed for Tolstoy that to write was his life’s calling, and when the Crimean War ended, he left military service so that he might do so full-time.

But once a civilian Tolstoy did not leave war behind, at least not as a subject matter. Until he died, he mined his time in uniform for the material of his fiction. In that fiction, most prominently the legendary accounts of the battles of Austerlitz and Borodino found in War and Peace, one can easily detect what he thought of command. Tolstoy’s contention is that the very idea of command itself is practically a fiction, so tenuous is the relationship between what commanders visualize, describe, and direct and what in fact happens on the battlefield. The worst officers in Tolstoy’s stories do great harm by vainly supposing they understand battles at hand when they in fact haven’t the faintest idea of what’s going on. The best officers are at peace with their inevitable ignorance and rather than fighting it, gamely project a calm that inspires their men. Either way, most officers wander the battlefield, blinded by gun smoke or folds in the earth, only later making up stories to explain what happened, stories others wrongly take as credible witness testimony.

Command or Hallucination?

Students of war may wonder whether Tolstoy was saying anything Carl von Clausewitz had not already said in On War, published in 1832. After all, there Clausewitz made famous allowances for the way the unexpected and the small both shape battlefield outcomes, describing their effects as “friction,” a term that still enjoys wide use in the US military today. But the friction metaphor itself already hints at one major difference between Clausewitz’s understanding of battle and Tolstoy’s. For Clausewitz all the things that go sideways in war amount to friction impeding the smooth operation of a machine at work on the battlefield, a machine begotten of an intelligent design and consisting of interlocking parts that fail by exception. As Tolstoy sees it, there is no such machine, except in the imagination of largely ineffectual senior leaders, who, try as they might, cannot realize their designs on the battlefield.

Tolstoy thus differed from Clausewitz by arguing that commanders not only fail to anticipate friction, but outright hallucinate. They see patterns on the battlefield where there are none and causes where there is only coincidence. In War and Peace, Pyotr Bagration seeks permission to start the battle at Austerlitz when it is already lost, Moscow burns in 1814 not because Kutuzov ordered it but because the firefighters fled the city, and Russians’ masterful knockout flank at Tarutino occurs not in accordance with a preconceived plan but by an accident of logistics. Yet historians and contemporaries alike credit Bagration and Kutuzov for the genius of these events—to say nothing of Napoleon, whom Tolstoy casts as a deluded egoist, “a child, who, holding a couple of strings inside a carriage, thinks he is driving it.”

Why then, per Tolstoy, do the commanders and historians credit such plans with unrelated effects? Tolstoy answers this in a typical philosophical passage of War and Peace: “The human mind cannot grasp the causes of events in their completeness,” but “the desire to find those causes is implanted in the human soul.” People, desirous of coherence but unable to espy the many small causes of events, instead see grand things and great men that are not there. Here Tolstoy makes a crucial point—it is not that there are no causes of events, just that the causes are too numerous and obscure for humans to know. These causes Tolstoy called “infinitesimals,” and to find them one must “leave aside kings, ministers, and generals” and instead study “the small elements by which the masses are moved.”

This is Tolstoy’s complaint. He lodged it against the great man theorists of history, then influential, who supposed great men propelled human events through genius and will. But it also can be read as a strong case for mission command, for Tolstoy’s account of war suggests that not only is a decentralized command the best sort of command—it is the only authentic command at all. Everything else is illusory. High-echelon commanders’ distance from the fight, from the level of the grunt or the kitchen attendant, allows their hallucinations to persist unspoiled by reality far longer than those below them in rank. The leader low to the ground is best positioned to integrate the infinitesimals into an understanding of the battlefield. That integration, as Isaiah Berlin writes in his great Tolstoy essay “The Hedgehog and Fox,” is more so “artistic-psychological” work than anything else. And what else are the “mutual trust” and “shared understanding,” which Army doctrine deems essential to mission command, but the products of an artful, psychological process?

From Great Man Theory to Great Model Theory

Perhaps no one needs Tolstoy to appreciate mission command. Today American observers see everywhere on the battlefields of Ukraine proof of its wisdom. They credit the Ukrainian armed forces with countering their Russian opponents’ numerical and material superiority by employing more dynamic, decentralized command and control, which they liken to the US Army’s own style. Others credit Ukrainians’ use of artificial intelligence for myriad battlefield functions, and here the Ukrainians are far ahead of the US Army. Calls abound to catch up by integrating artificial intelligence into data-centric command-and-control tools, staff work, and doctrine. The relationship between these two imperatives, to integrate artificial intelligence and preserve mission command, has received less attention.

At first blush, artificial intelligence seems a convincing answer to Tolstoy’s complaint. In “The Hedgehog and the Fox” Isaiah Berlin summarized that complaint this way:

Our ignorance is due not to some inherent inaccessibility of the first causes, only their multiplicity, the smallness of the ultimate units, and our own inability to see and hear and remember and record and co-ordinate enough of the available material. Omniscience is in principle possible even to empirical beings, but, of course, in practice unattainable.

Can one come up with a better pitch for artificial intelligence than that? Is not artificial intelligence’s alleged value proposition for the commander its ability to integrate all the Tolstoyan infinitesimals, those “ultimate units,” then project it, perhaps on a wearable device, for quick reference by the dynamic officer pressed for time by an advancing enemy? Put another way, can’t a great model deliver on the battlefield what a great man couldn’t?

The trouble is threefold. Whatever model or computer vision or multimodal system we call “artificial intelligence” and incorporate into a given layer of a command-and-control platform represents something like one mind, but not many minds, so each instance wherein a leader outsources analysis to that artificial intelligence is another instance of centralization. Second, the models we have are disposed to patterns and to hubris, so are more a replication than a departure from the hallucinating commanders Tolstoy so derided. Finally, leaders may reject the evidence of their eyes and ears in deference to artificial intelligence because it enjoys the credibility of dispassionate computation, thereby forgoing precisely the ground-level inputs that Tolstoy pointed out were most important for understanding battle.

Consider the centralization problem. Different models may be in development for different uses across the military, but the widespread fielding of any artificial intelligence–enabled command-and-control system risks proliferating the same model across the operational army. If the purpose of mission command were strictly to hasten battlefield decisions by replicating the mind of a higher command within junior leaders, then the threat of centralization would be irrelevant because artificial intelligence would render mission command obsolete. But Army Doctrinal Pamphlet 6-0 lists as mission command’s purpose also the levering of “subordinate ingenuity”—something that centralization denies. In aggregate one risks giving every user the exact same coach, if not the exact same commander, however brilliant that coach or commander might be.

Such a universal coach, like a universal compass or rifle, might not be so bad, were it not for the tendency of that universal coach to hallucinate. That large language models make things up and then confidently present them as truth is not news, but it is also not going away. Nor is those models’ basic function, which is to seek patterns and then extend them. Computer vision likewise produces false positives. This “illusion of thinking,” to paraphrase recent research, severely limits the capacity of artificial intelligence to tackle novel problems or process novel environments. Tolstoy observes that during the invasion of Russia “a war began which did not follow any previous traditions of war,” yet Napoleon “did not cease to complain . . . that the war was being carried on contrary to all the rules—as if there were any rules for killing people.” In this way Tolstoy ascribes Napoleon’s disastrous defeat at Borodino precisely to the sort of error artificial intelligence is prone to make—the faulty assumption that the rules that once applied extend forward mechanically. There is thus little difference between the sort of prediction for which models are trained and the picture of Napoleon in War and Peace on the eve of his arrival in Moscow. He imagined a victory that the data on which he had trained indicated he ought expect but that ultimately eludes him.

Such hallucinations are compounded by models’ systemic overconfidence. Research suggests that, like immature officers, models prefer to confidently proffer an answer than confess they just do not know. It is then not hard to imagine artificial intelligence processing incomplete reports of enemy behavior on the battlefield, deciding that the behavior conforms to a pattern, filling in gaps the observed data leaves, then confidently predicting an enemy course of action disproven by what a sergeant on the ground is seeing. It is similarly not hard to imagine a commander directing, at the suggestion of an artificial intelligence model, the creation of an engagement area anchored to hallucinated terrain or queued by a nonexistent enemy patrol. In the aggregate, artificial intelligence might effectively imagine entire scenarios like the ones on which it was trained playing out on a battlefield where it can detect little more than the distant, detonating pop of an explosive-laden drone.

To be fair, uniformed advocates of artificial intelligence have said explicitly that no one wants to replace human judgment. Often those advocates speak instead of artificial intelligence informing, enhancing, enabling, or otherwise making more efficient human commanders. Besides, any young soldier will point out that human commanders make all the same mistakes. Officers need no help from machines to spook at a nonexistent enemy or to design boneheaded engagement areas. So what’s the big deal with using artificial intelligence?

The issue is precisely that we regard artificial intelligence as more than human and so show it a deference researchers call “automation bias.” It’s all but laughable today to ascribe to any human the genius for seeing through war’s complexity that great man theorists once vested in Napoleon. But now many invest similar faith in the genius of artificial intelligence. Sam Altman of OpenAI refers to his project as the creation of “superintelligence.” How much daylight is there between the concept of superintelligence and the concept of the great man? We thus risk treating artificial intelligence as the Napoleon that Napoleon could not be, the genius integrator of infinitesimals, the protagonist of the histories that Tolstoy so effectively demolished in War and Peace. And if we regard artificial intelligence as the great man of the history, can we expect a young lieutenant to resist its recommendations?

What Is to Be Done?

Artificial intelligence, in its many forms, is here to stay. The Army cannot afford in this interwar moment a Luddite reflex. It must integrate artificial intelligence into its operations. Anybody who has attempted to forecast when a brigade will be ready for war or when a battalion will need fuel resupply or when a soldier will need a dental checkup knows how much there is to be gained from narrow artificial intelligence, which promises to gain immense efficiencies in high-iteration, structured, context-independent tasks. Initiatives like Next Generation Command and Control promise as much. But the risks to mission command posed by artificial intelligence are sizable. Tolstoy’s complaint is of great use to the Army as it seeks to understand and mitigate those risks.

The first way to mitigate the risk artificial intelligence poses to mission command is to limit the use of it those high-volume, simple tasks. Artificial intelligence is ill-suited for low-volume, highly complex, context-dependent, deeply human endeavors—a good description of warfare—and so its role in campaign design, tactical planning, the analysis of the enemy, and the leadership of soldiers should be small. Its use in such endeavors is limited to expediting calculations of the small inputs human judgment requires. This notion of human-machine teaming in war is not new (it has been explored well by others, including Major Amanda Collazzo via the Modern War Institute). But amid excitement for it, the Army risks forgetting that it must carefully draw and jealously guard the boundary between human and machine. It must do so not only for ethical reasons, but because, as Tolstoy showed to such effect, command in battle humbles the algorithmic mind—of man or machine. Put in Berlin’s terms, command remains “artistic-psychological” work, and that work, even now, remains human work. Such caution does not require a ban on machine learning and artificial intelligence in simulations or wargames, which would be self-sabotage, but it does require that officers check any temptation to outsource the authorship of campaigns or orders to a model—something which sounds obvious now, but soon may not.

The second way is to program into the instruction of Army leaders a healthy skepticism of artificial intelligence. This might be done first by splitting the instruction of students into analog and artificial intelligence–enabled segments, not unlike training mortarmen to plan fire missions with a plotting board as well as a ballistic computer. Officers must first learn to write plans and direct their execution without aid before incorporating artificial intelligence into the process. Their ability to do so must be regularly recertified throughout their careers. Classes on machine learning that highlight the dependency of models on data quality must complement classes on intelligence preparation of the battlefield. Curriculum designers will rightly point out that curricula are already overstuffed, but if artificial intelligence–enabled command and control is as revolutionary as its proponents suggest, it demands a commensurate change in the way we instruct our commanders.

The third way to mitigate the risks posed is to program the same skepticism of artificial intelligence into training. When George Marshall led the Infantry School during the interwar years, he and fellow instructor Joseph Stilwell forced students out of the classroom and into the field for unscripted exercises, providing them bad maps so as to simulate the unpredictability of combat. Following their example, the Army should deliberately equip leaders during field exercises and wargames with hallucinatory models. Those leaders should be evaluated on their ability to recognize when the battlefield imagined by their artificial intelligence–enabled command-and-control platforms and the battlefield they see before them differ. And when training checklists require that for a unit to be fully certified in a task it must perform that task under dynamic, degraded conditions, “degraded” must come to include hallucinatory or inoperable artificial intelligence.

Even then, Army leaders must never forget what Tolstoy teaches us: that command is a contingent, human endeavor. Often battles represent idiosyncratic problems of their own, liable to defy patterns. Well-trained young leaders’ proximity to those problems is an asset rather than a liability. For that proximity they can spot on the battlefield infinitesimally small things that great data ingests cannot capture. A philosophy of mission command, however fickle and at times frustrating, best accommodates the insights that arise from that proximity. Only then can the Army see war’s Tolstoyan infinitesimals through the gun smoke and have any hope of integrating them.

Theo Lipsky is an active duty US Army captain. He is currently assigned as an instructor to the Department of Social Sciences at the US Military Academy at West Point. He holds a master of public administration from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and a bachelor of science from the US Military Academy. His writing can be found at theolipsky.substack.com.

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

Image credit: Sgt. Zoe Morris, US Army

mwi.westpoint.edu · by Theo Lipsky

15. Exploring African Perspectives on Irregular Warfare

Excerpts:

Engagements on IW threats in Africa should consider the unique circumstances that affect how regional partners conceive of IW. The U.S. government would benefit greatly by highlighting state-led IW campaigns to increase exposure of other non-traditional threats while recognizing that partners and allies on the continent may disagree on terminology. Case studies on the destabilizing impacts of state-led IW campaigns carried out by regional powers in the DRC or Sudan could overcome some reluctance to see states as IW actors.

Africa’s security situation is not a monolith. But IW is a common threat across our surveyed countries. Additionally, IW as a concept resonated with defense thought leaders from Angola, Nigeria, Kenya, Liberia, and Zambia and their immediate regions. At its core, this study supports the conclusion reached in the previous two regions: IW conceptualization is heavily dependent on local context rather than following international models or copying U.S. doctrine. Participants saw IW, as they understood it, as a threat. They were receptive to future engagements both with the United States and regional partners on IW. One of the participant countries, Nigeria, recently created its own Irregular Warfare Center to better understand the threat.

Professional military institutions, ministries of defense, and defense thought leaders across Africa will ultimately craft understandings of IW best suited for their political, strategic, and tactical operating environments. U.S. and allied definitions and educational material will inform this process. But expecting a universalization of the U.S. understanding of the threat is naive. Rather, the U.S. DoD should continually reassess both the actual IW operating environment in Africa and surveying how key partners and allies understand that environment on the continent.

Western militaries pivot back and forth between preparing for great power conventional war and irregular war against state or non-state opponents. IW existed in Africa long before the term came into vogue in the West. America’s African partner forces offer a deep well of experience in irregular campaigns. The DoD can more effectively counter joint threats in Africa with the highest impact and minimized costs only when working alongside partners and allies on the continent.

Exploring African Perspectives on Irregular Warfare

irregularwarfare.org · by Sandor Fabian, Matthew Heidel · July 1, 2025

Across Africa, “conventional warfare […] is irregular and irregular warfare is conventional.” That is how a Nigerian general officer described the state of warfare in his region to the United States Department of Defense’s (DoD’s) Irregular Warfare Center (IWC). While key U.S. strategy documents call on U.S. forces to “institutionalize irregular warfare as a core competency” across much of Africa, irregular warfare (IW) is already the main modality of warfare. Given the prominence of IW on the continent, understanding how African allies and partners view IW is vital for the United States to ensure warfighter effectiveness in the region. This is where the IWC comes in. The IWC’s third iteration of the Center’s Conceptualization of Irregular Warfare Study Series builds on previous work conceptualizing IW in the Indo-Pacific and Europe. After recent engagement with five thought leaders across Angola, Nigeria, Kenya, Liberia, and Zambia, the IWC’s study provides four key lessons on IW in Africa:

The concept of IW resonated with study participants, but there is not a unified conceptualization of IW across Africa.
Participants primarily considered IW as the focus of violent non-state actors.
Colonial and post-colonial experience influences IW understanding.
IW in a participant state’s neighboring countries has an outsized impact on national perspectives.

We reached these conclusions after conducting an open-ended survey followed by semi-structured interviews and reviewing presentations by study participants on irregular warfare. The survey questions included asking about definitions of IW, primary irregular threats, types of IW education, and primary audiences for IW education. During the interviews, we asked participants to elaborate on their survey responses using both scripted questions and follow-ups tailored to their individual answers.

We approached studying IW conceptualization in Africa in the same manner as IWC’s two previous studies on IW conceptualization in Europe and the Indo-Pacific. For this iteration, we chose five countries based on their relevance to U.S. interests in the region, security posture, and openness to engaging with the U.S. DoD. We focused on interviewing instructors at professional military institutions or key individuals inside respective defense ministries. The African Conceptualization of IW Study included one assistant minister of defense, one lieutenant general, two brigadier generals, and one major. Except for the assistant minister of defense, all participants were either instructors or had recently served as instructors.

Why Study IW in Africa

Irregular warfare on the African continent provides ample case studies that test IW’s key attributes of “indirect, non-attributable, or asymmetric” methods. Threat actors often channel IW campaigns aimed at core U.S. interests through multiple regions without respecting national borders, especially in Africa. Violent extremist organizations and state actors leverage IW techniques to overtly and clandestinely develop influence across a continent replete with natural resources and human talent. The continent is full of cases including proxy conflict, foreign internal defense, and asymmetric capabilities to offset conventional combat power. In the case of direct great power conflict in other regions, Africa could be a region for U.S. adversaries to pursue horizontal escalation.

Horizontal escalation occurs as belligerents use IW outside of a primary conflict theater to raise the costs of continuing to fight. This model has already been partially demonstrated in Africa through Ukrainian support to Tuareg rebels targeting Russian mercenaries in Mali.

How the Pentagon thinks about IW in 2025

Joint Publication 1 Volume 1: Joint Warfighting lays out the DoD’s definition of IW as: “a form of warfare where states and non-state actors campaign to assure or coerce states or other groups through indirect, non-attributable, or asymmetric activities, either as the primary approach or in concert with conventional warfare” (emphasis added). While JP 1 applies across the joint force, the U.S. Army added its own understanding of IW in Field Manual 3-0 in the March 2025 update.

According to the Army, IW is the “overt, clandestine, and covert employment of military and nonmilitary capabilities by state and non-state actors to achieve policy objectives other than military domination of an enemy, either as the primary approach or in concert with conventional warfare.” This understanding focuses less on IW as a means of assurance or coercion than as a set of tactics. The Army’s view is further supported in a Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Instruction asserting five core IW activities: counterterrorism, unconventional warfare, foreign internal defense, counterinsurgency, and stability operations. The IWC’s Irregular Warfare 101 course provides an in-depth exploration of the definition of IW beyond this.

U.S. and partners share a term but not a definition

As a term, irregular warfare resonated with each study participant, and all participants were familiar with the term. Unlike in the European Conceptualization of IW study, participants did not propose “hybrid threats” as an alternative.

However, there was also no unified definition of IW. While many of the surveyed institutions and individuals were aware of the U.S. definition, none had fully adopted it. In Kenya, IW is seen as a type of conflict where “belligerents utilize asymmetric tactics,” according to a participant from the Kenyan Counter Insurgency, Terrorism, and Stability Operations Organization. The Angolan participant described IW as a way of waging war without conventional means. The definition that most closely mirrored the U.S. understanding of IW came from the Zambian participant, who noted that while Zambia does not have a formal definition, their description of “low-intensity conflict” was close. In the Zambian understanding, low-intensity conflicts are “usually localized between two or more states or non-state actors below [the level of] conventional warfare.” Nigeria does not currently have a formal definition of IW, but it does define insurgency and terrorism.

Participants highlighted forms of IW that either the IWC had not identified in previous portions of this study series or are under-conceptualized in U.S. or western security studies. These include crimes against natural resources, such as poaching, which Nigeria, Kenya, and Zambia identified. Kenyan and Nigerian participants also included organized crime against livestock, such as cattle rustling. Participants from Nigeria and Kenya also identified piracy and sea robbery as IW threats.

Participants who identified organized criminal activity as IW did not clearly delineate between ordinary criminality and IW. This may come from a recognition that organized criminal activity in the region can often be connected to violent non-state actors. For instance, transnational livestock rustling funds Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) in West Africa while Al Shabaab collects taxes and has encouraged piracy amidst increased collaboration with the Houthis in Yemen. Additionally, violent non-state actors have threatened counter-poaching and wildlife management efforts, while illicit timber harvesting funds violent non-state actors. Alternatively, these activities may arise from a perceived lack of alternative economic opportunities, as the Kenyan participant noted.

Participants primarily saw IW as the domain of violent non-state actors

Irregular warfare was most closely associated with violent non-state actors. Each participant pointed to at least one violent non-state actor as their country’s primary IW threat. Participant-identified groups included U.S.-designated terrorist organizations such as al-Qa‘ida and ISIS affiliates, plus organized crime actors and insurgent groups. Overall, participants did not consider state-based actors in their definition of IW or in their list of primary IW threats. When pressed on state-based IW, some participants suggested that state-based IW would, at a minimum, leverage a non-state proxy.

Colonial and post-colonial experience influences IW understanding

While decolonization varied across participant countries, each country experienced elements of pro-independence IW and colonial counter-insurgency operations. Each participant highlighted colonial-era counterinsurgency campaigns and the irregular warfare tactics employed by pro-independence movements as shaping their current understanding of irregular warfare, but all advised against drawing universal conclusions due to different independence processes across the region. Nigeria achieved independence gradually through successor constitutions amid relatively fewer pro-independence IW actors. Alternatively, Angola won independence following more than a decade of violent struggle.

Colonial counterinsurgency campaigns informed each participant’s understanding of both successful and unsuccessful methods for countering IW. In Nigeria, colonial authorities often embedded administrators into their regions. Colonial authorities deployed a criminal justice model following an assassination attempt on the Colonial Chief Secretary, which was the most major pro-independence act of IW. Conversely, in Angola, Portuguese authorities sought to suppress the independence movement with support from the South African Defence Forces. This brutal counterinsurgency campaign likely informed the country’s understanding of violent IW and counter IW.

Independence from colonial control changed the character of IW over time throughout the region. Following independence, one participant argued it would have been reasonable to expect that IW would cease since the main factor causing IW, colonial occupation, had ended.

Quite the opposite occurred in the decades following independence. Political factions led to civil war dominated by irregular tactics in Liberia and Angola. Secessionist movements arose in Nigeria and Angola, while religiously motivated violent non-state actors took up arms in Kenya and Nigeria. Instability in neighboring countries led to IW spilling over national borders for Angola, Kenya, Nigeria, and Zambia. Each represented country experienced elements of IW in the struggle for independence and saw former IW actors needing to suppress IW threats from violent non-state actors following independence.

IW in a country’s immediate neighbors has an outsized impact on national conceptualizations of IW

When participants discussed ongoing and future IW threats their countries face, each study participant pointed to IW threats emanating from a neighboring country. Participants from Angola, Nigeria, Kenya, Liberia, and Zambia each pointed to the presence of IW in neighboring countries as a potential risk. Most commonly, these presenters identified violent extremist organizations, separatist movements, or coups in neighboring countries as potential sources of IW in their country. Additionally, Liberia, Nigeria, and Zambia identified transnational criminal organizations as a cross-border IW threat. Participants from these three countries also highlighted cybercrime as an emerging potential IW threat.

This conclusion is partially a selection effect of choosing five relatively stable countries that border countries experiencing civil war, crisis in governance, or insurgency such as Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and Somalia. However, it points to how crisis in one country informs the understanding of defense thought leaders in the broader region.

These remarks underscore border security’s role in preventing the spread of IW threat actors. Participants argued that IW threat actors often exploited porous borders and periods of instability to thwart successful counter-IW campaigns. Some participants, including from Angola and Zambia, which share a land border, pointed to collaboration on security in border regions as a proven means to reduce IW threats.

Conclusion

Engagements on IW threats in Africa should consider the unique circumstances that affect how regional partners conceive of IW. The U.S. government would benefit greatly by highlighting state-led IW campaigns to increase exposure of other non-traditional threats while recognizing that partners and allies on the continent may disagree on terminology. Case studies on the destabilizing impacts of state-led IW campaigns carried out by regional powers in the DRC or Sudan could overcome some reluctance to see states as IW actors.

Africa’s security situation is not a monolith. But IW is a common threat across our surveyed countries. Additionally, IW as a concept resonated with defense thought leaders from Angola, Nigeria, Kenya, Liberia, and Zambia and their immediate regions. At its core, this study supports the conclusion reached in the previous two regions: IW conceptualization is heavily dependent on local context rather than following international models or copying U.S. doctrine. Participants saw IW, as they understood it, as a threat. They were receptive to future engagements both with the United States and regional partners on IW. One of the participant countries, Nigeria, recently created its own Irregular Warfare Center to better understand the threat.

Professional military institutions, ministries of defense, and defense thought leaders across Africa will ultimately craft understandings of IW best suited for their political, strategic, and tactical operating environments. U.S. and allied definitions and educational material will inform this process. But expecting a universalization of the U.S. understanding of the threat is naive. Rather, the U.S. DoD should continually reassess both the actual IW operating environment in Africa and surveying how key partners and allies understand that environment on the continent.

Western militaries pivot back and forth between preparing for great power conventional war and irregular war against state or non-state opponents. IW existed in Africa long before the term came into vogue in the West. America’s African partner forces offer a deep well of experience in irregular campaigns. The DoD can more effectively counter joint threats in Africa with the highest impact and minimized costs only when working alongside partners and allies on the continent.

Dr. Sandor Fabian is a former Hungarian Special Forces lieutenant colonel with twenty years of military experience. He was previously an MWI and IWI nonresident fellow and is the author of the book Irregular Warfare: The Future Military Strategy for Small States.

Matthew Heidel is an analyst at Valens Global focused on the African and European regions. In this role, he has conducted interviews and reviewed surveys on the international conceptualization of irregular warfare. Matthew has also helped develop immersive wargames for academic, civil society, and government audiences at Valens Global. Matthew holds a B.A. in Government from the College of William & Mary.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the official position of the Irregular Warfare Initiative, Princeton University’s Empirical Studies of Conflict Project, the Modern War Institute at West Point, or the United States Government.

Photo by Road Ahead on Unsplash.

If you value reading the Irregular Warfare Initiative, please consider supporting our work. And for the best gear, check out the IWI store for mugs, coasters, apparel, and other items.

What makes warfare irregular? Pineland Underground speaks with Mr/LTC Doug Livermore on Irregular Warfare
Did you know the entire Joint Force engages in Irregular Warfare? Often defined differently depending on the individual or organization you speak to. The Pineland Underground podcast has Doug Livermore…
The Future of Irregular Warfare
In Episode 8 of the Irregular Warfare Podcast, hosts Nick Lopez and Shawna Sinnott have a conversation with best-selling authors August Cole and P.W. Singer to discuss how they see the future…
Irregular Warfare Oversight in DC
What are the mechanics and politics that determine how the US government approaches irregular conflicts? Hosts Nick Lopez and Kyle Atwell discuss irregular warfare policy formation and management with Mark…

irregularwarfare.org · by Sandor Fabian, Matthew Heidel · July 1, 2025

16. They Demanded Democracy. Years Later, They Are Still Paying the Price.

This should be more than a cautionary tale for Taiwan.

They Demanded Democracy. Years Later, They Are Still Paying the Price.

Thousands of young people lost careers, friends and dreams after taking part in mass antigovernment protests that erupted six years ago in Hong Kong.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/30/world/asia/hong-kong-protesters.html

Listen to this article · 5:22 min Learn more

Share full article
15

Chan Chi Sum was 20 when he was arrested under the national security law because of his involvement in a student political group.Credit...Billy H.C. Kwok for The New York Times

By Tiffany May

Reporting from Hong Kong

June 30, 2025

阅读简体中文版閱讀繁體中文版

There was the software engineering major who crouched behind umbrellas to dodge rubber bullets. The social worker who marched with other pro-democracy protesters. And the student who handed out leaflets and made speeches.

All three had joined the Hong Kong protests that erupted in 2019, hoping for more democracy. Instead, the movement was crushed, and they, like many others, were arrested, sentenced and sent to prison.

More than 10,000 people were arrested during the monthslong uprising that began as peaceful mass rallies but grew sometimes violent as the police responded with force. Almost a quarter of those were convicted of crimes that include rioting and national security offenses.

Image

Pro-democracy protests in the summer of 2019 drew huge crowds.Credit...Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times

China’s national security crackdown on Hong Kong, which began five years ago, has quelled protests and effectively outlawed public dissent. Many of the protesters have moved overseas or gone back to their lives.

But for those convicted of crimes, moving on has been hard. Some have found themselves shut out from their former careers; others feel stranded as their peers have moved on.

Here are the stories of three of them:

A Career Derailed

Fung, the social worker, who asked to be identified only by part of her name, had been arrested at a largely peaceful street protest. A conviction and prison sentence for rioting brought her five-year career to a halt.

Prison brought other hardships too, as when her father’s cancer took a turn for the worse. She was told she could only see him on his deathbed or attend his funeral. The hospital visit she chose lasted only ten minutes. When her father reached for her handcuffed hands, the officers forbade contact and ushered her away.

Editors’ Picks

Do I Really Need an Air Purifier?

What Makes Someone Cool? A New Study Offers Clues.

3 Salad Dressings You Should Memorize

Image

Despite years of experience and a master’s degree, Fung has been unable to get her license renewed to continue her career as a social worker.Credit...Billy H.C. Kwok for The New York Times

She applied to restore her license as a social worker, both while in prison and after her release, but was rejected despite having referrals from former professors and colleagues.

“I feel I have shouldered my responsibility,” she said. “Now I want to move on and become a part of society again.”

She said she would keep trying, and has been working as a concierge for a luxury hotel in the meantime. While many of her friends have emigrated, Fung is determined to stay put. She has no regrets.

“I have very deep feelings for Hong Kong,” she said. “I have hope that it will get better.”

Missed Opportunities

Chan Chi Sum was 20 when he was arrested and sentenced to prison for conspiracy to incite subversion. He had been a leader in a student group that had drawn the attention of the authorities for running a street booth where they handed out fliers and warned that a government Covid contact-tracing app could be used for surveillance.

Since his release, he has been trying to make up for the two years he lost behind bars.

But some old friends have kept their distance. One who had plans to join the civil service sent him a text message but did not make plans to meet. Eventually, they stopped talking.

Many of his peers who had fought for democracy alongside him had moved on. He kept quiet at high school reunions when his former classmates discussed plans to buy property and have children.

Image

Chan Chi Sum has been trying to make up for the two years he lost behind bars, but feels left behind as his friends have moved on.Credit...Billy H.C. Kwok for The New York Times

“They all completed their degrees and became the people they wanted to be. But I didn’t get to become who I wanted to be,” Mr. Chan said.

In order to save up for further study, he worked as many odd jobs as he could find, including as a mover, a busboy and a video editor. He also earned a license to become a construction worker in case universities rejected him because of his record.

He is now pursuing a degree in media and culture and hopes to make videos and documentaries that would bear witness to the changing city. “I can show others the Hong Kong I see through my eyes,” he said.

Enforced Silence

Tsui, the software engineering major, left prison to find a city far different than the one he remembered.

Tsui, who asked to be identified only by his last name, served almost two and a half years for rioting. Upon his release, he had initially wanted to speak out about the poor prison conditions, but his friends warned him against it.

Tsui feels frustrated that many who joined him in protesting seem to have set aside their political ideals and were even traveling regularly to mainland China for work or fun.

Image

Tsui feels frustrated that those who joined him at the protests have set aside their political ideals. But he, too, has begun to censor himself in a city that doesn’t tolerate dissent.Credit...Billy H.C. Kwok for The New York Times

He landed a job as an entry-level system administrator in a large private company. He has tried to keep his time in prison a secret from new acquaintances.

But office talk about movies and songs popular when he was in prison made him feel left out, and jokes comparing the work grind to prison did not seem funny. He also learned to dodge questions like why he avoided visiting mainland China or downloading Chinese apps like WeChat.

Now, he censors himself during conversations, and has started warning other friends to be careful about making comments critical of the government on social media.

“We have all learned how to dance within the red lines,” he said.

Tiffany May is a reporter based in Hong Kong, covering the politics, business and culture of the city and the broader region.

A version of this article appears in print on July 1, 2025, Section A, Page 7 of the New York edition with the headline: Ex-Protesters Living in a Hong Kong Cowed by Beijing. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

17. Ukraine Can Still Win: Western Half Measures Have Prolonged the War, but Decisive Action Now Could End It

Excerpts:

Putin’s ambition to dominate Ukraine is unlikely ever to diminish, even as Russian casualties approach a million. What can change are the battlefield and defense-industrial conditions that make Putin’s ambition feasible. Western countries have the collective resources to create a situation in which trend lines turn negative for Russia. Once the strategic risks accumulate to the extent that the Kremlin has to ask difficult questions about Russia’s ability to defend itself against other hostile actors, it will be compelled to reassess its approach.

Indeed, from a strategic vantage point, Russia has already lost this war. Regardless of how much additional territory changes hands, the Ukrainian nation is lost to Russia forever. No matter how many billions of dollars Moscow spends on propaganda and “reeducation,” filtration camps and torture chambers, it will never convince Ukrainians to accept its rule as legitimate. What Ukraine needs now is the time, tools, and space to prove to the Kremlin that an occupation is not just immoral but incompatible with Russia’s long-term security needs.

Ukraine’s allies have a choice. They can continue the current approach of transatlantic division and stillborn diplomacy, risking an expanded, longer, and far costlier war. Or they can act decisively to help Ukraine turn the tide, throttle the tempo of Russian weapons manufacturing, and empower the leadership in Kyiv to negotiate from a position of strength. A peace agreement may forever remain elusive, but once the cost of continued fighting becomes untenable, Russia can eventually be forced to settle for an armistice similar to the one that effectively ended the Korean War. Once that point is reached and the fighting diminishes, the space will emerge for Ukraine to renew its democratic mandate, resettle refugees, reconstruct infrastructure, and—perhaps most critically—finish its accession process with the EU and NATO. The return of all occupied territories may take longer, but Ukraine will have established the foundations of strategic victory.

Victory may not come quickly, cheaply, or easily. But it is still possible and will likely cost fewer lives and resources than a perpetuation of the status quo. What remains to be seen is whether the West—especially Europe—is willing to summon the political will to secure this brighter future.

Ukraine Can Still Win

Foreign Affairs · by More by Michael Carpenter · July 1, 2025

Western Half Measures Have Prolonged the War, but Decisive Action Now Could End It

Michael Carpenter

July 1, 2025

Ukrainian servicemen fire a tank in the Zaporizhzhia region, Ukraine, February 2025 Stringer / Reuters

Michael Carpenter is a Distinguished Fellow at the Atlantic Council. He was Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Europe at the U.S. National Security Council as well as Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe during the Biden administration.

Print Subscribe to unlock this feature or Sign in.

Save Sign in and save to read later

When U.S. President Donald Trump took office in January 2025, many in Washington expected a rapid settlement to the war in Ukraine. On the campaign trail, Trump had boasted he could end the conflict in 24 hours. Although few analysts believed that specific promise, many speculated about the possible terms and timeline of an impending deal. The investment bank JPMorgan Chase, for example, claimed an agreement could be reached by June.

Yet as the weeks pass and diplomacy stagnates, it is becoming clear that no such resolution is imminent. As Ukraine’s former Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba noted in Foreign Affairs in late May, neither Russia nor Ukraine “has much of an incentive to stop the fighting.” Ukraine refuses to surrender its sovereignty; Russia will not accept anything less than Ukrainian capitulation.

This conclusion, however, does not mean all is lost. Russia is much weaker economically than many analysts realize, and hard-hitting sanctions and export controls can still cripple its war economy. Ukraine is fighting smartly and could turn the tide on the battlefield with more high-end drones, air defense systems, long-range missiles, and munitions. With a change of strategy, Ukraine can still win the war in the near term—if both Europe and the United States decide to give it the assistance it needs.

THE DOSE MAKES THE POISON

Much of the premature optimism about a settlement earlier this year sprang from the prevailing belief that Ukraine was losing and would soon be forced to negotiate out of desperation. Trump stoked this narrative by asserting that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had “no cards” left to play. U.S. Vice President JD Vance took it a step further, declaring that Ukraine—and its foreign backers—never had any “pathway to victory.” Citing Russia’s superiority in manpower and weapons, Vance argued that if the United States kept up its security assistance, it would only postpone Ukraine’s inevitable defeat.

This defeatism has been supported by a second, equally pernicious assumption: that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s commitment to subjugating Ukraine cannot be deterred. The former CIA analyst Peter Schroeder’s assessment in Foreign Affairs last September exemplifies this view, describing Putin as “all in”—personally invested in keeping Ukraine from becoming a European democracy, no matter the cost. Such a narrative holds a kernel of truth, but it also dovetails too neatly with Russian propaganda. By assigning no agency to Ukraine or its foreign partners, it presumes that Ukrainian victory is a fantasy born of Western delusion, and it is a view that risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Both assumptions, meanwhile, rest on an excessively narrow reading of battlefield dynamics and a limited understanding of the policy options available to Ukraine’s backers. Despite significant constraints on the aid that Europe and the United States have offered over the past three and a half years, Ukraine has achieved impressive victories. It repelled Russia’s initial push toward Kyiv in March 2022 with little more than shoulder-fired antitank missiles and grit, defying the predictions of many military analysts. Later that year, in a stunning rout for Russian forces, Ukraine reclaimed nearly a thousand square miles in the Kharkiv region without the benefit of modern armor or air cover. And just weeks ago, Ukraine shocked the world by pulling off Operation Spiderweb, a surprise attack that used cheap, remote-controlled drones to inflict substantial damage on Russia’s long-range aviation.

Indeed, what most consistently hindered Ukraine’s war effort was not Kyiv’s lack of manpower or weak resolve compared with Putin, but rather an insufficient supply of advanced military capabilities. Long after Russia had deployed its most modern tanks, fifth-generation fighter aircraft, long-range air defense systems, and cutting-edge ballistic and cruise missiles, Ukraine was still waiting for deliveries of similar capabilities from its Western partners. When some of these systems finally did arrive, Ukraine was prohibited from using them on targets inside Russia until the United States relaxed its rules of engagement in mid-2024. The truth is precisely the opposite of what the current administration has claimed. Instead of prolonging the war by giving Ukraine too much military assistance, Kyiv’s foreign allies have prolonged it by giving too little, and often with significant delays.

When it comes to punitive economic measures against Russia, the international response has been similarly half-baked. In the early days of the war, the United States and its G-7 allies crafted sanctions and export controls that were thought to pack a powerful punch but in fact had so many mitigations built in that they were robbed of their full impact. In April 2022, just after Russia’s invasion, Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the European Union removed seven Russian banks from SWIFT, the dominant international payments system. Many analysts had previously touted the move as a “nuclear option” that would decimate the Russian economy.

But the delisting was so selective in its application—targeting only seven banks out of hundreds in Russia—that the Russian economy actually grew in 2023 and 2024. The gradual implementation of export controls also gave Russia time to adapt, as did numerous carve-outs for certain types of Russian banks or transactions: civil nuclear energy, aviation servicing and maintenance, and fertilizer sales, for example, could still be processed. As the saying goes, the dose makes the poison—and the insufficient dosing of punitive economic measures produced an underwhelming campaign with limited strategic effect.

TIPPING THE SCALE

Despite these missteps, victory for Ukraine—minimally defined as preserving its sovereignty and continuing to chart a course toward NATO and EU membership—is still squarely within reach. Achieving it, however, requires a fundamental shift in Western strategy, one that combines a large boost in military assistance with more robust economic measures to constrain Russia’s war economy.

The linchpin for this new strategy is the West’s mobilization of the approximately $300 billion in frozen Russian assets held in their jurisdictions—mostly in the EU—to support Ukraine’s current fight. Thus far, the Trump administration has shown no inclination to use congressionally authorized funds to support Ukraine. So, as Wally Adeyemo and David Shimer have written in Foreign Affairs, it makes sense to seize these assets and, in effect, “make Russia pay” for Ukraine’s defense. Some EU leaders have argued that these assets should be saved for reconstruction efforts after the war ends. Others worry about setting a dangerous precedent for the rule of law by seizing a country’s funds—even if that country has violated international laws and is engaged in the mass murder of civilians. If Europe is to help bring this war to an end, it must set these concerns aside and act now.

These funds could serve multiple purposes. A portion could be invested in Ukraine’s burgeoning defense industrial base: its drone sector, for instance, has become highly innovative but needs additional investments for industrial-scale production, sensor development, and counter-electronic warfare measures. Another portion could help Ukraine purchase long-range missiles and other weapons systems from Europe, assisting the continent in building up production lines that support both Ukraine’s defense and, once the war is over, NATO deterrence. A third chunk could fund the production of U.S.-made capabilities—such as air defense systems and long-range precision fires—that Ukraine needs but Europe currently lacks in sufficient quantities. And finally, the remainder could go to distributed energy generation, the protection of critical infrastructure such as switchyards and electrical substations, and humanitarian needs.

Yet helping Ukraine win requires more than just transferring arms. Western governments must prioritize co-production agreements, intellectual property sharing, and defense manufacturing partnerships—especially in missile and ammunition manufacturing, armored vehicles, and drone and counterdrone technologies, as well as cyber, command and coordination systems, and electronic warfare systems. Such arrangements would reduce Ukraine’s dependence on foreign supply chains, fortify its domestic capacity, and foster long-term interoperability with NATO forces. Equally important is for these governments to give Ukraine access to maintenance and life-cycle support technologies and software so that Western platforms can be adapted to the evolving battlefield.

Despite being outnumbered, Ukraine has repeatedly demonstrated its ability to offset its disadvantages with asymmetric tactics, such as sinking parts of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet with maritime drones and missiles and denying Russia air superiority by using its limited air defenses creatively. With more sustained military, technological, and economic support, Ukraine could develop new advantages, such as better integrating drones, land mines, and long-range fires to pin down Russian forces and take out their logistics nodes.

EVERY TOOL IN THE TOOLKIT

To buttress Ukraine’s military capabilities, the West must also target the economic foundations of Russia’s war effort. Fortunately for Ukraine, Russia’s economy remains fragile. Although the country’s GDP has increased over the last two years, structural weaknesses abound in its economy: a 20 percent interest rate, a 68 percent decline in Russia’s sovereign wealth fund since February 2022, and persistent inflation of around nine percent. These vulnerabilities present opportunities.

First, the West must go after Russia’s primary revenue stream: energy exports. Currently, Europe is still importing roughly $23.5 billion worth of Russian oil and natural gas. If Europe is to get serious about ending the war, it must decrease Moscow’s energy income and foreign currency flows. Moreover, Russia has systematically evaded the G-7’s oil price cap, significantly weakening its intended impact. Western countries should impose a full embargo or steep tariffs on Russian oil and gas and should tighten regulations, engage in more systematic maritime tracking, and take stronger legal measures to strictly enforce the G-7 price cap. And if third parties flout these restrictions, the G-7 should impose sanctions on them.

The G-7 countries, meanwhile, must further isolate Russia financially. The Kremlin has taken advantage of the sanctions regime’s carve-outs and has the power to direct Russian banks to process whatever payments are needed. To meaningfully disrupt Russia’s trade, devalue the ruble, and increase economic uncertainty, the G-7 should remove all Russian banks from SWIFT and subject them to full blocking sanctions, which prohibit all transactions with the sanctioned entity. If financial institutions in foreign countries enable sanctions evasion, they, too, should be subjected to secondary sanctions. Only by applying the full power of these sanctions tools can Ukraine’s allies succeed in weakening Russia’s war machine.

Western governments can also redouble their efforts regarding export controls on high-tech components, including semiconductors, precision machine tools, optics, aviation components, and industrial software. There have been export controls on Russia for more than a decade, but these are not one-and-done solutions; meaningfully degrading the Kremlin’s capacity to replenish and maintain its military equipment requires continuous enforcement whenever workarounds and third-party cutouts arise. The U.S. Commerce Department should further restrict Russia’s access to “dual use” goods—products valuable in both civilian and military applications—in order to constrain its production of high-tech weapons and undermine its military-industrial complex. Similarly, Western governments can do more to zero in on Russia’s defense industry by sanctioning more Russian firms that manufacture essential defense equipment such as drones, missiles, and armored vehicles.

Even after three and half years of full-scale war, Ukraine’s supporters have not come close to exhausting the sanctions toolkit. If rigorously applied and internationally enforced, the combination of these sanction enhancements would cripple Russia’s economy.

THE CHINA FACTOR

Yet it is also important to recognize that Russia is no longer waging this war alone. It has found steady backing from a coalition of autocratic states—backing that has allowed it to weather the bite of Western sanctions and replenish critical materiel. Only a few months into the war, Western intelligence agencies and military analysts had assessed that Russia had significantly depleted its stockpile of precision-guided munitions. As sanctions took hold and component shortages mounted, the Kremlin was forced to ration these weapons. This rationing had a real effect on the war, gradually turning the battlefield dynamics in Ukraine’s favor. The tempo of Russian precision strikes declined markedly by late 2022, replaced in part by the use of unguided bombs and the repurposing of systems such as the S-300 air defense missile for ground-attack roles.

By the fall of that year, however, Iran began supplying Russia with drones. Then, by 2023, China emerged as Russia’s primary supplier of dual-use technologies, including accounting for over 90 percent of imported microelectronics. North Korea, meanwhile, provided short-range ballistic missiles and, later, troops.

Confronting this axis of aggressors will require a shift in Western strategy. There is probably little Europe or the United States can do to dissuade North Korea, but Iran has been greatly weakened following its war with Israel and has less to offer now that Russia is mass-producing its own drones. That leaves China, whose inputs into the Russian defense industrial base are far more consequential than Iran’s or North Korea’s contributions. To constrain Chinese support for Moscow, a unified transatlantic approach is needed to raise the costs of Beijing’s support. That means leveraging trade and market access—areas in which Europe holds unique influence—to apply pressure. European leaders acknowledge China’s key role in enabling the Russian war effort, but they have not taken serious steps to stop it; mere expressions of disapproval are not enough. If the war in Ukraine is to be contained and ultimately resolved, Europe will have to make clear to Beijing that normal commercial relations cannot coexist with China’s support for a war against the European security order.

TURN THE TIDE

Putin’s ambition to dominate Ukraine is unlikely ever to diminish, even as Russian casualties approach a million. What can change are the battlefield and defense-industrial conditions that make Putin’s ambition feasible. Western countries have the collective resources to create a situation in which trend lines turn negative for Russia. Once the strategic risks accumulate to the extent that the Kremlin has to ask difficult questions about Russia’s ability to defend itself against other hostile actors, it will be compelled to reassess its approach.

Indeed, from a strategic vantage point, Russia has already lost this war. Regardless of how much additional territory changes hands, the Ukrainian nation is lost to Russia forever. No matter how many billions of dollars Moscow spends on propaganda and “reeducation,” filtration camps and torture chambers, it will never convince Ukrainians to accept its rule as legitimate. What Ukraine needs now is the time, tools, and space to prove to the Kremlin that an occupation is not just immoral but incompatible with Russia’s long-term security needs.

Ukraine’s allies have a choice. They can continue the current approach of transatlantic division and stillborn diplomacy, risking an expanded, longer, and far costlier war. Or they can act decisively to help Ukraine turn the tide, throttle the tempo of Russian weapons manufacturing, and empower the leadership in Kyiv to negotiate from a position of strength. A peace agreement may forever remain elusive, but once the cost of continued fighting becomes untenable, Russia can eventually be forced to settle for an armistice similar to the one that effectively ended the Korean War. Once that point is reached and the fighting diminishes, the space will emerge for Ukraine to renew its democratic mandate, resettle refugees, reconstruct infrastructure, and—perhaps most critically—finish its accession process with the EU and NATO. The return of all occupied territories may take longer, but Ukraine will have established the foundations of strategic victory.

Victory may not come quickly, cheaply, or easily. But it is still possible and will likely cost fewer lives and resources than a perpetuation of the status quo. What remains to be seen is whether the West—especially Europe—is willing to summon the political will to secure this brighter future.

Foreign Affairs · by More by Michael Carpenter · July 1, 2025

18. The Arctic Great Game: And Why America Risks Losing It

Our strategic high ground?

The Arctic Great Game

Foreign Affairs · by More by Heather A. Conley · June 24, 2025

Review Essay

And Why America Risks Losing It

Heather A. Conley

July/August 2025 Published on June 24, 2025

A Patriot missile launcher station at Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska, March 2022 Joseph P. LeVeille / Reuters

HEATHER A. CONLEY is a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and former President of the German Marshall Fund. From 2001 to 2005, she was U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and European Affairs.

In This Review

America in the Arctic: Foreign Policy and Competition in the Melting North
By Mary Thompson-Jones
Tertulia
Bookshop
Amazon

Subscribe to unlock this feature or Sign in.

Print Subscribe to unlock this feature or Sign in.

Save Sign in and save to read later

“Fighting it out over the Arctic, with the vast resources of the Arctic, is going to be the new great game of the twenty-first century,” Steve Bannon, who served as chief strategist early in President Donald Trump’s first term, declared in an interview in February. The power struggle unfolding in the far north does indeed have much in common with the original Great Game, the nineteenth-century competition between the era’s two great powers, the British and Russian Empires, over access to strategically and economically valuable territory in Central Asia. In today’s contest, China, Russia, and the United States are similarly pursuing territorial expansion and influence. The modern powers are again eager to access economic riches and build protective buffer zones. And should the competition intensify, the players’ military adventures could even end the same way their predecessors did: thwarted by cold weather.

With nineteenth-century power dynamics resurgent, the former U.S. diplomat Mary Thompson-Jones’s recent book, America in the Arctic, offers a timely and informative narrative of how the United States acquired and maintained its status as an Arctic power. After a largely successful history of building a U.S. presence in the Arctic, Thompson-Jones warns, Washington is now paying insufficient attention to a region that has become a focus of the world’s great powers.

Even in the short time since America in the Arctic was written, new developments have raised the stakes. After taking office, Trump trained his sights on potential Arctic acquisitions, making frequent, controversial references to Canada as “the 51st state” and vowing that the United States would “get” Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark, “one way or another.” Cooperation between Russia and China, meanwhile, has been growing since their 2022 announcement of an “unlimited partnership,” which in the Arctic has translated to joint scientific, space, and military operations, including coast guard and naval patrols. And Washington’s recent outreach to Moscow has introduced a wildcard: should talks yield some kind of grand bargain, the resulting geopolitical realignment could change the game entirely.

Whatever happens, a contest over critical minerals, maritime routes, fisheries, natural resources, seabed mining, and satellite communications is coming, and the United States is not ready for it. For years, Russia and China have been preparing to take advantage of new Arctic shipping routes, improving their undersea military and scientific capabilities, and honing their hybrid warfare tactics while U.S. attention has been elsewhere. To compete, the United States will need to dramatically increase its military, economic, scientific, and diplomatic presence in the Arctic, in close cooperation with U.S. allies. If Washington does not resolve the deficiencies and contradictions of its Arctic strategy soon, it may find that it has already lost the new great game.

MEET THE CONTESTANTS

Thompson-Jones provides a rich history of the United States’ experience in the Arctic, including its active role in shaping the Arctic policies of Canada, Denmark (via Greenland), Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, and Sweden, incorporating memorable vignettes from each Arctic country. A former U.S. diplomat who served in Canada, Thompson-Jones conveys her deep admiration for the people who live in the Arctic and her appreciation of the unrelenting effects of climate change, the desire for security, and the value of friends and allies “when the ice breaks,” as the Inuit proverb goes. The book closes with a stark—and accurate—lament of Washington’s distinct lack of ambition in its recent Arctic policies. Thompson-Jones, writing before the U.S. presidential election last year, recommends that future leaders increase their focus on climate change and multilateral diplomacy in an expansive Arctic strategy. That advice, unfortunately, quickly became outdated with the return of Trump.

More likely to suit the sensibilities of the U.S. president is Thompson-Jones’s suggestion that the United States have what she calls a “Longyear moment”—a reference to a Midwestern industrialist named John Longyear, who in 1901 sailed to the Svalbard archipelago in the sea north of mainland Norway and “saw iron ore and big possibilities.” In 1906, Longyear founded the Arctic Coal Company and sought to build and sustain an industrial presence in the Arctic, with the eventual support of the U.S. government. Thompson-Jones writes that this venture represented a “profound conceptual shift” in U.S. approaches to the Arctic, ushering in an era of heightened ambition.

Over a century later, the United States needs to pursue “big possibilities” in the Arctic once again if it is to compete with its rivals, Russia and China. All three players are invested in the region, but in different ways. For Russia, which holds vast swaths of Arctic territory, the region is vital to its military and economic survival. For China, the Arctic represents an opportunity to diversify its global economic interests. And for the United States, which secured its Arctic presence with the 1867 purchase of the territory of Alaska from Russia—a sale that Dmitry Rogozin, Russia’s former deputy prime minister, has described as a “betrayal of Russian power status”—the region is a northern frontline of defense.

The Arctic animates Russian President Vladimir Putin’s geopolitical strategy. He seeks to develop a maritime passageway, the Northern Sea Route, that traverses Russia’s northern coastal waters and is dotted with new port infrastructure linked by rail to the country’s sub-Arctic regions. A new fleet of Russian icebreakers would escort registered vessels along the route, which would facilitate the export of Russian natural resources and the east-west transit of Chinese goods. In that kind of large-scale project, Thompson-Jones traces echoes of a brutal legacy: the savagery of the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s Arctic infrastructure campaign, in which roads, railways, and mines were built by prisoners and forced laborers, many of whom died during the construction. One road was known as “the Bone Road” because so many workers were buried in its foundation that “there is one body for every meter of road.”

Putin’s economic and military buildup in the region is less ruthless than Stalin’s but similarly ambitious, driven by Russia’s chronic sense of insecurity and fear of losing control over its territory. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Arctic military bases were closed, damaged infrastructure was left unrepaired, and many Arctic populations, cut off from state subsidies, moved elsewhere. Today, Russian authorities are trying to prevent a further deterioration of the Arctic population by delaying residents’ requests to leave. Polar gulags are also the preferred place to send political prisoners who threaten the government, such as the opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died under suspicious circumstances in one such prison in 2024. Russia is constructing and refurbishing Arctic military bases, in part to improve its monitoring capabilities as commercial activity increases along the Northern Sea Route. The sudden appearance of Russian flags, crosses, and Orthodox priests across not just the Russian Arctic but also, worryingly, the Norwegian High North are declarations of Russia’s past, present, and future ownership.

China joined the Arctic game more recently. Despite lacking Arctic territory of its own, China has declared itself a “near Arctic” state on the basis of fifteenth-century maps and its interest in Arctic governance. Beginning in 2004, when it established its first research station on Svalbard, it has used scientific cooperation to boost its Arctic presence and knowledge. Later, China pursued business ventures with Canada and the Nordic states, but these countries were wary of its investment terms—and under pressure from Washington—and slowly restricted Beijing’s access. Another opening came with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. As Moscow faced the loss of its European markets, the end of its partnerships with Western energy companies, and wartime budgetary limitations, it welcomed Chinese investment as a way to fill the gap. China increased funding for Russia’s liquefied natural gas projects in the Arctic and related infrastructure development along the Northern Sea Route, expanding its commercial presence in the region.

For its part, the United States has been an Arctic economic power since it acquired Alaska to secure access to the territory’s natural resources. It first attempted to purchase Greenland in 1868 for the same reason. (Further attempts to acquire the island—in 1910, 1946, and 2019—had a mix of economic and security motives.) After World War II, the United States expanded its Arctic presence through a network of regional alliances and infrastructure projects. In the 1950s, it built the Distant Early Warning Line, a string of radar stations that traversed Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Iceland, and the Faroe Islands and remained operational until 1993 to defend against a potential Soviet missile attack. In cooperation with Canada, the United States constructed the Alaska Highway and created an integrated air defense system known as NORAD. Together with NATO allies, U.S. forces patrolled the waters and airspace of the North Atlantic, particularly around Greenland, Iceland, and the United Kingdom, to detect Soviet, and later, Russian nuclear submarines and bombers.

The Arctic remains vital to U.S. economic and security interests. Anchorage, Alaska, is home to the fourth-busiest cargo airport in the world. Nearly all of the United States’ radar systems and ground-based missile interceptors are located in the state, whose high latitude enables earlier detection of incoming threats. Recent bilateral defense agreements with all five Nordic countries and the accession of Finland and Sweden to NATO, in 2023 and 2024, respectively, have strengthened collective defense in the Arctic. But Washington has neglected its own capabilities in the region. U.S. military officials often decry the lack of port and aviation infrastructure, icebreakers, satellites, sensors, and cold-weather equipment and training that are necessary to defend Arctic territory.

THE GAME BOARD

The prize that Russia, China, and the United States are all after is control. As the American aviator Billy Mitchell quipped in 1935, “Whoever holds Alaska will hold the world.” Control of Arctic land offers several advantages. Crossing over polar regions shortens the distances that cargo vessels, airplanes, undersea cables, or intercontinental ballistic missiles must travel to reach their destinations. The region hosts satellite ground stations and orbital launch sites that are important to both civilian and military operations. High-latitude communications infrastructure, although limited, is vital for tracking vessels, monitoring weather, and integrating surveillance systems. Arctic lands and seabeds also hold vast quantities of critical minerals and energy resources, and Arctic waters are becoming an increasingly important source of food as warming ocean temperatures compel fish to swim north seeking cooler waters.

The main battle lines will thus be drawn along the Arctic seabed, in international waters, and en route to outer space. U.S. and Russian nuclear submarines already patrol zones where undersea cables connect Europe and the United States, and security is likely to get tighter as Russian and Chinese vessels target new cables. Countries will also be looking to lock in access to critical minerals. In 2023, a United Nations commission associated with the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) issued recommendations that supported most of Russia’s claims to extend its outer continental shelf deep into the central Arctic. (Russia must eventually negotiate with Canada and Denmark to resolve overlapping claims.) Seabed mining in this area could increase Russia’s commercial and military presence in international waters.

Disputes over the status of two Arctic maritime routes, the Russian Northern Sea Route and the Canadian equivalent, the Northwest Passage, are likely to continue. Both Russia and Canada claim these passages as internal waters, but the United States and other countries consider them to be international waters and therefore not subject to national laws or restrictions. As polar ice melts, a third transpolar route that lies almost entirely in undisputed international waters could open up, and the United States will need additional maritime and monitoring infrastructure to prepare for its increased use. China has already begun testing the viability of the route, sending an icebreaker through it in 2012. Finally, the positioning of satellite ground stations and polar orbit launching stations in the Arctic will be a key front of the space race. As Russia has demonstrated in its war in Ukraine, the country that controls global navigation systems and can disarm the satellites of its adversaries will have enormous military advantages.

PLAYING TO WIN

The United States is woefully unprepared for the emerging competition. Despite efforts from Congress, especially the delegations from Alaska, Maine, and Washington, to push successive administrations to devote the necessary resources to the region, the U.S. defense community has treated it as a low priority. Insufficient funding and insufficient attention create a vicious circle, producing uninspired Arctic strategies that lack adequate budgets and clear command structures. To get back in the game, the United States needs to ramp up its military and economic presence in the Arctic, working closely with its Arctic allies to strengthen its scientific and surveillance networks to better identify and defend against threats.

The most visible sign of the United States’ inadequate preparation is its aging icebreaker fleet. The U.S. Navy has no ice-strengthened surface ships, a class of ship that can navigate mostly ice-free waters. The U.S. Coast Guard has only three icebreakers—a stronger ship designed to clear passages through solid ice—but just two are operational today, and they must serve both the Arctic and the Antarctic. Just one, a 50-year-old ship, can break through 20 feet of ice. In 2024, Washington purchased the third, a commercial icebreaker built in 2012, but work must be done on it before it becomes operational, expected next year. This ship, which can break nearly five feet of ice, is meant to serve as a backup to the United States’ older icebreakers until a new, more powerful icebreaker that the first Trump administration commissioned in 2019 is constructed. The target date for that project, currently 2030, has been delayed by repeated design changes and the erosion of expertise at U.S. shipyards, which have not built a heavy icebreaker—one that can cut through ice 21 feet thick—since the 1970s.

The problem goes well beyond icebreakers. The United States does not have sufficient military presence or maritime infrastructure, such as deep-sea ports, to defend large swaths of Arctic territory. U.S. forces are able to operate Pituffik Space Base on the north coast of Greenland, for example, but they cannot secure the entire island. The Trump administration has also been jeopardizing critical Arctic alliances. Its aggression toward Canada and Denmark has pushed both countries to enhance their capabilities—Canada announced plans to construct two new icebreakers and three new Arctic military bases earlier this year, and Denmark announced a $2 billion security upgrade in January and another $600 million for surveillance vessels in April—but threaten to damage their relationships with the United States in the long term. If Washington is to compete with China and Russia, it needs its Arctic friends fully on its side.

Washington must also start putting real money behind the development of U.S. Arctic capabilities. Trump has spoken repeatedly about U.S. interests in the Arctic, and since 2021 Congress has pushed for multiyear funding for an Arctic security initiative to be included in the Pentagon’s budget. It is time to make that plan a reality. The U.S. Navy needs ice-strengthened ships. Trump has repeatedly called for the construction of 40 icebreakers, but this quantity is unnecessary and unrealistic. The Coast Guard has said it needs eight or nine, and even reaching this number within a reasonable time frame would require most of the building to be done by foreign shipyards. Runways, radar systems, and other military installations damaged by thawing permafrost must be repaired and stabilized. Increased deployments of personnel and long-range bombers, more and better port facilities and sensors along the coasts of Greenland, and upgraded satellite communications, underwater drones, and sea-floor mapping are necessary to monitor the vast expanse of the Arctic and particularly to detect Russian or Chinese military activity. As U.S. General Gregory Guillot, the head of the U.S. Northern Command, put it in his congressional testimony in February, “You cannot defeat what you cannot see.”

Ice near Nuuk, Greenland, February 2025 Sarah Meyssonnier / Reuters

The U.S. military must also streamline responsibility for operations in the Arctic under a single regional command. In the existing structure, developed in 2011, operational responsibilities are divided between the U.S. European Command, which covers the European Arctic, and the U.S. Northern Command and the U.S.-Canadian organization NORAD, which together cover North America. U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, meanwhile, manages the bulk of the U.S. Army’s cold-weather and airborne capabilities based in Alaska. With each command focused on its own area, no single entity has eyes on the Arctic as a whole. Even the east and west coasts of Greenland fall under separate military jurisdictions. A unified subregional U.S. Arctic Command would be able to detect and respond to adversaries’ activities across the Arctic and support regional commands.

There are clear steps the United States can take to access the Arctic’s critical minerals, too. One is for the Energy and State Departments to create a dedicated Arctic initiative, building on the Minerals Security Partnership (a grouping of 14 countries, plus the European Union, formed in 2022), to boost public-private investment in sustainable mining and related infrastructure in Alaska, Greenland, and other Arctic locations. Another step is to enlarge U.S. Arctic territory—not by trying to buy Greenland or incorporate Canada, but by extending the U.S. outer continental shelf in the Bering Sea and the Arctic Ocean. The Biden administration began this process in 2023 by mapping 151,700 square nautical miles as an extension of the land mass of Alaska, as defined under UNCLOS. Although not a signatory to the treaty, Washington can still submit a claim to these waters to the associated UN commission. The United States, moreover, ought to ratify this treaty, which both China and Russia have signed, in order to shape future governance of seabed mining and to use its provisions to hold Beijing and Moscow accountable for violations of maritime law.

For the past two decades, Washington has written dozens of Arctic strategies while letting its Arctic capabilities atrophy and, more recently, alienating its Arctic allies. But this is the time for concerted action. Russia and China have already made their opening moves. The United States, following a line from Rudyard Kipling’s 1901 book, Kim, set against the backdrop of nineteenth-century Central Asia, must now “go far and far into the North, playing the Great Game.”

In This Review

America in the Arctic: Foreign Policy and Competition in the Melting North
By Mary Thompson-Jones
Tertulia
Bookshop
Amazon

Topics & Regions:

Foreign Affairs · by More by Heather A. Conley · June 24, 2025

19. An Industrial Policy With American Characteristics: To Compete Like China, America Should Build Like China

Excerpts:

Underestimating China would be a grave error, but underestimating the United States would be equally foolish. History has shown that when properly mobilized, the United States can retool with astonishing speed and ingenuity. Nearly a century ago, the country completed the Hoover Dam ahead of schedule and under budget. The United States’ dynamic innovation system—renowned research institutions, deep and open capital markets, and high concentrations of global talent—remains an enduring advantage. It is arguably easier for the United States to build like China than it is for China to innovate like the United States.

To convert these advantages into productive capacity, the United States should selectively emulate today’s preeminent manufacturing powerhouse and rediscover its own ability to build fast and build well. The U.S. government must make industrial investment attractive once again, not only to businesses but also to investors, workers, and communities.

Reindustrialization is not about nostalgia but about renewal. The United States can no longer rest on its reputation as the country that invents the future but must build the infrastructure and deploy the technologies to deliver that future. The United States does not need to become China—nor is that even possible. But China has grasped a crucial point: economic prosperity for future generations hinges on investing in a twenty-first-century industrial base. Now, it is time for the United States to do the same.

An Industrial Policy With American Characteristics

Foreign Affairs · by More by Damien Ma · July 1, 2025

To Compete Like China, America Should Build Like China

July 1, 2025

Employees at an electric vehicle maker factory in Hefei, Anhui Province, China, April 2025 Florence Lo / Reuters

DAMIEN MA is Founder of MacroPolo and an Adjunct Lecturer at the Kellogg School of Management. He also serves as Senior Adviser to Aurora Macro Strategies.

Lizzi C. Lee is Fellow on Chinese Economy at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis.

More by Lizzi C. Lee

Print Subscribe to unlock this feature or Sign in.

Save Sign in and save to read later

Competition between China and the United States has long been framed as a contest between two countries with opposite roles in the global economy: China as the world’s leading producer and the United States as the world’s leading consumer. Now, however, each country is attempting to become more like the other in a race to rebalance its economy. Can the United States substitute for lost production from China faster than China can substitute for lost consumption from the United States?

Uncertainty about the answer to this question has shaken Washington out of its complacency. In a recent Foreign Affairs essay, former U.S. officials Kurt Campbell and Rush Doshi warned against underestimating China and its industrial capacity. Diagnosing the United States’ main deficiency as a lack of scale, which they defined as “the ability to use size to generate efficiency and productivity,” Campbell and Doshi argued that Washington must gather a team of allies to address this problem and compete with Beijing.

Assembling an economic Team America might help solve the scale problem, but it will not be enough. Scale alone won’t yield the integrated supply chains the country will need to build the way China has built for the last three decades. To get there, the United States will also need to do the hard work of digging up raw materials, building infrastructure, and deploying technology inside its own borders.

If the United States wants to achieve results like China, it will have to build more like China by replicating certain aspects of how Beijing organizes and mobilizes its production economy, prioritizing speed and agglomeration. What Washington needs is an industrial policy with American characteristics.

POWERING THE FUTURE

An exemplar of China’s model is its decades-long electrification push. When China launched its quest to deploy a nationwide electric-powered high-speed rail network around 20 years ago, it also needed to build the accompanying electrical infrastructure to accommodate the rail network. Later, Beijing’s investment in electric vehicles further increased demand for electricity, prompting more updates to the grid and the construction of more infrastructure, such as charging stations. The creation of an electric vehicle industry catalyzed the emergence of an advanced electrification supply chain, including batteries, permanent magnets, and energy storage. At each stage of development, China invested not only in advanced technologies but also in its grid infrastructure—a decision that has proved fruitful.

China has achieved advanced electrification with astonishing speed in part because of government support and in part because of its competitive and vertically integrated firms. Consider the Chinese automaker BYD: the conglomerate’s operations span the entire value chain, from securing raw materials to manufacturing batteries to producing electric vehicles. Similarly, leading Chinese solar companies such as LONGi and Trina Solar control each step of the supply chain in the manufacture of solar panels and their components. Vertical integration allows companies to rapidly iterate and optimize their processes to accelerate research and development, minimize supply disruptions, and reduce costs. As a result, solar panels are up to 65 percent cheaper to make in China than in the United States or Europe. The cost of lithium iron phosphate batteries, preferred by electric vehicle makers for their balance between power and efficiency, fell by 30 percent in 2024 alone. Industries adopt cheaper technologies more quickly, which in turn boosts production volumes and lowers costs for consumers—accelerating technological advancements.

In many cases, state support has dramatically shortened production cycles for energy technologies. Chinese central government and state-owned enterprises coordinate innovation, regulation, and deployment under a unified strategy. To develop an important next-generation nuclear technology, the small modular reactor, such firms partnered with universities to cultivate talent, directly funded labs to guide research, and aligned design and compliance timelines to speed up the regulatory process. As a result, China moved from conceptualizing to commercializing such reactors in just a decade—an unthinkable timeline in the U.S. regulatory environment.

China’s model has also produced results in renewable energy. In 2024 alone, the country installed enough solar panels to produce approximately 280 gigawatts of energy, more than the entire U.S. solar capacity. China’s solar capacity now exceeds one terawatt—enough to supply global demand through 2032. Partly as a result, China has more capacity to generate electricity than the United States and the European Union combined.

China’s massive investment in electrification has positioned the country for success in a key front in its competition with Washington: artificial intelligence. Because AI data centers require uninterrupted baseload power, the outcome of the global AI race will depend in no small part on reliable access to large amounts of electricity. Although the United States has the most advanced chips to train frontier AI models, China is well ahead in deploying the electrification infrastructure necessary for the widespread adoption or diffusion of AI.

GROWTH ZONES

Another ingredient in China’s recipe for manufacturing success is regional industrial clustering, a form of agglomeration in which businesses colocate to tap into concentrated labor pools and supplier networks. In this environment, firms can expand operations more quickly, increasing in value as they grow. In the Pearl River Delta, for example, the Chinese government designated special economic zones, built massive port and logistics infrastructure, and offered tax incentives to attract suppliers and assemblers. Firms benefit from reduced transaction costs and faster commercialization timelines, leading high-value manufacturers to concentrate in the zones. Companies such as Apple and the Chinese drone maker DJI, for example, have placed a significant portion of their supply chains in the region.

Industry clustering has also fueled the growth of electrification technology hubs across China. For more than a decade, China has fostered a hub dedicated to producing permanent magnets—which are used in electric vehicle motors, wind turbines, and sophisticated machines such as the F-35 fighter jet’s electric drive systems—around Inner Mongolia’s Baotou, a resource-rich city the government designated as a high-tech zone. As part of that designation, the government gave Baotou-based China Northern Rare Earth High-Tech Company, the country’s largest rare-earth producer, crucial access to rare-earth reserves as well as tax breaks and other incentives. Baotou is now home to a fully integrated rare-earth supply chain and seven of China’s top ten magnet firms.

Similarly, in Anhui Province in eastern China, the city of Hefei has transformed from a poor backwater into a crucial hub for the electric vehicle industry. The local government coinvested with major electric vehicle companies and built a supplier park with housing and transit links. Software developers, advanced display vendors, and manufacturers have colocated in the city, creating a clustered automobile industry supply chain. Global automakers have taken notice. In 2024, Germany’s Volkswagen invested $2.7 billion in its Hefei production and innovation center, reinforcing the city’s emergence as a twenty-first-century Detroit.

ORCHESTRATING ACCELERATION

China’s model offers important lessons for U.S. policymakers embracing industrial policy for the first time in half a century. Although Silicon Valley once lived by the mantra “move fast and break things,” this principle has not transferred well to manufacturing. Moving fast in the world of atoms is much harder than in the world of bits. Unrealized projects from the Northeast Corridor’s Gateway rail tunnel to California’s high-speed rail no longer represent isolated failures but symptoms of a national malaise.

Policymakers should focus on developing industries in which the United States faces the most glaring scarcities. China boasts well over 150 lithium-ion battery mega-factories, more than 1,000 solar manufacturers, and hundreds of permanent magnet producers of various sizes. As a result, China now produces 75 percent of batteries, 80 percent of solar panels, and 90 percent of permanent magnets globally. In contrast, the United States is home to only a single major manufacturer—whose scale pales in comparison with China’s firms—in each of those sectors. These severe deficiencies cannot be remedied by allies but will require rapidly building a domestic production base.

Clustering can be an effective strategy for growing a producer base. Any effort to create clusters would require federal policymakers, who have historically left such choices to state governments and market forces, to step outside their comfort zones and designate regions with comparative advantages where supply chains can mature and technologies can commercialize. Over time, government-supported clusters would evolve into robust, self-sustaining industrial ecosystems. Policymakers can start with exploring opportunities to cluster around existing capacity in critical industries.

The Midwest, for example, could foster clustering around lithium-ion battery capacity. The critical minerals needed for batteries are abundant in the Midwest: the region holds substantial deposits of cobalt, copper, and even manganese, particularly around Lake Superior. The Chinese battery maker Gotion has already invested billions in Illinois and Michigan to build battery plants with the potential to create thousands of jobs. The United States could transform the Great Lakes region—once derided as a rust belt, similar to China’s city of Hefei before its rebirth—into a “Battery Belt” stretching from Duluth, Minnesota, to Detroit, Michigan.

The U.S. government must become an agent of acceleration.

To create an integrated twenty-first-century electric vehicle supply chain in the United States, it will be necessary to cluster mining, manufacturing, and material science in close proximity. But to make Midwest mining economically and politically feasible, policymakers will have to think big and be ready to spend. If the Trump administration follows through on its proposal to create a national sovereign wealth fund, Washington could use such a fund to support strategic industry hubs. The private sector, too, will need to invest in ramping up industrial capacity. Doing so might not produce immediate returns. But even venture capital firms, which have historically shown more interest in the high-tech sector than in extractive industries, now recognize the need to back mining. The firm Andreessen Horowitz, for example, has called for the United States to build a new kind of vertically integrated “national mining champion” to secure critical mineral resources.

With ample resources to mine and refine within its own borders, the United States has the capacity to become more self-reliant on critical metals, including rare earths. Although allies may be able to supplement U.S. supplies, such efforts require slow and unwieldy coordination with countries in which production is often expensive. Even as the United States continues to work with allies, it must prioritize building its own capacity in various segments of the supply chain.

Yet simply designating clusters will be insufficient. The U.S. government must go further to become an agent of acceleration. Streamlining compliance and cutting environmental review timelines are necessary first steps, but Congress must also give federal agencies such as the Departments of Energy and Transportation the authority to accelerate project timelines: for example, there is no reason that it should take more than a decade to build a nuclear power plant, as it currently does. Executive agencies should collaborate to establish “green lanes” to streamline permitting for strategic industrial projects in designated clusters. Governors and mayors in turn must work with federal counterparts to create task forces that can fast-track utility, land-use, and workforce arrangements.

REINDUSTRIALIZATION FOR RENEWAL

The United States cannot and should not organize its economy exactly like China’s. It would be prudent, however, for Washington to learn from the world’s manufacturing colossus. Borrowing best practices from competitors is not without precedent: at the height of Japan’s challenge to U.S. industry in the 1980s, the United States leaned into competition while also adopting elements of the Japanese approach. U.S. auto manufacturers adopted Toyota’s inventory management practices—for example, organizing supply and production “just in time” to meet demand, minimizing factory stockpiles—and American business schools embraced the concept.

Underestimating China would be a grave error, but underestimating the United States would be equally foolish. History has shown that when properly mobilized, the United States can retool with astonishing speed and ingenuity. Nearly a century ago, the country completed the Hoover Dam ahead of schedule and under budget. The United States’ dynamic innovation system—renowned research institutions, deep and open capital markets, and high concentrations of global talent—remains an enduring advantage. It is arguably easier for the United States to build like China than it is for China to innovate like the United States.

To convert these advantages into productive capacity, the United States should selectively emulate today’s preeminent manufacturing powerhouse and rediscover its own ability to build fast and build well. The U.S. government must make industrial investment attractive once again, not only to businesses but also to investors, workers, and communities.

Reindustrialization is not about nostalgia but about renewal. The United States can no longer rest on its reputation as the country that invents the future but must build the infrastructure and deploy the technologies to deliver that future. The United States does not need to become China—nor is that even possible. But China has grasped a crucial point: economic prosperity for future generations hinges on investing in a twenty-first-century industrial base. Now, it is time for the United States to do the same.

Foreign Affairs · by More by Damien Ma · July 1, 2025

20. There’s a Race to Power the Future. China Is Pulling Away.

Please go to the link to view the graphics in proper format.

There’s a Race to Power the Future. China Is Pulling Away.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/06/30/climate/china-clean-energy-power.html?unlocked_article_code=1.TE8.1Ph_.fizWLTfzi5Z1&smid=url-share

NY Times · June 29, 2025

Beijing is selling clean energy to the world, Washington is pushing oil and gas. Both are driven by national security.

China

Solar in Shanxi Province

Gilles Sabrié for The New York Times

U.S.

Oil in California

J. Emilio Flores for The New York Times

June 29, 2025

In China, more wind turbines and solar panels were installed last year than in the rest of the world combined. And China’s clean energy boom is going global. Chinese companies are building electric vehicle and battery factories in Brazil, Thailand, Morocco, Hungary and beyond.

At the same time, in the United States, President Trump is pressing Japan and South Korea to invest “trillions of dollars” in a project to ship natural gas to Asia. And General Motors just killed plans to make electric motors at a factory near Buffalo, N.Y., and instead will put $888 million into building V-8 gasoline engines there.

The race is on to define the future of energy. Even as the dangers of global warming hang ominously over the planet, two of the most powerful countries in the world, the United States and China, are pursuing energy strategies defined mainly by economic and national security concerns, as opposed to the climate crisis. Entire industries are at stake, along with the economic and geopolitical alliances that shape the modern world.

The Trump administration wants to keep the world hooked on fossil fuels like oil and gas, which have powered cars and factories, warmed homes and fueled empires for more than a century. The United States is the world’s largest producer of oil and the largest exporter of natural gas, offering the potential for what Mr. Trump has called an era of American “energy dominance” that eliminates dependence on foreign countries, particularly rival powers like China.

POWER ︎ MOVES Inside China's drive to dominate clean energy. First in a series.

China is racing in an altogether different direction. It’s banking on a world that runs on cheap electricity from the sun and wind, and that relies on China for affordable, high-tech solar panels and turbines. China, unlike the United States, doesn’t have much easily accessible oil or gas of its own, so it is eager to eliminate dependence on imported fossil fuels and instead power more of its economy with renewables.

The dangers for China of relying on politically unstable regions for energy were underscored recently when Israel attacked Iran, which sells practically all its oil exports to China.

While China still burns more coal than the rest of the world and emits more climate pollution than the United States and Europe combined, its pivot to cleaner alternatives is happening at breakneck speed. Not only does China already dominate global manufacturing of solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, E.V.s and many other clean energy industries, but with each passing month it is widening its technological lead.

Exports of clean energy technology

Lithium-ion batteries

Solar panels and modules

Electric cars

Source: UN Comtrade

Note: Data is from 2023, the most recent year available

Harry Stevens/The New York Times

China’s biggest automaker, its biggest battery maker and its biggest electronics company have each introduced systems that can recharge electric cars in just five minutes, all but erasing one of the most annoying hassles of E.V.s, the long charging times. China has nearly 700,000 clean energy patents, more than half of the world's total. Beijing’s rise as a clean power behemoth is altering economies and shifting alliances in emerging countries as far afield as Pakistan and Brazil.

The country is also taking steps that could make it hard for other countries, particularly the United States, to catch up. In April, Beijing restricted the export of powerful “rare earth” magnets, a business China dominates, unless they’re already inside fully assembled products like electric vehicles or wind turbines. While China recently started issuing some export licenses for the magnets, the moves signal that the world may face a choice: Buy China’s green energy technology, or do without.

China has also begun to dominate nuclear power, a highly technical field once indisputably led by the United States. China not only has 31 reactors under construction, nearly as many as the rest of the world combined, but has announced advances in next-generation nuclear technologies and also in fusion, the long-promised source of all-but-limitless clean energy that has bedeviled science for years.

“China is huge,” said Praveer Sinha, chief executive of Tata Power, an Indian conglomerate that makes solar panels in a high-tech factory near the southern tip of the country but relies almost entirely on Chinese-made silicon to make those panels. “Huge means huge. No one in the world can compete with that.”

While China is dominating clean energy industries, from patented technologies to essential raw materials, the Trump administration is using the formidable clout of the world’s biggest economy to keep American oil and gas flowing.

In a full reversal from the Biden administration’s effort to pivot the American economy away from fossil fuels, the Trump White House is opening up public lands and federal waters for new drilling, fast-tracking permits for pipelines and pressuring other countries to buy American fuels as a way of avoiding tariffs.

Washington is essentially pursuing a strong-arm energy strategy, both at home and abroad with allies and friends. It’s premised on the idea that the modern world is already designed around these fuels, and the United States has them in abundance, so exporting them benefits the American economy even if solar energy is cleaner and often cheaper.

Fossil fuel exports

Crude oil

Natural gas

Coal

Source: UN Comtrade

Note: Data is from 2023, the most recent year available

Harry Stevens/The New York Times

The competition between the United States and China to sell the world their wares has serious consequences for the health of the planet.

Burning fossil fuels for more than 200 years has helped create the modern world while delivering great prosperity to developed countries such as the United States, which ranks historically as the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases. But it has also led to what scientists now say is a growing crisis. The carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere by the burning of oil, gas and coal acts as a heat-trapping blanket, leading to rapid global warming.

Cheap Chinese-made solar, batteries and E.V.s have made the pivot to cleaner technologies possible for many large economies including Brazil, South Africa and even India, a regional rival to Beijing. That affordability is crucial for bringing down global emissions.

The scientific consensus is that warming, if unchecked, will continue to cause increasingly severe droughts and storms, potentially alter ocean currents and global weather patterns, disrupt food production, deepen a biodiversity crisis and inundate some of the world’s biggest cities as sea levels rise, among other risks.

The Trump administration has dismissed those concerns. The United States energy secretary, Chris Wright, a former natural gas executive, has described climate change as “a side effect of building the modern world.”

Asked about the diverging energy pathways of China and the United States, Ben Dietderich, a Department of Energy spokesman, said, “The United States is blessed with an abundant supply of energy resources and the Trump administration is committed to fully utilizing them to meet the growing energy needs of the American people.” Past efforts to encourage cleaner energy like solar or wind, he said, “harmed America’s energy security.”

Amanda Eversole, executive vice president of the American Petroleum Institute, which lobbies for fossil fuel companies, said her organization monitored Chinese advances and that she was downplaying their strategic threat. “We continue to keep a very close eye on what the Chinese are doing, because we believe it’s in our national security interests and our economic interest to continue to dominate from an American energy perspective,” she said.

The White House declined to comment on energy strategy and China’s advances.

Most of the world’s energy still comes from fossil fuels. Yet as countries try to address the perils of climate change, they’ve been steadily adopting cleaner alternatives. By 2035, solar and wind power are expected to become the two largest sources of electricity production, surpassing coal and natural gas, according to the International Energy Agency.

As the cost of renewables keeps falling, the U.S. strategy may leave China poised to capitalize on the world’s growing appetite for not only cleaner but cheaper power.

“The U.S. will champion a fossil fuel economy, and China will become the leader of the low-carbon economy,” said Li Shuo, who heads the China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute. “The question for the U.S. now is, where do you go from here?”

China

Electric car factory in Zhengzhou

Gilles Sabrie for The New York Times

U.S.

Crude oil storage in Oklahoma

Reuters

How America Lost Its Lead

The United States had every opportunity to lead the world in renewables. In fact, it once did.

Americans created the first practical silicon photovoltaic cells in the 1950s and the first rechargeable lithium-metal batteries in the 1970s. The world’s first wind farm was built in New Hampshire nearly 50 years ago. Jimmy Carter installed solar panels on the White House in 1979.

But with oil, gas and coal in abundant supply, and the fossil-fuel industry funding efforts to downplay climate concerns, America’s commitment to promoting clean energy investment has ebbed and flowed, sometimes dramatically.

President Jimmy Carter at an event on the White House roof in 1979 after the solar panels behind him were installed there..

Universal Images Group, via Getty Images

For example, in 2009, the Obama administration began offering loan guarantees to emerging energy technologies. Tesla got $456 million, a loan that proved crucial to its later success.

Then there was Solyndra.

A maker of solar cells, Solyndra received a federal guarantee for loans totaling $528 million, then went out of business, leaving taxpayers on the hook. More than a decade has passed, yet critics of American efforts to promote clean energy still cite Solyndra as evidence of the folly of renewables.

Chinese officials have been mystified by the Solyndra fixation.

“You are a little bit worried by Solyndra? Very small companies, why are you worried?” Li Junfeng, a key architect of China’s wind and solar policies, said in a 2017 interview. Beijing had a bigger appetite for taking risks, which meant sometimes failing, but also sometimes reaping bigger payoffs.

China’s goal of dominating clean energy technology wasn’t about climate change. It was born in a moment of strategic self-awareness two decades ago, when the country’s leaders looked to the future and understood that controlling energy production was vital to national security.

In 2003, Wen Jiabao became China’s premier, the country’s second-highest position. A rare-earths geologist, Mr. Wen saw energy policy as both a business opportunity and geopolitical necessity.

Wen Jiabao, a driving force behind China’s pivot to clean energy, at the National People’s Congress in 2003.

Mark Ralston/South China Morning Post, via Getty Images

China had become dependent on imported oil. It felt vulnerable to upheavals in the Middle East and to the control of shipping lanes by the United States and India, two sometimes hostile powers.

Air pollution in China was terrible, killing people and creating a global embarrassment with images of cities smothered in gray. And the economy still relied on relatively unskilled manufacturing. Mr. Wen saw in energy a chance to solve both problems by making China an energy innovator.

“Instead of making flip-flops, they’d make clean tech,” said Jennifer Turner, director of the China environment program at the Woodrow Wilson Center.

Mr. Wen’s government essentially wrote a blank check.

China provided hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies to wind, solar and electric car manufacturers while protecting its markets from foreign competitors. It established a global near-monopoly over many key raw materials, such as cobalt for batteries.

Low-cost electricity from heavily polluting coal plants allowed the country to run aluminum smelters and polysilicon factories more cheaply than anywhere else. Critics have also accused China of using forced labor in places like Xinjiang to drive down costs, though China denies this.

At the same time, China has invested in research and a skilled workforce. These moves offered Chinese clean energy companies a level of sustained support that was nonexistent in the United States.

“It’s hard to get China to commit to a long-term goal,” said Jian Pan, co-chairman of CATL, the world’s largest maker of batteries for electric vehicles and electric grids. “But when we commit, we really want to get it done, and all aspects of society — government, policy, private sector, engineering, everybody — work hard toward the same goal under a coordinated effort.”

China’s efforts paid off.

Little more than a decade ago, CATL was a start-up created to buy a Japanese electronics company’s nascent electric-car battery division. Today, from its headquarters, which are shaped like an enormous battery, it operates a global network of mines, chemical processors and factories. Its founder is one of the wealthiest people in the world.

Robots at a Zeekr electric vehicle factory in Ningbo, China.

Qilai Shen for The New York Times

Over that same short stretch of time, China came to dominate even clean energy industries the United States had once led. In 2008 the United States produced nearly half of the world’s polysilicon, a crucial material for solar panels. Today, China produces more than 90 percent. China’s auto industry is now widely seen as the most innovative in the world, besting the Japanese, the Germans and the Americans.

To slash manufacturing costs, China has automated its factories, installing more robots each year from 2021 through 2023 than the rest of the world combined, and seven times as many as the United States.

Eric Luo, vice-president of LONGi Green Energy Technology, a Chinese solar panel maker, said that a practice known as “cluster manufacturing” had proved beneficial. “There are places where, within a three- to four-hour drive, you can have everything,” he said. The components, the manufacturer, the skilled workforce, everything. “There’s nowhere else globally where you can have all that innovation clustered together.”

Clustering also imparts huge benefits in the car battery business. Robin Zeng, CATL’s founder, said in an interview last summer that it costs six times as much to build a battery factory in the United States as in China, and that was before the Trump administration set out to weaken the financial incentives to build such plants in the United States.

Beyond its domination of manufacturing and technology, China has also gone on an epic clean-energy building spree.

Last June, the Urumqi solar farm, the largest in the world, came online in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region in China. It is capable of generating more power than some small countries need to run their entire economies.

It’s hardly an anomaly. The other 10 largest solar facilities in the world are also in China, and even bigger ones are planned. The Chinese automaker BYD is currently building not one but two electric vehicle factories that will each produce twice as many cars as the largest car factory in the world, a Volkswagen plant in Germany.

The United States was slow to see the full picture. Only toward the end of the Obama administration and during the first Trump administration did many Washington policymakers realize they had surrendered so much of the clean energy race to China.

“The U.S. was asleep,” said Michael Carr, a former staff member at the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee who is now executive director of Solar Energy Manufacturers for America, a trade group. “You can invent the greatest tech in the world, but if you don’t know how to manufacture it, it won’t matter.”

Of course, the United States could reverse course. A future administration could aggressively swing once again to clean energy research and investment.

But it will have lost precious time. Investments made years ago by China are paying off now, and Beijing is continuing to pour money into developing its domestic energy industry and exporting those goods to the world.

China

A Chinese E.V. factory in Brazil

Victor Moriyama for The New York Times

U.S.

An export terminal for American gas in Mexico

Sandy Huffaker for The New York Times

Beijing’s ‘Soft Power’ Ambitions

Among China’s biggest green-energy customers is a petrostate, Saudi Arabia. On desert land renowned for its boundless oil reserves, Chinese companies are building one of the world’s largest battery-storage projects alongside solar farms.

Around the world, Beijing is using its clean energy clout to build or expand political and economic relationships.

Both the United States and China not only see energy independence as essential at home, but understand that supplying other countries with energy is a vital way to project power. And yet, their approaches couldn’t be more different.

Today, China’s dominance of so many clean energy industries is enabling it to expand its sphere of influence by selling and financing energy technology around the world. These relationships allow China to forge multidecade financial, cultural and even military ties at a moment of shifting geopolitical alliances.

The projects read like a world atlas. Beijing is working on deals to supply nuclear reactors to countries like Turkey that once did business mainly with the United States and Europe. In Pakistan, China is already building what will be the country’s largest nuclear plant.

Chinese firms are building wind turbines in Brazil and electric vehicles in Indonesia. In northern Kenya, Chinese developers have erected Africa’s biggest wind farm. And across the continent, in countries rich with minerals needed for clean energy technologies, such as Zambia, Chinese financing for all sorts of projects has left some governments deeply in debt to Chinese banks.

Since 2023, Chinese companies have announced $168 billion in foreign investments in clean energy manufacturing, generation and transmission, according to Climate Energy Finance, a research group.

China’s announced foreign investments in clean tech since 2023

Batteries

Electric vehicles

Renewables

Other

Source: Climate Energy Finance

Note: Circles sized by investment value. “Other” includes hydroelectric projects, grid transmission and distribution, and green hydrogen.

Harry Stevens/The New York Times

“They are dominating these markets,” said Dr. Turner of the Woodrow Wilson Center. “And market dominance can be a form of soft power.”

The Trump administration is taking a different road. By dismantling a vast network of foreign aid programs, it has abandoned America’s longstanding strategy for projecting soft power.

In its place it is taking a more transactional approach with other countries. In Saudi Arabia, for example, while the Chinese are building a battery project there, the United States recently agreed to a major arms sale, and an American company agreed to set up rare-earth mining, processing and magnet manufacturing. And it is moving aggressively to sell other countries more fossil fuels.

Mr. Trump, who last year accepted more than $75 million in campaign donations from oil and gas executives, promised to “drill, baby, drill” and deliver an era of “energy dominance.” In his first few months he has tried to clear the way for more exports and to nudge foreign governments to buy more American gas.

Ukraine, for example, is desperate to maintain military supplies from the United States and has signaled it would buy more American gas. It’s another example of the administration’s aggressive approach, even with friends.

America gets “geopolitical leverage from oil and gas,” said Varun Sivaram, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who helped write clean energy policy for the Biden administration. “The energy transition is actually very bad for the United States,” he said, “because we cede geopolitical and economic ground to a rival in China.”

China

Power lines in Anhui Province

Gilles Sabrié for The New York Times

U.S.

Oil pipelines in Alaska

Erin Schaff/The New York Times

What Will the World Buy?

The future is being defined one deal at a time. The United States is pressing South Korea and Japan to buy more Alaskan natural gas and invest in a huge, longshot pipeline project there. China has been demanding that the European Union allow electric cars from China into its large market, although that could cause widespread job losses in Europe’s own car industry.

There is unlikely to be an immediate winner in this global race. The world is only becoming more energy-hungry, stoking an appetite for both solar panels and oil, nuclear and natural gas.

That may work well both for Beijing and for Washington in the short term. The United States still has many customers for its enormous stores of oil, gas and coal. Roughly 80 percent of global energy needs are still met by fossil fuels.

But that proportion is widely expected to decline. The International Energy Agency forecasts that by midcentury, oil, gas and coal will fall below 60 percent of global energy needs.

And China is positioned to pick up the extra business.

“When the federal government of the United States decides to go out of the race, it doesn’t stop the race,” said Rafael Dubeux, a senior official in Brazil’s Finance Ministry. “Other countries keep moving.”

Solar panels in Shanxi near a former coal mine.

Gilles Sabrié for The New York Times

NY Times · June 29, 2025

21. America owes its Afghan partners more than this

America owes its Afghan partners more than this

Those who fought alongside U.S. soldiers face deportation or years of punishing fees.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/06/30/afghan-partners-deportation-fees/

June 30, 2025 at 6:30 a.m. EDTYesterday at 6:30 a.m. EDT

4 min

210

Afghan soldiers patrol outside their military base on the outskirts of Kabul in 2021. (Rahmat Gul/AP)

By Thomas Warrick and Douglas Lute

Douglas Lute is a retired U.S. Army lieutenant general and a former U.S. ambassador to NATO. Thomas Warrick is a former Department of Homeland Security deputy assistant secretary for counterterrorism policy and a senior fellow for the Future of DHS Project at the Atlantic Council.

The conversation moves fast. Keep up with the Prompt newsletter.

As the Senate takes up the House-initiated One Big Beautiful Bill Act, it can uphold America’s honor and national interest by protecting the Afghans who served alongside our military and civilians in the two decades following al-Qaeda’s attack on Sept. 11, 2001.

Thousands of these brave Afghans were relocated to the United States when Afghanistan fell in August 2021 to protect them from death, torture or imprisonment by the Taliban. Today, more than 9,600 Afghans in the U.S. face deportation due to termination of the temporary protected status that allows them to live and work here. Even Afghans who can legally stay in the U.S. until their asylum cases or Special Immigrant Visas are processed will be required to pay the government thousands of dollars a year in fees if the Senate accepts the bill as passed by the House.

The United States has always needed local partners in wartime. Deporting our Afghan partners back to the Taliban and subjecting those who stay to crippling fees and charges goes against America’s character and its national security interests. How we treat those who fought and worked alongside us reflects directly on who we are as a people. Many American veterans and civilians who served after 9/11 believe strongly in protecting these men and women not only as a matter of conscience, but also because doing so represents a clear-eyed, hard-power national security imperative.

Following Opinions on the news

Following

Many Afghans were paroled hastily into the United States after August 2021 because the U.S. government failed to properly resource the back-office work necessary to process Special Immigrant Visas and also failed to find these Afghans permanent homes here or elsewhere in the two decades since 2001. Bureaucracy and politics, not security concerns, are why thousands remain in limbo in temporary status.

On May 12, the Department of Homeland Security said protected status for Afghans could end because Afghanistan’s economy was “stabilizing” and its security had “improved.” The World Bank, however, reports that Afghanistan’s economy remains a basket case where “poverty and food insecurity remain pressing challenges, exacerbated by high unemployment and restrictions on women’s economic participation.”

Security in Afghanistan might appear improved because the Taliban has cemented its brutal hold over Afghan society. This grip includes imprisoning and torturing political opponents, killing those who fought against it, and coercing Afghan women to stay home while denying them basic rights. We would be naive to believe returnees whose families supported the United States and its allies would be safe under the Taliban. In August 2021, when the last U.S. planes left Kabul, the Taliban began revenge killings, imprisonment and persecution, despite pledging amnesty for former Afghan military personnel. Deportations to Afghanistan would deliver the Taliban’s past adversaries for retribution.

Notably, Iran is now forcing thousands of Afghan refugees to leave or face arrest, fines and deportation. Such an act is in the Iranian regime’s character, not America’s. The suicide in May of Mohammad Amir Tawasoli, a former Afghan pilot, when he received an order from Iranian authorities to leave vividly illustrates the grim reality of what lies in store for others under the Taliban.

For those Afghans not subject to deportation by the end of TPS, language in the House bill imposes a severe burden. Subtitle VII.A would force everyone seeking asylum, protected status, or work permits to pay $2,000 to $4,000 a year in fees until their claims are finally adjudicated — which could take years. Many of our Afghan partners work hard in low-paying jobs, the same honorable way many of our forebears did when they came to America. If our Afghan partners are permittedto stay, the overwhelming majority will contribute just as our families did.

Sending thousands of Afghan partners back to a murderous regime, or impoverishing them here, dishonors our reputation and strengthens our critics and adversaries. Moreover, such a breach of faith will undoubtedly undercut our ability to engage future partners as new challenges emerge around the world.

Before this bill reaches the president’s desk, the Senate can set this issue right by granting lawful status to Afghans who pass security vetting (as those here already have) and dropping the crippling fees on those who are qualified to become American citizens. To do otherwise would stain our nation’s character, dishonor our own veterans and compromise our future national security interests.

22. China’s new graphite bomb signals shift to silent siege of Taiwan

"Silent conquest." Sounds like a good name for a war plan.

And "blackout warfare." How will most people anywhere in modern societies survive without power?

Conclusion:

China’s graphite bomb is not just a battlefield tool; it is part of a broader strategy of incapacitation through blackouts, blockade, and narrative warfare. If China views blackout warfare as a prelude to political collapse, graphite bombs may not just be an option. They could be the opening act of a war designed to end without invasion at all.

China’s new graphite bomb signals shift to silent siege of Taiwan - Asia Times

Silent conquest strategy would disable Taiwan’s grid, fracture society and force capitulation without full-scale invasion

asiatimes.com · by Gabriel Honrada · July 1, 2025

China’s tease of a graphite bomb signals a shift toward non-kinetic warfare aimed at crippling Taiwan’s power grid and eroding resistance from within.

Recently the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported that China in a state broadcaster video had teased a potential new graphite bomb, which appears designed to disable enemy power infrastructure through non-kinetic means.

The animation, shared via a CCTV-affiliated channel, shows a land-launched missile deploying 90 submunitions. These eject carbon filaments mid-air, short-circuiting electrical grids across an area exceeding 10,000 square meters.

While not officially named, the weapon mirrors characteristics of graphite munitions historically used by the US in Iraq and Kosovo. With a stated range of 290 kilometers and a 490-kilogram warhead, the weapon is allegedly suitable for precision strikes on substations, although its operational status remains undisclosed.

CCTV attributed the concept to China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation but withheld technical specifications. Analysts highlighted its alignment with People’s Liberation Army (PLA) priorities, enabling the paralyzing of command, control and surveillance systems without confrontation.

A 2017 commentary by Modern Ships editor Chen Chundi classified graphite bombs as “game-changing,” citing their potential to bypass conventional defenses and integrate BeiDou-guided tail kits for enhanced accuracy. Online speculation quickly linked the system’s deployment to a potential contingency in Taiwan.

While China offered no confirmation of deployment or mass production, the broadcast marks a rare public reference to a capability aimed at undermining adversarial command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR) frameworks through electromagnetic disruption.

The implications of this weapon go beyond battlefield utility. Analyzing the tactical, operational, and strategic impact of China’s new graphite bomb in a Taiwan scenario necessitates contextualization within a broader framework.

Timothy Heath and other writers mention in a June 2023 RAND report that Taiwan’s durability against China’s reunification efforts hinges on three interconnected factors: its infrastructure, economy and public resilience.

Heath and others state that disruption to power production could exacerbate economic hardships and public suffering. They note that since Taiwan is heavily dependent on trade, it is vulnerable to disruption in the event of a blockade, and low public tolerance towards hardship could result in limited support for resistance.

Highlighting the vulnerability of Taiwan’s power grid, the Financial Times (FT) reported in March 2024 that Taiwan’s energy grid faces acute wartime vulnerabilities due to its centralization, outdated crisis protocols and heavy (82%) dependence on imported fossil fuels for electricity generation.

Citing a war game by the Taiwan Center for Security Studies, the FT states that Greater Taipei relies on just three transmission chokepoints, which link northern demand centers to power plants in the center and south, making the grid highly susceptible to kinetic, cyber or electromagnetic attacks.

According to a Chinese military journal cited by SCMP in May 2025, a simultaneous strike on three key substations would carry a 99.7% probability of triggering a total blackout in northern Taiwan. The report adds that if timed for peak disruption, such as during a typhoon or election, the collapse of other infrastructure systems could unfold 40% faster.

Such infrastructure fragility makes graphite bombs an ideal first-strike tool in a strategy designed to break Taiwan’s will to fight before a conventional war even starts, especially if paired with a blockade that controls the tempo of escalation.

The logic of this strategy goes beyond infrastructure; it aims to fracture morale and governance. In line with that, Franklin Kramer and others write in a July 2024 Atlantic Council report that a large-scale attack could trigger cascading failures across Taiwan’s emergency services, healthcare, water supply and transportation, plunging society into chaos.

Such disruptions, they argue, could shake public faith in the government’s response, potentially destabilizing its ability to maintain order. They point out that the PLA could exploit societal collapse to enable a decapitation strike aimed at Taiwan’s political and military leadership.

Kramer and others emphasize that blackouts would be not merely collateral damage but a deliberate tactic designed to paralyze governance, disrupt national defense coordination and accelerate Taiwan’s potential capitulation.

Targeting Taiwan’s critical power infrastructure with “soft weapons” such as graphite bombs shows China’s approach to urban warfare. In an October 2022 RAND report, Sale Lilly notes that the PLA has increasingly focused on the challenges of urban warfare in its preparations for a potential invasion of Taiwan. He cites the Chinese idiom “killing rats in a porcelain shop” to illustrate the PLA’s recognition of the fragility of urban environments like Taipei and the need for caution in such settings.

Lilly explains that the phrase, drawn from historical precedent, conveys the difficulty of conducting combat operations without causing widespread damage. While the report highlights the PLA’s efforts to prepare for operations in complex urban terrain, it also points out that Chinese military writings may underestimate the duration and intensity of such fighting.

A graphite bomb attack on Taiwan’s power grid would likely be done in concert with a blockade and intense information warfare, all to ensure that the self-governing island capitulates with little to no resistance.

Noting Taiwan’s economic vulnerability, Bonny Lin and other writers mention in an August 2024 report for the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) that in 2022, Taiwan’s imports and exports accounted for 61% and 69% of its GDP, respectively. They also note that 97% of Taiwan’s energy and 70% of its food are imported.

The same report warns that a Chinese blockade resulting in a 50% trade disruption could spark widespread blackouts and cripple key economic sectors, including the semiconductor industry. It adds that even without total isolation, incremental disruptions to fuel and food shipments alone could induce widespread panic, weaken morale, and prompt Taiwan to negotiate.

In concert with a blockade, Vincent So mentions in a May 2025 article for The Interpreter that China’s information warfare strategy toward Taiwan aims to erode political cohesion and societal confidence without triggering kinetic retaliation. So says that rather than persuading Taiwan that reunification is desirable, China aims to convince it that reunification is unavoidable.

He explains that this is pursued through gradualist grey-zone tactics, including cyberattacks, disinformation, economic coercion and narrative saturation, designed to normalize pressure and fragment decision-making. He adds that Taiwan’s fragmented media landscape creates fertile ground for amplification and manipulation, while elite economic dependencies enable quietist accommodation.

China’s graphite bomb is not just a battlefield tool; it is part of a broader strategy of incapacitation through blackouts, blockade, and narrative warfare. If China views blackout warfare as a prelude to political collapse, graphite bombs may not just be an option. They could be the opening act of a war designed to end without invasion at all.

asiatimes.com · by Gabriel Honrada · July 1, 2025

23. Give the A-10s to Taiwan and they can stop a Chinese sea invasion

Give the A-10s to Taiwan and they can stop a Chinese sea invasion - Asia Times

The US Air Force wants to trash the planes, send them to the boneyard to rot in the sun, but here’s a better idea

asiatimes.com · by Stephen Bryen · June 30, 2025

The US Air Force proposes to “divest” itself of 162 A-10 Warthog aircraft by 2026 and send them to the boneyard at Davis Monthan Airbase in Tucson, Arizona. There the A-10s would rot away in the sun. If the US Air Force does not want them anymore, they would be gone by the end of 2026 or sooner.

Sending them to the scrap heap would be a massive mistake. Better to send them to Taiwan where they could make a major contribution to defending the island.

Taiwan faces the risk of a massive invasion from China, something the Chinese army, navy and air force have been practicing for years. The US knows the risk of a Chinese invasion, and Washington has accelerated its efforts to pivot to the Pacific.

Planners know that any attack on Taiwan could end US influence in the region and deprive the US of vital assets, including specialized semiconductors needed for the Artificial Intelligence revolution. Companies such as Nvidia, which calls itself the world leader in artificial intelligence computing, relies on Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC) to manufacture their advanced chips.

A scene at TSMC.

No matter how you look at it, Taiwan will have to shoulder the burden of an initial attack by China. The first few days will be critical. Swarms of Chinese invasion craft, supported by missiles and drones, will push Taiwan’s modest defense resources to the breaking point.

Taiwan’s air force consists of modernized, but quite old, F-16s and home-grown short-legged F-CK-1 Ching Kuo fighter jets. A near-fourth generation jet, the F-CK-1 is underpowered and has limited range and endurance. Taiwan’s existing aircraft are unlikely to be able to stop an incoming invasion fleet, or support Taiwanese air defenses by knocking out swarms of drones.

F-CK-1A model.

The A-10, however, can do both jobs, and it is more sturdy and survivable than any Taiwan air force jet in the inventory. The A-10 also has superior firepower and is equipped with new weapons ideally suited to sinking an invasion fleet or blasting away at drones.

An A-10 peels away from a KC-135 tanker over Afghanistan, February 2011 with Pave Penny pod visible and featuring a false canopy painted in dark gray on the underside.

The A-10 is a creature of the 1970s. Originally built by the now defunct Fairchild-Republic company between 1972 to 1984 in Farmingdale, New York, the A-10 was conceived as a ground attack plane to knock out Soviet tanks and other armor on the battlefield. Its creators thought of the A-10 playing a big role in stopping a Soviet invasion of then-West Germany through the Fulda Gap, an ideal funnel where Soviet armor could be picked off.

That mission faded away just as the USSR dematerialized. But over the years, and especially in the last half decade, the remaining A-10s have been significantly modified and equipped to carry new weapons that were not yet dreamed about in the 1970s.

Equipped with new, sturdy wings, new electronics and fire control, laser designators, and “smart” rocket pods, the A-10’s upgrades complement the huge firepower of its GAU-8 Avenger 30mm hydraulically driven seven-barrel Gatling-style autocannon. The autocannon fires PGU-14/B armor-piercing incendiary rounds featuring a depleted uranium penetrator that can easily tear up any landing ship or other seagoing vessel.

The new star of the show is the A-10’s ability to fire the new/old 70mm Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System II. The APKWS is an old Hydra unguided rocket that is upgraded with a guidance kit that is operated with a laser designator to hit a target. APKWS recently were diverted to the Middle East from Ukraine because they proved valuable in shooting down Houthi drones. The APKWS II system is highly effective but cheap compared with using air-to-air missiles to knock out drones.

The cost of a Sidewinder AIM-9X missile is around $600,000; typically two are fired at a target to nail it. The all up cost of the APKWS including the unguided Hydra unguided rocket (which are about $3,000 each) is less than $25,000. Because it is a man-in-the-loop guidance package – unlike the Sidewinder, which uses an infrared seeker – the chance for a successful hit is better. Sidewinder has far better range, but most of the time small drones are not picked up by radar or E/O sensors until they are much nearer.

The range of the APKWS is around two miles. Most drones cannot fight back, so knocking them out of the sky is a turkey shoot.

If Taiwan had the full fleet of A-10s it could focus its air defenses against Chinese missiles and let the A-10s operate against drones.

If Taiwan had the full fleet of A-10s it could focus its air defenses against Chinese missiles and let the A-10s operate against drones.

Compared with modern jet fighters the cost of operating the A-10 is far lower, coming in at $6,000 to $9,000 per hour compared versus the F-16’s $30,000 per hour.

A-10 aircraft are made to be robust, including titanium armor to protect the cockpit and self-sealing fuel tanks if the plane is hit by ground fire.

Sign up for one of our free newsletters

The upgraded A-10s also has a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) which means it can see targets even in bad weather. This means that if the PLA Navy tries to launch an invasion in heavy overcast conditions, thinking it can preclude Taiwan’s use of airpower, the SAR upgrade takes that strategy off the table because SAR can see through clouds, mist and bad weather.

In the past Taiwan has always wanted the newest and the greatest, not old stuff that the US has often dumped on the island. That view is understandable, but the A-10 must be viewed as a formidable exception. The A-10 would hand to Taiwan a capability it sorely lacks, and one that China will fear. With F-16s challenging China’s air arm, the A-10 can sink an invasion fleet and do so quickly.

In the past the US has refused to export the A-10, a strange posture considering that the Air Force has a low opinion of the fighter. But the potential struggle over Taiwan is looming. Taiwanese air crews could quickly be trained here by the existing operators, and support and maintenance assets rapidly transferred to the island.

Any new equipment, if we had any, will take years to materialize and probably can’t duplicate the flexibility and utility of the A-10. So, if the Air Force does not want the A-10, the A-10 can still contribute to Taiwan’s defense and to security in the Pacific region.

Stephen Bryen is a special correspondent to Asia Times and former US deputy undersecretary of defense for policy. This article, which originally appeared on his Substack newsletter Weapons and Strategy, is republished with permission.

asiatimes.com · by Stephen Bryen · June 30, 2025

24. China is not alone in building a new cult of heroes and martyrs

Excerpts:

Washington’s efforts to control how history is presented seem to come straight out of Beijing’s playbook. In 2020, during his July 4 address, Trump claimed: “Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values and indoctrinate our children.”

These words eerily resemble those used previously by Chinese president Xi Jinping to justify his campaign against what he calls “historical nihilism” – attempts to “destroy” the Chinese nation by eradicating its history.

Memory laws have also been adopted across Europe. The European Parliament, for example, has codified its own historical interpretations of the causes of the Second World War in an attempt to counter what it labels Russian disinformation.

The causes and consequences of war have always been and will continue to be hotly debated among historians, and there is no need for the EU’s bureaucracy to unilaterally “resolve” these debates.

A problem with these bureaucratic efforts to codify historical interpretation is that they feed memory wars and fuel escalation. Even more damaging is that they emulate authoritarian practices of “dictating” history and restricting debate.

These examples show that distinctions between authoritarian and democratic regimes are not as pristine as is often claimed. Increasingly, global memory practices are evolving and possibly converging on a fluid spectrum between these two poles.

China’s new hero cult is an important case for shedding light on these dynamics.

China is not alone in building a new cult of heroes and martyrs - Asia Times

China has become an example of a growing body of cases in which state actors seek to shape and control historical memory

asiatimes.com · by Vincent K.L. Chang · July 1, 2025

A tour guide competition was held in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late May. This was not some fun contest. According to Chinese state media, it was a carefully conceived effort to “attract and cultivate a group of politically firm and professionally skilled storytellers of heroes and martyrs in the new era.”

It symbolizes the ambitious and far-reaching campaign launched by the Chinese state to revive the country’s pantheon of national heroes and martyrs. The aim is to unite and mobilize the nation in what the Chinese leadership sees as the crucial final phase in the quest to become a modern global superpower.

On the same day as the Wuhan competition, but 750 miles farther inland in Sichuan province, children from a kindergarten gathered with martyrs’ family members to engage in traditional crafts. The official newspaper of the Chinese Communist party, the People’s Daily, explained how this activity helped “pass on the torch of heroes” to young generations.

And two weeks earlier, in China’s eastern province of Shandong, representatives from the official state news agency, Xinhua, attended an immersive training session on hero spirit. By coming “face to face” with heroes of the past, the trainees were able to grasp the “spirit” that had guided the extraordinary deeds of these ordinary people.

This “facing up” to past heroes increasingly takes place through digital means. Thanks to developments in AI, and with the help of universities, museums and various government units, numerous Chinese people have now been “reunited” or become “acquainted” with family members martyred decades ago.

Activities such as these have become commonplace in recent years. They are encouraged, guided and overseen by an expanding architecture of laws and regulations. There are at least two reasons why the campaign to build a new “spirit” of heroism and sacrifice requires attention beyond China-watchers.

A boy places flowers on a monument at the Shanghai Longhua Martyrs Cemetery. Photo: Alex Plavevski / EPA

Chinese memory politics

The first reason is the increasingly global reach of the campaign. Just as China’s economic statecraft is affecting global trade and finance, so too are Chinese memory politics spreading across the globe and reshaping the transnational memory landscape.

Beijing has become an active sponsor of commemorations that are concerned more with shaping the future than looking into the past. Recent examples include Victory Day celebrations in Moscow and Minsk, and joint commemorations in the Serbian capital, Belgrade, of the Chinese “martyrs” of Nato’s bombing of the Chinese embassy there in 1999.

China is also fostering bilateral memory partnerships in south-east Asia and Africa. And it has even resorted to memory diplomacy in seeking improved relations with the US by invoking the spirit of Sino-US cooperation during the second world war.

China’s historical statecraft operates globally in the legal realm, too. Laws have come into effect that aim to promote patriotism and spread “core socialist values” among Chinese communities worldwide.

Chinese embassies and consulates are required to locate Chinese martyrs buried in their host jurisdictions and to erect and maintain memorials for them. They are also expected to organize commemorations involving local Chinese diasporic and expat communities.

Recent laws have been used to detain Chinese citizens living abroad. One example is Chinese artist Gao Zhen. Gao had been a permanent US resident for 13 years when he was detained in China in 2024 for his critical depictions of Mao Zedong a decade earlier.

Gao was charged with the crime of “slandering China’s heroes and martyrs” under a law that did not exist when he created and exhibited his artwork.

Other countries, including traditional democracies, have also sought to shape and control historical memory. Phot: Will Oliver / EPA

The second reason why China’s martyrs and heroes campaign matters globally is possibly more disturbing. China has become an example of a growing body of cases in which state actors seek to shape and control historical memory.

With several democracies beginning to show signs of democratic backsliding, the Chinese case is one of many that show that polar distinctions between “liberal” and “illiberal” systems are untenable.

Perhaps the most obvious example of a democracy in democratic recession is the US. Donald Trump, a constitutionally elected president, is relying on a series of executive orders to consolidate power and hamper critical debate.

One such directive, issued late in Trump’s first term, entails a proposal to build a so-called “national garden of American heroes.” The proposal was revived recently with an executive order on “restoring truth and sanity to American history.”

The order aims to remove what the administration deems divisive and anti-American ideologies from national museums and public monuments.

Washington’s efforts to control how history is presented seem to come straight out of Beijing’s playbook. In 2020, during his July 4 address, Trump claimed: “Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values and indoctrinate our children.”

These words eerily resemble those used previously by Chinese president Xi Jinping to justify his campaign against what he calls “historical nihilism” – attempts to “destroy” the Chinese nation by eradicating its history.

Memory laws have also been adopted across Europe. The European Parliament, for example, has codified its own historical interpretations of the causes of the Second World War in an attempt to counter what it labels Russian disinformation.

The causes and consequences of war have always been and will continue to be hotly debated among historians, and there is no need for the EU’s bureaucracy to unilaterally “resolve” these debates.

A problem with these bureaucratic efforts to codify historical interpretation is that they feed memory wars and fuel escalation. Even more damaging is that they emulate authoritarian practices of “dictating” history and restricting debate.

These examples show that distinctions between authoritarian and democratic regimes are not as pristine as is often claimed. Increasingly, global memory practices are evolving and possibly converging on a fluid spectrum between these two poles.

China’s new hero cult is an important case for shedding light on these dynamics.

Vincent K.L. Chang is an assistant professor of the history and international relations of modern China at Leiden University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

asiatimes.com · by Vincent K.L. Chang · July 1, 2025

25. I’m a Conservative Evangelical. I’m Done With the Army.

Opinion

Guest Essay

I’m a Conservative Evangelical. I’m Done With the Army.

June 30, 2025

I’m Not the Person You’d Expect to Oppose a Ban on Transgender Troops

NY Times · by Anthony Guerrero · June 30, 2025

Guest Essay

June 30, 2025, 5:02 a.m. ET

Credit...Mark Peterson/Redux for The New York Times

Listen to this article · 5:00 min Learn more

Major Guerrero is an active duty officer in the U.S. Army.

I enlisted in the United States Army in 2006 and have been an officer since 2013, serving in a variety of leadership positions. I am proud of my service and I care deeply about the Army. But this month I began the process of resigning in protest of President Trump’s executive order barring transgender people from the military.

The president issued the order in January and the Supreme Court last month allowed the administration to start enforcing it. The order may be legally sound, but it is neither moral nor ethical. I believe that it is my duty as an officer to dissent when faced with such an order.

I may not be the sort of person you would expect to oppose a ban on transgender troops. I am a conservative evangelical Christian and a Republican. Though I have deep compassion for people who feel they are in the wrong body, I do not think that transitioning — as opposed to learning to love and accept the body God gave you — is the right thing to do in that predicament. But my views are irrelevant to the issue of transgender troops.

Having served under several presidential administrations, I understand that new leadership often entails changes to military policy. Some changes, such as the repeal in 2011 of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” I have disagreed with. But I have never before concluded that I need to resign.

This situation is different. The ban on transgender troops is blatantly discriminatory. It has nothing to do with the policy’s stated justification of military readiness. The Department of Defense, when imposing the ban in February, claimed that the “medical, surgical and mental health constraints” on transgender people “are incompatible with the high mental and physical standards necessary for military service.”

This is untrue, and the department should know it. A study from 2016 conducted by the RAND Corporation for the Department of Defense found that military policies in other countries that permit transgender people to serve openly have “no significant effect on cohesion, operational effectiveness or readiness.” The American Psychological Association noted in 2018 that “substantial psychological research” demonstrates that gender dysphoria does not itself prevent people from working at a high level, “including in military service.” Indeed, since 2016, when the Pentagon announced that transgender Americans could serve openly, transgender troops have been deployed to combat zones, provided vital support to combat operations and filled critical roles in the armed forces.

The executive order barring transgender troops is a legal command that provides cover for bigotry. It delivers hate in the guise of a national security issue, dressed up in medicalized language.

The meek compliance of military leadership with the ban sends a chilling message to all service members — namely, that our ranks are open only to those who fit a specific ideological mold, regardless of their ability to serve. Equally concerning is the message that military compliance sends to policymakers. If officers accept this kind of unethical order, where does it end? I fear that the White House will ask members of the military to perform increasingly loathsome tasks.

I have been speaking with my superior officers about my concerns since January. While they are allowing me to take the steps needed to resign, they have ordered me not to publish anything on this topic, arguing that doing so would be damaging to good order and discipline. Disobeying an order from a superior officer is punishable under the Uniform Code of Military Justice by dismissal, loss of pay and confinement. But this issue is too important to me. I cannot remain quiet while the Army that I love ignores lessons that it should have learned long ago.

In 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order that, while never explicitly instructing the military to incarcerate Japanese Americans, was understood correctly by military leaders to have precisely that intention. The military acted on it, and more than 70,000 American citizens of Japanese descent spent the war in internment camps on U.S. soil.

Some Japanese Americans nonetheless managed to serve in World War II, demonstrating their resolve and courage on the battlefield, even as so many of their fellow Japanese Americans were being persecuted. Transgender troops today have demonstrated the same resolve and courage through their service.

I am just one officer in a large military organization. I do not expect my resignation to persuade the president or the secretary of defense to reconsider the policy. I do hope, however, that my actions will prompt some reflection among military leaders about what it would take for them to disobey a lawful but unethical order. Most important, when my children grow up and look back at this moment in history, I want them to see an example of someone who chose the harder right over the easier wrong.

Anthony Guerrero is an active duty officer in the U.S. Army currently serving as an instructor at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. This essay was written in his personal capacity and does not represent the official views of the U.S. Military Academy, the U.S. Army or the Department of Defense.

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

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Bluesky, WhatsApp and Threads.

NY Times · by Anthony Guerrero · June 30, 2025

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

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

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

Access NSS HERE

Company Name | Website

I Fought in Ukraine and Here’s Why FPV Drones Kind of Suck – War on the Rocks

For Iran’s Nuclear Program, a Month Is Longer Than It Sounds

Some of the most important considerations for Tehran on the road to a nuclear weapon are political, not technical, and every delay complicates its calculations

The winners and losers in a trillion-dollar US defence budget - Army Technology

Winners and losers: the trillion-dollar question

Sign up for our daily news round-up!

Give your business an edge with our leading industry insights.

Army Technology Excellence Awards - Have you nominated?

Trump Lifts Sanctions on Syria as It Holds Talks on Diplomatic Ties With Israel

Middle East adversaries Israel and Syria have held discussions for weeks about normalization, officials say

Trump’s Diplomatic Model

Trump Seeks to Remake the World

He wants as much executive power as possible and the U.S. the top global player.

The Great Budget Baseline Con

The tax cuts don’t add $3.3 trillion to deficits under current tax policy.

FM 3-05 Army Special Operations (June 2025)

About The Author

A Strait Comparison: Lessons from the Dardanelles for a Strait of Hormuz Closure - War on the Rocks

Taiwan’s President Takes on China, and His Opponents, in Speaking Tour

Editors’ Picks

SOUTHCOM’s TMPI: Towards Integrated Deterrence in the Americas by Building Maintenance Capacity

Integrated Deterrence: The Role of TMPI

Lessons from the Land of the Morning Calm: Enhancing SOUTHCOM Sustainment through US Forces Korea’s Interoperable Model

Navigating the Shifting Sands: SOUTHCOM’s Challenges in a Volatile Latin American Landscape

Operationalizing the TMPI: Regional Deployments Through the National Guard State Partnership Program

Forging a Stronger Western Hemisphere: Towards Integrated Deterrence Through Partner Nation Readiness

About The Author

Tolstoy’s Complaint: Mission Command in the Age of Artificial Intelligence - Modern War Institute

Exploring African Perspectives on Irregular Warfare

Why Study IW in Africa

How the Pentagon thinks about IW in 2025

U.S. and partners share a term but not a definition

Participants primarily saw IW as the domain of violent non-state actors

Colonial and post-colonial experience influences IW understanding

Conclusion

Related Posts

They Demanded Democracy. Years Later, They Are Still Paying the Price.

A Career Derailed

Editors’ Picks

Missed Opportunities

Enforced Silence

Ukraine Can Still Win

Western Half Measures Have Prolonged the War, but Decisive Action Now Could End It

THE DOSE MAKES THE POISON

TIPPING THE SCALE

EVERY TOOL IN THE TOOLKIT

THE CHINA FACTOR

TURN THE TIDE

The Arctic Great Game

Review Essay

And Why America Risks Losing It

In This Review

MEET THE CONTESTANTS

THE GAME BOARD

PLAYING TO WIN

In This Review

An Industrial Policy With American Characteristics

To Compete Like China, America Should Build Like China

POWERING THE FUTURE

GROWTH ZONES

ORCHESTRATING ACCELERATION

REINDUSTRIALIZATION FOR RENEWAL

There’s a Race to Power the Future. China Is Pulling Away.

Exports of clean energy technology

Fossil fuel exports

How America Lost Its Lead

Beijing’s ‘Soft Power’ Ambitions

China’s announced foreign investments in clean tech since 2023

What Will the World Buy?

America owes its Afghan partners more than this

China’s new graphite bomb signals shift to silent siege of Taiwan - Asia Times

Give the A-10s to Taiwan and they can stop a Chinese sea invasion - Asia Times

Sign up for one of our free newsletters

These words eerily resemble those used previously by Chinese president Xi Jinping to justify his campaign against what he calls “historical nihilism” – attempts to “destroy” the Chinese nation by eradicating its history.

China is not alone in building a new cult of heroes and martyrs - Asia Times

These words eerily resemble those used previously by Chinese president Xi Jinping to justify his campaign against what he calls “historical nihilism” – attempts to “destroy” the Chinese nation by eradicating its history.

I’m a Conservative Evangelical. I’m Done With the Army.

I’m Not the Person You’d Expect to Oppose a Ban on Transgender Troops