Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

"With two thousand years of examples behind us, we have no excuse when fighting for not fighting well."

– Attributed to T.E. Lawrence

"The political work of the Eighth Route Army is guided by three basic principles. First, the principle of unity between officers and men, which means eradicating feudal practices in the army, prohibiting beating and abuse, building up a conscious discipline, and sharing weal and woe - as a result of which the entire army is closely united. Second, the principle of unity between the army and the people, which means maintaining a discipline that forbids the slightest violation of the people's interests, conducting propaganda among the masses, organizing and arming them, lightening their economic burdens and suppressing the traitors and collaborators who do harm to the army and the people - as a result of which the army is closely united with the people and welcomed everywhere. Third, the principle of disintegrating the enemy troops and giving lenient treatment to prisoners of war. Our victory depends not only upon our military operations but also upon the disintegration of the enemy troops."

– Mao Tse Tung

"Dau Tranh"

Political dau tranh: three elements

Dan Van- Action among your people: Total mobilization of propaganda, motivational & organizational measures to manipulate internal masses and fighting units. Example: Intensive indoctrination and total mobilization of all civilian and military personnel in North Vietnam.

Military dau tranh: the three phases

The strategy of the communist forces generally followed the protracted Revolutionary Warfare model of Mao in China, as diagrammed above. These phases were not static, and elements from one appear in others. Guerrilla warfare for example co-existed alongside conventional operations, and propaganda and terrorism would always be deployed throughout the conflict.

Preparation, organization and propaganda phase
Guerrilla warfare, terrorism phase
General offensive – conventional war phase including big unit and mobile warfare

– Vo Nguyen Giap

1. One Helluva Week – THE STRATEGY WEEKLY

2. US to revamp its command in Japan amid renaissance in defense ties

3. U.S. Launches Military Command in Tokyo to Counter China

4. Diplomatic Efforts Pick Up to Avert Israel, Hezbollah War

5. Integrated Deterrence and China's Strategic Insights: Lessons from Ukraine & Asian Pacific Deterrence

6. As F-16s Arrive, Ukraine Still Faces Steep Challenges in the Skies

7. IDF strikes deep in Lebanon after rocket attack, stoking fear of wider war

8. 2 Programs the Army Got Right

9. Army deploying brigades to Middle East, Europe, South Korea

10. Ukrainian troops destroy Russian Pantsir-S1 air defense system

11. The unseen conflict: North Korea’s discreet war with Israel - opinion

12. Not Just Boots on the Beach: How China Can Use Deception, Confusion, and Incrementalism to Change the Status Quo on Taiwan by Jude Blanchette and Hal Brands

13. NATO’s New Map

14. Sanctions crushed Syria’s elite. So they built a zombie economy fueled by drugs.

15. US Special Forces open permanent base in Poland

16. Ukraine war maps reveal Russian land grabs across eastern front line

17. Dark Eagle: The U.S. Army’s Plan to Dominate Hypersonic Weapons

18. Australia-based Marines ready to support Manila in sea-territory skirmish

19. China Is Freaked Out: The F-15EX Eagle II Fighter is a Missile Truck Like No Other

20. Vaccines tell a success story that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Trump forget – here are some key reminders

21. Why TikTok May Just Go Away On Its Own | Opinion

1. One Helluva Week – THE STRATEGY WEEKLY

A useful roll-up from Strategy Central.

One Helluva Week

THE STRATEGY WEEKLY

By Practitioners, For Practitioners

https://www.strategycentral.io/post/one-helluva-week

This Week’s Curated Articles

July 22 – 28, 2024

THE BIG PICTURE

In a week marked by significant global events, U.S. President Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from the presidential race, with Vice President Kamala Harris emerging as the new Democratic hopeful. Concurrently, a faulty software update from CrowdStrike caused widespread disruptions. In international airspace near Alaska, U.S. and Canadian jets intercepted Russian and Chinese military aircraft. Meanwhile, France faced coordinated arson attacks on its high-speed train network just before the Paris Olympics. During China's CCP Third Plenum, the struggling real estate sector was notably ignored, signaling potential economic concerns. Additionally, the likelihood of a full-scale conflict between Israel and Hezbollah increased, adding to the geopolitical tensions of the week.

U.S. President Joe Biden's withdrawal from the presidential race. Kamala Harris the new Democratic hopeful.
A faulty software update from CrowdStrike caused widespread disruptions.
Russian and Chinese military aircraft were intercepted by US and Canadian jets after they were detected in international airspace near Alaska.
Coordinated arson attacks on France's high-speed train network just before the Paris Olympics.
China's struggling real estate sector was ignored during the CCP Third Plenum, a major economic policy meeting in Beijing.
Increasing likelihood of a full-scale conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.

NATIONS MAKING HEADLINES

THE USA

"How the World Is Reacting to Biden Ending His Reelection Bid" by Anusha Rathi was published by Foreign Policy on July 22, 2024. This article details the global response to U.S. President Joe Biden's decision to withdraw from the presidential race, highlighting reactions from allies and adversaries alike. (https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/07/22/biden-ends-reelection-bid-world-reactions-response-harris-netanyahu-visit/).

"What We Know About CrowdStrike’s Update Fail That’s Causing Global Outages and Travel Chaos" by Zack Whittaker and Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai was published by TechCrunch on July 19, 2024. This article covers the widespread disruptions caused by a faulty software update from CrowdStrike, affecting various sectors worldwide. (https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/19/what-we-know-about-crowdstrikes-update-fail-thats-causing-global-outages-and-travel-chaos/).

"China and the U.S. Are Careening Toward a South China Sea Crisis" by Craig Singleton was published by Foreign Policy on July 23, 2024. This article examines the increasing tensions between the U.S., China, and the Philippines in the South China Sea, highlighting the risks of escalating conflict due to a failure of deterrence. https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/07/23/us-south-china-sea-philippines-crisis-military-alliance-deterrence/).

"How NYC Cyber Command Reacted to the Microsoft Outage Caused by CrowdStrike" by Jennifer Bisram and Mark Prussin was published by CBS New York on July 19, 2024. This article details the rapid response of New York City Cyber Command to a global Microsoft outage triggered by a faulty update from CrowdStrike, and the subsequent impact on the city's vital systems. (https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/nyc-cyber-command-microsoft-outage-crowdstrike-update/).

"US, Canadian Jets Intercept Joint Russian-Chinese Air Patrol" by Military Times was published on July 25, 2024. This article reports on the interception of Russian and Chinese military aircraft by US and Canadian jets after they were detected in international airspace near Alaska. (https://www.militarytimes.com/video/2024/07/25/us-canadian-jets-intercept-joint-russian-chinese-air-patrol/).

"The Trump/Vance Unilateralist Delusion" by Stephen M. Walt was published by Foreign Policy on July 24, 2024. This article critiques the foreign policy vision of Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, highlighting the unrealistic expectations and potential dangers of their unilateralist approach. (https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/07/24/trump-vance-project-2025-foreign-policy-unilateralism-realism-restraint/).

"How Harris Found Her Foreign-Policy Footing" by Aaron Mannes was published by Foreign Policy on July 22, 2024. This article explores how Vice President Kamala Harris has developed her approach to foreign policy, highlighting her successes and challenges as she navigates international affairs. (https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/07/22/kamala-harris-foreign-policy-experience-united-states-presidential-election/).

"US to Revamp Its Command in Japan Amid Renaissance in Defense Ties" by Noah Robertson was published by Defense News on July 27, 2024. This article discusses the U.S. plans to enhance its military command in Japan to better coordinate with Japanese forces, reflecting the deepening defense cooperation between the two nations. The full article can be accessed [here](https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2024/07/27/us-to-revamp-its-command-in-japan-amid-renaissance-in-defense-ties/).

EUROPE

"How the West Misunderstood Moscow in Ukraine," written by Julia Kazdobina, Jakob Hedenskog, and Andreas Umland, was published on July 17, 2024, by Foreign Policy. This article explores the reasons behind the West's failure to accurately diagnose Russia's actions in Ukraine from 2014 to 2022, emphasizing the lack of understanding of Russian hybrid warfare and the impact of Western misconceptions on the conflict. (https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/07/17/ukraine-russia-war-2014-donbas-crimea-west/?tpcc=recirc062921).

"The Uncomfortable Reality of Russia and Iran’s New Defense Relationship," written by Hanna Notte and Jim Lamson, was published by War on the Rocks on July 24, 2024. This article explores the deepening military-technical cooperation between Russia and Iran since 2022, highlighting the strategic implications for the West and the challenges in countering this alliance. (https://warontherocks.com/2024/07/the-uncomfortable-reality-of-russia-and-irans-new-defense-relationship).

"Paris Olympics: Security Intrudes on Macron’s Break From Politics," written by Samy Adghirni, was published by Bloomberg on July 26, 2024. This article discusses the challenges faced by French President Emmanuel Macron as security issues and political instability overshadow the Paris Olympics, which he had hoped would provide a respite from the political turmoil following recent snap elections. (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-07-26/paris-olympics-security-intrudes-on-macron-s-break-from-politics).

"France vs. Arson: Security Intrudes on Macron’s Break From Politics," written by Alexandra Sharp, was published by Foreign Policy on July 26, 2024. This article details the coordinated arson attacks on France's high-speed train network just before the Paris Olympics, highlighting the security challenges and political implications for President Emmanuel Macron amidst the ongoing political instability in France. (https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/07/26/france-vs-arson-security-intrudes-on-macrons-break-from-politics).

CHINA

"China's Third Plenum Economic Policy Meeting Mostly Avoided Housing Woes," written by Katia Dmitrieva, was published by Bloomberg on July 25, 2024. This article discusses the limited attention given to China's struggling real estate sector during the Third Plenum, a major economic policy meeting in Beijing, highlighting the focus on high-tech manufacturing, security, and trade instead. (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-07-25/china-s-third-plenum-economic-policy-meeting-mostly-avoided-housing-woes).

"NORAD intercepts Russian and Chinese bombers operating together near Alaska in first such flight," written by Oren Liebermann and Natasha Bertrand, was published by CNN on July 25, 2024. This article details the interception of two Russian TU-95 Bear and two Chinese H-6 bombers by the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) while they were operating near Alaska. This marks the first time the two countries have conducted a joint flight in the region, staying in international airspace and not posing an immediate threat. (https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/24/politics/norad-russian-chinese-bombers-alaska/index.html).

"Countering Chinese Aggression in the South China Sea," written by Simon Weiss and Michael Beckley, was published by War on the Rocks on July 23, 2024. This article examines the escalating military coercion by China in the South China Sea, particularly targeting the Philippines, and the strategic implications for U.S. alliances in Asia. It argues for a robust response to counter China's aggressive tactics and prevent further destabilization in the region. (https://warontherocks.com/2024/07/countering-chinese-aggression-in-the-south-china-sea).

"North Korean charged in cyberattacks on US bases, defense firms," written by Nick Ingram, Michael Goldberg, and Heather Hollingsworth, was published by Military Times on July 26, 2024. This article details the indictment of a North Korean military intelligence operative involved in hacking U.S. health care providers, military bases, NASA, and international entities, stealing sensitive information and installing ransomware. (https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2024/07/26/north-korean-charged-in-cyberattacks-on-us-bases-defense-firms).

ISRAEL & THE MIDDLE EAST

"Israel’s Next War: The Mounting Pressure to Fight Hezbollah in Lebanon—and Why That Is So Dangerous," written by Amos Harel, was published by Foreign Affairs on July 23, 2024. This article examines the increasing likelihood of a full-scale conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, highlighting the significant risks and potential regional destabilization that such a war could bring. (https://www.foreignaffairs.com/israel/israels-next-war-hezbollah-lebanon).

"The UAE tries to pull off an ‘Abraham Redux’ in Gaza," written by David Ignatius, was published by The Washington Post on July 23, 2024. This article discusses the United Arab Emirates' efforts to develop a peace plan for Gaza involving a reformed Palestinian Authority and international security support, drawing parallels to the Abraham Accords. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/07/23/uae-israel-hamas-palestinian-authority-gaza-ceasefire-plan).

"Israeli Strike on Port of Hudaydah in Yemen Will Harm Civilians, Not Houthis, Experts Say," written by Vivian Nereim and Shuaib Almosawa, was published by The New York Times on July 21, 2024. This article discusses the repercussions of an Israeli bombing on the port city of Hudaydah in Yemen, highlighting how the strike is likely to exacerbate the humanitarian crisis in Yemen rather than deter the Houthi militia. (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/21/world/middleeast/israeli-strike-hudaydah-yemen-civilians-houthis.html).

"Who Are the Houthis? What to Know as Red Sea Attacks Continue," written by James Hookway, was published by The Wall Street Journal on January 18, 2024. This article provides an in-depth look at the Houthi rebel group in Yemen, their origins, motivations, and recent escalations in attacking commercial shipping in the Red Sea, posing significant threats to global trade and security. (https://www.wsj.com/articles/who-are-the-houthis-red-sea-attacks-continue-75697f9c).

2. US to revamp its command in Japan amid renaissance in defense ties

One key point. There will be no US four star assigned to Japan which is something Japan desired.

US to revamp its command in Japan amid renaissance in defense ties

Defense News · by Noah Robertson · July 27, 2024

In 2013, after years of political turmoil and crisis, Japan’s then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced his country’s return to the world stage.

“Japan is back,” Abe said, speaking at a think tank in Washington.

In the ensuing decade, the country has been following through on that pledge. They’re on track to double defense spending by 2027, buying missiles capable of firing into enemy territory and giving more freedom to its long-restrained Self Defense Forces.

Those efforts will reach another milestone, with the U.S. announcing a plan to revamp its command in Japan to a new three-star billet, moving from a leader that mostly supervised forces to one that can plan large operations with the Japanese military.

America’s secretaries of state and defense traveled to Tokyo for meetings with their Japanese counterparts Sunday, where they announced new commitments to build and repair weapons together, securely share intelligence and to expand their posture in Japan’s southwest islands, which sit near Taiwan.

Almost as important was an earlier that day. For the first time in 15 years, a South Korean minister of defense was in Tokyo and to meet with Japanese and U.S. defense officials. This was also the first time this trilateral summit would take place in either Japan or South Korea, who until recently were in a years-long spat over the legacy of Japan’s colonial rule.

“We’re cooperating in ways that many experts would never have anticipated a decade ago, even five years ago,” a senior U.S. defense official told reporters ahead of the trip.

And yet, despite Japan’s rapid redirect, it still faces barriers. For one, the Self Defense Forces still face more limitations than most militaries due to the country’s pacifist constitution. And while the relationship with Korea has improved, that progress may not be permanent, especially considering the leaders who led it may not stay in office.

“It all comes down to sustainability,” said Ryo Hinata-Yamaguchi, an expert on Japanese defense issues at the Atlantic Council.

Restructuring

The new U.S. command dates back to an April visit by Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio to Washington, where he agreed to deepen security ties.

There, he pledged to create a new command structure for Japan’s military, which has long struggled to operate jointly, or with service branches all working together.

That decision, along with some of Japan’s other recent changes, such as buying long-range missiles, started to make the old model for the American and Japanese militaries working together obsolete. The longstanding image of how they operated has been the “shield” and the “spear,” where Japan’s forces protect the homeland and America’s can push forward.

Now, Japan’s military will soon be able to do both, which means the U.S. needs a new structure of its own to coordinate larger-scale operations, like a band’s drummer might want a new set if the guitarist buys a new six-string.

This restructuring of U.S. Forces Japan will replace the existing model, which does more administrative work and had to wait for orders from Indo-Pacific Command, 3,500 miles away in Hawaii, if a crisis broke out. The intent is to give more authority to a three-star U.S. officer in Japan, who can help the two militaries equip, plan, drill and operate more closely together.

“They are going to maintain that current role, which is one of the reasons why the scale of [U.S. Forces Japan] is likely to grow over time” from its current size of around 50,000 personnel, the official said.

That said, many details still aren’t certain, including how much the new structure will cost and how many people it will need. The Pentagon has started briefing lawmakers on the plans, the defense official said, but those conversations are early.

“We will need support from Capitol Hill to make this happen,” the official said, predicting that many of the remaining questions about the role will be answered by the fall.

‘To the end’

The official also stressed that this new arrangement will be different than that of South Korea, where during a conflict America has charge of both militaries and the forces are led by a four-star general. The three-star U.S. billet planned for Japan may also disappoint some in Tokyo who had hoped for a higher rank.

“They want a four-star,” said Jeff Hornung, an expert on Japanese security at the RAND Corporation. “They want something like [U.S. Forces Korea] but I don’t see that happening.”

At a press conference after the day’s meetings, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said that Washington hadn’t “ruled out” a four-star billet for the post.

Speaking together, the two country’s top diplomatic and defense officials alternated between optimism and gloom. On one side, they repeated that U.S.-Japan ties have never been stronger. On the other, the threats they are responding to — from Russia, China and North Korea — are “increasingly severe.”

The meetings and subsequent announcements corresponded to that mood. The two countries pledged to better share classified information — long a problem in Japan, where intelligence standards are looser — and to build more weapons together. Top of the list are missiles for the Patriot air defense system, which are scarce because of how many have been needed to defend Ukraine.

Austin wouldn’t say how many of these interceptors they would build or how long it would take.

Earlier in the day the defense officials beamed while joining their South Korean counterpart to sign an agreement that made their summits more formal. That it occurred on Japanese soil was a sign of how far and how quickly their relationship has improved. The three agreed to meet again next year, this time in South Korea.

Lastly, the U.S. and Japan met to discuss extended deterrence — or Washington’s commitment to protect Tokyo, including with nuclear weapons, if attacked. For the first time, this topic was be on the agenda for each country’s top diplomatic and defense officials, all concerned about China and North Korea’s nuclear buildups.

“Making that happen this time is by itself the biggest thing to come from this summit,” said Masafumi Ishii, a former Japanese diplomat.

Ishii added that the summit itself is a form of stability in an otherwise turbulent season. U.S. President Joe Biden, who helped bring Japan and South Korea together after years of feuding, is no longer running for reelection. Kishida too is unpopular at home and may not survive the year as leader of his party.

“This is to show the audience that we are ready to follow up on what we started to the end,” Ishii said.

This story has been updated with comments from a press conference.

About Noah Robertson

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

3. U.S. Launches Military Command in Tokyo to Counter China

Saying the quiet part out loud - the command to counter China.

I would like to know how dual apportioned forces between Korea and other INDOPACOM contingencies (e.g., Taiwan?) will be adjudicated. In Hawaii or DC?

How are the various defense plans going to be synchronized for sequential (Korea first, then Taiwan, or Taiwan first, then Korea) or simultaneous execution.? What does the overall INDOPACOM theater plan look like with two defense plans (Korea and Taiwan).

U.S. Launches Military Command in Tokyo to Counter China

American forces in Japan to be overseen from a headquarters there as Washington tries to strengthen allies in Asia

https://www.wsj.com/world/asia/u-s-launches-military-command-in-tokyo-to-counter-china-83b2c6fd?mod=hp_lead_pos10

By Michael R. Gordon

Updated July 28, 2024 7:32 am ET

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida with President Biden in April. PHOTO: YURI GRIPAS/PRESS POOL

TOKYO—The U.S. will establish a new military command in Japan to bolster security ties here as Washington moves to strengthen its Asia allies in the face of China’s military buildup, top American and Japanese officials said Sunday.

The new American command, which will initially be led by a three-star general, will coordinate military operations with the Japanese side, plan joint exercises and participate in the defense of the country if hostilities erupt.

In so doing, it will put America’s warfighting capabilities under the command of a headquarters on Japanese territory for the first time and dispense with the need for U.S. forces in the country to wait for instructions from the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, which is located in Hawaii 3,500 miles away.

The move is intended to keep pace with Japan’s efforts to build up its military capabilities, including a new joint military command that Japanese authorities are planning to stand up early next year.

The push to establish the command is also part of a broader effort to buttress military relations between the two allies and will include Japanese efforts to shore up the West’s industrial base, including expanding production of Patriot antimissile systems in Japan and providing some to the U.S.

A U.S. military Osprey aircraft in 2022. PHOTO: PHILIP FONG/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

While much of Washington’s attention in recent months has been focused on trying to end the conflict in Gaza and efforts to help Ukraine defend against Russian aggression, China remains the principal long-term threat to the U.S. and its allies in the Pacific region, according to the Pentagon’s formal defense strategy.

The U.S. and Japan also have to contend with increased military cooperation between Russia and China, which sent a joint bomber patrol toward Alaska this past week for the first time. North Korea’s growing nuclear and conventional arsenal is another danger.

The new initiatives were announced during a meeting here Sunday of Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and their Japanese counterparts, Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa and Defense Minister Minoru Kihara.

They are part of a comprehensive effort by the U.S. to strengthen the military capabilities of its Asia allies. On Tuesday, Blinken and Austin plan to announce $500 million in U.S. financing during a meeting with their counterparts in the Philippines, among other steps.

The U.S. is already involved in an ambitious effort to help Australia acquire nuclear-powered submarines. The U.S. has also removed the restrictions on the range of ballistic missiles South Korea can develop with American technology. And Japan has opted to buy hundreds of Tomahawk cruise missiles from the U.S. that can attack targets on land.

“What this means is the U.S. is prepared to take steps to support allied capabilities in ways that we haven’t before,” said Christopher Johnstone, a former senior U.S. official on Asia policy who is now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington.

The push to restructure command and control relations between Japan and the U.S. was foreshadowed during Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s visit to Washington in April.

“We are at a critical juncture. In order to thoroughly defend the existing international order, we need to continuously strengthen our alliance,” Kamikawa said.

Still, the effort to launch the new U.S. Joint Force Command, as it is dubbed by U.S. officials, remains a work in progress. To establish it, the U.S. military plans to overhaul an existing administrative headquarters at a base near Tokyo named U.S. Forces Japan to enable it to command the approximately 50,000 U.S. troops in the country.

A joint military exercise in the Philippines in 2019. PHOTO: ROLEX DELA PENA/SHUTTERSTOCK

American officials have yet to spell out what the geographic scope of the new command’s responsibilities will be, the schedule for standing up its capabilities and how large a staff it will have.

“This is actually a new type of cooperation for the U.S. and Japan, and so it’s going to take a lot of effort and we’re going to have to build some new muscles to be able to do that,” said Zack Cooper of the American Enterprise Institute and a former Defense Department official.

U.S. officials haven’t detailed how the new American command will interact with Japan’s parallel command.

Japan’s new command is expected to be located in the basement of its defense ministry, Cooper said. And U.S. officials haven’t said if they plan to establish a joint cell of American and Japanese officers from the two commands who can work side-by-side during a military crisis or to plan exercises, and where such a cell might be located.

The question is important because the American and Japanese commands will separately control their nation’s forces unlike the U.S. command in South Korea, which would control both American and South Korea forces in wartime.

Nor has it been determined if the new American command might eventually be led by a four-star U.S. general, as some Japanese officials would like as an demonstration of Washington’s commitment to their country’s defense. The U.S. headquarters in South Korea is led by a four-star general.

Japan’s defense minister said the rank of the U.S. commander was still an open question, and Austin said that eventually elevating the headquarters to a four-star command had not been ruled out.

“It’s a phased approach because…you can’t snap your fingers and do that overnight,” Austin said.

Discussions will also be held on how to deepen the role that Japan could play in strengthening the West’s defense industrial base.

Japanese law precludes the country from exporting weapons to nations involved in conflicts. But it allows for producing and then selling weapons to the U.S., whose inventory of some critical weapons, including Patriot antimissile systems, has been diminished by Washington’s efforts to support Ukraine following Russia’s 2022 invasion. The two sides said Japan would also seek to expand production of the AMRAAM air-to-air missile.

“The war in Ukraine has driven home the need for added industrial capability among like-minded states and allies,” said Johnstone. “The amount of material consumed in that conflict has been sort of mind-boggling.”

The meetings here are intended to hasten military cooperation in other ways as well. South Korea’s defense minister is making his first trip to Japan in 15 years to meet with Austin and his Japanese counterpart.

Austin, Blinken and Japan’s defense and foreign ministers will hold the first discussions at their level of “extended deterrence”—the issue of reassuring nonnuclear Japan that the U.S. would be prepared to use nuclear weapons if need be to defend Japan against external threats.

Following their discussions here, Blinken and Austin will fly to Manila for a similar set of meetings with the foreign and defense secretaries of the Philippines.

Soon after returning to the U.S., Blinken and Austin will also meet with the Australian foreign and defense ministers at a meeting to be held early next month in Annapolis, Md.

Write to Michael R. Gordon at michael.gordon@wsj.com

4. Diplomatic Efforts Pick Up to Avert Israel, Hezbollah War

Diplomatic Efforts Pick Up to Avert Israel, Hezbollah War

Tensions high as Druze community in Israeli-controlled Golan Heights bury young victims of rocket fire from Lebanon

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/diplomatic-efforts-pick-up-to-avert-israel-hezbollah-war-cbdcc8b5?mod=hp_lead_pos2

By Carrie Keller-Lynn, Summer SaidFollow and Jared MalsinFollow

Updated July 28, 2024 7:19 am ET

U.S. and Middle East diplomats worked Sunday to keep the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah from spiraling into a full-scale war, as the Druze community in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights began to bury the 12 children and teenagers killed by a rocket fired from Lebanon.

Israel has accused the Lebanon-based Hezbollah of carrying out the deadly strike on Saturday and threatened a strong response. The Israeli cabinet is meeting later Sunday to discuss its course of action, hours after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned from his visit to Washington.

Hezbollah said it had nothing to do with the deaths but claimed responsibility for a series of other attacks in the area on Saturday, including launching a Falaq-1 rocket at an Israeli military site a few kilometers from the strike scene. Israel’s military said that an Iranian-made Falaq-1 hit the soccer field on which the children and teenagers were playing, and that it was launched from the vicinity of Chebaa, a southern Lebanese village.

U.S. officials have reached out to their counterparts in Israel and Lebanon and also traded messages with Iran, which backs Hezbollah, to try to de-escalate the tensions, according to Arab and European officials familiar with the matter. All sides have indicated they aren’t interested in widening the conflict, but chances of a miscalculation remain high.

The Saturday strike also injured around 40 people, according to the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office. The rocket carried a 50-kilogram warhead, an unusually heavy payload, Israel’s military said.

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The deadly rocket strike threatens to escalate the already tense standoff on the Lebanese border. Photo: Jalaa Marey/AFP/Getty

“We are approaching the moment of an all-out war against Hezbollah and Lebanon,” Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said shortly after Saturday’s strike. The attack “crossed all red lines, and the response will be in accordance.”

The Israeli military already struck several targets deep into Lebanon on Sunday morning in immediate response to the attack. The military said the strike on Saturday was the single largest civilian casualty event in Israel since Oct. 7, when Hamas killed 1,200 people in the south of the country and took 250 hostage, according to local authorities, and triggered the continuing war in Gaza. Gaza health authorities say 39,000 people have been killed in the war, most of them civilians. The figure doesn’t specify how many were combatants.

The strike comes at a critical time for U.S.-led efforts to strike a cease-fire deal in Gaza. An escalation between Israel and Hezbollah could disrupt those negotiations, which have been stalled for months but are set to resume this week in Rome. Top officials are planning to attend the latest round of talks, including CIA Director William Burns, Israeli spy chief David Barnea, Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel and Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, people familiar with the matter said.

Israel and Hezbollah have been trading cross-border fire exchanges since the U.S.-designated terrorist organization joined the fight, and Hezbollah has said it wouldn’t agree to a cease-fire until fighting ends in Gaza.

Saturday’s strike has dialed up the risk that the slow-burning conflict between Israel and Hezbollah could trigger a full-scale war. For months, the two sides have managed to keep the conflict within limits and avoided an all-out war that could be devastating for both Israel and Lebanon.

The strike was exactly the kind of incident that regional officials and observers have feared for months: a miscalculation that could generate domestic pressure on the other side to respond forcefully.

The rocket strike Saturday hit a soccer field in the village of Majdal Shams. PHOTO: MENAHEM KAHANA/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

“We’ve always said that something like this is possible, that there is an attack that kills civilians for instance or in other ways creates a situation on one side that this party feels compelled to strike back very hard,” said Heiko Wimmen, project director for Lebanon, Syria and Iraq at the International Crisis Group.

“We’re going to get a higher level of violence, and that means almost by definition the risk of something like that happening again, that the risk of escalation increases,” he said.

The attack amplifies pressure on the Biden administration, which has sought for months to de-escalate the fighting on the Israel-Lebanon border and prevent the Gaza war from spiraling into a wider regional conflict. The war has also provoked attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels on vital Red Sea shipping lanes and on Israel, along with attacks by Iranian-backed militia groups on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria.

The U.S. National Security Council condemned the Saturday strike, and said Washington’s support for Israel remains firm as it continues to push for a diplomatic solution.

“Israel continues to face severe threats to its security, as the world saw today, and the United States will continue to support efforts to end these terrible attacks along the Blue Line, which must be a top priority,” read a statement from an NSC spokesperson, referring to the United Nations-recognized demarcation line between Israel and Lebanon. “Our support for Israel’s security is iron-clad and unwavering against all Iranian backed terrorist groups, including Lebanese Hezbollah.”

Any full-blown war between Israel and Hezbollah could cause widespread death and destruction in both countries. During the last war between the two in 2006, Israel bombed Beirut’s civilian airport and other infrastructure, and Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, said in June that Israel was capable of bombing Lebanon “back to the stone age.”

Hezbollah for its part has bulked up its military capabilities in recent years with the help of its key supporter Iran, acquiring advanced missiles, drones and guidance systems. The group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has claimed that Hezbollah’s precision missiles are capable of striking anywhere in Israel.

Iran has signaled that it doesn’t want a full-scale war but will back Hezbollah if the conflict expands. Mojtaba Amani, Iran’s ambassador to Beirut, wrote on X that Iran does not want the conflict to spread, while Iran’s Foreign Ministry warned against any Israeli response that “could prepare ground for expansion of instability, insecurity and flames of war in the region,” in a statement issued by spokesman Nasser Kanaani.

Mourners place a photo of one of the young victims on her coffin a day after Saturday’s strike in the Golan Heights. PHOTO: LEO CORREA/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Hezbollah is Iran’s most important asset in the Persian Gulf state’s regional array of militant-group allies, and Iranian officials have at times threatened to intervene to protect Hezbollah if Israel were to enter full-scale war with the group.

Iranian security advisers recently said an Israeli attempt to destroy Hezbollah, especially by launching a land invasion, would be the red line that could bring a direct Iranian intervention into the conflict. So far, the Islamic Republic has been arming and training allies in Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon that have attacked Israel, but has only carried out a direct strike against Israel once, a barrage of more than 300 missiles and drones in April.

“Deterrence from Hezbollah [against Israel] is the most important for Iran,” an Iranian security adviser recently said.

The U.N. also called for restraint. “We urge the parties to exercise maximum restraint and to put a stop to the ongoing intensified exchanges of fire. It could ignite a wider conflagration that would engulf the entire region in a catastrophe beyond belief,” said U.N. Special Coordinator for Lebanon Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert and the head of the U.N.’s peacekeeping forces on the Lebanese border with Israel.

The Lebanese government condemned “all acts of violence and aggression against all civilians” and called for an immediate cease-fire, in a statement released on state-run media. Saturday’s strike raised ire within Lebanon, which also has a large Druze community.

The rocket hit a crowded soccer field where youth were playing in Majdal Shams, a Druze minority town in the Golan Heights that is close to Lebanon and Syria. First responders described a scene of carnage, and images released from the scene show several dismembered bodies. The strike was part of a barrage of about 40 projectiles that the Israeli military said were fired from Lebanon into Israel on Saturday afternoon.

Israeli security forces earlier this month blocked a road in the Golan Heights after Hezbollah launched projectiles. PHOTO: AVI OHAYON/REUTERS

Israel seized the Golan Heights from Syria during the Six-Day War in 1967, and then annexed the territory in 1981 despite international condemnation. Druze communities there have continued to retain their connection to Syria, and most do not have Israeli citizenship. Syria’s recent civil war disrupted those ties and has led to an uptick of Druze from the Golan Heights seeking Israeli citizenship.

The Druze community issued a partial list of children and teenagers killed on Saturday and said they would be brought to burial on Sunday.

Since Hezbollah and Israel began exchanging fire in October, more than 6,400 projectiles have been launched at Israel, the military said. Israel has launched hundreds of air and artillery strikes in Lebanon. Tens of thousands of civilians on each side of the border have been displaced from their homes, as fighting has decimated towns in both southern Lebanon and Israel’s northern border region.

Saturda’s attack also showed the challenges facing Hezbollah within Lebanon, where the group faces criticism from some ordinary Lebanese people who have criticized it along with political elites in general for systemic failures of governance that have left the country in financial ruin in recent years. Many Lebanese also support the group, viewing it as the country’s main protection against Israel and the threat of Sunni jihadist groups.

“Hezbollah is feeling pressured because it does not want to spark sectarian tensions inside Lebanon through being seen as having killed civilians from the Druze community. This is why Hezbollah is staunchly denying responsibility for the attack in the Golan Heights,” said Lina Khatib, an associate fellow with the Middle East and North Africa Program at Chatham House, an international-affairs institute in London.

—Benoit Faucon, Dov Lieber, Aresu Eqbali and Ken Thomas contributed to this article

Write to Summer Said at summer.said@wsj.com and Jared Malsin at jared.malsin@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications

Hezbollah is a U.S.-designated terrorist organization. An earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to it as a U.S-based terrorist organization. (Corrected on July 28)

5. Integrated Deterrence and China's Strategic Insights: Lessons from Ukraine & Asian Pacific Deterrence

Excerpt:

But deterrence is not dead or the wrong strategy. The U.S. cannot abandon Ukraine and believe China would not see it as a green light for their expansionist designs. Checking China and Russia means a U.S./NATO win in Ukraine is vital. This is followed closely by a U.S. campaign to check the Chinese fishing boat militia, end fake island expansion, create a real deterrent for Taiwan, and win the game of influence. Even with deterrent success in the Pacific, Ukraine remains the fulcrum of the U.S. deterrent strategy. If Putin achieves a victory in Ukraine, China will see that U.S. efforts to deter and resist Chinese expansionism can be overcome by sticking it out and absorbing the punishment. At that point, what could stop them? War is the only logical outcome.

Integrated Deterrence and China's Strategic Insights:

Lessons from Ukraine & Asian Pacific Deterrence

https://www.strategycentral.io/post/integrated-deterrence-and-china-s-strategic-insights

Strategy Central

By Practitioners, For Practitioners

By Monte Erfourth – July 27, 2024

Nervous General finding out what Integrated Deterrence Means for his command:

“Do everything, everywhere, all the time…..perfectly coordinated.”

Introduction

The United States' inability to deter Russia from invading Ukraine in 2022 can be attributed to a series of historical errors, insufficient signaling of consequences, and a lack of consistent and credible deterrence measures across multiple administrations. From President George W. Bush’s weak response to the 2008 invasion of Georgia to the Biden administration’s hesitant gestures of support for Ukraine, U.S. policies created the impression that the United States was not willing to make an assault on Ukraine painful for Russia. The result was a tremendously costly war that could have been avoided.

The failures of U.S. deterrence leading up to Russia's invasion of Ukraine highlight a series of historical missteps, inconsistent policies, and insufficient signaling of consequences. Over multiple administrations, the U.S. demonstrated a pattern of weak responses to Russian aggression, from the Bush administration’s limited reaction to the 2008 invasion of Georgia to the Obama administration’s reluctance to provide lethal aid during the 2014 Crimea crisis and Trump’s mixed messages regarding NATO commitments. The botched withdrawal from Afghanistan further contributed to the perception of U.S. weakness and war-weariness, undermining its deterrence credibility. This cumulative display of indecision and limited action failed to create a credible deterrent effect, ultimately emboldening Russia to invade Ukraine in 2022.

China has closely observed these failures and learned several key lessons about deterrence. Beijing noted the unexpectedly strong and coordinated Western response to Russia's aggression, which included comprehensive sanctions that even impacted a major global player like Russia. This has led China to reassess its vulnerabilities and the potential economic costs of aggressive actions, such as a possible invasion of Taiwan. Additionally, China has recognized the importance of economic resilience and the necessity of forming and maintaining international partnerships to withstand potential sanctions. Xi Jinping has applied these lessons by enhancing China's military-industrial complex, preparing for protracted conflicts, and ensuring strong domestic support for potential military campaigns.

Determining whether deterrence is effective can be challenging. Without being present when leaders decide not to take action due to deterrent activity, it's hard to attribute the cause. Deterrence is a crucial element of U.S. grand strategy, but it can also be complex and frustrating as administrations negotiate between winning and warning or between defense and deterrence. These trade-offs require a clear understanding of our national priorities and the limitations of available tools. China watched for decades as the United States and NATO applied weak deterrent measures against Russia. The missteps leading up to the war in Ukraine exemplify the danger of relying on underperforming deterrent measures. This article explores the historical context and policy weaknesses of the U.S. deterrence with Russia and the potential for failure with China over Taiwan and the Asian Pacific.

The U.S. – Russian Deterrence Failure

The West, including the U.S., did not have an unambiguous strategy to deter a Russian invasion of Ukraine. NATO’s strategic focus has primarily been to deter aggression against NATO members, not Ukraine. This lack of a targeted deterrence strategy meant that measures like sanctions and NATO threats were not designed to specifically discourage Russia from invading Ukraine. Russia could have interpreted this lack of clear warning as a tacit acceptance of an invasion.

Russia had decades of lackluster U.S. responses to Russia's aggressive actions that set a precedent for perceived weakness. For example, during the 2008 invasion of Georgia, the Bush administration limited its response to providing airlift for Georgian soldiers and delivering humanitarian aid, in an attempt to avoid resorting to military involvement and economic sanctions. This pattern signaled to Russia that the U.S. was unwilling to take decisive actions against its aggression in the satellite states of the former U.S.S.R.

Similarly, during the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea, the Obama administration's refusal to provide lethal aid to Ukraine, combined with the employment of only limited sanctions and non-lethal assistance, further reinforced Russia's perception of weak U.S. resolve. Despite internal and congressional calls for stronger measures, the administration prioritized diplomatic and economic measures over military support. After the Georgia episode, the Obama administration pursued resetting relations with Russia, abandoning missile defense plans in Eastern Europe and reducing the U.S. military presence in Europe.

Although the Trump administration reversed the prohibition on lethal aid and delivered Javelin missiles to Ukraine, it restricted their use in combat, effectively removing their deterrent value. President Trump also repeatedly questioned the U.S. commitment to NATO. Trump's transactional approach and threats to withdraw from NATO sent a message to Russia that U.S. support was not guaranteed, undermining the credibility of NATO’s foundational deterrent measure.

In the run-up to the 2022 invasion, the Biden administration hesitated to provide substantial military aid to Ukraine, fearing it would provoke Russia. This included denying requests for defensive weapons like Stinger missiles until the invasion was imminent. Despite demonstrating renewed interest and support for NATO, there was no specific pushback to Russian threats to invade Ukraine.

The botched withdrawal from Afghanistan sent a signal that the U.S. was possibly war-weary and diminished by twenty years of counterinsurgency and terror operations. Despite improved relations with NATO, the years without meaningful deterrence actions and lack of commitment to the long fight in Afghanistan conveyed a lack of commitment to Ukraine’s defense, which may have emboldened Russia.

The U.S. and its Western Allies did not understand Russia's motivations. They, therefore, relied on general deterrence, which was the threat of NATO's collective military power, to deter Russia from invading Ukraine. However, this approach was not explicitly targeted at Russia. Additionally, the projection of military power to deter attacks on third nations, known as extended deterrence, was not effectively communicated or backed by significant actions. The West's threats, including sanctions and promises of defensive support, lacked the immediacy and credibility needed to change the Kremlin’s calculations.

Lastly, economic sanctions were not seen as a credible deterrent for Russia because Moscow believed it could withstand any new economic measures based on its previous experiences with sanctions, particularly after the 2014 annexation of Crimea. The Kremlin expected any sanctions to be limited and bearable in exchange for achieving its strategic objectives in Ukraine.

China’s Initial Lessons Learned

In general, it is understood that China has learned several key lessons about deterrence from the Russian-Ukraine conflict. They have developed a mutually influential relationship that plays off each other’s strategic approach. Beijing has been surprised by the ferocity and unity of the Western response to Russia's aggression. The coordinated sanctions by the U.S., NATO, and other allies demonstrated that even great powers are not immune to economic warfare, provided the coalition enforcing them remains cohesive. This realization has underscored the importance of international partnerships and the collective strength they can wield in economic conflicts.

China also observed that large-scale sanctions can target significant global players, not just smaller or marginal economies. This has prompted Beijing to reassess its vulnerabilities and the potential economic costs of aggressive actions, such as a possible invasion of Taiwan. Moreover, China has studied the specific tactics and capabilities of the Western sanctions coalition. The swift and severe measures, including asset freezes, exclusion from the SWIFT financial messaging system, and export controls on critical technologies, have highlighted the extensive toolkit available to the West. This has driven China to enhance its economic defenses, such as developing alternative financial systems and reducing dependency on the U.S. dollar.

Additionally, Beijing has recognized the limitations of its unilateral economic measures. While China has employed economic coercion against countries like Australia and Lithuania, these efforts have often been mitigated by support from other nations. This has reinforced the understanding that successful economic deterrence relies on the capacity to impose costs and the ability to form and maintain supportive coalitions.

The Russo-Ukrainian conflict has illuminated the broader geopolitical and economic realities constraining China’s ambitions to reshape the global financial system. Despite efforts to promote the renminbi (yuan) and establish alternative payment systems, China remains deeply integrated into the existing international economic order. Russia's challenges in circumventing sanctions have demonstrated to Beijing that true sanctions-proofing is nearly impossible in today’s interconnected world. Russia has also demonstrated an ability to exploit black market options but cannot replace free and open participation in the global financial and market system.

In general, the lessons from the Russian-Ukraine conflict have driven China to bolster its economic resilience, reassess the potential costs of aggressive actions, and emphasize building and maintaining international partnerships to mitigate the impact of potential sanctions.

Xi’s Strategic Fix to U.S. Deterrence

Xi Jinping took the lessons from the Russian-Ukraine conflict and developed ways to mitigate them in preparation for a Chinese assault on Taiwan. One of the foremost lessons for China is the importance of preparing for a protracted conflict. Observing Russia’s drawn-out and bloody war, Xi took steps to identify and rectify corruption and inefficiencies within the Chinese military. This was most evident by the corruption investigation into the procurement system led by the newly appointed defense minister, Li Shangfu. Even if this has been the elimination of a rival, the effect on others is likely the same. Additionally, China is bolstering its military-industrial complex to ensure a robust stockpile of munitions, missiles, and drones and the capacity to produce them at a large scale.

Another key lesson revolves around the transformative role of drones on the battlefield. The extensive use of surveillance and attack drones by both Russian and Ukrainian forces has prompted China to integrate these capabilities into its combat doctrine. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) aims to learn and apply these modern warfare strategies through joint training operations with Russia.

Xi has also observed that economic resilience is vital in enduring sanctions and maintaining military operations. Despite the West’s comprehensive sanctions against Russia, Moscow’s leverage over global energy markets and efforts at financial decoupling and import substitution have allowed it to sustain its war efforts. In response, China has been intensifying its efforts to shockproof its economy. This includes promoting the renminbi in international trade and expanding land-based infrastructure with Russia to secure vital supplies in case of a U.S.-led naval blockade.

The war in Ukraine has highlighted the necessity of strong domestic support for prolonged military campaigns. Despite initial expectations that Western sanctions would destabilize Russia internally, the Kremlin has managed to maintain solid domestic backing for its war efforts. Xi is confident that framing a conflict over Taiwan as a defensive measure to prevent national disintegration would garner similar support in China. Furthermore, the Chinese government possesses more sophisticated tools than Russia for suppressing dissent and controlling public opinion. Tight control of the narrative and restricted outside influence in Russia and China have proven effective buffers for governmental missteps and the pursuit of party objectives at the expense of their citizens.

Xi has been closely monitoring the West’s commitment to Ukraine. While the initial response from the U.S. and its allies was swift and unified, ongoing political divisions and delays in military support signal weakening resolve. This perceived fracturing of Western solidarity is a critical observation for Beijing, suggesting that the West’s ability to sustain a united front in the face of a prolonged conflict may wane over time. The failures in Afghanistan and Iraq and the hesitation to provide more powerful weapons to Ukraine solidify this perception.

Overall, Xi Jinping has learned that success in modern conflicts requires thorough preparation, economic resilience, effective use of advanced military technology, strong domestic support, and an understanding of the adversary’s capacity for sustained commitment. It sounds more like Clausewitz than Sun-Tzu, but it demonstrates an ability to draw and apply strategic lessons from other maneuvers in great power competition. These lessons shape China’s strategic calculations and approach to potential future confrontations.

The U.S. Political Approach to China

The National Security Council is aware of Xi’s lessons and is attempting to shape policy to best position the U.S. to advance its interests through advantage and influence. The political approach of the United States towards China involves a combination of deterrence, diplomacy, and economic policy aimed at managing the competitive relationship without escalating to open conflict. The Biden administration’s strategy focuses on realistic assumptions about the capacity of the United States to shape China’s political system. Instead of seeking an all-out confrontation, the U.S. aims to prevent Chinese hegemony in the Indo-Pacific, maintain its economic and technological leadership, and support regional democracies. This involves intense competition through measures that blunt Chinese activities undermining U.S. interests and building coalitions with allies to secure American priorities.

Deterrence is a critical component of the U.S. strategy. The Biden administration has taken significant steps to enhance its military posture in the Indo-Pacific region, such as expanding military access in strategic locations and upgrading ties with key partners like Australia, Japan, and the Philippines. It has also implemented export controls on semiconductors, restricted outbound investments to China, and provided security assistance to Taiwan, demonstrating a clear commitment to countering Chinese aggression. There remains legitimate concern for what U.S. deterrence is aimed at. Unfortunately, it is limited to avoiding conflict and has done little to impede the Chinese from aggressively pursuing actions below the level of armed conflict.

Diplomacy works in conjunction with these deterrence measures to manage risks and maintain stability. By directly communicating with Chinese leaders, the U.S. seeks to clarify its intentions, reduce misunderstandings, and prevent escalatory spirals. High-level meetings, such as the summit between President Biden and President Xi Jinping, have led to concrete outcomes like the restoration of military-to-military communications and agreements to address the flow of fentanyl precursors.

Economic policy is also a vital part of the U.S. approach. Efforts to strengthen the American economy through substantial investments in infrastructure, technology, and clean energy aim to enhance the U.S. competitive position. Additionally, by coordinating with allies on economic and technological issues, the U.S. seeks to reduce dependence on Chinese supply chains and prevent China from leveraging its economic power to undermine global stability.

As previously discussed, China’s response to these U.S. measures has been multifaceted. While Beijing continues to assert its interests and expand its influence, it has also taken steps to mitigate the impact of U.S. actions. For instance, China has promoted the use of the yuan in international trade and built infrastructure to secure alternative supply routes. However, China’s economy remains deeply integrated with the global economy, making it vulnerable to sustained Western pressure. Despite these challenges, Chinese leaders have emphasized the need for economic resilience and strategic partnerships to counterbalance U.S. actions.

The U.S. strategy towards China involves a balanced mix of deterrence, diplomacy, and economic policies to manage competition and prevent conflict. This approach recognizes the complexities of the U.S.-China relationship and seeks to achieve American objectives while minimizing the risks of escalation and maintaining global stability.

The DoD Approach: Integrated Deterrence

Diplomacy, Congressional acts, and protectionism are affecting China. Although not always deterred, they are sometimes contained or blocked from acting. Is that true from a military standpoint? To a degree, yes, the U.S. remains the regional hegemon. However, some severe structural and physical problems exist with the Department of Defense (DoD) approach called integrated deterrence.

DoD employs the 2022 National Security Strategy's concept of integrated deterrence to blend military capabilities across all domains—land, sea, air, space, and cyber—to prevent adversaries from engaging in predatory activities. This approach aims to create a seamless combination of capabilities to convince potential adversaries that the costs of their aggressive actions will outweigh the benefits. The strategy includes cooperation across different branches of the U.S. military, integration with other government agencies, and collaboration with international allies to ensure a comprehensive deterrent posture.

However, the application of integrated deterrence is, at best, aspirational and faces significant challenges. Integrating all forces and capabilities across various domains and agencies (plus allies) into a cohesive deterrent strategy is daunting and unachievable. The U.S. military, traditionally specialized in warfighting, struggles to adapt to a role primarily focused on deterrence, which is inherently a political function. Effective deterrence requires clear communication of intentions and capabilities to adversaries, which can conflict with the secrecy and specialized nature of many military operations, particularly in cyber and space domains.

The problematic nature of implementing integrated deterrence lies in the inherent tension between forces designed to win wars and those aimed at preventing them. Military forces optimized for combat, such as highly mobile naval units and automated drones, may not effectively signal deterrence due to their flexible deployment and reduced perceived commitment. Moreover, the secretive nature of advanced technologies and cyber capabilities can undermine the transparency needed for credible deterrence, as adversaries may not fully understand or believe in the deterrent capabilities being signaled.

This complexity is further compounded by the bureaucratic hurdles within the DoD and the broader U.S. government. Integrating diverse organizations with different administrative cultures, priorities, and political constituencies is a formidable challenge. Additionally, aligning international allies' strategic goals and operational capabilities with U.S. objectives adds another layer of difficulty. These issues make the seamless implementation of integrated deterrence highly problematic and highlight the gap between the aspirational goals of the National Security Strategy and the practical realities faced by a military primarily designed for warfighting.

Further complicating attaining deterrence effects by the military is the narrow aim of preventing a major conflict. Very little deterrence has occurred as the Chinese violate international waters or air space, build islands in waters they claim, attack nations with their fishing fleet militias, and harass Taiwan with threatening military exercises that do not mask their hostility. The failure to respond by the United States set up an eerily similar situation that led Russia to conclude no U.S. response would follow the Ukraine invasion. The DoD must navigate these tensions to balance the dual roles of deterring adversaries and maintaining the capacity to win wars if deterrence fails. The spectrum of cooperation, competition, and conflict leaves the military confused and conflicted with precisely what it should do in the most critical space in great power competition: The competition to exploit advantages and influence as leverage to advance and protect interests.

Conclusion

The U.S. political approach towards China combines diplomacy, military pressure, and economic policy to manage the competitive relationship without escalating to open conflict. The Biden administration’s strategic objectives are preventing Chinese hegemony in the Indo-Pacific, maintaining American economic and technological leadership, and supporting regional democracies. From a military perspective, this involves enhancing military capabilities in the region, implementing export controls, and providing security assistance to allies. Diplomatic efforts aim to clarify U.S. intentions, reduce misunderstandings, and prevent escalation through direct communication with Chinese leaders. Economic policies seek to strengthen the U.S. position and reduce dependencies on Chinese supply chains.

However, the Department of Defense's (DoD) implementation of the 2022 National Security Strategy's concept of integrated deterrence requires doing everything, everywhere, all the time, and perfectly coordinated. This is an aspirational goal for a professional military, but it is simply not achievable. This impossibility evidences the DoD's confusion about what to do about competition. Instead of competing globally with China, the DoD has focused on a battle over Taiwan that it sees as the full measure of competition. Presumably, because it is the only region where U.S. hegemony is seriously challenged, this conclusion is unsurprising for an organization built to fight and win wars.

The DoD must revise its approach to deterrence, which falls from the ideal to the practical. Effective deterrence requires clear communication of intentions and capabilities, which can conflict with the secretive nature of advanced military operations, particularly in cyber and space domains. The Secretary of Defense must recognize that the bureaucratic hurdles within the DoD and the broader U.S. government, cross-domain coordination, and the need to align international allies' goals with U.S. objectives, all seamlessly implemented, make integrated deterrence beyond the reach of any human organization. A change must be made to provide effective military deterrence beyond avoiding conflict.

U.S. deterrence against Russia and China has been historically weak over the past twenty-five years. It failed to prevent Russia’s war of conquest in the Ukraine but might have deterred China from direct armed conflict in the Pacific theater. At present, it is hard to know if U.S. actions are what have prevented Chinese actions. What can be said with some certainty is that the U.S. military has not yet determined how to compete below the level of armed conflict, using deterrence as its primary mode, as outlined in the current strategy. Some progress has been made diplomatically and economically.

6. As F-16s Arrive, Ukraine Still Faces Steep Challenges in the Skies

As F-16s Arrive, Ukraine Still Faces Steep Challenges in the Skies

Ukraine wants to deploy its first F-16 jets this summer, hoping to counter Russia’s dominance in the air. But stepped-up Russian bombing attacks on air bases complicate the effort.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/28/world/europe/ukraine-russia-f-16s.html

The aftermath of a strike on Kyiv’s main children’s hospital last month. Russia’s attacks have become increasingly sophisticated and hard to counter.Credit...Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

By Marc Santora and Eric Schmitt

Marc Santora reported from Myrhorod and Kyiv, Ukraine, and Eric Schmitt from Washington.

July 28, 2024,

8:36 a.m. ET

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

The surveillance drone appeared high above the Ukrainian air base without warning in early July. Minutes after it relayed targeting data back to a Russian base, a barrage of ballistic missiles struck the airfield, Ukrainian officials said, recounting the episode.

“That first hit was so powerful that even our windows were trembling,” said Valeria Minenko, 21, who lives near the air base in Myrhorod, central Ukraine, one of many targeted in relentless attacks by Russia in recent months.

“Now they’re hitting the air base with the rockets all the time,” Ms. Minenko said.

Russia has been saturating the skies over Ukraine with surveillance drones, exploiting gaps in air-defense systems, to launch increasingly sophisticated attacks on Ukrainian positions. Its dominance in the air along parts of the front has allowed it to bombard Ukrainian positions with hundreds of powerful guided bombs every day, helping its ground forces to make slow and costly gains.

Ukraine’s strategy was to counter Russia in the air war with the aid of long-coveted F-16 fighter jets from the West that it says it will deploy this summer.

But the assaults on Ukrainian air bases underscore Russia’s determination to limit the impact of the planes even before they enter the fight. They also highlight the challenges Ukraine faces as it prepares to deploy the sophisticated aircraft for the first time.

Ukraine is hoping the F-16s, which come with powerful electronic warfare systems and an array of other weapons, can be used in coordination with other Western weapons like Patriot air-defense systems to expand the area deemed too dangerous for Russian pilots to fly. They also hope the jets will add another layer of protection for Ukrainian cities and critical infrastructure from relentless missile and drone attacks.

Image

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, second from left, with F-16 pilots, instructors and a maintenance team in Brussels in May.Credit...Olivier Hoslet/EPA, via Shutterstock

But a shortage of trained pilots and a limited number of jets will constrain the immediate impact, experts say.

“Russia has had so much time to fortify its defenses, especially along the frontline areas,” said Hunter Stoll, a defense analyst at RAND, a research organization. “The F-16s and their pilots will face stiff resistance from Russian air defenses, both on the ground and in the sky.”

Ukraine says it is “in the process” of moving the first F-16s into the country, about two and a half years after it first pleaded for the aircraft. It has been a year since the Biden administration finally reversed policy and allowed Western allies to transfer American fighter jets to Ukraine.

“Today, we can already say clearly, we have entered the club of countries that have F-16s,” Yuri Ihnat, a representative for the Ukrainian Air Force, said in an interview. “This is a turning point for our nation.”

The arrival of the planes — the exact number has not been publicly revealed — comes at a moment of deep uncertainty in the war. Russian forces are engaged in furious assaults all along the 600-mile front, the Ukrainian energy grid is crippled by years of unrelenting bombardment and a presidential election in the United States that could reshape future military assistance.

In addition to the Russian attacks on the Ukrainian airfields, Ukraine will also be constrained by the small number of trained pilots, according to Ukrainian and U.S. military officials. About 20 airmen in the various U.S., Dutch and Danish training pipelines are expected to be ready this year, according to U.S. officials.

Image

A restaurant is powered by a generator amid rolling blackouts in Kyiv last month. The Ukrainian energy grid is crippled by years of unrelenting bombardment.Credit...Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

Air commanders say they typically allot at least two pilots per aircraft — for crew rest, training and other matters. So that would allow Ukraine to fly only about 10 F-16s, at most, on combat missions this year.

Another major limiting factor, these officials say, is the number of trained maintenance and support personnel on the ground to keep the F-16s flying.

“It’s not just the pilots you have to have,” Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a longtime F-16 pilot, said last month. “Maintenance is also a key part of that, and training the maintainers.”

Gen. Serhii Holubtsov, chief of aviation of Ukraine’s air force, said Ukrainians “do not wear rose-colored glasses” and understand that the F-16 is “not a panacea.”

The strategy, he told Donbas Realiy, a branch of Radio Liberty, could be thought of in three phases — “crawl, walk, run” — and it would take time.

“We haven’t learned to crawl yet,” he said.

Before the jets can start to play a role in shaping the battlefield, Ukraine needs to be sure they can be protected. While Russia has been attacking Ukrainian airfields since the first hours of the war, the early July attack on Myrhorod was different, Ukrainian officials said.

“The enemy came up with a new tactic,” Mr. Ihnat said.

Specifically, he said, the Russians were improving missiles and reconnaissance drones, “making it so that we cannot influence them with electronic warfare.”

They are also preprogramming surveillance drones to fly deep into Ukraine without emitting telltale electronic signatures, making them harder to detect.

Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, Ukraine’s top military commander, said this week that Ukraine urgently needs to find new methods of destroying enemy drones.

Image

A photograph released by the Ukrainian Defense Ministry of a Sukhoi Su-27 plane at an airfield in Myrhorod region in 2022.Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Mr. Ihnat said that the Ukrainian air force had effectively adopted deception tactics — like building model planes to act as decoys, camouflaging aircraft and moving them — to protect its depleted fleet of Soviet-era aircraft, and would do the same for the F-16s.

“If someone wants to laugh at this, let them,” he said. “Thanks to the models, the enemy has already lost dozens or even hundreds of their missiles.”

Ukraine is also employing 1970s-vintage Yakovlev Yak-52 training planes to hunt Russian surveillance drones, he said.

The propeller-driven aircraft have been hunting Russian surveillance drones across southern Ukraine, with both Ukrainian and Russian forces posting videos of the aerial clashes.

General Holubtsov said he expects attacks on the airfields to increase. For that reason, he said, Ukraine will not keep all the promised F-16s in the country.

“There are a certain number of aircraft that will be stored at secure air bases, outside of Ukraine, so that they are not targeted here,” he said. “And this will be our reserve in case of need for replacement of faulty planes during routine maintenance.”

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has said that the storage abroad of planes or other Ukrainian military assets could “pose a serious danger of NATO being drawn further into the conflict.”

The Biden administration’s approach to arming Ukraine has been driven in large part by concerns about potential escalation with Moscow, which is why it resisted allowing the transfer of F-16s from allies for so long.

Image

An F-16 at Bodo airport, Norway, on Jan. 3. Ukraine’s deployment of the jets will be limited by a shortage of trained pilots and maintenance crew.Credit...Jan Langhaug/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Retired Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, the dean of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies in Washington, said the delay “has given Russia the gift of time.”

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“We gave them time to dig in and establish defenses that are now much more difficult to unravel,” he said.

American, Dutch and Danish officials have been working with Ukrainian counterparts to hammer out the details of synchronizing the arrival of the promised aircraft, equipping them with air-to-air and air-to-ground munitions, and thinking through the most efficient and effective use of the initial group of planes, the U.S. and Ukrainian officials said.

After spending some time getting used to the aircraft, General Holubtsov said, the F-16s can be used in the effort to push back the Russian attack planes that have been bombing Ukraine.

General Holubtsov said that F-16s alone would not be enough to drive back the Russian warplanes. They would work in concert with ground-based air defenses like the Patriots, coordinating efforts with a powerful Western information exchange network called Link 16.

The process will take time, he said, and there are a host of factors that could complicate the effort, including Ukraine’s shortage of air-defense systems, which it needs desperately to protect civilian as well as military assets.

But if the Russian planes can be driven further back from the front, the general said, “it can be considered a turning point and a victory — if not superiority, then parity in the air space.”

Dzvinka Pinchuk contributed reporting. Nataliia Novosolova contributed research.

Marc Santora has been reporting from Ukraine since the beginning of the war with Russia. He was previously based in London as an international news editor focused on breaking news events and earlier the bureau chief for East and Central Europe, based in Warsaw. He has also reported extensively from Iraq and Africa. More about Marc Santora

Eric Schmitt is a national security correspondent for The Times, focusing on U.S. military affairs and counterterrorism issues overseas, topics he has reported on for more than three decades. More about Eric Schmitt

7. IDF strikes deep in Lebanon after rocket attack, stoking fear of wider war

IDF strikes deep in Lebanon after rocket attack, stoking fear of wider war

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/07/28/israel-hamas-war-news-gaza-lebanon/

Israel has promised revenge for a rocket strike from Lebanon that killed in 12 in the Golan Heights town of Majdal Shams. Hezbollah denied responsibility.

Charred bicycles lie next to an area that was hit by a rocket strike at a soccer field in the Druze town of Majdal Shams, in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, on Saturday. (Leo Correa/AP)

By Rachel Pannett and Niha Masih

Updated July 28, 2024 at 8:00 a.m. EDT|Published July 28, 2024 at 12:50 a.m. EDT

Israel’s military said it struck Hezbollah targets deep inside Lebanon and in the country’s southern region Sunday, after a rocket strike from Lebanon killed 12 people, mostly teenagers and children, on a soccer field in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

Amid increased fears of an all-out war, the Lebanese government asked the United States to urge restraint from Israel, the country’s foreign minister, Abdallah Bou Habib, told Reuters.

Israel’s military said it targeted Hezbollah weapons caches and militant infrastructure in Lebanon overnight, including in the areas of Chabriha, Borj El Chmali, Beqaa, Kfarkela, Rab El Thalathine, Khiam and Tayr Harfa.

Israel blamed the Saturday strike in Majdal Shams on Hezbollah, citing military intelligence and an assessment of the scene, and described it as the deadliest single attack on Israel since Hamas’s Oct. 7 assault. Hezbollah denied any connection to the attack. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and top Israeli officials promised to retaliate against the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group, raising fears of a wider escalation in regional hostilities.

Netanyahu returned to Israel on Sunday from his visit to the United States and is set to meet with his security cabinet later in the day.

In a Sunday morning tweet, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant mourned the victims of the Majdal Shams attack and said all people living in the area “suffer” on account of Hezbollah. “We will ensure Hezbollah, the proxy of Iran, pays a price for this loss,” he wrote. Earlier, Netanyahu warned: “Hezbollah will pay a heavy price for this that it has not paid so far.”

“We are deeply saddened by the loss of life,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters at a Sunday news conference in Tokyo, where he has been meeting his Japanese counterparts. “Every indication is that indeed … the rocket was from Hezbollah,” he added.

While the Biden administration believes Hezbollah carried out the attack, the working assumption is that it was an accident, a senior U.S. official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive assessments. The person cautioned that U.S. officials don’t yet have a definitive conclusion about the intention behind the attack

Fighting along the Lebanon-Israel border has intensified in recent months, with regular exchanges of fire between Hezbollah and Israel’s military. For months, the United States has pushed to de-escalate hostilities on that front. Blinken reiterated Sunday that he and other top U.S. policymakers “don’t want to see the conflict escalate,” and that they were working to ease tensions and bring about a cease-fire deal in Gaza, which he said would reduce flare-ups on the Israel-Lebanon border.

Bou Habib, the Lebanese foreign minister, told Reuters that the United States had asked the Lebanese government to pass on a message of restraint to Hezbollah, too.

Hundreds of mourners gathered in Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights, home to the Arabic-speaking ethnic Druze community, on Sunday for the funeral of those killed in the rocket attack. The spiritual leader of the community, Sheikh Muwafek Tarif, described it as a day of mourning in an interview to Israeli news outlet Ynet. He said there was a lot of anger in the community and questioned what the Israeli government had done for the area’s security.

“Harming civilians is a black line. The government must bring security to the residents,” he said.

Mourners attend a funeral for 10 of the victims of the rocket attack in Majdal Shams on Sunday. (Amir Levy/Getty Images)

Assad Abu Saleh, who lives in Spain but was visiting relatives in Majdal Shams when the strike occurred, said several of the victims belonged to his extended family. “It’s a catastrophe,” he told The Washington Post during the funerals Sunday. He saw “parts of bodies” and people without heads at the site, he said.

“This war, this stupid war, has to come to an end,” he said. But he could not see the end. “Both sides are too stubborn to settle for negotiations.”

Majd Abu Saleh, an engineer, said he was about 160 feet away when the projectile landed. “All our children, all the time, they are playing” in the soccer field. His 9-year-old daughter left the field about five minutes before the strike, he said, and three of her friends were killed.

Video he recorded when he arrived showed a terrible scene: at least nine children in soccer jerseys and cleats, motionless, their bodies contorted or pierced by shrapnel on the green field.

“I wish to be finished with this tragedy and this crazy war,” said Fawzi Abu Jaber, 72, who said he has lived his whole life in Majdal Shams. The United States, he said, “must back peace, not the war, and not the Israeli government, which doesn’t want peace. Not in Lebanon and in Gaza but in all the Middle East.”

Paramedics arrived at the soccer field Saturday to a “very difficult scene,” said United Hatzalah, an Israeli volunteer-based emergency medical services organization. Dozens of children lay injured. Nine of the victims were declared dead on the scene because of the severity of their injuries, the group said in an email. Israel’s military said those injured and killed were between 10 and 20 years old.

The Golan Heights, where Majdal Shams is located, is a 500-square-mile strip along the border between Syria and Israel that was seized by Israel in 1967 and formally annexed in 1981. In 2019, President Donald Trump upended years of the status quo by making the United States the only country apart from Israel to recognize it Israeli territory.

“There is no doubt that Hezbollah has crossed all the red lines here, and the response will reflect that,” Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz told Channel 12 on Saturday, adding: “We are nearing the moment in which we face an all-out war against Hezbollah and Lebanon.” A 34-day-war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006 left hundreds of soldiers and civilians dead and injured on both sides. Hezbollah has since received large shipments of rockets and drones from Iran and produced its own weapons and has air defense capabilities.

Here’s what else to know

Iran’s Foreign Ministry warned Israel against any “new adventure” in Lebanon and backed Hezbollah’s assertion that the group was not behind the Majdal Shams attack. Spokesman Nasser Kanani said Israeli claims that Hezbollah is responsible for the strike are a “fake scenario” attempting to divert attention from the war in Gaza, according to a Foreign Ministry statement Sunday. The United States and the United Nations have a “moral responsibility” to prevent Israel “from starting a new fire whose flames will spread,” Kanani said.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock condemned the Majdal Shams strike on Sunday, adding, “It is important to act with cool heads. Far too many people have died already in this conflict.”

The attack in Majdal Shams followed a deadly strike in central Gaza, where local health authorities said at least 30 Palestinians were killed when Israel bombed a school that was sheltering displaced people. The Israel Defense Forces said it targeted a Hamas command and control center inside the Khadija school compound.

At least 39,324 people have been killed and 90,830 injured in Gaza since the war began, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but says the majority of the dead are women and children. Israel estimates that about 1,200 people were killed in Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, including more than 300 soldiers, and says 329 soldiers have been killed since the launch of its military operation in Gaza.

Heidi Levine, Kareem Fahim, Michael Birnbaum, Alon Rom and Lior Soroka contributed to this report.

8. 2 Programs the Army Got Right

I think the jury is still out on the SFABs though I agree with the potential they can bring as long as expectations are properly managed and it is understood they are not a replacement for SF.

I am a strong proponent of APS3. One aspect of APS3 that is not discussed is the potential and likelihood that these well educated officers will continue to serve in and support national security after retirement from active duty. APS3 is helping to create national security professionals for life and I think the Army's vision is making an important contribution.

Almost every graduate of APS3 I know is still making important contributions after retirement, directly and indirectly.

2 Programs the Army Got Right

military.com · by Military.com | By Brendan Gallagher Published July 26, 2024 at 1:19pm ET · July 26, 2024

The opinions expressed in this op-ed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Military.com or the official position of the Department of the Army or Department of Defense. If you would like to submit your own commentary, please send your article to opinions@military.com for consideration.

The U.S. Army, like most large organizations, can sometimes get some things wrong. But in this piece, I'd like to highlight two recent initiatives where the Army nailed it: the Advanced Strategic Planning and Policy Program (ASP3) and the Security Force Assistance Brigades (SFABs).

Having had the privilege to take part in both, I can affirm that they both are moving the Army in a positive direction and show how focusing on deliberate, constructive initiatives can continue moving the service forward.

First, ASP3 is a Ph.D.-producing program open to officers upon completion of their key and developmental assignment as a major (with many officers also choosing to apply as lieutenant colonels). Once accepted into ASP3, the officer applies to a Ph.D. program of their choice to focus on a field such as political science, history or security studies, and then works to earn a doctorate. You get only three years of study to complete all requirements, including the dissertation, an aggressive timeline that is notably more stringent than the typical Ph.D. student will experience. But it can -- and has -- been done successfully by many officers (nearly 90 as of this writing). After earning the doctorate, the officer is then expected to complete a utilization tour that leverages their skills, but will also have the opportunity to command if selected to do so.

Why is ASP3 a good thing? Well, I'd argue it fills a unique and important gap in our service. The Army, and the U.S. military as a whole, faced serious strategic setbacks in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, and a coherent national strategy did not take shape to address those challenges. However, ASP3 builds strategic capacity within the service by developing officers who can better recognize and grapple with such difficulties. Will this guarantee success in the next war? Hardly, because no such guarantee exists. But a growing bench of strategically minded leaders, gradually dispersed among various command and staff positions, should improve the odds that the Army will have people in the right places who are better prepared to deal with tough strategic questions down the road.

SFABs embody a different -- but also very constructive and thoughtful -- endeavor that is fully underway across the Army. Five active-duty SFABs currently exist, along with one in the National Guard. These specially formed brigades are designed to strengthen allies by advising foreign security forces and building partner capacity over time. Outwardly, each is structured somewhat like a conventional brigade combat team, yet these noncommissioned officer- and officer-centric organizations do not have junior enlisted soldiers. Instead, they consist of leader-heavy SFAB adviser teams that can operate across the spectrum of conflict, from capacity-building efforts over many years to advising and supporting key partners in the advent of a "hot" war, along with other scenarios in between. Ideally, the mere presence of SFAB teams overseas might help reassure partners and deter adversaries, thereby helping to avoid a shooting war in the first place.

The SFAB fills a void in the Army's force structure that became apparent when brigade combat teams were repeatedly called upon to deploy to places like Afghanistan while leaving about half of their combat power stateside. It also builds on long-standing recommendations for increased advisory capability by avoiding many of the pitfalls of ad hoc advisory elements created on the fly. The SFAB construct provides a tailor-made force that can help advance U.S. interests and values by influencing foreign partners in an enduring way, and at greater scale than was previously possible. Additionally, the alignment of each SFAB brigade with a different geographic combatant command can help build relationships that reap dividends in the years to come.

It is, of course, too early to say whether these endeavors will be unqualified successes, and it is certainly possible one or both could encounter challenges, but many signs are positive.

Although it often seems safe to stick with the status quo, in these two instances, the U.S. Army has commendably decided to take a calculated risk by leading change to address specific gaps and deficiencies. The ability to generate strategically adept leaders and to build partner capacity will almost certainly remain important for the foreseeable future. While large organizations can certainly be prone to making errors, in these two areas, the Army deserves praise, and if it remains committed to both initiatives, they might foster a positive return on investment well into the future.

-- Col. Brendan Gallagher is the garrison commander at Fort Bliss, Texas. He earned a Ph.D. at Princeton as a scholar in the ASP3 Program and is the author of the book "The Day After: Why America Wins the War but Loses the Peace" (Cornell University Press).

military.com · by Military.com | By Brendan Gallagher Published July 26, 2024 at 1:19pm ET · July 26, 2024

9. Army deploying brigades to Middle East, Europe, South Korea

We have seen this reported multiple times this week.

But I want to flag this comment from the former SMA:

Grinston now serves as CEO of Army Emergency Relief, which helps soldiers and their families in financial distress. His job involves helping soldiers deployed across the globe who need to take emergency leave.

The deployments and training exercises underscore that the Army has not returned to garrison life even though the war in Afghanistan ended nearly three years ago, Grinston said.

“From my time, when I left a year ago, the soldiers were just as busy then as they were in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Grinston said. “Clearly it’s less dangerous, but time away from families is still time away from families.”

Army deploying brigades to Middle East, Europe, South Korea

The Army has announced that three brigades will deploy this fall as part of ongoing rotations

JEFF SCHOGOL

POSTED ON JUL 26, 2024 5:21 PM EDT

taskandpurpose.com · by Jeff Schogol

The Army has announced that three brigades will deploy this fall to three different theaters, underscoring that many soldiers continue to serve far away from home even though the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have ended.

The 1st Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division is headed to the U.S. Central Command theater of operations, the Army recently announced. The brigade combat team will replace the New Jersey Army National Guard’s 44th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, which is currently supporting Operation Inherent Resolve, the U.S.-led mission against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.

The 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division is also deploying to Europe as part of the latest rotation of Operation Atlantic Resolve, which was launched to strengthen NATO’s eastern flank following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The unit will replace the 3rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division.

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And the 1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division will go to South Korea to replace the 3rd Cavalry Regiment, which falls under III Corps.

“The Army has a total commitment of 135,200 Soldiers worldwide, with 132,600 Soldiers overseas in over 140 countries supporting Unified Combatant Commands (CCMDs) and another 13,500 within the U.S. and its territories supporting CCMDs,” an Army official told Task & Purpose.

Meanwhile, the Army is cutting 24,000 active-duty billets. Army’s most recent budget request would fund a total of 442,300 active-duty soldiers, down from an active-duty end strength of 485,900 soldiers in Fiscal Year 2021.

It’s worth noting that it takes a total of three brigades to make such deployments: One brigade is already deployed, another is getting ready to go, and a third just got back, said retired Sergeant Major of the Army Michael A. “Tony” Grinston.

To be ready for such deployments, soldiers go through extensive preparation at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California, and elsewhere, further keeping them away from their families, Grinston told Task & Purpose.

Grinston now serves as CEO of Army Emergency Relief, which helps soldiers and their families in financial distress. His job involves helping soldiers deployed across the globe who need to take emergency leave.

The deployments and training exercises underscore that the Army has not returned to garrison life even though the war in Afghanistan ended nearly three years ago, Grinston said.

“From my time, when I left a year ago, the soldiers were just as busy then as they were in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Grinston said. “Clearly it’s less dangerous, but time away from families is still time away from families.”

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Jeff Schogol

Senior Pentagon Reporter

Jeff Schogol is a senior staff writer for Task & Purpose. He reports on both the Defense Department as a whole as well as individual services, covering a variety of topics that include personnel, policy, military justice, deployments, and technology. His apartment in Alexandria, Va., has served as the Task & Purpose Pentagon bureau since the pandemic first struck in March 2020. The dwelling is now known as Forward Operating Base Schogol.

taskandpurpose.com · by Jeff Schogol

10. Ukrainian troops destroy Russian Pantsir-S1 air defense system

Ukrainian troops destroy Russian Pantsir-S1 air defense system

defence-blog.com · July 26, 2024

Ukrainian Defense Forces have successfully destroyed a Russian Pantsir-S1 air defense system in the Kherson region.

The destruction was documented with photos of the charred remains of the system, published by the Militarniy.

It is speculated that the system was hit by a high-precision GMLRS missile, causing the subsequent blaze.

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The “Russia No Context” Telegram channel reported that the Russian air defense system was destroyed on July 25, 2024. In addition, two Russian personnel were critically injured, while the status of other occupants is currently unknown.

Based on the lowered radar antenna and raised supports in the photos, it appears the system was not deployed at the time of the strike and may have been moving along a public road.

Recent months have seen considerable losses for Russian air defense systems, attributed to attacks from FPV drones near the front lines and GMLRS missiles used by Ukrainian forces in the rear.

Previously, the “Militarniy” reported that an M142 HIMARS rocket system, in collaboration with an aerial reconnaissance drone, destroyed a Russian Pantsir-S1 system 30 kilometers south of Donetsk. This system was supposed to provide air defense for enemy units in the area.

defence-blog.com · July 26, 2024

11. The unseen conflict: North Korea’s discreet war with Israel - opinion

Interesting background history and theory.

At least one analyst takes north Korea seriously.

The unseen conflict: North Korea’s discreet war with Israel - opinion

By DIVYA MALHOTRA

JULY 28, 2024 01:35

North Korea views Israel as a satellite state of the US. Israel therefore remains a collateral damage in Pyongyang-Washington strategic rivalry.

Jerusalem Post

In January 2024, South Korean intelligence reports claimed that Hamas had been using North Korean weapons in its ongoing conflict with Israel in Gaza.

Even though Pyongyang denied the allegations, there is strong reason to believe that Seoul’s claim might be true.

North Korea and Israel have no diplomatic ties. Pyongyang acknowledges Palestinian authority over the entire Israeli territory.

North Korea’s relationship with Palestine dates to the 1960s, when it started training the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). Over the last six decades, military forces of the two states came face to face on several occasions, even though they have no direct territorial conflict or ideological differences.

North Korea saw Israel as an imperialist state in the Mediterranean. Their lingering rivalry is largely accrued to their contrasting relations with US and their bilateral relations continue to carry the nostalgia of the cold-war era.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un attends the 10th Plenary Meeting of the 8th Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea in Pyongyang, North Korea, in this undated photo released by North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency July 2, 2024. (credit: KCNA VIA REUTERS)

In the 1960s, Kim II Sung intervened actively in the Arab-Israeli conflict by deploying his military and intelligence against Israeli forces.

During the 1970s, Pyongyang began offering financial support and training to Palestinian terrorist groups.

In 1972, radical Marxist operatives from the Japanese Red Army, trained and funded by North Korea, stormed Israel’s international Airport in Lod.

Israel-North Korea relations in history

Twenty-six people were killed and over 80 were wounded. The majority of those killed were Puerto Rican Christian pilgrims traveling to the Holy Land. Two years prior, George Habash, the commander of the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) had visited Pyongyang to plan and coordinate the attack.

Subsequently, the Japanese militants received training from PFLP fighters In Lebanon’s Bekaa valley.

Pyongyang’s military forces worked hand-in-glove with the Egyptian forces during the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

Then Egyptian president Anwar Sadat had severed Cairo’s military ties with Moscow. North Koreans therefore found a strategic opportunity to step in.

Sadat and his army chief Hosni Mubarak were well-familiar with North Korea’s military prowess and welcomed their forces to participate.

Sadat formally welcomed North Korean military advisors to Egypt in June 1973. As war with Israel seemed inevitable, Pyongyang reportedly dispatched about 1,500 soldiers (disguised as laborers) to assist the Egyptians in operating their Soviet-made surface-to-air missile systems.

These wars exposed Pyongyang’s intention, interest, and ability to get involved in theater of Arab-Israeli conflict.

Besides direct involvement in conflicts, North Korea allied itself with Iran after the Islamic revolution in 1979 that toppled the US-backed shah. Sung started forging closer diplomatic and commercial ties with Iran.

During the Iran-Iraq war of 1980s, a US-led arms embargo made it extremely difficult for Tehran’s new administration to get weapons to oppose Saddam Hussein’s army. Thus, Sung supported Iran militarily throughout the war.

After the war, the two nations started working closely to build strategic missile systems. This collaboration was instrumental in designating Iran as a potent regional threat, giving it the ability to strike its enemies in the Arab world. Reaching out to Iran was also a way of bolstering the anti-US axis.

Tables turned in the 1990s. With the fall of Soviet Union, Moscow’s coffers went dry and its financial support for Pyongyang went down.

As its economy began to contract, it started seeing Israel as a possible economic partner and as a means for reaching out to Washington. In 1992, amid political unrest, North Korea discreetly reached out to Israel via a Korean American businessman.

They arranged a first encounter in midtown Manhattan.

Initially, Pyongyang asked for technical assistance to restore a gold mine destroyed by the US Air Force during the Korean War, along with $30 million investment. In return, Tel Aviv asked Kim to stop trading weapons around the Middle East.

After subsequent meetings in Beijing and Pyongyang in 1992 and 1993, North Korea asked for an additional investment of $1 billion or more in the nation, to compensate for loss of revenues from stopping arms sales.

According to rumors, Israel was prepared to establish a diplomatic mission in North Korea’s capital. This was the closest Israel came to fostering economic ties with North Korea in return of an assurance of non-proliferation of arms sales in the region. However, Israel reneged, and the agreement never materialized.

Some believe that the deal was called off under US pressure after the UN nuclear inspectors accused North Korea of diverting plutonium from its Yonabyon Reactor, potentially for weapons use.

Although some Israeli leaders lamented the failure of talks, it made more sense for Israel to show a clear allegiance to the US rather than tilting towards the anti-US bloc.

Albeit, North Koreans and Israelis carried on their covert communications in the interim.

Israeli diplomats covertly considered a similar proposal from North Korea in 1999, sent to them via diplomatic mission in Stockholm. Pyongyang proposed to cease its advanced missile systems exports to Syria and Iran in exchange for US$1 billion.

Israel retorted that it could not pay the North such sums of money without US approval. On both occasions, negotiations failed largely due to Israel’s incapacity to act independently of Washington.

As of 2024, Pyongyang has two justifications for selling military hardware and technology in the region: Under pressure of international sanctions, the primary motivation for the North has been money.

By selling weapons to Iran and non-state actors such as Hamas and Hezbollah, the North has been raising money for its own weapons program.

Second, and more fundamental, is North Korea’s commitment to the anti-American Axis of Resistance alongside Russia, China, and Iran.

To that end, North Korea views Israel as a satellite state of the US. Israel therefore remains a collateral damage in Pyongyang-Washington strategic rivalry.

The writer is a Delhi-based researcher. She has been associated with India’s National Security Advisory Board. The views expressed here are her own.

Jerusalem Post

12. Not Just Boots on the Beach: How China Can Use Deception, Confusion, and Incrementalism to Change the Status Quo on Taiwan by Jude Blanchette and Hal Brands

The paper can be downloaded in PDF at this link: https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/2024-07/240725_Blanchette_Boots_Beach_0.pdf?VersionId=8NIi72JHcsPUkM4qo_scVRLVCx.jrl8z

Confidence is a difficult "center of gravity" to sustain.

We have to deter high end conflict as well as conventional invasion of Taiwan. That is what defining China as the pacing item directs us to do. However, a holistic deterrence strategy should also require that we effectively compete and operate in the political warfare realm (China's unrestricted warfare and three warfare of spcyhological warfare, legal warfare [lawfare], and media or public opinion warfare]).

Excerpts:

In a contest short of war, the center of gravity is Taiwan’s confidence in its relationship with Washington and in its own ability to resist. The goal should thus be to convince Beijing that violent half-measures will backfire strategically even if they succeed tactically, as they would strengthen U.S. and international support for Taiwan and thereby harden Taipei’s hostility to unification at the point of a gun.

Most broadly, the upshot of this analysis is that Washington needs to expand its conception of deterrence in the Taiwan Strait. If the United States prepares only for incremental or ambiguous aggression, it risks making a full-scale invasion more attractive for Beijing. But if it focuses only on high-end deterrence, it could lose on the installment plan as China uses creative tactics that erode Taiwan’s sovereignty and its confidence in the United States. Beijing has many ways to change the status quo in a sensitive area. The United States will need a holistic deterrence strategy to match.

Not Just Boots on the Beach

How China Can Use Deception, Confusion, and Incrementalism to Change the Status Quo on Taiwan

csis.org · by Brief by Jude Blanchette and Hal Brands Published July 25, 2024

Available Downloads

Download the Brief 954kb

The Issue

Edited by Jude Blanchette of CSIS and Hal Brands of SAIS, the Marshall Papers is a series of essays that probes and challenges the assessments underpinning the U.S. approach to great power rivalry. The papers will be rigorous yet provocative, continually pushing the boundaries of intellectual and policy debates. In this Marshall Paper, Jude Blanchette and Hal Brands explore four coercive approaches that Beijing could use to change the status quo around Taiwan short of outright invasion or blockade. The paper also highlights the serious challenges Washington and Taipei must address to have a ready response to these scenarios.

Introduction

On September 18, 1931, a Japanese infantry regiment conducted a “false flag” attack on the Japanese-owned South Manchuria Railway, detonating an explosive near a stretch of the track and blaming the operation on Chinese troops nearby. The next day, in response to the alleged sabotage, Japanese troops attacked a Chinese military garrison. Within months, the Japanese army had conquered Manchuria and made it a puppet state. Although a commission formed by the League of Nations eventually unraveled the deception and concluded that Japan had illegally invaded China, the international community took no meaningful action, in part because the active period of crisis had settled into a new normal and political will had evaporated.

More than 80 years later, in February 2014, soldiers wearing uniforms without insignias or other identifying information surrounded Ukrainian military bases and seized strategic points in Crimea. Although many observers immediately suspected that these “little green men” were Russian troops, Moscow claimed that they were “local self-defense units” acting on their own initiative. The Ukrainian government quickly lost control of Crimea, which was formally annexed to Russia. Meanwhile, Russian special operations forces began quasi-surreptitiously supporting separatist uprisings in Eastern Ukraine, an operation that eventually led to the full-scale Russo-Ukrainian war that is still underway.

Today, the United States and its allies are focused on the threat of an even bigger war: a possible Chinese assault on Taiwan and the cataclysmic, world-changing conflict it could provoke. But in contemplating Chinese moves against Taiwan, it is worth keeping these earlier incidents in mind because they highlight an important if underappreciated fact: great powers pursuing revisionist aims often seek to disguise their actions, create a cloud of uncertainty around them, or achieve gains through a sequence of “salami slices” in order to increase the odds of a successful fait accompli that will decrease the costs they must pay for their aggression. As Washington ponders China’s next steps vis-à-vis Taiwan, it is vital to understand how Beijing might utilize subterfuge, “salami slicing” tactics, and wedge-driving strategies to isolate Taiwan and ultimately compel “reunification.”

This paper does not take the position that China has abandoned or will abandon the possibility of a more dramatic, full-on invasion of Taiwan, should Chinese leader Xi Jinping conclude that the road to “peaceful” annexation is closed (although the two authors of this report do differ in their views on how likely this scenario is).[1] The potential for an outright invasion is real, and the consequences of such a gambit would be dire. A Sino-American war over Taiwan would be a global catastrophe, and it is imperative for Washington and its allies to do all they can to deter such an attack.

Yet China has more than one way of coercing Taiwan into political capitulation.[2] Indeed, the more successful Washington and its friends are in deterring the “D-Day” scenario, the more Beijing may be incentivized to focus on lower-intensity, or less obvious, forms of aggression instead.

This paper puts aside the prospect of an invasion or direct blockade and instead discusses four coercive approaches that Beijing could use to change the status quo: (1) a decapitation strike meant to exploit uncertainty in Taipei’s continuity of government arrangements; (2) a quasi-disguised maritime quarantine; (3) the taking, perhaps through ambiguous means, of one of Taiwan’s outlying islands; and (4) the staging of a catalytic incident in the Taiwan Strait. Each of these approaches would feature some degree of ambiguity and deception. Each would also target key vulnerabilities in Taiwan and in the U.S.-Taiwan relationship, not the least of which include Taiwanese political will and Taiwanese confidence in the availability of U.S. support.

This is not to say that China will conduct any of these operations—each of which could fail and each of which would entail significant risks for Beijing. Nor is the argument here that a conflict with China over Taiwan is preordained. In the authors’ judgment, China would only dramatically increase its coercion of Taiwan—whether disguised or overt—if it believed it had a decent chance of success and it had run out of other, less violent options for shifting the status quo. Yet it is entirely possible that Beijing could arrive at this juncture sometime in the coming years. As is on display in Ukraine, dictators make decisions that often conflict with rationality. Thus, it is crucial to understand that the parameters of possible Chinese action vis-à-vis Taiwan are more expansive than is commonly understood, if only so that the United States and its allies can forge a comprehensive response. A complete deterrence strategy must keep Beijing from salami-slicing its way to victory in the Taiwan Strait, even as the United States also races to deter a deadly high-end fight.

A complete deterrence strategy must keep Beijing from salami-slicing its way to victory in the Taiwan Strait, even as the United States also races to deter a deadly high-end fight.

Assumptions

This analysis rests on several assumptions about Chinese preferences and behavior:

First, China wants to annex Taiwan or otherwise bring about its political capitulation to the People’s Republic of China (PRC). This has been a consistent desire of Beijing’s since 1949. Although there is a lively debate about Xi’s sense of urgency in achieving this goal, there is no doubt that he—like generations of Chinese leaders before him—seeks to bring Taiwan to heel, or that China is developing the tools, from hard military power to disinformation campaigns and cyberattacks, to do so. The fact that China is actively seeking multiple ways of achieving its long-held goal of annexation or forced capitulation means that the United States, its allies, and most importantly Taiwan itself should be contemplating all potential angles of attack.
Second, Xi or any future Chinese leader would prefer to take Taiwan with minimal international blowback. That blowback could include immediate repercussions such as economic sanctions or war with the United States; it could also include longer-term costs, such as a region that rallies against Beijing after Taiwan falls. The more dramatic the action China takes against Taiwan, the stronger the regional and global reaction might be. Beijing’s grand strategy encompasses goals beyond taking Taiwan, and so it will seek to balance its global aspirations with the important objective of achieving “reunification.”
Third, and related, Beijing would prefer to take Taiwan in ways that make it harder for the United States to intervene effectively and rally regional and global support if it does get involved. This puts a premium on pursuing annexation in ways that mask Beijing’s intentions, or at the very least sow doubt about what is happening and who is at fault. Over the past 15 years, for instance, China has often blamed the Philippines or Japan for escalating tensions in the South and East China Seas—and then used the resulting crises to strengthen its presence around key hot spots. More recently, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and Chinese Coast Guard (CCG) launched joint military exercises in the waters and airspace around Taiwan in response to a “provocative” inauguration speech by Taiwanese president William Lai.[3] Decisions to use military force are ultimately political choices, and the more China can move in ways that complicate the politics and geopolitics of a U.S. response, the bigger the head start it will have toward achieving a fait accompli.
Fourth, Beijing would ideally like to avoid the most vexing governance and security challenges that could occur after a direct, full-bore assault.[4] Put differently, Beijing would prefer to rule a Taiwan that is not ruined, physically and economically, by conflict or roiled by a raging insurgency. Coercing Taipei to accept a political settlement, even an unpopular one, minimizes the governance and security challenges in comparison to a post-invasion scenario. Assuming that Beijing cannot find a (coerced) political path forward, it may still prefer to use tools other than the PLA—such as the People’s Armed Police, the Chinese Coast Guard, or the intelligence services—to precipitate a change in the status quo. Of course, the realities of pursuing an annexation strategy may complicate Beijing’s desires; nonetheless, from a planning perspective, the cleaner and less violent the path to “reunification,” the easier the security and governance challenges that follow annexation will become.
Fifth, China does not necessarily have to pursue annexation in a single bite. It could try, instead, to coerce Taipei into formal political negotiations that would have unification as the eventual endpoint, on the assumption that those negotiations would be consummated after Taiwanese resolve and U.S. credibility are shattered. Again, recent experience is instructive: Beijing’s periodic assertiveness around Scarborough Reef and Second Thomas Shoal in the South China Sea is driven, in part, by the desire to put pressure on the U.S.-Philippines alliance by demonstrating that Washington can do little to help Manila uphold its economic rights and territorial claims in scenarios short of all-out war.

With these assumptions in mind, some might look to Hong Kong’s recent experience as the model for Beijing’s preferred Taiwan strategy. Yet this analogy is both instructive and misleading. It is instructive in the sense that Beijing eventually achieved a decisive outcome—a significant blow to Hong Kong’s “one country, two systems” arrangement—but it did so through measures meant to minimize collateral damage to the city’s position as a global financial hub. China did not, for instance, send the PLA into the city’s streets—a step that likely would have provoked greater global blowback. Instead, it used local police forces to quell the demonstrations and then—utilizing bureaucratic and legal channels—pushed through a draconian national security law that dealt the critical strike to Hong Kong’s autonomy. Because Beijing used lawfare to achieve its aims, it was politically and diplomatically challenging for the United States, the United Kingdom, and other stakeholders to do much beyond symbolic sanctions. The Chinese leadership calculated that this combination of measures would achieve their desired result—breaking the back of independent politics—with minimal geopolitical cost. Rather than demonstrating Xi’s unbridled appetite for risk, the Hong Kong example demonstrates his preference for lawfare and salami-slicing as a means to fundamentally alter the strategic landscape.

But the Hong Kong analogy also has limitations, the most important of which is that the city had been Chinese de jure territory for more than 20 years by the time the culminating actions came. This gave Beijing legal channels through which to constrict Hong Kong’s political liberties. It also meant that China could use non-military forces, such as the police, to suppress the popular response. Such options would not be available to China in a Taiwan scenario, so Beijing would need alternative ways of generating the leverage necessary to achieve a decisive outcome.

Of course, just because Beijing might want to take Taiwan through actions short of invasion does not mean it can do so. It is possible that increased, but not immediately decisive, coercion of Taiwan could actually encourage a stronger U.S. commitment to the island or incentivize Taiwan to take stronger measures to defend itself. It should be remembered that Mao Zedong’s shelling of Taiwan’s offshore islands in 1954 encouraged President Dwight D. Eisenhower to push through a mutual defense treaty with Taiwan. Something similar has happened in recent years, as the PLA’s provocative military exercises have led to increased U.S. arms sales and more explicit promises of U.S. support by President Biden. Indeed, options beneath the threshold of outright war all suffer from this potential liability, which is why the notion that Chinese leaders might opt for dramatic, decisive military action meant to solve the Taiwan problem once and for all cannot be dismissed.[5]

But the extreme risks and potentially disastrous costs of invasion also must weigh heavily on Beijing’s calculus, which is why options short of invasion must be considered, too.[6]

Scenario 1: Decapitation Strike

On March 19, 2004, President Chen Shui-bian and Vice President Annette Lu were traveling in an open-top Jeep in the southwest city of Tainan for a campaign stop when two bullets tore through their vehicle, injuring both Chen and Lu. The pair won reelection the following day, but before the authorities could complete their investigation into the assassination attempt, two of the suspected gunmen died under mysterious circumstances. Although some, including Vice President Lu, blamed the PRC for the attack, no conclusive evidence was found to support this assertion.

In 2017, an assailant carrying a stolen Japanese sword attacked a military police officer outside of the Presidential Office Building. According to police reports, the man, surnamed Lu, had a PRC flag in his possession at the time of the attack. More recently, a member of the Presidential Office’s Department of Security Affairs and an officer from the National Security Bureau’s Special Service Center were convicted of leaking information to Chinese intelligence about then-president Tsai Ing-wen’s itinerary. According to media reporting, the intelligence included a “hand-drawn organizational chart of the Special Service Center,” as well as “the names, titles and work phone numbers of senior security officers guarding the Presidential Office and Tsai’s residence in the heart of Taipei.”[7]

These incidents highlight two underappreciated risks to Taiwan’s political resiliency: there is insufficient security around Taiwan’s elected leadership, and perhaps more worryingly, there is insufficient legal clarity on the line of succession.

Although Taiwan reportedly has an internal plan for leadership transition, Article 49 of its constitution merely stipulates

"In case the office of the President should become vacant, the Vice President shall succeed until the expiration of the original presidential term. In case the office of both the President and the Vice President should become vacant, the President of the Executive Yuan shall act for the President; and, in accordance with the provisions of Article 30 of this Constitution, an extraordinary session of the National Assembly shall be convoked for the election of a new President and a new Vice President, who shall hold office until the completion of the term left unfinished by the preceding President."

This language raises several worrying questions: What is the timeline for the convocation of the National Assembly? Hours? Days? Months? Article 30 stipulates that the president of the Legislative Yuan (LY) “shall issue the notice of convocation,” but it does not clarify under what timeline and what occurs should the president of the LY fail to issue the notice in a timely manner.[8] Furthermore, what happens if all three individuals listed are incapacitated or killed? How can the National Assembly be convoked?

Beijing may consider exploiting these vulnerabilities to create a sharp constitutional crisis, and it could use the resulting chaos to alter Taiwan’s political orientation. It might do so if years of accumulating political trends in Taiwan—such as continued Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) dominance of the presidency—convince Chinese officials that inaction would be the greater risk. Alternatively, Beijing might act if it believes that a dramatic change in cross-Strait dynamics—such as a formal declaration of de jure independence or the reestablishment of the U.S.-Taiwan Mutual Defense Treaty—was highly likely to occur. In other words, an assassination attempt on Taiwan’s political leadership would be intended to serve as a substitute for a full-on invasion, carried out in a way that is designed to create confusion for the Taiwanese people and the United States. And it would not come out of the blue; it would instead follow a progression of political and diplomatic developments that Beijing considered to pose a near-existential risk to its cross-Strait strategy.

As in 2004, Beijing would be the early and obvious target of recrimination, but the key question is how or if Taiwan and the United States would be able to formulate an effective response. In the absence of clear proof, accusations would remain just that. And as was the case in Crimea in 2014, or Manchuria in 1931, even after the truth becomes apparent, the window of opportunity to take effective action might well have closed.

How might this scenario play out? A successful attack on Taiwan’s president and vice president, perhaps during a presidential inauguration or during the president’s annual National Day address on October 10, would immediately throw the island into turmoil. If the president of the LY were unharmed, this individual would bear enormous responsibility for bringing political order to a badly shaken nation. Such an effort would be difficult even in the most mature of democracies.[9] In this early chaos, Beijing would have ample opportunities to stoke fear and uncertainty through disinformation and covert political meddling. If the LY president were killed, Taiwan would face an even graver crisis due to the acute leadership vacuum. Even if Taiwan had an internal line of succession, the absence of a publicly and constitutionally recognized process for transferring political power would call into question how legitimate that transfer is in the eyes of a shell-shocked public. Turning again to current events, the current fractious nature of Taiwan’s legislative politics, owing to an extraordinarily divisive partisan political environment, should put a damper on how likely the prospect of the three main political parties “coming together” is.

How might Beijing take advantage of the ensuing chaos? There is the prospect of Beijing unilaterally sending “security assistance” to help stabilize the situation, but even as Taiwan’s people reel, this might be seen as too direct an effort. A more realistic path is for pro-Beijing voices in Taiwan’s political system to seek to utilize the confusion and constitutional crisis to seize political power or otherwise open up space for a dramatically transformed political leadership on Taiwan. Success would not be guaranteed, of course, and Beijing would only consider such a move if it saw the cross-Strait situation as dire and felt the need to take drastic steps to reorient the status quo.

As such, this type of brazen attack would be a huge gamble. Any assassination attempt may fail, exposing Beijing’s complicity in the process. Even if the attack were successful, there is no guarantee that a post-decapitation strike plan would be carried out with any precision. Moreover, if Beijing intended to send “security assistance” to Taiwan following an assassination, it would presumably have to build up its forces opposite the island beforehand, which might give the game away. And any attack on Taiwan’s leadership would likely be seen by many in Taiwan and the international community as obvious Chinese aggression, calling forth a punitive response.

Beijing’s bet, in other words, would have to be that this option nonetheless carries less risk than either allowing Taiwan to drift further away from the mainland or taking more overt military action to change its trajectory.

Scenario 2: Quarantine

In August 2022, Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan, making her the first speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives to do so in a quarter-century. Beijing responded with military exercises meant to show off the PLA’s improving capabilities to conduct a blockade, bombardment, or invasion of Taiwan. Chinese missiles overflew Taiwan (albeit through outer space) and splashed down in its surrounding waters—a clear demonstration of Beijing’s ability to choke off vital sea lanes.[10] In May, just after the inauguration speech of President William Lai, Beijing again launched massive military exercises encircling Taiwan, including “comprehensive law enforcement operations” by the Chinese Coast Guard.

The most recent exercises highlight an option available to Beijing short of invasion and formal blockade: a quarantine meant to probe Washington’s risk tolerance and potentially strain its relationship with Taipei while sending a clear signal to the people on Taiwan that they are isolated.[11] As a recent CSIS report on the prospect of a PRC quarantine of Taiwan concluded, “The purpose of a quarantine is not to completely seal Taiwan off from the world but to assert China’s control over Taiwan by setting the terms for traffic in and out of the island.”[12]

Beijing might seize on any variety of potential pretexts: a “provocative” statement or policy departure from Taiwan’s president, Lai Ching-te; a trip to the island by another high-ranking U.S. official; or a U.S. arms sale that, from Beijing’s perspective, threatens the status quo in the strait. A quarantine would be meant to mimic the effects of a more traditional naval blockade, without necessarily emulating its forms.[13]

For example, Beijing could announce that the Chinese Coast Guard, rather than the PLA Navy, would conduct customs inspections of shipping headed to and from Taiwan. It could further disrupt maritime traffic into Taiwan by conducting missile tests that terminate in frequently used shipping lanes in the international waters off the island’s major ports. Related, the PLA could announce a series of air and sea exercises in international waters off of Taiwan’s major western ports with no indication of duration, disrupting maritime trade under the pretext of “normal” military training. China could also ratchet up the pressure by having the PLA Air Force “escort” traffic into Taiwan’s air space, as some observers feared it might do at the time of Speaker Pelosi’s visit.

China certainly has the capabilities for any of these scenarios. Its coast guard is the world’s largest; it features significant surface combatants and is, in essence, a second Chinese navy. Beijing also boasts the world’s largest conventional missile force, with a deep magazine of short-range missiles that can target the waters around Taiwan. Its inventory of fighter aircraft dwarfs Taiwan’s and whatever contingent the United States has available in the Western Pacific.

What might make this option even more attractive is the dilemmas it would create for the United States, its regional allies, and Taiwan. Of the 193 UN member states, only 11 (plus the Holy See) diplomatically recognize Taiwan. So even though Washington and its allies would strenuously object to Chinese actions, a customs quarantine would be a less clear-cut act of international aggression than an invasion or even a conventional naval blockade of a fully sovereign state. By relying primarily on the Chinese Coast Guard and shore-based assets, this option would also reduce the danger of high-seas encounters between war-fighting navies (at the outset, at least). Similarly, this approach offers China the ability to achieve some effects of a blockade without crossing into what Taiwan deems as its territorial waters; missiles splashing down just outside of that limit could scare off shipping or at least drive insurance rates skyward.

The soft quarantine would thus highlight, in a very public way, Taiwan’s inherent vulnerability as an island nation dependent on imports of food, energy, and other vital resources.

The soft quarantine would thus highlight, in a very public way, Taiwan’s inherent vulnerability as an island nation dependent on imports of food, energy, and other vital resources. Even if a quarantine were only enforced selectively or intermittently, it would remind Taiwan of the economic noose Beijing can cinch tight around its neck. The United States and other friendly countries might try to defeat the quarantine by organizing a relief expedition and escorting planes and ships into Taiwan. But Washington might struggle to do so indefinitely, especially if this crisis happened when U.S. naval assets were already stretched thin by other commitments—for example, threats to freedom of navigation in the narrow waterways around the Arabian Peninsula. Indeed, the true goal of this strategy might be to expose the limits of U.S. support of Taiwan—and thereby soften the island up for further pressures meant, eventually, to cause its capitulation. There is also the possibility that the voices calling for “restraint” in the United States and other Western capitals would win out, after debate on whether Washington really wants to risk a conflict with China over some ships being boarded in waters thousands of miles away.

That is not to say this approach is risk-free for Beijing. A limited quarantine would still be seen as aggression by Washington, Tokyo, Canberra, Manilla, and Seoul, to say nothing of Taipei, and so while it may “succeed” in the short term, it might also strengthen international support for Taipei, just as Beijing’s firing of rockets into Japan’s exclusive economic zone in August 2022 helped galvanize a more assertive Japanese approach vis-à-vis China. This approach could still turn into a high-stakes game of chicken, if U.S. warships and aircraft escort relief shipments into Taiwan and dare Beijing to get in the way. If China does not blink, in that scenario, it could have a war on its hands; if it falters, that could undermine the credibility of its coercive threats. Moreover, blockades and quarantines have a poor record of convincing countries to give up their independence; just as often, the suffering they cause strengthens, at least for a time, the will to resist. But a quarantine might still appeal to Xi, not least because it would also force the United States to decide if it wants to escalate to a full-blown crisis—and to sustain Taiwan indefinitely—in a situation where the PLA has not yet fired a shot.

Scenario 3: Offshore Island Seizure

Several of Taiwan’s outer islands already live in the shadow of U.S. ambiguity, as the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act—which directs the president and congress to consider “appropriate action” in response to “threats to the security or the social or economic system of the people of Taiwan”—covers only “the islands of Taiwan and the Pescadores [‘Penghu’].”[14] This means that one of the only legally binding commitments the United States has to Taiwan does not extend to its outlying islands—Pratas, Kinmen, Itu Aba, the Wuchiu Islands, and Matsu. As a result, these islands are potential targets for a Chinese takeover, not necessarily as a stepping stone for a full invasion of Taiwan, but as a way of probing U.S. and Taiwanese risk appetite and exposing the limits of American commitment and credibility.[15]

This calculus has been demonstrated to exist in modern U.S.-China relations. During the two Taiwan Strait crises of the 1950s (1954 and 1958), Mao Zedong repeatedly used the shelling of Taiwan’s offshore islands as a way to probe the United States and test its relationship with Taipei. As Mao stated in August 1958 meeting of the Politburo, “although we have fired dozens of thousands or rounds on Jinmen [Kinmen], we only mean to probe [America’s intention].” He added, “we need to see if the Americans want to carry these islands on their back.”[16]

An appealing target might be Pratas Island, which is sparsely populated with only a small contingent of Taiwanese coast guard and military personnel. The island is of little inherent strategic value to Taiwan, and its seizure might not provoke any substantial military response from either Taiwan or the United States, assuming casualties are low to zero. At a minimum, the takeover of the island would force the United States to confront the dilemma of whether it wants to risk major war with China over a small island of just 430 total acres that sits in the middle of the South China Sea.

Indeed, Beijing has multiple options for taking Pratas Island. It could announce military exercises in the waters and airspace surrounding the island that would have the functional effect of cutting Pratas off from its regular shipments of water, food, and other supplies from Taiwan’s main island. Beijing might then signal through lower-tier diplomatic channels that Taiwan can rotate existing military and coast guard off the island, but it cannot bring new troops and coast guard on.

Alternatively, a more confrontational—and riskier—approach would be simply to directly overpower the tiny contingent of coast guard and marines stationed on the island. This would, of course, invite condemnation from Taipei, Washington, Tokyo, Manila, and other capitals that would see such a move as naked aggression. But it is not at all clear that any of these countries, including the United States, would be able and willing to muster a proportionate punitive response. For the United States, the challenge would be explaining to the American people why a tiny island nearly 300 miles from Taiwan, and which is not covered by the Taiwan Relations Act, is worth a possible conflict with China, the world’s second-largest economy.

In any of these scenarios, geography would severely constrain the response from Taipei and Washington, who would have to decide whether to tolerate the loss of a small, geopolitically insignificant chunk of Taiwan’s territory or risk a much bigger fight just a few miles from China’s shores. As Lancaster University’s Andrew Chubb has written, an outer island seizure “would offer Beijing greater flexibility and escalation control, lower risk of civilian casualties, and less likelihood of sparking a strong Taiwanese response or U.S. intervention.”[17]

A common objection to such scenarios holds that the capture of an outer island yields China little to no strategic benefit if the goal is the full annexation of Taiwan, as it would still need to attempt a direct attack on the main island of Taiwan, which would presumably be on high alert. Further, even if the PLA were to cleanly seize Pratas, it would simply confirm the fears of many countries in the region—its initial gain of Taiwan territory would have come at the expense of “tripping the alarm” and therefore galvanizing action in Tokyo, Manilla, and Canberra.

But such objections are premised on the idea that Beijing’s immediate goal in undertaking such actions would be “reunification.” A more plausible objective for Beijing would be to cut a slice of salami that the United States and Taiwan will not be willing or able to defend. Here, the main goal would be a clear provocation that is met with an underwhelming response, for it would publicly demonstrate that Washington’s bark is worse than its bite when it comes to defending Taiwan. This strategy could thereby erode Taiwan’s confidence in U.S. support—to say nothing of its confidence in its ability to protect itself—while also provoking anxiety in U.S. allies and partners over Washington’s inability to credibly defend against incremental Chinese aggression. And at the point that Beijing is willing to undertake such a gambit, it may already be pricing in the erosion of its remaining goodwill in the region.

Scenario 4: False Flag

A final scenario involves a false flag operation—akin to what Japan perpetrated in Manchuria in 1931—meant to justify subsequent military action against Taiwan. The current situation offers plenty of possibilities. Chinese aircraft regularly fly across the center line of the strait or into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone, where they are tracked by Taiwanese air defenses or intercepted by Taiwanese fighters. Run-ins between Taiwan’s coast guard and Chinese civilian vessels have occasionally turned deadly. Chinese drones overfly Taiwanese territory; Chinese forces intercept—and dangerously crowd—planes and ships belonging to Taiwan’s friends. The air and waters of the Western Pacific are becoming crowded, dangerous, and primed for some catalytic incident.

China could concoct a Taiwanese “provocation”—a collision between Taiwanese and Chinese ships or aircraft, or perhaps even an alleged Taiwanese attack on Chinese forces operating in or around the strait. It could then use full-throated propaganda and disinformation to pin the blame on Taipei and exploit the incident to obliterate the status quo.

One option would be to use the incident as justification for a large-scale, potentially decisive attack on Taiwan, in which case the point of the subterfuge would be simply to complicate the domestic and coalition politics of the U.S. response. Or Beijing could use the incident as pretext for something more limited, such as “retaliatory” strikes on Taiwanese bases and military assets. Likewise, the PLA Air Force could simply conduct large-scale, persistent intrusions into Taiwan’s airspace, meant to assert its ability to overfly the island at will—forcing Taipei to choose between submitting to this confidence-crushing humiliation or contesting these intrusions at the risk of war.

This approach offers many benefits for Beijing. It would showcase China’s overwhelming escalation dominance in the area around Taiwan, which leaves Taipei with few good options for responding to limited strikes or stepped-up military pressure. It would exploit the ability of China’s state-directed propaganda apparatus to rapidly disseminate a false or misleading narrative, as officials and media outlets in the United States, Taiwan, and other nations would struggle to respond.[18] It could also strain the U.S.-Taiwan relationship by forcing Washington to decide how much risk to run in pushing back against limited Chinese aggression—a real dilemma, given that U.S. officials would presumably not wish to see matters escalate further.

Even if a false flag incident led to more dramatic forms of aggression, this approach could—by sowing ambiguity and confusion—slow U.S. decisionmaking and exacerbate the severe time pressures a distant United States faces, even in the most favorable circumstances, in rushing to Taiwan’s aid. A false flag operation does not have to fool everyone forever. It just has to foul up the international response long enough for Beijing to create new facts on the ground.

The downsides are also considerable. The United States has shown, during the war in Ukraine, that it can sometimes detect and reveal false flag operations before they occur (although this may hinge on remarkable intelligence penetration of the sort Washington seems to have achieved in the Kremlin). Even if a false flag operation created momentary confusion, any further use of force against Taiwan could quickly bring clarity to the debate in Washington and other capitals. And if the false flag were merely a prelude to more limited military actions, the United States could still respond in ways that would make Taiwan a tougher nut to crack—by deploying larger numbers of troops on Taiwanese territory, for example. If this was the case, the outcome might actually be to increase Taiwan’s resilience by strengthening its faith in U.S. support.

Conclusion

None of these options is a silver bullet for Beijing. Deceptions can be unraveled. Coercion, even when clouded by confusion, can invite strategic blowback. To return to an earlier example, Russia’s ambiguous aggression in Crimea gave it control of that peninsula, but at the same time, Kyiv responded to the loss of Crimea by accelerating its alignment with the transatlantic community—and thereby confronted Putin with the dilemma he tried to solve, disastrously, with a full-on invasion in 2022. Yet China might still consider limited options—both because the near-term risks associated with them remain lower than the risks associated with a large-scale, overt aggression such as a direct invasion, and because these options could create significant political dilemmas for Taiwan and the United States.

Each of the scenarios reveals a weakness China could try to exploit: from Taiwan’s deficient continuity-of-government procedures, to its inherent economic vulnerabilities, to uncertainties around how the United States would respond in crises short of all-out conflict. Most fundamentally, these approaches would target Taiwan’s political will to resist and its confidence in U.S. support—the two vital, interrelated intangibles that Beijing must weaken to achieve unification without a brutal fight.

If these scenarios illustrate how Beijing might try to thread that needle, they also highlight some of the challenges Washington and Taipei must address. Taiwan’s survival may hinge as much on its internal security and continuity-of-government procedures as on its stockpile of anti-ship missiles and sea mines. The United States, for its part, needs to be developing contingency plans for cases of limited aggression. The specifics of those plans will vary according to the contingency. But the crucial point is that they must include sharp, non-kinetic punishments that allow the United States to inflict damage on China without sparking a larger military confrontation in places where the escalation dynamics are unfavorable—as well as measures that defeat the intended Chinese political effect of ambiguous aggression by significantly deepening U.S. military, diplomatic, and economic support for Taiwan.

The United States might communicate to Beijing that any significant coercive change in the status quo would render the norms and agreements governing U.S.-Taiwan-China relations a dead letter—thereby clearing the way for, among other things, a thicker, more robust military-to-military relationship between Washington and Taipei, and perhaps even a larger, more capable, and more visible U.S. troop presence in Taiwan. Or it could indicate that aggression against outlying islands is likely to lead to more explicit U.S. security guarantees for the Taiwanese territory that remains. The 1979 Taiwan Relations Act already sets the groundwork for such messages.[19]

Similarly, the United States might—in coordination with allies and partners—preload packages of economic sanctions that could be applied in cases of ambiguous aggression. The challenge here is that the magnitude of sanctions needed, and the importance of signaling them credibly and early, are all difficult to pull together, especially under scenarios where Beijing’s actions are in the gray zone, and therefore not always seen as sufficiently provocative to risk a possible global recession.[20] It would also be useful to wargame scenarios short of outright conflict with Taiwan and other friendly countries, if only to form a stronger shared understanding of the difficulties those scenarios might create in the capitals whose combined effort would be needed to forge an effective response.

In a contest short of war, the center of gravity is Taiwan’s confidence in its relationship with Washington and in its own ability to resist.

In a contest short of war, the center of gravity is Taiwan’s confidence in its relationship with Washington and in its own ability to resist. The goal should thus be to convince Beijing that violent half-measures will backfire strategically even if they succeed tactically, as they would strengthen U.S. and international support for Taiwan and thereby harden Taipei’s hostility to unification at the point of a gun.

Most broadly, the upshot of this analysis is that Washington needs to expand its conception of deterrence in the Taiwan Strait. If the United States prepares only for incremental or ambiguous aggression, it risks making a full-scale invasion more attractive for Beijing. But if it focuses only on high-end deterrence, it could lose on the installment plan as China uses creative tactics that erode Taiwan’s sovereignty and its confidence in the United States. Beijing has many ways to change the status quo in a sensitive area. The United States will need a holistic deterrence strategy to match.

Jude Blanchette holds the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. Hal Brands is Henry Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

This brief is made possible by general support to CSIS and the support of the America in the World Consortium.

Please consult the PDF for references.

CSIS Briefs are produced by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a private, tax-exempt institution focusing on international public policy issues. Its research is nonpartisan and nonproprietary. CSIS does not take specific policy positions. Accordingly, all views, positions, and conclusions expressed in this publication should be understood to be solely those of the author(s).

csis.org · by Brief by Jude Blanchette and Hal Brands Published July 25, 2024

13. NATO’s New Map

Please go to the link to view the map and photos. https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/07/27/nato-arctic-circle-nordic-countries-map-alliance-integration/?utm

NATO’s New Map

On NATO’s new map—with all of Scandinavia now in the alliance—everything has to be connected.

JULY 27, 2024, 7:00 AM

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By Jack Detsch, a Pentagon and national security reporter at Foreign Policy.

Foreign Policy · by Jack Detsch

NATO
Russia
Europe
Jack Detsch

ABOARD KV BISON—In the chow hall of this hulking Norwegian Coast Guard patrol ship, a seasoned conscript sailor explains the plan to a half-dozen American visitors. The guests—U.S. government bureaucrats, congressional staffers, think tankers, and this reporter—will sail for four hours aboard the Bison from the service’s home port in Sortland to about 200 miles inside the Arctic Circle. Then, the guests will be lowered into small rescue boats and transported into the harbor at Andoya.

If Russia were to challenge Norway, it might do so in a place like this, where 6,000-ton ships like Bison are too big to go into port. It’s a place where the Norwegian military once thought that, if the Cold War turned hot, it would be fighting alone for days until help from the United States and continental European allies arrived.

For parts of their history, three Nordic countries—Finland, Sweden, and Norway—were one country, united under the Swedish crown. Now, with Finland and Sweden having abandoned neutrality and joined their fellow Nordic countries Denmark, Norway, and Iceland in NATO, they want to fight together again—as if they were all one military. And NATO has to redraw its map to make their inlets, bays, seas, and territories into one area covered by Article 5, the alliance’s collective-defense pledge.

“The Baltic Sea and the High North are so closely linked together that it’s basically one strategic theater operation, but with different directions,” said Gen. Eirik Kristoffersen, Norway’s chief of defense. “North in the high north, and to the east in the Baltic Sea.”

But how to shrink all of that geography into one sweeping strategy? How to patrol such a vast area—from Russia’s bases in Kaliningrad, to the fjords, to ice-capped Svalbard, to the submarine internet cables that run across the Atlantic Ocean? Where to draw the line in the Baltic Sea between the Nordic countries and mainland Europe?

On NATO’s new map, everything has to be connected. The alliance’s fledgling command in Norfolk, Virginia, which has the mission of fighting across the Atlantic, has to double its staff to put the new allies under one hat; it needs to figure out how far it can integrate the Nordic militaries into one fighting force; and Norway, Finland, and Sweden even need to reconfigure their roads that run in different directions to get thousands of troops into the fight when needed.

“The question of Sweden and Finland joining NATO means, from a geostrategic point of view, that the North Atlantic, the High North, and the Baltic Sea are now tied together for the first time,” said Tobias Billström, Sweden’s foreign minister. “This is a major shift of geopolitical proportions that is taking place.”

Soldiers wearing light-colored camouflage and carrying skies stand on a wooden dock in a line as they prepare to board a ship. Snowy mountains are seen in the distance.

French and Finnish marines prepare to board a Swedish CB90-class fast assault craft during the Nordic Response 24 military exercise near Sorstraumen, Norway, on March 10.Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP via Getty Images

The Bison feels big—it’s about three stories tall and 300 feet long. That’s big enough to tow a marooned oil tanker to safety, or even to move a beached whale carcass before it explodes.

But compare that to the area it has to help cover: Norway’s coastline is as much as 63,000 miles long–depending on how you measure it. Norway doesn’t want China and Russia to be sitting alone up in the Arctic, because its fish, oil, and gas all come from there—by the bucket. The Norwegian Coast Guard has just four frigates to patrol all of the High North—and they’re only being rented until 2030.

The only way to cut the Arctic, the North Sea, and the Baltic down to size is to have help. “We should integrate our forces in the region and into NATO,” Kristoffersen said. “It means integrating in the land domain, in the air domain, in the maritime domain, in cyber, and in space.”

The idea of force integration dates back as far as World War I, when the U.S. military sent its troops to fight directly within better-established—if worn out—British and French units. “We should not have different responsibilities,” Kristoffersen added. “We should all have a balanced force, but we should integrate them.”

The Nordic chiefs of defense are already envisioning putting a land command for the region in Finland, an air command in Norway, and a logistics command in Sweden. The Nordic chiefs haven’t figured out where to put a naval command yet, as they juggle how to split their ships among the North Sea, the Baltic Sea, and the Atlantic Ocean. They do know, however, that they want to have a combined naval task force with the Baltic navies in the Baltic Sea.

Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden are looking at integration all the way down to tank units and infantry platoons. (Iceland has a base for the U.S. P-8 Poseidon aircraft that can hunt submarines, but no standing military.)

The region’s air forces have been exercising together for years now. “We can initiate an activity the day before and we cross borders and we train and exercise in each country’s airspace,” said Gen. Micael Byden, the Swedish chief of defense. Norway already lands its air force jets on Finnish runways.

Finnish soldiers take part in an Arrow 22 exercise in Kankaanpaa, western Finland.

Finnish soldiers take part in an Arrow 22 exercise in Kankaanpaa, western Finland, on May 4, 2022. Heikki Saukkomaa/Lehtikuva/AFP via Getty Images

The badge of the NATO military exercise Steadfast Defender 2024 is seen on the sleeve of Finnish Defense Minister Antti Hakkanen as he addresses members of the media ahead of a demonstration of border crossing by Swedish and Finnish troops during a military exercise on the Finnish side of the Kivilompolo border crossing between Finland and Norway.

On the ground, Sweden has started the process of sending brigade-sized units over the border into Finland for live-fire exercises. There are only four in the whole Swedish Army.

The question is how far the integration can go. They’re getting on the same page of using all of the same weapons. But they will still need U.S. enablers. About 70 percent of NATO’s military capabilities still come from the United States, said Ketil Olsen, Norway’s former military representative to NATO who now runs Andoya Space, a rocket launchpad in northern Norway.

The Nordic countries formed a defense bloc in 2009, but they have fought over minute details for more than a decade. They fought over building a jointly procured armored personnel carrier—only 25 percent of the vehicle was commonly made. They even fought over what color their uniforms should be.

“We couldn’t agree on anything, to be honest,” Olsen said. Norway’s most sensitive defense talks are not with other Nordic countries, but with the Americans and the Brits on intelligence, space, and special operations.

The countries will need to establish a corps-level headquarters for the region that’s big enough to house up to 45,000 troops in wartime. But the biggest problem is fighting at scale. Finland can conscript some 280,000 troops from civilian ranks for war – and put more than three times that number of reservists on active duty – but Norway and Sweden can only call up a fraction of that. They’ll need even more to take on the Russians.

“We’re going to be swimming or sinking together,” Swedish Defense Minister Pal Jonson said in an interview. “There’s also a strong linkage between what happens in the Baltic Sea and the High North as well.”

A map shows the landscape of NATO's Nordic members with Norway, Sweden, and Finland labeled in the north, along with Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Germany around the Baltic Sea. Russia, including Kaliningrad on the Baltic, is also labeled.

NATO’s new map may need to be connected, but drawing lines is political. Finland and Sweden want to be together with Norway in the alliance’s military structure, fighting across the Atlantic Ocean and patrolling the High North.

“If you look at the map, it’s obvious for me that Nordic countries should go together,” Byden said. “And when you look at the Baltics, they glue together with the continental Europe.”

That would mean drawing a line across the Baltic Sea—between Finland and Sweden in the north, and the Baltic States in the south.

“We do not have three NATOs in NATO,” said Hanno Pevkur, Estonia’s defense minister, referring to the alliance’s operational commands in Naples, Italy; Norfolk, Virginia; and Brunssum, the Netherlands. “We have one NATO.”

NATO has built a command center for the Baltic Sea in Rostock, Germany, where the allies will watch Russian submarines move back and forth between Kaliningrad and Saint Petersburg. But where will the Nordic naval patrols stop—and the rest of Europe take over? The allies don’t know yet.

“Do you put it on the east side of the Baltic, the west side of the Baltic, or down the middle?” said a NATO official, speaking on condition of anonymity to talk about still-pending war plans. “It can absolutely be done, but it’s quite politically sensitive.”

The Baltic States—Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia—and Poland don’t think anyone should be drawing lines in the Baltic Sea.

“Our position is very clear: The Baltic Sea should be one operational area,” said a senior Lithuanian official, speaking on condition of anonymity to talk candidly about an ongoing policy debate. “We will be fighting against dividing the Baltic Sea in two.”

NATO’s military expert committee will make a decision on where to draw the line by the end of the year, Jonson, Sweden’s defense minister, said in an interview. But in the meantime, the Nordic states will also need to get comfortable with the idea of defending not only the home front, but also continental Europe.

And the attack could come from anywhere.

“The vector of Russian attack could also come from the Atlantic,” said the NATO official. “There are obvious areas of potential tension in Kaliningrad [and] the Baltic States. It’s really dangerous to conclude: ‘It’s going to be here.’”

Italian Marines take position during a Nordic Response 24 military exercise near Sorstraumen.

Italian Marines take position during a Nordic Response 24 military exercise near Sorstraumen on March 10. Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP via Getty Images

Soldiers from the Norwegian Armed Forces take part in the international military exercise Cold Response 22, a Norwegian-led winter exercise in which NATO and partner countries participate, at Setermoen, Norway.

You can still see trenches and radar antennae in the hills of the Arctic fishing village of Bleik, Norway. They’re from World War II, when occupying Nazi forces put them up to try to suss out Soviet troops moving toward Murmansk.

These areas of the Arctic have been inhabited for centuries. Some residents of Bleik have found the skeletons of Vikings buried under their houses, still dressed in full armor. When the oil companies came in to lay pipelines in the area, they had to hire teenagers to move the bones.

Now, Norway wants these places also to be populated by radars that could provide early warning of a Russian assault. But the current antennae are too big to schlep up the side of a mountain. Norway’s military needs smaller ones that it can carry up to give them clear lines of sight.

With two-thirds of the country covered in mountain ranges—and those mountains eventually covered with tiny radar stations—Norway might be able to detect an imminent Russian invasion in a timely manner, but it could still have to try to fend off such an attack all by itself for as long as 30 days. That’s been the military’s planning standard for how long Norway can hold off a Russian invasion before NATO reinforcements arrive.

But by the time those NATO troops got there, the Russians might already be over the border—and Norway, or even all of Scandinavia, completely dependent on the United States for supplies, could be cut off.

“If you look at the map, Scandinavia is basically an island … completely dependent upon the open sea lanes of communication, not only across the Atlantic and from Europe, but globally,” said Audun Halvorsen, the director of security and contingency planning for the Norwegian Shipowners’ Association and a former deputy foreign minister of Norway.

The alliance is taking steps to respond more rapidly. NATO and other allies are considering putting a drone base for long-range surveillance in northern Norway, where the U.S. military used to have turboprop surveillance planes, said Olsen, Norway’s former military representative to the alliance. NATO uses the air base at Bodo. The U.S. Marines have stored weapons, vehicles, and ammo in the Trondheim mountainsides since the 1980s. And the United States has been talking to the Norwegian government about reviving its use of Olavsvern, a secret Cold War naval base with dry docks big enough for six submarines burrowed into the mountainside.

U.S. and Swedish Marines ride on a CB90 fast assault craft as they participate in a military exercise in the Stockholm Archipelago.

Sweden Is Making the Most of NATO’s Waiting Room

Sweden’s military has taken a 500-year path to joining NATO, from the Vikings through Napoleon and neutrality. So what’s another few months?

In a snowy landscape looking slightly downward from a hilltop, a side profile of a man holding a gun stands on the left of frame beside two other men on skis having a discussion. In the distant background, a group of military personnel stand in a large clearing with their equipment bags. Trees line the horizon and surround the environment.

A Temperature Check on NATO’s ‘Arctic Sparta’

The Finnish town of Ivalo now hosts the closest base to mainland Russia accessible to U.S. troops.

Three members of the Italian Marines in helmets and bullet-proof vests stand onboard a small motorized military boat as it cuts through the water in front of a snow-covered ridge of land. The soldier at the bow aims a rifle, while the other two sit at the stern and steer the vessel.

NATO Is Unprepared for Russia’s Arctic Threats

Even with Finland and Sweden, the alliance lacks a capable defense presence in the north.

They’re looking at a more aggressive posture, which could also see U.S. troops go to Finnish and Swedish bases, too. But Nordic officials say they have already seen the Russian military rearrange itself after Finland and Sweden joined the alliance. The Kremlin emptied land forces from Murmansk and Kaliningrad. Still, the threat is thought to be in the medium term, not right now.

“We don’t see Russian units coming over Finnish or Swedish borders as of now,” said Byden, the Swedish defense chief. Norway doesn’t, either.

What European officials do see is a rapidly deteriorating security situation. Russia has the upper hand on the battlefield in Ukraine. The Kremlin’s military planners are already looking toward a longer-term conflict with an enlarged NATO. Byden cautioned that Russia could reconstitute forces in the Western Military District that borders NATO within three to five years.

“This is just the beginning of this major military transformation,” said Katarzyna Zysk, a professor of international relations and contemporary history at the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies. “NATO may face a sort of Soviet-style mass army across the border over the next decade.”

For now, Russia is still focused on training new recruits for Ukraine, said Kristoffersen, Norway’s military chief. Russia has only about one-fifth of its land forces left on Nordic borders from before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Norwegian officials believe that Russia would use troops on the Kola Peninsula in any conflict. But with NATO’s eyes on Russia along a much longer border, the allies would also be able to see the Kremlin massing troops very quickly.

“The supply lines run along the Finnish border, which is now NATO territory,” said Svein Efjestad, a former top Norwegian defense official who is now a senior advisor at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs. “The reinforcements they used to send to the Kola Peninsula come from Siberia, and much of this goes on rail, and it takes a long time. We have very good intelligence in the area. I think we will see this quite early.”

A boat is seen through a rectangular window as it zips through the water in an icy landscape.

Italian Marines ply the water during an amphibious assault demonstration near Sorstraumen on March 10. Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP via Getty Images

While NATO was busy arguing about where to put the line in the Baltic Sea, the Russians went ahead and redrew the map.

In May, the Kremlin stunned Nordic and Baltic officials when it came out with a draft government decree to redraw the borders of the shallow sea back to where they were in Soviet times, giving Russia more turf in the Gulf of Finland, islands near the Finnish coast, and more territory near the Kaliningrad Peninsula that splits Poland and Lithuania.

It’s another sign that Russia can weaponize borders—whether by drawing them, as the Kremlin has attempted to do in Georgia, Ukraine, and now the Baltic Sea; removing border-marking buoys in Estonia; or sending people over them, as it’s doing in Finland.

The Kremlin also has a history of trying to redraw borders by force. Sweden has fought a dozen wars with Russia. Finland fought off the Russians on its own during World War II. Norwegian officials say they can’t do it alone. They have long-range precision strike on the border, but they are shorter-range U.S. multiple launch rockets, not the longer-range munitions that have been sent to Ukraine.

“The readiness of the Norwegian forces, the Swedish forces, the German forces, the Danish forces, has been almost nonexistent,” Efjestad said. “But it is improving now—finally.”

During the Cold War, Norway restricted NATO aircraft from flying past the 24th meridian east of Greenwich. Those restrictions have eased quite a bit, but there’s a reluctance in Oslo to put offensive firepower on the border, because Russia hosts one of its largest concentrations of nuclear weapons across the border from Norway.

The strategy to hold the Russians at bay is to keep an eye on them, with a network of ships and sensors that can track the Kremlin’s vessels all the way from Murmansk in the north to Kaliningrad and Saint Petersburg in the east, now surrounded by the 32-nation alliance.

Russia may be boxed in by NATO in the Baltic Sea with Finland and Sweden now allies, but U.S. and European officials expect Russia to continue to harass Western sea lanes by moving its northern fleet along Norway’s Arctic coast—all the way across the Atlantic.

The Kremlin’s submarine force “poses a risk to both the trans-Atlantic lines of communications, but it also poses a direct threat to the U.S. as well,” said Ine Eriksen Soreide, Norway’s former foreign affairs minister who now heads up the foreign affairs and defense committee in the country’s unicameral parliament. Severodvinsk submarines have enough range to reach the east coast of the United States, she said.

Norway has an intelligence ship in the Barents Sea up to 280 days a year, but not everyone is present. Swedish submarines haven’t been in the Atlantic for eight years.

The goal is to build a military that can deter the Russians by threatening to inflict enough pain to prevent an invasion, but also to build a military that would be strong enough to blunt the Russians until Nordic reinforcements—and the Americans—arrive en masse.

But they can’t move along roads that don’t meet. Norway is only about five miles wide at its narrowest points. The roads run north to south. In Sweden and Finland, roads run east to west. Norway’s troops are mostly based in the north. Sweden’s and Finland’s forces are down south.

Norway, Sweden, and Finland have to pour concrete. Lots of it. Norway is making plans to put in place more east-west infrastructure. It has a four-year plan to build bridges, railroad tracks, and ports, and a long-term plan for NATO reinforcement.

But it’s not just as simple as backing up a cement mixer: Seventy percent of the country is above the Arctic Circle, covered in permafrost—ice that doesn’t melt.

It’s not just building roads, bridges, bases—or redrawing the map. For the Nordic countries, now all in NATO, they have to change the way that they think.

“We’ve been militarily thinking only north and south,” a Nordic military official said. “Now, the whole Baltic Sea will be linked to Norway.”

Reporting for this article was made possible by the Atlantic Council.

Foreign Policy · by Jack Detsch

14. Sanctions crushed Syria’s elite. So they built a zombie economy fueled by drugs.

Please go to the link to view the graphics.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/interactive/2024/us-syria-civil-war-sanctions-drug-trafficking/?utm

Sanctions crushed Syria’s elite. So they built a zombie economy fueled by drugs.

By Joby Warrick and Souad Mekhennet

July 25, 2024 at 5:00 a.m.

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KOM AL-RAF, JORDAN

On clear days, the Syrian villages along the border here look deceptively empty. The Jordanian soldiers peering north across no man’s land see only dusty ghost towns where nothing moves except feral dogs and an occasional farmer working fields that have seen too little rain and too much war.

But on nights when the fog rolls in over the hills, the frontier takes on a sinister, alternate existence. Dozens of men — in trucks, on dirt bikes and on foot — emerge from the mist to form heavily armed columns for a race across the border.

They carry assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, even machine guns. Concealed in their vehicles and backpacks are hundreds of packages containing many tens of thousands of small white pills. The drugs, a synthetic stimulant called Captagon, are fresh from factories in the Syrian heartland that churn out an estimated $10 billion worth of illicit drugs each year.

In a country where traditional industry has all but ceased to exist, the pills are the fabulously profitable core of a zombie economy that has helped Syria’s political and military elite cling to power after 13 years of civil war and a decade of crushing sanctions. Having swollen to a massive scale with tacit government approval, according to U.S. and Middle Eastern officials, the trade increasingly threatens Syria’s neighbors, flooding the region with cheap drugs.

“If visibility is bad, they are coming — every single time,” said Col. Essam Dweikat, commander of a Jordanian Armed Forces unit responsible for defending the western sector of the country’s 200-mile border with Syria. “The problem is, the people who come across now are armed, and they are ready to fight.”

The Money War

The U.S. government is putting more sanctions on foreign governments, companies and people than ever. But these powerful tools of economic warfare can have unintended consequences, hurting civilian populations and undermining U.S. foreign policy interests. The Money War investigates the proliferation of U.S. financial sanctions and the dangers of overuse.

Jordan has twice dispatched fighter jets into Syrian airspace to carry out strikes against smugglers and their safe houses, according to intelligence officials in the region — operations the government in Amman has not acknowledged publicly.

Yet, despite extraordinary efforts to stem the tide, billions of Captagon pills from dozens of manufacturing centers continue to pour across Syria’s borders and through its seaports. The trade’s ripple effects are expanding ever outward, to include rising levels of addiction in wealthy Persian Gulf countries and the appearance of drugmaking labs in neighboring Iraq and as far away as Germany, according to Iraqi and German officials.

Huge profits from the pills — which cost less than a dollar to make but fetch up to $20 each on the street — have attracted a host of dangerous accomplices, from organized crime networks to Iranian-backed militias in Lebanon, Iraq and Syria, according to U.S. and Middle Eastern intelligence officials. In recent months, smugglers began moving weapons as well as drugs, the officials said. Jordanian raids on smuggling convoys have netted rockets, mines and explosives apparently intended for Islamist extremists in Jordan or possibly for Palestinian fighters in Gaza and the West Bank.

Fighters affiliated with Syria's Hayat Tahrir al-Sham rebel group display drugs previously seized at a checkpoint they control in Daret Ezza, Syria, in 2022. (Omar Haj Kadour/AFP/Getty Images)

Most profoundly, the drugs have provided a lifeline for the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who has seized on Captagon as a way to stay in power, current and former U.S. officials said. As the United States and other Western countries ramped up pressure with sanctions — to hold Syrian officials accountable for war crimes or to pressure Assad to negotiate an end to the conflict — Syria’s ruling class found salvation in a small white pill, one that conferred massive profits and partial insulation from the punishment U.S. policymakers were serving up.

“This is the stream of revenue on which they are relying in the face of sanctions pressure from us and from the European Union,” said Joel Rayburn, the U.S. special envoy to Syria from 2018 to 2021. “The Assad regime could not withstand robust sanctions enforcement, except for Captagon. There is no other source of revenue that could make up for what they lost due to sanctions enforcement.”

The Syrian mission to the United Nations did not respond to a request for comment. The Assad government has repeatedly denied having any involvement with illicit drugs, and in the past year, it announced arrests of several low-level traffickers and the seizure of small quantities of the white pills. Yet Treasury Department documents have identified close relatives of Assad — including his brother Maher al-Assad, commander of the Syrian army’s 4th Armored Division — as key participants in Captagon trafficking. Most of the pills are produced in regime-held areas and moved through borders and port facilities under government control.

A 2023 study extrapolating from known seizures of drugs since 2020 estimated that Captagon generates about $2.4 billion a year for the Assad regime, “well above any other single licit or illicit source of revenue,” wrote the authors at the Observatory of Political and Economic Networks, a nonprofit that conducts research on organized crime and corruption in Syria.

How Captagon makes its way through Syria

How Captagon makes its way

through Syria

Adana

NORTH

CYPRUS

Latakia

Aleppo

TURKEY

Mediterranean

Sea

Tartus

Ingredients for the drug,

such as amphetamine,

are purchased legally

and imported into

Syria through Latakia.

Alexandria

LEBANON

Beirut

SYRIA

The precursor chemicals

are mixed in factories

and machine-pressed

into tablets primarily

in this area along the

Lebanese border.

ISRAEL

Damascus

Cairo

Mosul

SYRIA

WEST

BANK

GAZA

IRAQ

Jerusalem

Bukamal

Armed smugglers

predominantly use the

Jordanian border to

distribute it out of the country,

but some also leaves via the

ports of Latakia and Tartus,

and into Iraq near Bukamal.

Amman

EGYPT

Sinai

Peninsula

JORDAN

SAUDI

ARABIA

50 MILES

Baghdad

The industry’s rise illustrates the complexities of trying to change a foreign power’s violent repression by ratcheting up economic pressure on its leadership and business elites. U.S. officials and experts say sanctions remain the most powerful tool, short of war, for punishing a government that has been accused of numerous war crimes since Assad began brutally crushing a pro-democracy uprising in 2011.

The long list of offenses includes the systematic torture and executions of civilians, the deliberate targeting of hospitals and food distribution centers, and the killings of hundreds of women and children with outlawed sarin nerve gas, according to U.S. officials, U.N. investigations, and human rights and exile groups. Syria is officially listed by the United States as a sponsor of international terrorism and is regarded as an increasingly vital ally and strategic partner to Russia and Iran.

Assad has defied calls for his ouster while presiding over the destruction of this once moderately prosperous country of 22 million. At least 12 million Syrians are now refugees or internally displaced, and 90 percent of the country’s citizens live in poverty. The country’s GDP fell from a prewar high of $252 billion to just $9 billion in 2021, according to World Bank estimates. The economy continues to shrink, as does the life expectancy for young Syrians.

The emergence of industrial-scale Captagon production beginning around 2019 prompted U.S. officials and Congress to shift the focus of sanctions to specifically target the drug trade and its sponsors. In April, Congress approved legislation targeting Syria’s drug kingpins as part of the $95 billion bipartisan foreign aid package signed into law by President Biden. That followed a Treasury Department announcement of new sanctions against Syrian business executives with alleged ties to Captagon smuggling.

Yet Captagon production continues to soar, and Assad is unshaken and apparently wealthier than ever, U.S. officials acknowledge. While the sanctions imposed against his government enjoy broad support among Syrian opposition leaders and human rights advocacy groups, the experience of the past decade underscores a perplexing reality: While sanctions remain a vital tool for punishing criminal behavior by governments, the targets of sanctions inevitably find ways to blunt their impact, often with painful consequences for ordinary citizens.

“The most profound point is that sanctions strengthen the bad actor relative to the rest of the population,” said Ben Rhodes, the former deputy national security adviser for the Obama administration who worked on Syria policy in the early years of the civil war. “The people who are most able to withstand this are the people with guns and power.”

A sack of confiscated Captagon pills in 2022 at the judicial police headquarters in Kafarshima, south of Lebanon's capital, Beirut. (Joseph Eid/AFP/Getty Images)

A STATE ENTERPRISE

Syria’s Captagon crisis came on fast and hard.

A few well-connected Syrians and Lebanese nationals built the foundations for a vast drug empire amid the chaos of the country’s fragmentation.

Before the start of the conflict in 2011, Captagon was regarded as a niche product for a small number of crime groups in Lebanon and Turkey. These manufacturers developed a knockoff version of the drug that was first developed in the 1960s by a German pharmaceutical company and marketed under the Captagon brand. The original version combined amphetamine with a second drug that stimulates the central nervous system. It was used by German physicians to treat hyperactivity and depression until the 1980s, when U.S. regulators and the World Health Organization recommended outlawing it because of the high risk for abuse.

Beginning around 2018, U.S. and Middle Eastern officials said, cottage-scale manufacturing of the drug in Lebanon expanded to a handful of Syrian towns in a border region north of Damascus.

A key figure, according to Treasury Department sanctions documents, was Hassan Daqqou, a dual Syrian-Lebanese national and onetime car dealer who began buying up properties on both sides of the border for production centers and warehouses. Daqqou — dubbed the “King of Captagon” by the Lebanese news media — succeeded in building his empire through alliances with powerful friends within government and security circles in Syria and Lebanon.

Among his collaborators, U.S. and Middle Eastern officials said, were operatives with the Lebanese militia group Hezbollah as well as top Syrian political and military leaders — not only Maher al-Assad, but also several Assad cousins and business executives close to the Syrian leader.

“

“The most profound point is that sanctions strengthen the bad actor relative to the rest of the population. The people who are most able to withstand this are the people with guns and power.”

Ben Rhodes,

former deputy national security adviser for the Obama administration

Two Biden administration officials, citing U.S. intelligence assessments, confirmed in interviews that Maher’s 4th Division has been an active participant in the Captagon trade since at least 2020, controlling distribution and transportation hubs, including port facilities in Latakia on the Syrian coast. Syrian control of operations increased after Daqqou was imprisoned in Lebanon for drug trafficking in 2021.

Biden administration officials say they have no evidence that Assad is personally directing the Captagon trade. But by naming his brother and cousins as key facilitators, U.S. officials made clear their view that drug manufacturing in Syria is now a state enterprise.

“Syria’s security forces now provide protection for drug traffickers,” said one Biden administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence assessments. White House officials believe Assad is now using Captagon as leverage with Arab states, offering to selectively restrict the flow of drugs as a reward to governments that normalize ties with Syria.

“It is clear that he could shut this down if he wanted to,” the administration official said.

Also clear is the massive scale of drug manufacturing in Syria, which U.S. officials say now produces most of the world’s Captagon supply. Administration officials say ingredients for the drug, such as amphetamine, are purchased legally from several countries, including Iran and India, and imported through Latakia. The precursor chemicals are mixed in factories and machine-pressed into tablets bearing a distinctive double-C logo.

Since the start of the decade, law enforcement agencies have intercepted huge shipments of Syrian-made drugs in busts at ports in Italy, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Malaysia. In 2021, the Malaysian authorities discovered more than 95 million Captagon tablets hidden inside a cargo ship — a record haul with a street value of $1.2 billion that was routed through Malaysia to hide its ultimate destination: Saudi Arabia,

The biggest maritime busts showed smugglers going to extraordinary lengths to conceal their cargo. The 84 million tablets seized by customs officials in the Italian seaport of Salerno in 2020 had been hidden inside industrial-size spools of paper. Saudi police found millions of the white pills stashed inside containers of pomegranates and flour in separate incidents in August 2022 and April 2023. In one of the most recent attempts, uncovered by Dubai investigators this past September, drug traffickers hid 86 million pills inside prefabricated wooden panels and doors labeled for delivery to construction companies. Nearly all the pills were traced back to ports in Syria.

While it’s not technically accurate to call Syria a narco-state — Captagon is a stimulant, not a narcotic — the country has become so dependent on drug income that Assad would be hard-pressed to shut down the drug factories if he decided to, said Caroline Rose, a researcher who oversees the Special Project on the Captagon Trade at the New Lines Institute, a Washington nonprofit.

“They’ve taken Captagon to such a level that the industry can sustain itself,” Rose said. “It’s no longer mobile facilities, but permanent factories that can accommodate industrial-scale production. And on top of that, there’s an active security apparatus that provides guards, protection and support and even facilitates the movement of the drugs.

“It’s a perfect system,” she said.

Jordanian soldiers patrol along the border with Syria in 2022. (Khalil Mazraawi/AFP/Getty Images)

RUNNING BATTLES

For Syria’s neighbors, it’s a disaster.

Captagon has now become a drug of choice — and a public health crisis — among young people across the Middle East, making deep inroads in countries such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates where alcohol is banned or, for locals, proscribed. Habitual use brings addiction and a wide array of health problems, from insomnia and depression to hallucinations and heart problems, according to medical researchers.

The drug is also a tool for Islamist groups, including Islamic State militants, because it provides users with a burst of euphoric energy and a feeling of invincibility and emotional detachment on the battlefield. Some fighters call it “Captain Courage.”

Surging drug trafficking has forced Jordan to deploy hundreds of soldiers on its northern border. In the past year, Jordanian forces have waged running battles with groups of up to 100 traffickers that left multiple people dead and wounded on both sides.

On a recent late-winter afternoon near Kom al-Raf, a dozen soldiers in full combat gear traced the southern edge of no man’s land, checking for signs of breaches in the barrier system of berms and coiled concertina wire. As they walked, other soldiers stood guard from atop armored vehicles and watchtowers that have been erected at half-mile intervals along the perimeter road. In recent months, officers said, the smugglers had begun using drones to conduct surveillance or, in some cases, to ferry small parcels to confederates across the border.

But vastly more drugs are hauled overland. Near Kom al-Raf, a firefight in 2022 killed a Jordanian soldier when his patrol surprised a large column of smugglers — at least 68 gunmen on foot, according to the after-action report — as they attempted to cross in dense fog.

A map of the Syria-Jordan border where smugglers transport Captagon.

A major storage location for Captagon and the launch point for shipments heading toward Jordan. Targeted by Jordanian airstrikes

in April 2022.

Golan

Heights

DARAA

SWEIDA

Sea of

Galilee

SYRIA

ISRAEL

Sweida

Daraa

Jibab

Irbid

al-Shaab

Orman

Border area where armed clashes

with smugglers have occurred.

Al Mafraq

WEST

BANK

Kom al-Raf

TURKEY

SYRIA

JORDAN

LEB.

Damascus

Med. Sea

IRAQ

ISRAEL

Detail

Amman

10 MILES

200 MILES

JORDAN

EGYPT

SAUDI ARABIA

Sources: Human Rights Watch and Northwestern University’s Knight Lab

After a brief firefight, the smugglers fled back into Syria, leaving behind 100-pound packs filled with Captagon tablets as well as bolt-cutters and weapons, Jordanian officials said.

The convoy’s large size and willingness to engage a military patrol startled the Jordanians and prompted army commanders to adopt more aggressive measures.

“We’ve had to change our rules of engagement multiple times because their methods have changed,” Brig. Gen. Mustafa al-Hiyari said in an interview at the headquarters of the Jordanian Armed Forces, perched on a heavily fortified hilltop just outside Amman. “Smugglers generally don’t want to fight, but these are armed.”

Since 2020, the border region has seen at least a dozen armed clashes that resulted in deaths, injuries or arrests. One encounter in January resulted in the capture of 15 alleged traffickers, according to photos shown to The Washington Post. Jordanian officials said the men acknowledged during interrogations that they had undergone professional military training to qualify for the job of courier. At the time of the arrests, several were high on Captagon, the officials said.

Seized drugs, including Captagon, in Marea, Syria, in 2022. (AFP/Getty Images)

In one of the most recent cases, Jordanian authorities tracked a suspected drug shipment last month as it traversed more than 100 miles of open highway before police swooped in at a border crossing with Saudi Arabia. Millions of pills were found hidden inside construction equipment bound for the gulf kingdom, officials said.

Based on interrogations and other evidence, Jordanian intelligence officials said they have concluded that the most recent bands of smugglers are linked to Iranian-backed Syrian militias, including some of the same groups that have fired rockets at U.S. forces based in eastern Syria. There is no evidence of direct involvement in drug trafficking by Tehran, but Iranian officials have provided weapons, money and intelligence to the groups.

U.S. and Jordanian officials say the militias may be responsible for the increasingly sophisticated weapons carried by traffickers. In several instances, smugglers have left caches of weapons inside Jordanian territory, possibly with the intention of providing them to other Iranian-backed militants in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip. The Post was shown photos of some of the hidden weapons, which included Claymore-type anti-personnel mines.

“The Iranian proxy groups operate like warlords,” constantly competing for fighters, better weapons and cash, said Charles Lister, director of counterterrorism programs at the Washington-based nonprofit Middle East Institute. “Drugs are just an easy way to make money and become more powerful than your neighbors.”

Displaced Syrians in Idlib. At least 12 million Syrians are now refugees or internally displaced, and 90 percent of the country’s citizens live in poverty. (Bilal Alhammoud/AFP/Getty Images)

‘IN AN UNDERWORLD’

The U.S. policy of maintaining harsh sanctions enjoys broad bipartisan support. The toughest measures to date came in 2020, nine years after the start of the war and the same year that the first massive seizures of Captagon drugs were being recorded. The congressionally approved Caesar Act was named in honor of a Syrian military photographer and defector — known publicly only as “Caesar” — who used his camera to document the Assad regime’s torture and murder of more than 11,000 Syrian prisoners. The sanctions targeted the country’s largest remaining industrial sectors, including energy production and construction, and are explicitly intended to discourage international business agreements that could help Assad repair the country’s battered infrastructure.

As a means of inflicting well-deserved punishment on Syria’s leader, the sanctions are widely regarded as a triumph. Supporters of the measures warn that the world cannot “normalize” Assad or allow his regime to enrich itself through construction contracts to rebuild cities that Assad helped to depopulate and destroy.

The Caesar Act, together with this year’s Captagon sanctions, sends an important signal to the Assad regime and its allies that the United States is standing with ordinary Syrians, said Mouaz Moustafa, executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a Washington-based nonprofit that advocates for victims of Syrian war crimes.

“There are strict humanitarian exceptions to ensure that no Syrian civilians, regardless of their political outlook, are harmed by these sanctions,” Moustafa said. “The sanctions are focused on the people who are harming ordinary Syrians with chemical weapons, torture and indiscriminate bombardment. The drugs were part of a deliberate strategy by these same people to ensure that they have a revenue source, and that they have complete control over it.”

Yet even the most ardent supporters acknowledge that no “victory” in Syria is completely clean.

While there may be few viable alternatives to sanctions, the measures always come with unwanted side effects — including the inevitable certainty that the elites of society will find ways to survive and even profit, said Peter Andreas, a professor of international studies at Brown University and the author of a study on how sanctions increase illicit trade.

“The targets of sanctions, because their survival depends on it, are willing to go through all kinds of alliances to succeed,” Andreas said.

Sanctions can eventually “put the whole economy in an underworld,” he said. “It’s an unintended but very real and long-lasting consequence.”

THE MONEY WAR

Trump White House was warned sanctions on Venezuela could fuel migration

July 26, 2024

Sanctions crushed Syria’s elite. So they built a zombie economy fueled by drugs.

July 25, 2024

How four U.S. presidents unleashed economic warfare across the globe

July 25, 2024

About this story

Mekhennet reported from Washington and Frankfurt, Germany. Jeff Stein and Cate Brown in Washington contributed to this report.

Design and development by Stephanie Hays. Illustrations by Chantal Jahchan. Photo editing by Robert Miller and Max Becherer. Design editing by Betty Chavarria. Additional editing by Karly Domb Sadof. Maps by Laris Karklis. Graphics editing by Kate Rabinowitz.

Editing by Peter Finn, Ben Pauker, and Lori Montgomery. Copy editing by Feroze Dhanoa and Brian Malasics.

Project editing by Ana Carano. Additional production and support from Jordan Melendrez, Sarah Murray, Megan Bridgeman, Kathleen Floyd, Jenna Lief and Alisa Vazquez.

265 Comments

Joby Warrick

Joby Warrick joined The Washington Post’s National staff in 1996. He has served with the Post's investigative and national security teams, and writes about the Middle East, terrorism and weapons proliferation. He is the author of three books, including “Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS," which was awarded a 2016 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction.@jobywarrick

Souad Mekhennet

Souad Mekhennet is a correspondent on the national security desk. She is the author of "I Was Told to Come Alone: My Journey Behind the Lines of Jihad," and she has reported on terrorism for the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune and NPR.@smekhennet

15. US Special Forces open permanent base in Poland

US Special Forces open permanent base in Poland

1lurer.am

Political

13:2318 May, 2024

The United States has established a permanent special forces base in Poland, where 150-200 American military personnel will be stationed. The base is located near the Balice airport, close to Kraków, as reported by RMF24.

Named Miron Camp, the base aims to facilitate continuous cooperation and training between American special forces and nearby Polish units, while also serving as a deterrent to potential aggressors.

“This initiative is about enhancing our existing capabilities. This permanent presence will strengthen the deterrent signal, contributing to the security of our nation,” said Lieutenant Colonel Mariusz Lapeta, spokesperson for the Polish Special Forces component.

It is noteworthy that Miron Camp will be the easternmost training centre for American special forces and the closest to the Russian border.

The new American base is named in honour of Polish soldier Mirosław "Miron" Łucki, who died in Afghanistan during NATO operations. The ceremonial opening was attended by Miron's wife and son. Lukasz, a high school student, aspires to become a soldier in the future, with dreams of joining the air force. American officials were also present at the opening ceremony.

“This is a good sign for the future of our relations,” said Erin Nickerson, the US Consul General in Kraków, at the base's inauguration.

The Gaze previously reported that the Polish government plans to allocate an additional 1.5 billion zlotys (approximately 350 million euros) for the modernization of barriers on the border with Belarus.

"In particular, the entire length of the existing barrier, which was built a few months ago, will be reinforced. The Silesian University of Technology and our engineers are working on strengthening the entire barrier. They guarantee that the barrier will be impassable," noted Polish Deputy Defence Minister Cezary Tomczyk.

1lurer.am

16. Ukraine war maps reveal Russian land grabs across eastern front line

Please go to the link to view the maps: https://www.newsweek.com/russia-ukraine-isw-maps-eastern-front-line-1930060

Ukraine war maps reveal Russian land grabs across eastern front line

Newsweek · by Brendan Cole · July 25, 2024

BySenior News Reporter

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Russian forces have made marginal gains in recent days in Ukraine's east, according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), whose latest maps depict the state of play on the front line.

The Washington, D.C.-based think tank reported Wednesday that Russian forces had advanced north of Kharkiv City and continued fighting in the north of the region.

One of its maps marked Moscow's claims that it had captured the village of Hlyboke on Tuesday near the border and showed other reported Russian advances in the town of Starytsa, around 20 miles further east three days earlier.

Another map depicted Russian claims of gains in the Donetsk region, such as the seizure of the towns of Nevelske and Yurivka on July 21. Citing geolocated footage, the graph also marks Russian advances on July 22 toward Niu York, Maksymilianivka and, two days later, Kostiantynivka.

This illustrative image shows a soldier from Ukraine's 21st Separate Motorized Infantry Battalion 'Sarmat' fires an RPG while training on July 21, 2024 near Chasiv Yar, Ukraine. Russian forces have made marginal gains in recent... This illustrative image shows a soldier from Ukraine's 21st Separate Motorized Infantry Battalion 'Sarmat' fires an RPG while training on July 21, 2024 near Chasiv Yar, Ukraine. Russian forces have made marginal gains in recent days in Ukraine's east. Ethan Swope/Getty Images

This map by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) from July 24, 2024 shows the state of play around Kharkiv. This map by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) from July 24, 2024 shows the state of play around Kharkiv. Institute for the Study of War

This map by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) from July 24, 2024 shows the state of play around Donetsk. This map by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) from July 24, 2024 shows the state of play around Donetsk. Institute for the Study of War

Newsweek has contacted the Russian and Ukrainian defense ministries for comment.

However, Ukrainian forces have boasted of their own successes. Soldiers from the 79th Tavrian Air Assault Brigade said they had repelled one of the largest Russian assaults since the start of the war, in the Kurakhove sector in Donetsk where Russia is trying to break through.

The brigade said that paratroopers had damaged six Russian tanks and seven armored vehicles, and destroyed 12 motorcycles in an operation that left 40 Russian soldiers dead and 37 others injured.

Ukraine reported on Thursday that Russian attacks across the country over the previous day had killed at least four civilians and injured at least 30.

Russian forces struck the town of Lozova in Kharkiv oblast with an Iskander missile around midday Wednesday, killing three people and injuring six, the regional governor said. At least a dozen civilians were reported injured during multiple missile and bombing strikes against two other districts in Kharkiv.

Ukraine's Air Force said Thursday air defenses had managed to down 25 out of 38 Russian Shahed drones over six regions throughout the country. Some drones targeted a district in Odesa region, which is close to the border with Romania.

This was the second time the area has been targeted in two days, with the Romanian Air Force scrambling its F-16 fighter jets on Wednesday following a previous attack.

On Thursday, Romania's Defense Ministry confirmed Russian Geran fragments were found near the town of Plauru, which lies across the Danube River from the Ukrainian city of Izmail.

Also on Thursday, General Oleksandr Pivnenko, the commander of Ukraine's National Guard, told Ukrainian outlet Ukrinform that Moscow will not be able to keep up the scale of its attacks in multiple sectors because its "capabilities are not unlimited."

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About the writer

Brendan Cole

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Brendan Cole is a Newsweek Senior News Reporter based in London, UK. His focus is Russia and Ukraine, in particular the war started by Moscow. He also covers other areas of geopolitics including China.

Brendan joined Newsweek in 2018 from the International Business Times and well as English, knows Russian and French.

You can get in touch with Brendan by emailing b.cole@newsweek.com or follow on him on his X account @brendanmarkcole.

Brendan Cole is a Newsweek Senior News Reporter based in London, UK. His focus is Russia and Ukraine, in particular ...

To read how Newsweek uses AI as a newsroom tool, Click here.

Newsweek · by Brendan Cole · July 25, 2024

17. Dark Eagle: The U.S. Army’s Plan to Dominate Hypersonic Weapons

Dark Eagle: The U.S. Army’s Plan to Dominate Hypersonic Weapons

The National Interest · by Brandon J. Weichert · July 27, 2024

Summary and Key Points: After years of struggling to adapt to new global threats, the U.S. Army has achieved a significant breakthrough with the successful test of its Long Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW), also known as the Dark Eagle, on June 28, 2024

-With a range of 1,725 miles and the ability to travel over 3,800 mph, this ground-launched, truck-based system can strike targets while evading missile defenses.

-The Dark Eagle represents a crucial advancement in countering China’s anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) strategies and restoring U.S. military dominance. Congress is urged to prioritize funding for this program to enhance U.S. strategic capabilities in the Indo-Pacific.

US Army’s Dark Eagle Hypersonic Weapon Could Change Sino-American War Dynamics

The U.S. Army has had a rough go over the last couple of decades. It struggled to adapt to the needs of the Global War on Terror. Indeed, the amphibious U.S. Marine Corps did a far better job of adapting to the demands of that war than did America’s primary land power.

And as the GWOT wrapped up, the Army again failed to adapt to the new dynamic threat environment of great power competition.

The Army Hasn’t Been Doing Well

The Army was so slow on the uptake that during the Obama administration, the Navy, Air Force, and Marines essentially cut the Army out of their main plans for countering a Chinese invasion of Taiwan (plans known as Air-Sea Battle”). That, and the subsequent cuts to the Army as part of the (failed) sequestration concocted between the Obama White House and the Republican-controlled Congress in 2011, did lasting damage to the Army’s readiness.

This was something that late Army Gen. Ray Odierno said to my colleagues and I during his final briefing on the Hill before his retirement.

America’s Army languished since then as it tried to find its place in the new paradigm. There were attempts to counter the Air Force-Navy-Marine “Air-Sea Battle” with what Gen. Odierno called the Office of Strategic Land Power. That concept struggled to gain traction, as the other major branches of the military had beaten the Army to the punch with Air-Sea Battle.

The Army Might Have Finally Found Its Way

Finally, after years of flailing about, the Army might have homed in on the right formulation for making itself viable in the frightening event of war with China. The focus is in the domain of hypersonic weapons. China leads the United States in the development of a host of strategic denial capabilities, such as anti-ship ballistic missiles, anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) systems, hypersonic glide vehicles, and counterspace weapons.

With these strategic denial systems in place, Chinese forces could likely keep the U.S. military away from the region as Chinese forces overwhelm a local target such as Taiwan.

Keeping the Americans just over the horizon gives the Chinese military a greater chance of victory over China’s smaller and likely weaker local rivals (who are backed by the US military).

It’s too late to prevent China from maximizing the gains from these strategic denial capabilities. However, the Americans can develop systems designed to punch through whatever denial systems Beijing’s forces establish, land killing blows against Chinese military targets, and then work to restore U.S. military dominance in any engagement.

The Dark Eagle

The key to this strategy will be mastery of long-range warfare, and that’s where the Army comes in. Specifically, the Army’s Long Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW), also known as Dark Eagle. Possessing a reported range of 1,725 miles, as described by the Congressional Research Service, this beast “consists of a ground-launched missile equipped with a hypersonic glide body and associated transport, support, and fire control equipment.”

The Army goes on to detail how this “land-based, truck-launched system is armed with hypersonic missiles that can travel well over 3,800 miles per hour. They can reach the top of the Earth’s atmosphere and remain just beyond the range of air and missile defense systems until they are ready to strike, and by then it’s too late to react.”

Indeed, the Dark Eagle is such an important step forward both for the Army and the U.S. military as a whole, that the Navy has begun cooperating with Big Green in the development of this system, hoping for greater interoperability between the land branch and the maritime service. American defense contractors Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman are developing the LRHW.

After two years of struggle, the Army finally made the Dark Eagle work in a test flight conducted from the Pacific Missile Range Facility in Kauai, Hawaii, on June 28, 2024.

Building On Success for Dark Eagle

Obviously, more tests will be needed. But the June 28 tests in Hawaii are a quantum leap forward for the Army in its mission to remain a potent element of America’s joint fighting force. Congress must direct as much funding and resources into the Dark Eagle program as possible, even if it means diverting funds away from other preferred Army and Navy programs.

If a Sino-American war erupts, it won’t be aircraft carriers and F-16s that determine the outcome. It will be whoever possesses a greater share of long-range, hypersonic weapons that can punch through the fortified, modern defenses that China has erected all about their region. The conflict will be decided by the side that can survive in such a degraded environment longer than the other.

The Army’s Dark Eagle is the equivalent of a silver bullet for punching holes through China’s A2/AD bubbles. It might allow for US. .surface warships and Marine amphibious ships to operate more safely nearer to contested territory in the Indo-Pacific.

Author Experience and Expertise: Brandon J. Weichert

Brandon J. Weichert, a National Interest national security analyst, is a former Congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst who is a contributor at The Washington Times, the Asia Times, and The-Pipeline. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life, and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy. His next book, A Disaster of Our Own Making: How the West Lost Ukraine, is due October 22 from Encounter Books. Weichert can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.

All images are Creative Commons or Shutterstock.

From the Vault

Russia Freaked Out: Why the U.S. Navy 'Unretired' the Iowa-Class Battleships

Battleship vs. Battlecruiser: Iowa-Class vs. Russia's Kirov-Class (Who Wins?)

The National Interest · by Brandon J. Weichert · July 27, 2024

18. Australia-based Marines ready to support Manila in sea-territory skirmish

Australia-based Marines ready to support Manila in sea-territory skirmish

Stars and Stripes · by Seth Robson · July 25, 2024

The commander of Marine Rotational Force – Darwin, Col. Brian Mulvihill, poses at Mount Bundey Training Area in Australia's Northern Territory, July 24, 2024. (Seth Robson/Stars and Stripes)

MOUNT BUNDEY TRAINING AREA, Australia — A Marine rotational force in northern Australia is ready to back up the Philippines in clashes with China over disputed territory in the South China Sea, according to the force’s commander.

“We were given a warning order to support the Philippines defense forces in resupplying of the Second Thomas Shoal,” Marine Rotational Force — Darwin commander Col. Brian Mulvihill said Wednesday at an Outback training camp in the Northern Territory.

Mulvihill, a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, commands 2,000 Marines in the territory. He said members of the rotational force have been in the Philippines for extended periods this year for the Balikatan, Valiant Shield and Marine Aviation Support Activity exercises.

Clashes between Filipino and Chinese forces at the shoal have intensified in recent months. The Chinese coast guard has interrupted Filipino navy and coast guard efforts to resupply troops on the grounded BRP Sierra Madre. The rusted warship houses a garrison to reinforce the Philippines’ claim to the shoal.

Beijing and Manila agreed Sunday to deescalate at the shoal without conceding either side’s territorial claims, according to statements from both country’s foreign ministries reported by The Associated Press that day.

The Marines have been monitoring events at the shoal over a drone feed, Mulvihill said.

“We were ready to support the Philippine defense forces,” he said, noting that Marines across the Pacific are also ready to back the U.S. ally.

The rotational force can airlift food and water by pushing pallets out of helicopters, he added.

“We can control airspace and aircraft from many nations,” he said. “We provide a range of options if a host nation, through the embassy, requires assistance.”

Crisis response force

The rotational force was also ready to support Papua New Guinea after a deadly May 24 landslide that buried hundreds of people. Marines were in the islands earlier that month, but local officials did not ask for their help, Mulvihill said.

Marine Rotational Force — Darwin has evolved from a unit that trains with its counterparts to a crisis-response force under the Hawaii-based U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, he said.

“Anything we do here, we are partnered with another military,” he said. “In order to create stability in the region we need to partner with the forces that live here and know the region better than we do.”

The force sent Marines and sailors to the Micronesian island of Nauru in May and June for Operation Render Safe, an Australian-led effort to clear explosives dating to World War II from Oceania, Mulvihill said.

The bomb-disposal crews, along with medical personnel, will fly to the Solomon Islands on MV-22 Osprey aircraft to perform the same mission from August to September, he said.

Three Marines attached to Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 363 and deployed with the previous rotation to Darwin died after their MV-22B Osprey crashed on Melville Island, part of the Tiwi Islands, Aug. 4, 2023.

Support platform

Darwin is an excellent platform for launching forces into Southeast Asia, according to Grant Newsham, a retired Marine colonel and senior researcher with the Japan Forum for Strategic Studies in Tokyo.

“It’s good to see Darwin and Northern Territory being used this way … rather than just as a training area for Marines, Air Force, and Australian and other forces,” he said by email Thursday.

The Marines can offer the Philippines fire support coordination. They can help with logistics and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance and guard locations that support Philippine forces operating towards the disputed shoal, he said.

“Of course, Marines can deploy aboard Philippine resupply boats alongside [Philippine] personnel,” he said.

Marine engineers could repair the Sierra Madre at the shoal and Marine helicopters could resupply it, Newsham added.

“A U.S. amphibious ship or two with Marines and their aircraft and other hardware aboard deployed to Second Thomas Shoal would be a serious force — and also sending a clear message,” he said. “Deploying Marines in the Philippines with their aviation, long-range rockets, and other hardware has a political significance in itself.”

Stars and Stripes · by Seth Robson · July 25, 2024

19. China Is Freaked Out: The F-15EX Eagle II Fighter is a Missile Truck Like No Other

China Is Freaked Out: The F-15EX Eagle II Fighter is a Missile Truck Like No Other

The National Interest · by Brandon J. Weichert · July 26, 2024

Summary and Key Points: The U.S. Air Force's new F-15EX Eagle II addresses gaps left by the premature cancellation of the F-22 and delays in the F-35 program. Though a fourth-generation fighter, the F-15EX is a highly capable "missile truck" to counter growing threats from China's J-20 and Russia's Su-57.

-This decision underscores deficiencies in current U.S. air defenses and the need for a reliable, cost-effective platform.

-Deploying the F-15EX to Taiwan could enhance defensive operations against potential Chinese aggression, ensuring a strategic advantage in critical regions like the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait.

The F-15EX Eagle II Is Something Powerful

The F-15EX Eagle II is the United States Air Force’s newest warplane. An upgraded version of the plane that first flew the wild blue yonder in 1972, the new version is both an upgrade and a stopgap. At its core, the F-15EX Eagle-II is basically just a missile truck. This new bird can carry significantly more armaments into battle and still be combat-effective.

Yet, it is still a fourth-generation warplane.

In other words, the F-15, which remains a foundational element of America’s airpower doctrine, is now being outclassed both by its own military’s new fifth-generation warplanes, F-35 Lightning II and the F-22 Raptor, as well as by the fifth-generation warplanes of its two main strategic rivals, China and Russia.

Back in 2009, the Obama administration foolishly and prematurely canceled the production of the F-22 Raptor.

For the record, most experts agree that the F-22 is America’s finest air superiority fighter. Cutting it prematurely for budgetary reasons, as the forty-fourth president did, is widely viewed as a mistake. Because now, at a time when America’s rivals either are or, in some cases, have caught up to the US military’s fifth-generation warplane capabilities, the US Air Force has a very limited number of the F-22s.

This places a greater burden on both the existing fleet of fourth-generation warplanes and the still growing F-35 warplanes.

After decades of being in development, the F-35 is finally making some headway with mass production. Although, it is a massively expensive system that requires a great deal of training and expertise to fly, as well as maintain.

Already, the Air Force is looking to develop an even costlier, supposedly more sophisticated sixth-generation warplane to replace the F-35 and F-22—before their fifth-generation warplanes have really proven themselves in the crucible of great power conflict.

Costs of the Fifth-Generation Warplane Have Created a Hole in America’s Defenses

As always, cost is a key limiting factor.

The technical delays and cost overruns of the military’s fifth-generation warplane programs, notably with the F-35, at the same time that the Air Force has been retiring large numbers of its existing fleet of fourth-generation warplanes, have created dire strategic gaps in its defenses. Meanwhile, China and Russia continue to invest in, improve upon, and deploy greater numbers of their own fifth-generation warplanes.

For these reasons, the Air Force opted to spend a fraction of the money that it costs to build new F-35s and introduce a new, upgraded version of its ubiquitous F-15. Lacking the stealth and range—as well as the other high-tech self-defenses—of most fifth-generation warplanes, the new F-15s are, as noted above, essentially missile trucks.

These upgraded fourth-generation systems are designed to fill the void that the decommissioning of, frankly, far too many fourth-generation warplanes and the lack of having adequate numbers of fifth-generation warplanes on hand, at a time when America’s rivals are catching up militarily, created.

In other words, these new planes are a tacit admission by the Pentagon that they screwed up America’s air defenses significantly.

What the Air Force is saying with the introduction of these new F-15s is that, if a shooting war were to start soon, they’d need a reliable weapons platform beyond the costly F-35 and F-22s that there are insufficient numbers of. So, the new F-15s are going to be thrown into the meat grinder against China’s J-20 or, quite possibly, against Russia’s Su-57.

As with America’s F-35 or F-22s, the Chinese and Russian next-generation warplanes could probably fly circles around the Air Force’s F-15s. Since the F-15 remains the primary air superiority platform the Air Force relies on, this poses many risks. To overcome the advantages of individual Chinese J-20s or Russian Su-57s, the new F-15EX Eagle IIs will simply overwhelm targets with a barrage of missiles.

The Serious Limits of the F-15EX Eagle II

Of course, the geography of key regions, notably the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait, work against the F-15EX Eagle IIs from being deployed in the ways that they have been engaged in the past—especially against the J-20. Instead, these systems would have to stay nearer to their bases because China’s fifth-generation warplanes, like America’s, have advantages over longer-ranges.

For the F-15EX Eagle II to have the kind of impact it needs to have, I would recommend handing these systems over to the Taiwanese and having Taiwan’s air force use them for defensive operations around Taiwan to harry Chinese warplanes, bombers, and warships, when the inevitable Chinese invasion (or blockade) starts.

About the Author:

All images are Creative Commons and or Shutterstock.

The National Interest · by Brandon J. Weichert · July 26, 2024

20. Vaccines tell a success story that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Trump forget – here are some key reminders

I remain a strong believer in vaccines, to include COVID but especially vaccinations for children going to school.

Vaccines tell a success story that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Trump forget – here are some key reminders

Many fatal childhood illnesses can be prevented with vaccination. Halfpoint Images/Moment via Getty Images

theconversation.com · by Mark R. O'Brian

Vaccinations have provided significant protection for the public against infectious diseases. However, there was a modest decrease in support in 2023 nationwide for vaccine requirements for children to attend public schools.

In addition, the presidential candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a leading critic of childhood vaccination, has given him a prominent platform in which to amplify his views. This includes an extensive interview on the “Joe Rogan Experience,” a podcast with over 14 million subscribers. Notably, former President Donald Trump has said he is opposed to mandatory school COVID-19 vaccinations, and in a phone call Trump apparently wasn’t aware was being recorded, he appeared to endorse Kennedy’s views toward vaccines.

I am a biochemist and molecular biologist studying the roles microbes play in health and disease. I also teach medical students and am interested in how the public understands science.

Here are some facts about vaccines that skeptics like Kennedy get wrong:

Vaccines are effective and safe

Public health data from 1974 to the present conclude that vaccines have saved at least 154 million lives worldwide over the past 50 years. Vaccines are also constantly monitored for safety in the U.S.

Nevertheless, the false claim that vaccines cause autism persists despite study after study of large populations throughout the world showing no causal link between them.

Claims about the dangers of vaccines often come from misrepresenting scientific research papers. Kennedy cites a 2005 report allegedly showing massive brain inflammation in monkeys in response to vaccination, when in fact the authors of that study state that there were no serious medical complications. A separate 2003 study that Kennedy claimed showed a 1,135% increase in autism in vaccinated versus unvaccinated children actually found no consistent significant association between vaccines and neurodevelopmental outcomes.

Kennedy also claims that a 2002 vaccine study included a control group of children 6 months of age and younger who were fed mercury-contaminated tuna sandwiches. This claim is false.

Vaccines are continuously monitored for safety before and long after they’re available to the general public. Elena Zaretskaya/Moment via Getty Images

Aluminum adjuvants help boost immunity

Kennedy is co-counsel with a law firm that is suing the pharmaceutical company Merck based in part on the unfounded assertion that the aluminum in one of its vaccines causes neurological disease. Aluminum is added to many vaccines as an adjuvant to strengthen the body’s immune response to the vaccine, thereby enhancing the body’s defense against the targeted microbe.

The law firm’s claim is based on a 2020 report showing that brain tissue from some patients with Alzheimer’s disease, autism and multiple sclerosis have elevated levels of aluminum. The authors of that study do not assert that vaccines are the source of the aluminum, and vaccines are unlikely to be the culprit.

Notably, the brain samples analyzed in that study were from 47- to 105-year-old patients. Most people are exposed to aluminum primarily through their diets, and aluminum is eliminated from the body within days. Therefore, aluminum exposure from childhood vaccines is not expected to persist in those patients.

Vaccines undergo the same approval process as other drugs

Clinical trials for vaccines and other drugs are blinded, randomized and placebo-controlled studies. For a vaccine trial, this means that participants are randomly divided into one group that receives the vaccine and a second group that receives a placebo saline solution. The researchers carrying out the study, and sometimes the participants, do not know who has received the vaccine or the placebo until the study has finished. This eliminates bias.

Results are published in the public domain. For example, vaccine trial data for COVID-19, human papilloma virus and rotavirus is available for anyone to access.

Vaccine manufacturers are liable for injury or death

Kennedy’s lawsuit against Merck contradicts his insistence that vaccine manufacturers are fully immune from litigation.

His claim is based on an incorrect interpretation of the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, or VICP. VICP is a no-fault federal program created to reduce frivolous lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers, which threaten to cause vaccine shortages and a resurgence of vaccine-preventable disease.

A person claiming injury from a vaccine can petition the U.S. Court of Federal Claims through the VICP for monetary compensation. If the VICP petition is denied, the claimant can then sue the vaccine manufacturer.

Drug manufacturers are liable for any vaccine-related death or injury. Andreas Ren Photography Germany/Image Source via Getty Images

The majority of cases resolved under the VICP end in a negotiated settlement between parties without establishing that a vaccine was the cause of the claimed injury. Kennedy and his law firm have incorrectly used the payouts under the VICP to assert that vaccines are unsafe.

The VICP gets the vaccine manufacturer off the hook only if it has complied with all requirements of the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act and exercised due care. It does not protect the vaccine maker from claims of fraud or withholding information regarding the safety or efficacy of the vaccine during its development or after approval.

Good nutrition and sanitation are not substitutes for vaccination

Kennedy asserts that populations with adequate nutrition do not need vaccines to avoid infectious diseases. While it is clear that improvements in nutrition, sanitation, water treatment, food safety and public health measures have played important roles in reducing deaths and severe complications from infectious diseases, these factors do not eliminate the need for vaccines.

After World War II, the U.S. was a wealthy nation with substantial health-related infrastructure. Yet, Americans reported an average of 1 million cases per year of now-preventable infectious diseases.

Vaccines introduced or expanded in the 1950s and 1960s against diseases like diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, measles, polio, mumps, rubella and Haemophilus influenza type B have resulted in the near or complete eradication of those diseases.

It’s easy to forget why many infectious diseases are rarely encountered today. The success of vaccines does not always tell its own story. It must be retold again and again to counter misinformation.

theconversation.com · by Mark R. O'Brian

21. Why TikTok May Just Go Away On Its Own | Opinion

Interesting theory.

Why TikTok May Just Go Away On Its Own | Opinion

Newsweek · by Jason Nichols · July 26, 2024

I used to work at an upstart new digital service called AOL. The environment was a bit unreal compared to previous places I'd worked—go all out, essentially. Push every button, partner with everyone, don't ask too many questions, and most important—grow at all costs.

I'm not sure if that's the strategy at TikTok and their China-based owner ByteDance, but TikTok has grown so rapidly that one could legitimately raise the question.

Having worked with TikTok a bit (albeit from the outside), I sense ByteDance's ambitions to be more focused and refined these days.

I think ByteDance's goal is to make the enterprise into the most formidable shopping channel out there, one that can fuse the community and energy of a huge social network with commerce. It's not a stretch to envision TikTok and many of ByteDance's apps eventually looking more like Amazon than Instagram, Snapchat, or X. It's also not unrealistic to think about TikTok as an extremely profitable retailer, a direct-to-consumer player that can leverage direct relationships with Chinese manufacturers.

Here's an even simpler view of the strategy—ByteDance provides the tools and support to content partners, advertisers, and social influencers, and it keeps its eyes open on new opportunities (like shopping, advertiser tools, even security tools to help users). And it eventually builds itself a giant new revenue stream and positioning in the market, mostly from driving commerce. TikTok's influencers might even look closer to shopping personalities, not so far off from what one might remember from cable networks like HSN or QVC.

But here's the rub—How long can TikTok dominate as a social network? Sure, at over a billion and a half users, they're a juggernaut, one that has become a dominant influence (if not disrupter) in industries from music to fashion, and certainly politics. But I've seen a lot of Big Tech networks—social or not so social—just decline over time, not from anything specific, just because sands shift and new players come onto the field, and some of these engage audiences—often younger audiences—in ways that are more appealing.

MySpace and Vine come to mind, as does AOL. Some aren't so engaging with current audiences—think about Meta's Threads, or even Apple's Ping, a rare miss for Apple. I can't cite a single reason why AOL eventually went away, but there were a lot of options competing against us in the market, and eventually audiences gravitated to them, no matter how hard we tried to change. And we did make a game attempt at a shopping strategy.

So what stands out to me with TikTok? For one, younger audiences have adopted it, for news, music, politics—and an influencer economy has emerged from it, with lots of potential.

In music, TikTok has become an essential platform for breaking talent, maybe even more important than radio or streamers like Spotify—a huge statement. Those artists may not be as long-lasting as in earlier decades, but TikTok is definitely central to putting them on audiences' radar.

The logo of TikTok at Gamescom is seen. The logo of TikTok at Gamescom is seen. Rolf Vennenbernd/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images

The "influencer economy" is an emerging mystery to me, but I do see lots of potential for the combination of brands and influencers, and TikTok is a kingmaker there.

I witnessed this in person at the recent Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, where TikTok's pavilion at a ritzy hotel seemed closer to a theme park than an office. There's no doubt advertisers want to be part of it all.

TikTok's engine runs on multiple cylinders—with content like news, politics, and fashion—so it is very well positioned. So well positioned one might think it will defend its dominance and keep growing.

But I do think the opposition it faces from governments, regulators—and increasingly people concerned about privacy—will weigh on it, particularly if the U.S. government does succeed in splitting TikTok off and a new, different U.S. algorithm comes along for U.S. audiences.

Don't get me wrong. A government can do enormous damage to any app—TikTok and WeChat included—by "de-platforming" it or forcing a change in ownership.

But TikTok's algorithm and addictive "For You" page seems so central to its success. A new algorithm especially created for U.S. audiences could potentially change the TikTok user experience; even a slight change could send younger audiences off in a different direction, maybe to Instagram's Reels, to Snapchat, or perhaps one of a new generation of social or gaming apps all seeking mindshare and time.

Sure, I may be over-reacting, as TikTok is so embedded in popular digital culture and business that it may weather this storm transparently. But it's possible the pressure and a new algorithm could set off an avalanche that might truly change the picture for TikTok and ByteDance, so much that they might just decline on their own.

Seth A. Schachner is managing director at Strat Americas, a media and entertainment consultancy.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.

Uncommon Knowledge

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

Newsweek · by Jason Nichols · July 26, 2024

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

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

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

Access NSS HERE

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Vaccines tell a success story that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Trump forget – here are some key reminders

Vaccines are effective and safe

Aluminum adjuvants help boost immunity

Vaccines undergo the same approval process as other drugs

Vaccine manufacturers are liable for injury or death

Good nutrition and sanitation are not substitutes for vaccination

Why TikTok May Just Go Away On Its Own | Opinion

Uncommon Knowledge

JULY 28, 2024 01:35