Quotes of the Day:

"We thought that the dispatch of American forces to any of these threatened areas would, in fact, be self-defeating. The idea of strategic bombing as a weapon against communist infiltration and subversion would have been strange to us. What seemed to us desirable was to stimulate and encourage the rise of indigenous political resistance to communist pressures in the threatened countries. We believed that unless the people and governments of those countries operating through their own political systems, could be induced to pick up the great burden of this load, success was not likely. For us to attempt to carry that burden would have effects — such as the paralysis of local initiative and responsibility, or the negative impact which a great foreign presence inevitably has on the natives of a country — which would tend to defeat the purpose of the undertaking." 

– George Kennan, 1967

“Such a palpable decline from one group to another, despite individual variations, was related to a decay in the culture of public life, especially the media, in which the forces acting upon all of these men had become more divisive, intolerant, and even hysterical at times. And as the media has become less serious, so have our leaders. The media, with its right-and left-wing extremes, each seeking to proclaim its virtue in its own way, has often encouraged our post–Cold War presidents to be moralistic rather than moral. Passion, often the enemy of analysis, is precisely what is encouraged by social media, which has had such an insidious effect on our politics. To some extent, nations, especially in democracies, get the leaders they deserve. America was a great and well-functioning mass democracy in the print-and-typewriter age. It is unclear whether it can continue as such in a digital-video age aggravated by social media, which promises to be further manipulated by artificial intelligence.”

– Robert D. Kaplan, Waste Land: A World in Permanent Crisis  

“In each succeeding war there is a tendency to proclaim as something new the principles under which it is conducted. Not only those who have never studied or experienced the realities of war, but also professional soldiers frequently fall into the error. But the principles of warfare as I learned them at West Point remain unchanged.”

– John J. Pershing, 'My Experiences in the World War'

1. Global hack on Microsoft product hits U.S., state agencies, researchers say

2. The Digital Escort Fraud --Another Major DOD Security Failure

3. The Taiwan scenarios 1: Subversion, quarantine, blockade, invasion

4. Russia Pounds Ukraine With Massive Overnight Strike – One Dead, Kyiv Choked by Smoke, Metro Station Hit

5. Ukraine Ups Its Arms Production, Asking Allies to Pay for It

6. Navy Special Operators Prepare For 'Davidson Window'

7. A sensible look at the State Department cuts

8. China Stood Up to Trump, and It’s Not Giving Europe an Inch, Either

9. What Will Become of the C.I.A.? (Book Review)

10. Special Operations News – Monday, July 21, 2025

11. From Ambiguity to Flexibility: Reframing U.S. Taiwan Policy

12. National security elites accept Trump is creating a new world order

13. As lawmakers head to summer recess, threat of an autumn shutdown looms

14. ‘If you can be seen, you can be killed’: Drone warfare forces broad rethink of training, Army leaders say

15. General nominated to lead Army’s new consolidated command for training and transformation

16. Steel in the Storm: Recent Wars as Guides for Armor Transformation

17. Making America Alone Again – History Offers Few Parallels for Washington’s Repudiation of Its Own Alliances

18. Is the US Weapons Stockpile Depleted By the War In Ukraine?

19. Exclusive | Donald Trump and Xi Jinping tipped to meet ahead of or during Apec summit in South Korea

20. ‘Eliminate toxic influences’: China’s military issues new political guidelines after wave of corruption cases

21. US reporter goes inside the House of Huawei (Book Review)

22.  Ed Feulner Built Institutions in Support of American Values by Mike Pence

23. ‘John Hancock’ Review: A Signature Founding Father

24. Hegseth abandoned by aides as Pentagon left in turmoil

1. Global hack on Microsoft product hits U.S., state agencies, researchers say

Could this have anything to do with the recent reports of what Microsoft was doing in China with DOD systems?

Excerpts:

On Friday, Microsoft said it would stop using China-based engineers to support Defense Department cloud-computing programs after a report by investigative outlet ProPublica revealed the practice, prompting Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to order a review of Pentagon cloud deals.

The nonprofit Center for Internet Security, which staffs an information-sharing group for state and local governments, notified about 100 organizations that they were vulnerable and potentially compromised, said Randy Rose, the organization’s vice president. Those warned included public schools and universities.

The process took six hours Saturday night — much longer than it otherwise would have, because the threat-intelligence and incident-response teams have been cut by 65 percent as CISA slashed funding, Rose said.

Despite CISA being led by an acting director because nominee Sean Plankey has not been confirmed, agency officials have been “working around-the-clock” on the issue, McCarthy said. “No one has been asleep at the wheel.’’

Global hack on Microsoft product hits U.S., state agencies, researchers say

Unknown attackers exploited a “significant vulnerability” in Microsoft’s SharePoint collaboration software, hitting targets around the world.

July 20, 2025 at 5:01 p.m. EDTYesterday at 5:01 p.m. EDT

5 min

Summary

280

Microsoft’s SharePoint platform is used by governments, organizations and companies to manage and share documents. (Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters)

By Ellen Nakashima, Yvonne Wingett Sanchez and Joseph Menn

Hackers exploited a major security flaw in widely used Microsoft server software to launch a global attack on government agencies and businesses in the past few days, breaching U.S. federal and state agencies, universities, energy companies and an Asian telecommunications company, according to state officials and private researchers.

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The U.S. government and partners in Canada and Australia are investigating the compromise of SharePoint servers, which provide a platform for sharing and managing documents. Tens of thousands of such servers are at risk, experts said, and Microsoft has issued no patch for the flaw, leaving victims around the world scrambling to respond.

The “zero-day” attack, so called because it targeted a previously unknown vulnerability, is only the latest cybersecurity embarrassment for Microsoft. Last year, the company was faulted by a panel of U.S. government and industry experts for lapses that enabled a 2023 targeted Chinese hack of U.S. government emails, including those of then-Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.

This most recent attack compromises only those servers housed within an organization — not those in the cloud, such as Microsoft 365, officials said. After first suggesting that users make modifications to or simply unplug SharePoint server programs from the internet, the company on Sunday evening released a patch for one version of the software. Two other versions remain vulnerable and Microsoft said it is continuing to work to develop a patch. The company declined to comment further.

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“Anybody who’s got a hosted SharePoint server has got a problem,” said Adam Meyers, senior vice president with CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm. “It’s a significant vulnerability.’’

The FBI said in a statement that it was aware of the matter. “We are working closely with our federal government and private sector partners,” it said.

“We are seeing attempts to exploit thousands of SharePoint servers globally before a patch is available,” said Pete Renals, a senior manager with Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42. “We have identified dozens of compromised organizations spanning both commercial and government sectors.’’

With access to these servers, which often connect to Outlook email, Teams and other core services, a breach can lead to theft of sensitive data as well as password harvesting, Netherlands-based research company Eye Security noted. What’s also alarming, researchers said, is that the hackers have gained access to keys that may allow them to regain entry even after a system is patched.

“So pushing out a patch on Monday or Tuesday doesn’t help anybody who’s been compromised in the past 72 hours,” said one researcher, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because a federal investigation is ongoing.

It was not immediately clear who is behind the hacking of global reach or what its ultimate goal is. One private research company found the hackers targeting servers in China as well as a state legislature in the eastern United States. Eye Security said it has tracked more than 50 breaches, including at an energy company in a large state and several European government agencies.

At least two U.S. federal agencies have seen their servers breached, according to researchers, who said victim confidentiality agreements prevent them from naming the targets.

One state official in the eastern U.S. said the attackers had “hijacked” a repository of documents provided to the public to help residents understand how their government works. The agency involved can no longer access the material, but it wasn’t clear whether it was deleted.

“We will need to make these documents available again in a different repository,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a developing situation.

Such “wiper” attacks are rare, and this one left officials alarmed in other states as word spread. Some security companies said they had not seen deletions in the SharePoint attacks, only the theft of cryptographic keys that would allow the hackers to reenter the servers.

In Arizona, cybersecurity officials were convening with state, local and tribal officials to assess potential vulnerabilities and share information.

“There is definitely a mad scramble across the nation right now,” said one person familiar with the state’s response.

The breaches occurred after Microsoft fixed a security flaw this month. The attackers realized they could use a similar vulnerability, according to the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

CISA spokesperson Marci McCarthy said the agency was alerted to the issue Friday by a cyber research firm and immediately contacted Microsoft.

Microsoft has been faulted in the past for issuing fixes that are too narrowly designed and leave similar avenues open to attack. The company, one of the largest tech vendors to governments, has had other major stumbles in the past two years, including breaches of its own corporate networks and executives’ emails. A programming flaw in its cloud services also allowed China-backed hackers to steal email from federal officials.

On Friday, Microsoft said it would stop using China-based engineers to support Defense Department cloud-computing programs after a report by investigative outlet ProPublica revealed the practice, prompting Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to order a review of Pentagon cloud deals.

The nonprofit Center for Internet Security, which staffs an information-sharing group for state and local governments, notified about 100 organizations that they were vulnerable and potentially compromised, said Randy Rose, the organization’s vice president. Those warned included public schools and universities.

The process took six hours Saturday night — much longer than it otherwise would have, because the threat-intelligence and incident-response teams have been cut by 65 percent as CISA slashed funding, Rose said.

Despite CISA being led by an acting director because nominee Sean Plankey has not been confirmed, agency officials have been “working around-the-clock” on the issue, McCarthy said. “No one has been asleep at the wheel.’’

Others that were breached included a government agency in Spain, a local agency in Albuquerque and a university in Brazil, security researchers said.

Patrick Marley, Sarah Ellison and Aaron Schaffer contributed to this report.

What readers are saying

The comments largely criticize the Trump administration for cutting cybersecurity funding, which many believe has weakened the U.S.'s ability to respond to cyber threats like the recent Microsoft SharePoint hack. Several comments highlight the reduction of CISA's... Show more

This summary is AI-generated. AI can make mistakes and this summary is not a replacement for reading the comments.

All comments 280

By Ellen Nakashima

Ellen Nakashima is an intelligence and national security reporter at The Washington Post. She's been a member of three Pulitzer prizewinning teams, for probing the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol, Russian interference in the 2016 election, and the hidden scope of government surveillance. Send her secure tips on Signal at Ellen.626 follow on X@nakashimae

By Yvonne Wingett Sanchez

Yvonne Wingett Sanchez writes about voting issues in Arizona for The Washington Post. She previously covered politics for the Arizona Republic.follow on X@yvonnewingett

By Joseph Menn

Joseph Menn joined The Post in 2022 after two decades covering technology for Reuters, the Financial Times and the Los Angeles Times. His books include "Cult of the Dead Cow: How the Original Hacking Supergroup Might Just Save the World" (2019) and "Fatal System Error: The Hunt for the New Crime Lords who are Bringing Down the Internet" (2010).

2. The Digital Escort Fraud --Another Major DOD Security Failure

Excerpts:

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth understands the Digital Escort issue is a big deal, but he cannot just accept Microsoft's decision to end China's participation in the Defense Department cloud. Hegseth needs to back a full scale inquiry and investigation. We need an assessment of how much damage was done and, potentially, what programs may have possibly been compromised. Such an investigation has to assess just how long the Digital Escort system has been in place. How long has China had access to the Defense Department’s computer heartland? Secretary Hegseth needs to find out what the other contractors are doing and if they are using foreign workers.

Finally there is a serious question about outsourcing American security to private contractors, especially those who are not core defense contractors and who depend on foreign revenues to support their bottom line. Companies that are mainly commercial are inherently a risk because they lack a security culture and always want to expand into markets that can prove difficult and risky. Putting trust in them raises more than eyebrows.

The Digital Escort Fraud --Another Major DOD Security Failure

https://weapons.substack.com/p/the-digital-escort-fraud-another?isFreemail=true&pos

substack.com · by Stephen Bryen

By Stephen Bryen

Microsoft was caught with its pants down in a brilliant exposé by Propublica that said that a major part of the Defense Department's Cloud Computer system was run by Chinese engineers and monitored by so-called Digital Escorts who supposedly looked out for any compromise of DOD information. Now, when Senator Tom Cotton called Defense Secretary Hegseth's attention to the mess, Microsoft withdrew the Chinese engineers and pretended everything was fixed.

Thanks for reading Weapons and Strategy! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Back in April, 2018 I participated at the Hudson Institute in a special panel review of the then-Pentagon plan to transition all its heritage computer databases to a single computer cloud. (I have posted the full video below,) The Pentagon plan was to shut down the old computer systems after the cloud was up and running. DOD claimed that the cloud would be easier to maintain than a number of separate computers, and more secure.

DOD's problem is that it has done a poor job on cyber security for years, and DOD contractors and sub-contractors, operating under weak departmental guidance, have been even worse.

There have been many scandals as the so-called "advanced persistent Cyber threat" has continued to get worse.

A persistent cyber threat is one that operates in the shadows for long periods of time and steals vast quantities of sensitive information. At the time of the DOD cloud proposal, government and contractor computers were under constant attack from hackers. Some of these hackers were teams of Chinese and Russian operators, others came from domestic and international hackers who could sell the acquired information to different bidders, including terrorists. Still others were from rogue countries who are still engaged deeply in hacking, including from North Korea and Iran.

Around the same time DOD determined that around 50 gigabytes or more F-35 stealth fighter jet data had disappeared. We know where it went: China, and we know the result, China was able to field a stealth fighter jet in record time.

Chengdu J-20

Of course it was not only the design information and other details that enabled China to be successful: China also conducts industrial espionage in depth, so its agents can penetrate US contractors and subcontractors and infiltrate their supplier networks.

The US classifies some sensitive information, but actually quite a lot less than one might think. This enables contractors to work without the burden of cleared workers. We have seen numerous cases of people caught working in critical companies smuggling components needed by China either for further exploitation or use.

In regard to cloud security in 2018 I said: "DoD has laid down its own standards, if you want to call them that, or guidelines, if you want to call them that, on what it expects the security of a system that it's going to procure should look like. And basically what they've done, for the most part, is two things. One, of course, is to make sure the employees that are working in the cloud environment that's being proposed are cleared American employees. That, by the way, creates a significant problem in being able to find enough cleared American employees to do the job. And I'm not sure they are so readily available. But that is definitely a challenge, let's say, that's out there. And the second is to take some of the procedures that are used to secure DoD's existing computers and servers and equipment and apply that to the cloud."

We understood, in 2018, that the cloud security problem was supposedly solved by using only security-cleared American employees. It seems that pledge was violated by the Defense Department that permitted foreign workers to support and service the DoD cloud so long as they were "supervised." The supervisors are called "digital escorts." The workers, so far at least in Microsoft’s case, turn out to be Chinese.

Chinese engineers work remotely in China, and it is probably a fair assumption that digital escorts allegedly monitor the work of the Chinese engineers, also remotely. In other words, the so-called Escorts are virtual, they don't sit next to the Chinese operators.

We do not know anything really about the qualifications of the Digital Escorts, or even if they understand the Cloud network they are supposedly protecting. They would have to understand the actual cloud software and the underlying processors, and they would need to follow guidelines on what might constitute any sort of breach of the protocols or data by the Chinese. Any clever operator in China could figure out how to insert malware into the cloud, but actually since they have full time access to it anyway there is no overpowering reason for them to do so. Instead they can just suck up all the data and run it through their supercomputers, or even their latest quantum computers. China leads the world in quantum computers, and if they really do work, they can smash encryption codes in seconds.

working on a quantum computer

DoD information in the cloud is supposed to be encrypted, or at least we are told that. But that may just be the outside of the system to keep out random hackers. The actual information may not actually be encrypted. That would mean a potential bonanza for China and a huge risk to US security.

The original DOD contract was supposed to be to a single contractor. However, complaints from industry and the public, and from security experts as in our panel discussion, pushed the department to support more than one cloud application (and also may have allowed for some backup if a cloud operation crashed, for whatever reason, although DoD has not told us about any backup). The question arises, if Microsoft was using Chinese engineers, were the other cloud providers doing the same thing, and did they have Digital Escorts, or something like them? Along with Microsoft, other participants in the DoD cloud contract, initially for $9 billion, were Amazon, Google and Oracle. All of them do business in China. Oracle has offices in Beijing. Amazon has offices in Beijing, Shanghai and Wuhan. Google has offices in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen. Of course we do not know if DoD granted them the same deal they allowed for Microsoft, but it is important to find out.

Or maybe DOD never agreed to Digital Escorts and Chinese engineers? We don’t really know, but it is unlikely Microsoft could have hired Chinese engineers without some Defense Department input. If DoD never approved, then it is another example of a security failure. If they did approve, of course, it is also a security failure. Either way it is a disaster.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth understands the Digital Escort issue is a big deal, but he cannot just accept Microsoft's decision to end China's participation in the Defense Department cloud. Hegseth needs to back a full scale inquiry and investigation. We need an assessment of how much damage was done and, potentially, what programs may have possibly been compromised. Such an investigation has to assess just how long the Digital Escort system has been in place. How long has China had access to the Defense Department’s computer heartland? Secretary Hegseth needs to find out what the other contractors are doing and if they are using foreign workers.

Finally there is a serious question about outsourcing American security to private contractors, especially those who are not core defense contractors and who depend on foreign revenues to support their bottom line. Companies that are mainly commercial are inherently a risk because they lack a security culture and always want to expand into markets that can prove difficult and risky. Putting trust in them raises more than eyebrows.

Thanks for reading Weapons and Strategy! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

substack.com · by Stephen Bryen

3. The Taiwan scenarios 1: Subversion, quarantine, blockade, invasion

And, as noted in the article, probably initiated following major cyber attacks that will continue throughout the operation.

The Taiwan scenarios 1: Subversion, quarantine, blockade, invasion | The Strategist

aspistrategist.org.au · by Nathan Attrill · July 21, 2025

ASPI has wargamed President Xi Jinping’s options for subjugating Taiwan. We tried four scenarios, the details of which will be presented in this and three more daily articles this week.

President Xi Jinping likely favours a path to unification in which Taiwan is gradually worn down by sustained and intensifying Chinese coercion. However, if he sought to accelerate this process, he would likely favour actions that remained below the threshold of war but still compelled Taiwan to cede aspects of its sovereignty. This could include the China Coast Guard enforcing a quarantine of Taiwan—asserting a right to block certain imports and exports— or covert acts of subversion intended to trigger a broader crisis and increase pressure on Taipei.

While more overt options, such as a full-scale invasion or naval blockade, remain possible, they carry significant risks that could threaten the Chinese Communist Party’s hold on power. As long as Xi views these risks as credible, actions that could rapidly escalate to war are unlikely to be his preferred course.

Xi has made his intentions regarding Taiwan clear. At the 20th Party Congress, he reiterated that, while peaceful unification was his preferred approach, China still reserved the right to use force if necessary. Although he has set no specific deadline, he warned in 2013 that the Taiwan issue ‘should not be passed down generation after generation.’ In his recent speeches, Xi continues to assert that unification is inevitable, signaling his determination to bring Taiwan under Beijing’s control sooner rather than later.

Here are outlines of the four scenarios we wargamed.

Subversion—The shadow war

During the Spanish Civil War, Nationalist forces advancing on cities such as Madrid relied on what was called a fifth column, a covert network of sympathisers within Republican-held territory who worked to undermine the government from within. Could a similar scenario unfold in Taiwan? According to a former Taiwanese military intelligence director, more than 5,000 people are operating in Taiwan on behalf of the Chinese government.

The activation of a fifth column to incite civil unrest across Taiwan could be highly effective. It could debilitate Taipei’s ability to govern and maintain stability, potentially by exploiting existing fault lines in Taiwanese politics. This could provide Beijing with a pretext to deploy what it might call stabilisation forces. A fifth column could plausibly target critical infrastructure, disrupting power grids, railways, air traffic control and water treatment facilities. Bomb threats, arson attacks and incitement of riots would further destabilise society. Combined with Beijing’s formidable cyber capabilities, China could sow chaos and division while publicly denying any involvement. This would give Beijing the opportunity to shape the narrative, spread propaganda and justify intervention as a response to what it could claim is an internal matter.

Quarantine—The lawfare veil

As China increasingly integrates its coast guard into military exercises around Taiwan, the prospect of a quarantine scenario has gained growing attention. In such a scenario, Beijing could manufacture a crisis to justify the imposition of a quarantine around the island. For example, it might claim that all inbound and outbound shipments require inspection due to national security concerns, such as alleged arms transfers or biological threats.

With more than 150 large ocean-going vessels, the China Coast Guard is well-equipped to enforce such a quarantine. Likely operating in coordination with the navy, which would stand off at a distance, the coast guard could try to divert commercial shipping and apply great pressure on Taiwan’s government. This would likely be accompanied by cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns designed to sow confusion, disrupt governance and further isolate Taiwan. If external support were insufficient or slow to materialise, the cumulative pressure could force Taipei to the negotiating table on Beijing’s terms.

Blockade—The siege

Since 2022, China’s military has frequently conducted large exercises around Taiwan. In the 2022 drills, it took four days for the armed forces to encircle the island in one such exercise. By 2023, they achieved this in just two days. In 2024, Chinese warships could complete a full maritime encirclement of Taiwan within 24 hours.

A blockade would differ from a quarantine by being absolute, forbidding movement of all ships to and from Taiwan, not just those carrying supposed contraband, and air movements, too.

China would likely aim to isolate Taiwan by deploying its navy to close off key ports, using its air force to disrupt air traffic, and positioning aircraft carriers, submarines and missile systems to deter foreign intervention. Undersea internet cables could be cut, cyberattacks launched to cripple communications and critical infrastructure, and on-island operatives, such as special forces or fifth-column actors, could carry out acts of sabotage to intensify pressure on Taipei. Beijing might manufacture a pretext to justify such actions.

But regardless of the reasoning, a blockade is generally regarded as an act of war and carries real risk of military intervention from the United States and others.

Invasion—A war of no winners

Xi has directed his armed forces to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027, according to the US Central Intelligence Agency. This does not necessarily mean China will launch an invasion that year but, rather, that the military should be capable of performing one then if ordered. Unlike Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, however, China cannot simply roll over a land border. Taiwan is separated from the mainland by the Taiwan Strait, which is 130 kilometres wide at its narrowest point.

China could conceal preparations for an invasion by framing it as a large-scale joint exercise. To date, these drills have involved missile units, marines and naval forces, strategic bombers and fighter jets, as well as cyber and logistic units. Should Xi give the order, the opening phase would be a massive missile barrage targeting Taiwan’s airbases, radar stations, naval ports and command centres. Simultaneously, China’s air force would launch waves of fighters, drones and bombers to suppress Taiwan’s air defences, while amphibious and airborne assault forces began their push from China’s eastern seaboard.

The early days of such a conflict would likely see intense, brutal combat as Taiwan’s military fights to repel the assault. The human and strategic costs would be enormous for both sides. If the US decided to intervene, the world could quickly find itself on the brink of a global conflict.

Beijing’s pros and cons

Tomorrow’s article will look at the warning signs that would precede Chinese action.

aspistrategist.org.au · by Nathan Attrill · July 21, 2025

4. Russia Pounds Ukraine With Massive Overnight Strike – One Dead, Kyiv Choked by Smoke, Metro Station Hit

Can Putin win by exhaustion? So far Ukraine has demonstrated amazing resilience.

Russia Pounds Ukraine With Massive Overnight Strike – One Dead, Kyiv Choked by Smoke, Metro Station Hit

The attacks come amid a sharp escalation in Russian aerial strikes. Over the past two months, Russia has been launching hundreds of drones at Ukraine almost daily, often in near-nightly waves.

https://www.kyivpost.com/post/56649

by Alisa Orlova | July 21, 2025, 8:25 am

This photo shows a damaged residential building following a Russian attack in Kyiv on July 21, 2025, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. (Photo by OLEKSII FILIPPOV / AFP)

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Russia launched a massive air assault across Ukraine overnight, striking the capital with drones and missiles in one of the most intense attacks in recent months.

Explosions thundered across Kyiv for hours, killing at least one person, damaging metro infrastructure, and setting fires in several districts. Poland scrambled fighter jets in response to the wave of Russian missiles.

The strike on Kyiv began just before midnight Sunday and continued into the early hours of Monday. A Kyiv Post reporter based in the capital’s Solomyanskyi district heard continuous blasts from Shahed drones targeting a nearby industrial zone from around 1:30 a.m. to 6 a.m.

Kyiv’s city authorities confirmed damage in at least five districts: Darnytskyi, Shevchenkivskyi, Dniprovskyi, Solomyanskyi and Obolonskyi. Mayor Vitali Klitschko said one person was killed and at least two others injured. A fire broke out in a supermarket, and multiple residential buildings suffered rooftop fires.

In Dniprovskyi, flames tore through kiosks, a kindergarten, and a non-residential building. In Shevchenkivskyi, fires erupted on two floors of an apartment block, and one person was rescued.

The entrance to the Lukianivska metro station was damaged. Emergency officials said smoke spread underground, briefly filling the sheltering area with acrid fumes. The red metro line was partially shut down, operating only between Akademmistechko and Vokzalna stations, city authorities said.

Other Topics of Interest

Ukraine’s Drone Blitz Halts Trains in Rostov, Grounds Flights in Moscow

Overnight drone attacks by Ukraine caused major delays on Russian railways in the Rostov region and forced temporary closures at Moscow airports. No Russian civilians were killed or injured.

In the Solomyanskyi and Obolonskyi districts, what officials described as “falling drone debris” caused fires at warehouse facilities and an unoccupied housing complex. However, according to Kyiv Post correspondents based in the area, drones repeatedly struck industrial facilities in those districts without being intercepted by air defenses. No injuries were reported in those areas.

According to Ukraine’s Air Force, Russia launched a total of 450 aerial weapons in the attack, including 426 Shahed drones and decoys, five Kh-47M2 Kinzhal hypersonic missiles, 14 Kh-101 cruise missiles, four Kalibr cruise missiles from the Black Sea, and one Iskander-K missile. The launches came from multiple directions, including Russian territory and the Black Sea.

Image: @hqmapukrEastern and western Ukraine were also hit. In Kharkiv, 12 drone strikes were recorded, including one near a residential building in the Kyivskyi district, according to Mayor Ihor Terekhov. Roads, tram lines, and electrical infrastructure were damaged. Fires also broke out at a civilian business.

Regional Governor Oleh Syniehubov said Russian forces used Geran-2 drones in the attack.

In the Ivano-Frankivsk region, missiles and drones hit villages outside the city. Mayor Ruslan Martsinkiv called it the largest assault on the region since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in 2022. Several people suffered minor injuries, and residential windows were blown out by shockwaves.

Poland’s Armed Forces said it had scrambled alert fighters and raised its air defense readiness in response to the Russian missile activity near its eastern border.

The attacks come amid a sharp escalation in Russian aerial strikes. Over the past two months, Russia has been launching hundreds of drones at Ukraine almost daily, often in near-nightly waves. On July 9, Ukraine reported a record assault, with 741 aerial targets launched in a single night.

Trump on June 14 said he had struck a deal with NATO to supply Kyiv with American air-defense systems and other weapons to Ukraine and threatened Russia with tariffs and sanctions, as he grows frustrated with Russian leader Vladimir Putin for rejecting a ceasefire and instead intensifying attacks.

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Alisa Orlova

Alisa is the Head of News and a correspondent at Kyiv Post, where she leads the newsroom’s coverage of breaking events and global developments. With over seven years of experience in TV journalism, Alisa has reported on international and Ukrainian politics, making complex stories easier to understand. Back in September 2022, Alisa joined the Kyiv Post team.

5. Ukraine Ups Its Arms Production, Asking Allies to Pay for It

Ukraine Ups Its Arms Production, Asking Allies to Pay for It

There is a growing drive to make the country more self-reliant in weapons manufacturing as it faces Russia’s superior firepower. That requires a lot of money from Western backers.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/21/world/europe/ukraine-weapons-industry.html

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An employee at Ukrainian Armor working on a vehicle in its factory this month in central Ukraine.Credit...Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

By Constant Méheut

Constant Méheut reported from a factory in central Ukraine that produces armored personnel carriers and mortar launchers.

July 21, 2025, 

5:00 a.m. ET

The clang of hammers and the whine of drills echo through a factory in central Ukraine, as workers assemble hulking armored personnel carriers that troops will soon ride into combat — a cacophony that captures this moment in the war with Russia.

Ukraine has been ramping up domestic arms production significantly, unable to rely as heavily as it once did on an increasingly uncertain supply of weapons from its allies. Last year, Ukrainian Armor, a private company that runs the armored vehicle factory, produced double the number of vehicles it did the year before, according to Vladislav Belbas, the chief executive.

“But that’s not enough,” Mr. Belbas said during a recent visit to the factory, which also includes an assembly line for mortars. “We need to produce more.”

His view reflects a growing sense of reckoning in Ukraine after three and a half years of war. President Trump’s inconsistent support for Ukraine has called into question the continued backing of the United States, Kyiv’s biggest arms supplier. The Trump administration recently paused some arms transfers but then reversed course, agreeing to sell weapons to European allies, which will then give them to Ukraine.

Image

Last year, Ukrainian Armor, the private company that runs the armored vehicle factory, doubled its output of the vehicles from the year before, according to Vladislav Belbas, the chief executive.Credit...Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

But even with greater certainty about the flow of Western weapons, it still does not match what Ukraine needs to fend off the Russian invasion.

That reality has produced a fundamental shift in Ukraine’s appeals to its Western allies. Rather than pleading primarily for arms, as it did early in the war, Ukraine is increasingly asking for the money to build its own weapons. The effort involves an array of both private and government-owned firms involved in making vehicles, engines, electronics, weapons and ammunition.

At the start of the war in 2022, Ukraine relied mostly on artillery, shells and machine guns donated by Western partners. Now, it produces about 40 percent of the weapons used at the front, according to President Volodymyr Zelensky, and it is looking to increase that amount sharply.

The most striking example of this growing self-reliance is the use of drones, now omnipresent on the battlefield and produced almost entirely in Ukraine.

“This does not bring peace of mind, but it does provide greater moral confidence that we will not be left empty-handed,” Mr. Zelensky said in February of Ukraine’s booming defense industry.

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Mortar launchers at a Ukrainian Armor fabrication facility. The company also has an assembly line for mortars.Credit...Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

To further increase production, Ukraine needs more money, which it sorely lacks. Olena Bilousova, a defense industry expert at the Kyiv School of Economics, said Ukraine had the industrial capacity to produce $35 billion per year’s worth of military equipment, but was producing only up to about $15 billion, and was unable to afford more.

“The funding issue is a bottleneck for our defense industry,” Ms. Bilousova said in an interview.

Last year, an agreement with a handful of allies provided more than $500 million for Ukrainian manufacturers to build weapons. That amount is set to double this year, but it will still fall far short of closing the gap between production capacity and funding, and Ukraine wants to secure financing from more countries.

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Adding to the pressure to produce more weapons is Russia’s own war machinery, which has expanded greatly during the war. Russia’s defense budget this year is at least $150 billion, about three times as large as Ukraine’s.

Video

A worker at Ukrainian Armor welding a vehicle frame.

Russia now produces three times as much ammunition in three months as all of NATO does in a year, Mark Rutte, the alliance’s secretary general, said in a recent interview.

The imbalance in arms production has given Russia an overwhelming firepower advantage on the battlefield, even in domains like drones that Ukraine once dominated. Ukrainian soldiers defending the embattled city of Kostiantynivka in the east say Russian attack drones monitor the battlefield day and night, targeting anything that moves.

Graffiti left on the bombed-out train station in Kostiantynivka tells the mood. Partly erased where the station wall was blown apart, the words, in English, can still be made out: “Not asking too much. We just need artillery shells and aviation. Rest we do ourselves.”

Unable to match enemy fire, Ukraine is forced to adapt.

Using feedback from soldiers on the ground, Ukrainian Armor has started producing vehicles designed specifically to evade drones on the battlefield, including a light buggy capable of racing up to 90 miles per hour to outrun drones. Its construction is bare-bones: an open-topped metal frame, suspension, two seats — and no speedometer.

“Why would you need one?” Mr. Belbas said with a smile, as he toured the factory. The New York Times agreed not to disclose the factory’s precise location because Russia routinely targets weapons-production sites in Ukraine.

Image

Graffiti on the bombed-out train station in Kostiantynivka, partly erased where the wall was blown apart, reads, in English: “Not asking too much. We just need artillery shells and aviation. Rest we do ourselves.”Credit...David Guttenfelder/The New York Times

Ukrainian Armor also makes a large, unmanned carrier that shows the growing robotization of the battlefield. It is, in effect, a drone mother ship, designed to transport smaller remote-controlled vehicles to the front. The smaller drones, in turn, deliver food and ammunition to combat positions, while the carrier serves as a relay station for signal transmission.

Mr. Belbas said robotic vehicles were designed to save the lives of Ukraine’s limited number of soldiers, sparing them from risky missions like resupplying troops at the front.

“Also, it’s about money,” he acknowledged. The Ukrainian government pays 15 million hryvnia, or about $360,000, in compensation to the family of each soldier who is killed. Producing a vehicle like this is “five times cheaper,” Mr. Belbas said.

These innovations make up only a small share of the company’s output. Most of its production remains focused on battlefield staples like mortars — weapons that are reliable in all weather conditions, unlike drones.

“The mortars are like the undying classic weapons,” Mr. Belbas said as he stepped into a warehouse lined with mortars mounted on two-wheeled chassis. Last year, the company produced about 1,000 mortars, roughly double the previous year’s output.

Early in the war, Ukrainian troops used Caesar self-propelled howitzers — big cannons mounted on heavy trucks — to pound Russian positions. Now, they have largely turned to a homegrown alternative, the Bohdana, producing nearly 20 units a month, Ukrainian officials say.

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Employees at Ukrainian Armor working on building mortar launchers.Credit...Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

Ms. Bilousova, the defense industry expert, said Ukraine now produces more artillery systems each month than all European countries combined. As for mortars, Mr. Belbas estimated that Ukraine has been fully self-reliant for both launchers and shells since last year. It is a turnaround from the start of the war, when nearly all mortar shells were imported.

Kyiv has also launched plans to develop more advanced weapons like air-defense systems — the type of munitions that were the subject of the Trump administration’s recent flip-flop. (Mr. Trump said he did not know who had paused the weapons delivery.)

These sophisticated systems are expensive to develop and build, and Kyiv cannot afford to do so on its own. Mr. Belbas said contracts with the Ukrainian defense ministry to produce more mortars, a far more basic weapon, went unfulfilled because of a lack of funding.

To broaden its options, Kyiv recently began a new initiative, inviting its allies to host production facilities within their borders for Ukrainian weapons makers. Under this model, Ukraine would provide the expertise, while Western partners would provide money and production sites out of reach of Russian strikes.

Denmark was the first country to officially endorse the plan, in early July, and Mr. Zelensky said that “more such agreements will follow.”

Facing the twin threats of Russian expansionism and a diminished U.S. commitment to NATO, Europe is also ramping up military spending and weapons production. Ukrainian officials hope that will mean leaning on Ukraine’s hard-won expertise to help rearm the continent.

“Ukraine needs investment. You need skills, you need technology,” Mr. Zelensky told Western allies this month in Rome. “And everything we are building now to protect Ukraine will also help protect you.”

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The Novator, an armored vehicle manufactured by Ukrainian Armor.Credit...Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

Daria Mitiuk and Olha Konovalova contributed reporting.

Constant Méheut reports on the war in Ukraine, including battlefield deve

6. Navy Special Operators Prepare For 'Davidson Window'

There is a lot more to the Chinese threat than an attack on Taiwan.

We must not neglect the full range of Chinese threats around the world.

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

Navy Special Operators Prepare For 'Davidson Window'

https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2025/7/15/navy-special-operators-prepare-for-davidson-window

7/15/2025

By Scott R. Gourley

Naval Special Warfare operators onboard a SEAL Delivery Vehicle Mark 11

Navy photo

TAMPA, Florida — Naval Special Warfare operators are working on a short timeline to ensure the rapid integration of equipment and technologies to optimize their capabilities.

Capt. Jared Wyrick, Special Operations Command’s program executive officer for maritime, measures his modernization timeline against the so-called “Davidson Window,” a timeframe named after a 2021 warning by then-Indo-Pacific Command Commander Adm. Philip Davidson, who indicated that the Chinese were on a potential military readiness path to invade Taiwan by 2027.

“Thanks to a lot of attention from our leadership across the entire DoD, when I look at our portfolio, I don’t think about it at the strategic — the DoD level — where you see a lot of the talk,” Wyrick said. “I look at it in [2027] at the operator level.”

“Now, I’m also aware that we’re not the best at predicting when a major confrontation will occur, but I still think we need to be tracking towards something as a pacesetter,” he said during a recent briefing to industry at the SOF Week conference in Tampa, Florida.

Using January 2027 as that pacesetter date, Wyrick said there are currently young sailors graduating from boot camp, initial technical training, specialized training, officer candidate school and the Special Warfare Combat Crewman school who will be using gear now under development during their first sea tour.

“You [industry] here in this room are what’s going to help us ensure that their kit is loaded to the max extent possible, to ensure they are poised to succeed when that window opens up,” he said.

“We have to work to ensure that every ounce they have is filled with only the best equipment, with no wasted space or something not fully committed to ensuring that their lethality and survivability is higher than anyone else in the arena,” he added.

Recent changes on the battlefield itself are influencing what this future kit might look like, he said.

“If you had asked us five years ago today, I’d be shocked if any of us could have predicted what a battlefield right now looks like. How many would have envisioned thousands of miles of fiber optic cables thrown across fields? You’ve got people in trenches, but you also have people on heads-up displays and laptops. You’ve got enemy warships and enemy airplanes being shot down by unmanned systems — and that just happened this weekend,” he said.

Program Executive Office Maritime typically does not receive equipment from its parent service, the Navy. Rather, the majority of platforms are “special operations peculiar,” meaning that they are not only specifically built to meet Naval Special Warfare requirements, but also that the program office’s responsibilities include full life cycle system management, from requirements definition to retirement, disposal and system replacement.

In terms of defining requirements, Wyrick said the process begins with special operators at the table to talk through their needs.

“And as we go, we want to keep pushing for faster ways to get to ‘yes,’ from contracting strategies to testing protocols to creative material and production solutions that help us continue to find new ways to tackle those old problems and new ways to eliminate tomorrow’s problems,” he said.

Program offices within PEO Maritime cover a tactical spectrum of surface systems, undersea systems, maritime technology, undersea special mission systems, combat diving and expeditionary mobility.

The surface systems portfolio, for example, includes the Combatant Craft Heavy, Combatant Craft Medium, Combatant Craft Assault, Special Operations Craft – Riverine, Next-Gen Combatant Craft Forward Looking Infrared and Maritime Precision Engagement.

The program office is currently sustaining the first three Combatant Craft Heavy platforms — manufactured by Vigor Works LLC — while production is ongoing of the fourth and fifth boats by Fincantieri Marinette Marine.

Meanwhile, 31 of the Combatant Craft Medium have been fielded. Initial market research and discussions with industry are ongoing for a new follow-on to those platforms.

Production and delivery of additional Special Operations Craft – Riverine vessels by U.S. Marine Inc. are also ongoing to maintain a fleet of 24. That follows two years of presidential drawdown requests for the platforms to support efforts in Ukraine.

Emphasis on placing the forward-looking infrared sensors on the combat crafts will shift toward requirements development for a next-generation FLIR system, Wyrick said.

Installation of the Maritime Precision Engagement standoff weapons starts on multiple surface platforms beginning this fiscal year, and there is some exploration of introducing new “non-kinetic capabilities” for future applications, he added.

The undersea systems portfolio includes the SEAL Delivery Vehicle, Dry Combat Submersible, Dry Deck Shelter, Uncrewed Undersea Vehicle and Uncrewed Surface Vehicle.

The SEAL Delivery Vehicle fleet transition is currently underway to replace the MK 8 MOD 1 SDVs with new MK 11s from Teledyne Brown Engineering. Enhancements will include Intel Core i7 processors, an enhanced ethernet backbone, improved software and user interface, increased cargo and payload capacity and increased range.

Ten MK 11s were delivered to Naval Special Warfare units between 2018 and 2024, with a bridging strategy that has kept four of the MK 8 MOD 1 boats in inventory for a total of 14 SEAL Delivery Vehicles, although the MK 8 MOD 1 boats are projected to leave service over the next 18 months, Wyrick said.

With initial operational capability in fiscal year 2023 and full operational capability in 2024, the Dry Combat Submersible provides special operators with a multi-mission platform with diverse mission sets, Wyrick said. The acquisition strategy has featured a full and open competition for a production representative system with options for up to two additional systems, he added.

The Dry Deck Shelter is a certified diving system that attaches to the decks of modified submarines, providing a large interface to allow deployment and retrieval of special operators and equipment while remaining submerged. Originally delivered to the fleet in the 1990s, the systems are heavily used, with command representatives acknowledging that five of the shelters are currently in use across the fleet.

Due to their heavy use — and conceptual plans to keep them operational through 2040 — significant emphasis is placed on overhaul and maintenance, with the current shelters’ maintenance contract awarded in 2018 to Oceaneering International Inc.’s marine services division. Current Naval Special Warfare plans are to release a request for proposals for a follow-on five-year maintenance contract later this summer, with contract award expected in fiscal year 2026, officials at the conference said.

In addition to maintaining current Dry Deck Shelters, planning began last year on a next-generation system, or DDSNext, a concept that will leverage the strengths of both legacy and modified shelters and be compatible with both current and future Virginia-class submarines. Potential capabilities of the next-generation shelter will include supporting wet manned submersible missions, unmanned platform missions and mass swimmer lockout missions.

As for robotic systems, the Small Class Uncrewed Undersea Vehicle enables access to high threat areas in the maritime domain, expands access and reach into littorals and reduces risk to naval personnel or manned platforms. The acquisition strategy calls for procurement of a service-common UUV program of record and then augmenting that system with special operations peculiar modifications.

Initial operational capability for the platform was achieved in 2021, with a transition underway from acquisition of the MK 18 MOD 1 — based on a REMUS 100 vehicle — to the MOD 3 Lionfish, which is based on a REMUS 300 vehicle.

During the underwater robotics program briefing in Tampa, Navy representatives pointed to an “imminent” release of a request for information for a “smaller UUV” focused on a form that could better integrate in a SEAL Delivery Vehicle and more easily be used in submarine lockout operations.

That RFI, which was subsequently published on May 19 by Naval Surface Warfare Center, Panama City Division, stated a requirement that it be “less than 45 inches in length” and “less than 200 pounds threshold” in weight — an objective weight of 120 pounds or less.

Another unmanned program, the Small Class Uncrewed Surface Vehicle, provides forces access in contested areas and the ability to deliver scalable effects for both short and long-endurance missions.

The acquisition strategy calls for procurement of commercial off-the-shelf small boats that are subsequently augmented with purpose-built modular plug-and-play sensors and payloads to meet special ops peculiar requirements. Upcoming program milestones include the planned fiscal year 2027 procurement of 13 short-endurance and 12 long-endurance USVs, according to information provided at the conference.

Other critical elements within the maritime portfolio range from combat diving to maritime technology.

According to Jim Knudson, program manager for combat diving within PEO Maritime, the overall strategy in this area is to take off-the-shelf items “and blend those with thresholds and objectives to turn that equipment into key pieces of SOF gear for the combat diver today.”

Knudson identified a range of representative requirement areas within the combat diving arena as maritime environmental protection, including enhanced thermal regulation; life support systems, including an excursion-capable oxygen underwater breathing apparatus; diver navigation; diver propulsion; and underwater communication. 

7. A sensible look at the State Department cuts

A sensible look at the State Department cuts

Washington Examiner · July 14, 2025

Nearly three months ago, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said big changes were coming. The hiring of thousands of new employees over the last decade and a half, Rubio said, not only made operations cumbersome and less efficient, but it also distracted from the department’s core goals.

“In its current form, the department is bloated, bureaucratic, and unable to perform its essential diplomatic mission in this new era of great power competition,” Rubio said in a statement on April 22. “Over the past 15 years, the department’s footprint has had unprecedented growth and costs have soared. But far from seeing a return on investment, taxpayers have seen less effective and efficient diplomacy. The sprawling bureaucracy created a system more beholden to radical political ideology than advancing America’s core national interests.”

The cuts are focused and not across the board. A significant number appears to be at the department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, known as DRL. “Our entire office is just … gone,” a senior official who took deferred retirement told NBC News late Friday. The administration had already cut most of DRL’s funding, so it was no surprise that the bureau’s staff was next.

Rubio has long believed that the State Department has become sidetracked from its main mission. In 2023, when he was in the Senate, he published, along with Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL), a brief report titled “Diversity Over Diplomacy: How Wokeness is Weakening the U.S. State Department.” Rubio noted that the Biden State Department seemed to be more concerned with promoting diversity than with dealing with the threat posed by China.

“Why did the Biden administration create internal Offices of Diversity and Inclusion at both the State Department and USAID?” Rubio asked. “Why did State and USAID request $83.3 million from Congress for their FY2024 budget, a full 26.9 percent increase from their 2023 budget request for diversity recruiting initiatives? Surely such resources would be better spent countering Beijing, yet to date there has been no institution-wide messaging in the State Department on China.”

Rubio and Mast listed some of the same questionable expenditures from the State Department that, two years later, were eliminated by the Department of Government Efficiency effort. There was the funding for drag theater in Ecuador; support for an “LGBT activist group supporting prostitution in Colombia”; the “film festival featuring incest and pedophilia in Portugal”; the memo from then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken that “could be construed to classify Sweden, Finland, and the United Kingdom as human rights abusers for their association with ‘conversion therapy’ treatment for gender dysphoria”; the grant to “promote social acceptance of LGBTQI+ persons” in Botswana; and more.

Projects like that “distracted State Department leaders from their duty to protect and promote America’s national security,” Rubio wrote. And not just leaders — in the State Department, workers got ahead by “behavior that advances DEIA core values,” Rubio added. “Until the State Department reprioritizes national security and recommits itself to its stated mission — to protect and promote U.S. security, prosperity, and democratic values — our diplomats will continue to lose focus, cohesion, and morale.”

Now, Rubio, with a mandate from President Donald Trump, is in a position to act on his beliefs.

A few of the laid-off workers left messages taped to walls and mirrors. “Here sat America’s experts on democracy, human rights (yes, which includes women’s, LGBTQ+, & minorities’ rights), elections security, freedom of expression, privacy, on countering corruption, violent extremism and disinformation, and more,” one message said. “You’ve just released them and hundreds of their colleagues into the wild … in the United States of America.”

Another message was more succinct: “Colleagues, if you remain: RESIST FASCISM. Remember the oath you vowed to uphold.”

It seems likely the creators of those flyers were not totally on board with Rubio’s new direction. Maybe it is best that they leave.

In any event, the cuts, which amount to about 1.6% of State Department staff, can hardly be described as “devastating.” Of course, they are upsetting for those who lost their jobs. But this kind of thing happens every day in the private sector, sometimes involving many more people, without the kind of hand-wringing that has characterized media coverage of the State Department.

Now, as he takes the heat in the coverage, it’s time for Rubio to keep going, to put into place the reforms he envisioned for the department. In politics, such opportunities do not last long.

Washington Examiner · July 14, 2025

8. China Stood Up to Trump, and It’s Not Giving Europe an Inch, Either

​Excerpts:

Mr. Gao was dismissive of European criticisms of China’s relationship with Russia, saying that the region should essentially mind its own business and focus on improving the lives of its people.

“From the Chinese perspective, they are not qualified as a geopolitical rival,” he said. “They think too much of themselves.”

China’s strategy toward Europe is essentially to divide and conquer. It saw the European Union as hawkish and sought to minimize the impact of its policies while courting Europe’s leading businesses, namely from Germany and France, Mr. Gao said.

Hopes that Beijing will ever help Europe pressure the Kremlin to end its war have “faded away,” said Philippe Le Corre, a senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis, who is no more optimistic that Brussels and Beijing will compromise on trade.

“There is no trust between the two sides,” he said.

China Stood Up to Trump, and It’s Not Giving Europe an Inch, Either

Beijing is betting that economic pressure and diplomatic defiance will force concessions, but its stance could put more strain on its ties with Europe at a crucial time.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/21/world/asia/china-europe-trade-war.html

A shipping terminal in the city of Chongqing, which connects China with countries in Europe and elsewhere.Credit...Gilles Sabrié for The New York Times

By David Pierson and Berry Wang

Reporting from Hong Kong

July 21, 2025, 12:01 a.m. ET

Having forced the Trump administration into a trade truce through economic pressure and strategic defiance, China now appears to be playing the same kind of hardball with Europe.

It has retaliated against trade curbs, accused Europe of protectionism, slowed exports of critical minerals and further embraced Russia, with China’s top leader himself pledging support for Moscow just days before a summit of European Union leaders that China is scheduled to host this week.

The moves are part of a tough posture that Beijing is taking in its trade and geopolitical disputes with Brussels. China wants Europe to lift heavy tariffs that it has imposed on Chinese electric vehicles and refrain from further restrictions on trade. E.U. leaders see Beijing as effectively supporting Russia in its war with Ukraine, and are also concerned that China is dumping artificially cheap products that could undermine local industries.

Beijing has learned that it has leverage it can use against outside pressure. It stood up to the Trump administration’s punishing trade war by demonstrating how dependent global industry was on China for its supply of critical minerals. And Beijing likely assesses that it is in a stronger position because Western unity is fracturing, analysts say, with President Trump’s “America First” foreign policy weakening the historical bonds between Europe and the United States.

“Beijing perceives that the global order is in flux,” said Simona Grano, a China expert at the University of Zurich. “From its perspective, the United States is overstretched and preoccupied with multiple conflicts around the world and domestic polarization.”

“And with signs of division or fatigue within the trans-Atlantic alliance, the Chinese leadership sees more room to assert its interests, not least in trade, tech and security,” Ms. Grano said.

That calculation has been evident in China’s approach to the summit talks on Thursday, which will include its top leader, Xi Jinping, and Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, as well as other senior European leaders. The two sides will be commemorating 50 years of diplomatic ties — the type of anniversary that ordinarily would be a chance for Beijing to showcase its partnerships.

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China's top leader, Xi Jinping, center, is scheduled to host European leaders in Beijing on Thursday. Credit...Maxim Shemetov/Reuters

Yet each detail of the meeting appears to underscore China’s view of the power dynamic. The summit is being held in Beijing even though it was Brussels’s turn to host the rotating event. The meeting will only last one day, according to the European Union, despite having been billed earlier as a two-day affair. Expectations for any concrete results from the summit are low.

The 27-nation European bloc is caught between wanting to cut a trade deal with the United States, which is putting pressure on the region to commit to taking a harder line on China, and the need to maintain stable ties with China.

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But Brussels has grown more confrontational with Beijing in recent years about a massive trade imbalance that amounted to over $350 billion last year, as well as Beijing’s alignment with Russia.

In a speech this month in the European Parliament, Ms. von der Leyen accused China of “flooding global markets with cheap, subsidized goods, to wipe out competitors,” and of discriminating against European companies doing business in China. She also warned that China’s support for Moscow in its war with Ukraine was creating instability in Europe.

She said she planned to raise these concerns with Chinese officials at the meeting in Beijing. China is unlikely to be accommodating of such criticisms at the summit, if its recent muscle flexing is any indication.

Mao Ning, a spokeswoman for China’s foreign ministry, fired back at Ms. von der Leyen, saying it was the European Union’s “mind-set” that needed “rebalancing,” not China’s trade relationship with Europe.

Earlier this year, China slowed exports of rare earth minerals to Europe, sounding alarms at high-tech firms across Europe and triggering a temporary shutdown of production lines at European auto parts manufacturers. And this month, China hit back at European Union curbs on government purchases of Chinese medical devices by imposing similar government procurement restrictions on European medical equipment.

Image

Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, accused China this month of “flooding global markets with cheap, subsidized goods, to wipe out competitors.”Credit...Jean-Christophe Verhaegen/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Despite its combative stance, Beijing cannot afford to push Europe too far. China needs European markets to absorb the glut of electric vehicles, batteries and solar panels its factories are making. Domestically, huge price wars have shrunk profits, prompting even Mr. Xi and other leaders to warn companies against engaging in “disorderly and low-price competition.” And Europe’s importance has only grown as the Trump administration tries to close off other markets to China.

“Europe remains an indispensable economic partner for China. But if Beijing overplays its hand, it could find itself more isolated,” Ms. Grano said.

Still, China has remained defiant when it comes to its close relationship with Russia — which Beijing considers an invaluable partner in counterbalancing the West. Europe has long complained that Beijing’s purchases of Russian oil and its supplying of dual-use technologies has enabled the Kremlin to prolong its war in Ukraine.

China claims neutrality over the conflict, a position that has been met with deep skepticism in the West, in part because of the closeness of China and Russia. Mr. Xi called for Beijing and Moscow to “deepen” their ties and “safeguard” their “security interests” when he met Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, in Beijing last week.

And earlier this month, China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, privately told European Union officials in Brussels that it was not in Beijing’s interests for the war to end because it might shift U.S. attention toward Asia, according to a European official briefed on the talks, who spoke to The New York Times on condition of anonymity to share details of remarks made in a closed-door meeting. Mr. Wang’s remarks were first reported by the South China Morning Post.

China has not commented on what Mr. Wang reportedly said.

But Victor Gao, a former Chinese diplomat and vice president of the Center for China and Globalization, a Beijing-based think tank, argued that the assertion attributed to Mr. Wang did not make sense because China believes the United States is able to project its influence in both Asia and over the fate of Ukraine at the same time.

Image

Firefighters on the scene of a Russian drone strike in Odesa, Ukraine, this month. European leaders say China has been helping Russia prolong its assault on Ukraine.Credit...David Guttenfelder/The New York Times

Mr. Gao was dismissive of European criticisms of China’s relationship with Russia, saying that the region should essentially mind its own business and focus on improving the lives of its people.

“From the Chinese perspective, they are not qualified as a geopolitical rival,” he said. “They think too much of themselves.”

China’s strategy toward Europe is essentially to divide and conquer. It saw the European Union as hawkish and sought to minimize the impact of its policies while courting Europe’s leading businesses, namely from Germany and France, Mr. Gao said.

Hopes that Beijing will ever help Europe pressure the Kremlin to end its war have “faded away,” said Philippe Le Corre, a senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis, who is no more optimistic that Brussels and Beijing will compromise on trade.

“There is no trust between the two sides,” he said.

Jeanna Smialek contributed reporting from Brussels, and Zunaira Saieed from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

David Pierson covers Chinese foreign policy and China’s economic and cultural engagement with the world. He has been a journalist for more than two decades.

9. What Will Become of the C.I.A.? (Book Review)

​I do not think we will ever be at risk of losing adversaries.

Conclusion:

There was a time when the C.I.A.’s existential fear was of losing its adversary. In Al Qaeda, it found a new one; in Iraq, it created others. In Trump, it faces an adversary of a different kind. Weiner concludes his book by expressing his faith in the agency’s rank and file, but with a clear sense of foreboding. If a genuine emergency were to take place, and Trump tried to use the occasion to cancel elections or declare martial law, who would be able to stop him? What if he tried to make the C.I.A. great again? “Who would disobey him,” Weiner asks, “if he ordered the clandestine service to rebuild the secret prisons, overthrow a sovereign nation, or assassinate his political enemies?” Historically, Weiner writes, the C.I.A. has not directly defied orders. But individuals have blown the whistle, resigned in protest, and spoken to journalists. There may not be homes for old wizards of Armageddon, but surely there is space for them on MSNBC. 

What Will Become of the C.I.A.?

The New Yorker · by Keith Gessen · July 16, 2025

Books

The covert agency has long believed in the power of knowing one’s enemy. But these days the threats are coming from above.

July 16, 2025

From assassination plots to torture programs, the agency’s darkest operations have always been at the President’s behest.Illustration by Ben Hickey

In December, 1988, as the Soviet Union was beginning to come apart, Senator Bill Bradley, a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, convened a closed-door hearing with several of the C.I.A.’s top Soviet experts. These were analysts, not operatives. They did not run spies or weapons, or shoot poisoned darts at people; mostly, they sat at their desks at Langley, reading Pravda or studying photographs of Soviet military parades. The hearing found them in a melancholy mood, pondering life without the U.S.S.R. “The Soviet Union is so fundamental to our outlook on the world, to our concept of what is right and wrong in politics,” Douglas J. MacEachin, who ran the C.I.A.’s office of Soviet analysis, said, “that major change in the U.S.S.R. is as significant as some major change in the sociological fabric of the United States itself.” And so, MacEachin explained, a C.I.A. analyst struggled to see things clearly; not only his world view but his livelihood was at stake. If the Soviet Union disappeared, what would become of those who made their careers analyzing it? “There are not many homes for old wizards of Armageddon,” MacEachin said.

Soon enough, the Soviet Union collapsed with a whimper, and the United States stood alone. Perceiving no enemies on the near horizon, the nation stopped looking for them so fervently. Budgets were cut, retirements suggested. Agents in the field were brought in from the cold. Bill Clinton, the first post-Cold War President, was elected to fix the economy. So infrequent were Clinton’s meetings with his first C.I.A. director, James Woolsey, that when a small plane crashed onto the White House lawn, in the fall of 1994, people joked that it must be Woolsey, trying to get an audience with the President.

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History was over. Humanity had resolved most major questions. The great rivalries of the age were between Biggie and Tupac, “Friends” and “Seinfeld.” When, in the late nineteen-nineties, Al Qaeda began mounting ever more sophisticated terror attacks—bombing two American embassies in East Africa, in 1998, and then blowing a giant hole in the hull of a Navy ship, the U.S.S. Cole, in 2000—it took some time to adjust. George W. Bush, in the first six and a half months of his Presidency, received thirty-six C.I.A. briefings on Al Qaeda. This was a lot of briefings—perhaps too many. If Al Qaeda was always about to launch an attack on American soil, would it ever actually attack? Then, on a cloudless morning in September, hijackers seized four planes on the Eastern Seaboard and flew two of them into the World Trade Center. History was back, and so was the C.I.A.

The journalist Tim Weiner begins his new book, “The Mission: The CIA in the 21st Century” (Mariner), amid the steady but fruitless drumbeat of intelligence about Al Qaeda, and then, following the attacks, the overwhelming response. Two days after the Twin Towers fell, the C.I.A. counterterrorism chief, Cofer Black—a large, charismatic former covert operative known for his imposing presence and already several years into the hunt for Osama bin Laden—gave a thrilling presentation to Bush and his national-security team. He promised to defeat Al Qaeda within weeks. “Bin Laden, dead,” he said. “Zawahiri, dead.” He added, “When we’re through with them, they’ll have flies walking across their eyeballs.”

Bush ate it up. Speaking to reporters at the Pentagon a few days later, he leaned in to his Texas drawl and said that bin Laden was wanted “dead or alive.” The C.I.A. analyst Michael Morell, who served as the President’s daily briefer and would later become the acting director of the agency, was less enthusiastic. “He cannot deliver on that promise,” Morell recalled thinking about Black. “We don’t have that kind of intelligence. We don’t have the capability to do that.” It was the ancient yin and yang of the C.I.A. Operatives were adventuresome; analysts were cautious. Presidents, unsurprisingly, preferred the adventuresome. And so the C.I.A. went to war in Afghanistan.

Weiner is a longtime national-security correspondent with a specialty in intelligence. His first book on the subject was about Aldrich Ames, the Soviet mole inside the C.I.A., who, before finally being ferreted out by the F.B.I., in 1994, handed over the identities of dozens of agency assets. When the K.G.B. learned from him the names of Soviet citizens spying for the U.S., it shot them. Weiner visited him in jail shortly after his arrest, and Ames maintained that he had done what he did not for money but for peace.

Weiner’s best-known book, “Legacy of Ashes” (2007), is a history of the C.I.A.’s first sixty years—a chronicle of analytical failures and harebrained operations that made the agency seem less diabolical than daffy. He found not only a divide between the Directorate of Analysis and the clandestine Directorate of Operations, but a further divide within the clandestine service itself. Was the mission to use tradecraft to gather intelligence, or to use money, propaganda, and violence to shape events? Was the point to know the world or to change it? Increasingly, as the decades passed, the answer tilted toward the latter. In the name of fighting communism, the C.I.A. put its thumb on the scale of the 1948 elections in Italy, overthrew elected leaders in Iran and Guatemala, and generally ran roughshod through the Global South. The 1953 coup in Iran—which toppled Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh and handed ruling power to what had previously been a constitutional monarchy—was, in Weiner’s account, a Pyrrhic victory: it gave the agency and its masters the dangerous impression that this was something they could pull off at will.

Covert action became a regular Presidential recourse. One could see the appeal. It was far less noisy than sending B-2 bombers or your Secretary of State. If it went well, great; if it failed, you could often pretend that it had never happened. And failure was frequent. Throughout the early Cold War, the C.I.A. parachuted émigrés into Albania, China, North Korea, and Soviet Ukraine, hoping to gather information and maybe even spark some sort of resistance; the operatives were usually captured and never heard from again. But the C.I.A. kept trying. J.F.K., only recently sworn in, acceded to a half-baked C.I.A. scheme left over from the Eisenhower Administration: several battalions of Cuban exiles would land at a Cuban inlet known as the Bay of Pigs and topple Fidel Castro. This turned out to be easier said than done. The fiasco was immediate and public, but, even after the rout, Kennedy kept pressing the agency to assassinate Castro. L.B.J., inheriting Kennedy’s Vietnam mess, found himself in a bind of his own. As Weiner recounts, Johnson was convinced that Saigon would fall without American support, but he didn’t want to commit huge numbers of troops. At the same time, it was politically unthinkable to be seen to have pulled out. Covert action was, in Weiner’s words, “the only path between war and diplomacy,” and so the agency became drawn ever deeper into the mire.

An organization devoted to secrecy ends up with a lot of secrets. The C.I.A. did its best to keep its own hidden—from the Warren Commission, from people in other parts of the agency, and, of course, from Congress. The C.I.A. operated like a besieged, landlocked country, surrounded by rivals and foes. Its goal was to fight communism, but you couldn’t do that if Congress cut your funding or the Pentagon gobbled you up. The audience that mattered most was the President. In 1975, at a rare moment of introspection in American politics, Senator Frank Church wondered whether the C.I.A. had become a “rogue elephant on a rampage.” The answer, actually, was no. Almost always, the orders came from the top. Presidents didn’t like to hear bad news, and smart C.I.A. directors learned to withhold it. Richard Nixon, despite his contempt for the C.I.A. (“They’ve got forty thousand people over there reading newspapers”), ordered it to come up with a psychological profile of Daniel Ellsberg and to try to prevent Salvador Allende from getting elected. Ronald Reagan charged it with arming the Contras. Even the sweet, saintly Jimmy Carter, who cancelled a number of the agency’s more odious operations, signed a covert-action order to send weapons to resistance groups after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The arms were routed through Pakistani intelligence, which favored the most committed and fanatical Afghan fighters. When the Soviets left, the holy warriors, and the weaponry, remained.

The story of the C.I.A. that Weiner tells in “The Mission” closely resembles the one he told in “Legacy of Ashes.” At the start of the war on terror, as at the start of the Cold War, intelligence was at a premium. “Our knowledge of what the other side was up to, their intentions, their capabilities, was nil, or next to it,” one of the C.I.A.’s early directors told Weiner about the Soviets. The situation with Al Qaeda was similar. Weiner quotes Bob Gates, a Soviet analyst who became the agency’s director and later Secretary of Defense: “We didn’t know jack shit about al Qaeda. That’s the reason a lot of this stuff happened, the interrogations and everything else, because we didn’t know anything. If we’d had a great database and knew exactly what al Qaeda was all about, what their capabilities were and stuff like that, some of these measures wouldn’t have been necessary.”

Like the Cold War, the war on terror kept expanding. By the time it was over, the U.S. had conducted antiterrorism trainings in as many as a hundred and fifty countries, deployed combat troops in at least fifteen, and launched drone strikes in at least seven. The most fateful expansion was into Iraq. In the lead-up to that invasion, under intense pressure, the C.I.A. told the White House what it wanted to hear: that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. (It didn’t.) The episode, to which Weiner devotes considerable space, remains a black mark on the agency, but it’s not as if Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were holding their breath in anticipation of a Colin Powell speech to the United Nations. As one former operative tells Weiner, “These guys would have gone to war if Saddam had a rubber band and a paper clip that could put your eye out.”

From the first, the fixation on Iraq interfered with the mission to destroy Al Qaeda. Reporting for the Times in Afghanistan in late 2001, Weiner heard from a local official that bin Laden was hiding in Tora Bora—travelling on horseback by night, sleeping in caves. The same official had, it turned out, told the same thing to the C.I.A., which had relayed it to General Tommy Franks, the top U.S. commander. But Franks, who later said that he was getting multiple intelligence reports of bin Laden in multiple places, didn’t act on the information. “Bin Laden was definitely there,” Weiner writes, and we missed him. “In the general’s defense,” he goes on, “he was distracted.” Rumsfeld had just ordered Franks—less than three months after September 11th—to create a plan for the invasion of Iraq. Bin Laden disappeared into Pakistan. It would take the C.I.A. a decade before it got another solid lead as to his whereabouts.

The overwhelming need to know the enemy, lest he attack without warning, eventually led, during both the Cold War and the war on terror, to the same place: torture. It was the dark, or darker, side of running human assets. In March, 2002, the agency got hold of an Al Qaeda associate known as Abu Zubaydah and flew him to a secret prison in Thailand. There, an F.B.I. agent named Ali Soufan, a fluent Arabic speaker, won his trust and learned a great deal. Zubaydah revealed that the 9/11 attacks had been orchestrated by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, described Al Qaeda’s money-smuggling operations, and even mentioned outlandish future plots—like a plan to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge, inspired by a group viewing of the 1998 “Godzilla.”

Then the C.I.A. began interrogating Zubaydah. Agents “stripped him naked, chained him hand and foot to the floor, and blasted death metal music in his ears,” Weiner writes. They kept him awake for seventy-six hours, until medics intervened. They built a coffin around him. None of it worked. Soufan phoned F.B.I. headquarters and threatened to arrest the psychologist the C.I.A. had hired to run its “enhanced interrogation”; instead, Soufan was pulled out and recalled to the U.S. The interrogation continued. After receiving Presidential approval, the interrogators waterboarded Zubaydah for four days. They poured water down his throat and up his nose until he thought he would drown. “I have nothing more,” he pleaded. “I give you everything.” He nearly died. Finally, to make it stop, he started inventing things. The interrogators relented. All this was videotaped. Three years later, fearing that the tapes would leak, the head of the counterterrorism division at the time of the torture, Jose A. Rodriguez, and his deputy, Gina Haspel, ordered that the tapes be destroyed.

Weiner captures the mood of dread that gripped Washington in the aftermath of September 11th, when most in the national-security establishment were convinced that a “second wave” of Al Qaeda attacks was imminent. They missed the crucial point that better intelligence could have provided. Al Qaeda did plan further strikes, some of which the C.I.A. eventually thwarted, but the first attack had already achieved its aims: it dragged the U.S. into a protracted war in Afghanistan, pushed the country back into the moral swamp of torture, and, as a bonus, helped goad America into invading Iraq.

Barack Obama’s election, in 2008, changed things less than some people had hoped. He put an end to torture, drew down forces in Iraq, and, when the C.I.A., after years of painstaking detective work, finally found bin Laden in a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, authorized the SEAL-team mission that killed him. But, in the broader war on terror, he merely replaced torture with drone strikes. These killed a lot of Al Qaeda operatives and people who hung out with them, such as their families. The drone strikes were, in a way, the opposite of torture—distanced rather than intimate, wiping out everything in the blast radius rather than trying to extract every last molecule of knowledge—but they had the same effect. They were immoral; outside the United States, they were unpopular; and they did not win the war.

The night before the September 11th attacks, the New York real-estate mogul Donald Trump attended Marc Jacobs’s spring fashion show in the meatpacking district, along with fellow-celebrities Sarah Jessica Parker and Monica Lewinsky. Just hours after the attacks, he was interviewed by a local TV station. One of the anchors asked him whether his property at 40 Wall Street had been damaged by the collapse of the Twin Towers. Trump said no and added that his building was now the tallest in downtown Manhattan.

Trump emerged as a national figure out of the ingredients of a peculiarly American cauldron: real estate, high-profile business dealings, reality TV—and the war on terror. Long before he ran for President, he had a lot to say about whom and what and how we were fighting. He thought that the U.S. was not prosecuting the war viciously enough. He thought that torture was just fine. And he thought, or claimed to think, that Obama was not born in the United States, and hinted darkly that he might, in fact, be a Muslim. Trump used, as Obama was not willing to use, the phrase “radical Islamic terror” to describe the enemy. As Spencer Ackerman wrote in “Reign of Terror” (2021), the phrase turned a geopolitical contest into a race war and “extracted the precious nativist metal from the husk of the Forever War.” It excited Trump’s future base.

The predominant intelligence story of Trump’s first Presidential run was, of course, Russian interference in the election. Years later, we still haven’t fully digested what actually happened and what it meant. Did the Russian operation sway the results? Even if it didn’t, what does it say that so many around Trump seemed willing to play along? Was this any worse than the dirty tricks of American politics past? For years, liberals followed a trail of crumbs from Paul Manafort to Konstantin Kilimnik to Oleg Deripaska, convinced that, somewhere, a smoking gun would be found. The fantasy was Watergate redux: nail down the connections, show how “high up” collusion went, and Trump’s Presidency would collapse under the weight of scandal. If only we could establish that Trump’s pal Roger Stone was in contact with WikiLeaks, which was talking to the Russians, who had hacked Hillary Clinton’s e-mails at Vladimir Putin’s direction—then the mystery would be solved, the nightmare over.

But clarity never came. There were too many cutouts and complications. G.R.U. hackers working for Putin were a far cry from the C.I.A.-linked burglars who broke into D.N.C. offices for Nixon; WikiLeaks was a media organization, arguably. Meanwhile, Obama was too careful; Senate Republicans were too truculent; the Steele dossier created unrealistic expectations. Even if we’d had perfect information, fully publicized, it probably would not have mattered. Trump, in front of the television cameras, had urged the Russians—“if you’re listening”—to find Hillary’s e-mails. His poll numbers were unaffected by this apparent solicitation of illicit foreign intervention.

Fifteen years of the war on terror had done a lot to corrode political trust in the United States. If you’d been primed to believe that Obama was a secret Muslim or that Democrats were in league with Radical Islamic Terror, then working with the Russians to educate the public about Democratic leaders hardly seemed out of bounds. And then—unlike, say, the stories once told by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth—at least the e-mails published by WikiLeaks were real.

Trump’s first term brought a curious reversal in the C.I.A.’s public image. He repeatedly clashed with the agency over his view on Russian election interference. “President Putin says it’s not Russia,” Trump said at a summit with the Russian President in Helsinki. “I don’t see any reason why it would be.” He proved uninterested in much of the C.I.A.’s other work, as well. John Bolton, Trump’s longest-serving national-security adviser, later wrote of Trump’s weekly reports from his intelligence chiefs, “I didn’t think these briefings were terribly useful, and neither did the intelligence community, since much of the time was spent listening to Trump, rather than Trump listening to the briefers.”

Various former officials went public with their concerns about Trump, some labelling him a threat to national security. Several “formers,” as they’re called, became fixtures of liberal Resistance media. It was, notably, a C.I.A. agent detailed to the White House who blew the whistle on Trump’s “perfect phone call” with Volodymyr Zelensky, in 2019. Were C.I.A. agents now the good guys? Trump’s second C.I.A. director, Gina Haspel, nominated in part because Trump admired her work on the torture program, resisted his attempts to suborn the agency, especially in the wake of the 2020 election. She warned that Trump was attempting to mount a “right-wing coup.” It’s now clear that, as bad as things got in January of 2021, they could have been a whole lot worse.

The C.I.A. was a step behind during Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, but it did manage to confirm—through an agency asset inside the Kremlin, Oleg Smolenkov—that Putin was the one orchestrating it. (The agency was worried that Smolenkov would be exposed, possibly by Trump, and is presumed to have exfiltrated the asset and his family by yacht from a putative vacation in Montenegro during the summer of 2017.) A few years later, though, when Putin began amassing troops on Ukraine’s border, the agency was in its element. At the time, in the fall of 2021, many experts did not think that a full-scale invasion was likely. After all, Putin had sporadically concentrated forces at the border before, then brought them home. The C.I.A. had a different analysis. It had satellite imagery of the troop buildup; it knew from sources near the Kremlin that the government was investing money in reserve forces and military contingency planning; it eventually got something very close to the actual war plan. All these factors pointed to an invasion. The C.I.A. sounded the alarm, and in the course of several months urged the Europeans and, to some extent, the Ukrainians, to prepare for war.

It was a major intelligence victory for the agency—“a return to its central mission,” according to Weiner—though it failed to deter the invasion itself. In November, 2021, the C.I.A. director, William J. Burns, a Biden appointee who’d previously been a senior U.S. diplomat, travelled to Moscow to try to talk Putin out of going to war. He brought all the intelligence the C.I.A. had gathered and warned of the consequences if Putin were to go ahead. The Russian President was “utterly unapologetic,” Burns recalled. Putin believed that his army would roll into Ukraine with minimal opposition. There was nothing anyone could do to stop him. Knowledge is power, but, as it turns out, there are other kinds of power. It also turned out that Putin’s intelligence on Ukraine was a lot worse than the C.I.A.’s intelligence on him.

After Burns’s mission failed, the C.I.A. shared everything it knew with the Ukrainians. Once war began, the agency helped locate Russian troops, kill Russian generals, and run covert ops in occupied Ukrainian territory. The C.I.A. had once desperately tried to infiltrate Soviet Ukraine, leading to the torture and deaths of dozens of men. Now the agency could work hand in glove with Ukrainian intelligence officers inside Ukraine to hinder the Russian invasion.

Trump’s return to office throws the C.I.A.’s success in Ukraine—and much else—into doubt. This time, Trump has made sure to put a loyalist in charge of the agency: the former Texas congressman John Ratcliffe, who promptly eliminated the agency’s diversity-hiring program—a remarkably self-defeating move for a global superpower. “For more than forty years,” Weiner writes, “the clandestine service had been trying to recruit and retain African American, Arab American, and Asian American officers, on the sound basis that sending an all-white cadre to spy in places like Somalia, Pakistan, or China was terrible tradecraft.” When Elon Musk’s DOGE requested employee names from government agencies, Ratcliffe failed to protect C.I.A. personnel, submitting a list of agents which included their real first names—a potential security risk. After America bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities, and a Defense Intelligence Agency leak undercut the Administration’s claims about the strikes’ effectiveness, it was Ratcliffe who came forward to uphold the official line.

There was a time when the C.I.A.’s existential fear was of losing its adversary. In Al Qaeda, it found a new one; in Iraq, it created others. In Trump, it faces an adversary of a different kind. Weiner concludes his book by expressing his faith in the agency’s rank and file, but with a clear sense of foreboding. If a genuine emergency were to take place, and Trump tried to use the occasion to cancel elections or declare martial law, who would be able to stop him? What if he tried to make the C.I.A. great again? “Who would disobey him,” Weiner asks, “if he ordered the clandestine service to rebuild the secret prisons, overthrow a sovereign nation, or assassinate his political enemies?” Historically, Weiner writes, the C.I.A. has not directly defied orders. But individuals have blown the whistle, resigned in protest, and spoken to journalists. There may not be homes for old wizards of Armageddon, but surely there is space for them on MSNBC.

Published in the print edition of the July 28, 2025, issue, with the headline “The Secret Keepers.”

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10. Special Operations News – Monday, July 21, 2025

Special Operations News – Monday, July 21, 2025

https://sof.news/update/20250721/

July 21, 2025 SOF News Update 0

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

Photo / Image: Sailors operating a diver propulsion device during high-altitude dive training in California, Sept. 5, 2022. Photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Alex Per.

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SOF News

Alert for U.S. SOF Personnel. The United States Army Special Operations Command (USASOC) has sent out an alert bulletin notifiying active and retired senior officials of the special operations community who served in Iraq or Syria and who now live in Florida that there is a terrorist threat they should be aware of. The warning was issued on Thursday, July 17th. The “duty to warn” notification encourages active-duty and retired special forces members “to remain vigilant” against any potential terrorist threats. “Army Special Operations Warns Retired Members of Terror Threat”, The New York Times, July 17, 2025. (subscription)

Mike Waltz – Next UN Ambassador? Former U.S. National Security Adviser Michael Waltz (and former Green Beret) testified on July 15th before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. His confirmation will be an important step towards U.S. diplomacy at the United Nations. “U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nominee Waltz Faces Senate Vote as the Global Body Reels”, by Richard Gowan, Just Security, July 11, 2025.

New 5th SFG(A) Cdr. Colonel Szody relinquished command of the 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne) to Colonel Wainwright on July 15, 2025. Wainwright has previously served with the 5th Group as an ODA commander and battalion commander.

New 7st SFG(A) Cdr. Colonel Patrick Nelson passed command of the 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne) to Colonel John Leitner on July 17, 2025.

New 10th SFG(A) Cdr. Colonel Justin Hufnagel will relinquish command to Colonel Nathanael Joslyn on July 25, 2025 at Fort Carson, Colorado.

NSW and Force Moderization. A lenghty article by Scott R. Gourley describes the innovative steps Naval Special Warfare is taking to prepare its operators for future conflicts in the Indo-Pacific as well as other regions of the world. “Navy Special Operators Prepare for ‘Davidson Window'”, National Defense, July 15, 2025.

Cancel Culture – Extremists on Both Sides. The February 2025 firing of General Jim Slife by the SECDEF points to a troublesome facit of today’s national security environment. Slife was the Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force and had previously commanded Air Force Special Operations Command. He was also put on a ‘hit list’ of generals to be fired after the election but before the inauguration by an anti-woke group hoping to ‘clean house’. “The Curious Case of Slife the Knife”, RadarBlog, July 15, 2025.

U.S. Navy SEAL Released by Venezuela. Ten Americans and legal permanent U.S. residents (green card holders) who were detained by Venezuala were released on Friday, July 18th, in exchange for a few hundred Venezuelans who were held in a detention facility in El Salvador. One of those Americans is a former Navy SEAL, Wilbert Castaneda Gomez. He was arrested while on vacation in Venezuela last August. More than 250 Venezuelans that were deported in March by the U.S. to a high-security prison in El Salvador were returned to Venezuela. “Welcoming the Release of U.S. Nationals and Political Prisoners Held in Venezuela”, U.S. Department of State, July 18, 2025. See also “U.S.-Venezuela prisoner swap frees Americans for migrants in El Salvador”, The Washington Post, July 18, 2025. (subscription)

International SOF

UK SOF Busy in Syria? A hit on a ISIS leader took place in Syria by United Kingdom special operations forces. The operation was arranged to protect UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy ahead of his visit to Syria. “UK special forces carry out secret ‘kill’ operation against top ISIS bomb-maker in Syria”, The Standard, July 13, 2025.

UK SAS Details Leaked. Recent reports from London say that information related to thousands of Afghans who worked with British forces were revealed inadvertantly, putting their lives in danger. New information about the leaks has been released – apparently the personal details of more than 100 sensitive UK military personnel were also made public. “Personal details of UK special forces and spies were included in Afghan data breach”, BBC News, July 17, 2025.

SAS, “The Triples”, and a Coverup. An intriguing story of the SAS record in Afghanistan. “Deny, delete, and delay: the secrecy operation inside special forces“, The Observer, July 20, 2025.

SOF History

“Operation Galdio”. In the 1950s an Italian paramilitary organization was created by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to resist a possible future Soviet Union occupation of Italy and Italian territories. The network would provide intelligence and conduct sabotage activities. The activities of the network continued into the 1970s and 1980s. The existence of the network was admitted by the Italian prime minister in 1990 and the organization was subsequently disbanded. “Operation Gladio: The CIA’s Clandestine Network in Italy”, by Rachele Momi, Grey Dynamics, July 13, 2025.

On July 22, 1940, the Special Operations Executive (SOE) Charter was approved, formed from Section D, MI(R), and EH.

Started in July 1943, the 7th Amphibious Scouts trained in jungle survival, unarmed combat, reconnaissance, and shoreline sketching.

On July 27, 1953, the Korean Armistice Agreement was signed, ending the Korean War. About 37,000 Americans lost their lives, 92,000 were wounded, and 8,000 missing. DoD News.

On July 30, 1994, elements of the 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne) and the 325th Airborne Infantry (82nd) landed at the Rwandan capital of Kigal to secure the airport for an international aid effort as days of tribal conflict ensued.

Ukraine Conflict

Tanks to Ukraine – Compliments of Australia. The first tranche of 49 M1A1 Abrams tanks have been delivered to the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The Australian tanks were unloaded at the Polish port of Szczecin and will soon be enroute to Ukraine. The tanks were part of Australia’s retired inventory and is part of a large miltary aid package. “Ukraine Gets Major Abrams Tank Boost”, Newsweek, July 19, 2025.

Patriots to Ukraine. Some Patriot air defense systems in the production pipeline are being diverted to Ukraine. This is the result of Washington’s newfound emphasis in helping Ukraine repel the near-constant Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities with missiles and drones. “US diverts Patriot systems from Switzerland to Ukraine”, Defense News, July 17, 2025.

National Security and Commentary

Intelligence Wars and Irregular Operations. Operation Spider’s Web (Ukraine) and Operation Rising Lion (Israel) have highlighted the use of intelligence organizations and the conduct of irregular military operations. A recent article explores the role that military and civilian intelligence organizations perform in contemporary hostilities from a ‘legalistic perspective’. “Intelligence Wars, Their Warriors, and Legal Ambiguity”, Lieber Institute at West Point, July 16, 2025.

DoD Boycotts Aspen. Several top officials of the Pentagon were abruptly pulled from speaking at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado. The speakers were high-ranking generals, including General Bryan Fenton of USSOCOM and Lt. Gen. John Brennan, the deputy commander of U.S. AFRICOM. In the past the forum has been an opportunity for the Pentagon to weigh in on important national security topics and present the DoD’s view on policy issues and defense priorities. Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said that defense officials will no longer be participating because the forums values do not align with the values of the DOD. The institute describes itself as a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization. “Pentagon yanks speakers from Aspen Security Forum, blasts its values”, Defense News, July 14, 2025.

Combating IW and Homeland Defense. Sal Artiaga writes on how the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Russian Federation are using non-military tactics to exploit American societal advantages and convert them into strategic weaknesses. Russia’s primary tool to accomplish this is the use of false narratives to erode American’s confidence in their elections, justice system, and more. China’s approach is somewhat different – focusing on systemic erosion and co-option around the world. “Defense of the Homeland: A National Strategy for Combating Irregular Warfare”, LinkedIn, July 19, 2025.

New Login System for DOD and Veterans. The Defense Department will replace the legacy DS Logon system which authenticates more than 200 DOD and Veterans Affairs websites with a more modern and flexible system called myAuth. Hopefully it will be more successful than some DOD digital enterprises . . . like DTS. “DOD Launching New Authentication System to Replace DS Logon”, DOD News, July 17, 2025.

‘Soft Power’, IO, and Cyber Operations

Generative AI. The conflict between Israel and Iran witnessed an increased use of social media and artificial intelligence generated scripts and photos posted on Twitter and other social media outlets. The information warfare that took place during this latest conflict was on a scale not seen before. Millions of people were scrolling on their phones even as bombs and missiles reached their targets. The Ukraine Russia conflict also has seen the large use of informational warfare – with each nation crafting a narrative and disseminating it in many different methods. Nations are heeding the importance of winning the narrative battle. “Israel and Iran Usher in New Era of Psychological Warfare”, The New York Times, July 15, 2025.

GRU Hybrid Threats. A policy paper outlines the activities of Russian military intelligence officers engaged in malicious cyber activity with NATO allies. The report highlights actions the GRU is taking in the Urkaine and Africa as well. “Profile: GRU Cyber and Hybrid Threat Operations”, GOV.uk, 18 July 2025.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/profile-gru-cyber-and-hybrid-threat-operations/profile-gru-cyber-and-hybrid-threat-operations

Russia IO in Africa. Moscow is actively increasing its influence across African countries, using propaganda networks such as the Russian state information agency TASS and state-owned news outlet Russia Today (RT). “Russia scales up propaganda operations across Africa”, The Kyiv Independent, July 13, 2025.

China: Diplomatic and Economic Statecraft in the Americas. China uses its commercial and economic ties in a strategic manner – attempting to shape the policy behavior of other countries to China’s benefit. These tactics are a form of irregular warfare – an approach that subdues the enemy without fighting. This type of irregular warfare (IW) can be framed through the acronym DIME-FIL: diplomacy, information, military, economic, finance, intelligence, and lawfare/law enforcement. China uses it very effectively in the Caribbean, Central America, and South America. Read more in “Development of Dependence? Rethinking China’s Economic Playbook in the Americas”, Irregular Warfare Initiative, July 16, 2025.

Congress Cuts USAID Funds. On the heals for dismantling USAID and Voice of America, it appears that more cuts to ‘soft power’ mechanisms are in the works. “US House approves $9B in budget cuts to public broadcasting and foreign aid”, Jurist News, July 19, 2025.

Tanks, Aircraft Carriers, and ‘Soft Power’ Win Wars. William McRaven, the former commander of JSOC and USSOCOM, argues that ‘soft power’ is important to our national security – whether in preventing conflict or assisting the military forces during a war. McRaven believes that the dismantling of USAID and dismissal of highly trained and experienced diplomats at the State Department will jeopardize national security and make the military’s job much more difficult. “Cutting the State Department and USAID will put every American at risk”, The Washington Post, July 15, 2025.

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

Asia

Shan State. in April 1964, representatives form the Shan State Independence Army (SSIA), the Shan National United Front (SNUF), and the Kokang Revolutionary Force (KRF) met secretly in Thailand to form the Shan State Army (SSA). These ethnic armed organizations have continued the fight for the past 60 years in the northeastern region of Myanmar (formerly known as Burma). Read more in “Shan State Army: Illicit Networks and Armed Power”, by Eirini Kongkini, Grey Dynamics, June 13, 2025.

Taiwan and Civil Resilience. Marta Kepe and Scott W. Harold have penned a 70 page report that provides insight into Taiwan’s civilian resilience program against acts of war. Since 2014, one of the principal tenets for resisting a foreign power’s attack and occupation is utilizing the resistance operating concept (ROC) developed by SOCEUR in collaboration with other countries in Europe. Elements of the ROC have been adopted by Taiwan for use in the event of an attack and occupation by the PRC. Building Taiwan’s Resilience, RAND Corporation, July 2025, PDF. https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RRA3300/RRA3388-1/RAND_RRA3388-1.pdf

Taiwan Scenarios. Read an article that outlines the possible scenarios where the PRC could effect a path to reunification of Taiwan with ‘the home country’. “The Taiwan scenairos: Subversion, quarantine, blockade, invasion”, The Strategist, Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), July 21, 2025.

Afghanistan

Seven Day Stay of TPS. The 4th Circuit Court provided a temporary halt stay on the Temporary Protective Status (TPS) expiration (Afghan Report, Feb 15, 2022) for Afghan allies. The termination of TPS means that Afghan interpreters and their families could be deported back to Afghanistan where they will face retaliation for their support of the U.S. military during the 20-year involvement of the U.S. in the Afghan conflict. The TPS termination had been announced by the Department of Homeland Security in a notice sent out a few months ago (USCIS, May 12, 2025) with an effective date of July 14, 2025. Around 12,000 Afghans are affected by the end of TPS.

Glimmer of Hope for Afghan Allies Stranded in UAE. In some late breaking news on Sunday there are reports that President Trump has acknowledged that there are Afghans stuck in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) that are being threatened with deporatation to Afghanistan. Many Afghans that were sent to the EHC during the August 2021 Kabul NEO served alongside the U.S. military as interpreters or as members of specialized military formations in Afghanistan. Most of them have been stuck in the Emirates Humanitarian City (Afghan Report, Feb 13, 2022) in the UAE for many long months.

Afghan Residents in CAS Have Uncertain Future. About 1,500 Afghans remain on U.S. base Camp As Sayliya (CAS) in Doha, Qatar and their future remains in the air. They were transported there as part of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) that has been suspended by executive order. Government officials have said that CAS will close on September 28, 2025 and that the refugee resettlement plan is no longer an option due to the travel ban. The Afghans at CAS qualified for the USRAP status because of their past affilitiation with the U.S. military in Afghanistan. Prior to their arrival at CAS the Afghans and their families were subjected to extensive security and medical vetting and admitted if they could prove their employment or association with U.S. government agencies or military forces. If forced to return to Afghanistan many will face retaliation for their assistance to U.S. forces during the 20-year long Afghan conflict. “Afghan Allies Under Pressure to Self-Deport: Voices from Camp As Sayliyah”, by Beth Bailey, Reason.com, July 17, 2025.

Africa

Peace Deal – Congo and Rwanda? A new peace agreement could stop the fighting taking place in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The agreement was signed in late June and will hopefully stop the fighting that has killed thousands and driven hundreds of thousands from their homes. M23, an insurgent group backed by Rwanda, has taken large amounts of mineral rich territory from DRC government forces. “The DR Congo-Rwanda Deal: Now Comes the Hard Part”, by Richard Moncrieff, International Crisis Group, July 4, 2025.

French Withdraws from Senegal. The 350 remaining French soldiers in Senegal handed over its last camp in the country on Thursday, July 17th. Paris now has no military bases in West or Central Africa. The French have been retreating (or kicked out) of many of its overseas locations in the past few years. At the same time that the French are losing influence in Africa the jihadist movement is growing across Mali, Burkino Faso, and Niger. France’s remaining base in Africa is in Djibouti where some 1,500 personnel are stationed. “French army withdraws last troops from Senegal bases”, Le Monde, July 17, 2025.

Troubles in HOA. Geopolitical ambitions, ethnic divisions, and contested access to fresh water and the sea are intensifying conflict in Ethiopia, Eritrea, and the Tigray region. “Rising tensions in the Horn of Africa”, by Teresa Nogueira Pinto, GIS Reports Online, July 7, 2025.

UAE’s Role in Sudan’s War. The United Arab Emirates has been supporting the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in their fight against the government’s Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). Mustafa Fetouri writes on the UAE role in the conflict in “Genocide, Ghost Wars and Gold: How the Genocide Convention Loophole Helps Fracture Sudan”, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, June 18, 2025.

Books, Podcasts, Videos, and Movies

Book Review – The Mission: The CIA in the 21st Century. Journalist Tim Weiner has a new book out about the Central Intelligence Agency. Keith Gessen provides a book review of Weiner’s work in a long essay on the history of the CIA. The short of the book (and the review) is how the CIA lost its historical adversary (Soviet Union) but inherited a new one (Al Qaeda). The book author ends with a warning that the CIA may soon have a new adversary – one within the government. “What Will Become of the CIA?”, The New Yorker, July 16, 2025.

Spotlight Newsletter. The June 2025 newsletter of the Irregular Warfare Center is now posted online. (PDF). https://irregularwarfarecenter.org/news/newsletter/june-2025-newsletter/

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11. From Ambiguity to Flexibility: Reframing U.S. Taiwan Policy

Conclusion:

Strategic ambiguity, long a hallmark of informal U.S. policy discourse, has evolved into a potential constraint for U.S. policymakers. Misperceptions obscure response options, perpetuate a false binary, overlook legal commitments, and complicate signaling at a time when precision and adaptability are paramount. Flexibility offers a more effective framework for understanding and communicating U.S. Taiwan policy — one grounded in law, aligned with U.S. strategic objectives, and better suited to managing the escalating risk of conflict in the Taiwan Strait. The United States should embrace a conceptual recalibration — not by expressly abandoning ambiguity, but by reclaiming flexibility.

From Ambiguity to Flexibility: Reframing U.S. Taiwan Policy

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/07/21/ambiguity-to-flexibility-u-s-taiwan-policy/

by Tim Boyle

|

07.21.2025 at 06:00am

Strategic ambiguity has become a liability for U.S. policymakers. Though merely an informal shorthand, it is commonly treated as official policy in media and among national security professionals. This framing reduces U.S. decision-making to a false binary between war and inaction, obscuring a spectrum of options and overlooking legal commitments under the Taiwan Relations Act. With Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth warning that Chinese aggression could be “imminent,” Washington should recalibrate perceptions of U.S. Taiwan policy to strengthen deterrence and make its commitments and options unmistakably clear to Beijing and Taipei. 

Rather than abandoning strategic ambiguity outright, U.S. officials should steer discourse toward flexibility as a defining feature of U.S. Taiwan policy. Flexibility avoids the binary trap by rejecting both indifference and rigid clarity. Instead, it rests on the presumption that the United States will respond to Chinese aggression, while preserving discretion over how — emphasizing optionality to employ varied and scalable instruments of power, with or without military force. Crucially, this narrative shift requires no change in policy or disavowal of strategic ambiguity. It simply reframes how existing policy is communicated and understood, offering a more credible and adaptable approach to managing the growing risk of conflict in the Taiwan Strait. 

Reassessing the Role of Strategic Ambiguity 

Though often linked to the U.S. One China Policy, the term strategic ambiguity does not appear in the Taiwan Relations Act, the three Joint Communiqués, the Six Assurances, or any other law, regulation, or formal policy directive. It emerged as an informal concept in the mid-1990s when Joseph Nye, then Assistant Secretary of Defense, used the term in Congressional testimony and subsequent interviews. Pressed by Chinese officials during a visit to Beijing, Nye told his hosts, “We don’t know what we would do, because it’s going to depend on the circumstances, and you don’t know what we would do.” Former Secretary of Defense William Perry later said Nye’s comments “perfectly” captured U.S. policy.

Nye’s framing reflected the geopolitical realities of the time. Taiwan’s President, Lee Teng-hui, was dismantling martial law-era structures and promoting democratic reforms, culminating in Taiwan’s first direct presidential election in 1996. Sensing its leverage waning, Beijing launched missile tests and military exercises in the Taiwan Strait, triggering the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis. As Nye later explained, strategic ambiguity served a dual deterrent function in this period: to discourage Taipei from “pressing the envelope of independence” and to signal to Beijing that “any unprovoked attack in the Taiwan Strait would have very grave consequences.”

But what began in the mid-1990s as a flexible heuristic has since ossified into orthodoxy in U.S. Taiwan policy discourse. Commentators have reacted with alarm to perceived deviations, from President Bush’s 2001 “whatever it takes” remark to President Biden’s repeated pledges to defend Taiwan. In such moments, the mistaken belief that U.S. leaders abandoned a fixed tenet of U.S. policy has inadvertently reinforced Beijing’s narrative that Washington is shifting toward support for Taiwan independence, providing rhetorical cover for Chinese escalation. Yet while these statements draw scrutiny for seeming too committal, there are no clear examples of U.S. leaders explicitly stating that the United States would not defend Taiwan. This asymmetry underscores the distortion that ambiguity introduces — inviting speculation at both ends of the spectrum without offering reliable insight into actual policy.

Today, strategic ambiguity has become a flashpoint for policy debate. Some argue for strategic clarity; others advocate retrenchment. Either way, the growing threat to Taiwan demands a clear-eyed reassessment of strategic ambiguity for what it is: an informal shorthand, not formal policy. Like any heuristic, it remains open to recalibration. Just as it was conceived in the mid-1990s to fit the geopolitical moment, it should now be reframed to reinforce deterrence while emphasizing flexibility. Indeed, China’s growing assertiveness suggests that the dual deterrent logic described by Nye no longer carries the same strategic coherence — at least not for Beijing. Left unexamined, entrenched perceptions of strategic ambiguity risk emboldening Chinese escalation and blunting the credibility of statements like Secretary Hegseth’s warning that Chinese aggression would result in “devasting consequences.”

SINGAPORE, SINGAPORE – MAY 31: U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth speaks in the first plenary session entitled “United States’ New Ambitions for Indo-Pacific Security” during the 22nd IISS Shangri-La Dialogue at the Shangri-La Hotel on May 31, 2025 in Singapore. Organized by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the annual conference brings together senior defense officials to debate and discuss current and pressing global and regional security challenges. (Photo by Yong Teck Lim/Getty Images)

Breaking The Binary Trap 

Debate on strategic ambiguity frequently traps U.S. decision-making in a false binary: will the United States defend Taiwan or not? This all-or-nothing framing obscures an array of calibrated options short of full-scale war, from cyber operations to sanctions and intelligence sharing. It can also fuel anxiety over two worst-case scenarios: great-power war with China and abandonment of Taiwan to a Chinese takeover. Boxed in by this framing, policymakers, commentators, and observers alike might rush to a premature zero-sum judgment or default to indecision, where strategic ambiguity becomes a convenient escape hatch — a means to defer, rather than define, what is required for credible deterrence. 

This binary logic also overlooks key provisions of the Taiwan Relations Act (hereafter, the Act), which effectively rules out passivity as a viable legal option. Notably, the Act requires the United States to maintain the capacity to resist Chinese coercion or aggression and provide Taiwan with arms and services for its self-defense. It also directly links Taiwan’s security to U.S. interests by describing any effort to determine Taiwan’s future by non-peaceful means as “a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific” and “of grave concern to the United States.” If these interests are endangered, the Act obligates the President and Congress to determine appropriate action in accordance with constitutional processes — not necessarily military action, but action nonetheless.

While the Act forecloses strategic indifference, it also constrains unqualified strategic clarity. Its requirement for executive-legislative consultation reinforces Congress’s check on presidential powers, underscoring the likely need for a congressional authorization before any protracted commitment of U.S. forces to conflict in the Taiwan Strait. Like U.S. defense treaties, the Act avoids automatic commitments to use force yet still conveys serious obligations (see Table for a comparison between the Act and U.S. treaties with Japan and the Philippines). One of the Act’s principal architects, the late Senator Jacob Javits, described it as “functionally equivalent” to a treaty. In effect, both the Act and U.S. defense treaties enshrine legal commitments while preserving flexibility in how those commitments are fulfilled. 

The binary trap diverts attention from the Act’s concrete statutory obligations, centering discourse on whether the United States will or will not intervene militarily to defend Taiwan. Yet as long as the Act remains binding U.S. law, the central question should focus on how the United States may choose to fulfill its commitment to support Taiwan’s defense if China uses force. This reframing aligns with Secretary Hegseth’s recent remarks at the Shangri-La Dialogue by repositioning discourse to focus on flexibility in response options. It rejects both indecision and unqualified clarity, instead preserving space for tailored responses shaped by the circumstances of a given contingency — responses that may vary widely in scale, scope, and risk, and may or may not involve committing U.S. forces to combat.

Toward Strategic Flexibility 

The evolution toward flexibility should begin by correcting the misperception that strategic ambiguity is fixed U.S. policy — narrowing the gap between official commitments and informal narratives to reduce the risk of miscalculation and foster an information ecosystem more conducive to effective U.S. signaling. Rather than openly disavowing strategic ambiguity, which could prompt Chinese escalation, U.S. officials should highlight the clarity of commitments under the U.S. One China Policy, as guided by the Act, the three Joint Communiqués, and Six Assurances. These commitments, reaffirmed across multiple administrations, should be presented as clear and consistent pillars of U.S. policy — anchoring a strategy that deters aggression through credible resolve to maintain peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.

In parallel, U.S. departments and agencies should institutionalize updated Taiwan policy training across professional education programs. Such training should aim to deepen expertise on the subtleties of U.S. Taiwan policy across the U.S. government. Bilateral and multilateral forums provide key venues to reinforce the message of flexibility, helping reassure partners and prevent discourse from collapsing into the binary trap. To further shape informed views among domestic and international audiences, U.S. leaders should focus strategic communications on the continuity and adaptability of U.S. Taiwan policy. 

Ultimately, recalibrating perceptions of U.S. Taiwan policy toward flexibility can restore initiative to U.S. policymakers. Rather than framing U.S. policy around a speculative yes-or-no question about military intervention, flexibility steers debate toward a spectrum of response options informed by context, including the character of Chinese aggression, the degree of allied support, and the broader geopolitical environment. Like Nye’s original articulation of strategic ambiguity, flexibility preserves U.S. discretion, but it also counters contemporary misperceptions by grounding that discretion in longstanding U.S. policy and legal responsibilities — reinforcing deterrence through clarity of commitment, not specificity of action. 

Flexibility can also support reassurance — not just deterrence. It signals to Taipei that U.S. support is enduring, but strongest when paired with Taiwan’s continued investment in its own defense. At the same time, it communicates to Beijing that while war is not inevitable, aggression will not go unanswered. Rather than encouraging premature judgments shaped by binary pressures, flexibility promotes forward-looking investment in capabilities, partnerships, and posture.

Crucially, this recalibrated approach aligns with Secretary Hegseth’s recent remarks. Viewed through the lens of flexibility, his statement that Chinese aggression toward Taiwan would bring “devastating consequences” can be seen as part of a broader messaging strategy — one that communicates resolve while preserving adaptability. Flexibility offers the perceptual scaffolding needed to integrate such language into a more credible and coherent deterrent posture.

Conclusion

Strategic ambiguity, long a hallmark of informal U.S. policy discourse, has evolved into a potential constraint for U.S. policymakers. Misperceptions obscure response options, perpetuate a false binary, overlook legal commitments, and complicate signaling at a time when precision and adaptability are paramount. Flexibility offers a more effective framework for understanding and communicating U.S. Taiwan policy — one grounded in law, aligned with U.S. strategic objectives, and better suited to managing the escalating risk of conflict in the Taiwan Strait. The United States should embrace a conceptual recalibration — not by expressly abandoning ambiguity, but by reclaiming flexibility.

(The views expressed in this post are those of the author and do not reflect the official policies or positions of the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.)

Tags: strategic ambiguity, strategic flexibility, Taiwan, taiwan policy, Taiwan Relations Act, U.S.-Taiwan relations

About The Author

• 
  
• Tim Boyle
• Tim Boyle is an officer in the U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General’s Corps and was previously the head of operational law at U.S. Indo-Pacific Command. His next assignment will be as staff judge advocate for the U.S. Seventh Fleet. He has extensive experience working on and writing about strategies to counter China’s lawfare. The views expressed in this post are those of the author and do not reflect the official policies or positions of the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.

12. National security elites accept Trump is creating a new world order

​And there is no going back.

Excerpts:

Few solutions were also being offered to the fundamental changes Trump is ushering in, cautioned the former U.S. diplomat.

“Especially on soft power, I’m seeing a lot fall apart but it doesn’t seem like there’s something else being built to put in its place,” the diplomat said.

Some officials focused their warnings on the dangerous uncertainty created by the kind of reshaping of the world that Trump has embarked on.

“Any student of history will know the most dangerous phase is the interregnum between one world order and another,” said Singaporean Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan during a fireside chat at the conference. “Are we in that interregnum? Yes, we are.”

National security elites accept Trump is creating a new world order

The U.S. president has revamped trade, aid and military force to an extent that attendees here say will have effects for decades to come.

“We have to recognize that we're probably not going back to exactly that system,” former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said at the closing panel of the summit. | Francis Chung/POLITICO

By Eric Bazail-Eimil

07/19/2025 07:00 AM EDT

Politico

Her words reflect the striking efficacy of the second Trump administration, which in its first six months has taken a sledgehammer to the norms and conventions that governed U.S. trade relations, use of military force and engagement with stalwart partners and alliances. It has also overseen the elimination of agencies that handle foreign policy tasks — most notably the now-defunct U.S. Agency for International Development — and slashed staff within the intelligence community, the Pentagon and the State Department.

The administration has said these moves are necessary to create a more focused and effective foreign policy process that can prioritize American interests above all. But its critics have said the U.S. is reducing its ability to respond to crises, losing its credibility with allies and undermining the global economy by taking such a pugilistic approach to policy.

Either way, attendees at Aspen are trying to adjust to an America First world order.

The first time Trump was president, the national security establishment started out thinking they could influence his policy, and then assumed his policy moves could be easily reversed once he left office. Now that same group is struggling to come up with strategies to influence even on the edges, especially when the administration doesn’t want to be part of the conversation.

The day before the conference was scheduled to start, the Pentagon pulled its speakers, calling the conference a “den of globalists” that didn’t match the administration’s values.

In the end, only one administration official attended the conference: Adam Boehler, Trump’s special envoy for hostage release. The other non-Pentagon official who’d been slated to speak — U.S. Ambassador to Turkey and Syria envoy Tom Barrack — withdrew following Israel’s Wednesday strikes on Syria.

Boehler participated in a convivial on-stage interview with CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins where he outlined how the Trump team addressed conflicting portfolios and argued the administration is moving in lock step to achieve key priorities, including freeing Americans held hostage by rogue regimes and actors around the world.

“I have a president and team that backs it up,” Boehler said of his efforts to free Americans. “It gives me strength. When we decided to make a move, and the president decided to move on Iran for me, getting Americans out — that’s going to get Americans out.”

Given the administration’s limited presence, attendees were forced to wrestle with how to address the president’s many changes to foreign policy amongst themselves. The main approach at the conference seemed to be to at least avoid antagonizing team Trump.

Much praise was offered for Trump’s recent expressions of support for Ukraine and the success of U.S. airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities in deteriorating Tehran’s nuclear capabilities.

And Trump’s overhaul of federal agencies and departments was met with resignation and even some optimism. In informal conversations, there was recognition from some attendees that the State Department was overdue for reform to cut through decades of bureaucracy. The main protest was about the manner in which the cuts were being made.

“They all need reform,” said a former U.S. diplomat who attended the forum of USAID and State. “There are a lot of challenges with how the bureaucracy is set up, and part of it is because of congressional demands. But this isn’t reform. This is just dismantling and shutting down government bodies … and poor treatment of federal workers.”

The former diplomat, like others cited, was granted anonymity to speak freely about the conference.

Panelists and attendees also embraced the need to rethink the way that the U.S. offers foreign assistance. In one session discussing the future of foreign aid, panelists agreed that the Trump administration’s pursuit of access to critical minerals in Africa’s Great Lakes region represents an opportunity for alliances with countries that China has looked to court in recent years.

“There are a number of questions that rightfully should be asked, but I wouldn’t condemn it outrightly. I think there is an opportunity to be had going down the line,” Comfort Ero, who leads the International Crisis Group think tank, told the audience.

Especially on economic questions, attendees and panelists were quick to note that the protectionist tendencies Trump embraces are gaining adherents across the U.S. ideological spectrum.

“It’s a big deal that you’ve now had two presidents of two different parties take a protectionist line,” former U.S. Trade Representative and World Bank Group President Robert Zoellick, said on one panel. “That is a very big switch in the nature of trade politics.”

Some attendees expressed frustration at what they saw as pandering to Trump, saying there was a missing opportunity to have more discussion on the main stage about the potential impacts of Trump’s policies and governing style on U.S. democratic institutions and institutions around the world.

A recurring theme across panels was frustration with Congress over its repeated inability to pass a budget on time. Such delays in passing a budget and a reliance in recent years on continuing resolutions have been blamed for lags in innovative defense initiatives and snags in securing contracts.

The threats posed by China in the Indo-Pacific — which many Democrats and Republicans agree are pressing — came up in many discussions, as foreign officials and former U.S. officials warned that the risk of full-scale conflict with Beijing over Taiwan or other flashpoints had reached an unprecedented level.

Still, some Democratic attendees argued that Americans aren’t necessarily sold on Trump’s vision for the world. On a panel Friday, Biden administration national security adviser Jake Sullivan argued that people on both sides of the aisle are too ready to read Trump’s 2024 victory as a mandate for protectionism and isolationism.

“We tend only to read the signals in one direction. And I think that’s not right,” said Sullivan, who noted that few people suddenly argued Americans were newly interested in the world after President Joe Biden — widely seen as a fervent internationalist — defeated Trump in 2020. “I actually believe the American people continue to believe in principled engagement in the world, and continue to believe that our fate is tied to the fate of people elsewhere.”

Few solutions were also being offered to the fundamental changes Trump is ushering in, cautioned the former U.S. diplomat.

“Especially on soft power, I’m seeing a lot fall apart but it doesn’t seem like there’s something else being built to put in its place,” the diplomat said.

Some officials focused their warnings on the dangerous uncertainty created by the kind of reshaping of the world that Trump has embarked on.

“Any student of history will know the most dangerous phase is the interregnum between one world order and another,” said Singaporean Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan during a fireside chat at the conference. “Are we in that interregnum? Yes, we are.”

Nahal Toosi and Felicia Schwartz contributed to this report.

Politico

13. As lawmakers head to summer recess, threat of an autumn shutdown looms

​How could anyone head home and enjoy a vacation with this hanging over their heads?

Excerpt:

The threat of a shutdown has become commonplace on Capitol Hill, but Congress appears even less prepared for the next threat than others in the recent past. Only a few appropriations bills have been adopted by the full house — funding for the Defense Department and Veterans Affairs are among that group — and none have been finalized by the Senate.

Note the USSOCOM nominee is testifying on Tuesday (tomorrow).

As lawmakers head to summer recess, threat of an autumn shutdown looms

militarytimes.com · by Leo Shane III · July 21, 2025

The House is set to break for its summer recess starting on July 25, leaving fewer than 20 legislative days on the schedule for lawmakers to avoid a partial government shutdown at the end of September.

The federal budget runs out on Sept. 30. Without a short-term funding extension or a full-year spending plan, agencies will once again be facing the possibility of partial shutdowns, with a host of operations and services shuttered until new money is made available.

The threat of a shutdown has become commonplace on Capitol Hill, but Congress appears even less prepared for the next threat than others in the recent past. Only a few appropriations bills have been adopted by the full house — funding for the Defense Department and Veterans Affairs are among that group — and none have been finalized by the Senate.

With lawmakers headed back home next week, staffers will spend much of August trying to find points of compromise for a plan. But the recent rescission package and reconciliation bills adopted without input from Democratic lawmakers will complicate that work, especially if some of their votes are needed in the closely-divided House.

Tuesday, July 22

Senate Armed Services — 9:30 a.m. — G-50 Dirksen

Nominations

The committee will consider the nominations of Vice Adm. Frank Bradley to be head of U.S. Special Operations Command and Air Force Lt. Gen. Dagvin Anderson to be head of U.S. Africa Command.

House Homeland Security — 10 a.m. — 310 Cannon

Cyber Threats

Outside experts will testify on the evolution of cyber threats to critical American infrastructure.

Senate Foreign Relations — 10 a.m. — 419 Dirksen

Nominations

The committee will consider several pending nominations.

House Foreign Affairs — 10 a.m. — 2172 Rayburn

Pending Legislation

The committee will mark up several pending bills.

House Veterans' Affairs — 2 p.m. — 360 Cannon

Employee Bonuses

Department officials will testify on efforts to prevent fraud and abuse in VA’s employee bonus programs.

Senate Foreign Relations — 2:30 p.m. — 419 Dirksen

Hong Kong

Outside experts will testify on human rights and democracy in Hong Kong.

Wednesday, July 23

House Armed Services — 10 a.m. — 2118 Rayburn

Defense Acquisition Reform

Pentagon officials will testify on proposed reforms to the defense acquisition process.

House Foreign Affairs — 10 a.m. — 2172 Rayburn

State Department Posture

State Department officials will testify on the fiscal 2026 budget request.

Senate Foreign Relations — 10 a.m. — 419 Dirksen

Pending Business

The committee will consider several pending nominations and pieces of legislation.

Senate Foreign Relations — 2:30 p.m. — 419 Dirksen

Middle East Strategies

Outside experts will testify on current U.S. diplomatic strategies towards Middle Eastern countries.

Senate Veterans' Affairs — 4 p.m. — 418 Russell

Nominations

The committee will consider several pending nominations.

Thursday, July 24

Senate Armed Services — 9:30 a.m. — G-50 Dirksen

Nominations

The committee will consider the nomination of Adm. Daryl Caudle to be Chief of Naval Operations.

About Leo Shane III

Leo covers Congress, Veterans Affairs and the White House for Military Times. He has covered Washington, D.C. since 2004, focusing on military personnel and veterans policies. His work has earned numerous honors, including a 2009 Polk award, a 2010 National Headliner Award, the IAVA Leadership in Journalism award and the VFW News Media award.

14. ‘If you can be seen, you can be killed’: Drone warfare forces broad rethink of training, Army leaders say

​What is the 3-5 second rush under drone conditions? ("I am up, he sees me, I am moving, he shoots, I am down.")

‘If you can be seen, you can be killed’: Drone warfare forces broad rethink of training, Army leaders say

Stars and Stripes · by John Vandiver · July 18, 2025

Soldiers with 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division conduct tank maneuver training in 2015, in Estonia. The war in Ukraine has shown that the way tank formations maneuver needs to be rethought, 1st Armored Division commander Maj. Gen. Curtis Taylor said. (Juana M. Nesbitt/U.S. Army)

WIESBADEN, Germany — A recent robotic assault by Ukraine on Russian positions north of Kharkiv marked a watershed moment for how ground combat forces must prepare for war, a top U.S. general said this week.

The attack saw 50 Ukrainian unmanned ground vehicles and aerial drones seize initial positions. It pushed the Russians back and paved the way for Ukrainian troops to hold the territory.

“I think that battle right there indicates that the time to reimagine armor has begun, and we have got to think about what armor will look like in the future,” 1st Armored Division commander Maj. Gen. Curtis Taylor said Thursday.

For tank units, that means thinking about protecting formations with a layered defense, similar to the way a naval aircraft carrier group maneuvers at sea.

“We need to think of a combined arms battalion more like a carrier strike group that has embedded countermeasures,” Taylor said.

Taylor and other top Army commanders discussed how the Russia-Ukraine war has upended traditional ground warfare tactics at the Association of the U.S. Army’s two-day symposium in Wiesbaden.

Strykers from 3rd Squadron, 2nd Cavalry Regiment convoy through Lithuania in 2015. Drones are making large convoys obsolete in battle, Army leaders said at a recent conference in Wiesbaden, Germany. (Michael Abrams/Stars and Stripes)

Maj. Gen. Ronald R. Ragin, commander of the 21st Theater Sustainment Command, listens to another speaker during a panel discussion at the LandEuro defense symposium in Wiesbaden, Germany, July 17, 2025. Ragin said that large convoys will be too susceptible to drone surveillance on future battlefields. (Phillip Walter Wellman/Stars and Stripes)

Defense industry leaders showcased systems for NATO militaries, while commanders stressed the need for faster innovation.

Much of the discussion revolved around how drones have transformed the modern battlefield. The shift affects everything from coordinating assaults to supplying troops and managing the stress of being under constant surveillance.

“To counter (unmanned aerial systems), it can quickly burden small unit leaders,” said Col. Donald Neal, commander of the Vilseck, Germany-based 2nd Cavalry Regiment.

Ground troops are working with a wide range of systems to monitor the skies, which means keeping track of large amounts of unsynchronized data. Managing that data needs to be part of combat arms training, Neal said.

“What’s hard is to get all these systems to talk to each other … getting all the data to be centrally processed and pop up on a common operating picture so you can see the things flying in the air,” he said.

A convoy of 4th Infantry Division vehicles drives along a German autobahn in 2017, on the way to Poland. Supply convoys are vulnerable because of the expansion of drone warfare, Maj. Gen. Ronald R. Ragin, head of the 21st Theater Sustainment Command, said July 17, 2025 at a symposium in Wiesbaden, Germany. (Michael Abrams/Stars and Stripes)

Tanks of the 1st Armored Division return to the assembly area after an exercise in Australia, Aug. 8, 2023. The way tank formations maneuver and are protected needs to be rethought, Army leaders said at a recent conference in Wiesbaden, Germany. (Charlie Duke/U.S. Army)

Meanwhile, the practice of convoying supplies to troops at the front lines is becoming obsolete because of the ubiquitous presence of camera-equipped drones.

“We usually have these large clusters of formations. We like to drive in convoys,” said Maj. Gen. Ronald R. Ragin, commander of the 21st Theater Sustainment Command. “I do not believe that that will be applicable on future battlefields, because if you can be seen, you can be killed.”

The situation also puts pre-positioned weapons stocks at risk, he said. Large NATO warehouses would be immediate targets.

In Ukraine, “I can tell you that ammunition depots were targeted,” Ragin said. “Any fixed facility that can be found was targeted, and it was eliminated on both sides.”

The Army is working with allies to set up discreet, dispersed locations across NATO’s eastern flank and in Northern Europe, he said.

“Matter of fact, some of them are in Estonia, some of them Lithuania, a lot in Poland and then across the theater, so we’ve got to be dispersed,” Ragin said.

Given the high costs of such arrangements, the Army is looking to allies to spend more, he added.

For NATO, there is urgency to boost weapons production.

U.S. European Command’s Gen. Alexus G. Grynkewich, speaking Thursday in Wiesbaden, said allies must prepare for the possibility of a two-front war with Russia and China in the coming years.

“We’re going to need every bit of kit and equipment and munitions that we can in order to beat that,” said Grynkewich, NATO’s supreme allied commander.

In Ukraine, more than 70% of combat vehicle losses since January have been caused by small drone strikes, Taylor said.

It’s now cheaper and easier to take out targets than it is to protect them, he said.

“You see this all the time, with $900 drones destroying $9 million combat systems,” Taylor said. “We’ve got to change that cost calculus if we’re going to be able to operate on the future battlefield.”

Stars and Stripes reporter Phillip Walter Wellman contributed to this report.

Stars and Stripes · by John Vandiver · July 18, 2025

​15. General nominated to lead Army’s new consolidated command for training and transformation

General nominated to lead Army’s new consolidated command for training and transformation

Stars and Stripes · by Rose L. Thayer · July 18, 2025

Lt. Gen. David M. Hodne was nominated by President Donald Trump to lead the Army’s yet-to-be-activated Transformation and Training Command in Austin, Texas. (U.S Army)

AUSTIN, Texas — Lt. Gen. David M. Hodne was nominated by President Donald Trump to lead a new Army command expected to stand up later this year through the merger of Army Futures Command and Training and Doctrine Command, the Defense Department announced Friday.

Hodne was nominated for promotion to four-star general and the position of commander of the Army Transformation and Training Command, which will be headquartered in Austin. He has served as deputy commander of futures and concepts for a Futures Command office at Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Va., since January 2024, which is also when he received his third star.

The Army is expected to release full details of the command consolidation in August but the service has confirmed the headquarters for the four-star leading the Transformation and Training Command will be in Austin, where the four-star who leads Futures Command is now located.

TRADOC is headquartered at Fort Eustis and said it expects some of its personnel and operations to stay in Virginia.

Each command has roughly 1,000 personnel in its respective headquarters.

Hodne’s time as a general has balanced between leading troops, leading the infantry schoolhouse, and shaping Army modernization and conceptualizing the demands of future warfighting. He also spent considerable time deployed after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

He has served as commander of the 4th Infantry Division at Fort Carson, Colo., the Futures Command’s director of the Soldier Lethality Cross Functional Team and commandant of the Army Infantry School at Fort Benning, Ga., according to his Army biography.

He also served as a battalion commander in combat in Iraq with the 3rd Squadron of the 4th Cavalry Regiment and in Afghanistan with the 2nd Battalion of the 75th Ranger Regiment.

Hodne in September addressed the Maneuver Warfighter Conference at Fort Benning, where he described a three-phase approach Futures Command uses to shape the Army — near-term readiness improvements, deliberate modernization in the next decade, and long-term, concept-driven changes for 2040 and beyond.

“We are experimenting with the future force today, testing how new technologies can be integrated into existing systems to give us the edge in future conflicts,” Hodne told conference attendees.

His nomination to lead the new Transformation and Training Command will now go to the Senate for confirmation. The command could be activated as early as Oct. 1, the Army said.

Rose Thayer

Rose Thayer

Rose L. Thayer is based in Austin, Texas, and she has been covering the western region of the continental U.S. for Stars and Stripes since 2018. Before that she was a reporter for Killeen Daily Herald and a freelance journalist for publications including The Alcalde, Texas Highways and the Austin American-Statesman. She is the spouse of an Army veteran and a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin with a degree in journalism. Her awards include a 2021 Society of Professional Journalists Washington Dateline Award and an Honorable Mention from the Military Reporters and Editors Association for her coverage of crime at Fort Hood.

Stars and Stripes · by Rose L. Thayer · July 18, 2025

16. Steel in the Storm: Recent Wars as Guides for Armor Transformation

​Conclusion:

While recent conflicts in Ukraine, Israel, and Nagorno-Karabakh highlight the susceptibilities of poorly employed or outdated armored forces, they also provide valuable lessons for future warfare. The U.S. Army, with its superior training, combined arms principles, and capacity for rapid transformation is uniquely positioned to adapt to these challenges and maintain the combat effectiveness of its armored formations. It will require professional commitment and intellectual collaboration from the soldiers and leaders of the Army’s armor force to get right. Those who would minimize the future role of armored formations because of instances of ineffective employment or vulnerability are taking away the wrong lesson from these wars and would leave the Army unprepared. Rather than signaling the end of armored warfare, the lessons from contemporary conflicts are the call to action to adapt now to meet these new realities. By embodying the principles of adaptability, innovation, and resilience, the U.S. Army can ensure that armored formations not only survive but retain their place as a cornerstone of modern military power and a decisive force in future conflicts.

Steel in the Storm: Recent Wars as Guides for Armor Transformation - War on the Rocks

Lt. Gen. Kevin D. Admiral and Nicholas Drake

July 21, 2025

warontherocks.com · July 21, 2025

Drones turning tanks into bonfires might make great YouTube content, but the real story of armored warfare’s future is going to be much different than you might think.

Some observers and analysts openly question whether the advances in precision-guided munitions, drones, and anti-tank weaponry seen in wars that have dominated professional military analysis over the last five years — Nagorno-Karabakh, the Russian-Ukrainian war, and the war between Israel and Hamas — have made the tank and armored formations into prohibitively expensive, ineffective anachronisms. While they are correct to point out that almost all belligerents in these conflicts have struggled to employ their armor effectively, these critics jump to conclusions which miss the essential function the tank and armor formations can and must perform on the modern battlefield. As leaders of III Armored Corps, we see how the armor force will retain an indispensable role on the battlefield. However, in order to do so it will need to adapt to meet contemporary challenges. Under the framework of the Army’s Transform in Contact initiative, the armored force will need to integrate new technological capabilities, adapt organizational designs, and evolve its training to ensure it continues to fight as a combined arms team.

As the champions for the future armor force, we are seeking to learn the right lessons from these cases of armor employment in recent wars to guide the development of a more lethal and effective fighting force. Furthermore, we will also need to assess the applicability and limits of these lessons when applied against the war the United States does not want but must be ready for: one against China.

BECOME A MEMBER

Armor’s Indispensable Role

Before diving into contemporary conflicts, it is important to summarize the critical role armor has played, and continues to play, in ground combat. Armored formations — when fighting in concert with infantry artillery, engineers, attack aviation, and protection capabilities — allow the combined arms team to seize, retain, and exploit the initiative on the battlefield. Armored vehicles’ combination of mobility, protection, firepower, and shock effect restores mobility to static battlefields when they join the infantry and engineers to advance on an enemy entrenched in prepared defenses. The record in historic and recent battlefield events is clear on this.

Some may grumble about the vulnerability of armored vehicles to the latest anti-tank weapons, the considerable costs to train and equip armored formations, and their operational limitations. But only armored formations — again, when fighting as a combined arms team — can maneuver with the mass, tempo, reach, and endurance to gain positions of advantage that threaten or destroy that which the enemy values most. In complex terrain that restricts larger-scale maneuver, smaller elements of armor forces fight in close coordination lighter formations to destroy enemy strong points or provide mobile counterattack forces. They are the best formation to take the offensive to and defeat the armored formations that all U.S. peer and near-peer adversaries possess, including China, which maintains the largest tank fleet in the world. And with the U.S. Marine Corps’ decision to divest of its armor formations, the U.S. Army armored force is now the sole provider of armored capability to the joint force. These realities are why it’s critically important to transform the Army’s armored forces so they can remain a dominant force on land in any theater, despite the rapidly evolving reality of warfare.

Challenges Faced by Modern Armored Formations

Not all lessons from these cases are directly translatable to all conflicts or threats, particularly a high-end, large-scale war with China in the Indo-Pacific theater. Each of these cases exist within limited, regional specific contexts where the belligerent parties possess varying levels of technical sophistication and military professionalism. They are all conflicts that predominately occurred in the land domain and do not fully display the complexities of multidomain joint integration required in a maritime theater of war. While these cases may lack the scope, scale, and intensity of a war with China, they do offer some compelling insights into how the U.S. armor force has an obligation to adapt.

Armenian Failure to Adapt in Nagorno-Karabakh

The 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan illustrated just how ugly a conflict can become for forces that fail to recognize the evolving character of warfare. Azerbaijan’s effective use of drones, including Turkish Bayraktar TB2s and Israeli Harop loitering munitions, highlighted the vulnerabilities of traditional armored formations for the world to see on social media. Armenian tanks and armored vehicles, largely dug into static defensive positions, were systematically targeted and destroyed, often before they could engage in battle. The continuous stream of images of seemingly helpless armored vehicles reinforced the perception that drones and precision-guided munitions have rendered armored units obsolete.

However, a deeper analysis reveals that the Armenian forces failed to recognize and adapt to changes on the modern battlefield. Their armored units operated without adequate concealment, air defense, or electronic warfare capabilities, leaving them entirely exposed to drone strikes. Once their remaining armor was committed against Azerbaijani forces, poor coordination across formations, a lack of infantry support, and outdated tactics further compounded their losses. The Armenian failures in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict highlight the importance of integrating armored units into a broader network of capabilities to make them an effective fighting force.

For the U.S. Army, the lesson of the Nagorno- Karabakh War is that ignoring the changing character of war will lead to defeat. Even middle-weight powers like Azerbaijan are leveraging new technologies in a reconnaissance strike complex to disintegrate air defenses and attrit maneuver forces to the point of combat ineffectiveness. China, a clear leader in developing these technologies, possesses significantly more advanced systems in far greater qualities and will leverage these capabilities to even more destructive effect.

This is a problem the Army cannot wish away if it hopes to preserve combat power and operational effectiveness in the future. It is essential that the armor force develop an appropriately layered counter-drone network to and tactics to deny or defeat air threats at echelon. In addition to enhancing protection, the armor force should integrate advanced reconnaissance assets and electronic warfare systems to increase its ability to sense and strike adversaries at greater depth.

Russian and Ukrainian High-Cost Failures to Achieve Combined Arms

While much of the analysis about fighting in Ukraine has recently centered on static battles of attrition and the ever-accelerating proliferation of unmanned systems, the conflict provides many lessons about the challenges of employing armored formations against a modern industrialized military in large-scale combat. During the initial phases of the invasion, Russian forces, despite massing thousands of armored vehicles along several axes of advance, failed to achieve success because they proved incapable of coordinating or sustaining ground combat operations. While Ukrainian drones and western anti-armor weapons were deadly against armored vehicles, much of the Russian failure can be attributed to shortfalls in force design, large-scale combat training, and discipline. The battalion tactical groups, Russia’s basic organic fighting unit, were optimized for independent small-scale battles with short lines of supply running from proxy-controlled areas. This design left Russian forces woefully ill-structured for sustained offensives deep into Ukraine in 2022. Furthermore, the Russians training exercises in the run up to the invasion centered around active defense scenarios within Russia territory which did not prepare them to fight at scale with the whole of their army. Once in action, poorly trained and ineptly led units failed to effectively perform essential functions such as reconnaissance, cross-unit coordination, and logistics operations critical to maintaining combat power over time. As a result of these challenges, the Russians were unable to use their armored forces to exploit their invasion’s initial shock and culminated rapidly, allowing Ukrainian forces to regroup and defeat their disorganized mechanized formations in detail.

Much as Russian armored formations initially stumbled in the face of small teams of Ukrainian light infantry armed with anti-tank weapons, so too did Ukrainian forces struggle to employ their armor to achieve operational objectives in the face of complex entrenched defenses during their counteroffensive in 2023. Russian forces, leveraging layered anti-tank defenses, electronic warfare, and a lethal tactical reconnaissance strike complex, inflicted significant losses on Ukrainian armored columns when they attempted to breach the Surovikin line. Ukrainian forces, unfortunately, were inadequately equipped, trained, and supported for the fight which they ultimately encountered. As a result, they were unable to effectively employ combined arms principles while attempting to deliberately penetrate the Russian defenses. Their armored units operated without adequate infantry support, air defense, or air cover, making them vulnerable to repeated attacks from anti-tank guided missiles, attack helicopters, and drones. Moreover, Russian electronic warfare hampered effective communication and situational awareness making coordination between the breaching armor units and supporting artillery and engineer units ineffective. The Ukrainian armored thrust’s tempo subsequently broke down under the enemy disruption, allowing the Russians to reallocate their forces and further attrit Ukrainian combat power until it became clear that they could not achieve their objectives at an acceptable cost. The failure of the counter-offensive highlighted that armored units cannot rely on massing the combat capabilities of their platforms alone to achieve breakthroughs and should continue to adapt to ensure they leverage all arms, including joint enablers, to achieve suppression and create freedom to maneuver.

While the armored forces of both nations have struggled to conduct effective combined arms operations, neither army is rejecting the utility of armored formations in the conflict. On the contrary, both belligerents continue to go to great lengths to bring their armor into the fight, albeit at a smaller scale based on attrition and training shortfalls. Ukrainian armored units’ combination of mobility, protection, and firepower was a critical element in the success of both their counteroffensive in Kharkiv and the initial phases of the Kursk incursion last year. For the armored force, the Russian-Ukrainian war underscores the importance of modernizing doctrine, equipment, and training to adapt to a rapidly evolving battlefield. The U.S. Army should reevaluate armored unit’s organizational design to ensure they are integrated with the advanced reconnaissance, command and control, electronic warfare, and air defense systems that will enable them to maintain their ability to fight, survive, and win in modern combat, particularly against a high-end peer competitor like China. Perhaps the most important lesson to draw from each side’s struggles is that combined arms operations are inherently difficult to perform in war. As a prerequisite, units should develop experienced leaders at each echelon and disciplined soldiers with rigorous training. Absent this professional skill set, all the newest technology cannot and will not generate success. The U.S. Army does this at its combat training centers at a scale, intensity, and frequency that is unmatched in the world. However, even here there is an imperative for the Army to ensure that its combat training centers are continuously replicating the evolving character of war and pushing leaders to become masters of combined arms.

Israeli Combined Arms Columns in Gaza

Although there is limited utility to the effort to prepare for future large-scale combat, the recent conflict between Israel and Hamas offers valuable insights into the continued relevance of armored formations in urban and hybrid warfare. Learning from their own recent history in Lebanon in 2006, the Israel Defense Forces demonstrated the efficacy of integrating armor with infantry, artillery, engineers, and air support in a complex and dynamic environment. While Hamas could not be characterized as a peer competitor with the Israeli military, it persistently employed asymmetric tactics, including extensive use of tunnels, improvised explosive devices, and rocket barrages to attempt to counter Israeli advantages in conventional ground and air power. In response to these challenges, the Israeli military successfully leveraged armored combined arms columns to penetrate Hamas defenses, protect infantry forces as they cleared urban terrain, and provide responsive mobile firepower to overcome strong points. The Israeli military’s advanced defensive systems, such as the Trophy active protection system on the Merkava tank, proved vital countermeasures by neutralizing anti-tank guided missiles and keeping tanks in the fight during sustained offensive operations. Israel’s experience demonstrates that armored forces remain an indispensable asset across the range of military operations when employed with modern technology and adaptive tactics. Although the threat faced by Israeli armored units was different in scale and technological sophistication than those seen in Ukraine and Armenia, several lessons for the U.S. Army remain worthy to heed. Investing in active protection systems, enhancing urban warfare training, and ensuring seamless coordination between armor, infantry, and air assets will be vital to maintaining the effectiveness of armored formations going forward. Other lessons coming out of the conflict, such as the suitability of certain tactics or the value of specific capabilities, do not translate directly to inform the future needs for the U.S. armor force.

What to Learn, Especially for the Indo-Pacific

Since their inception in 1916, armored platforms have continuously adapted to an ever-evolving battlefield, even through the moments when critics declared the tank and armored formations obsolete. Three saliant points emerge from examining these recent cases of recent armored warfare. First, U.S. Army armored forces should integrate new capabilities, specifically counter-drone, electronic warfare, and command-and-control systems, or risk being rendered combat ineffective in future combat operations. Second, they need to reevaluate current organizational designs to ensure they remain fit for purpose — namely combining mobility, protection, firepower, and shock effect to destroy the enemy in sustained, close combat. And third, to be prepared to execute combined arms operations, it’s imperative that armored forces conduct large scale training to stress all warfighting functions against a technologically advanced opposing force in an environment that replicates the demands of modern combat.

The large-scale combat training imperative should be expanded to integrate into a joint force construct as the armor brigade cannot be brought to bear on land in the Pacific region without the integration of joint logistics, intelligence, fires, maneuver, and command and control in all domains. While exercises such as Talisman Sabre 23 and Pacific Fortitude 24 served as initial learning opportunities to better understand armored formation deployment and integration into the theater, continued trials and exercises will be needed. Furthermore, recognizing the geographic realities of the region, armor forces should be trained, organized, and equipped at echelon to enable seamless integration into lighter or joint ground maneuver units which would likely proceed them into the area of operations.

China’s military represents a vastly more technologically advanced adversary than the forces previously discussed, and one that is specifically designed to compete with the U.S. military for dominance in all domains. Considering this, the technical capability gaps above remain a relevant concern that must be addressed in an iterative and aggressive manner. There will be no silver bullet solutions that will allow the armored force to suddenly nullify Chinese advantages in low-cost, AI-enabled drones or blind their integrated reconnaissance-strike complex. The solution will lie in a lead bullet approach — continuously iterating with numerous technologies to construct resilient capabilities in areas such as counter-drone, command and control, and reconnaissance strike that evolve over time to enable the armored force to achieve its core mission of combining mobility, protection, firepower, and shock effect to seize the initiative and destroy enemies in close combat.

Where Do We Go From Here?

For U.S. Army armored formations to maintain their capacity to provide the unmatched mobility, protection, and firepower which make them indispensable in large-scale ground combat, the Army should invest in armored transformation. In the near term, Transformation in Contact will afford the armored community the opportunity to test new organizational designs, technology, and tactics which build on the lessons identified in recent wars. This includes integrating a variety of drone, layered counter-drone, electronic warfare, and command-and-control capabilities tailored to support mounted maneuver. Once integrated, units will test how these technologies can be employed to shorten kill chains, suppress the enemy, enhance situational awareness, mask targetable signatures, and preserve combat power so it is available at critical points in battle. Commanders at each echelon will be required to experiment with novel tactics and inform doctrinal adaptations that will determine how armor forces achieve combined arms and destroy modern adversaries.

Furthermore, Transformation in Contact will enable the armored force to accelerate upgrades to existing combat platforms, such as AI-assisted targeting, active protection systems, and improved fuel efficiency. This iterative process will result in a refined armored brigade organizational design and equipping framework that will ensure that the U.S. Army armor force adapts to meet the demands of the evolving character of war. While the U.S. Army’s current armored combat platforms remain among the most lethal and survivable in the world, the future operating environment demands improvements which the current Abrams tank and Bradley fighting vehicle cannot meet in their current form.

Under the broader framework of Army Transformation Initiative, the U.S. Army should continue to accelerate its development of the next generation of ground combat vehicles that can be manned, optionally manned, or autonomous, decrease sustainment requirements with greater fuel efficiency, and increase mobility through decreased overall weight. Perhaps most importantly, the armored force should foster the culture of innovation and adaptation that has been a defining feature throughout its history. The character of conflict now demands that leaders drive rapid and continuous transformation in contact. The armored force should exploit this opportunity at every level, continuously testing new doctrines, organizations and technologies.

To uphold the U.S. Army’s combined arms edge, the armored force should also enhance training in light of observations gleaned from recent conflicts and understanding of the threat posed by peer adversaries like China. This includes an emphasis on counter-drone tactics, urban warfare, and sustaining large-scale combined arms operations to prepare armored units for future conflicts. Units should also develop proficiency in operating dispersed across wide areas and rapidly consolidating at the right time and place on the battlefield to capitalize on opportunities and generate the mass to overwhelm enemy forces. The U.S. Army rightly places a premium on rigorous training and professional development, ensuring that its armored crews and leaders are among the best in the world. Regular exercises, such as the National Training Center rotations, prepare soldiers for complex, high-intensity combat scenarios, fostering adaptability and resilience. These exercises should replicate, to the maximum extent possible, the contemporary challenges that are shaping the battlefield. Further, the armored force should continue to prioritize rigorous multi-echelon home station training in fire and maneuver and build leaders who are adaptive, creative, and critical thinkers.

Conclusion

While recent conflicts in Ukraine, Israel, and Nagorno-Karabakh highlight the susceptibilities of poorly employed or outdated armored forces, they also provide valuable lessons for future warfare. The U.S. Army, with its superior training, combined arms principles, and capacity for rapid transformation is uniquely positioned to adapt to these challenges and maintain the combat effectiveness of its armored formations. It will require professional commitment and intellectual collaboration from the soldiers and leaders of the Army’s armor force to get right. Those who would minimize the future role of armored formations because of instances of ineffective employment or vulnerability are taking away the wrong lesson from these wars and would leave the Army unprepared. Rather than signaling the end of armored warfare, the lessons from contemporary conflicts are the call to action to adapt now to meet these new realities. By embodying the principles of adaptability, innovation, and resilience, the U.S. Army can ensure that armored formations not only survive but retain their place as a cornerstone of modern military power and a decisive force in future conflicts.

BECOME A MEMBER

Lt. Gen. Kevin D. Admiral is the commanding general of III Armored Corps. He has 31 years of experience leading armor, infantry, and cavalry formations including previous assignments as commanding general of 1st Cavalry Division, chief of armor, and 76th colonel of the 3d Cavalry Regiment.

Nicholas Drake is a U.S. Army officer and the armor brigade transformation lead for III Armored Corps. He has 18 years of experience leading armor and cavalry formations in armored, Stryker, and infantry brigade combat teams.

The views in this article are those of the authors and do not represent those of the U.S. Army, the Defense Department, or any part of the U.S. government.

Image: Midjourney

warontherocks.com · July 21, 2025

17. Making America Alone Again – History Offers Few Parallels for Washington’s Repudiation of Its Own Alliances

​Are we repudiating our alliances?

Is our debt so large because of our alliance mutual defense commitments?

Excerpt:

The United States is now experiencing what the United Kingdom did even in the heyday of its empire. Being the world’s greatest military power is a heavy burden, and partly as a result, the U.S. debt continues to grow to staggering levels. Ambitious powers, China in particular, are pouring resources into an arms race that gets ever more expensive. And, as has happened many times before, other nations are tempted to abandon the old power for the new or group against it to take advantage of what they see as its decline. If Trump’s current hostility to alliances continues and the administration keeps insulting, belittling, and even economically harming its long-standing partners, the United States is going to find the world an increasingly unfriendly place.

Former allies or uncommitted powers may decide, as the Slovak Republic or Serbia have already done, that Putin’s Russia is a better bet; others may bypass the United States with new trade arrangements or, as is happening with European nations and Canada, sharing in their own military production, planning, and mutual deterrence, on the assumption that the United States is no longer a dependable ally. In a harbinger of things to come, Canada has just shipped its first container of liquefied natural gas to Asia. The British once called their position in the world “splendid isolation” until they realized the costs were too high. Trump’s United States may find that, in the dangerous twenty-first century, those splendors are overrated.

Making America Alone Again

Foreign Affairs · by More by Margaret MacMillan · July 21, 2025

History Offers Few Parallels for Washington’s Repudiation of Its Own Alliances

Margaret MacMillan

July 21, 2025

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and U.S. President Donald Trump, Kananaskis, Canada, June 2025 Suzanne Plunkett / Pool / Reuters

MARGARET MACMILLAN is Professor Emeritus of International History at Oxford University and the author of War: How Conflict Shaped Us and The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914.

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Henry Kissinger once compared himself to the lone cowboy who rode into town to sort out the bad guys. But the U.S. secretary of state, who also served as national security adviser, knew different when it came to dealing with major powers. His hero was the Austrian statesman Klemens von Metternich, who somehow brought together the unlikely combination of Austria, the United Kingdom, Prussia, Russia, and a number of even smaller allies and their incompatible leaders into the alliance that finally defeated Napoleon in 1815. As Kissinger understood, even lone rangers need friends.

It is an insight that appears to be lost on U.S. President Donald Trump. Since returning to office in January, Trump has called the United States’ closest allies cheaters and freeloaders. Japan and other Asian trading partners, he insists, are “very spoiled”; immediate North American neighbors stand accused of exporting drugs and criminals. He freely and publicly labels the leaders of some of the United States’ most important democratic partners as has-beens, weak, or dishonest, while heaping praise on autocrats he finds easier to deal with, such as Hungarian President Viktor Orban (“a very great leader”), Salvadoran strongman Nayib Bukele (“a great friend”), North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un (“a smart guy”), and—at least until very recently—Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom he has called “a genius” and “very savvy” in attacking Ukraine. In what would have been unthinkable in previous administrations, including Trump’s first, the United States in February even sided against its own democratic allies and with Russia and other authoritarian states, such as North Korea and Belarus, in voting against a UN resolution that condemned Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and upheld the latter’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Perhaps most baffling, at a time when Washington is trying to contain China and shore up U.S. defenses in the Indo-Pacific, the administration is preparing punitive tariffs on South Korea and Japan, the United States’ closest Asian allies, as well as on a sweeping list of European partners it is trying to keep away from Beijing. U.S. allies around the world are also rattled by the public musings of Trump and members of his cabinet that the so-called nuclear umbrella under which the American nuclear deterrent was a guarantee for their defense is no longer a sure thing. Such is now the level of doubt that in July, France and the United Kingdom announced a new agreement to begin providing extended nuclear deterrence in Europe for themselves, and allies such as South Korea, Poland, and even Japan have begun to contemplate acquiring their own nuclear weapons.

The past offers plenty of examples of world powers falling out with erstwhile alliance partners or seeking new ones. But it’s hard to think of a case in which the leader of a major alliance has so casually and brutally cast aside allies that, for the most part, have been dependable and have accepted its writ. If the United States wants Canadian or Greenlandic resources, those have always been available. Threatening annexation is counterproductive, stirring up anti-Americanism as it has already done. Washington’s NATO allies, it is true, have not been spending enough on defense but that is partly because the United States has insisted for decades on having the dominant role. And when pressed, as at the most recent NATO summit in June, members of the transatlantic alliance have increased their defense budgets, or pledged to do so, to levels that could not have been imagined only a few years ago.

It is difficult to find a plausible explanation for the policies of the second Trump administration. If the president is impatient with existing alliances, he has offered few alternatives beyond an apparent attachment to the old concept of spheres of influence, in which a handful of powers dominate their immediate neighbors, and multilateral organizations, if they survive at all, have little power or authority. Such a world offers greater threats in the future to the United States as the other spheres—presumably including a Chinese-dominated Asia and perhaps a Russian zone in eastern Europe and Central Asia—jostle against it and smaller powers within each sphere either accept their fate often resentfully or look for new hegemons.

By trashing alliances that have served it well, the United States risks a general breakdown of stability and order that will, in the long run, prove highly costly, whether in military expenditure or unending trade wars, as each great power seeks advantage where their zones of interest meet. The striking lack of historical precedents for such behavior does not suggest a clever Machiavellian policy to enhance American power; rather, it shows a United States acting against its own interests in bewildering fashion, undermining one of the key sources of that power. And this comes at a time when American global leadership and economic and technological dominance are already under growing pressure from China and other major rivals.

THE POWER RULE

For centuries, the value of alliances, even among highly disparate countries, has been accepted as a key element of international relations. As far back as history has been recorded, groups, whether clans or nations, have come together for protection against common enemies. In the fifth century BC, the Delian League of Greek city-states defeated the Persian Empire; in 1815, the Grand Alliance of Austria, the United Kingdom, Prussia, and Russia joined forces to vanquish Napoleon’s France. Common cause can bring together the most unlikely partners, such as Catholic France and the Muslim Ottoman Empire, which joined forces in the sixteenth century and remained allies for more than two centuries, or Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union with the United Kingdom and the United States, which together defeated Germany and Japan and the other Axis powers in World War II.

Before the world became so interconnected and communication was more difficult, geography allowed some states to live without allies. Japan was able to remain in lonely isolation for two and a half centuries until it was confronted with a different and more expansive world when the U.S. naval officer Commodore Matthew Perry came calling in 1853. The United States, protected as it once was by two oceans and with no powerful enemies along its land borders, prided itself for much of its history on avoiding alliances. Even when it belatedly entered World War I on the Allied side, President Woodrow Wilson insisted that the United States was an “associated power” rather than an ally. Only after 1945 did it abandon this suspicion of alliances. Facing a hostile Soviet Union and communist China, the Soviets’ then close partner, it entered peacetime defensive alliances, foremost among them NATO, for the first time in its history. As we see today, the isolationist strand in American foreign policy never entirely went away.

As Kissinger understood, even lone rangers need friends.

As the Truman administration learned 80 years ago, even powerful states need allies, partly for reasons of prestige but also because great power has its limits and is costly to maintain. By the late nineteenth century, the British Empire, the biggest the world had ever seen, was experiencing what the historian Paul Kennedy called “imperial overstretch” as it confronted both old rivals, such as France and Russia, and newer ones such as Germany, Japan, and the United States. The British economy was still powerful and its navy ruled the oceans, but others were catching up. The British Treasury and the British taxpayer grumbled at the expense of maintaining dominance.

How widely the United Kingdom had come to be resented was made clear when it struggled to crush the two tiny Afrikaner republics (the Transvaal Republic and the Orange Free State) in the South African War of 1899–1902. The early Afrikaner victories not only showed the inadequacies of the British Army but were generally welcomed around the world. The brutal treatment of Afrikaner civilians further undermined the reputation of the British Empire. At the Paris Exposition in 1900, admiring crowds piled flowers at the Transvaal Pavilion. The realization of how much they were loathed shocked the British into seeing that even they needed friends. In short order, the British government reached understandings with its rivals France, Japan, and Russia, which lessened the chance of conflict with each and encouraged cooperation, and so mitigated the overstretch. The United Kingdom, in the eyes of its contemporaries, remained the world’s dominant power, arguably until the middle of World War II.

As the British experience demonstrates, global power cannot be measured in military resources alone. It is relatively easy to count guns, ships, aircraft, economic output, or scientific and technological strengths, but it is not so easy to gauge competencies, organizational capacity, effective government, or morale. Russia looked strong before its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and for China, Iran, and North Korea, a desirable ally. Today, after three and a half years of unsuccessful war and heavy losses, Russia may be more of a liability. A state has to have credibility in the eyes of others, whether allies or enemies or its own people. When Soviet Russia in the 1980s and then the United States in the first decades of this century failed in Afghanistan in spite of their overwhelming military advantage, those failures dismayed their own allies, pushed away the uncommitted, and shook the faith of their own peoples in their governments while encouraging potential enemies. The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, which was made possible by Russia’s military defeats, should have warned the Soviet regime itself of the consequences of failure—and should be a warning to Putin today.

Nor is power a constant. Despite being on the winning side in both world wars, the United Kingdom found its resources depleted and its empire melting away. Is the United States as powerful as it once was? It has had failures abroad, notably in Afghanistan and Iraq, is increasingly divided at home, and has an exploding national debt and waning investment in crucial infrastructure. And in an age of increasingly fast and long-range missiles, geography no longer provides the barrier to adversaries that it once did. All the more reason to nurture alliances with sympathetic powers rather than spurn them. Canada has never been a threat to the United States, except in hockey, and Canadians have long seen Americans as their close relatives. The border between the two countries is the longest undefended one in the world. The two economies are closely intertwined.

Yet what Trump has done with his talk of the 51st state, his imposition of punitive tariffs, and his threats that the United States will not defend Canada under the proposed Golden Dome missile defense system unless it pays up (and he keeps raising the putative bill), has enraged a normally mild-mannered people. In Ottawa, the mood is one of shock and disbelief. What had seemed the unquestionable bases of Canadian foreign policy are melting like the glaciers in Greenland. What is being destroyed will not be easily mended, certainly not for a generation. And for what?

CONSTANT GARDENERS

Like many other human relationships, alliances are hard work: their management requires patience, forbearance, skill, and, like a garden, repeated tending. The stakes are often high, and the character of the leaders and diplomats involved can be critical. Diplomacy is not about going to cocktail parties, although socializing is part of it. Rather, it is gaining insight into other nations and their leaders and learning how to negotiate with them. Publicly chastising allies on their supposed faults, as Vice President JD Vance did with the Europeans at the Munich Security Conference in February, barking out orders and insults on social media, as the president does almost daily, or publicly releasing letters to other heads of state before they have been delivered to the recipients, only stores up resentments and makes future personal relations more difficult.

If Kissinger had not been able to establish a rapport of mutual respect with his Chinese counterpart, Zhou Enlai, the opening of relations between the United States and China during the Nixon administration might have been delayed for years. The case of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt is perhaps even more telling. From the time that war broke out in Europe in 1939, Churchill worked on, as he put it, wooing Roosevelt like a suitor. He knew that, to prevail, the United Kingdom needed American resources, such as guns and money, and eventually, he fervently hoped, American forces. And for his part, Roosevelt did not want the British to fail. Although he was at first constrained by the American public, which resisted entering the war, he stretched the powers of the presidency to provide as much assistance as he could.

As World War II unfolded, the two leaders traveled thousands of miles by ship and plane to meet each other and Stalin, often at risk to their health and their lives. Without the strong personal relationship between Churchill and Roosevelt, the irritations and cross-purposes that exist in any alliance would have greatly hampered joint strategic planning and vital U.S. military aid under the Lend-Lease Act. The partnership between their two countries was amplified and strengthened by the thousands of experts, administrators, publicists, intellectuals, and serving military who learned, not always easily, to work with one another.

Global power cannot be measured in military resources alone.

Consider the deep and rare friendship that John Dill, the United Kingdom’s senior military representative in Washington, established with the reserved George Marshall, chief of staff of the U.S. Army and Roosevelt’s most important military adviser. Together, the two generals were able to reconcile what were often deep and sometimes acrimonious divisions among their colleagues and between their political masters. Although Churchill and his successors exaggerated just how special the postwar “special relationship” was, it served both the United States and the United Kingdom well from the Berlin airlift at the start of the Cold War to the fall of the Berlin Wall at its end.

Alliances are also unlikely to last beyond their immediate purpose. Churchill and Roosevelt were far less successful in their effort to build a more lasting friendship with Stalin and his Soviet Union. The gulf between the democracies and the Soviet dictatorship was too great: Soviet memories of Allied intervention against the Bolsheviks at the end of World War I, the strained relations of the interwar years, and the deep suspicions, partly born out of Russian history and partly out of Marxist assumptions about the coming final battle between capitalism and socialism, made ordinary relations almost impossible. The need to defeat Nazi Germany and Japan’s military dictatorship was the main glue that held the Grand Alliance together, and when that vanished, so did the relationship. That had happened repeatedly throughout history, whether in the collapse of the Delian League once Persia had been defeated or the Balkan States waging war on one another in 1913 once they had together defeated the Ottoman Empire.

While they are impossible to measure, emotions such as liking or hatred, admiration or contempt—the quotidian stuff of human relations—play a crucial part in making and unmaking alliances. Personal friendships and mutual respect and trust are the oil in the complicated machinery that helps them last. On repeated occasions since 1945, British and American leaders—Harold Macmillan and John F. Kennedy, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Tony Blair among them—have had good relations that have helped reinforce the partnership between their countries. In the absence of such chemistry, or at least some measure of trust between leaders, however, relations can deteriorate surprisingly quickly, as the world is witnessing again today._Alexander I of Russia chafed under Napoleon’s patronage and gradually drifted toward his enemies. Mao Zedong and his colleagues increasingly resented Soviet assumptions of superiority and leadership of the world communist movement, while Stalin’s successor Nikita Khrushchev found the Chinese devious and untrustworthy—contributing to the very public and bitter Sino-Soviet split after 1962.

THROWING AWAY THE CARDS

Since 1945, dozens of countries in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East have depended on their security relationships with Washington. This includes the 31 other members of NATO; Asian countries with formal U.S. military alliances, such as Australia, Japan, and South Korea; and those with less formal but far-reaching U.S. military partnerships, such as Israel and Saudi Arabia. And then there are those countries around the world such as Chile and Vietnam that have tended to work with the United States on a friendly basis. This impressive variety of countries has welcomed U.S. protection and leadership over the decades since the end of World War II not just because the American superpower was strong but because it represented hope for a better and fairer world.

Yet there is now the real possibility that the Western alliance is joining the list of ones that failed. Trump has always been uncomfortable with the give and take of alliance politics. This may be in part because of his own experience in business where he was usually the unchallenged boss. He ran his companies with small offices, unlike the big corporations with their structures and outside boards. In his show The Apprentice, his notorious line was, “You’re fired!”

In his first term, Trump seemed especially uneasy at multilateral meetings where he had to deal with other leaders as equals, such as the G-7 meeting in Canada in 2018 where he arrived late and left early but not before quarreling with the other leaders over their trade policies and tariffs. He further shocked allies when he unilaterally pulled out of important and painstakingly negotiated agreements such as the Paris climate accord and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action to limit Iran’s capacity to develop nuclear weapons (an agreement that bears a distinct resemblance to the one the second Trump administration offered Iran, at least until it was drawn into bombing Iranian nuclear sites in June). Striking a note that became the leitmotif of his second term, he complained, “We’re like the piggy bank that everybody’s robbing.”

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte meeting with Trump, Washington, D.C., July 2025 Nathan Howard / Reuters

Today, Trump is freer to act on his impulses because those established and respected advisers who stood up to him in his first term have been replaced by courtiers and sycophants. From time to time, Trump still has to deal with other democratic powers or even multilateral organizations, and he has made clear his impatience with them. With few exceptions, the Oval Office has become the stage set for a demonstration of Trump’s dominance, and when he makes an appearance at international meetings, he keeps it as brief as possible. And the gratuitous insults—to NATO allies, the European Union, the BRICs, the United Nations, or the World Health Organization—continue to flow from the president. It is hard to make out an overall purpose beyond keeping him the center of attention.

Trump prefers to treat international relations as a series of transactions, holding face-to-face meetings or long phone calls with only one other leader at a time, and seems distinctly more at ease with powerful autocrats than democratic statesmen. If necessary, he will bludgeon both friends and adversaries into submission, assuming they will abandon any opposition if the offer on the table is good enough or if Washington seems to hold the best hand. (“You don’t have the cards right now,” he told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the now infamous Oval Office dressing down.)

If only it were so simple. Nations do not always act on what others assume are their best interests. Hitler thought in 1940 that the United Kingdom had little choice but to capitulate just as Putin believed that Ukraine would give up in a matter of days in the face of the Russian invasion. As Roosevelt had come to realize by the time he died in the spring of 1945, leaders can define interests in different ways. Beliefs and cultural and personal differences can matter as much as more objective factors such as demographics or geography. Stalin came out of a very different world and had very different experiences and goals than did the privileged son of an old American family.

AMERICAN CARNAGE

In Trump’s world, mutual trust and respect, so hard to establish and so easy to destroy, do not matter. Parties will work together if it suits their interests and only until a better offer comes along. Russia sees the advantages of friendship from the United States. European allies will grumble but do what Washington wants or find themselves alone and friendless. China will negotiate on trade, promising for example to buy American agricultural products because it does not want to be shut out of U.S. markets. And if Beijing wants Taiwan, why not let it have it as long as the United States gets something in return? The president seems to assume that current and potential allies see international relations as he does. If you lose one round you may win the next. Yet nations, like individuals, have long memories of past wrongs or defeats, as Trump himself should know.

Trust among individuals or nations is hard to measure, but lasting and productive relations cannot exist without it. During the Cold War, negotiations between the Soviet Union and the United States over arms control were tortuous and drawn out because neither side trusted the other. Incidents such as the American pilot Gary Powers’s intercepted U-2 flight over the Soviet Union in 1960 or the Soviet shooting down of the Korean airliner in 1983 tended to be read by the other side as evidence of malign intent. By contrast, although there were certainly tensions between the United States and its allies, each generally assumed their counterparts were acting in good faith, and there was a willingness to discuss tricky matters and search for mutually acceptable solutions. That no longer exists today and cannot be easily or quickly rebuilt.

The Western alliance could be joining the list of ones that failed.

The United States is now experiencing what the United Kingdom did even in the heyday of its empire. Being the world’s greatest military power is a heavy burden, and partly as a result, the U.S. debt continues to grow to staggering levels. Ambitious powers, China in particular, are pouring resources into an arms race that gets ever more expensive. And, as has happened many times before, other nations are tempted to abandon the old power for the new or group against it to take advantage of what they see as its decline. If Trump’s current hostility to alliances continues and the administration keeps insulting, belittling, and even economically harming its long-standing partners, the United States is going to find the world an increasingly unfriendly place.

Former allies or uncommitted powers may decide, as the Slovak Republic or Serbia have already done, that Putin’s Russia is a better bet; others may bypass the United States with new trade arrangements or, as is happening with European nations and Canada, sharing in their own military production, planning, and mutual deterrence, on the assumption that the United States is no longer a dependable ally. In a harbinger of things to come, Canada has just shipped its first container of liquefied natural gas to Asia. The British once called their position in the world “splendid isolation” until they realized the costs were too high. Trump’s United States may find that, in the dangerous twenty-first century, those splendors are overrated.

Foreign Affairs · by More by Margaret MacMillan · July 21, 2025

18. Is the US Weapons Stockpile Depleted By the War In Ukraine?

​What is the ground truth about our war stocks?

Is the US Weapons Stockpile Depleted By the War In Ukraine?

A brief pause in weapons shipments raised questions about the state of the stockpile

July 18, 2025| Leah Rosenbaum

thewarhorse.org · by Leah Rosenbaum · July 18, 2025

This Quick Take is a look at an issue from our Under the Wire newsletter. Each week, the newsletter breaks down a headline using Operation Timeline. Click here to subscribe to the newsletter.

In the weeks since the White House and the Pentagon briefly scuffled over sending weapons to Ukraine, a question at the core of the debate remains: Is the size of our weapons stockpile large enough to counter mounting threats against the U.S.?

The War Horse sat down with Mark Cancian, a retired Marine Corps colonel and current senior adviser with the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, to discuss the stockpile, Ukraine, and those Patriot weapons systems we agreed to send.

First, a look back at how we got here.

• Feb. 28: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy leaves the White House without signing a minerals deal after a contentious Oval Office meeting.
• March 3: Trump pauses military aid for Ukraine. Critics argue the pause weakens national security.
• April 11: Hegseth virtually attends a Ukrainian defense coordination.
• June 4: Hegseth skips a Ukraine military aid meeting. It is the first time a U.S. defense secretary has not attended since the war began.
• June 5: Trump suggests Russia and Ukraine should “fight for a while.”
• July 1: Pentagon stops promised shipments to Ukraine. Officials said the U.S. stockpile had declined too much.
• July 8: The White House and Pentagon are at odds over sending weapons to Ukraine.
• July 9: U.S. resumes sending some weapons to Ukraine after pause.
• July 11: NATO will pay for US weapons sent to Ukraine, Trump says.
• July 13: US will send Patriot missiles to Ukraine.

Q: What do we know about the current state of the U.S. weapons stockpile?

There is no hard answer, Cancian said, because the Department of Defense does not publish numbers of the current weapons stockpiles, “so that has to be inferred.” However, it is possible to make some rough calculations. Right now, he said, “there’s no question that the stockpile of certain weapons is low.”

This could be a security risk in some scenarios, Cancian said, like if a prolonged conflict on the Korean Peninsula or with China emerged.

The Pentagon disputed a report earlier this month in The Guardian that the U.S. has about 25% of the Patriot missile interceptors it needs after tapping stockpiles for operations in the Middle East in recent months.

Cancian said the broad categories of weapons from the U.S. stockpile that are probably low now include artillery ammunition, artillery systems, rocket systems, air defense munitions, and anti-tank munitions. “Those are areas where DOD has invested money to increase the production rate. That’s an indicator that those are especially stressed.”

Q: How long has this been an issue?

The U.S. has been sending weapons to Ukraine for nearly three years, and has been sending weapons to other countries as well, including Israel.

But not all the weapons that we send to Ukraine come directly from our stockpile. Cancian said there are two mechanisms by which we send military equipment to Ukraine: drawdowns of the current stockpile and manufacturing of new equipment. The drawdown method is faster, and Ukraine can get the weapons in about six months.

Cancian says that DOD has a threshold for drawdowns, however. When that threshold is reached, the rest of the promised weapons must be manufactured first, then sent to Ukraine. This process takes much longer — up to 42 months.

Operation Timeline: The Trump Administration’s Impact on Veterans and the Military

Q: How did the current level of the weapons stockpile contribute to the brief pause in weapons shipments to Ukraine at the beginning of July?

Cancian said two factors caused the pause, which only lasted a few days. The first was the low level of certain items in the U.S. weapons stockpile.

The other factor was a “shift in strategy,” which he attributes to Elbridge Colby, the current Under Secretary of Defense for Policy at the Department of Defense. “He regards Ukraine as a distraction, and every weapon that you send to Ukraine is one weapon that could help us in a potential conflict with China,” Cancian said.

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On July 13, the Wall Street Journal reported that a memo Colby wrote about depleted U.S. stockpiles and shared with DOD Secretary Pete Hegseth may have contributed to the pause.

However, the Associated Press reported that this strategy shift caught the President off guard, and weapons shipments to Ukraine soon resumed.

Q: How will the new weapons shipments to Ukraine impact the US weapons stockpile dilemma?

The President recently pledged multiple Patriot missile defense systems worth billions of dollars to Ukraine, with NATO countries footing the bill.

It is unclear where exactly these systems are coming from, Cancian said. Some may already exist and just need to be shipped, while others might still need to be built by the manufacturer, Raytheon Technologies.

In addition to the U.S., 18 countries currently have Patriot systems, and others are buying them, including Germany, Switzerland, Poland, and Morocco.

Q: How will the Patriot missiles help Ukraine turn the tide of the war with Russia?

Cancian said that while these surface-to-air missile interception systems are very useful, “they are just one piece of an air defense system that Ukraine needs help with.”

Patriot is a high-end system that costs about $3 million a shot and specifically shoots down ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and aircraft, Cancian said. These are extremely deadly threats, but they are only about 5% of the air defense threats that Ukraine faces, he said.

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The other 95% come from low-flying Kamikaze drones, which the Patriot system can’t defend against. So are the Patriot missile systems “a game changer? No,” Cancian said. “There’s no such thing as a game changer.” The Ukrainian army still needs other supplies, including ammunition, trucks, and medical supplies to keep fighting against Russia.

This War Horse explainer was reported by Leah Rosenbaum, edited by Mike Frankel. Hrisanthi Pickett wrote the headlines.

thewarhorse.org · by Leah Rosenbaum · July 18, 2025

19. Exclusive | Donald Trump and Xi Jinping tipped to meet ahead of or during Apec summit in South Korea

Exclusive | Donald Trump and Xi Jinping tipped to meet ahead of or during Apec summit in South Korea

Sources said the US leader might visit China beforehand or meet his Chinese counterpart on the sidelines of the event

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3318921/donald-trump-and-xi-jinping-tipped-meet-ahead-or-during-apec-summit-south-korea?tpcc=enlz-china&UUID=b6aa9fa1-137f-48da-8e5d-b6a303526224&next_article_id=3318917&article_id_list=3319013,3319006&tc=25

Mark Magnierin New YorkandAlyssa Chenin Hong Kong

Published: 10:03pm, 20 Jul 2025Updated: 11:08pm, 20 Jul 2025

This year’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in South Korea is probably the best opportunity for Xi Jinping and Donald Trump to meet in person this year, multiple sources have said.

They said Trump might visit China before going to the Apec summit between October 30 and November 1, or he could meet his Chinese counterpart on the sidelines of the Apec event.

According to South Korean media reports, Xi plans to attend the event in Gyeongju, but Trump’s participation is yet to be confirmed.

Earlier this month Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had their first face-to-face meeting – a potentially important step towards the two presidents meeting. Meanwhile, in a phone call last month, Xi invited Trump and his wife to visit China, an invitation the US president reciprocated.

Rubio told reporters after meeting Wang that there was a “strong desire on both sides” for a meeting between the two presidents.

US-China relations have fluctuated since Trump returned to the White House in late January and threatened heavy tariffs of up to 145 per cent on Chinese goods. Since then, however, both sides have worked to stabilise relations, agreeing on a preliminary trade deal that eases China’s rare-earth export restrictions and US technology trade barriers.

Trump and Xi discuss Taiwan, troubled US-China trade ties in call breaking stand-off

Analysts said a meeting in China before the Apec summit or on the sidelines was the most likely scenario, adding that Trump may visit Shanghai or another location rather than Beijing, to distinguish it from his 2017 visit to the Chinese capital.

Diao Daming, an international relations professor at Renmin University in Beijing, said: “Under favourable conditions and an appropriate atmosphere, any form of interaction between the two leaders will aid in the stabilisation and development of US-China relations.”

A meeting between Trump and Xi would be beneficial from China’s point of view, according to Bonnie Glaser, managing director of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, who cited her discussions with Chinese counterparts.

“They maintain that a leaders’ meeting could create greater stability in the relationship,” Glaser said. “It would also present an opportunity for Xi to press Trump to ease some restrictions on technology and reaffirm that the United States doesn’t support Taiwan independence – and perhaps say that the US supports peaceful reunification.”

Beijing views Taiwan as part of its territory that must be reunited with mainland China, by force if necessary. Most countries, including the US, do not recognise it as an independent state, but Washington opposes any attempt to take the island by force and is legally bound to provide arms to help it defend itself.

Sun Chenghao, a fellow at Tsinghua University’s Centre for International Security and Strategy, said a direct leaders’ meeting would be beneficial for breaking the impasse on issues such as fentanyl and tariffs.

“If certain issues can be clarified directly through a summit between the two leaders, I believe we could see relatively swift breakthroughs in specific areas of US-China relations, where leaders could effectively mobilise efforts at the working level.”

Chen Qi, a professor of international relations at Tsinghua, said: “Both sides are indeed working to create a conducive atmosphere for a meeting. Despite some fluctuations since June, there was a mutual effort to establish an improved atmosphere for a potential meeting”

As long as the pair can achieve a certain degree of “mutual cooperation”, particularly on issues that Trump cares about such as trade and export controls, it would foster positive interactions, Chen added.

Diplomatic observers agreed Trump wanted the meeting more than Xi, handing an advantage to Beijing.

“It’s up to China. Trump would be on a plane to Beijing tomorrow if he could,” said Jeremy Chan, a senior analyst with Eurasia Group.

“China is very protocol driven and wants all agreements lined up well in advance while Trump would be happy to hash it all out over a Big Mac.”

However, analysts warned that several factors could jeopardise a meeting, including Taiwan or the actions of the more hawkish elements in Washington.

“The summit will be well telegraphed in advance,” said Chan. “But all it would take would be one slip up along the way to derail the whole thing.”

Diao said that if the US insisted on containing China or “interfering” over Taiwan, it would create obstacles to the leaders’ meeting.

Reports that Taiwanese leader William Lai Ching-te intends to transit in the US ahead of a trip to the island’s Latin American allies have already prompted condemnation from Beijing.

Xin Qiang, deputy director of the Centre for American Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai, said the prospects for a meeting were uncertain and Beijing would closely monitor how the US handles Lai’s transit.

“If significant provocative incidents occur during Lai’s transit, or if Washington extends an overly high-profile reception, it could erode the goodwill and trust that have been painstakingly built up to this point.”

But Chen predicted that Trump would not play the Taiwan card during the summit preparations.

Analysts said the summit was likely to have a visible lead-up if it was on track, citing the meeting between Rubio and Wang as a possible first step and Trump’s decision to allow Nvidia to sell AI chips to China.

They said there may be other signs of progress – such as meetings on fentanyl, US export controls and rare earths – as well as a possible further meeting between Rubio and Wang.

Chan of Eurasia Group said Beijing was likely to keep the sanctions it imposed on Rubio as a senator over his comments on human rights, Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Taiwan, to keep some leverage and avoid the impression it was bowing to Washington.

But if he were to visit China, a “suspension” or some other face-saving arrangement would probably be worked out.

Mark Magnier

Before joining the Post in Washington, Mark worked in China, India and Japan for the Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times and was a Knight-Wallace journalism fellow. He’s covered economic, social and political issues throughout Asia and conflicts in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq, including weeks spent camping under Saddam Hussein’s bridges.

Alyssa Chen

Alyssa joined the Post in 2023 as a reporter on China desk to cover diplomacy. Her interests lie in cross-strait relations and Sino-Japan relations. Previously, she was the Asia Correspondent for the Japan Times, and graduated from the University of Hong Kong.

​20. ‘Eliminate toxic influences’: China’s military issues new political guidelines after wave of corruption cases

‘Eliminate toxic influences’: China’s military issues new political guidelines after wave of corruption cases

The guidelines follow a series of scandals that have seen a dozen senior PLA commanders being placed under investigation

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3319030/eliminate-toxic-influences-chinas-military-issues-new-political-guidelines-after-wave-corruption?utm

Vanessa Caiin Shanghai

Published: 6:25pm, 21 Jul 2025

China’s top military body has issued a new set of guidelines for political officers following a series of corruption cases.

The regulations, released by the Central Military Commission (CMC), were designed to “strengthen political loyalty”, according to the official newspaper PLA Daily. It stressed the importance of Communist Party officials embedded within the military “acting with fairness and integrity in personnel matters, and leading by example”.

A commentary published by the newspaper on Monday said the new rules drew “clear political red lines, boundaries on the exercise of power and limits on social interactions”, and “represented a solemn commitment to the entire military”.

The report did not say when the new rules had been issued and the full text has not been made public.

The guidelines come in the wake of an anti-corruption purge that has seen more than a dozen People’s Liberation Army generals and some defence industry executives being placed under investigation.

President Xi Jinping has repeatedly emphasised the importance of party loyalty to strengthen ideological control and support China’s goal of becoming a military superpower.

PLA Daily said cadres were required to “set an example through their own actions, and inspire the troops and earn the trust of officers and soldiers through a strong work ethic and exemplary image”.

The “regulations on vigorously promoting fine traditions, fully eliminating toxic influences, and rebuilding the image and authority of political cadres”, laid out strict standards for political cadres, saying they should “take the lead in building credibility, and strictly eliminate malpractice”.

A commentary published in PLA Daily said “building a politically loyal, combat-focused, and well-disciplined political workforce requires a spirit of thorough self-reform to confront deep-rooted problems and eliminate factors that harm the [PLA’s] image and authority”.

Last month, Miao Hua, a top general who once oversaw the PLA’s ideology work, was removed from the CMC.

His dismissal followed the removal of former defence minister Li Shangfu from the CMC in October 2023. Li’s predecessor Wei Fenghe is also under investigation on suspicion of corruption and expelled from the party.

China sacks defence minister Li Shangfu with no explanation after nearly two-month absence

He Weidong, the second-ranked vice-chairman of the CMC and one of the 24 members of the Communist Party’s Politburo, has not been seen in public since the end of the annual legislative session in March and has missed a number of public engagements since then.

He is the third most powerful commander of the PLA and is considered a close associate of Xi.

Last month, it was also announced that Vice Admiral Li Hanjun, the navy’s chief of staff, had been expelled from the national legislature – a clear hint that he is also facing disciplinary action.

At least 16 military lawmakers have been removed from the National People’s Congress since its current term began in March 2023.

Vanessa Cai

Vanessa Cai is a reporter for the China desk, based in Shanghai. Previously she worked for Caixin Global in Beijing and Shanghai-based news outlet Sixth Tone.

21. US reporter goes inside the House of Huawei (Book Review)

​Excerpts:

A technology reporter for the Washington Post, Dou provides the background to questions such as:

• How did Huawei get so big so quickly?
• What relationship does Ren have with the Chinese military?
• Is Huawei spying for the Chinese Communist Party?

...

Speaking in Beijing last Wednesday, Huang said, “Anyone who discounts Huawei and anyone who discounts China’s manufacturing capability is deeply naïve.” But that doesn’t mean that Dou’s conclusion is necessarily wrong, only that a book cannot keep up with the news, particularly in the case of fast-moving technologies.

What the news can’t match is Dou’s thorough exploration of the evolution of Huawei’s management, its legal and political battles in China and the US, and the character of Ren Zhengfei and its other key personnel. House of Huawei is an excellent source for scholars, journalists and anyone else interested in the rise of China.

US reporter goes inside the House of Huawei - Asia Times

Eva Dou’s new book explains most of what you need to know about China’s outstanding and controversial company

asiatimes.com · by Scott Foster · July 21, 2025

“As a military man I have known many clever and truly outstanding strategists. I have rarely come across an individual more strategically oriented than Ren.”

With this quote from Admiral William A. Owens, former vice-chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff and former CEO of Nortel, Eva Dou introduces her detailed account of Chinese entrepreneur Ren Zhengfei and Huawei, the company that he founded and has led to global prominence.

A technology reporter for the Washington Post, Dou provides the background to questions such as:

• How did Huawei get so big so quickly?
• What relationship does Ren have with the Chinese military?
• Is Huawei spying for the Chinese Communist Party?

House of Huawei: The Secret History of China’s Most Powerful Company (Portfolio / Penguin, 2025, 406 pages) takes the reader through Ren’s early life, his years in the military, Huawei’s origins in the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone established under the rule of Deng Xiaoping, Ren’s political education and how he has used it to advance the company’s interests, Huawei’s rise to the top of the global telecommunications equipment market, the US government’s attempt to shut it down and the start of its recovery.

The story begins with the arrest of Ren’s daughter and Huawei CFO Meng Wangzhou (Sabrina Meng) by Canadian authorities at Vancouver International Airport in December 2018 and concludes with her release in September 2021 and the company’s subsequent development under sanctions. The timeline of events at the end of the book stops with the launch of Huawei’s Mate 60 Pro 5G smartphone in September 2023.

Focused on corporate structure, management and the question of just what sort of company Huawei is (and needing to stop somewhere), Dou does not address the evolution of Huawei into a diversified technology company that is far more sophisticated and influential than it was when the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) of the U.S. Department of Commerce put sanctions on it in May 2019.

Born in 1944, Ren grew up in poverty in the early years of the People’s Republic of China, during the struggle to establish a communist society, on the edge of starvation during the Great Leap Forward, in the dangerous political chaos of the Cultural Revolution. The son of an educator who was attacked and humiliated by students during the rampage of the Red Guards, and of a mother who supported his love of learning, he was the only one of seven children to attend university.

In 1968, after graduating from the Chongqing Institute of Architecture and Engineering with a degree in heating, gas supply and ventilation engineering, Ren went to work at Base 011, a military factory hidden in the caves of Guizhou Province, not far from Vietnam. He worked as a cook, a plumber and a technician, studying electronics in his spare time.

After that, he was dispatched to train at the Xi’an Instruments Factory, which made pressure gauges, thermometers and other devices, and then to Liaoyang in the far northeast with the PLA Engineering Corps to build a nylon and polyester factory. Ren was not a soldier, but he adopted military attitudes and a strong sense of patriotism.

“He would inculcate Huawei with a military-esque culture,” writes Dou, “running new hires through army-inspired boot camps and emphasizing discipline and personal sacrifice. He peppered his speeches with military analogies and references to famous battles. Years later, he still carried himself with a soldier’s bearing.”

In Liaoyang, Ren’s unit was assigned to test and calibrate instruments brought by French technical advisors. These included differential pressure transmitters, which measure the rate of flow through a pipe. Frustrated by the old and inaccurate Soviet gauges on hand and inspired after learning about a new type of precision gauge made in the US, he decided to build his own. In 1979, after a great deal of work, he published a small book about his invention entitled A Floating Ball-Precision Pressure Generator – Air Pressure Balance.

By then, Ren had been sent to Jinan, where he was made deputy director of a research institute. And he had attended China’s first National Science Conference, where Deng Xiaoping declared that scientists were part of the working class. This made it possible for him to join the Communist Party, which would greatly facilitate his career in China but raise the incurable suspicion of the Americans.

And so it was that after the PLA Engineering Corps was disbanded in 1982, Ren was able to move to Shenzhen with the experience, drive and connections that would first land him a job at a subsidiary of the South Sea Oil Corporation and then, when Shenzhen legalized privately owned technology companies, strike out on his own. In September 1987, at the age of 42, Ren founded Huawei Technologies Co.

Huawei started off as a contract assembler and distributor of telephone switches, but Ren wanted to build his own. To do this, he recruited engineering talent and began to copy a Chinese-made switch, a simple PBX (Private Branch Exchange), that was already on the market.

The engineers he hired included Guo Ping, who is now chairman of Huawei’s supervisory board, who joined Huawei in 1988; and Hu Houkun (Ken Hu), who is now one of the four rotating chairs of the company’s board of directors, who joined in 1990. Two other current rotating chairs, Xu Zhijun (Eric Xu) and Liang Hua (Howard Liang), joined in 1993 and 1995. The fourth is Ren’s daughter, Meng Wanzhou.

Image: Asia Society

In 1993, Ren bet the company on the development of an advanced digital PBX that could handle 10,000 telephone calls at once. The following year, having obtained the support of the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications and formed a joint venture with provincial telecommunications bureaus, Huawei had both a functioning prototype and recognition as a company that could help China eliminate its dependence on foreign suppliers of telecom equipment.

When national leader Jiang Zemin, himself an engineer, visited Shenzhen, Ren told him:“A country without its own program-controlled switches is like one without an army.” Ren added that such switches are “related to national security” and that their “software must be held in the hands of the Chinese government.”

After that, Huawei’s domestic business took off as it and Chinese rivals, led by ZTE, displaced foreign suppliers such as Northern Telecom (Nortel), Ericsson and Fujitsu with a combination of low prices, aggressive marketing, government favoritism and steady technological advance. Foreign equipment was ripped out and replaced, something that Huawei itself would experience in the US and other countries many years later.

Huawei also began to expand outside China, starting in California in 1993 and moving on to Hong Kong, Russia, Europe, Latin America and the rest of the world. Faced with entrenched competition in advanced countries, it sought an advantage in less attractive markets including Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran. That earned it the attention of the US military (which bombed an optical fiber network Huawei was building in Iraq in 2001) and the National Security Agency (NSA).

In February 2003, Cisco sued Huawei for patent infringement, dropping its suit in July 2004. Neither side revealed the details of the settlement, merely indicating that they were satisfied, but suspicion of Huawei only increased. The FBI interviewed Ren during his visit to New York in 2007, Motorola sued Huawei in 2010 and the House Select Committee on Intelligence looked into the activities of both Huawei and ZTE in 2012.

In 2014, the New York Times and Der Spiegel, citing documents made public by Edward Snowden, reported that the NSA had hacked Huawei’s email system in 2009, had also gained access to its source code and was even using Huawei telecom infrastructure to conduct its own spying operations.

Also in 2014, Meng Wanzhou was detained for questioning at JFK Airport in New York. In 2016, the U.S. Department of Commerce put sanctions on ZTE, and in August 2018, President Trump prohibited US government agencies from using ZTE and Huawei equipment. When Meng Wanzhou was arrested in Vancouver in December of that year, the immediate pretext was Huawei’s business in Iran, which contravened US sanctions.

But there was a lot more to it than that. Huawei had become the world’s top supplier of leading edge 5G mobile telecom equipment, with the highest market share, the most advanced technology and by far the lowest prices. Western vendors, who had invented and until recently dominated the telecom equipment market, were going the way of the Dodo bird.

On top of that, the US, Australia and others were worried that China would do to them what the US had been doing to China, with serious consequences for national security. As former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull wrote about banning Huawei’s 5G equipment, “That didn’t mean we thought Huawei was currently being used to interfere with our telecommunication networks. Our approach was a hedge against a future threat, not the identification of a smoking gun but a loaded one.”

As things stand now, the use of Huawei and ZTE 5G equipment has been banned or greatly restricted in the US and Canada, western Europe, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. But because countries not allied with the US have not cooperated, and because the Chinese market is so big, Huawei remains the world’s top supplier.

Near the end of her narrative, Dou writes:

But make no mistake: The US government has succeeded in halting Huawei’s rise. Huawei is no longer setting new sales records each year but is instead working to regain its 2020 levels…[and] it remains to be seen if Huawei can maintain its place as an R&D leader in the next generation, and the one after that.

However, Huawei’s financial results for 2024 show sales up 35% since 2021, when sanctions hit hardest, reaching 96% of their 2020 peak with a higher operating margin. And, in addition to returning to the 5G cell phone market in defiance of US sanctions on the Chinese semiconductor industry, Huawei has taken the lead in 5G-Advanced (5.5G) mobile telecom technology, replaced Oracle’s ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software with its own, become a significant supplier of autonomous driving solutions, and impressed both Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and industry analysts with its AI processing technology.

Speaking in Beijing last Wednesday, Huang said, “Anyone who discounts Huawei and anyone who discounts China’s manufacturing capability is deeply naïve.” But that doesn’t mean that Dou’s conclusion is necessarily wrong, only that a book cannot keep up with the news, particularly in the case of fast-moving technologies.

What the news can’t match is Dou’s thorough exploration of the evolution of Huawei’s management, its legal and political battles in China and the US, and the character of Ren Zhengfei and its other key personnel. House of Huawei is an excellent source for scholars, journalists and anyone else interested in the rise of China.

Follow this writer on X: @ScottFo83517667

asiatimes.com · by Scott Foster · July 21, 2025

22. Ed Feulner Built Institutions in Support of American Values by Mike Pence

Ed Feulner Built Institutions in Support of American Values

The Heritage founder lamented the right’s turn against free markets and U.S. global leadership. RIP.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/ed-feulner-built-institutions-in-support-of-american-values-heritage-foundation-5edee202

By Mike Pence

July 20, 2025 5:10 pm ET

Edwin Feulner, co-founder of the Heritage Foundation, speaks in Seoul, May 14, 2024. Photo: Yonhap News/Zuma Press

The conservative movement has lost one of its true giants and I have lost a mentor and cherished friend. Ed Feulner was many things: scholar, strategist, counselor to presidents, but above all, he was a great man and an American statesman who devoted his life to the defense of our nation’s first principles. Ed believed that this nation wasn’t only exceptional, but good—and that its future would rise or fall on our fidelity to timeless truths. In an age of cynicism, Ed reminded us that one man with courage and conviction can still shape the course of human history, just as he did.

As the founder of the Heritage Foundation, Ed was a leading voice of conservatism for more than 50 years. Under his leadership, Heritage became both a center for scholarship and a powerhouse of strategic influence. I first met him in 1991, when Heritage launched an effort to strengthen public policy leadership in the states. That initiative would later give rise to the State Policy Network. At the time, I was a young lawyer in Indiana, freshly inspired by the Reagan Revolution.

Encouraged by Ed’s leadership, I had the opportunity to lead the Indiana Policy Review Foundation, an early part of a network of think tanks that now spans state capitols across the country advocating federalism, free enterprise and traditional values to policymakers and the public. Even then, Ed carried himself with the quiet assurance of a movement elder. Yet he was never aloof. He was generous with his time, practical in his advice, and relentlessly focused on results.

Ed believed, deep in his bones, that ideas have consequences—but only if people know about them. That simple yet profound insight guided everything he did. He understood that the battle of ideas was more than an academic exercise, and to win, conservatives must match the left’s institutional power with institutions of our own.

On Capitol Hill, Ed founded the Republican Study Committee, a caucus that would become the home for conservatism in Congress. During my years as chairman of the caucus, I would often turn to Ed for intellectual ammunition and moral clarity. Whether the issue was taxes and spending, life or America’s place in the world, Ed was a constant and unapologetic voice for traditional conservatism, even when that meant challenging congressional leaders and a president of his own party. Ed simply understood that free markets, strong families and a robust national defense allow America to lead the world not just with strength, but by example.

As vice president, I relied on Ed’s counsel more than ever. While others chased the headlines of the day, Ed focused on laying the groundwork for victories to come. His advice, seasoned by experience, was always grounded in abiding principle and played a leading role in shaping the conservative record of the first Trump administration.

Even after stepping back from day-to-day leadership at Heritage, Ed remained a guiding force. As a board member of our foundation, Advancing American Freedom, he continued to shape the soul of the movement he helped build, even co-authoring an essay with me this summer in National Affairs on the state of our movement in this age of populism on the right. Ed had no patience for fleeting applause or fashionable causes. What concerned him, as always, was the long-term health of the American Republic, and the strength of the institutions that would defend it for generations to come.

Bold as ever, Ed called out “an existential identity crisis” that now grips the American right and warned that our “political movement once united by a commitment to limited government, moral order, and a robust defense of American ideals now appears fractured, its purpose clouded by populist grievances and ideological drift.” I will always count it a high honor to have shared the byline on what may well have been his final word to our movement.

As conservatives mourn Ed’s passing, we would do well to remember his example. Ed didn’t just build up institutions; he cultivated a movement that brought ivory tower ideas into the public square and never lost sight of the moral and spiritual foundations of liberty.

Above all, as for so many other conservatives, Ed was my friend and a fellow traveler whose wisdom, warmth and leadership will be deeply missed. But we take comfort in knowing that his legacy lives on—in the institutions he built, the leaders he inspired, and the countless Americans who still believe, as he did, in the enduring promise of freedom and the unfailing providence of almighty God. God bless Ed Feulner.

Mr. Pence served as vice president of the United States, 2017-21.

​23. ‘John Hancock’ Review: A Signature Founding Father

​We are still learning about our founding fathers.

‘John Hancock’ Review: A Signature Founding Father

A wealthy merchant with a penchant for luxury, the Founder with a famous signature contributed more to the revolution than his critics allowed.

https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/books/john-hancock-review-a-signature-founding-father-cc7a8cf8

By Mark G. Spencer

July 20, 2025 10:33 am ET

He is popularly remembered today for his famous signature, scrawled on the Declaration of Independence—or so the story goes—in letters so large that King George III could read it without his eyeglasses. In his day, John Hancock, the son of a Braintree, Mass., minister, would rise to become a wealthy merchant and prominent politician, numbering among the Founding Fathers.

Grab a Copy

John Hancock: First to Sign, First to Invest in America's Independence

Hancock (1737-93) is hardly a forgotten figure. Nigh a decade goes by without at least one book devoted to him. Recent accounts include Nina Sankovitch’s (2020) and Brooke Barbier’s (2023). Do we need another? In “John Hancock,” Willard Sterne Randall contends that negative portrayals by jealous contemporaries and prejudiced early historians have obscured Hancock’s “underappreciated contributions.” One critic mockingly called him “King Hancock.” Another described him as “shallow and vainglorious”—traits that might be discerned lurking in John Singleton Copley’s portrait of Hancock gracing the book’s cover.

Having published widely on the American Revolution, largely through biographies—Ethan Allen, Benedict Arnold, Franklin, Hamilton, Jefferson and Washington—Mr. Randall here aims to “explore Hancock’s thirty-year relationship with other Founding Fathers as they labored together to give birth to the United States of America.”

Baptized in the same parish and around the same time as John Adams, young John moved with his mother into his grandfather’s home when Hancock’s father died in 1744. A life-defining moment came a year later, when his wealthy, childless uncle and aunt, Thomas and Lydia Hancock, took him in. The 8-year-old John left “the crowded small-town manse in Lexington,” writes Mr. Randall, for “a mansion atop Beacon Hill and the privileged status of adopted son and putative heir to one of colonial America’s wealthiest entrepreneurs.”

After study at Harvard and a year abroad, Hancock learned the inner workings of the House of Hancock mercantile firm. During the unsettled years following the Seven Years’ War and after his uncle’s death in 1764, Hancock expanded the business in lucrative ways, cornering the Nantucket whale oil market and introducing franchises. Adams, a lifelong friend, later recalled him as “steady, ready, punctual, industrious [and] indefatigable.” Mr. Randall reminds us that Hancock was also willing to extend credit and regularly provided for the needy. He would also donate generously to the cause of American independence.

With tensions building between the colonies and Britain, Hancock sided with the nascent anti-royalist movement, despite his wealth. Unpopular measures passed by Parliament—the Sugar Act of 1764 and especially the hated Stamp Act of 1765—induced Hancock, who by this time possessed substantial influence, to promote a boycott of British luxuries. When Parliament repealed the Stamp Act in 1766, Hancock partied: Throwing open Beacon Hill, he laid out “rows of tables in the yard in front of the mansion, where he offered to share a cask 125 gallons of Madeira, barrels of cider and plates of food,” Mr. Randall records. Later that night he sponsored public fireworks. Hancock was fast becoming a popular hero.

After confrontations with customs officials over searches for contraband on his ships the Lydia and the aptly named Liberty, Hancock found himself in and out of court, defended by Adams. Increasingly, Hancock also found himself at odds with other wealthy New Englanders, among them Thomas Hutchinson, the governor of Massachusetts. Although the two merchants had a shared background as Harvard alumni, their relationship “had become stormy,” writes Mr. Randall, with Hutchinson even trying to block Hancock’s election to speaker of the House of Representatives.

In 1774 Hancock gave the fourth annual Massacre Day Speech commemorating the so-called Boston Massacre: He was now firmly aligned with the Patriots. When the British and Americans exchanged gunfire at Lexington and Concord in April 1775, Hancock fled Boston, pursued by British authorities as a traitor. A month later, in Philadelphia, the Second Continental Congress made Hancock its president. He worked tirelessly, despite excruciating pain from gout. Meanwhile, Britain’s Gen. Henry Clinton took up residence in Hancock’s lavish Beacon Hill mansion.

In 1780 Hancock was elected the first governor of the commonwealth of Massachusetts. The 43-year-old Hancock assumed “the office with a flourish,” submits Mr. Randall. He was carried to the Statehouse in his “favorite yellow carriage” wearing “a crimson velvet waistcoat with gold trim and matching buttons and an embroidered white vest” and “escorted by one hundred mounted men of the Corps of Cadets with swords drawn,” Mr. Randall writes. Hancock’s old rival Samuel Adams was not impressed, seeing, as he put it, “more pomp and parade than is consistent with the sober republican principle.” Mr. Randall’s concluding chapters pursue Hancock through his final years, giving attention to Shays’ Rebellion and the turmoil of a young nation during President Washington’s first administration. His health declined precipitously in the early 1790s; he died in 1793 at 56.

Mr. Randall’s light, unadorned prose is a pleasure to read. But attempting to cover so many events in so short a space requires skimming the surface of complicated events. How odd, then, that significant portions of the book relate neither to Hancock himself nor to his relationships with other Founders. The book also needed a firmer editorial hand; on one page, for example, we’re told that Gov. James Bowdoin raised a militia that “constituted the largest military force mustered since the Revolution,” and on the next that Bowdoin’s militia was “the largest armed force mustered in the United States since the Revolution.”

The book says little new or novel about Hancock, but readers will come away knowing the man for more than his famous signature. Some may agree with the assessment of Brissot de Warville, the French journalist with which Mr. Randall concludes his book. “You know the great sacrifices he made in the Revolution and the boldness with which he declared himself at the beginning of the insurrection,” wrote Brissot. “A great generosity, united to a vast ambition, forms his character.”

Mr. Spencer, a professor of history at Brock University, is the author of “David Hume and Eighteenth-Century America” and the editor-in-chief of “The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of the American Enlightenment.”

Copyright ©2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Appeared in the July 21, 2025, print edition as 'A Signature Founding Father'.

24. Hegseth abandoned by aides as Pentagon left in turmoil

Hegseth abandoned by aides as Pentagon left in turmoil

Defence secretary ‘in full paranoia mode’ as he loses sixth senior adviser in as many months

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/politics/2025/07/20/aides-abandon-hegseth-pentagon-in-turmoil/

Susie Coen

US Correspondent

Related Topics

• Pete Hegseth, The Pentagon, Elon Musk, Donald Trump

20 July 2025 9:48pm BST

Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, has faced accusations of incompetence, unprofessionalism and sharing sensitive military information Credit: Jim Lo Scalzo/Shutterstock

Pete Hegseth has lost his sixth senior aide in as many months, with the defence secretary’s struggle to retain key staff leaving the Pentagon in limbo.

Justin Fulcher, who resigned on Saturday, was named as an adviser to Mr Hegseth in April after joining the Trump administration as part of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (Doge).

Mr Fulcher said he only planned to work for the government for six months, but his departure is the latest of a string of top Hegseth aides to quit the Pentagon.

Mr Fulcher had been involved in a confrontation with Doge staff members assigned to the Pentagon in April, the Washington Post reported, but officials insisted his departure was amicable.

Justin Fulcher’s departure is the latest of a string of top Hegseth aides to quit the Pentagon

Sean Parnell, the chief Pentagon spokesman, said: “The Department of Defense is grateful to Justin Fulcher for his work on behalf of President Trump and Secretary Hegseth.”

It comes following reports that Mr Hegseth is in “full paranoia” mode after a series of Pentagon leaks, and that he now only trusts his wife and inner circle.

The defence secretary was said to have entered “full paranoia, back-against-the-wall mode” following a slew of stories accusing him of incompetence, unprofessionalism and sharing sensitive military information, according to CNN.

Mr Hegseth came under intense pressure to step down after details about US strikes on Yemen were sent to a journalist who had been inadvertently added to a group chat on the Signal platform. He was also accused of posting the same details about strike plans in another Signal group.

The defence secretary fired several members of his senior staff following the leak investigation, including Dan Caldwell, a senior adviser, and Dan Selnick, the deputy chief of staff.

Joe Kasper, Mr Hegseth’s chief of staff, was also moved to another role within the department after coming under pressure over toxic workplace allegations.

Colin Carroll, another senior adviser, was ousted after being identified during an investigation into the leaks.

The Pentagon has been left in limbo by the slew of resignations and firings Credit: Joshua Roberts/Reuters

Mr Fulcher suggested there was no ill will behind his departure.

“Working alongside the dedicated men and women of the Department of Defense has been incredibly inspiring,” Mr Fulcher said.

“Revitalising the warrior ethos, rebuilding the military, and re-establishing deterrence are just some of the historic accomplishments I’m proud to have witnessed.

“None of this could have happened without Secretary Hegseth’s decisive leadership or President Trump’s continued confidence in our team.”

Last month, it was reported that the department was struggling to fill positions, with at least three people turning down jobs to work for Mr Hegseth, an official told NBC News.

Mr Parnell denied the claims, saying that the “anonymous sources cited in this article have no idea what they’re talking about.”

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