Quotes of the Day:

"You must remember that some things that are legally right are not morally right."

– Abraham Lincoln

"Once you teach people to say what they do not understand, it is easy enough to get them to say anything you like."

– J.J. Rousseau

"Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our Children."

– Crazy Horse

1. William Calley, Army officer and face of My Lai Massacre, is dead at 80

2. Trump Shooter Began Buying Guns, Bomb Materials More Than a Year Ago, FBI Says

3. Five Truths for Foreign Area Officers

4. ONE STEP FORWARD, TWO STEPS BACK:A Review of U.S.-Europe Cooperation on China

5. The Boiling Moat' argues U.S. should prepare to help Taiwan defend against China (with transcript)

6. The World Is Not About Us: Information and Power in the Current Strategic Environment

7. Integrate to Win From Competition Through Conflict: Create a Joint Force Information Warfare Component Commander

8. A half-million records and one app: The group behind a massive effort to ‘clean’ voter rolls

9. The situation in the Red Sea is not getting better by Joseph L. Votel

10. It’s the Energy Market, Stupid: An Economic Strategy for Ending the Conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza

11. US will send $1.7 billion in military aid to Ukraine

12. Interview with Robert Blackwill and Richard Fontaine: Lost Decade – The US Pivot and the Rise of Chinese Power

13. The U.S. Wanted to Knock Down Huawei. It’s Only Getting Stronger.

14. ‘Not prepared’: Congressional panel calls for huge defense buildup

15. US boosts alliance with the Philippines with $500 million funding and pact amid concern over China

16. Politics or People: What Does the Navy Value?

17. Reviving Cold War Air Bases: A Strategic Move for Modern Deterrence?

18. France renews vow to defend freedom of navigation as it showcases fighter jets in the Philippines

19. NATO After Next: From Interoperability to Fungibility

20. Republicans and Democrats Name Members of Trump Assassination Inquiry

21. COLONELS WRITING FOR COLONELS

22. The Islamic State Keeps Finding Opportunities

23. After Trump Assassination Attempt, Some Veterans Spread Misinformation. Others Pushed Back.

24. NATO Can’t Be a One Trick Pony: The Future of Alliance Crisis Prevention and Management

25. Can Anyone Govern Gaza?

26. Why America Stands to Lose If It Resumes Nuclear Testing

27. The Hidden War Over Taiwan

28. Ukraine Strikes Deeper by Mick Ryan

29. Joint Statement on the Philippines-United States Fourth 2+2 Ministerial Dialogue

30.  Rebels in Mali Display Ukrainian Flag After Wagner Defeat

31. Russia is relying on unwitting Americans to spread election disinformation, US officials say

1. William Calley, Army officer and face of My Lai Massacre, is dead at 80

He died in April and it is only now being reported because someone noticed.

I was not aware of many of the personal details of Calley's life prior to the Army that are described in this.

I do remember being at OCS and that we all knew his story and that he worked at the jewelry store in Columbus.

Excerpts:

The Post was alerted to the death, which was not previously reported, by Zachary Woodward, a recent Harvard Law School graduate who said he noticed Mr. Calley’s death while looking through public records.

...

Curiously, his death certificate matched known details about his life — including information on his birth, career, name and nickname — but featured one notable omission. On a line asking if he had ever served “in U.S. armed forces,” the answer given was “no.”

William Calley, Army officer and face of My Lai Massacre, is dead at 80

https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2024/07/29/william-calley-dead-my-lai-massacre/?utm

He was the only person convicted in connection with the atrocity, in which American troops killed hundreds of unarmed South Vietnamese men, women and children.

14 min

1305

Lt. William L. Calley Jr., flanked by two military policemen, leaves court at Fort Benning, Ga., after being sentenced to life imprisonment in 1971. (AP)

By Harrison Smith, Emily Langer, Brian Murphy and Adam Bernstein

July 29, 2024 at 7:38 p.m. EDT

William L. Calley Jr., a junior Army officer who became the only person convicted in connection with the My Lai Massacre of 1968, when U.S. soldiers slaughtered hundreds of unarmed South Vietnamese men, women and children in one of the darkest chapters in American military history, died April 28 at a hospice center in Gainesville, Fla. He was 80.

The Washington Post obtained a copy of his death certificate from the Florida Department of Health in Alachua County. His son, Laws Calley, did not immediately respond to requests for additional information. Other efforts to reach Mr. Calley’s family were unsuccessful.

The Post was alerted to the death, which was not previously reported, by Zachary Woodward, a recent Harvard Law School graduate who said he noticed Mr. Calley’s death while looking through public records.

Although he was once the country’s most notorious Army officer, a symbol of military misconduct in a war that many considered immoral and unwinnable, Mr. Calley had lived in obscurity for decades, declining interviews while working as a jeweler in Columbus, Ga., not far from the military base where he was court-martialed and convicted in 1971.

A junior-college dropout from South Florida, he had bounced around jobs, unsuccessfully trying to enlist in the Army in 1964, before being called up two years later. As the war escalated in Vietnam, he found a home in a military that was desperately trying to replenish its lower ranks.

Mr. Calley was quickly tapped to become a junior officer, with minimal vetting, and was soon promoted to second lieutenant, commanding a platoon in Charlie Company, a unit of the Army’s Americal Division. The company sustained heavy losses in the early months of 1968, losing men to sniper fire, land mines and booby traps as the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong launched coordinated attacks in the Tet Offensive.

On the morning of March 16, 1968, the unit was airlifted by helicopter to Son My, a patchwork village of rice paddies, irrigation ditches and small settlements, including a hamlet known to U.S. soldiers as My Lai 4. Over the next few hours, Mr. Calley and other soldiers in Charlie Company shot and bayoneted women, children and elderly men, destroying the village while searching for Viet Cong guerrillas and sympathizers who were said to have been hiding in the area. Homes were burned, and some women and girls were gang-raped before being killed.

An Army investigation later concluded that 347 men, women and children had been killed, including victims of another American unit, Bravo Company. A Vietnamese estimate placed the death toll at 504.

American soldiers look over the remains of a home in the Vietnamese hamlet of My Lai in 1970. (AP)

For more than a year and a half, the details of the atrocity were hidden and covered up from the public. A report to headquarters initially characterized the attack as a significant victory, claiming that 128 “enemy” fighters had been killed. Gen. William C. Westmoreland, the top commander in Vietnam, praised American forces at My Lai for dealing a “heavy blow” to the Viet Cong.

Meanwhile, Ronald Ridenhour, a helicopter gunner who was not at the scene but had heard of the killings weeks later, did his own probing. While on home leave nearly a year after the massacre, he began writing letters to top political and military leaders about the bloodbath at My Lai — providing information that was credited with sparking official investigations.

Backed with photographs and witness testimony, the Army charged Mr. Calley with premeditated murder days before his scheduled discharge.

Although a four-paragraph Associated Press article appeared in September 1969, providing Mr. Calley’s name and reporting that he was being held for allegedly murdering an unspecified number of civilians, a more complete picture of the massacre was not revealed until that November, through articles by investigative reporter Seymour M. Hersh.

Acting on a tip by an antiwar activist, Hersh worked exhaustively to track down Mr. Calley. He finally located him in the unlikeliest of places for a man facing court-martial for what at the time was believed to be 109 murders: at the senior officers’ quarters of Fort Benning, now called Fort Moore, in Georgia.

Hersh’s articles, distributed to newspapers around the country by the independent Dispatch News Service, received the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting, shocked a nation that was already divided over the Vietnam War and thrust Mr. Calley into the national spotlight.

Almost from the very beginning, Mr. Calley polarized Americans who variously deemed him a war criminal or a scapegoat, a mass murderer or an inexperienced officer made to take the fall for the actions of his superiors. Defenders argued that he had been forced into a brutal conflict with an often invisible enemy, then blamed for the horrors of the war.

To some, he seemed like a convenient target for military prosecutors, the lowest link in a chain of command that included Capt. Ernest Medina, who was accused of bearing overall responsibility for the attacks, and Maj. Gen. Samuel W. Koster, the highest-ranking officer charged with trying to cover up the massacre.

Mr. Calley was convicted of murdering at least 22 noncombatants and sentenced to life at hard labor, after a military jury rejected his defense that he was just following orders. Amid appeals, he ultimately served about three years, much of it under house arrest.​ 

“My Lai was the absolute low point in the history of the modern U.S. military,” said Pulitzer Prize-winning military correspondent Thomas E. Ricks, whose book “The Generals” traces the evolution of the post-World War II Army.

Beyond the atrocities committed by Mr. Calley, Ricks said it was important to remember that “there were 1,000 causes here, bad people doing bad things up and down the chain of command,” including the “second grave sin” of the coverup.

“My Lai forced a reexamination of the U.S. Army,” Ricks noted, referring to its central role in later studies about revamping military professionalism. “It was not just that hundreds of civilians had been murdered, and a score raped, but that the acts of the day were covered up by the Army chain of command.

“The incident was just not the work of a deranged lieutenant,” he continued. “Other officers were aware of what was going on. And the extensive coverup, including the destruction of documents, went all the way up to the rank of general, with two generals and three colonels implicated.”

Mr. Calley, center, flashes the peace sign from a military helicopter in South Vietnam in 1970. (AP)

‘Go and get them’

The attack on My Lai came a month and a half after the Tet Offensive. U.S. soldiers had visited the village a few times, interviewing residents while seeking intel about the Viet Cong, or VC. This time, Medina told his men in Charlie Company, the objective was to strike hard against a community believed to be harboring VC.

Destroy anything that is “walking, crawling or growling,” Medina declared in a pre-mission briefing, according to testimony given at Mr. Calley’s court-martial. Asked if that included women and children, he replied that according to military intelligence, ordinary villagers should be at a nearby market. Anyone left behind was either a guerrilla or a sympathizer.

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“They’re all VC, now go and get them,” he said, according to trial testimony.

Around 7:30 a.m. the next morning, Mr. Calley and his platoon arrived at the village expecting heavy resistance. Instead, they found a quiet community sitting down for breakfast.

Some soldiers thought it was a trap, according to court-martial accounts. Viet Cong explosives and mines had accounted for up 90 percent of American casualties in the previous months. As Mr. Calley’s men fanned out, some shot villagers while searching in vain for suspected fighters. Others used grenades to blow apart homes.

Mr. Calley’s platoon herded women, children and elderly men into groups. Accounts vary on what happened next: According to Mr. Calley, Medina grew irritated by the unit’s slow progress and told Mr. Calley to “get rid of” the civilians. Medina denied giving any order to harm civilians, although other soldiers remembered it differently, recalling that Medina made it clear that it was acceptable to “wipe the place out.” A few minutes later, Mr. Calley and a fellow soldier, Pfc. Paul Meadlo, were said to have opened fire.

At the court-martial, soldiers described a systematic slaughter of defenseless civilians. Entire families were wiped out by the attack. Witnesses said Mr. Calley shot a praying Buddhist monk and, when he saw a young boy crawling out of a ditch, threw the child back in and shot him. Pictures taken at the scene by an Army photographer, Ronald L. Haeberle, provided additional evidence of the massacre and were later published in newspapers and magazines.

U.S. troops torch a house during the 1968 My Lai Massacre. Many of the victims were women, children and elderly men. (Pictures from History/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

A scene from the My Lai Massacre in 1968. (Pictures From History/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

The My Lai killings were further exposed in 1969 by Ridenhour. After leaving the service, he wrote to President Richard M. Nixon, Defense Secretary Melvin R. Laird and members of Congress with his findings. An Army investigation ensued, leading to the indictment of more than a dozen men, but several of the cases unraveled before trial or ended without convictions.

In the end, only Mr. Calley was held legally responsible for playing a direct role in the massacre. He was convicted on March 29, 1971, after one of the longest court-martials in military history.

“My troops were getting massacred and mauled by an enemy I couldn’t see, I couldn’t feel and I couldn’t touch — that nobody in the military system ever described them as anything other than Communism,” Mr. Calley said in a statement to the court. “They didn’t give it a race, they didn’t give it a sex, they didn’t give it an age. They never let me believe it was just a philosophy in a man’s mind. That was my enemy out there.”

The outpouring of support for Mr. Calley was captured in a spoken-word song, “Battle Hymn of Lt. Calley” — “Sir, I followed all my orders and I did the best I could/ It’s hard to judge the enemy and hard to tell the good” — that was performed by Terry Nelson and sold more than 1 million copies.

After his conviction, Mr. Calley was removed from the stockade on Nixon’s orders and confined to his quarters at Fort Benning. His life sentence was quickly reduced to 20 years and, in 1974, the sentence was halved again, to 10 years, after the secretary of the Army found that Mr. Calley “may have sincerely believed that he was acting in accordance with the orders he had received and that he was not aware of his responsibility to refuse an illegal order.”

Mr. Calley is taken from the Fort Benning stockade in 1974. (Joe Holloway Jr./AP)

Later that year, Mr. Calley was freed on bail and paroled. He seldom spoke about My Lai, although in 2009 he delivered what was reportedly his first public apology for the massacre, at a meeting of the Kiwanis Club of Greater Columbus.

“There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai,” he said. “I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families. I am very sorry.”

During the speech, he also said that he had just been following orders, a declaration that irritated critics who questioned whether he had experienced a change of heart.

Mr. Calley in 1970. (AP)

An ‘average’ schoolboy

William Laws Calley Jr., the second of four siblings and the only son, was born in Miami on June 8, 1943. His father, a Navy veteran of World War II, sold heavy construction equipment. As the business prospered, the family began vacationing at a cottage in North Carolina, and a teenage Mr. Calley — nicknamed Rusty for his reddish-brown hair — was given his own car.

Mr. Calley was often described by peers and adults who knew him as an “average” American schoolboy: reserved, polite and pleasant but, at 5-foot-3 and 130 pounds, sometimes struggling for attention in school and social settings.

Academically, he was in a downward spiral. He was forced to repeat seventh grade after being caught cheating on an exam. He later spent two years attending military academies in Florida and Georgia before graduating from Miami Edison Senior High School in 1962 in the bottom quarter of his class.

After flunking out of Palm Beach Junior College, he supported himself with jobs as a hotel bellhop and restaurant dishwasher. During a bitter labor strike in 1963, Florida East Coast Railway hired Mr. Calley as a switchman and then promoted him to conductor. Among other incidents, Mr. Calley once let freight cars get loose and smash into a loading ramp.

Around this time, Mr. Calley’s home life grew unstable. His mother was dying of cancer, and his father, who developed diabetes, saw his business fall into bankruptcy. In 1964, William Calley first tried to enlist in the Army but was rejected because of a hearing defect.

He began drifting west and south in search of work. At one point, he was on assignment in Mexico for an American insurance investigator when he walked off the job, saying he was “bored and frustrated” and didn’t understand what he was doing. Mr. Calley left for San Francisco, where his backlog of mail began to catch up with him, including a Selective Service notice saying his earlier rejection was being reconsidered.

On his way back to Florida, his car broke down in Albuquerque. He walked into a local Army induction center, explained his situation and enlisted as a clerk-trainee in July 1966. He was soon selected for officer candidate school by a senior officer who took notice of Mr. Calley’s brief stints at military academies.

Despite the Army’s acute need for junior officers in Vietnam, historian Howard Jones wrote in his 2017 book “My Lai,” “The Citadel, West Point, and the Virginia Military Institute had been unable to fill the growing demand, and the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) had fallen out of favor on many college campuses. The army immediately needed more recruits from OCS — which opened the door to Calley.”

Mr. Calley graduated 120th in his OCS class of 156.

“One thing at OCS was nobody said, ‘Now, there will be innocent civilians there,’” Mr. Calley recalled in his 1970 memoir, “Lieutenant Calley: His Own Story,” written with journalist John Sack. “It was drummed into us, ‘Be sharp! On guard! As soon as you think these people won’t kill you, ZAP! In combat, you haven’t friends! You have enemies!’ Over and over at OCS we heard this and I told myself, I’ll act as if I’m never secure. As if everyone in Vietnam would do me in. As if everyone’s bad.”

After his release from military custody, Mr. Calley moved to Columbus and married Penny Vick, whose family owned a jewelry shop, in 1976. Smithsonian magazine later reported that their wedding guests included U.S. District Judge J. Robert Elliott, who had attempted to get Mr. Calley’s conviction overturned.

Mr. Calley and Vick had a son, Laws, and later divorced. Information on survivors was not immediately available.

Mr. Calley reportedly carried an umbrella at times to prevent photographers from taking pictures of him. He wished, he said, to “sink into anonymity.”

Curiously, his death certificate matched known details about his life — including information on his birth, career, name and nickname — but featured one notable omission. On a line asking if he had ever served “in U.S. armed forces,” the answer given was “no.”

Rae Riiska and Monika Mathur contributed to this report.

2. Trump Shooter Began Buying Guns, Bomb Materials More Than a Year Ago, FBI Says

So did the gunman practice good OPSEC? Or was he invisible and able to travel under the radar because of his social background and status? Was he just lucky? Or is this our incompetence?

Trump Shooter Began Buying Guns, Bomb Materials More Than a Year Ago, FBI Says

Trump has agreed to be interviewed by the FBI as part of its investigation

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/trump-shooter-bought-guns-bomb-making-materials-more-than-a-year-ago-fbi-says-c09af7d5?mod=latest_headlines

By Sadie Gurman

Follow and C. Ryan Barber

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Updated July 29, 2024 12:58 pm ET

Former President Donald Trump speaking in Butler, Pa., before the shooting. PHOTO: GENE J. PUSKAR/ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON—The gunman who tried to assassinate Donald Trump began making dozens of gun-related purchases and stocking up on bomb-making materials more than a year ago, FBI officials said Monday, the strongest indication yet that he had been planning an attack well before he opened fire on the former president.

Thomas Matthew Crooks made 25 different gun-related buys online between spring 2023 and the first half of this year, and bought material used in explosives six times, officials said, offering new glimpses into their far-ranging investigation into the July 13 shooting at a campaign rally in western Pennsylvania. 

FBI officials said Crooks, 20 years old, searched online for information about power plants, mass-shooting events, improvised explosive devices and the May assassination attempt on Slovakia’s prime minister, said Kevin Rojek, the FBI special agent in charge in Pittsburgh.

“While the FBI’s investigation may not have yet determined a motive, we believe the subject made significant efforts to conceal his activities,” Rojek said. “Additionally, we believe his actions can also show careful planning ahead of the campaign rally.”

Crooks made the purchases online using an alias and collected the chemicals and gun equipment in the home he shared with his parents in Bethel Park, Pa., about an hour south of the rally site. But they weren’t alarmed because he had long been interested in science and experiments, Rojek said. 

Who Was Thomas Matthew Crooks, Trump Rally Shooter?

Who Was Thomas Matthew Crooks, Trump Rally Shooter?

Play video: Who Was Thomas Matthew Crooks, Trump Rally Shooter?

Investigators are piecing together information about the shooter who attempted to assassinate former President Donald Trump. Here’s what we know about the 20-year-old from Bethel Park, Pa., whom authorities named as the suspect. Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty; Bethel Park School District

“For that reason, they weren’t concerned that it was focused on committing an attack of this nature or harming other people,” Rojek said. “The parents have said in their interviews that they had no advanced knowledge of any of this,” he said, adding that Crooks’ parents have been credible and cooperative. 

Several investigations are ongoing into how Crooks was able to open fire with an AR-15 rifle from the roof of a building roughly 400 feet away from where Trump spoke, killing one spectator, critically injuring two others and leaving the former president with a graze wound to the ear. A Secret Service sniper team shot back, killing him.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has interviewed more than 450 people, including dozens of Crooks’ co-workers, family members and former classmates. On Monday, Rojek said Trump had agreed to be interviewed as part of the shooting probe. An interview with a crime victim is a normal part of any FBI investigation, but long-simmering tensions between Trump and the bureau have escalated since the shooting, raising doubts about whether the former president would submit to questioning. Trump was hit by a bullet or a bullet fragment, the bureau confirmed last week, after Trump grew upset with Director Christopher Wray’s circumspect responses to questions about how he was hurt.

“We want to get his perspective on what he observed, just like any other witness to the crime,” Rojek said. “It is a standard victim interview like we would do for any other victim of crime.”

In studying Crooks, the FBI has been able to piece together a picture of a highly intelligent loner who attended college and held down steady work at a nursing home and whose primary social circle was limited to his immediate family. But his motive remains murky. 

The FBI has requested information from 86 companies as it examines online accounts associated with Crooks, but he appears to have had few interactions with others, even virtually, officials said.

Crooks’ interest in shooting began as a hobby and progressed to formal firearms training courses. 

He registered to attend Trump’s rally in Butler, Pa., on July 6, three days after the former president’s campaign announced the event. The same day, he searched online for details about the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, querying, “How far away was Oswald from Kennedy?”

Crooks went to the rally site the next day and spent about 20 minutes in the area, including around the American Glass Research building, to conduct what law-enforcement officials believe was early surveillance. On the day of the shooting, he gained access to his rooftop firing position by scaling HVAC equipment and a pipe.

In Crooks’ car parked near the rally site, investigators found two “relatively crude” homemade bombs designed to be set off by remote control.

“These devices consist of ammunition boxes filled with explosive material, with wires, receivers and ignition devices connected to them,” Rojek said. Investigators found a transmitter on the gunman’s body. The bombs were capable of exploding, but the receivers were in the off position, Rojek said. 

Write to Sadie Gurman at sadie.gurman@wsj.com and C. Ryan Barber at ryan.barber@wsj.com

3. Five Truths for Foreign Area Officers

Please go to the link to download the essay: https://digitalcommons.ndu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1060&context=joint-force-quarterly

1. FAOs Are Most Effective in the Gray Zone Between Peace and War. 

2. Networks Cannot Be Built After a Crisis Begins.

3. FAOs Are Regional Experts, Not Generalists.

4. Language and Culture Provide FAOs’ Unique Access. 

5. FAOs Are Raised by Their Service but Operate in the Joint and Interagency World. 

Five Truths for Foreign Area Officers

Authors

Michael L. Burgoyne, University of Arizona

Albert “Jim” J. Marckwardt, School of Advanced International Studies, The Johns Hopkins University

Abstract

Colonel John Collins served in the U.S. Army through three wars and went on to be a revered military strategist and scholar. He founded the Warlord Loop, an organization of defense and security thinkers that remains active today. In 1987, Collins captured five “truths” regarding special operations forces. In so doing, Collins helped define the principles and attributes of special operations forces, which had been misunderstood by the larger conventional military. Foreign area officer (FAO) is another often misunderstood specialty in the military that would also benefit greatly from an exploration of its own truths. This is especially important given the ongoing debate about its future.

Recommended Citation

Burgoyne, Michael L. and Marckwardt, Albert “Jim” J. (2024) "Five Truths for Foreign Area Officers," Joint Force Quarterly: Vol. 114, Article 18.

Available at: https://digitalcommons.ndu.edu/joint-force-quarterly/vol114/iss2/18

4. ONE STEP FORWARD, TWO STEPS BACK:A Review of U.S.-Europe Cooperation on China

Download the entire report here: https://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/risch_july_2024_one_step_forward_two_steps_back_a_review_of_useuropecooperationonchina.pdf

ONE STEP FORWARD, TWO STEPS BACK:

A Review of U.S.-Europe Cooperation on China

TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Letter of Transmittal ................................................................................................................................................................................2 

Executive Summary ................................................................................................................................................................................3 

Introduction ................................................................................................................................................................................................6 

Chapter 1: Safeguarding Our Societies ......................................................................................................................................8

Chapter 2: Upholding the Integrity of International Organizations ........................................................................27 

Chapter 3: Defending the International Trading System ..............................................................................................34 

Chapter 4: Shaping the Future of Technology ....................................................................................................................50 

Chapter 5: Addressing the Implications of China’s Strategic Investments ......................................................64 

Chapter 6: Growing U.S.-Europe Cooperation in Africa .................................................................................................82 

Chapter 7: Growing U.S.-Europe Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific .........................................................................100 

Appendix: Scorecard Key and Explanation ..........................................................................................................................111 \

Abbreviations and Acronyms ........................................................................................................................................................116

LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL 

U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations July 2024

Dear Colleagues,

In November 2020, I published a report on the importance of the United States and our European partners working together to counter an increasingly confrontational China. Nearly four years later, China’s efforts to undermine prosperity, security, and good governance in every region of the globe continue to be what I consider the most important foreign policy challenge of our time.

While the United States and Europe have long worked together to create and defend a rule of law in which the entire international community has prospered. China directly threatens this system by supporting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, employing predatory economic practices to undermine U.S. and European competitiveness, exploiting weak scrutiny of university funding to conduct malign influence operations, and bending international organizations to serve its authoritarian goals.

My last report laid out a number of key areas where we should specifically collaborate with our European colleagues on the challenges posed by China. This updated report looks at the progress, or lack thereof, made by the Biden-Harris Administration on implementing these recommendations and proposes additional steps we must take to defend transatlantic security and prosperity.

If we are to succeed in confronting China, the next administration must do more than the

Biden-Harris Administration has over the last four years. We cannot afford to wait.

Sincerely,

James E. Risch

Ranking Member

5. 'The Boiling Moat' argues U.S. should prepare to help Taiwan defend against China (with transcript)

I sent the link to the audio only previously. Below is the transcript.

https://www.npr.org/2024/07/29/nx-s1-5013620/the-boiling-moat-argues-u-s-should-prepare-to-help-taiwan-defend-against-china

Matt gives props to the Biden Administration. Although there is much to criticize I think the next most important foreign policy effort has been the strengthening of the US alliance system going from a hub and spoke to the latticework structure (which I think is better described as a silk web).

Excerpts:

INSKEEP: Has the United States bought itself some extra time in the last couple of years because the Biden administration, has, I'm sure you know very well, cut off the supply of the highest grade chips to China, things that they might use for advanced weapons, which would presumably slow down their military development.

POTTINGER: Yeah. I think that that was an excellent move. It built on some of the steps during the Trump administration, for example, preventing some Chinese companies like Huawei from getting high-end chips. The Biden administration went much further. I think this might be the most important step President Biden's team has taken, vis-a-vis China, but it is not a permanent step. Things don't stand still. Beijing is going to look for ways to work around those export controls. So I think we need to take steps now to actually undermine Beijing's ability to monopolize older generation chips as well.

'The Boiling Moat' argues U.S. should prepare to help Taiwan defend against China

JULY 29, 20243:20 AM ET

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NPR's Steve Inskeep talks to Matt Pottinger, editor of "The Boiling Moat," about the U.S. protecting Taiwan from an ever-encroaching China. Pottinger is a former deputy national security adviser.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

The analyst Matt Pottinger has been thinking of what it would mean for Americans if China should capture Taiwan.

MATT POTTINGER: If you look at the most valuable companies in the United States, the value of those companies depend on access to Taiwan-manufactured semiconductors.

INSKEEP: Meaning a Chinese attack there could bring economic disaster here. Matt Pottinger says he wants to avoid that outcome, although it may sound as if he is preparing for it. He is a China specialist, a former journalist in Beijing, who later became deputy national security adviser in the Trump administration. Now he is the editor of a book called "The Boiling Moat." Multiple authors in that book argued that the U.S. should arm itself with the right drones, missiles, and other weapons to help Taiwan defend itself. He told me the U.S. should be ready for a war that would be extensive.

POTTINGER: It would make wars in the Middle East and in Europe right now in Ukraine seem like an afterthought by comparison, It could potentially mean the end of U.S. status as a superpower if Taiwan were coercively annexed. And by the way, this is not me calling for war. OK? Quite the opposite. I fought in wars. I'm the last person on Earth who wants to ever see the United States in a position of having to fight a war. The key is deterrence.

INSKEEP: Well, let's talk about that. And first, on Taiwan's level, is it possible for Taiwan to arm itself sufficiently to defend itself, in the same way that the United States is arming Ukraine to defend itself against Russia?

POTTINGER: Yeah. So in terms of deterring or repelling an invasion, geography is Taiwan's friend. Whereas, geography did not help Ukraine because they were right up against Russia's border.

INSKEEP: Yeah.

POTTINGER: But when it comes to a protracted war, in the event that we end up in a weeks- or monthslong or worse kind of a scenario, a yearslong war like we're seeing in Ukraine, geography is no longer Taiwan's friend because it's so far away from the United States, because it doesn't share a border with friendly countries on its eastern and northern flank. The key is that we want Taiwan to be able to hold out in a short conflict or in the initial phase, you know, the initial weeks of a protracted war long enough for the United States and Japan and Australia in particular to come to Taiwan's aid.

INSKEEP: So you would anticipate then at some point, U.S. troops are on the line. Americans are being killed, perhaps.

POTTINGER: Yes. I don't think that Taiwan would be able to survive a protracted conflict without Americans being involved in that war. So we need to show that we have both the capability and the will to fight in order paradoxically to not have to fight in the first place. That's what the essence of peace through strength is.

INSKEEP: You've actually got a chapter in this book that is called "Sink China's Navy." I guess that's what you're talking about here.

POTTINGER: Exactly. So my co-authors and I judged that China's center of gravity in a conflict - if China wants to win control of Taiwan, its navy is the most important component. And if we can hold that navy at risk, sink their navy and demonstrate in advance of a war that we have the capability to sink their navy, it's far less likely that Xi Jinping is going to roll the iron dice of war and take such a big risk by trying to start a fight.

INSKEEP: Does the United States even have to be prepared for a nuclear exchange because this is a nuclear armed country?

POTTINGER: Yeah. So one of the negative lessons that we should be learning, and I fear that China has learned from Vladimir Putin's nuclear saber-rattling is that Americans get really spooked easily by threats of nuclear war. But we need to just have a little bit of grit, a little extra backbone, and remember. Vladimir Putin is not suicidal, even though I think he's reckless. Xi Jinping is not suicidal, and he's less reckless than Vladimir Putin. I don't think that the risk of nuclear war is high at all.

INSKEEP: I want to underline what that calculation would be. That would be this president or a future president saying, this conflict is starting. I'm going to send in American troops against Chinese troops and discount the risk that it would escalate to something nuclear.

POTTINGER: I mean, we have a massive nuclear deterrent, much bigger than China's. I think that these are forms of psychological warfare that we need to be prepared for.

INSKEEP: Has the United States bought itself some extra time in the last couple of years because the Biden administration, has, I'm sure you know very well, cut off the supply of the highest grade chips to China, things that they might use for advanced weapons, which would presumably slow down their military development.

POTTINGER: Yeah. I think that that was an excellent move. It built on some of the steps during the Trump administration, for example, preventing some Chinese companies like Huawei from getting high-end chips. The Biden administration went much further. I think this might be the most important step President Biden's team has taken, vis-a-vis China, but it is not a permanent step. Things don't stand still. Beijing is going to look for ways to work around those export controls. So I think we need to take steps now to actually undermine Beijing's ability to monopolize older generation chips as well.

INSKEEP: I want you to have a chance to answer somebody who may be listening to this and thinking that they don't quite buy your premise, that this is a huge risk of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Why would China take that risk?

POTTINGER: Here is the context that I think it's important to bear in mind. Number one, Xi Jinping has said that he intends to solve the Taiwan question. Xi Jinping has said that he believes the essence of his broader policy of what he calls the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation requires this unification with Taiwan, even though Taiwan has never been under the control of the People's Republic of China. And then you need to think of this as well. What has happened just over the last year? Beijing has quintupled down on its support for Vladimir Putin's war machine and conflict against Ukraine. Beijing is also bullying the Philippines. Why would Beijing be taking these risks - these are big risks - if it weren't setting the table for an even bigger move? And I fear that that is what's happening right now.

INSKEEP: Matt Pottinger is a China specialist who served in the Trump administration and is now the editor of a book called "The Boiling Moat: Urgent Steps To Defend Taiwan." Thanks so much.

POTTINGER: Steve, thanks for having me.

INSKEEP: Now, after we recorded that conversation, Bloomberg Business Week published an interview with former President Trump. The presidential candidate said he felt that Taiwan should be paying the United States for its defense. After his comments, the world's largest chipmaker, which is based in Taiwan, saw its shares drop.

Copyright © 2024 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

6. The World Is Not About Us: Information and Power in the Current Strategic Environment

A fascinating essay. Download the PDF at this link: https://digitalcommons.ndu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1058&context=joint-force-quarterly

Excerpt:

American officials would benefit from considering how U.S. power attained that global reach in competition with the Soviet Union. The United States had its version of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and other mass global infrastructure programs but with deeper partnerships. Measures of their economic impacts alone miss the considerable political effects of many projects. Forswearing the use of some of these means is a luxury of hegemonic power that the United States is losing, and the hegemon’s gentle rules can become an adversary’s instruments of strategic manipulation.

The World Is Not About Us: Information and Power in the Current Strategic Environment

Authors

Will Reno, Northwestern University

Jesse R. Humpal, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy

Abstract

Τhe Taj Mahal Guest House made a unique offer: Give us data, get beer.1 The Jalalabad, Afghanistan, café offered beer to anyone who brought video files, voice recordings, documents, and data dumps. The Taj shut down after Jalalabad became too hostile to outsiders, but not before its proprietors amassed extensive fine-grained data on local political and economic matters and supported projects that set up communications networks for local people. At least as important was the Taj’s role in facilitating informal personal relationships across government (foreign and local), commercial, humanitarian, and ordinary social networks. While not overtly a U.S.-led information operation, the Taj provided valuable intelligence for U.S. operations in the region. It showed how networks can be set up and used for multiple aspects of information warfare and local influence, a critical skill the United States neglected after the Cold War.

Recommended Citation

Reno, Will and Humpal, Jesse R. (2024) "The World Is Not About Us: Information and Power in the Current Strategic Environment," Joint Force Quarterly: Vol. 114, Article 16.

Available at: https://digitalcommons.ndu.edu/joint-force-quarterly/vol114/iss2/16

7. Integrate to Win From Competition Through Conflict: Create a Joint Force Information Warfare Component Commander

Download the essay at this link: https://digitalcommons.ndu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1064&context=joint-force-quarterly

Integrate to Win From Competition Through Conflict: Create a Joint Force Information Warfare Component Commander

https://digitalcommons.ndu.edu/joint-force-quarterly/vol114/iss2/22/

Authors

Tam N. Pham, College of Maritime Operational Warfare, U.S. Naval War College

Walter A. Berbrick, War Gaming Department, Center for Naval Warfare Studies, U.S. Naval War College

Abstract

Τhroughout the history of warfare, militaries have sought advantages by conducting information warfare (IW) to affect the perception and behavior of adversaries. Advances in IW capabilities are increasing the reach, speed, and effectiveness by which individuals, organizations, and systems can collect, process, disseminate, or act on information—and deny adversaries the same. The United States is not the only power to recognize the importance of IW in achieving national objectives. Russia and China have made great strides in improving and employing their IW capabilities to offset U.S. joint (and allied combined) forces in competition and conflict. Russia’s and China’s ability to employ synchronized IW capabilities rapidly and coherently to gain information advantages across the operational environment has allowed them, in some cases, to seize the initiative or exploit the information environment to counter U.S. military superiority.

Recommended Citation

Pham, Tam N. and Berbrick, Walter A. (2024) "Integrate to Win From Competition Through Conflict: Create a Joint Force Information Warfare Component Commander," Joint Force Quarterly: Vol. 114, Article 22.

Available at: https://digitalcommons.ndu.edu/joint-force-quarterly/vol114/iss2/22

8. A half-million records and one app: The group behind a massive effort to ‘clean’ voter rolls

We have met the enemy and he is us.. This is a brilliant information operation if you intend to undermine the legitimacy of elections and our democratic process.

A half-million records and one app: The group behind a massive effort to ‘clean’ voter rolls | CNN Politics

CNN · by Curt Devine, Yahya Abou-Ghazala, Kyung Lah · July 29, 2024

A voter casts his ballot during election day on November 3, 2020, in Austin, Texas.

Sergio Flores/AFP/Getty Images

CNN —

Police officers in Texas, senior citizens at a nursing home in Pennsylvania and people who had registered to vote at a Marine base in California.

They are among the thousands of voters whose right to cast a ballot has been needlessly challenged ahead of this November’s election by activists — many of whom have been inspired by conspiracy theories — seeking to prevent voter fraud.

“My simple right as a voter is being attacked,” said Daniel Moss, a university administrator from Denton County, Texas, whose registration was challenged by one of the activists even though he has lived in the county and voted there for about two decades. “It’s kind of un-American to do that.”

Election officials across the country have been inundated with dubious complaints about inaccurate voter rolls, which have wasted government resources and sapped taxpayer money spent reviewing lists of registered voters that officials say are already carefully maintained, a CNN investigation has found.

One of the main drivers of the fruitless challenges is a conservative Texas-based nonprofit group called True the Vote, an election-monitoring organization that has long peddled debunked voter-fraud theories. The group’s founder, Catherine Engelbrecht, has called on followers to help clean voter rolls by using an app called IV3 that enables users to research voter data and submit voter-eligibility challenges to local election offices.

In this 2015 photo, Catherine Engelbrecht, founder of True the Vote, testifies during a confirmation hearing at the US Capitol in Washington, DC.

Samuel Corum/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

The activists say they are merely trying to help clean voter rolls to prevent fraud, but their challenges have been riddled with errors and have at times included vulnerable groups, such as people registered to vote at assisted-living facilities and homeless shelters, documents obtained by CNN show.

True the Vote has said that nearly 7,000 people have been using its app, which references voter and postal data, to challenge a total of more than a half-million records.

Acting on conspiracy theories

County and state officials across nine states — many of them considered battlegrounds — interviewed by CNN said they have meticulous processes for maintaining voter rolls. They also said they cannot simply purge registered voters from the rolls without making efforts to contact them and following other safeguards. Some officials added that portions of the data in the IV3 app appear outdated, which they say undercuts much of the activists’ work.

“These people are actually trying to help but they did not understand the procedures we have in place,” said Matt Webber, the registrar of voters for Yavapai County, Arizona, who explained how two people who said they were working with True the Vote in May and June sought to challenge a list of potentially ineligible voters that the county had already addressed by contacting them and, if warranted, placing them into an inactive status.

Some election observers have argued that even if the activists submitting mass challenges are operating in good faith, their efforts waste election officials’ time, promote false notions about the maintenance of voter rolls and could prompt the inappropriate removal of some registered voters. In Waterford, Michigan, for example, an activist’s lobbying last year led to what the state called the improper removal of 1,000 people, including an Air Force officer’s registration that was later reinstated, as reported by The New York Times.

Moreover, some argue the challenges show how certain groups have not only spread false election conspiracy theories but also convinced believers to act on them, which could further inflame distrust in elections.

“A lot of these people are people of goodwill. They have just been fed a constant diet of lies,” said David Becker, founder of the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation & Research, who added that one of the “great ironies” is that “the voter lists are more accurate than they have ever been” because of modern data-sharing technology.

In a statement, Engelbrecht of True the Vote said her group seeks to “empower citizens to ensure accurate, secure, and fair elections,” and argued, “In pursuit of our mission, True the Vote has developed specialized processes, technologies, and methodologies that have been affirmed by experts and courts across the political spectrum.” She did not name the experts and courts to which her statement referred.

‘Unlawful disenfranchisement’

Some states have recommended local officials disregard or dismiss pleas from private citizens to drop groups of voters from the rolls. A June memo from Pennsylvania’s deputy secretary for elections and commissions warned that such challenges can lead to “unlawful disenfranchisement.” A spokesperson for California’s secretary of state told CNN that responding to unvetted voter-removal requests “distracts” from necessary election preparation. The challenges come as a wave of states have passed laws with added voting restrictions since 2020.

Other officials have been more receptive.

“We are open to anyone assisting,” said Jeff Roberts, the administrator of elections for Tennessee’s Davidson County, home to Nashville. Roberts said he has received voter-registration challenges from a local resident who separately told CNN he had spent about 100 hours compiling lists of voters who appeared ineligible based on data in the IV3 app. Roberts said he would follow the law and would not simply purge voters from the rolls without giving them the opportunity to respond.

About a dozen people in Denton County, Texas — outside of Dallas — have submitted what has sometimes surpassed 1,000 challenges a day, according to the county elections administrator, Frank Phillips. Records show at least some of them have used IV3.

Phillips said he has sought to review all their challenges but added the effort has become “a little time-consuming.”

Denton County elections administrator Frank Phillips.

CNN

Phillips said most of the challenges involve voters the county has already placed in an inactive status or removed from the rolls, whereas a minority of them warrant follow-up. In those cases, he said the activists’ challenges speed up the process the county already has for maintaining its rolls and verifying voters’ residences.

Some of the challenges submitted by Denton County activists have had blatant problems. For example, one woman challenged a few local police officers who lawfully listed their address as a government building, emails show.

“These people just can’t see past the end of their own nose, evidently,” said one of those officers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he lacked approval to speak to the media. He explained that cops and other officials are sometimes allowed to use alias addresses like county buildings out of concern for their personal safety. “They’re just throwing everything against the wall to see what will stick. … That undermines their investigation.”

Unconventional addresses

True the Vote has seemingly encouraged the practice of submitting mass challenges against people registered at unconventional addresses even if some voters may be properly registered at those locations.

In a June webinar, for example, True the Vote’s founder Engelbrecht highlighted what she called a “sketchy” address in Phoenix where she said hundreds of people were registered to vote. “Would I challenge them? Probably so,” she said.

Catherine Engelbrecht, center, leader of True the Vote, a national group focused on voter fraud, in Worthington, Ohio, in 2012.

Michael F. McElroy/The New York Times/Redux

A basic internet search reveals a local nonprofit organization has offered that location as a mailing address for homeless people seeking shelter or other services. Still, a few weeks after that True the Vote webinar, a woman tried to challenge the individuals registered there. A county official responded to her email by thanking her but stated the county already “continuously” performs list maintenance through processes mandated by law.

Challenges submitted by another woman in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, included voters registered at assisted living facilities and nursing homes, according to the local elections director, Marybeth Kuznik. In a June letter, Kuznik explained that she would reject the woman’s challenges because they conflicted with voter registration laws and because the mere appearance that someone lives in a “commercial” facility like an assisted living facility does not justify cancellation.

Melanie Patterson, the Fayette County woman who submitted those challenges after doing research with IV3, told CNN that she wanted to help clean the rolls to deter potential fraud in future elections. Despite an absence of evidence, she said she believes voter fraud in Pennsylvania influenced the 2020 election.

“Dirty voter rolls mean dirty elections,” Patterson said. “If you don’t protect that vote, we are going to lose the foundations this country was built on.”

Patterson’s views were largely reflected by a handful of other IV3 users who agreed to speak to CNN.

Christine Wilfong of Maricopa County, Arizona, said she believes her county has not effectively policed its voter rolls and that she hoped her efforts would remind officials that local citizens are now providing more government oversight.

“We are watching you,” Wilfong said, referring to election officials. “That’s why I’m doing what small thing I can do to try to clean up the rolls. … I do want people to understand that they are being looked at.”

Links to discredited ‘2000 Mules’ film

Aside from using the IV3 app promoted by True the Vote, Wilfong and others referenced the film “2000 Mules” — which cited data from True the Vote and purported to reveal widespread ballot fraud in the 2020 election — for bolstering their desire to help prevent potential voter fraud.

But that film has been discredited. When a Georgia judge ordered True the Vote last year to provide relevant evidence and sourcing for its claims, the group responded that it did not have the identity or contact information for its sources, nor records that supported other claims made.

The film’s publisher, Salem Media Group, issued a public apology this year and said it would stop distributing the movie after a Georgia man wrongly accused of voter fraud sued the company for defamation. In its statement, the company pointed the finger at True the Vote and a conservative filmmaker, saying it relied on their representations and evidence that people were captured illegally depositing ballots.

The history of True the Vote and its leaders peddling baseless election conspiracy theories extends further.

In November 2016, days after Donald Trump won the presidential election, a then-board member of True the Vote, Gregg Phillips, tweeted that he had verified more than 3 million votes cast by non-citizens. When pressed in an appearance on CNN in January 2017, Phillips refused to provide the evidence. Instead, he argued that he needed more time to prepare a public report to ensure accuracy and because the work — much like the efforts of IV3 today — was being completed by volunteers.

Denton County, Texas voter Daniel Moss, whose registration was challenged by a baseless complaint

CNN

Despite those controversies, the group’s revenue has ballooned over the last decade. True the Vote pulled in just over $4 million between 2014 and 2019 but reported nearly $12 million in revenue between 2020 and 2022, the latest year of its publicly available financial reports.

Scrutiny of finances

True the Vote has also faced allegations of financial wrongdoing. Last year, the watchdog group Campaign for Accountability filed a complaint with the IRS that alleged True the Vote may have excessively paid former director Phillips’ business and improperly loaned money to Engelbrecht.

Specifically, the organization paid Phillips’ business at least $750,000 for data analysis after the 2020 election and did not disclose the transactions in a government filing, according to the complaint. True the Vote also allegedly issued loans to Engelbrecht, a director and employee for the organization, despite Texas law prohibiting nonprofit directors from receiving loans from their groups. A True the Vote spokesperson previously argued that the complaint was filed as a “form of harassment” and that it was “without merit.”

An IRS spokesperson said the agency by law cannot confirm or deny whether an entity is under examination.

Today, True the Vote continues to solicit donations with appeals to “protecting the republic” and calls on followers to help “save” trustworthy elections.

But to some election professionals and voters who have had their registrations challenged, the group’s efforts could have the opposite effect.

“These kinds of rash activities can do much more harm than good,” said Moss, the Denton County, Texas voter. “If you want to be part of the solution and you want to help … maybe push to get people to vote versus trying to find answers that don’t even have problems to begin with.”

CNN · by Curt Devine, Yahya Abou-Ghazala, Kyung Lah · July 29, 2024

9. The situation in the Red Sea is not getting better by Joseph L. Votel

Conclusion:

The current situation is not only intolerable — it is unsustainable. It is time to recognize that the Houthis, with strong and persistent support from Iran, are in a position to hold not only the US but virtually the entire global system hostage. A disruption of commerce and navigation is a situation we could see attempted in other locations, and we must demonstrate that the payoff for pursuing this approach does not outweigh the costs imposed. Our men and women in uniform are doing their part — but we must immediately bring all our resources to bear.

The situation in the Red Sea is not getting better

Expert Commentary

July 23, 2024

Joseph L. Votel

mei.edu

For decades, the free flow of commerce and navigation in the Middle East was a central national security interest of the United States. Iran challenged this interest almost immediately after the revolutionary government came to power in 1979. Iranian actions at that time led to US responses like Operation Earnest Will, which brought together an array of joint military and civilian resources to successfully reflag and escort Kuwaiti tankers under threat from Iranian attacks in 1987 and 1988 — preserving the free flow of Gulf oil that was critical to our economy at the time.

During my tour as the commander (2016-2019) of US Central Command (CENTCOM), our naval ships were harassed by Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps fast boats dozens of times every month. But our forces’ demonstrated readiness to protect themselves, coupled with an effective public information campaign, brought the situation back under control. In October 2016, when the Iranian-backed Yemeni Houthis attacked USS Mason in the Red Sea, we decisively struck back against the group’s radar and missile sites. While those direct attacks stopped, the Houthis and Iran saw an opportunity for an asymmetric challenge — an opportunity they are exploiting today.

Since October 2023, US naval forces have been in combat against Iranian-supported Houthi attacks in the Red Sea, the Bab el-Mandab Strait, and the Gulf of Aden. According to Military Times, so far in July 2024, US forces (and partners) have destroyed two surface-to-air missiles, 22 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), nine sea-based surface drones, and three radar sites in Yemen or the Red Sea. Our naval forces are fighting intensely, given that the Houthis can launch their weapons at any time against any target, requiring the US Navy to maintain exceptional surveillance and readiness and often forcing responses measured in minutes and seconds.

On Saturday, an attack by a Houthi UAV, which hit an apartment building in Tel Aviv, was met with a significant counter-response the following day by the Israeli Defense Forces against the port of Hodeidah — a critical entry point handling supplies for the Houthis but also humanitarian aid for the people of Yemen. When combined with the continuing ability of the Houthis to generate attacks in the Red Sea, their drone strike against Tel Aviv was an unambiguous indication that our efforts to deter Iran and the Houthis are not working.

It must be recognized that we are no longer preserving a once vital US national security interest. The damage to commerce and navigation was almost immediate when the Houthis started their attacks on international shipping last fall. In the first three months after their activities commenced, the daily volume of goods transiting the Suez Canal and the Red Sea dropped from 565,000 twenty-foot equivalent container units (TEU) to 91,400 TEU. Shipping costs per container from the North American east coast went from about $2,500 to over $6,700 per container. Maritime transit around the Cape of Good Hope now adds 10-14 days to a vessel’s journey. None of this is changing and is in danger of becoming “normalized.”

Beyond all this, it could get worse. It is worth considering how the character of Houthi operations could change if, for example, Russia supplied them with advanced technology — like hypersonic weapons or artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities — rather than just anti-ship missiles, as some reports indicate. Whether we like it or not, the Russian-Houthi relationship is a symptom of great power competition, and how we move forward in our efforts to preserve a long-standing, vital national interest in this strategic theater is being closely watched by our adversaries and competitors.

Along with many others, I have written and spoken on this topic frequently since the start of the Gaza war. Let me reiterate three key areas where we should focus our efforts now to blunt the Houthis, hold Iran accountable, and restore this crucial national interest.

First, our strategic messaging must switch from “preventing the expansion of the current conflict” to “restoring freedom of commerce and navigation.” While I appreciate the reasoning behind our messaging to date, it is principally defensive. It conveys a reluctance to do what is necessary to preserve a vital national security interest.

Second, there is a need for a more holistic approach to the Houthis. Indeed, the US Armed Forces must have the authority and resources to blunt, disrupt, and destroy Houthi military capabilities. However, as we have seen in many other areas, there are limits to what missiles, jets, destroyers, and even boots on the ground can achieve. It is now time to more fully examine ways that the broader US government can help deny the Houthis the means and resources that are enabling their continued attacks in the Red Sea. Developing a comprehensive strategy and plan to restore freedom of commerce and navigation is necessary.

Finally, with a more comprehensive strategy and plan, we must double down on building more substantial international consensus and support to stop the Houthis’ malign activities as well as return to a more stabilized environment. Bahrain stands alone among regional nations in supporting Operation Prosperity Guardian — our international military effort in the Red Sea. We need more commitment not only in the region but globally as well. A new global focus must expand the military component but, more importantly, go beyond the current military operations and fully leverage the diplomatic, economic, and informational elements of power.

The current situation is not only intolerable — it is unsustainable. It is time to recognize that the Houthis, with strong and persistent support from Iran, are in a position to hold not only the US but virtually the entire global system hostage. A disruption of commerce and navigation is a situation we could see attempted in other locations, and we must demonstrate that the payoff for pursuing this approach does not outweigh the costs imposed. Our men and women in uniform are doing their part — but we must immediately bring all our resources to bear.

Gen. (ret.) Joseph L. Votel is the former US Central Command and US Special Operations Command Commanding General. He is a Distinguished Fellow in National Security at the Middle East Institute.

Photo by AFP via Getty Images

The Middle East Institute (MEI) is an independent, non-partisan, non-for-profit, educational organization. It does not engage in advocacy and its scholars’ opinions are their own. MEI welcomes financial donations, but retains sole editorial control over its work and its publications reflect only the authors’ views. For a listing of MEI donors, please click here.

mei.edu

10. It’s the Energy Market, Stupid: An Economic Strategy for Ending the Conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza

Mon, 07/29/2024 - 8:02pm

It’s the Energy Market, Stupid: An Economic Strategy for Ending the Conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza

By Tom Ordeman, Jr.

https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/its-energy-market-stupid-economic-strategy-ending-conflicts-ukraine-and-gaza 

Despite the abrupt departure of President Joe Biden from the 2024 election campaign, and the equally abrupt substitution of Vice President Kamala Harris as his effective proxy, many commentators continue to believe that the November contest remains former President Donald Trump's to lose. Should Trump prevail in November, he will inherit the management of American support for two longtime allies, both of them - Israel and Ukraine - currently engaged in costly, prolonged conflicts. A single major policy change from that of the sitting administration could generate the leverage that Trump requires to end both conflicts in manners favorable to America and the respective international partners, while satisfying, at least in part, the isolationist wing of the Republican party.

In the now-historic June 27th debate, President Trump pledged to end the war in Ukraine prior to his inauguration, acknowledging that Vladimir Putin's declared terms were unacceptable. While some Republican officials oppose the Biden White House's Ukraine policies on purely partisan grounds, others - notably Trump's running mate, Senator J.D. Vance - either sincerely believe, or represent members of the electorate who sincerely believe, that American intervention in Ukraine harms America's long-term interests. This viewpoint mixes fiscal concerns about what is described, perhaps inaccurately, as a "blank check for Ukraine," with isolationist sentiment borne from the ill-fated post-9/11 campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. Still other critics oppose the current, open-ended, so-called "strategy" that can be summarized as "fighting to the last Ukrainian."

Meanwhile, around 1,400 miles south of Kyiv, Israeli leaders continue to fight a costly and controversial urban warfare campaign in the neighboring Gaza Strip. The ongoing operation seeks to eliminate Hamas as a viable organization, and to repatriate the handful of hostages - or their physical remains - who have yet to be accounted for. Approximately eight of the remaining hostages hold American citizenship. The conflict continues to draw allegations of Israeli war crimes, and to polarize societies in Israel, the United States, and the world at large, as well as stalling prior progress toward ongoing Israeli rapprochement with key Arab states, which - rather ironically - involve corresponding political settlements with said Arab states that would fundamentally transform life for Palestinians.

American partisan differences over these respective conflicts remain remarkably diametric. The Biden White House, in moves reminiscent of the Obama Administration before it, seem to have leveraged aid to Israel, in an effort to undermine Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in favor of Israeli politicians whose philosophies more closely mirror those of Obama's wing of the Democratic party. Meanwhile, some conservatives have taken to portraying Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a grifter. Conversely, American progressives remain strongly committed to supporting Ukraine, while American conservatives remain strongly committed to supporting Israel.

Should he secure a second term, Donald Trump will enjoy a narrow window with which to apply uniquely American leverage to alter the trajectory of both conflicts. So, how could he do it? Very directly: by restoring American energy independence, and reducing inflation.

By the end of the Obama era, and despite deliberate efforts by the Obama White House, American energy production had surged. During President Trump's first term, his administration further facilitated this domestic production of energy. This included fossil fuels, but also alternative energy sources like modern nuclear reactors. When Donald Trump left office, the average price of a gallon of gasoline was $2.41, while the current price is $3.52, occasionally surging above $7.00 in some areas of the United States. Throughout the country, federal and state regulations have diminished generating and transmission capacity, leading to brownouts and outages during periods of surging demand. Within hours of taking office, President Trump could reinstate a range of executive branch policies that were dismantled during Joe Biden's initial days in office, immediately alleviating some such constraints, and setting the stage to alleviate more over the medium term. Meanwhile, inflation - ironically, escalated in part by the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 - impacts energy prices because in most markets, oil and other fuels are bought and sold with dollars. Thus, fluctuations in America's currency cause second order fluctuations in the global oil market, and efforts to curtail or reverse inflation could similarly stabilize the market.

Aside from providing relief for American families, how can this simple policy adjustment provide American diplomats with leverage to bring the wars in Ukraine and Gaza to satisfactory ends? Again, very directly: by deflating the value of the oil market, the Trump Administration could deflate the economic power of the belligerents that are sustaining both wars.

In the case of Ukraine, Russia is commonly characterized as a "gas station with guns." Years of decay in Russia's industrial base, coupled with the ongoing emigration of the bulk of Russia's academic base, have forced the Kremlin to rely upon two central economic pillars: energy, and arms. Despite the various international sanctions efforts that have arisen since the Ukraine crisis escalated in 2022, with oil prices up, Russia's already unstable war effort could drop below a threshold of viability. This might compel Vladimir Putin to make the legitimate, war-ending concessions that high oil prices have thus far allowed him to circumvent.

Elsewhere, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad receive the lion's share of their funding from the Islamic Republic of Iran, as do Yemen's Ansar Allah (better known as the Houthis) and Lebanese Hezbollah. Deflating the oil market would similarly hamstring the Iranian regime's finances, limiting their own capacity to satisfy their budgetary line items for supporting these overseas proxies.

American leverage relative to Russia's arms exports is limited, as is American leverage against global energy demand. However, the United States can leverage domestic capacity against the global energy supply, as well as collaborating in this effort with other global energy producers, notably key members of both the Arab League and OPEC. Iran has yet to diversify its economy, so Tehran's own international leverage relies heavily upon a strong oil market. In America, the domestic benefits of concrete efforts to control inflation, and of corresponding efforts to boost energy supply in order to both meet and drive demand, should be self-evident.

In both cases, prior precedent exists. During the 1980's, a central tenet of the Reagan Administration's economic agenda was to facilitate domestic economic growth, while curtailing the Soviet Union's, by deflating the price of oil. At that time, Reagan was rebuilding relations with the newly minted Gulf Cooperation Council states, which had previously enforced an oil embargo against America in 1973, and an ensuing price spike in the wake of Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution. More recently, in 2015, the Saudi government led a sustained effort to deflate oil prices, seen as both an effort to drive American producers out of the oil market, and as an effort to apply leverage aimed at weakening Iran's position in the nuclear negotiations that eventually produced the controversial Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

Additionally, the new Trump Administration would enjoy several benefits relative to a notional Harris Administration. The Trump team would be unlikely to suffer any significant political damage from pursuing such policies, and Trump continues to enjoy cordial relationships with both Tel Aviv/Jerusalem and Riyadh. Without hauling out too much prior baggage, Trump himself has offered up indicators - notably a recent phone call with President Zelenskyy that reportedly went well - that suggest the potential for a reset of that relationship that would be favorable to Ukrainian interests. Conversely, Harris would be obligated by her political base to keep energy prices high, to hold Israel to account for alleged war crimes, and to support Ukraine without any substantive conditions. Harris would also inherit fraught relationships with both Benjamin Netanyahu and Mohammed bin Salman.

Will Trump win? While many commentators believe that recent events render November’s national poll his to lose, the same commentators acknowledge that he remains, as in both 2016 and 2020, entirely capable of doing so. Should Trump succeed, he and his team could squander their brief opportunity to change the trajectory of these and other challenges. Should Harris prevail, some might hope that a new hand at the proverbial helm could offer up new solutions, or introduce new advisors to replace ineffective holdovers from the Obama and Biden Administrations. Meanwhile, the world anticipates new solutions with bated breath, but with no clear endgames in sight.

And these are only two of the challenges that America's forty-seventh chief executive will be called to manage on day one.

About the Author(s)

Tom Ordeman, Jr.

Tom Ordeman, Jr. is an Oregon-based information security professional, freelance military historian, and former federal contractor. A graduate with Distinction from the University of Aberdeen’s MSc program in Strategic Studies, he holds multiple DoD and industry security certifications. Between 2006 and 2017, he supported training and enterprise risk management requirements for multiple DoD and federal civilian agencies. His research interests include the modern history of the Sultanate of Oman, and the exploits of the Gordon Highlanders during the First World War. His opinions are his own, and do not necessarily reflect those of any entity with which he is associated.

11. US will send $1.7 billion in military aid to Ukraine

US will send $1.7 billion in military aid to Ukraine

AP · July 29, 2024

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. will send $1.7 billion in military aid to Ukraine, officials announced on Monday, including an array of munitions for air defense systems, artillery, mortars and anti-tank and anti-ship missiles.

The package includes $1.5 billion in funding for long-term contracts through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, and $200 million in immediate military aid taken from Pentagon stockpiles.

The latest infusion of weapons comes a bit more than two weeks after the NATO summit in Washington, where allies focused a significant amount of time on shoring up support for Ukraine as it fends off Russian forces. President Joe Biden announced during the summit that the U.S. would send a Patriot missile battery to Ukraine, answering a key plea from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

NATO members agreed to create a new program to provide reliable military aid to Ukraine and prepare for its eventual membership in the alliance. And they declared Ukraine was on an “ irreversible ” path to join NATO.

In the latest package, air defense munitions for National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems, or NASAMS, and High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, as well as Javelin and other missiles will be provided through presidential drawdown authority, which allows the Pentagon to pull the weapons directly from its shelves. The package also includes anti-armor systems, artillery, small arms, demolition equipment and other spare parts and maintenance.

The Pentagon said the longer-term contracted weapons will include “capabilities to augment” Ukraine’s air defenses, including short- and medium-range munitions. The USAI will also provide funding for mortar rounds, anti-armor systems, electronic warfare equipment, explosives, secure communications systems and commercial satellite imagery services.

The weapons and equipment provided through USAI will go through the contracting process and so won’t get to the warfront for months or years.

With the latest funding, the U.S. has now sent more than $55.4 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since Russia’s invasion in February 2022.

White House national security spokesman John Kirby said Monday that the package includes “key capabilities for the fight.” He said this is the ninth military aid package for Ukraine since late April, when Congress finally passed supplemental funding for aid to Kyiv after months of gridlock and delays.

At that time, he said, “there were legitimate concerns that Russia would achieve a strategic breakthrough on the battlefield by the summer.” But since the funding passed Congress, “Ukraine’s defensive lines have been fortified and Ukrainian forces have continued to fight bravely and repel Russia’s advances.”

AP · July 29, 2024

12. Interview with Robert Blackwill and Richard Fontaine: Lost Decade – The US Pivot and the Rise of Chinese Power

Tue, 07/30/2024 - 7:35am

Interview with Robert Blackwill and Richard Fontaine: Lost Decade – The US Pivot and the Rise of Chinese Power

 https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/interview-robert-blackwill-and-richard-fontaine-lost-decade-us-pivot-and-rise-chinese

CSDS-SWJ STRATEGY DEBRIEFS

Interview with Ambassador Robert Blackwill and Richard Fontaine, by Octavian Manea

Although the United States’ (US) pivot to the Indo-Pacific benefits from bipartisan consensus and efforts, the pivot has been less than conclusive and it remains at best an unfinished legacy. On the one hand, the pivot may seem like a relatively simple affair: enhance the US’ efforts to meet the strategic challenge posed by China. On the other hand, the pivot has been complicated by Russia’s war on Ukraine and the conflict in the Middle East. This is made even more challenging given the rapprochement between Russia and China, with Beijing providing industrial and technological depth to Moscow, as well as its tacit support for Russia’s military actions. In this regard, the pivot today implies that the US may have to make some unavoidable trade-offs, establishing a prioritisation of interests and alliances.

To debate the past and the future of the US pivot to the Indo-Pacific, Ambassador Robert Blackwill and Richard Fontaine have agreed to discuss their new book, Lost Decade: The US Pivot to Asia and the Rise of Chinese Power, for this Strategy Debrief. Ambassador Blackwill, could you provide an overview of the main arguments in your new book?

Ambassador Blackwill: We would like to make four points at the outset, which we hope will summarise our book. First, that the Obama-Clinton pivot to Asia announced in the fall of 2011 was a radical change in US grand strategy. Throughout its history, the United States had been a Europe-first nation. Now Asia would be America’s first external priority with first claim on US resources and attention. Two, however, this revolution in US grand strategy never happened. Despite the astonishing rise of Chinese power and influence during the 2010s, the US did not pivot to Asia, and did not devote additional resources to meet China’s challenge. Indeed, the United States is in a much weaker position in Asia today in terms of the balance of military power, the economic domain and diplomatic influence than when the pivot was announced in 2011. That is why this was the “Lost Decade”. Three, this US failure to respond in the 2010s to the momentous growth in Chinese power and influence in Asia and beyond, we believe, represents one of the three most critical US foreign policy failures since the end of World War II, along with Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1965 escalation in Vietnam and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. And finally, we think it is more important than ever for the US to pivot to Asia.

Our book tells the story of the pivot and the simultaneous rise of Chinese power and assertiveness. It examines the impulse behind the pivot, analyses the challenges that it posed for America’s global presence and commitments, and investigates how it faltered. It looks at responses to the policy from countries in Asia, Europe and the Middle East, and details China’s strategic trajectory. As I said, more than a decade after its announcement, it is very clear that the pivot did not in fact occur. There was no reorientation of attention and resources from the Middle East and Europe to the Indo-Pacific. Military resources in the three theatres remain today broadly similar to 2011. China’s military modernisation has methodically altered the balance of military power in its favour in the waters adjacent to the Chinese mainland, especially in the Taiwan Strait.

The US economic agenda has become ever less ambitious. In more than a decade since the pivot’s announcement, the strategy’s economic component changed radically. At the beginning, US policy sought to harness opportunity through a series of economic agreements with multiple countries crowned by the pan-regional Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Yet virtually all those efforts failed over time, and Washington’s offensive agenda increasingly yielded to a defensive effort focused instead on blunting the national security risk that attended China’s economic activities. In our view, the TPP represented both the pivot’s central initiative and a US strategic failure. And America’s diplomatic engagement has proved inconsistent. The demand for US presence and engagement in the Indo-Pacific is high, but there are doubts about America’s ability to deliver. The pivot was designed in part to deal with rising Chinese power, but China’s power today is greater than ever, with an aggressive foreign policy to match.

Why did the pivot fail?

Ambassador Blackwill: First, Washington persistently underestimated the China challenge. For too long, policymakers retained the belief that the proper combination of incentives and disincentives would induce Beijing to support rather than undermine international order, and that they might even prompt the development of Chinese pluralist structures and practices. As we all know, none of that happened. But it was not until 2017, during the Trump administration, that the United States declared China a strategic competitor.

Second, crises emerged in other places. From the outset, the policy was predicated on an expected peace dividend in Iraq and Afghanistan – two wars Obama was determined to end, and neither, of course, ended. Obama did follow through on his commitment to withdraw US military from Iraq, but in neglecting to leave a residual force that could dampen instability there, the Islamic State established the world’s largest terrorist sanctuary in the emergent vacuum, and US troops had to return to Iraq and went to Syria as well. The pivot also assumed a quiescent Europe where major war was unthinkable. That presumption, of course, was first challenged by the 2014 annexation of Crimea and then by Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. There are a whole series of other issues and events in the world that distracted American policymakers during this period.

Third, the pivot lacked a clear, commonly understood strategic articulation. In interviews for this book, we found officials across administrations defining the pivot differently, unable to agree on its specific objectives, or identify what precisely constituted progress toward its end.

Fourth, no American president put sufficient weight behind the pivot and because that did not happen, there was no uniform administration effort to make the pivot work.

Fifth, by declaring an Asia-first foreign policy, the Obama administration attempted a grand strategic shift in the absence of forcing events or cataclysm. But unlike the period after World War II, where the Red Army stood on the plains of Europe, or after the 9/11 attacks, the pivot followed no visceral alarm.

And finally, the pivot was more than successive administrations could manage. Shifting military assets from Europe and the Middle East, for instance, would have entailed assuming more risk in those regions and potentially undermining US credibility there. Passing the TPP would have put members of Congress in the crosshairs of anti-trade voters at home. Sustaining the Hillary Clinton-era focus on diplomacy in the Pacific would have meant spending less time on peace in the Middle East (the priority under Secretary Kerry), or Russia and Iran (areas of focus under Secretaries Tillerson and Pompeo). Funding greater military resources for the Pacific would have required a bipartisan spending deal. Divesting legacy weapons systems to procure armaments better tailored for China contingencies would have stirred those who support continuing the existing production lines.

All those steps and more would have been best taken years ago, but they proved too hard to get done. All of this, if it had been done, would not have removed the challenge of dealing with the rise of Chinese power, but it certainly would have put us in a better place than we are now.

What happened with the pivot under the current Biden Administration?

Richard Fontaine: Our book shows that despite real efforts across both the Obama and the Trump administrations, the pivot to Asia at least as originally conceived failed to achieve many of its aspirations economically, militarily and diplomatically. And that took place across a decade in which China made major gains in all of these areas. But we conclude that the pivot was the right strategic impulse back in 2011 and it remains the right approach today. Asia, of course, today is even more important to the US than it was a decade ago when the Biden administration came in. It took some concrete steps early on to sort of revive the pivot without using precisely that language. It clearly identified China as its top priority, the Indo-Pacific as the region deserving of the greatest attention and resources from the US.

Its early strategic guidance and its national security strategy offered a raft of actions and proposals to try to affect those kinds of changes. But it has run up against some of the same issues as its predecessors: competing crises in Europe and the Middle East, a limited defence budget, a domestic aversion to multilateral trade agreements. And the Biden administration’s belated effort to pivot to Asia has some real accomplishments, especially in the areas of military posture and in diplomacy. But it is incomplete and has run into some of the same difficulties that have plagued efforts in the past.

What should the US pivot look like in the second half of the 2020s?

Richard Fontaine: We think that if you draw on some of the lessons from the past decade plus, there are some strategic principles that should outline and guide a present-day pivot to Asia. So first, Washington should articulate a positive vision for its own ambitions, particularly in the region where countries are worried about being caught between the United States and China. The US is not just competing against China. It is working toward the preservation and the extension of core international values that serve many other countries well. It is not just America first. Second, Washington should endorse America’s global role in addition to devoting new diplomatic, economic and military resources to Asia. The US has not and should not become or try to become a regional power focused on Asia to the exclusion of its interests and commitments in other regions, especially in Europe and the Middle East.

The answer to the challenge of China is not to abandon Ukraine or Israel, or get out completely from the Middle East and Europe to better focus on China, but rather to tailor our engagement in those areas in a way that better reflects what it is we are trying to achieve. That means that third, we must calculate some difficult and inevitable trade-offs. We need a more subtle prioritisation of regions and issues and a policy process that considers the relevant importance of multiple crises and opportunities. This is not just a broad “do more in Asia” kind of mantra. The test should be whether a particular set of resources will provide greater value in Asia or in some other region. The debate about whether to limit aid to Ukraine to better resource Taiwan or the US military in the western Pacific is a contemporary test.

And then finally, the hardest thing of all, we should to the greatest degree possible, pursue domestic unity around these things. This is especially true given our elections this year and the kind of deadlocks we have seen in Congress. But competition with China at least has the potential to bring our political leaders together rather than driving them apart.

What are some concrete ways to fulfil the strategic principles you just described?

Richard Fontaine: First, continue to strengthen the US alliances in the Indo-Pacific. In this sense, the Biden administration has made some important strides. They are key comparative advantages for the United States.

Two, it is essential to have a trade policy again at some point. We should join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) or some modified version of it while we derisk economic ties with China. If that is a domestic political bridge too far, then crafting a regional digital trade agreement or even a set of bilateral digital trade agreements would be a step in the right direction. But we have essentially hit rock bottom on our trade policy. So almost anything is up from here.

Third, we need to increase the US defence budget and thereby boost US military assets and our power projection in Asia and deterrence in Asia. We cannot just move things around, although we will need to do some of that from theatre to theatre. The 2.7% of GDP the US is spending on defence in 2024 matches the level in 1999, which was the height of the peace dividend after the Cold War. Resources are going to have to grow. We can also shift some military resources from the Middle East to Asia. For more than a decade, we have had the perception that the US is withdrawing from the Middle East, which is always news to those who say, well, the Fifth Fleet is still in Bahrain. We still have five air bases there. The level of troops is still quite high. It has been the worst of all worlds because we have had this deep and costly engagement in the region. But we have also fuelled the flames of abandonment. It is more about performance in the region, what we do with the resources we have, than the total military footprint. The ability to move some military resources to Asia and then surge into the Middle East, when necessary, is at hand.

And then in terms of Europe, troop levels have gone up by more than 30,000 since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Those are mostly on a reassurance mission. Some naval forces could be shifted as the war starts to draw down in 2025 from Europe to the Indo-Pacific. Russia’s power is weaker than when it started. Europe’s power will be stronger than when it started, and that provides new opportunities.

We do need to make European allies central in our China strategy. We reject the idea that the Europeans should just take care of Europe and stay out of Asia, and we should take care of Asia and stay out of Europe and have an overall global division of labour where the allies just do their own thing. The European sentiment toward China is changing quite quickly. You see this in NATO pronouncements and much more, but certainly at a minimum on some of the big economic and technology issues that are at the heart of competition with China. Europe is incredibly important.

All of these things are within our power. The United States has the power, the geography, the economy, the technology, the alliances and the values to pivot to Asia and effectively deal with its commitments and interests in Europe and the Middle East. And it is our hope that we can get on with it.

You are suggesting an increase in the US defence budget. However, there seems to be little enthusiasm among the American people, especially within the American Congress, for more defence spending. Do you have a strategy about how that can be changed to meet the demands you have laid out

Ambassador Blackwill: Terrific question and observation, and maybe even an understatement with respect to the public’s and the Congress’s appetite for increased defence spending. It may not happen. But we should have a debate about it because our national interests are suffering from inadequate defence spending over a very long period. How would we change the public sentiment and the Congress’s view? I think first and foremost – this seems obvious, but I think it’s preeminent – the president has to take the lead. The president must try to persuade the American people, as presidents have been known to do in the past, that this is required for America’s freedom, prosperity and peace. So if our president in 2025 is unwilling to do that, our position in Asia is likely to continue to erode. The same is true of our complete lack of economic policy in a region which has enormous value for global economic development.

The pivot was described as a revolution, but ultimately failed. One factor in the failure was a lack of attention and follow-up in diplomatic efforts. Has the overarching American grand strategy reached its limitations in dealing with revolutionary changes and the multitude of crises that have arisen during the same period?

Richard Fontaine: I do not think so, certainly not in terms of capabilities. If you look at the percentage of GDP we are spending on defence or the fact that our economic policy is really a function of will, not capability or capacity. It gets back to what was said before: if you look at big shifts in US foreign policy, it often takes a major crisis to prompt them. And one would like to think that you can get out ahead of a major crisis by anticipating what would be necessary if there were a crisis, or potentially to dampen that kind of crisis and make policy shifts. That is what the 2011 pivot to Asia was promising and something that we are promising now. Whether we can do it, ultimately, I think is a matter of will, not whether we have the underlying resources, alliances and ability to do it.

Ambassador Blackwill: I suppose that in an existential sense one might say, “Are we going to have to have a war with China over Taiwan before we have one of these dramatic shifts in US grand strategy?”. We hope that we can have this shift which strengthens defence and deterrence in Asia while meeting our vital national interests elsewhere without such a war. And perhaps uniquely, the pivot does not require this catastrophic event to remind us of our national interests.

What role do you expect Europe to play in the pivot? Are you confident that Europe will do it?

Richard Fontaine: Europe has an incredibly important role to play in the economic and technological aspects of this. We are talking about derisking economic relations with China, which after all is a European concept. I also think it has a military role to play, not because the resources that Europe would deploy to Asia are going to be so overwhelming. But deterrence in Asia is going to be greater the more countries that are involved in the enterprise. And so even without vast quantities of military resources in the area, their involvement (France, Britain, Germany) can be important.

China has a global strategy, economically, diplomatically, geopolitically. Would it be wiser in terms of resource allocation to compete with China for influence across the “Global South” rather than to significantly increase the US’ presence in Asia?

Richard Fontaine: I worry that if we define the whole world as our venue of competition and Chinese influence anywhere is bad, and must be resisted maximally everywhere, then we will set ourselves up for failure. Chinese military power, for example, is most acute and most relevant in the western Pacific, not across the “Global South”, and it becomes attenuated the further from the western Pacific you get. That is where we worry about it the most. And that is one of the reasons why a military pivot to Asia rather than a military pivot to South America makes sense.

On the economic side, it depends on what you are talking about. But if one of the goals is to limit Chinese influence such that Southeast Asia is less dependent on China to the degree that is possible, or at least Chinese political influence and geopolitical influence is limited, then southeast Asia matters, and the Pacific Islands matter more than some countries in sub-Saharan Africa from the American perspective. You have to set priorities based on what it is that we are interested in and what it is we are worried about.

There is a mismatch between the record of failure and incompetence that you lay out and the recommendations. The optimism of your recommendations is at odds with the demonstrated strategic, political and general incapacity of the US to get its ducks in a row. What you are essentially hoping for is a “Zeitenwende” for the US with regard to China, but without the war that would provoke it. But the war itself that could provoke it in Taiwan would be one of the greatest catastrophes of the 21st  century. The recommendations sound very sensible, but they fly in the face of the US government’s record of being unable to shoot straight for over a generation. 

Ambassador Blackwill: One does not have to have a perfect solution to America’s geopolitical challenges, it just has tohave the best one you can think of. I do not think one can begin to deal with the world by saying, for example, restraint is the answer everywhere because we are so incompetent. There were periods during the Cold War when I used to say in speeches that we and the Soviets were competing for premier incompetence, and it would go back and forth for a while, for one would be in the lead of incompetence, the other would take over. But we really do not have a choice if we avoid being competent, being strategic – for whatever reason, and you are certainly right, that we have had trouble shooting straight – our country is going to be more and more at risk. And not just our country, but the West is going to be more and more at risk.

The other thing I would address is that we cannot have a binary choice between dealing with the “Global South” and strengthening our power and influence in Asia. Both are required. This idea, that we have “either/or” solutions to virtually everything that we are addressing, seems now more and more prevalent – either we have to try to cultivate the Third World, or we have to build up our power and influence in Asia. In my experience in government, in senior policy roles, there are very few issues which lend themselves to such extreme binary solutions. The US, in its leadership role, has to be able to do more than one thing at a time.

Richard Fontaine: If we end up with a full-scale war with China, we both lose. The whole world loses. So our number one priority is to deter and to avoid a war with China. I do think there is more of a case for optimism in some areas than you allow. Some of the things the US has done since the beginning of the Biden administration on alliances, on military posture, on derisking economic ties, on building up domestic sources of strength in particular technology areas, those would not have been possible even a few years ago. Largely, it is because they are seen as necessary to deal effectively with China. It has not taken a war. Is it insufficient? Yes, but at least it is some steps in the right direction.

Ambassador Blackwill: If I can add: once former national security advisor McGeorge Bundy observed that “if we guard our toothbrushes and diamonds with equal zeal, we will probably lose fewer toothbrushes and more diamonds”.

In 2012, at the conclusion of the Defence Strategic Review, the Obama administration estimated that approximately 60% of the US Navy’s focus was on the Atlantic, Middle East and Mediterranean regions, with 40% in the Indo-Pacific. At that time, they stated that this balance would gradually change over time. Has that balance shifted today? 

Richard Fontaine: The Obama administration did announce that henceforth that we would have 60% of the US Navy in the Indo-Pacific. But the navy was shrinking at the time. In real terms, if you count up the number of actual vessels, it did not actually increase; it just protected Asia from a decrease. In our interviews, the Trump administration – particularly Matt Pottinger – was actually very open about this. They said, we wanted to try to cut Asia last in terms of the shrinking navy. That was the objective as opposed to a numerical increase. And of course, this happened over a period of time where China’s navy was just exploding. There is a chart in our book that shows 20 years ago China had about 150 less ships than the US. In the next few years, it will have more than 150 more ships than the US. That is the backdrop there. The administration did fulfil its stated commitment, but it was with a shrinking navy.

If the European countries invest more in defence, it could be argued that this increases the options for the US to move some of its resources from Europe to Asia. What would be a proper division of military resources that European countries should divide between Europe itself and the US, given that at the moment European resources are limited and still depend very heavily on US military support in our security relations with Russia?

Ambassador Blackwill: There is great emphasis in the US on Europe doing more for its own defence. Our book calls for that too, but we also observe that in that context, the organisational sociology of the US is also going to have to change. As the Europeans do more over time, they are obviously going to want to have a greater role in alliance decision-making. This will be very hard for US institutions to accept instantaneously. So if the policy prescriptions in our book are realised, at least to some degree, our grip on the NATO apparatus is going to weaken. Not deterrence and not our commitment to Article 5 and the defence of our European partners, but to accept that part of the pivot to Asia is going to mean greater European influence on these decisions of European security. I did not start speaking in French in order to make that point, but I do think Macron, to some degree, has the future on his side if the pivot actually occurs in the way we would like.

There are regional concerns in Asia about the political risk posed by the US. Washington has been seen retreating from agreements it either helped create or created itself. How can the US restore confidence and reassure others about its commitments, especially with a fragmented domestic political scene expected to persist?

Ambassador Blackwill: The question of trust is crucial. The US lost the trust of its allies and friends over time, a day at a time, and an episode at a time. We will only regain that trust a day at a time and an episode at a time, and it will not happen quickly. But I do not think that we Americans have a genetic disability to have competent policies. Perhaps it is nurture and not nature. So I think it is possible. I have worked in administrations which I think historians will believe have been more competent on geopolitics, and I have worked in ones that have the opposite record. I am not a pessimist in this regard. We will have to see. I agree entirely that the record in the past, especially in the recent past, is not sterling. But every day is a new day. If you are a policymaker, you simply cannot give up. You cannot give up. You have to continue to try. But then it is back to the president as the leader: what is his vision of the US and the world? Who does he hire and what are their views of the world? And so forth. So we have the chance to be more competent. And I hope we will be. And I believe that trust will grow as we are more competent and steadfast and loyal to our friends and allies.

What would be the implication of a second Trump term for US foreign policy?

Richard Fontaine: It is worth pointing out that on Asia policy and China policy, there has been a huge amount of continuity from Trump to Biden, much more than one might expect. The Biden China policy and the Biden Asia policy is much closer to Trump’s than it is to Obama’s, even though all of these people, including Joe Biden himself, worked in the Obama administration. All the Trump tariffs are in place and have been increased; all the export controls have been increased; the identification of China as a strategic competitor rather than some country we can engage and get to be a responsible stakeholder has remained.

There are two big differences: one, Biden does not seem to have Trump’s confidence in his own personal ability to woo Xi Jinping and cut some sort of deal; two, Trump was obviously fixated on the trade deficit in a way that Biden has not and so Trump raised the purchase agreements with China to be the top priority. I think if Trump comes back, we will see this fixation on the trade deficit again, and these efforts to get the Chinese to buy more soybeans and even a willingness potentially to trade other strategic things for purchase agreements. Overall, I think you will see a lot of continuity if there is another Trump term. But it will be unpredictable.

How do you see the broader strategic legacy of the third offset strategy? We have this tendency to equate the third offset just with a technology-centric kind of strategy. But in reality, it was more of a construct about strategic posturing and re-posturing and about developing new operational concepts. Did we make any progress also from this perspective, not just moving assets around, but really developing effective operational concepts?

Richard Fontaine: The first accomplishment of the third offset was at the intellectual level. The US military had been configured for counter-terrorism and stabilisation operations across the greater Middle East, not for conventional warfare in the western Pacific. In this context, the third offset was a way to transform the thinking behind US military objectives. And then, of course, the concepts for how it would attain those objectives, which was the infusion of technology, different kinds of systems and configurations.

The actual shift in that direction, at the intellectual level, is there. At the operational concept level, a lot of it has taken place, but I do not think all of it. You still have this question of F-35s flying off of carriers into the fight and whether that is realistic or not. And then at the level of budgets I think that they are lagging even further behind.

Overall, things are moving in the right direction. The US military has come a long way since the first announcement of the third offset, but there is certainly a lot further to go, and particularly in the operational concept and budget spheres.

Ambassador Blackwill: Let me make one final point, which is an encompassing one. It draws on an observation that Robert Gates has made recently. As we look forward, and as the US either pivots seriously to Asia or does not, one thing that would prevent the pivot is a war someplace else. And as Bob Gates says, if he had only one piece of advice to a president looking forward, it would be do not start a war that you are not going to win. We have voices now in the US which favour escalatory US steps in Ukraine and escalatory US steps regarding Iran. The one way we could be sure there is no pivot is if we go to war someplace else.

About the Author(s)

Octavian Manea

Octavian Manea was a Fulbright Junior Scholar at Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs (Syracuse University) where he received an MA in International Relations and a Certificate of Advanced Studies in Security Studies.

13. The U.S. Wanted to Knock Down Huawei. It’s Only Getting Stronger.

Excerpts:

Huawei is leading a government-funded project to develop memory units for advanced AI chips, people familiar with the matter said, with at least 11 national AI data centers now using Huawei chips.

Through various state-backed funds, the Chinese government has invested in more than two dozen chip-related startups alongside Huawei over the past five years, according to corporate database Tianyancha. 

Last August, Huawei launched its Mate 60 Pro, a smartphone with 5G-like capability powered by a chip developed in-house. Many Chinese consumers have cited national pride as a reason for buying Huawei smartphones, whose success led to a sharp drop in Apple iPhone sales so far this year.

Barely a month after the phone’s launch, a group of Huawei researchers gathered at a barbecue restaurant on the outskirts of Beijing, and congratulated engineers who had worked on the project at HiSilicon, Huawei’s chip unit.

“You HiSilicon people kick ass,” one of the Huawei researchers said, according to a person who attended. “Managers tell us daily that our work helps the country fight against foreign oppression,” a HiSilicon engineer who was present responded.

“We’re becoming more and more like a state-owned company, aren’t we?” another researcher chimed in.

The U.S. Wanted to Knock Down Huawei. It’s Only Getting Stronger.

The Chinese telecom giant struggled at first under U.S. sanctions—then Beijing stepped in

https://www.wsj.com/business/telecom/huawei-china-technology-us-sanctions-76462031?mod=wknd_pos1

By Liza LinFollow

, Stu WooFollow

 and Raffaele HuangFollow

July 29, 2024 9:00 pm ET

Five years ago, Washington sanctioned Huawei, cutting off the Chinese company’s access to advanced U.S. technologies because it feared the telecommunications giant would spy on Americans and their allies. Many in the industry thought it would ring the death knell for one of China’s most vital tech players.

Huawei struggled at first—but now it’s come roaring back.

Bolstered by billions of dollars in state support, Huawei has expanded into new businesses, boosted its profitability and found fresh ways to curb its dependence on U.S. suppliers. It has held on to its leading position in the global telecom-equipment market, despite American efforts to squeeze Huawei out of its allies’ networks. And it’s making a big comeback in high-end smartphones, using sophisticated new chips developed in-house to take buyers from Apple. 

Along the way, a company that portrayed itself as independent from Beijing has morphed into something more like a national champion, helping China wean itself off foreign suppliers—part of a broader campaign to eliminate U.S. technology in China, dubbed “Delete A,” for Delete America. Its resurgence shows why it’s so hard for America to contain China’s technological ambitions.

“The U.S. government’s campaign against Huawei is inadvertently bolstering the company’s resilience, echoing the age-old adage that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” said Sameh Boujelbene, an analyst at research firm Dell’Oro Group. 

State money was critical. While China’s government has backed Huawei since its earliest days, government support ramped up in recent years. Huawei’s profit more than doubled last year, the largest jump in at least two decades. Roughly two-thirds of its revenue comes from domestic clients. 

Government contracts and company registration records, as well as interviews with former and current employees, reveal that billions of dollars flowed from the Chinese government to Huawei through preferential buying contracts and subsidies. State-owned enterprises, government agencies and Communist Party bodies sought Huawei chips, smartphones, cloud services and software, with some procurement contracts calling for Huawei gear by name. 

Newly launched smartphones at a Huawei store in Beijing last year. PHOTO: KEVIN FRAYER/GETTY IMAGES

A Luxeed S7 electric sedan, co-developed by Huawei and Chery Automobile, on display in Chongqing. PHOTO: RAUL ARIANO/BLOOMBERG NEWS

Local governments have bought Huawei businesses, providing cash injections. Once reliant on Google’s Android for its consumer devices, Huawei built its own operating system. It has even made a foray into electric vehicles, a task that Apple gave up on, and developed its own version of Bluetooth.

Huawei still faces challenges. Its most advanced semiconductors remain a step behind industry leaders such as Nvidia, and some sector experts believe it will be hard for Huawei to keep innovating without access to more advanced Western technologies. 

“We’ve been through a lot over the past few years. But through one challenge after another, we’ve managed to grow,” Huawei said in a written statement, adding that the company owed its survival and development to the trust and support of global customers, partners and “all sectors of society.” Sustaining R&D investment will be crucial going forward, the company said. 

China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and its Ministry of Finance, which leads government procurement, didn’t respond to requests for comment. 

In the U.S., supporters of restrictions on Huawei say they achieved their primary goal: reducing the amount of Huawei equipment in networks in the U.S. and its military allies. 

“The goal wasn’t to drive Huawei out of business,” said Matt Pottinger, who was deputy national security adviser in the Trump administration and now chairs the China program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank. “It was to protect our alliances and protect our data, and if it made life harder for Huawei, all the better.”

Washington is watching Huawei’s progress warily. One current U.S. official said Washington is closely tracking Huawei’s efforts to make its own semiconductors, in case more actions are needed to block China from manufacturing artificial-intelligence-focused chips that can give Beijing a military edge.

Ascent interrupted

Huawei was founded in 1987 by Ren Zhengfei, now 79, as a maker of phone switches. It went on to become one of the world’s biggest producers of smartphones and telecom equipment, and one of the most profitable private companies in China. It also made inroads beyond China, with around 48% of its revenue from international clients in 2018. 

China’s Xi Jinping with Huawei’s Ren Zhengfei, left, in the company’s London offices in 2015. PHOTO: MATTHEW LLOYD/PRESS POOL

As U.S.-China tensions ratcheted up, Western officials grew more concerned that Huawei could pose a security risk to countries that used its equipment. Foreign perceptions of the company worsened when Meng Wanzhou, a Huawei executive and Ren’s daughter, was detained in Canada in 2018 for alleged violations of U.S. sanctions on Iran.

The Trump administration, which had been lobbying allies to drop Huawei from their networks, added it to a Commerce Department trade blacklist that barred companies such as Intel, Qualcomm and Google from supplying technology from the U.S. to Huawei without a license.

Huawei denied that its products would ever be used to spy on Western nations, and played down any ties with the Chinese state. In the company’s early years, according to state media, Ren turned down help from China’s then-premier in getting a loan so that Huawei could maintain distance from authorities.

After the U.S. imposed restrictions, Huawei and China’s government grew closer. Soon, Huawei leaders declared that every product they made going forward should be able to rely entirely on components developed by Chinese companies.

In a public speech last year, Ren recalled that a Huawei executive told him: “America doesn’t understand that with this blow, they are turning the biggest supporter of the U.S. into its largest detractor.”

Huawei’s Meng Wanzhou spoke in Vancouver in 2021, after she was released from detention. PHOTO: JESSE WINTER/REUTERS

Ren compared the firm to a Soviet military plane that had crashed during World War II in a Kazakhstan lake, only to be recovered in recent years and restored. The Ilyushin Il-2, dubbed the Flying Tank, flew again. Huawei circulated a video about the plane to staff, with the slogan: “Heroes are forged, not born.”

For a while, though, it looked like Huawei would struggle to stay aloft. In 2021, its revenue dropped almost 30% from the year before. Its core telecom equipment business was suffering. Apple’s iPhone was taking over Huawei market share in smartphones.

Huawei focused on building out more of its own supply chain and expanding into new areas that could generate revenue to help keep the company going, including cloud computing and other services, according to Chris Peirera, a former Huawei senior director in public affairs. Ren was a motivational leader, he said. 

“In the past, we chased the ideal of globalization, determined to serve mankind. What are our goals now? It’s to survive. We will make money wherever we can,” Ren later told staff in an internal letter.

China to the rescue

Government support began to amp up from Day One of the sanctions. 

On May 16, 2019—the day the Commerce Department added Huawei to the trade blacklist—the local government in Shenzhen, where Huawei is based, registered an investment company. That entity, Shenzhen Major Industry Investment Group, or SMII, focused on semiconductors, investing in foundries, manufacturing equipment and materials that would help ensure Huawei was supplied with enough domestically made chips and other technologies.

Two companies established by SMII, including a chip foundry, employed former Huawei executives, according to people familiar with the matter. One received around a dozen patented technologies transferred from Huawei. Huawei human-resources managers had asked company researchers if they would work at that entity, promising them they could keep their benefits if they moved, according to people familiar with the matter. 

A Huawei production line in Dongguan in 2019. PHOTO: KEVIN FRAYER/GETTY IMAGES

Shenzhen’s imports of semiconductor manufacturing equipment surged after SMII’s inception, official data shows.  

Shenzhen’s government and SMII didn’t respond to requests for comment. Huawei said not all of the Shenzhen government’s semiconductor-related activities are linked to Huawei.

A new company majority-owned by Shenzhen also bought Huawei’s Honor smartphone business, which was struggling because of the U.S. sanctions. The deal was worth several billions of dollars, a person familiar with the transaction said. The cash allowed Huawei to focus on other businesses, including its higher-end Mate series of phones.

Direct financial support increased as well. Huawei received over $1 billion in government grants in 2023, more than quadruple the amount it received in 2019, according to Huawei’s financial reports. In all, Huawei received nearly $3 billion in the past five years, accounting for 3% of its total R&D expenses.

The U.S. also is providing large subsidies to encourage domestic chip-making, though it has made the assistance available to foreign companies, including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.  

Beijing directed state agencies to buy more of Huawei’s software, chips and mobile devices, a policy that boosted Huawei while reducing China’s reliance on American companies, including Apple, whose iPhones are no longer allowed in the workplace for many government employees. A government research unit named Huawei as one of four tech giants spearheading the nation’s push to wean itself off foreign technology, while another government body singled out Huawei as a preferred state supplier of AI chips, servers and other enterprise software. 

The Wall Street Journal found more than 300 government procurement contracts worth around $5 billion specifically calling for the purchase of servers and other tech infrastructure powered by Huawei’s Kunpeng central processing units, or CPUs, in 2023. Other contracts listed Huawei CPUs among a handful of preferred local vendors. 

All of this was a sharp contrast to five years ago, when government agencies specifically requested products from U.S. chip makers Intel or AMD.

China’s buy-local policy is even more pronounced in the telecom-equipment space, Huawei’s largest revenue source. State-owned Chinese wireless carriers have largely stopped buying equipment from Huawei’s foreign rivals, Sweden’s Ericsson and Finland’s Nokia, even when one of them priced their contracts more cheaply than Chinese companies. The shift came while Sweden and other European countries indicated that they would cut Huawei and another Chinese equipment maker, ZTE, from their networks. 

Ericsson and Nokia held about 15% of China’s cellular equipment market before 5G began rolling out in 2019. Now, in the 5G cellular-equipment market, they hold about 4% to 5%, according to research firm Dell’Oro.

Fighting ‘foreign oppression’

Though Huawei is still seeking to sell its products abroad in places such as Southeast Asia and Africa, it is more reliant on China’s market than ever, with 67% of revenue last year coming from domestic clients. The company often portrays itself as a national champion that gives priority to serving China.

The Canadian arrest of Meng, Ren’s daughter, helped accelerate that transition. Beijing imprisoned two Canadian citizens in retaliation and negotiated her release. When Meng stepped off the plane in China in September 2021 after three years of detention, she expressed gratitude as she addressed a crowd gathered to greet her. 

“Over the last three years, I’ve come to understand this better: An individual’s fate, a corporation’s fate, and the country’s fate are all intertwined. Our motherland is our strongest backing,” she said.

Meng arriving at the Shenzhen airport in 2021. PHOTO: JIN LIWANG/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Supporters waited for Meng’s arrival. PHOTO: NOEL CELIS/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

With so much government support, Huawei was able to avoid massive cuts that would have gutted its R&D or led to a talent exodus. Huawei boosted R&D spending to almost 165 billion yuan, or $23 billion, last year, up from 102 billion yuan in 2018. More than half of Huawei’s 207,000 employees are in R&D. 

Huawei is now at the vanguard of China’s push to develop cutting-edge chips to wean reliance on Nvidia and Intel, as the Biden administration seeks to curb China’s ability to develop advanced chips and technology that could aid its warfare and surveillance. U.S. chip juggernaut Nvidia singled out Huawei as a top competitor in February. 

Huawei is leading a government-funded project to develop memory units for advanced AI chips, people familiar with the matter said, with at least 11 national AI data centers now using Huawei chips.

Through various state-backed funds, the Chinese government has invested in more than two dozen chip-related startups alongside Huawei over the past five years, according to corporate database Tianyancha. 

Last August, Huawei launched its Mate 60 Pro, a smartphone with 5G-like capability powered by a chip developed in-house. Many Chinese consumers have cited national pride as a reason for buying Huawei smartphones, whose success led to a sharp drop in Apple iPhone sales so far this year.

Barely a month after the phone’s launch, a group of Huawei researchers gathered at a barbecue restaurant on the outskirts of Beijing, and congratulated engineers who had worked on the project at HiSilicon, Huawei’s chip unit.

“You HiSilicon people kick ass,” one of the Huawei researchers said, according to a person who attended. “Managers tell us daily that our work helps the country fight against foreign oppression,” a HiSilicon engineer who was present responded.

“We’re becoming more and more like a state-owned company, aren’t we?” another researcher chimed in.

Write to Liza Lin at liza.lin@wsj.com, Stu Woo at Stu.Woo@wsj.com and Raffaele Huang at raffaele.huang@wsj.com

14. ‘Not prepared’: Congressional panel calls for huge defense buildup

I have not found a link to this report. If anyone finds a link please forward it to me.

This was the finding of a bipartisan panel tasked by Congress to review U.S. defense strategy. Its nearly 100-page report reveals a crisis of confidence in American national security.

‘Not prepared’: Congressional panel calls for huge defense buildup

Defense News · by Noah Robertson · July 29, 2024

America’s odds of fighting a major war are the highest in 80 years, and its military isn’t prepared for one.

This was the finding of a bipartisan panel tasked by Congress to review U.S. defense strategy. Its nearly 100-page report reveals a crisis of confidence in American national security.

The commission chides a Pentagon it considers too plodding, a Congress it considers too partisan and multiple administrations it says have been too complacent to address threats from China, Russia and countries in the Middle East.

“The nation was last prepared for such a fight during the Cold War, which ended 35 years ago,” the report reads. “It is not prepared today.”

Every four years, Congress gathers a group of outside experts to review the country’s national defense strategy. The goal is to have an independent board assess U.S. national security like an accountant audits a company’s books. To do so, the eight commissioners spoke with lawmakers, U.S. allies, members of the administration and leaders in the Pentagon, including the secretary and deputy secretary of defense.

The report wasn’t due until the end of the year, and the panel finished early so that its findings could factor into the presidential election. Both the timing and tone are an attempt to yank public attention away from domestic issues, such as the border and the economy, said Jane Harman, a former Democratic Congresswoman from California and chair of the commission.

“Public awareness is dismal,” she said, calling America’s security threats “blinking red.”

The commission’s argument is almost as simple as supply and demand. In its eyes, America faces a much more dangerous world, with competitors that are either more willing to go to war, in the case of Russia, or much closer to being a military peer, in the case of China.

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But as those threats have emerged — or even merged given that many of America’s adversaries are now working more closely together — the report argues that the U.S. hasn’t grown stronger in proportion. Instead, the country has proceeded largely as usual, or even with more dysfunction. Examples include budgets that are too small, spending bills passed too late, legacy weapons preferred over new ones and a public either unaware of the challenges America faces or unmotivated to respond.

Even more, while the National Defense Strategy calls for “integrated deterrence,” or using more than just military might to prevent conflict, the commission found that the approach isn’t clearly defined or coordinated.

“The United States is still failing to act with the urgency required, across administrations and without regard to governing party,” the report says.

The commissioners were equally nominated by Republicans and Democrats in Congress, and all agreed to the report’s conclusions. Their arguments resemble those made by many defense hawks around Washington, such as Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., who says that the country needs to spend far more on defense.

Many of them, including the commissioners authoring this report, use the Cold War as an analog.

During a defense buildup led by President Ronald Reagan, the U.S. spent 6.8% of GDP on defense. It now spends around 3%, though in real terms defense spending reached its all-time high during the wars on terror earlier this century, according to data from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

The last commission’s report, assessing the 2018 National Defense Strategy, recommended increasing the defense budget by 3% to 5% each year, a mark the U.S. has not hit though it’s unclear what analysis supports that number. One of the most recent barriers was a deal struck last year to avoid a government default, which capped increases to the Pentagon budget at 1%, a cut when accounting for inflation.

Since the war in Ukraine, the U.S. has passed multiple enormous supplemental security bills — most recently a $95 billion one this April that included funding to support Kyiv, Israel and countries in the Indo-Pacific. These bills don’t technically factor into the annual defense budget, like a garnish not listed in a recipe. But they’ve poured money into America’s defense industry.

‘A solution’

But legislation and money do little to solve what the commission calls America’s biggest issue: the home front. The military isn’t recruiting as many people as it wants, though it’s doing better retaining those who already joined. And during the Cold War, the report argues, higher tax rates for businesses and high earners made it easier to sustain a bigger defense budget. The combination of a less mobilized public, lower taxes and much higher government debt make a defense buildup harder, the report argues.

“We’re not just saying, ‘oh my god, the house is burning, figure it out,” said Harman. “We have ideas.”

Those recommendations fall into a few main categories.

The first is to reassess the Pentagon’s acquisition and innovation systems. Leaders in the Defense Department should review its orders and have more freedom to cancel less relevant purchases.

The Defense Department should also change its buying practices — a point argued by a separate congressional commission earlier this year — to fulfill purchases faster and work more with non-traditional defense companies, which are increasingly building more innovative weapons.

A second point concerns spending. Congress should “immediately” pass a supplemental defense bill so that the U.S. can build more equipment, harden military sites threatened by China and buy more weapons, particularly munitions. Perhaps most abruptly, Congress should also ditch the budget caps holding back defense spending this year.

Lastly, the U.S. should consider politically unpopular ways to pay for these reforms. One would be higher taxes. Another is reforming entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, whose costs are projected to swell by the end of the decade.

The upshot would be a force capable of more than protecting the homeland, fighting one major war and preventing another, which the last two defense strategies have proposed. Given the threat of Russia, China and Iran in the Middle East, America’s military should be able to fight across multiple theaters at once, it says.

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Nevertheless, it doesn’t recommend specific spending or force structure targets, instead saying they should be bigger but not by how much.

“We weren’t going to dictate a solution, but it does need to be a multi-theater force planning construct,” said Tom Mahnken, head of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and one of the commissioners.

Some of the panelists have served on past review boards, made similar recommendations and seen them ignored. On one page in the report, they list key paragraphs from earlier reports issued in 2018, 2014 and 2010 — each escalating in alarm.

Mahnken, who worked on the last commission, listed shortfalls they identified that later proved prescient: munitions, raising defense spending, the ability for America’s military to fight jointly, or with multiple services working together. These have since become top priorities for the Pentagon and many members of Congress.

“We find that the situation has deteriorated since the 2018 Commission’s report and that many of the previous recommendations were not adopted,” this report says.

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.

​15. US boosts alliance with the Philippines with $500 million funding and pact amid concern over China

US boosts alliance with the Philippines with $500 million funding and pact amid concern over China

AP · by JIM GOMEZ · July 30, 2024

1 of 12 |Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., center, greets U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, left, and U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin at the Malacanang presidential palace in Manila, Philippines on Tuesday, July 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Basilio Sepe, Pool)

MATTHEW LEE

JIM GOMEZ

Gomez is The AP Chief Correspondent in the Philippines.

twittermailto

AP · by JIM GOMEZ · July 30, 2024

16. Politics or People: What Does the Navy Value?

Politics or People: What Does the Navy Value?

By Brent Ramsey

July 30, 2024

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2024/07/30/politics_or_people_what_does_the_navy_value_1048069.html?mc_cid=043cb4b9c5&mc_eid=70bf478f36

From Military.com:

“According to recently released Pentagon data on suicide across all the services, the Navy reported 24 suicides among its sailors for the first three months of 2024. That is the highest-ever quarterly figure for the service going back to 2018, when data first started being released.” 

“The Navy reported a record number of suicides in the first quarter of 2024, again drawing attention to the myriad issues revealed about the quality of life for sailors and the service's ability to prevent such deaths.”

From Navy Times:

 “Poor living conditions on ships in port is listed as a contributing cause of surging suicides in the Navy.” 

According to Marine Corps Times on May 2, 2024 “Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy says an average of 800 sailors have to live on ships after deployment due to lack of barracks.”  How is this tolerated in our Navy in 2024. It is disgraceful neglect of our most precious asset, our sailors!

The size of the Navy is continually shrinking but the number of suicides is going up. This begs the question about the quality of decision-making on things that affect sailor quality of life. This calls into question the Navy’s priorities. Are sailors important or is promoting political or social issues more important?

For FY 2024 the Navy had $72+ Billion in Operations and Maintenance funding. With such a huge amount of funding there are plenty of creative solutions to providing adequate berthing to every sailor ashore when the ship is not deployed. The Navy has wide latitude to spend the funds in the Operations and Maintenance, Navy account, the account that impacts quality of life for our sailors the most. The Navy just is not doing it. To its credit the Navy recently announced plans to put chaplains on each guided missile destroyer. That does not address the berthing ashore issue but hopefully it is a sign that senior leadership is trying to find solutions for the problem.

Instead of providing quality berthing accommodations to all sailors, here are other examples of how the Navy chooses to spend its funds: 

The Navy Press Office announced on 24 June: 

“The Department of the Navy (DON) is hosting Climate Action III, the third in a series of tabletop exercises (TTX) the DON has held during the last three years that validates and exercises Climate Action 2030, the DON’s climate strategy. The TTX, which will take place June 25-26 with Caribbean nations, and key stakeholders and partners, to identify areas of collaboration to increase climate resilience.” 

“The impacts of climate change, from increasing temperatures and droughts, to changing precipitation patterns and sea level rise, are impacting our forces, our communities, and economies,” said Meredith Berger, Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Energy, Installations, and Environment and the Department of the Navy’s Chief Sustainability Officer. “Island and coastal nations like our Caribbean neighbors are on the front lines of this challenge, and we know that when we work together, we do better. We have a lot to learn from each other, and even more to gain from working together to build our shared climate resilience and enhance our collective security.”

In 2022 the Navy announced Climate Change 2030 Action Plan. It says, “Climate change is an existential threat that impacts not only our operations and readiness but also our infrastructure, our forces, and their families. Rising sea levels, recurring flooding, and more frequent and destructive hurricanes threaten our coastal installations. Changes in global climate and other dangerous trans-boundary threats, including pandemics, are only expected to worsen, posing increasing challenges for our forces, platforms, infrastructure, and supporting communities, and driving or intensifying conflict and humanitarian disasters around the world. The DON will adapt to these challenges that are increasingly putting pressure on our force and the systems that support it.”

Much of the above statement is false. Sea levels are slightly rising. This has been going on for an extended period. Science has demonstrated wide variability in sea level over lengthy periods of time. Flooding and destructive hurricanes are not increasing. The actual data shows a decline in flooding and hurricane frequency and strength over time since record keeping began. The impact of natural disasters on human mortality continues to decline to all-time lows as civilization and technology has advanced. Why does the Navy not read the actual data in the IPCC reports instead of the breathless reports by activists that report on worse case scenarios and exaggerate the risk tremendously. According to a study by the Lancet Public Health released in 2021, for every death attributed to heat, nine deaths are caused by cold.

How many millions will the Navy spend on climate change which represents a vanishingly small risk instead of taking care of its sailors? For a fair, factual and balanced view of the actual threat posed by climate change, please read Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn't, and Why It Matters by Dr. Steven Koonin, a former Undersecretary of Energy under President Obama.

Secretary Carlos Del Toro Released the Following 2024 Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex+ Pride Month Message to the Force on 3 June 2024:

“The Department of the Navy (DON) joins the Nation in celebrating Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex (LGBTQI+) Pride Month during the month of June. LGBTQI+ Pride Month provides us with a platform to honor the perseverance and achievements of LGBTQI+ leaders within our ranks and reflect on the strides made in overcoming numerous obstacles to their Service.” 

It goes on like that extolling the virtues of the LGBTQI+ members for 4 more paragraphs. All this for what is estimated is still a very small percent of the military. One report by an advocacy group cited 6% of the military as LGBTQI+ but DOD has not produced any data on the subject. How much is spent celebrating people’s sexual proclivities? How is that relevant to Navy readiness? How does celebrating sexual practices of LGBTQI+ sailors improve the morale of the 70%+ of the Navy who are professing Christians? This bowing to the far-left agenda aimed at destroying the nuclear family is damaging to the Navy, a distraction from serious matters such as the threats posed by our enemies, and waste of resources that could be spent on saving lives of despairing sailors who are contemplating taking their own lives due to unbearable circumstances associated with their naval service.

Announcement of the U.S. Naval War College 2024 Women, Peace, and Security Symposium, May 2-3rd:

“The Naval War College (NWC) welcomes paper proposals for its 10th annual Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) Conference, May 2-3, 2024, in Newport, Rhode Island. This year's theme is "Advancing Gendered Security in a Complex World: Hard Power, Smart Power, Soft Power."

“The event brings together U.S. and international scholars and experts, civilian and military practitioners, and leaders to better understand our complex and dynamic security environment. It examines women’s full and equal participation, decision-making, and leadership, alongside men, in promoting lasting peace and security.”

“The event brings together U.S. and international scholars and experts, civilian and military practitioners, and leaders to better understand our complex and dynamic security environment. It examines women’s full and equal participation, decision-making, and leadership, alongside men, in promoting lasting peace and security.”

Select papers will be considered for publication in a book related to the Symposium theme “Advancing Gendered Security in a Complex World: Hard Power, Smart Power, Soft Power.”

The Navy War College feels it is important to devote resources to studying the following topics:

- Conflict-Related Sexual Violence 

- Rape as a strategic weapon of war

- Ethnic cleansing campaigns

- War crimes and genocide prevention

- Sexual slavery

- Forced Pregnancy, sterilization, and other forms of wartime sexual harm

- Gender Advisors in Maritime Operations

- Gender perspectives in maritime security strategies

- Gender-inclusive humanitarian disaster planning and response

- Human trafficking and Irregular Migration

- Illegal Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) Fishing and Forced Labor at Sea

- Women in the Maritime Industry, Coast Guard, Navy, and Marine Corps

- Gender Inclusion in Peace and Security Roles

- Feminist foreign policies

- Warrior women in history

How do these topics prepare the Navy to fight and win war? How much money is spent on such matters when we have a sailor committing suicide just about every day?

Navy leaders need to take a serious look at their mission statement. I’ll give you a hint, it is about preparing for and fighting our nation’s wars to defend our Republic. It is not about following political agendas. Navy leaders should be about caring for and protecting sailors so that they can be honed into a lethal weapon to fight and win our nation’s wars. It is time for Navy leaders to take stock of how they spend their time and how the money gets spent. Every day should be a 100% focus on preparing for the next war and politics should be put aside.

CAPT Brent Ramsey, (USN, Ret.) has written extensively on Defense matters. He is an officer with Calvert Group, Board of Advisors member for the Center for Military Readiness and STARRS, and member of the Military Advisory Group for Congressman Chuck Edwards (NC-11).

17. Reviving Cold War Air Bases: A Strategic Move for Modern Deterrence?

Conclusion:

Ultimately, the decision to expand the basing footprint should be built on a comprehensive analysis of costs and benefits and a thorough understanding of strategic implications. By carefully weighing these factors, policymakers can make informed decisions that enhance national security while minimizing negative impacts on communities and the environment.

Reviving Cold War Air Bases: A Strategic Move for Modern Deterrence? — Global Security Review

globalsecurityreview.com · by Joshua Thibert · July 25, 2024

The West is behind in rebuilding the infrastructure needed to meet the emerging threats posed by China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia. The re-emergence of great-power competition requires an intense effort to rebuild atrophied capabilities. The Strategic Posture Review made the case for urgent investment in modernized strategic forces including a less vulnerable road-mobile Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and expressed concern that the nuclear bomber force is currently located at only three bases with ICBMs and ballistic missile submarines (SSBN) each at two additional bases.

As the B-21 bomber enters the Air Force inventory the number of nuclear-capable bomber bases sees very little change. With the nation preparing for the geopolitical era ahead, it is time to discuss the re-commissioning of Cold War–era United States Air Force (USAF) bases, whose geographic positions can once again play an important role in deterring the axis of autocracy that is forming in opposition to American and Western leadership.

The changing strategic landscape and re-emergence of great-power competition should prompt discussion of renewing a committed focus towards strategic deterrence and the nuclear capabilities needed to deter China, North Korea, and Russia. Many Cold War–era bases were strategically located to project power and respond to threats. Re-commissioning these bases could provide needed dispersal for a bomber force that is located at only three bases. While upgrades and modernization are necessary, existing infrastructure at bases that remain in use by National Guard units, for example, or other organizations could significantly reduce the cost and time required to build a more resilient bomber leg of the nuclear triad. Tankers and other supporting components to the bomber mission would also benefit.

Utilizing existing bases could minimize environmental impacts, construction costs, and impact on local communities. While the Base Realignment and Closure effort that followed the Cold War’s end allowed the United States to reduce defense spending through dramatic cuts to infrastructure, the three-decade hiatus from great-power competition is over and the consolidation impacted deployability and introduced strategic force vulnerabilities. Today’s accelerating threat requires the urgent re-establishment of a ready network of dispersal and forward bases.

In tandem with re-commissioning Cold War–era Air Force bases, the strategic value of the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) must also be considered. As a critical asset in ensuring energy security, the SPR provides a buffer against potential disruptions in oil supply that could arise from geopolitical tensions or conflicts. Ensuring that military operations are not hampered by fuel shortages is paramount, especially when considering the logistical demands of dispersed air bases. By maintaining and potentially expanding the SPR, the US can safeguard its military readiness and resilience, ensuring that energy constraints do not undermine strategic deterrence and defense capabilities.

The expansion of the American strategic nuclear arsenal—including increasing the number of SSBNs, making Sentinel road-mobile, and acquiring more than the planned 100 B-21 stealth bombers, which are all required in the current strategic environment—underscores the need for re-commissioned bases. Not only are these bases useful for dispersal of bombers, but they have the potential to offer areas from which road-mobile ICBMs can disperse.

Admittedly, significant investment is required to modernize shuddered bases, including upgrades to runways, hangars, communication systems, and security. Environmental assessments and remediation efforts may also be necessary to address potential contamination from previous operations, adding to the cost and timeline. Re-commissioning could also disrupt local communities and raise concerns about noise pollution, safety, and environmental impacts, necessitating careful planning and community engagement. However, many towns devastated by the closure of bases would gladly welcome their return.

Significant resources are required to refurbish or rebuild facilities, integrate new aircraft and technology with existing infrastructure, coordinate with local authorities, and establish new supply chains and support networks. Legacy infrastructure at Air National Guard bases, for example, can reduce the cost and time required to build a more resilient force structure while reducing costs. ICBMs, tankers, and other support elements would also benefit.

During the Cold War, the U.S. military employed a dispersal strategy to mitigate the risk of concentrated attacks on its airbases, scattering aircraft across multiple locations to enhance survivability and ensure retaliatory capabilities. This approach was vital in countering the Soviet threat—reducing the vulnerability of strategic assets. In today’s context of renewed great-power competition, with rising threats from China, North Korea, and Russia, adjusting the current strategy is essential.

Ultimately, the decision to expand the basing footprint should be built on a comprehensive analysis of costs and benefits and a thorough understanding of strategic implications. By carefully weighing these factors, policymakers can make informed decisions that enhance national security while minimizing negative impacts on communities and the environment.

Joshua Thibert is a Contributing Senior Analyst at the National Institute for Deterrence Studies (NIDS) with nearly 30 years of comprehensive expertise. His background encompasses roles as a former counterintelligence special agent within the Department of Defense and as a practitioner in compliance, security, and risk management in the private sector. Views express are his own.

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About the Author

Joshua Thibert

Author GSR

Joshua Thibert is a Contributing Senior Analyst at the National Institute for Deterrence Studies (NIDS)with over 30 years of comprehensive expertise, his background encompasses roles as a former counterintelligence special agent within the Department of Defense and as a practitioner in compliance, security, and risk management in the private sector. His extensive academic and practitioner experience spans strategic intelligence, multiple domains within defense and strategic studies, and critical infrastructure protection.

• Fortifying America’s Pacific Presence: Revitalizing Tinian Island’s Airfield
• Unveiling the Future: The Convergence of AI and Strategic Intelligence Operations
• The Double-edged Sword of Artificial Intelligence
• Lockheed Skunk Works KC-Z: Extending the Range of Deterrence

globalsecurityreview.com · by Joshua Thibert · July 25, 2024

18. France renews vow to defend freedom of navigation as it showcases fighter jets in the Philippines

France renews vow to defend freedom of navigation as it showcases fighter jets in the Philippines

Yahoo · by JIM GOMEZJuly 28, 2024 at 6:35 AM·3 min read237Link Copied

CLARK, Philippines (AP) — France renewed a commitment to help defend freedom of navigation and overflight in the Asia-Pacific Sunday and said that its supersonic fighter jets — a pair of which landed for the first time in the Philippines — and advance military power would enable it to respond rapidly to any humanitarian or security crisis in the region.

France is also working to quickly conclude a defense pact that would allow it to deploy a larger number of forces for joint exercises to the Philippines, French Ambassador to Manila Marie Fontanel said.

France has moved to broaden its defense engagements in the Indo-Pacific region, including with the Philippines and other Southeast Asian nations.

That dovetails with the effort of the administration of Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to boost his country’s territorial defense by allowing a larger US military presence in the Philippines under a 2014 defense agreement and by building security alliances with Asian and Western nations as it deals with China’s increasingly assertive actions in the disputed South China Sea.

An annual French air force mission called Pegase, which showcases its combat power and travels to friendly countries to deepen defense relations, arrived over the weekend at Clark air base, a part of the former U.S. Air Force base, north of Manila, with two French-made Rafale fighter jets and air force cargo and transport aircraft.

The French air force flew a small group of journalists, including from The Associated Press, aboard an Airbus A400M cargo aircraft over Philippine waters facing the South China Sea Sunday to demonstrate its crucial capability to undertake aerial refueling. But pockets of turbulence prompted the French military to abort the maneuver for safety reasons.

Philippine air force personnel will also get the chance to fly onboard the Rafale jets and familiarize themselves with the aircraft. The fighter jets have been a “game changer," French air force Brig. Gen. Guillaume Thomas, who was heading the air force mission, told a news conference.

“They enable us to go very far and very fast and to be able to react very quickly…in case of a humanitarian crisis or even security crisis,” Thomas said. “We are able to deploy forces from France to be in this area in the Pacific in a very short notice.”

The French air force mission “is not designed to target any specific country or any specific situation” and does not aim to escalate regional tensions, Fontanel said.

France and the Philippines have begun preliminary talks on a status-of-forces agreement that would provide a legal framework and enable troops from each country to hold exercises in the other’s territory. France has been tasked to finish an initial draft of the agreement by September that would be the basis of future talks, Fontanel said.

Aside from France, the Philippines has been holding separate talks with Canada and New Zealand for such agreements. It signed a similar pact with Japan earlier this month.

China has strongly criticized such alliance-building and large-scale U.S. military exercises in the Philippines, saying the Philippines is “ganging up” with countries from outside Asia, and warned that military drills could instigate a confrontation and undermine regional stability.

Philippine military officials have dismissed China’s criticism, saying the drills and alliances are aimed at boosting Manila’s territorial defense and are not directed at any particular country.

___

Associated Press journalist Haruka Nuga contributed to this report from Bangkok.

Yahoo · by JIM GOMEZJuly 28, 2024 at 6:35 AM·3 min read237Link Copied

19. NATO After Next: From Interoperability to Fungibility

Conclusion:

If interoperability defined efforts to generate combat power across the NATO alliance during the Cold War, fungibility should guide collective defense in the 21st century. Fungibility does not replace interoperability. It complements the concept and creates a theory of advantage based on freedom of action and optionality.

A new network of authoritarian states has the political will and resources to challenge what is left of the international order. That will bring more conflict, not less, to Europe’s doorstep and could even see free societies pulled into far-flung wars around the globe. The only way to meet the challenge is through building credible combat forces. That credibility underlies deterrence and the ability to fight wars beneath the nuclear threshold. Modern credibility rests on fielding interoperable and fungible forces that can pivot between missions and enable more dynamic task organization, optimizing forces in response to threat scenarios in a way that creates options and tempo. This adaptability provides new avenues for confronting mass since, sadly, authoritarian states seem primed to outproduce free countries regardless of the cost it imposes on their own citizens.

Like the Cold War quest for interoperability, fungibility will require experimentation and investments in people. NATO should use a mix of its schools, task forces, and battle groups to encourage bottom-up concept development, including testing new formations in head-to-head simulated combat via networks like Fight Club. The best concepts to emerge could be tested in an iterative manner to enable rapid prototyping and fielding. Done right, this process will create a culture of experimentation and produce entirely new types of units better aligned to the realities of modern combat.

NATO After Next: From Interoperability to Fungibility - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Benjamin Jensen · July 30, 2024

When I was a kid, I loved Legos and Transformers. They could take multiple shapes and let me play out a million different adventures from the same set of building blocks and plastic robot heroes and villains. Why can’t I have that versatility as an adult in my arsenal of democracy?

The answer is a flawed measure of effectiveness in modern weapon systems that focuses on single mission performance instead of fungibility and able to conduct multiple missions with the same piece of kit.

In the wake of the recent NATO summit, the alliance needs to look forward and ask itself what can strengthen collective defense over the coming decades. At the same time, the alliance will have to do more with less as the costs of aging populations crowd out the ability to surge defense spending. In other words, even though defense spending is rising to combat authoritarian states like Russia and China, there are structural limits to these increases due to the need to finance social safety nets and healthcare systems. This dilemma calls for new thinking about collective defense.

Given these challenges, the future of NATO’s military power — and with it the credibility of the alliance — rests on complementing its historic focus on interoperable forces with a new interest in fungibility. Fungibility — a core economic concept — implies that a military capability can be deployed on multiple platforms and used to conduct multiple missions, thereby lowering opportunity costs without losing its contribution to military power. Fungible systems may be more expensive to buy but are cheaper in terms of the range of missions they can accomplish. This makes them more adaptable and more valuable. Just as fungible financial assets preserve economic value, fungible military assets enable a more flexible force capable of accomplishing a wider range of missions. As a result, a more uncertain and high-risk threat environment puts a premium on fielding fungible military forces.

Become a Member

From Interoperability to Fungibility

A hidden hallmark of the NATO alliance has been its commitment to interoperability. It is one thing to have a collective defense pact. It is another to ensure 32 countries have military forces that can fight alongside one another.

The alliance defines interoperability in broad terms to include anything that better connects member states along technical, procedural, human, and informational lines. Technical interoperability ensures that hardware and armaments have standard measures. Procedural and human interoperability deals with doctrine, tactics, and establishment of a common terminology and training to ensure allies have a shared understanding. Information interoperability includes efforts to build a connected battle network that bridges, for example, NATO’s federated mission networking with the mission partner environment for U.S. allies connected to the combined joint all-domain command-and-control network. It is what drives the need to build deeper interoperability and embrace data science, AI, and machine learning as seen, for example, in ongoing experiments run by the Pentagon’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office.

Interoperability is constantly in the making. It requires time and resources at both the state and alliance level, ranging from exchanges to war games and exercise programs. For NATO’s Allied Command Transformation, interoperability is the capstone concept in its exercise program and the hackathons it co-sponsors with member states.

NATO understands what it takes to fight as an interoperable force, even if it struggles at times to achieve it. But now it needs to start thinking in terms of fungibility as well.

As I wrote earlier, fungibility is an economic concept referring to the extent to which a good is interchangeable for another good without a significant loss in value. The goods might be different (i.e., commodities, currencies), but the value is similar. This property produces multiple benefits including easing the exchange of goods and assets in a manner that leads to more efficient markets, optimized risk management, and better returns.

Outside of economics, fungibility played a role in helping scholars in the 1990s analyze if states could substitute military power for political power alongside the utility of force. Scholars like David Baldwin held that military force was fungible but highly contextual. The fungibility of power varies from situation to situation, making some instruments of power subject to diminishing marginal returns when incorrectly applied.

What has received less attention is a more operational analysis of fungible military concepts and capabilities. Can any piece of equipment — from artillery to a fighter jet — conduct multiple missions without a significant loss in value? To the extent that one piece of equipment can, it should produce — consistent with the theory of fungibility — ease of exchange, increased efficiency, and optimized risk management. When a fifth-generation fighter paired with collaborative combat aircraft can perform both counter-air missions and close air support, it provides more options to commanders (ease of exchange) while also allowing them to optimize the expected payoff from changing mission conditions. The same is true of ground combat. If a towed howitzer can provide fire support and contribute to air defense, it is fungible.

This implies two types of fungibility. Platform fungibility describes how a single weapons platform — for example, an MQ-9 unmanned aerial vehicle or a vertical launch cell on an unmanned surface combatant — can use multiple types of weapons. Mission fungibility defines a situation in which a single munition or class of munitions can be adapted to increase its optionality. The missile that can kill tanks, small ships, and — more often in practice — unsuspecting terrorists (i.e., high-value individual targeting) is fungible across missions. While both forms of fungibility are desirable force-design attributes, the ideal is to have both: a multi-mission capable platform that can fire weapons and hold multiple targets at risk.

There are historical precedents. The Flak 36 multipurpose gun developed by the Germans in the interwar period was an effective anti-air and anti-tank weapon that could even be fired from submarines. Since its introduction in the 1980s, Hellfire missiles have gone through multiple iterations that allow the air-to-ground missile to be fired at small naval ships, employed by light ground vehicles, and even fired from surface combatants like the littoral combat ship.

The two concept and capability mixes discussed below illustrate the promise of embracing fungibility as a core force design attribute.

Fungible Guns

It is now possible to field old-fashioned guns capable of both mission and platform fungibility. First, standard artillery shells can be adapted to become cannon-based air defense. By generating an electrical current in flight and powering data links, shells become mission fungible. They can be used to augment short-range air defenses, making them direct and indirect fire weapons usually thought of in terms of infantry-support capable of engaging drones and cruise missiles.

This concept grows out of experiments as part of the third offset to use high-velocity projectiles fired from howitzers to intercept everything from cruise to ballistic missiles. The concept also found traction in Japan, which experimented with a mix of high-velocity projectiles and data-linked artillery to engage cruise missiles and drone swarms.

What has changed is that new approaches focus more on data networking than intercept speed. It is better to shoot a slow arrow and hit the target than miss with a Mach 5 missile. This approach lowers the cost and makes weapons ranging from the 30mm cannons standard on infantry fighting vehicles to towed and/or mobile 155mm howitzers fungible.

Second, old-fashioned guns can take on new missions based on platform fungibility. The Mojave — an unmanned aircraft originally built for supporting ground forces — can be equipped with air-to-air missiles and gun pods to conduct defensive counter-air missions against slower moving targets like loitering munitions, subsonic cruise missiles, and helicopters. This concept is on display as Ukraine mobilizes slow flying prop planes to defend against loitering missiles. To increase their survivability, the unmanned aircraft could be paired with another aircraft using electronic warfare and jamming to obscure enemy air defense targeting. This system, currently being employed by the U.S. Marine Corps, makes even slow flying unmanned aircraft difficult to target. This combination of sensors, air, and ground-based air defense creates a mobile and flexible air defense in depth. It won’t stop fourth- and fifth-generation jets, but it will deny cruise missiles, loitering munitions, and helicopters. The fungibility of the gun achieves new reach when paired with a network that enables smaller, flexible air–ground teams to protect the forward edge of the battlefield from barrages of cruise missiles, loitering munitions, and drone swarms.

In addition, fungibility allows units to rapidly transition from defensive counter-air to suppression of enemy air defense and interdiction along the forward edge of the battlefield at machine speed. Imagine the Mojave unmanned aircraft providing targeting support for 3D-printed, air-launched effects swarming alongside loitering munitions fired from unmanned ground vehicles and even remotely piloted helicopters to attack Russian air defenses protecting an advancing armored column. While the Mojave and unmanned helicopters are at risk from surface-to-air missiles, the use of jamming to create attack windows of opportunity can reduce their vulnerability. Regardless, platform and mission fungibility present the enemy with a dilemma.

These flexible missions will also require new approaches to data. NATO should expand formal standards for interoperability to include new concepts like the modular open systems approach to support computing-intensive tasks like sensor fusion and AI-enabled analysis. This concept should embrace an open-source architecture to make it easier for NATO to dynamically organize large, unmanned forces. There will still be humans in the loop and even mechanics on the ground to support new battle groups, but code will be king and enable new tactics.

Fungible Missiles

Like old-fashioned artillery rounds and dumb guns, decades-old missiles can adopt new roles based on a mix of platform and mission fungibility. The Standard Missile — a class of modern missiles — is fielded on naval destroyers and ground-based AEGIS Ashore facilities. It has a proven track record of intercepting ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, aircraft at extended ranges, and naval vessels. Earlier variants of these missiles were even used in Operation Burnt Frost to shoot down a U.S. satellite and demonstrate America’s counter-space capability. New standardized containers like the MK 70 Mod 1 payload delivery system add to the missile’s fungibility. The containers allow the missile to be fired from land, including the U.S. Army’s new truck mobile Typhoon launcher, and smaller naval vessels like the littoral combat ship and future optionally manned surface vessels, adding platform fungibility to this family of missiles’ mission fungibility. Recent experiments have confirmed the ability to fire the missile from fighter aircraft, increasing the standoff range. This mix of platforms and missions helped the U.S. Navy develop new warfighting concepts including distributed lethality and its successor, distributed maritime operations. In short, fungibility generates options.

These options can be expanded through increased interoperability between partners and allies. Japan has deployed the Standard Missile on its destroyers for years. Australia fields the weapon in its new surface combatants, including the Hobart-class destroyer. The Netherlands is in the process of buying the Standard Missile for its new class of frigates. South Korea is procuring them for its AEGIS destroyers to support ballistic missile defense.

The fungibility of the Standard Missile enables planners to consider a wider range of contingencies for confronting emerging threats. Imagine a near future scenario in which Russia uses military power in the Mediterranean to threaten NATO with a combination of anti-access/area denial bastion coastal defense, advanced air defenses, fighter squadrons, and a reinforced Mediterranean Fleet that includes submarines stationed in Tartus. The combined effects allow Russia to hold naval and air assets at risk over large portions of the Eastern Mediterranean.

In developing its flexible response options, NATO planners can tailor different approaches because of the fungibility of the Standard Missile. A standing NATO maritime group could operate alongside a U.S. Army multi-domain task force to support an enhanced integrated air and missile defense as a demonstration of capability to Russia during a crisis. This conventional deterrent signal would be strengthened by the fact that Russian forces would know that Standard Missiles could be used in both an anti-air and anti-ship role. In the event of a transition to limited hostilities, the NATO Maritime Group could pull back and use F/A-18s to fire Standard Missiles to attack Russian frigates. All of these missions could in turn grow in effectiveness when tied into a battle network based on the modular open systems approach and using unmanned aircraft targeting over-the-horizon threats with signals intelligence.

Conclusion

If interoperability defined efforts to generate combat power across the NATO alliance during the Cold War, fungibility should guide collective defense in the 21st century. Fungibility does not replace interoperability. It complements the concept and creates a theory of advantage based on freedom of action and optionality.

A new network of authoritarian states has the political will and resources to challenge what is left of the international order. That will bring more conflict, not less, to Europe’s doorstep and could even see free societies pulled into far-flung wars around the globe. The only way to meet the challenge is through building credible combat forces. That credibility underlies deterrence and the ability to fight wars beneath the nuclear threshold. Modern credibility rests on fielding interoperable and fungible forces that can pivot between missions and enable more dynamic task organization, optimizing forces in response to threat scenarios in a way that creates options and tempo. This adaptability provides new avenues for confronting mass since, sadly, authoritarian states seem primed to outproduce free countries regardless of the cost it imposes on their own citizens.

Like the Cold War quest for interoperability, fungibility will require experimentation and investments in people. NATO should use a mix of its schools, task forces, and battle groups to encourage bottom-up concept development, including testing new formations in head-to-head simulated combat via networks like Fight Club. The best concepts to emerge could be tested in an iterative manner to enable rapid prototyping and fielding. Done right, this process will create a culture of experimentation and produce entirely new types of units better aligned to the realities of modern combat.

Become a Member

Benjamin Jensen, Ph.D. is the Petersen Chair and a professor of strategic studies at the School of Advanced Warfighting in the Marine Corps University as well as a senior fellow in the Futures Lab at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He is also an officer in the U.S. Army Reserve. The views expressed are strictly his own and not indicative of any official government or industry position.

Image: Royal Air Force

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Benjamin Jensen · July 30, 2024

20. Republicans and Democrats Name Members of Trump Assassination Inquiry

Republicans and Democrats Name Members of Trump Assassination Inquiry

House leaders picked 13 lawmakers with background in national security and law enforcement, including a Republican who trafficked in conspiracy theories about the Jan. 6, 2021, attack.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/29/us/politics/trump-assassination-task-force.html

Representative Mike Kelly was named chairman of a new House task force formed to investigate the attempted assassination of former President Donald J. Trump.Credit...Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times

By Luke Broadwater

Reporting from Washington

July 29, 2024

House leaders on Monday appointed 13 lawmakers to serve on a newly formed bipartisan congressional task force to investigate the attempted assassination of former President Donald J. Trump, choosing mostly members with significant military or law enforcement experience.

Representative Mike Kelly, Republican of Pennsylvania who represents the district where the shooting took place while Mr. Trump spoke at a campaign rally, was named the panel’s chairman. The top Democrat on the task force will be Representative Jason Crow of Colorado, a former Army Ranger.

“We have the utmost confidence in this bipartisan group of steady, highly qualified, and capable members of Congress to move quickly to find the facts, ensure accountability, and help make certain such failures never happen again,” Speaker Mike Johnson and Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the minority leader, said in a joint statement.

In private conversations between the two leaders, Mr. Jeffries emphasized the need to appoint serious members to the panel, a proposition with which Mr. Johnson agreed, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions. Mr. Johnson also emphasized that the task force, which was formally created by a congressional act that unanimously passed the House last week, represent a cross section of views within the Republican Party.

Spots on the committee, which is seen as a high-profile assignment to close out the 118th Congress, were the subject of intense internal lobbying.

The appointment of one lawmaker, Representative Clay Higgins, Republican of Louisiana, sparked criticism because of his history of endorsing conspiracy theories, including about the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Mr. Higgins, a former U.S. Army staff sergeant and former law enforcement officer, has claimed that the F.B.I. entrapped supporters of Mr. Trump into carrying out the riot, and that “ghost buses” took agents provocateurs to the Capitol to instigate the violence.

Mr. Higgins, who chairs a House subcommittee on border enforcement, also has claimed that the federal government is “staging a civil war” against Texas. And he called the criminal charges against Mr. Trump for mishandling classified documents a “perimeter probe from the oppressors.”

Other Republicans on the panel include Representative Mark Green of Tennessee, a former U.S. Army major and combat veteran who is the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee and led the drive to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas; Representative David Joyce of Ohio, who leads a group of centrist Republicans and served as an attorney and county prosecutor for 25 years; Representative Laurel Lee of Florida, a former judge and federal prosecutor; Representative Michael Waltz of Florida, a former Green Beret; and Representative Pat Fallon of Texas, a former Air Force officer.

For the Democrats, Mr. Jeffries selected Representative Lou Correa of California, who recently traveled to Butler, Pa., with the Homeland Security Committee to visit the site of the assassination attempt; Representative Madeleine Dean of Pennsylvania, one of the impeachment managers who investigated Mr. Trump over the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol; Representative Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, an Air Force veteran; Representative Glenn Ivey of Maryland, a former federal prosecutor; and Representative Jared Moskowitz of Florida, a former director of Florida’s Division of Emergency Management who has earned a reputation for verbal sparring on the Oversight Committee.

In an interview, Mr. Ivey said that the committee would try to perform its duties in a nonpartisan way.

“It’s important to have a nonpartisan effort,” he said. “We don’t have time for politics at all on this. We have a very short amount of time to get the investigation done.”

Mr. Ivey said he had worked with several of the Republicans on the panel in the past and believed they were “straight shooters and reasonable people.”

“It’s a core group I think we can work with in a reasonable way,” he said.

The task force, which was approved last week by a 416-0 vote on the House floor, will take the lead of an investigation being carried out by at least four different congressional panels.

The task force will have subpoena power and will attempt to answer myriad questions about what went wrong on the day of the attempted assassination of Mr. Trump. In the aftermath of the July 13 shooting, the director of the Secret Service, Kimberly A. Cheatle, resigned.

Luke Broadwater covers Congress with a focus on congressional investigations. More about Luke Broadwater

A version of this article appears in print on July 30, 2024, Section A, Page 13 of the New York edition with the headline: House Panel Is Appointed To Investigate The Shooting. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

21. COLONELS WRITING FOR COLONELS

The CSA is quoted in the discussion.: "Professionals take part in conversations."

A 36 minute podcast that brought back a lot of memories and hopefully will encourage professionals (and more than just Colonels) to write and discuss all aspects of the profession of arms.

COLONELS WRITING FOR COLONELS

https://warroom.armywarcollege.edu/podcasts/colonels-writing/

 JAKE LARKOWICH , JP CLARK  JULY 30, 2024 2 MIN READ

It’s time to talk about the Harding Project once again. The project is the Chief of Staff of the Army’s (CSA) effort to renew professional publications, strengthen the profession, and ultimately enhance the warfighting capability of the U.S. Army. Jake Larkowich, Deputy Commandant of the U.S. Army War College and associate editor for War Room, stepped into the studio to share a senior leader perspective. He joins Editor-in-Chief, JP Clark, to discuss the importance of putting words to your thoughts. Their conversation focuses on sharing experiences and opinions in writing at the senior leader level, where there is value for both junior officers and NCOs, as well as challenges and benefits to writing for one’s contemporaries.

Professional writing is a way to overcome the tyranny of distance and share those ideas outside of that closed circle that you exist in on a day-to-day basis.

The podcast episode JP references with Zach Griffiths and Zach Griffiths and Theo Lipsky can be found here. The article written by COL Larkowich and then COL Buzzard was titled What Should the Brigade Be Doing Right Now? Deconstructing the ‘Brigade Fight’.

Jake Larkowich is a colonel in the U.S. Army and serves as the Deputy Commandant of the U.S. Army War College. In his immediate prior assignment, he served as the Director of the Center for Strategic Leadership within the College. Colonel Larkowich previously served as the Commander of the 188th Infantry Brigade in First Army Division East at Fort Stewart, Georgia, providing training and validation to Army National Guard and Reserve Component units across the Southeastern United States.

JP Clark is an associate professor of military strategy teaching in the Basic Strategic Art Program. He served in the army for twenty-six years as an armor officer and strategist. He holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in history from Duke University, an M.S.S. from the Army War College, and a B.S. in Russian and German from West Point. He is the author of Preparing for War: The Emergence of the Modern U.S. Army, 1815-1917 (Harvard, 2017). He is currently working on a history of U.S. military strategy in the Pacific from 1898 to 1941 that is under contract with the University Press of Kansas. He is the 3rd Editor-in-Chief of War Room. Follow him on Twitter @JPClark97.

The views expressed in this presentation are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Army War College, U.S. Army, or Department of Defense.

Photo Description: Chief of Staff of the Army, General Randy George, addresses the crowd at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new Root Hall at the U.S. Army War College, 25 October 2023.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the U.S. Army War College flickr account.

22. The Islamic State Keeps Finding Opportunities

Excerpts:

The United States should also attach increased urgency to resuming training courses for Syrian Democrat Forces’ prison guards, which have been put on indefinite hold in 2024. The Syrian Democratic Forces attribute the delay to a “lack of availability” as their leaders have had to contend with an increase in Turkish airstrikes targeting commanders and persistent tensions with some Arab tribes following an uprising in September 2023 that killed 150 people. The issue of prisons in northeast Syria is particularly sensitive as 54,600 Islamic State members and their relatives are being held in 27 detention centers run by the Syrian Democratic Forces across northeast Syria. These facilities have regularly been the target of prison breaks, including the al-Sinaa prison, which Islamic State cells briefly captured from Jan. 20 to Feb. 3, 2022, when they managed to release several dozen high-ranking leaders.

Despite this, U.S. forces continue to note a “general lack of professionalism within the detention facility guard force,” which only shares information “when it benefits them,” describing both sides’ overall relationship as “very transactional.” The Islamic State certainly harbors ambitions to launch more prison breaks in the future and, should security in the area deteriorate, it may successfully do so once again.

Though the current political climate in the United States likely will not permit it, in the medium to long term Washington should increase its troop presence in northeast Syria to expand its patrols along key highways where the Islamic State moves weapons and fighters between different regions. Since the Jan. 28, 2024 attack on U.S troops in Jordan, the United States increased its deployment of troops to the country by 20 percent, with the number growing from 3,000 to 3,813. A similar increase to the 900 U.S. personnel currently operating in Syria would have a significant impact in stabilizing an arguably more volatile and dangerous area.

The Islamic State Keeps Finding Opportunities - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Jeremy Hodge · July 30, 2024

In March 2024, the Islamic State killed more people in parts of Syria controlled by the Assad regime than at any point since July 2018. The attacks are part of an ongoing trend since October 2023 that has seen Islamic State activity in this area grow to levels unseen since the group lost control of its territorial caliphate.

This growth is largely attributable to the recent withdrawal of thousands of Russian and Iranian troops from parts of Syria controlled by the Assad regime, which has given the Islamic State more space to operate than at any point since 2017. The prospect of a new war between Israel and Hizballah in Lebanon threatens to exacerbate this trend, as Iran would likely redeploy thousands more of its proxy forces from Syria, Iraq, and elsewhere to reinforce Hizballah positions should a war occur.

The United States should take note of these developments and ramp up its number of raids and operations against the Islamic State, which have declined 16 percent compared to 2023. This was largely due to reduced U.S. troop activity after Oct. 7, 2023, when Iranian-backed groups carried out more than 170 attacks against American personnel.

The United States should also immediately resume training courses for Syrian Democratic Forces’ prison guards, which have been put indefinitely on pause in 2024. The issue of prisons is particularly urgent. The Syrian Democratic Forces are currently holding more than 50,000 veteran Islamic State members and their relatives at 27 detention centers across northeast Syria, many of which have already been the target of prison break attempts by Islamic State cells.

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Rising Risks

The growth in Islamic State activity has been sufficient to elicit a rare statement of warning from U.S. Central Command, which recently claimed that, “From January to June 2024, ISIS has claimed 153 attacks in Iraq and Syria. At this rate, ISIS is on pace to more than double the total number of attacks they claimed in 2023.”

In truth, Central Command’s assessment of the Islamic State’s growth represents a serious understatement, as it only accounts for attacks that the group itself has claimed responsibility for. As has been widely documented, since 2020 the Islamic State has deliberately under-reported its attacks in Syria — claiming on average 25 percent of the total — as part of a strategy to re-establish itself without attracting the attention of its adversaries. More accurate data from a collection of experts puts the total number of Islamic State attacks in Syria alone in the first half of 2024 at 551, with the vast majority occurring in areas controlled by the regime of President Bashar al Assad.

The Assad regime has struggled to contain the group’s resurgence as the wars in Ukraine and Gaza have produced downstream effects that have forced both Russia and Iran to withdraw thousands of personnel from key parts of the country where the Islamic State operates. Following the Wagner Group’s June 2023 mutiny in Rostov-on-Don and Israel’s expanded bombing campaign of Iranian targets in Syria in early 2024, thousands of Russian and then Iranian forces withdrew from the country. In both cases, the Islamic State was able within weeks to take advantage of the vacuum and carry out record breaking levels of violence. Now, the fallout from the Gaza conflict threatens to provoke a new war in Lebanon between Israel and Hizballah that would likely produce a third wave of withdrawals, in particular of Iranian-backed Iraqi, Afghan, and other militiamen who have pledged to deploy to Lebanon should a war occur.

Since 2012, these foreign militia have formed the backbone of Iranian-backed infantry units in Syria’s Central Desert — the Islamic State’s main area of operations — and other sensitive frontline positions in Aleppo, Damascus, and southern Syria. If they withdrew, it would be disastrous for the region and grant the Islamic State even greater freedom of movement to conduct attacks. This includes in areas of northeast Syria controlled by the United States and its partners, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which in 2024 also saw a 320 percent increase in Islamic State attacks compared to 2023.

According to the U.S.-led coalition’s most recent quarterly report, by March 2024 Islamic State attacks against the Syrian Democratic Forces were double that of any other month going back to January 2022. Local reports claim the number of attacks in April 2024 was even higher. In May and June 2024, the Islamic State carried out three suicide bombing attacks for the first time in years.

On June 5, 2024, the Assad regime attempted to address the threat on its side by launching its largest anti-Islamic State campaign since 2021. However, unlike previous campaigns that were led mostly by Russian officers and Wagner mercenaries, this campaign is being led by three Syrian army units with close ties to Assad’s inner circle. These are the units traditionally responsible for recapturing and holding territory from moderate rebels in southern and northwest Syria.

By removing these units from other front lines, the Assad regime has left itself exposed, and in southern Syria violence has exploded since their withdrawal. That said, in the first month of the campaign, the Islamic State killed an estimated 69 pro-Assad fighters and wounded dozens more. The fate of many more who have fallen prey to the group’s ambushes in the desert remain unknown. As of now, the campaign’s overall effectiveness remains unclear.

Exploited Opportunities

Since losing the last of its territorial possessions in Syria in March 2019, the Islamic State has waged a hard-fought campaign to ensure its survival, passing through several cycles of growth and collapse in the last 5 years. In each instance, the group’s expansion was driven by bouts of infighting amongst its adversaries that led to the withdrawal of foreign troops from key parts of the country, creating gaps the group exploited to carry out attacks and extort merchants and local communities.

The first of these gaps opened up during Turkey’s October 2019 assault on the Syrian Democratic Forces. Hundreds of U.S. personnel withdrew from the outskirts of key cities in the area, leaving Russian and Assad regime troops to take their place — although these cities remain jointly administered by the Syrian Democratic Forces, Russia, and pro-Assad troops. Many of these cities — such as Ain Aissa, Raqqa, Tabqa, and others — are located along the 712, 6, and 4 highways that link the Turkish city of Akçakale to Syria’s Central Desert, a sparsely populated 80,000 square-kilometer expanse nominally under the control of the Assad regime.

The Central Desert is home to a series of rugged, impenetrable mountains and a majority of Syria’s gas and phosphate reserves along with their processing infrastructure. This region separates Syria’s densely populated western strip from areas northeast of the Euphrates River controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces. Following the loss of its caliphate, the area became a rear base and training hub for Islamic State cells who could take refuge in the mountains and launch violent ambushes at night on passing convoys of soldiers escorting energy shipments across the country.

After October 2019, the number of Islamic State fighters in the Central Desert grew, as Russian and Assad regime troops that controlled the 712, 6, and 4 highways had far fewer resources to patrol the area than U.S. forces. The group subsequently converted the highways into active smuggling corridors for foreign and local fighters entering the Central Desert from northeast Syria, at times coordinating with Russian and Assad regime troops who looked the other way in exchange for bribes.

By April 2020, Islamic State attacks in the Central Desert began to surge, a trend that continued, then doubled in August and remained constant throughout the rest of 2020. Despite this growth, a perfect mix of converging factors prevented Russia and the Assad regime from taking the steps necessary to rein in the group’s expansion.

First, the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic weakened the Assad regime’s already low capacity to patrol wide swaths of the country. In February and March 2020, significant fighting between the regime and armed opposition groups in northwestern and southern Syria further diverted the former’s focus and its ability to redirect troops elsewhere.

Across the Mediterranean, fighting in the first half of 2020 between Russian- and Turkish-backed factions in Libya further drew Moscow’s attention away from Syria. Rather than deploy fighters to the Central Desert, Moscow instead recruited thousands of Syrian mercenaries in early 2020 who were flown to Libya to fight alongside Russia’s ally and proxy, Gen. Khalifa Haftar.

Lastly, the Islamic State was helped by local developments in the Central Desert itself. In June 2020, an intense rivalry emerged between the Assad regime’s two most powerful commanders in Deir Ezzor province, whose units in turn clashed with one another and refused to cooperate in carrying out patrols. In addition to granting the Islamic State greater freedom of movement, both commanders allegedly cooperated with the group against one another, providing it intelligence on the other’s movements that facilitated several large massacres. One such massacre of 39 troops on New Year’s Eve 2020 finally pushed Russia, Iran, and the Assad regime to form a joint operations room, which from January to March 2021 killed off much of the Islamic State’s active leadership and fighting ranks in the Central Desert.

It would not be until fall 2023 that a similar mix of circumstances emerged to create gaps that the Islamic State could exploit to resume attacks against Assad regime troops at the same level that it did in 2020. Once again, these circumstances were driven by infighting within and between regional states that preceded the withdrawal of foreign troops, in this case those of Russia and Iran.

The first instance occurred after the Wagner Group’s failed June 24, 2023 mutiny against Russian army units in Rostov-on-Don. In early September 2023, shortly after the death of Wagner commander Yevgeny Prigozhin, thousands of the group’s fighters withdrew from Syria after refusing an ultimatum to merge either with units affiliated with Russia’s Ministry of Defense or Redut, a smaller Russian mercenary outfit and long-time rival of Prigozhin. Despite the apparent blow to a core pillar of his regime, Assad welcomed the withdrawal, and similarly refused offers from Redut to dispatch forces to replace Wagner fighters in the Central Desert — where the latter had disproportionately been deployed. This created a vacuum that the Islamic State could exploit.

In this case, tensions arose from disagreements over energy reserves. Wagner forces in Syria first deployed en masse to the Central Desert in July 2017, when a Prigozhin front company received a five-year contract from the state-owned Syrian Petroleum Company. According to this agreement, Wagner would receive 25 percent of all profits from oil, gas, and phosphate reserves that it captured from the Islamic State, which controlled the area at the time. Many of these facilities were built, owned, or operated in the 2000s by Stroytransgaz, a Russian company owned by Gennady Timchenko, a close Putin associate responsible for managing the Russian leader’s financial interests abroad. Throughout 2017, Stroytransgaz itself signed a new wave of contracts with the Assad regime securing rights to oversee production, transportation, and repairs at these and other sites.

At the time, the Assad regime was dependent on Russia and Iran to defeat the Islamic State and moderate rebel groups that still controlled wide swaths of the country, and so granted wide-ranging concessions to companies from both countries. However these deals generated widespread anger amongst Syria’s elite, who resented being excluded from the country’s most lucrative revenue generating sectors.

As large-scale fighting against moderate rebels drew to a close in 2020, Assad and his inner circle began to gradually seek ways to extricate themselves from both Russian and Iranian control. This goal was partially achieved by the Arab League’s May 2023 decision to readmit Assad, which Damascus hopes can serve as a stepping-stone towards rapprochement with western states. Wagner’s withdrawal along with Moscow’s shuttering of Prigozhin’s economic empire in summer 2023 therefore presented a rare opportunity for the Assad regime. It quickly sought to shake off one key pillar of Russian control and renegotiate the now-expired July 2017 deal on better terms.

The results on the ground were immediately apparent. Within weeks of Wagner’s withdrawal, the Islamic State launched a multi-pronged assault against remaining pro-Assad forces in the Central Desert, seizing the large Doubayat gas field near the border with Iraq on Oct. 18, 2023. Recapturing the gas field afterwards required more than a month of intense fighting by Iranian-backed Afghan Shia militias supported by significant Russian airpower.

During the battle, the Islamic State displayed tactical prowess against its more numerous foes. It deployed cells behind enemy lines to besiege small villages and ambush and massacre dozens of pro-Assad fighters on opposite ends of the desert to relieve pressure on Doubayat. By the end of the fighting, nearly 70 Afghan and Syrian fighters had been killed and dozens more injured.

Since then, Islamic State attacks have grown. In the first five months of 2024, the group’s attacks in Assad regime-controlled areas grew 213 percent compared to 2023, which itself saw a 68 percent increase compared to 2022. During 2024, nearly half of all Assad regime casualties occurred as a result of Islamic State attacks. The group’s momentum was again aided when Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps commanders began to evacuate positions across Syria in early 2024 as Israel and the United States expanded their aerial assassination campaign against the group and its proxies. Though the largest number of withdrawals occurred in southern Syria, Iran has also evacuated three Central Desert bases in southern Raqqa province near the 712, 6, and 4 highways while reducing its footprint in others.

The significant uptick in attacks has also pushed Iran to investigate and arrest a significant number of its own proxy forces suspected of providing information to either Israel or the Islamic State, thereby driving partial demobilizations. Recently, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander for eastern Syria along with Hizballah’s 313 unit — which recruits Syrians into Hizballah — established a new task force charged with performing full background checks on more than 1,500 veteran fighters across all Iranian-backed militias in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor. After completing these checks, the task force intends to conduct a second round of vetting of an equal number of new recruits. So far, the corps has arrested more than 80 of its own proxy fighters in 2024 suspected of collaborating with either Israel or the Islamic State.

Supporting the Syrian Democratic Forces

Unfortunately, the Syrian Democratic Forces have few innovative options available to deal with the growing threat. Following a spike in Islamic State violence in April 2024, they issued new residency directives requiring Arab refugees originally from areas outside northeast Syria to acquire newly created expatriate cards or be expelled. Almost immediately, more than 40 families living in Hasakah province were reportedly deported to Assad regime territory, while tens of thousands more qualify for a similar fate. Local activists suggested the arrests targeted communities that the Syrian Democratic Forces allege have ties to the Islamic State, though this cannot be confirmed.

Though Islamic State activity in Hasakah thereafter subsided, the group’s activity remains elevated in Deir Ezzor. There, fighters have increasingly begun to carry out numerous brazen robberies and seizures of oil tankers as part of a campaign to extort local businessmen.

U.S. forces in Syria should therefore brace for a period of growing instability in the medium to long term, particularly in the event that a conflict breaks out between Israel and Hizballah in Lebanon.

First, U.S. forces in Syria should ramp up anti-Islamic State raids and operations after a period of lull. According to Central Command’s semi-annual review, U.S. forces carried out 59 anti-Islamic State operations in Syria in 2024, killing 14 Islamic State members and arresting 92. This represents a 16 percent decline in operations and 72 percent decline in the number of Islamic State members killed or captured compared to 2023. This decrease can largely be attributed to a reduction in U.S. troop activity in Syria after Oct. 7, 2023, when Iranian-backed groups carried out more than 170 attacks against American personnel up until February 2024.

The United States should also attach increased urgency to resuming training courses for Syrian Democrat Forces’ prison guards, which have been put on indefinite hold in 2024. The Syrian Democratic Forces attribute the delay to a “lack of availability” as their leaders have had to contend with an increase in Turkish airstrikes targeting commanders and persistent tensions with some Arab tribes following an uprising in September 2023 that killed 150 people. The issue of prisons in northeast Syria is particularly sensitive as 54,600 Islamic State members and their relatives are being held in 27 detention centers run by the Syrian Democratic Forces across northeast Syria. These facilities have regularly been the target of prison breaks, including the al-Sinaa prison, which Islamic State cells briefly captured from Jan. 20 to Feb. 3, 2022, when they managed to release several dozen high-ranking leaders.

Despite this, U.S. forces continue to note a “general lack of professionalism within the detention facility guard force,” which only shares information “when it benefits them,” describing both sides’ overall relationship as “very transactional.” The Islamic State certainly harbors ambitions to launch more prison breaks in the future and, should security in the area deteriorate, it may successfully do so once again.

Though the current political climate in the United States likely will not permit it, in the medium to long term Washington should increase its troop presence in northeast Syria to expand its patrols along key highways where the Islamic State moves weapons and fighters between different regions. Since the Jan. 28, 2024 attack on U.S troops in Jordan, the United States increased its deployment of troops to the country by 20 percent, with the number growing from 3,000 to 3,813. A similar increase to the 900 U.S. personnel currently operating in Syria would have a significant impact in stabilizing an arguably more volatile and dangerous area.

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Jeremy Hodge is a senior fellow at New America and research fellow at Arizona State University’s Future Security Initiative. Follow him on X @JeremyHodge2

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warontherocks.com · by Jeremy Hodge · July 30, 2024

​23. After Trump Assassination Attempt, Some Veterans Spread Misinformation. Others Pushed Back.

Again, we have met the enemy and he is us.  

After Trump Assassination Attempt, Some Veterans Spread Misinformation. Others Pushed Back.

We surveyed the social media accounts of the 95 veterans in Congress. Here’s what we found.

https://thewarhorse.org/us-veterans-influence-drives-debate-on-trump-shooting/?utm

JULY 25, 2024| SONNER KEHRT

About two hours after the shooting at the Trump rally, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance called out the Biden campaign on social media. (@JDVance1 on X.com)

JULY 25, 2024| SONNER KEHRT

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When the first shot rang out at the Trump rally in Butler County, Pennsylvania, Jondavid Longo recognized the sound. But his brain wouldn’t allow him to believe it.

“I thought, ‘OK, this might be a firecracker, a balloon, or something,’” the Marine Corps veteran and mayor of Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania, told The War Horse. “On the second shot, I realized exactly what it was.”

Longo, who deployed to Afghanistan as an infantry rifleman, dived on top of his pregnant wife and yelled for people to get down in the chilling moments after the gunfire.

“My hope in joining the Marine Corps and going to Afghanistan,” he said, “was that I would endure those sounds and those sights and those smells and those thoughts and feelings so that my family never would have to.”

When he got home that night, like so many stunned Americans eager for updates, Longo turned to social media and shared his gratitude: “I’m home now. I’m alright. My family is safe.”

By then, the frenzy of misinformation, early conspiracy theories, and violent rhetoric was already exploding across the Internet. A would-be assassin’s failed attempt to gun down former President Donald Trump—and growing concerns over the Secret Service’s failure to secure the rally—have catapulted the country, already in a fraught moment, to unprecedented levels of political tension.

And veterans—whose military service still commands high levels of trust across the political spectrum—are using their influence to both fuel and cool the debate.

Longo said the choice should be easy.

Jondavid Longo, a Marine Corps veteran and mayor of Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania, spoke at the July 13 rally in Butler just before former President Trump took the stage. (Photo courtesy of Jondavid Longo)

“There should be no veteran who would ever fan the flames of rhetoric that would increase the potential for violence here at home,” he said.

But in the hours and days after the shooting, some veterans online helped spread false narratives about the attempted assassination, leveraging their ostensible expertise to give their social media posts credibility. Some insisted the shooting was an “inside” job, meant to take down Trump, and that countersnipers could have easily taken out the shooter if they wanted to. Others said the shooting was staged to garner Trump sympathy.

On Truth Social, the social media site owned by Trump, a Marine Corps veteran smelled “a big infestation of Deep State Rats.” On X, formerly known as Twitter, an Army veteran said the sound of the bullets made it clear the shooting was fake.

Even some politicians raised unfounded suspicions shortly after the shooting.

“It would take extreme negligence to overlook the risk of a sniper on that roof if you were tasked with securing the site. Epic failure or far worse?” posted Warren Davidson, an Army veteran and a Republican representative from Ohio.

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A War Horse analysis of social media posts from the official and personal accounts of the 95 veterans who are members of Congress found four suggested that the assassination attempt may have been allowed to happen or was somehow orchestrated from inside the government. Seven posted that they did not trust the FBI, DHS, or the Secret Service to do a thorough investigation, and eleven directly blamed President Biden or the Democrats for the shooting.

With shaken rallygoers still heading home about two hours after the shooting, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance—a Marine Corps veteran—unleashed his opinion on X, reaching more than 18 million views. (His next post on a fundraiser for the victims, by comparison, got 2.2 million views.)

“Today is not just some isolated incident,” he wrote. “The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs.

“That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”

More than a week into the investigation, there is no evidence the 20-year-old shooter had any partisan motive.

Less than 48 hours after Vance’s post, Trump named the senator as his vice-presidential running mate.

A 1,200% Spike in References to Civil War

The July 13 shooting injured former President Trump and two rallygoers, and killed Corey Comperatore, a 50-year-old firefighter and Army Reserve veteran.

The next day, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism summed up the extreme reaction to the tragedy on social media. On Telegram, a platform favored by the far right, references to “civil war” grew by more than 1,200% that Saturday, compared to the previous day. Experts who spoke with The War Horse said that most calls for violence came from the far right, but that they are also seeing increasing violent rhetoric from the far left.

There are reports that some militias have started recruiting off of the Trump rally shooting, though extremism experts cautioned that it’s too early to predict how much online activity will turn into action in the real world.

READ MORE

He Liked the Pro-America, Pro-Constitution Vibe. But He Liked the Rage, Too.

But violent rhetoric has other consequences in a democracy, experts say: It normalizes bloodshed.

“We’ll talk about violence, it becomes more acceptable so that when it does happen in the real world, we’re less inclined to think, ‘Oh, this is bad,’ as a society,” says Amy Cooter, the research director at Middlebury’s Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism.

The tension following the shooting was compounded by the fact that, for days, there was very little information about the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, or his motives—opening a black hole that quickly filled with unfounded theories and misinformation. NewsGuard, an organization that tracks misinformation online, found that mentions of “staged” and “inside job” on X grew by more than 3,000% each in the two days following the shooting.

“I think people are very much looking for answers right now,” says Freddy Cruz, the program manager for monitoring and training at the Western States Center, a think tank that focuses on extremism and democracy. “And unfortunately, it looks like there’s a lot of people trying to offer answers.”

‘This is how misinformation flies’

After the shooting, several posts from people who claimed to have served in the military went viral. In one, a poster said his military sniper experience led him to believe that the shooting was planned and executed by people inside the government, “without a doubt in my mind.”

Rep. Cory Mills, a Republican from Florida and an Army veteran, said on CNN that his own countersniper experience led him to ask whether the lapse in security “was intentional as opposed to fecklessness” and said that the possibility should be considered in an investigation. He continued the speculation on Fox News and social media.

No evidence has emerged that the shooting was an inside attack. The gunman was a registered Republican who had searched online for politicians from both parties, as well as for the locations of the Democratic National Convention and Trump rallies.

Lawmakers in both parties have expressed anger and frustration over the stunning security failures at the rally in Pennsylvania. In a congressional hearing on Monday, Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle testified that the roof where the gunman was perched had been identified as a potential security vulnerability and that the Secret Service had received multiple reports of a suspicious person before the shooter opened fire.

Cheatle—who resigned Tuesday under intense pressure to step down—repeatedly referred to ongoing investigations in declining to provide more details about the breakdown. Some lawmakers with military experience said the lack of information was fueling the wild speculation.

“Are you aware that there are rumors rampant online that there were multiple shooters?” said Rep. Mike Waltz, a Republican from Florida and a former Army Green Beret. He also pointed out that “people are speculating there could have been foreign involvement” because the shooter had what he described as “overseas encrypted platforms.”

“This is how misinformation flies,” he said.

After the hearing, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, a Republican from Florida and an Air Force veteran, posted on X that she left the hearing “convinced” that the gunman “was not working alone.”

Veteran voices can come across as authoritative on matters that involve the military or the government—which is the case with many conspiracy theories, says Elizabeth Yates, a democracy protection researcher at the nonprofit Human Rights First. She has studied how military influencers have advanced narratives about QAnon, the baseless conspiracy theory that claims Trump has been selected to destroy a cabal of blood-drinking pedophiles who control global affairs.

In one post on X after the Trump rally shooting, a user claiming to have worked in military intelligence offered an analysis that authorities “allowed” the gunman to shoot at Trump. On Truth Social, a retired Air Force special operator claimed insider knowledge that special forces in the military had previously protected Trump from dozens of “deep state assassination attempts.”

With veterans, Yates said, “you’re looking at people who in society we view as apolitical and have a lot of legitimacy. … There’s no question that because they have this experience that they are called on to lend credence to the specific military elements of these conspiracy theories.”

‘Before you start pointing fingers’

One Trump supporter in Congress stood out in our review of social media messages for pushing back against conspiracies.

Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a Republican from Texas who served as a Navy SEAL in Iraq and Afghanistan, released a video calling out posts from former snipers for spreading misinformation.

“A lot of people are trying to mislead you, trying to enrage you, trying to make you think that, again, it’s some preplanned operation,” Crenshaw said in the video. He said there were security failures. “But you have to know at least the facts and the context before you start pointing fingers.”

He argued that there are major differences between countersniper operations in Iraq or Afghanistan and security at a presidential rally attended by thousands of American citizens, a point that Longo, the Slippery Rock mayor, echoed.

“We need to remember too that the way that we address threats here in the United States at home is incredibly different from the way that you address threats in a combat zone,” Longo said.

Yates points out that veterans’ experiences can make them particularly powerful voices in pushing back against misinformation and calls for violence.

“They have this really unique opportunity to be a strong advocate for democracy,” she says.

Chris Purdy agrees. The Iraq war veteran launched a new initiative, The Chamberlain Network, to organize veterans in defense of democracy just days before the assassination attempt.

“Do you want Atlanta to look like Fallujah? No,” he says. “Veterans understand. We know what political violence does to nations.”

In a joint statement responding to the assassination attempt, the co-chairs of the bipartisan For Country Caucus, a group of 30 veterans in Congress, called for calm.

“Political violence is unacceptable and has no place in our society,” wrote Rep. Tony Gonzales, a Navy veteran and Republican from Texas and Rep. Jason Crow, Democrat, of Colorado, and a former Army Ranger. “To restore civility, our elected leaders must dial down dangerous rhetoric and seek to unite our nation. In unity lies our greatest strength.”

Two-thirds of the 95 veterans in Congress used their social media accounts to condemn political violence or call for softening the rhetoric, according to The War Horse survey.

Republican Rep. Barry Loudermilk of Georgia, an Air Force veteran, was one of them. In 2017, he was standing near home plate when a gunman opened fire at a baseball field where GOP congress members were practicing for a charity game.

“We’re in this era where if you don’t believe 100% the way I want you to believe or the way I believe that you’re my enemy,” he told WSB-TV in Atlanta, linking to the clip on X. “The only way that we can bring this level down, it’s up to us.”

A coalition of 17 veterans groups, including Student Veterans of America, the National Military Family Association, and Mission Roll Call, also released a statement condemning the violence and calling for a commitment to democratic norms.

“Regardless of individual politics, an attack on any candidate for office, elected official or election official is an attack on all of us. It is an attack on the system of self-government that our men and women in uniform have served and sacrificed to protect,” they wrote.

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Ellen Gustafson, the executive director of We the Veterans and Military Families, told The War Horse in an interview earlier this year that while people often think of the military community as a single demographic, the reality is different: A shared ethos of service ties together an exceptionally diverse group of people.

“We’re not a monolith. We’re a pluralistic community,” she said. “That’s actually a pretty good example of Americans working together and putting politics aside, and we should be a little bit louder about that.”

The week of the Trump rally shooting, her group, which has spearheaded an effort to recruit veterans and military family members to work as poll workers, announced it had blown past its goal of signing up 100,000 new volunteers for the upcoming election.

Purdy said that the most important thing people who have served can do is to be the loudest voices in their local communities—to hammer home, again and again, that the idea so many Americans fought to protect and defend is still worth protecting and defending today.

“What veterans can do is they can show up to their town hall, their state houses, their VFW, whatever it is, their barbecues for the holidays, and get people to believe in democracy,” he says.

“It sounds corny, it really does. But democracy is like fairy dust, right? It only works if you believe in it.”

This War Horse story was reported by Sonner Kehrt, edited by Mike Frankel, fact-checked by Jess Rohan, and copy-edited by Mitchell Hansen-Dewar. Abbie Bennett wrote the headlines. Samantha Daniels, Becca Keaty and Anne Marshall-Chalmers provided research assistance.

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Sonner Kehrt

Sonner Kehrt is an investigative reporter at The War Horse, where she covers the military and climate change, misinformation, and gender. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, WIRED magazine, Inside Climate News, The Verge, and other publications. She studied government at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy and served for five years as Coast Guard officer before earning a masters in democracy and governance studies from Georgetown University and a masters of journalism from UC Berkeley. She has also worked as a lecturer at UC Berkeley, teaching classes in writing, reporting, and ethics. In her free time, she is trying to learn to windsurf. She can be reached at sonner.kehrt@thewarhorse.org and occasionally on Twitter @etskehrt.

24. NATO Can’t Be a One Trick Pony: The Future of Alliance Crisis Prevention and Management

Excerpts:

Most importantly, allies should make a purposeful effort to redefine crisis management in a changing geopolitical environment. The annual review of the NATO Crisis Response System should include an emphasis on more prevention activities, integrating lessons learned in crisis management from contexts such as Ukraine or counter-ISIS efforts, while anticipating future crisis scenarios. This should be coupled with a much-needed update to allied joint publications on crisis response operations.

Insecurity and fragility in neighboring countries that fuel migration and terrorism or attacks on critical infrastructure, whether on allied territory or not, all have the potential to impact alliance members’ security without crossing into collective defense scenarios. Bolstering NATO exercise slates to work through more robust and realistic contingencies and understanding potential scenarios for action can help NATO be more prepared.

An enhanced commitment to crisis management for a new age of great power rivalry could better position NATO to promote stability by preventing emerging crises from becoming full-blown military conflicts.

NATO Can’t Be a One Trick Pony: The Future of Alliance Crisis Prevention and Management - Modern War Institute

mwi.westpoint.edu · by Paul Schaffner, Anca Agachi, Jack Lashendock · July 30, 2024

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Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, NATO has gone back to basics and its raison d’etre of collective defense. That doesn’t mean, however, that the alliance can afford to neglect its commitment to dealing with emerging incidents and crises before they devolve into bloody military conflicts. As Supreme Allied Commander Europe Gen. Chris Cavoli recently told the Senate Armed Services Committee, “NATO is not a one problem alliance.”

Even as its top priority remains deterring and defending against Russian irredentism, failing to maintain its crisis management capabilities presents its own security risks. NATO should seek to bolster its crisis management efforts through targeted prevention, enhanced readiness, and strategic partnerships to address security threats worldwide.

The definition of NATO crisis management has evolved over the years. In the 1990s and 2000s, it was primarily associated with out-of-area peacekeeping and stabilization operations. Today, the need for crisis management operations can arise from a broad range of events— from military aggression to humanitarian disasters to technological disruptions. The lines between Article 5 defense missions and crisis management are becoming blurrier—so-called hybrid warfare that exploits the gray area between peace and war are a case in point—which means NATO cannot be optimally prepared for either mission without being prepared for both.

NATO is trying to adapt for future contingencies. Rather than managing crises as they arise, the NATO 2022 Strategic Concept focuses on preventing and responding to crises that “have the potential to affect Allied security” and the recent 2024 Summit Declaration reiterates this objective. This approach is aimed at ensuring that NATO can better maintain regional stability by preventing adversaries from exploiting minor incidents to promote instability for geopolitical gain.

Along with the alliance’s new strategic documents, force and capability changes are being made to adapt to an environment in which crises are the norm, not the exception. NATO unveiled a new force model at the 2022 Madrid Summit to promote a heightened state of readiness and adaptability to address emerging crises before they metastasize.

The force model is underpinned by “high readiness forces across domains” included in a new Allied Response Force, consisting of a planned five hundred thousand troops, and supports the alliance’s new Concept for the Deterrence and Defense of the Euro-Atlantic Area. The goal is to strengthen the alliance’s deterrence posture and crisis management capabilities without compromising overall readiness.

What does this mean for NATO operationally? In the near term, active crisis management missions will likely remain operational albeitat limited levels compared to past efforts such as the International Security Assistance Force, which conducted military training and rebuilding efforts in Afghanistan. Future efforts should draw on existing NATO initiatives that focus on the crisis prevention side of crisis management.

A key example of this is the Kosovo Force, active since the violence in the Balkans in 1999 and engaged in developing local security organizations for Kosovo. Another would be the broadening of the NATO Mission in Iraq, a noncombat advisory and capacity-building mission aimed at helping Iraq build better security institutions to stabilize the country and combat terrorism. While some may view these efforts as security cooperation and institution building rather than crisis management, both missions aim to foster stability in their respective host countries to diffuse crises before they require larger intervention.

NATO’s crisis management operations also extend to the maritime domain with the alliance’s Standing Naval Forces, Operation Sea Guardian, and the Aegean Activity. The Baltic Air Policing mission in Europe and ongoing cooperation with the African Union also illustrate NATO’s comprehensive focus on security. These areas, while becoming more limited in relation to collective defense efforts, are like muscles the alliance has effectively trained in the past twenty years, and which it will likely continue to exercise.

New crisis management missions outside NATO territory remain unlikely, as the scars of Afghanistan and worsening security situations in the Middle East and the Sahel may limit engagement in these regions, even as terrorism remains a key threat. This makes preventing crises before they occur even more important. Rather, the focus in NATO’s south will likely be primarily on dialogue, partnership building, training, and security cooperation on shared issues while limiting on-the-ground military engagement, as recent operational and political efforts suggest.

Given this state of play, what should NATO do? In bolstering crisis management, NATO’s interaction with other multilateral organizations is crucial. Collaborating with entities such as the European Union, the United Nations, and regional organizations like the African Union and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) can enhance the collective ability to respond to complex and emerging crises. This collaboration should include political, civilian, and military tools.

NATO cooperation with the United Nations also should focus on sharing lessons learned, best practices, and standards, including in key areas like women, peace, and security and civilian protection. In addition, NATO should consider pursuing strategic partnerships even with subregional organizations such as the Economic Community of West African States or the Intergovernmental Authority on Development in East Africa. Joint exercises, shared intelligence, and coordinated response plans with these subregional partnerships could be productive. With the European Union, the focus can be on operational coordination in crisis management efforts and resource sharing, while with the African Union, focus on issues such as capacity building and training can elevate the substantive nature of the partnership.

Finally, NATO’s collaboration with OSCE can provide a platform for dialogue and conflict resolution in areas where military intervention could be avoided given OSCE’s complementary expertise in in preventive diplomacy and conflict prevention.

As the alliance transitions to its new Allied Response Force model, it should continue the development of highly ready forces that can respond to fight both conventional and unconventional crises. On the force development side, the focus should be on training and exercises, especially no-notice exercises, to ensure an alliance-wide standard of readiness exists for crisis contingencies.

Most importantly, allies should make a purposeful effort to redefine crisis management in a changing geopolitical environment. The annual review of the NATO Crisis Response System should include an emphasis on more prevention activities, integrating lessons learned in crisis management from contexts such as Ukraine or counter-ISIS efforts, while anticipating future crisis scenarios. This should be coupled with a much-needed update to allied joint publications on crisis response operations.

Insecurity and fragility in neighboring countries that fuel migration and terrorism or attacks on critical infrastructure, whether on allied territory or not, all have the potential to impact alliance members’ security without crossing into collective defense scenarios. Bolstering NATO exercise slates to work through more robust and realistic contingencies and understanding potential scenarios for action can help NATO be more prepared.

An enhanced commitment to crisis management for a new age of great power rivalry could better position NATO to promote stability by preventing emerging crises from becoming full-blown military conflicts.

Paul Schaffner is a policy analyst at RAND, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research institution, who focuses US grand strategy, alliance building, and transatlantic security.

Anca Agachi is a (defense) policy analyst at RAND with expertise in NATO’s adaptation and transformation and emerging threats.

Jack Lashendock is a policy analyst at RAND specializing in global governance and multilateralism.

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

Image credit: GPA Photo Archive

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mwi.westpoint.edu · by Paul Schaffner, Anca Agachi, Jack Lashendock · July 30, 2024

25. Can Anyone Govern Gaza?

​Excerpts:

The United States can do much more to ensure the PA beats the odds and governs Gaza. To help the PA, Washington must provide more training and aid. The Department of Defense and intelligence agencies should also step up efforts to train and equip the PA’s security forces to fight insurgencies. Yet technical training is only the first step. The bigger problem, as the United States learned the hard way in Afghanistan, is that security forces must have a government that inspires confidence. Right now, the PA is not worth fighting for. The PA will need to help itself by changing its leadership. Abbas is too old, inept, and unpopular to run Gaza, or even to continue running the West Bank. The United States should coordinate with international and Arab donors to the PA to identify younger, more qualified Palestinians to play leadership roles. Donors should restrict some aid if Abbas resists change and increase it if new leadership is brought in.

But shoring up the PA will mean little if Washington cannot convince Israelis to respect its authority and accept that a strong PA is in their best interest. Although Netanyahu says he is opposed to a PA-run government in Gaza, Israeli security officials increasingly recognize that destroying Hamas completely will not solve the country’s long-term problem and that they must find an alternative government for Gaza if Israel is to defeat Hamas. Leading opposition figures, including former war cabinet members Yoav Gallant and Benny Gantz, also seem more open to a PA role in Gaza. In June, Daniel Hagari, an Israeli military spokesman, said, “If we do not bring something else to Gaza, at the end of the day, we will get Hamas.” He is right, and the best “something else” is the Palestinian Authority. As the Middle East analyst Ehud Yaari noted that same month, “Hamas is already working on their own day-after plan.” The only way to defeat the group, then, is for the United States, Israel, and the PA to collectively make a better plan.

Can Anyone Govern Gaza?

The Perilous Path to the Day After

By Daniel Byman

July 30, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by Daniel Byman · July 30, 2024

When the devastating war in the Gaza Strip ends, someone will have to govern the territory. It’s a job that many have held. Israel occupied the strip between 1967, when it conquered Gaza, and 1994, when it transferred official control of most affairs to the newly created Palestinian Authority in the heady days of the Oslo peace negotiations—although Israel maintained 21 settlements there until 2005. In 2006, Hamas won the legislative elections in the Palestinian territories, and in 2007 it pushed its rivals out of Gaza by force. Hamas then governed Gaza, albeit with many Israeli restrictions, until Israel dislodged it in response to the October 7, 2023, attacks. Today, Gaza has no functioning government.

When the shooting stops, Gaza will remain a political and economic wasteland. As of mid-July, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, over 38,000 Gazans are dead. According to UNWRA, 1.9 million—about 80 percent of the territory’s population—are displaced. About 80 percent of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure—such as homes, hospitals, water and sanitation facilities—has been destroyed or damaged, according to the World Health Organization. Now that Hamas no longer polices the territory, crime is rife. Gaza’s economy was stagnant before October 7, but today, there is no economy to speak of. The population will be even more dependent on outside aid than before.

It would be hard to fix these problems even if Israel, Hamas, and the United States agreed on what Gaza’s future should look like. But each has a different vision. Hamas, of course, wants to survive, claw back its power in Gaza, and, over time, eclipse the PA to dominate the Palestinian national movement. Israel wants a government in Gaza that has no link to Hamas, but it is skeptical of other existing Palestinian organizations that could take over. Israel blames the PA, which controls much of the West Bank and has long cooperated with Israel to suppress Hamas, for sustaining a tolerant attitude toward extremism that tacitly encouraged terrorist attacks. The United States hopes the PA will rule Gaza and eventually become a more credible partner in negotiations for a long-sought two-state solution.

The Palestinians in Gaza don’t get a vote, but they seek an end to conflict, the resumption of essential services, and a path to prosperity and nationhood. Their wishes should not be conflated with those of Hamas. The group was not popular in Gaza before October 7, and although the war has raised Hamas’s standing considerably, some Palestinians in Gaza blame it for leaving ordinary people defenseless and without food or water in the face of Israel’s predictably destructive response to the October attack. “If the death and hunger of their people do not make any difference to them,” Motaz Azaiza, a Gazan photojournalist, wrote in an apparent reference to Hamas in March, “they do not need to make any difference to us.”

There are at least seven possible options for Gaza’s future, and none are good. Some leave Hamas too strong; others require a costly occupation of the territory by Israel or foreign powers. The best among this set of bad choices is for the PA to run Gaza, but given both Hamas’s and Israel’s opposition to any elevation of the PA’s standing, this option seems a long shot. The United States and its allies should increase the odds of a PA-run government by pushing Israel harder to accept that option, building up the PA’s security and administrative capacity, and demanding that the PA’s current leadership step down. By doing so, the United States may be able to avoid the worst scenario.

The most likely future for Gaza, alas, is that it becomes a failed state in which Hamas maintains some authority and the Israeli military regularly invades to quash the militant group. In such a scenario, ordinary Palestinians would continue to suffer but with less international outcry as people around the world become desensitized to the violence. Washington should prepare for a Gaza that is perpetually plagued by violence and starvation—while doing all that it can to prevent that grim outcome.

ISRAELI OCCUPATION, AGAIN

One potential future for Gaza is that Israel fully reoccupies the territory. Israel has a significant military presence there, but it does not really run the strip on a day-to-day basis—no one does. Various international organizations and charities, such as UNICEF and Doctors Without Borders, provide some services but are hamstrung by the ongoing fighting, Israeli restrictions on goods going into Gaza, and the devastation of the territory’s health infrastructure. If Israel did formally reoccupy Gaza, it would be responsible for providing law and order, running services such as sanitation and education, and otherwise functioning as the government there.

Israel has experience doing these things. If Israel reoccupied the territory, Gazans’ sovereignty, already limited before the war, would disappear, but the population might be able to enjoy some peace and basic services. Eventually, perhaps, Israel might hand over some powers to local Palestinians, but this would be a gradual process under even the most optimistic scenario. Israel would routinely hunt down members of Hamas to prevent the organization from resurfacing, which would require frequent military operations. Even before Hamas came to power in 2006, the group had deep roots in the educational, social welfare, and religious institutions in the strip. Based on calculations from RAND analyst James Quinlivan to determine the size of stability operations, Israel would have to indefinitely maintain around 100,000 troops and police in Gaza. Even more may be needed, given that Gaza is mostly urban, which makes military operations particularly hard.

This is a huge number of personnel for Israel, a small country whose military depends heavily on reserves, especially considering that it also faces a restive West Bank and a possible war with Hezbollah, a Lebanese militant group backed by Iran. If Israel reoccupied Gaza with fewer troops, Hamas could return to parts of the strip. This has already happened: in January 2024, Hamas returned to Gaza City after Israel withdrew the bulk of its forces there, and since then Hamas’s forces have returned to other areas that Israeli officials thought were pacified. Inevitably, Hamas would wage a low-level insurgency against the Israeli army, carrying out a steady stream of kidnappings and causing more casualties.

The cost to Israel’s international reputation would be even higher. Its image is already tattered, including among young people in the United States, its most important ally. The violence of an occupation would likely not make the news as often as did the fighting in the months after October 7, but it would be constant, likely preventing Israel from repairing the damage to its reputation. Ordinary Palestinians, too, would loathe an Israeli reoccupation; their resentment toward Israel, already strong, has grown since October, and a renewed occupation would be a step backward from Palestinian statehood. Washington would also oppose this option. It would not want to be seen as abetting the long-term occupation of more Palestinian territory, and continued fighting would distract from other U.S. goals in the region, such as uniting allies against Iran.

HAMAS BACK IN CHARGE

At the other end of the spectrum of options is the possibility that Gaza will basically return to its status quo before October 7. Hamas would rule Gaza, as it did between 2007 and 2023, albeit with even more difficulty than before. Israel’s campaign has hit Hamas hard, destroying much of its military infrastructure and killing many of its members. Hamas, however, remains the strongest Palestinian actor in the strip and could regain control of it. Hamas could then use Gaza as a base to rebuild its armed forces, launch attacks on Israel, and restore its credentials as a governing entity. Israel would continue to regularly conduct strikes on Hamas, trying to kill its leaders and prevent it from regrouping. Israel and Egypt would severely restrict economic activity in the territory.

Hamas not only wants to survive as an organization. It also wishes to grow stronger in relation to both Israel and its Palestinian rival, the PA, although the Hamas leadership is divided when it comes to priorities. The more pragmatic members, many of whom live outside Gaza, seek influence among Palestinians in the West Bank and hope to emerge as the dominant force within the Palestinian national movement. Hard-liners, including Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s leader in Gaza and the mastermind of the October 7 attacks, have dedicated themselves to Israel’s destruction and are willing to sacrifice their own people to achieve it. As was true before October 7, governing Gaza would leave Hamas open to criticism that it is failing to provide for ordinary Palestinians. It would also make members of Hamas especially vulnerable to Israeli attacks because governing Gaza would force Hamas leaders into the open, revealing deeper layers of its leadership apparatus.

For Israel, a return of Hamas rule is a nonstarter. Israelis understandably ask themselves how they can live with a neighbor that launched such a brutal surprise attack, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly affirmed that Israel seeks “total victory” against Hamas. The United States, too, would balk at the prospect of Hamas openly returning to power.

There are at least seven possible options for Gaza’s future, and none are good.

In a more plausible scenario, Hamas would exercise power behind the scenes, as Hezbollah does in Lebanon. Although Hezbollah is the most powerful force in Lebanon, the group usually holds only 12 to 15 of the 128 seats in the country’s parliament. Hezbollah limits the number of seats it contests to allow allied groups, including Christian ones, to win them instead, thereby maintaining a façade that it does not dominate Lebanon. This coalition has sometimes held a legislative majority, and Hezbollah has controlled various government ministries for almost two decades. Even when Hezbollah and its allies do not win enough seats to control parliament, as is the case today, its mixture of political influence, armed force, and street power—and its willingness to assassinate rivals—make it a player that cannot be ignored. Supporters of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri learned that in 2005, when Hezbollah killed him for supporting the withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon. Many Lebanese groups and communities are anti-Hezbollah, but they respect its power. The group exercises a de facto veto over government formation and policy.

Yet despite its influence, Hezbollah has avoided becoming the public face of Lebanon. Its control is not complete, and Western countries work with the Lebanese government even though they know that doing so indirectly funds some of Hezbollah’s activities. Leading such an arrangement in Gaza would probably appeal to Hamas, which might prefer to be the power behind the throne. Even before October 7, governing Gaza under international isolation was a constant struggle. At several points over the past 16 years, Hamas even considered arrangements in which its rival, the PA, would take over some of its responsibilities while Hamas maintained its military forces and power base as part of a unity government. Although the PA and Hamas have at times signed agreements supporting this idea, no real unity ever emerged—a Chinese effort to bring the two together earlier this month is likely to suffer a similar fate. In any event, in a behind-the-scenes role, Hamas could fight Israel when it wanted to and leave the difficult task of rebuilding Gaza and providing services to someone else.

If Hamas became puppet master to a generic Palestinian administrative power in Gaza, the Israeli government could publicly claim that Hamas no longer governs Gaza, and foreign governments could send aid to the territory without openly assisting a terrorist government. Ordinary Gazans could thus gain some humanitarian relief and, if all sides accepted the charade, a degree of stability. But the risks for Israel—beyond accusations of hypocrisy—would be many. Hamas could take control of aid flowing into Gaza and rebuild itself militarily without interference from Gaza’s government. Israel would still likely regularly conduct attacks to suppress terrorism, which would put civilian lives at risk and leave Gaza’s putative government looking helpless and illegitimate. And because there are no other strong political organizations in the strip, any government in Gaza would be even more beholden to Hamas than Lebanese factions are to Hezbollah.

CALL IN THE PA

The Biden administration’s preferred approach is for the PA to take the helm. The PA ran Gaza before Hamas seized power in 2007; it controls parts of the West Bank and enjoys support from much of the world, which recognizes it as the voice of the Palestinians. For years, PA security forces have worked with Israel to fight Hamas in the West Bank and otherwise limit violence there. On paper, the PA already has a bureaucratic presence in Gaza—for years, it paid the salaries of some civil servants there, an arrangement that lingers from its previous stint in power—and it has a shadow cabinet that claims to manage education and security, although in reality it does nothing.

If the PA took charge, Arab countries would have an easier time working with Israel to rebuild Gaza. Many Arab governments loathe Hamas for its ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran, both of which are political bogeymen for Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates in particular. At the same time, it is politically risky for Arab governments to work with Israel because it is exceedingly unpopular among their citizens, especially when it is killing Palestinians on a daily basis. If Israel makes concessions to the PA and promises progress toward a two-state solution, Arab leaders can justify working with Israel because they can show their people they are not abandoning the Palestinians. Uniting the leadership of Gaza and the West Bank would seem like a positive step toward the establishment of a Palestinian state—a goal also supported by the United States but unpopular among Israelis.

Installing the PA, however, would not be a silver bullet. The PA’s track record in the West Bank is poor. The organization is corrupt and fails to deliver many essential services. It has not held real elections since 2006 because its leaders and foreign backers fear, with good reason, that it would lose. Nearly 90 percent of Palestinians want Mahmoud Abbas, the 88-year-old head of the PA, to resign. Most important, many Palestinians see the PA as Israel’s stooge because it cooperates with Israeli security services. The PA’s image worsens every time Jewish extremists build a new settlement or attack Palestinians. The PA used to be credited with maintaining some semblance of order. Now, as violence grows in the West Bank, it can’t even claim that: between October 7, 2023, and July 15, 2024, Israeli settlers attacked Palestinians over 1,100 times, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Despite the PA’s cooperation with Israel, many Israeli politicians oppose the idea of having the PA take control of Gaza. They claim that the PA radicalizes Palestinians, pointing to PA-approved textbooks that praise violence against Israel, public buildings named after militants who have killed Israelis, and payments the PA sends to the families of Palestinians in jail for terrorism or of those killed fighting Israel. Many Israelis chafe at the idea that Palestinians in general might benefit from October 7 and its aftermath. According to the Israel Democracy Institute, a think tank, most Israeli Jews now oppose a two-state solution and believe the PA will not reform. Forty-four percent think terrorism would increase if there were a Palestinian state. The far right, a core component of Netanyahu’s governing coalition, is particularly hostile to the PA. Since October 7, Israel has refused to send some tax revenues it collects from Palestinians to the PA. Israeli leaders, including the far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, have threatened to withhold a waiver that allows Israeli banks to send payments to Palestinian ones. Without it, the PA’s financial system could collapse. Netanyahu has made his opposition to PA control clear, saying that a Palestinian state would become a “terror haven” and that he is “not ready to hand [Gaza] over to the PA.”

FOREIGNERS AND RANDOS

Israeli leaders have offered few details as to how they believe Gaza should be governed. But some have raised the idea of local, unaffiliated Palestinian leaders or technocrats taking charge instead of Hamas or the PA. Such a government might be decentralized, with a clan leader in charge in one part of Gaza and a local politician in another. Israel might control certain zones itself and help local Gazan leaders administer the rest of the strip, overseeing reconstruction with international support and lending a hand in the government’s day-to-day functions. Eventually, the United States or other foreign countries could take over Israel’s role. In the short term, some Palestinians would probably welcome a government that could provide basic services and that poses a smaller risk of inciting more war with Israel.

This approach, however, is largely a pipe dream. Hamas is so deeply enmeshed in Gaza that it would be hard to find respected officials there who are independent of the group and strong enough to resist its influence. According to Netanyahu, Hamas has already killed Palestinians in Gaza who worked with Israel to distribute aid after October 7, and any Palestinian associated with Israel risks being seen as a pawn of the occupation. A Palestinian government cannot cooperate with Israel and maintain legitimacy for long, especially if it can’t guarantee Palestinians more political rights, and Palestinians would not want a fragmented state dominated by Israel. The few alternatives to Hamas already have ties to the PA.

Given the weaknesses of various Palestinian alternatives, another option is for outsiders to control Gaza in the form of de facto trusteeship, as happened in Kosovo and East Timor. The UN Transitional Administration in East Timor, established in 1999, appointed judges, regulated the economy, and trained civil servants, among other duties. If set up in Gaza, this arrangement could be an outcome in and of itself or be used to transition to another scenario. The trustee, perhaps made up of officials and forces from Arab and European countries acting under UN auspices, could provide security and administer services. Even if the trustee did not fight Hamas directly, its presence would deprive the group of tax revenue and any legitimacy that comes from governing territory. Third-party control might even facilitate eventual Israeli-Palestinian peace talks if the trustee nurtured a corps of Palestinian political leaders who enjoyed domestic and international legitimacy.

In practice, however, a trusteeship is likely to fail, and no one is volunteering for the job. Third-party forces usually come with narrow mandates, limited numbers of troops, and restrictive rules of engagement, all of which Hamas would exploit. In Kosovo, the de facto UN trusteeship succeeded because U.S.-led forces had already defeated Serbia. In East Timor, Indonesia agreed to give up control. In both cases, the trustee did not have to fight a powerful indigenous insurgency. Whoever governs Gaza, by contrast, will face the threat of a Hamas resurgence and the risks, both military and political, posed by regular Israeli operations to keep the group down. If the trustee let Israel routinely go after Hamas, it would be seen as an extension of the Israeli occupation. If it didn’t, it would be seen as pro-Hamas. A trustee government would struggle to find a middle ground. Although Arab countries probably have the most legitimacy to rule in the eyes of Palestinians, they tend to have ineffective armies and would fear that suppressing Palestinian insurgents or associating with Israel would cause them domestic political headaches. To get around that, their participation would need to be connected to a real plan to create a two-state solution—and since that is unlikely to materialize, so is any interest on their part in governing.

PREPARE FOR THE WORST

Today, chaos rules Gaza. If no new government is imposed or emerges, chaos will likely dominate even after the fighting stops. Indeed, Gaza may end up like Somalia, where civil war, crime, and humanitarian crises are the norm outside a few pockets of relative calm. Gaza’s economy is in ruins. The territory will need tens of billions of dollars in reconstruction aid, and no one is lining up to offer it. Israelis will no longer allow Gazans to work in Israel and will be wary of permitting any goods that might have a military application to enter the strip. To some Israelis, Gaza without a government might seem preferable to rule by Hamas, but anarchy brings tremendous risk. Gazans might try to flee into Egypt, which already suffers from a floundering economy, a low-level conflict in the Sinai Peninsula, and a government with little legitimacy. And an atmosphere of squalor and violence will make it easy for Hamas or any other violent group to recruit fighters.

Some version of a failed state is the likeliest scenario for postwar Gaza. The alternatives would be hard to implement, and U.S. efforts to forge a cease-fire have mostly skirted the question of who will govern Gaza so as not to derail already thorny negotiations. Each failed state fails in its own way. Gaza may not look exactly like Somalia or Yemen. It will be nearly impossible, however, for any new Gazan government to gel amid Hamas’s opposition, Israeli strikes, and a collapsed economy, so the United States must prepare for such a dismal scenario. The territory is likely to remain in or near a humanitarian crisis for the foreseeable future.

All options for Gaza’s future are bad, but to prevent outright chaos, it is worth focusing sharply on the least bad scenario—the return of the PA to Gaza. It is a more plausible solution than imposing a government controlled by an international trustee or by unaffiliated Palestinians and a less disastrous option than a failed state or the return to Hamas rule, whether outright or covert. Although the PA is unpopular among Palestinians, they prefer a PA-run Gaza to a direct occupation by Israel. In the long term, it might also be preferable to Israelis—after all, there is a reason Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005.

Walking through the wreckage, Gaza, July 2024

Dawoud Abu Alkas / Reuters

The United States can do much more to ensure the PA beats the odds and governs Gaza. To help the PA, Washington must provide more training and aid. The Department of Defense and intelligence agencies should also step up efforts to train and equip the PA’s security forces to fight insurgencies. Yet technical training is only the first step. The bigger problem, as the United States learned the hard way in Afghanistan, is that security forces must have a government that inspires confidence. Right now, the PA is not worth fighting for. The PA will need to help itself by changing its leadership. Abbas is too old, inept, and unpopular to run Gaza, or even to continue running the West Bank. The United States should coordinate with international and Arab donors to the PA to identify younger, more qualified Palestinians to play leadership roles. Donors should restrict some aid if Abbas resists change and increase it if new leadership is brought in.

But shoring up the PA will mean little if Washington cannot convince Israelis to respect its authority and accept that a strong PA is in their best interest. Although Netanyahu says he is opposed to a PA-run government in Gaza, Israeli security officials increasingly recognize that destroying Hamas completely will not solve the country’s long-term problem and that they must find an alternative government for Gaza if Israel is to defeat Hamas. Leading opposition figures, including former war cabinet members Yoav Gallant and Benny Gantz, also seem more open to a PA role in Gaza. In June, Daniel Hagari, an Israeli military spokesman, said, “If we do not bring something else to Gaza, at the end of the day, we will get Hamas.” He is right, and the best “something else” is the Palestinian Authority. As the Middle East analyst Ehud Yaari noted that same month, “Hamas is already working on their own day-after plan.” The only way to defeat the group, then, is for the United States, Israel, and the PA to collectively make a better plan.

• DANIEL BYMAN is a Professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University and a Senior Fellow in the Warfare, Irregular Threats, and Terrorism Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Foreign Affairs · by Daniel Byman · July 30, 2024

26. Why America Stands to Lose If It Resumes Nuclear Testing

Excerpts:

The naive belief that resuming nuclear explosions would lengthen the United States’ lead evokes a long tradition of shortsighted thinking about the bomb, with politicians and pundits unable to plan more than one move ahead. It’s a failing that dates to the very inception of the bomb in 1945.

Early on, advocates of using the bomb against Japan believed that the United States would enjoy a nuclear monopoly over the Soviet Union for decades. Moscow acquired its own bomb in less than four years. The same people then argued that developing a thermonuclear weapon, or hydrogen bomb, would restore the advantage. The Soviet Union obtained one less than two years after the United States, followed eventually by others, including China. At each step in the arms race, policymakers have succumbed to such wishful thinking. If the United States moves first to resume nuclear weapons testing, it will quickly learn how naive it has been once again.

Why America Stands to Lose If It Resumes Nuclear Testing

China and Russia Would Finally Be Able to Catch Up

By Jeffrey Lewis

July 30, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by Jeffrey Lewis · July 30, 2024

People close to former President Donald Trump, including those who could serve in a second administration of his, are once again floating the unhelpful idea of the United States resuming nuclear weapons testing. Although the Trump administration did not conduct a nuclear test explosion while in office, senior national security officials did consider the idea in May 2020, according to The Washington Post. Had the administration proceeded with the idea, it would have been the first U.S. nuclear test since 1992 and would likely have encouraged other countries to do the same.

Yet the idea is not dead – far from it. In a Foreign Affairs essay, Robert O’Brien, Trump’s national security adviser from 2019 to 2021, made the startling suggestion that the United States should resume the practice of exploding nuclear weapons underneath the Nevada desert. “The United States has to maintain technical and numerical superiority to the combined Chinese and Russian nuclear stockpiles,” O’Brien wrote. “To do so, Washington must test new nuclear weapons for reliability and safety in the real world for the first time since 1992—not just by using computer models.”

The United States has not conducted a nuclear explosion in more than 30 years. Nor has Russia or China. The United States, Russia, and China are among the 187 countries that have signed the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) which prohibits all nuclear explosions, of any size. The treaty is administered by the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization, which maintains a vast international monitoring system of seismic, infrasound, hydroacoustic, and radionuclide stations. Thanks to the treaty, there is a strong international norm against nuclear testing. Since nuclear detonations by India and Pakistan in 1998, no other country has conducted an explosion, with the lamentable exception of North Korea.

Still, the treaty itself has never entered into force. Although the United States signed it in 1996, Republicans in the Senate voted against ratifying it. China, which also signed, has refused to ratify it until the United States does. And Russia, which ratified the treaty in 2000, withdrew its ratification in November 2023. After nearly 30 years in limbo, the treaty’s future is very uncertain.

O’Brien’s proposal, then, comes at an awkward moment. There are real questions about whether Russia might resume nuclear explosions. Russia, China and the United States all keep their nuclear test sites in at least a partial state of readiness. Satellite images show new buildings, ongoing work on tunnels, and a steady stream of people and equipment at all three sites. The big problem is the possibility that one of the big three nuclear powers will resume detonating nuclear weapons. Once one does, the other two are likely to follow suit. And make no mistake: the resumption of nuclear weapons testing would be bad for the United States.

PLAYING CATCH UP

In his essay, O’Brien argued that nuclear testing —not just computer modeling—is essential for maintaining U.S. technical superiority over Russia and China. But a world in which China and Russia can resume nuclear explosions is one in which they will catch up with the United States, not fall behind. Plus, the purpose of testing nuclear weapons is not to increase their reliability and safety, as O’Brien wrote, but to collect data to validate computer models.

The United States has conducted more nuclear detonations (1,149) than Russia (969) and China (45) combined. Even with all these tests, the United States almost never took a nuclear weapon out of the stockpile and then tested it by detonating it in the desert; instead, the tests were more like experiments. Only in the last decade or so of nuclear testing did the United States test a limited number of weapons out of the stockpile. Even then, however, a single explosion doesn’t establish anything like statistical reliability that a weapon would work as intended. The outcome of a test is better described as confidence, a sense that everything works as it should—confidence in the computer models, confidence in the people who design the bombs, and confidence in the processes for making them.

The United States has conducted more nuclear detonations than Russia and China combined.

When the United States stopped testing in 1992 and signed the CTBT in 1996, it was much better positioned than Russia or China to maintain its confidence in its nuclear arsenal without nuclear explosions. The United States had conducted more explosions. It had also gotten more out of each test, thanks to its technological advantages—such as fiber optic cables that could relay data effectively without attenuation from the effects of a nuclear explosion.

The United States had another advantage. In 1996, its supercomputers were vastly superior to those in Russia and China. When negotiating the CTBT, both Russia and China had such poor data and lousy supercomputers that they were reluctant to agree to a comprehensive ban on nuclear explosions; instead, they preferred an exception for very small explosions. The United States held firm on a “zero yield” treaty. Then both countries asked the Clinton administration to ease restrictions on supercomputer exports as a condition of signing the treaty. Russia got a few restrictions lifted, but China got nothing.

SMARTER WITHOUT TESTING

The United States combined supercomputing and the wealth of data from the tests it had conducted into something it called “science-based stockpile stewardship,” a massive investment in science, surveillance, facilities, and computing that has allowed the country to maintain its nuclear arsenal without testing.

Under this approach, the United States conducts much closer surveillance of the nuclear weapons in its stockpile than it ever did during the Cold War. It has also invested in better understanding how thermonuclear weapons really work. During the Cold War, American scientists had a relatively poor understanding of why nuclear weapons behaved the way they did, meaning that models of how the weapons would perform had to be fine-tuned in an ad hoc way—for example, multiplying a variable by two, even if no one could quite say why it worked that way. Many, although not all, of these adjustments have in recent years been replaced by a more complete scientific understanding of the principles behind thermonuclear explosions.

The United States has spent billions of dollars on the infrastructure needed to monitor and understand its nuclear weapons without live testing. The United States has an underground laboratory—the Principal Underground Laboratory for Subcritical Experimentation, or PULSE—that houses machines that conduct no-yield experiments involving small amounts of plutonium. It also maintains a facility to X-ray bombs as they detonate without plutonium and another one to study fusion processes in thermonuclear weapons. (The latter, the National Ignition Facility, cost $3.5 billion to build.) As a result, the United States understands how nuclear weapons work much better today than it ever did when it was conducting nuclear explosions.

Russia and China made some similar investments, although not at the same scale and seemingly without the same result. Russia is thought to simply remanufacture each nuclear weapon about every ten years. Given some of the reliability problems that the Russian military has experienced in Ukraine, it’s fair to wonder how much faith one should put in Russia’s ability to make the same weapon over and over without detrimental changes creeping in.

LOSING YOUR EDGE

Underlying the United States’ science-based stockpile stewardship approach was a commitment to invest in supercomputing. In 1995, the computing requirements were considered daunting. The Department of Energy estimated that it would need a computer capable of about 100 teraflops, an amount of processing power one official called “insane.” Today, the fastest computer in the world, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, is about 10,000 times faster than that.

Of course, the United States no longer has the supercomputing lead it once did. For many years, the fastest supercomputer in the world has been at a nuclear weapons laboratory in China, not in the United States. But even with some of the world’s fastest supercomputers, there is one thing that China doesn’t have: the testing data for its computer codes. Without that data, which the United States has collected from years of conducting nuclear explosions, Chinese designers can less readily make changes to existing weapon designs that have already been tested. That might make it harder for China to make new, more miniaturized nuclear warheads.

The technical superiority of the American nuclear stockpile exists only because Russia and China quit testing and the United States invested heavily in science. If a second Trump administration resumed nuclear testing, Russia and China would surely follow suit—and because they have more to learn from each test, they would erode the United States’ advantage. Moreover, new or emerging nuclear weapons states—say, Iran or Saudi Arabia—would feel no constraints against carrying out explosion tests. The result would be that the United States’ nuclear-armed foes would be even more capable.

The naive belief that resuming nuclear explosions would lengthen the United States’ lead evokes a long tradition of shortsighted thinking about the bomb, with politicians and pundits unable to plan more than one move ahead. It’s a failing that dates to the very inception of the bomb in 1945.

Early on, advocates of using the bomb against Japan believed that the United States would enjoy a nuclear monopoly over the Soviet Union for decades. Moscow acquired its own bomb in less than four years. The same people then argued that developing a thermonuclear weapon, or hydrogen bomb, would restore the advantage. The Soviet Union obtained one less than two years after the United States, followed eventually by others, including China. At each step in the arms race, policymakers have succumbed to such wishful thinking. If the United States moves first to resume nuclear weapons testing, it will quickly learn how naive it has been once again.

• JEFFREY LEWIS is a Professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.

Foreign Affairs · by Jeffrey Lewis · July 30, 2024

27. The Hidden War Over Taiwan

Conclusion:

If Taipei is to win its current war, then Washington and its allies must develop digital strategies that lay bare China’s imperialistic ambitions for outright annexation of Taiwan. If Taipei and Western friends do not, then the quote often attributed to Sun Tzu will have been proven correct: “If one party is at war with another, and the other party does not realize it is at war, the party who knows it is at war almost always has the advantage and usually wins.”

The Hidden War Over Taiwan

Without firing a shot, China is already waging war against Taiwan, and it is winning.

The National Interest · by Robert Spalding III · July 29, 2024

Consternation grows that China will invade Taiwan. Numerous war games predict horrific outcomes. An invasion would be swift and sharp. As the United States did in the first Gulf War, China would likely knock out Taiwanese radar and air/sea defense capabilities first, followed by drops of airborne troops, including the seizure of airfields and ports. An amphibious assault would follow. The possibility of targeted special operations and cyber actions by embedded PLA assets in Taiwan could also not be discounted. Finally, an EMP attack might happen, shutting down communications and air defense batteries.

Despite this, while many consider a Chinese invasion to be inevitable if not imminent, Taiwan is sending a different, less convincing message—evidenced by the fact that it spends less as a percentage of GDP on its defense than the United States (2.6 percent compared to 3 percent). On top of that, Taiwan does not have a strong draft. During the second decade of this century, even as tensions with China grew, Taiwan reduced the term for compulsory conscription from two years to one and then from one year to only four months in 2017. Only since January 2024 has Taipei increased the term again to one year, but that level of commitment still pales when one considers that during the Cold War, the United States, facing no immediate threat of invasion by anyone, maintained a two-year draft. These facts raise the question of whether Taiwan is serious about resisting a Chinese invasion or even if it takes such threats seriously.

Taiwan’s politicians likely realize better than Washington that Taiwanese voters may not be as inclined to make the kind of heavy sacrifices that are necessary to defend their freedom as the Ukrainians, Israelis, Finns, or Swiss. The reality is that Taiwanese public opinion on China largely supports the current status quo, which Beijing also tolerates so long as there is no talk of independence. This state of affairs is consistent with the original framework set out by the United States and China in the 1972 Shanghai Communique. The United States acknowledged that “there is but one China and that Taiwan is part of China.” Washington reaffirmed its commitment to the “peaceful settlement of the Taiwan question by the Chinese themselves.” In a 2024 survey, over 33 percent of Taiwanese said that they would like to extend the current status quo indefinitely, followed by about 28 percent who would like to decide the question of independence at some later date and 21.5 percent who would like to maintain the status quo for now but move gradually toward eventual independence.

Taiwan no doubt carefully follows Chinese military writings on its approach to war. Chinese military thinkers suggest that a full-scale, military-style invasion may not be the first option on Beijing’s playlist. Non-kinetic alternatives receive as much consideration in Chinese military thinking.

Without firing a shot, China is already waging war against Taiwan, and it is winning. Beijing’s present strategy is primarily focused on economic absorption, intimidation, and influence. Their aim is to conquer Taiwan by quiet integration into the Chinese economy while warding off, with military threats if necessary, any Taiwanese political momentum toward a declaration of independence. China is Taiwan’s largest trading partner. The Chinese in Taiwan (but not the indigenous population) share a common language and past with mainland Chinese. Hence, the primary attack strategy will continue to be in the information warfare and trade warfighting domains, where China already excels. Even the term “reunification,” as used by Beijing, should be viewed as just another facet of its misinformation tactics. Historically, Taiwan has never been an integrated part of China.

Beijing also takes maximum advantage of its sway as the world’s largest manufacturing partner to influence other countries not to stand in the way of its Taiwan ambitions. The relationship between Taiwan and the United States ironically provides Beijing an additional, convenient excuse for all manner of intimidation tactics, such as the practice drills it conducted offshore Taiwan that were prompted by a visit to Taipei by former House Speaker Pelosi. China’s varied information war tactics are aimed at ineluctably grinding down resistance to unification, eliminating the need for a real military invasion.

In one particular respect, Taiwan should take a page from Hamas’ playbook to fend off China. It must turn more to political or media angles to neutralize China’s overwhelming military strength. Hamas’ slaughter of over 1200 Israeli civilians, taking others hostage, and engaging in rape and other abuses on October 7, 2023, has been overshadowed by global criticism of Israel’s intense military response to that vicious attack. Despite the IDF’s superiority and tactical successes in Gaza, Jerusalem may well have already lost that war in the court of world opinion thanks to Hamas’ “digital war” response.

Taipei, with support from Washington, should fashion the same kind of approach to deter invasion. Beijing must be made to understand that a bloody attack would create unacceptable diplomatic and economic consequences, seriously compromising its domestic economy and raising internal dissent while simultaneously destroying its global standing and trade relations. An effective information warfare campaign is as immediate a necessity for Taipei as is a heightened arms buildup. If Hamas can pull off success over Israel, then Taiwan should be capable of developing an equally effective digital war strategy for itself.

China, unfortunately, has already proven itself quite adept at winning that type of war so far. Nowhere has the product of its successful approach been better demonstrated than in the United Nations. Beijing marshals regular support for its policy on Taiwan in the UN General Assembly and UN agencies, skillfully out-maneuvering Washington and its Western allies. Beijing has successfully courted a voting coalition of countries that cooperate with it to deny Taiwan’s participation in various UN institutions. According to the Carnegie Endowment, China claims that “over 180 countries accept its ‘one China principle.’”

Outside the UN environment, China has also built new frameworks for exercising influence, particularly with the Global South. It helped to establish the BRICS+, a significant new geopolitical bloc that covers 45 percent of the world’s population. Members include Brazil, India, South Africa, Iran, Egypt, Russia, the UAE, Ethiopia, and China. The June 2024 BRICS Summit Beijing Declaration called for major United Nations reforms, including in the Security Council, where Global South countries (except China) remain shut out as permanent members. BRICS is a powerful new coalition that will only help provide Beijing with more cover for its expansionist ambitions in Taiwan and elsewhere. Thailand and Malaysia have just announced that they intend to join BRICS, as well.

If Taipei is to win its current war, then Washington and its allies must develop digital strategies that lay bare China’s imperialistic ambitions for outright annexation of Taiwan. If Taipei and Western friends do not, then the quote often attributed to Sun Tzu will have been proven correct: “If one party is at war with another, and the other party does not realize it is at war, the party who knows it is at war almost always has the advantage and usually wins.”

Brigadier General Rob Spalding retired from the Air Force after twenty-six years. He served as Chief China strategist for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and as the defense attaché to the US Embassy in Beijing. He also served on the National Security Council at the White House as Senior Director for Strategic Planning. General Spalding is the author of Stealth War and War without Rules. He is currently the CEO of SEMPRE, a resilient 5G secure communications and hybrid cloud company.

Ramon Marks is a retired New York international lawyer and Vice Chair of Business Executives for National Security. The views expressed here are strictly those of the authors.

Image: DLeng / Shutterstock.com.

The National Interest · by Robert Spalding III · July 29, 2024

28. Ukraine Strikes Deeper by Mick Ryan

Excerpts:

Overall, Ukraine’s constantly adapting and improving strike complex has been an impressive achievement over the past 28 months. This strike complex has played an important role in in Ukraine’s 2024 military strategy and will do so again in 2025.

There are also lessons from Ukraine’s development of a strike complex for other nations in their efforts to build military strike capabilities. Few nations can afford the kind of strike capabilities deployed by the U.S. military. The high-end / low-end, foreign/indigenous mix of capabilities deployed by Ukraine will be attractive to many other middle powers.

But for Ukraine, challenges remain. The key strategic challenges described in this article will need to be addressed if Ukraine’s very capable strike complex is to be used to best effect and support the achievement of the Ukrainian government’s war aims.

:

Ukraine Strikes Deeper

Ukraine’s evolving strategic strike complex and a special assessment of the challenges to its effectiveness in 2024 and 2025

https://mickryan.substack.com/p/ukraine-strikes-deeper?r=7i07&utm=

MICK RYAN

JUL 29, 2024

∙ PAID

Strategic-strike operations may be defined as those oriented on the principal sources of an enemy’s military, economic or political power. Strategic-strike operations have, as their primary focus, the goal of disabling the enemy’s center of gravity. Here the center of gravity is defined as those military, economic or political assets that, when denied to the enemy, will result in the loss of his ability or will to offer further resistance to friendly forces in achieving their strategic objectives.  Andrew Krepinevich, 2001

In the last 48 hours, it has emerged that Ukraine has conducted one of its longest-range strategic strikes yet.

Ukrainian military intelligence apparently conducted strikes on three airfields deep inside Russia. Ukrainian drones arrived at airfields in three regions: Saratov, Murmansk, and Ryazan. The strikes also included an attack against an oil refinery in Ryazan region. 

The strikes are claimed to have damaged a Russian Tu-22M3 long-range supersonic bomber at the Olenya airfield in the Murmansk area. This particular airfield lies about 1800 kilometres from Ukraine and is close to Russia’s border with northern Finland. The Tu-22M3 bombers are frequently used to launch missiles against Ukraine. Ukraine previously destroyed a Tu-22 in a strike on the Soltsky-2 airbase in 2023, and has also shot one down in April this year.

The Ukrainians have also recently struck key targets in Crimea. This included the significant damage to Russia’s last railway ferry in Crimea. This vessel has been used to transport military equipment to Russian forces in the occupied peninsula and thence to forces in southern Ukraine. This is part of the Ukrainian campaign to isolate Crimea and make it untenable for the Russian’s to sustain their military forces there.

Back in May 2023, I published an article that explored Ukrainian adaptation and how the Ukrainian Armed Forces had continuously learned and evolved their conduct of strike operations throughout this war. I updated this in an August 2023 article as well as in several articles this year. 

Today, I provide a comprehensive update on what is occurring with Ukraine’s multiple strike campaigns, and how they play a role in targeting Russia’s centre of gravity for the war. I also provide an assessment of the key challenges that Ukraine will face in the planning and conduct of strike operations against Russia for the remainder of this year, and into 2025.

A Continuously Evolving Strike Capability

Beginning from a very limited capability at the beginning of the large-scale Russian invasion in 2022, Ukraine has developed – and continues to evolve – its strike capability using a range of different systems. This strike complex now includes the following:

• Indigenously produced aerial and maritime surveillance and strike drones.
• Foreign systems including the Storm Shadow, SCALP and ATACMs.
• Intelligence derived from multiple sources including NATO members.
• The employment of special operations forces and resistance members in occupied territory as well as in Russia and beyond.
• Joint targeting doctrine from NATO.
• Prioritisation, command and strike authorities retained by the most senior military officers and the President.
• The ability to learn and adapt techniques, tactics and processes for planning and execution of strikes.

As can be seen from above, a military strike system is an intricate balance of technology, humans and processes that must be optimally combined for strike operations to be executed and succeed. I provided a more detailed exploration of this system in a January 2024 article on Ukraine’s strike capability. You can read that article here.

Long range strike has been an important strategic adaptation for the Ukrainians since the beginning of the Russian large-scale invasion. Modern cruise missiles from the UK and France, and uncrewed maritime strike vessels have expanded the reach of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

In a 2010 book called The Diffusion of Military Power, Michael Horowitz advanced a theory of institutional adoption capacity. Horowitz posited that:

The two key factors that determine how hard it is to adopt an innovation and whether or not a state has the capacity to adopt, which then influences the strategic pathway it is likely to choose, are the financial intensity and organizational capital required to adopt the innovation. Adoption-capacity theory posits that the financial and organizational requirements for adopting an innovation govern both the system-level distribution of responses and the way that individual actors make decisions, as well as the subsequent implications for international politics.

From 2022, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have demonstrated the ability to adopt and use very precise, long range strike systems against the Russians. This has influenced their strategy for the war. It has also impacted on Ukraine’s capacity to project an image of a capable nation that will not inevitably be defeated by Russia. As Horowitz writes, this has had implications for international politics.

The High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), an American truck mounted rocket launch platform, began to be deployed to Ukraine in June 2022. It is a lighter, more deployable version of the tracked M270 Mobile Rocket Launch System (MLRS) that was used in the 1991 and 2003 Gulf Wars.

In 2024, these were complemented with the ATACMs system provided by the United States. The missiles were used for the first time on 17 April against a Russian airfield in Russian- occupied Crimea. Four Russian S-400 launchers, three radar stations, a command post for air defense operations, and air space surveillance equipment Fundament-M were destroyed in the attack, according to Ukraine's military intelligence.

The new ATACMs have been an important new capability for the Ukrainian armed forces in 2024. It enhances their capacity for operational strike and complicates ground and air defence operations for the Russians. But, like all weapons, they are limited in numbers, And, like all strike weapons, the new, longer range ATACMS unfortunately have not provided a silver bullet in this war.

Ground-based strike systems are not the only new long-range strike weapons deployed by the Ukrainians in this war. Their ability to strike the Russians was enhanced with long-range aerial weapons. Initially, the Ukrainians modified old Soviet-era Tu-141 Strizh surveillance drones to conduct strike operations. After modification by the Ukrainian armed forces, these stop-gap cruise missiles were then used in long range strikeson the Engels and Dyagilevo Air Bases inside Russia in December 2022.

In 2023, a newer aerial long-range strike capability entered the Ukrainian inventory. The provision of the UK-built Storm Shadow missile to Ukraine was announced May 2023. The Storm Shadow, along with the SCALP missiles provided by France, is a stealthy missile launched from fighter aircraft and able to hit targets over 250 kilometres from its launch point. The missile considerably extended the ability of the Ukrainian armed forces to strike operational level Russian targets and will force further adaptation from the Russians to disperse and defend their high value headquarters and logistics nodes.

Ukraine has developed multiple indigenous solutions to its long-range strike requirements. Ukraine, in attempting to narrow the chasm between its long-range capabilities and those of Russia has expanded its array of indigenous drone programs for reconnaissance and attacking enemy fixed targets, vehicles and other drones.

Source: Covert Shores

A final adaptation over the past 28 months has been developments in the naval domain. This has encompassed mounting maritime strike missiles on different trucks as well as the development and combat employment of uncrewed surface and semi-submersible vessels, also known kamikaze boats.

In October 2022, the Ukrainians conducted a surprise attack on the Russian Black Sea Fleet with up to seven uncrewed surface vessels, supported by eight uncrewed aerial vehicles. An Admiral Grigorovich-class frigate and a Russian Navy mine countermeasure (MCM) ship were reportedly attacked by the Ukrainian kamikaze boats. In the wake of the attack, the Russian Ministry of Defence acknowledged only that there had been minor damage to the mine countermeasures vessel. Subsequent attacks were conducted in March, April and May 2023, although there is believed to have been little damage caused by the Ukrainian kamikaze boats in the most recent attacks.

This family of different uncrewed maritime strike vessels is an example of the Ukrainians adapting their strategy to embrace an indirect approach against a conventional navy. The Russian Black Sea Fleet is a powerful combination of surface, submarine and support vessels operating out of the base at Sevastopol in occupied Crimea. With almost no likelihood of developing its own conventional naval fleet to fight the Russians, the Ukrainians have developed uncrewed capabilities. A wide range of vessels have been developed, as can be seen from the graphic below. Most recently, a weaponised Ukrainian Jet Ski washed up in Turkey.

Source: Covert Shores

While designed to sink and damage Russian warships, this new fleet of maritime strike vessels is also designed to have the psychological effect of dissuading the Russian ships from putting to sea. Given that many of the missile attacks aimed at Russia originate from warships in the Black Sea, Ukraine is hoping to drastically reduce the effectiveness of the Russia Black Sea Fleet.

Ukraine has largely achieved this objective in the Black Sea. In the past few weeks, it has been reported that Russia has withdrawn the last naval patrol vessel from the Russian Navy base at Sevastopol. Russia has also withdrawn its warships from the Sea of Azov due to the threat from Ukraine’s maritime strike systems. For an excellent coverage of these Ukrainian vessels, I recommend the Covert Shores website.

Finally, Ukraine has employed special operations forces for the conduct of long-range strike activities. These have occurred in occupied Ukrainian territory, as well as in Russia itself. Ukraine has also deployed special forces even further abroad to attack Russian interests. Ukrainian special forces have allegedly supported attacks against Russian military and Wagner forces in Syria and Sudan. In a February 2024 interview with Politico, an official with Ukraine’s HUR military intelligence described how:

Ukrainian intelligence has to be present wherever there is a need to destroy the enemy, which is waging a full-scale war against Ukraine. We are present wherever it is possible to weaken the interests of Russia.

During the war, the Ukrainian Armed Forces has undertaken a range of adaptations to their force posture, structure and processes to enhance their operational effectiveness. The Ukrainian development of more complex, long-range strike capabilities, which merges indigenous and foreign weapons, intelligence, planning and adaptation, stands out as a case study of strategic adaptation in the war.

Employing Ukraine’s Strike Complex: Targeting Russia’s Centre of Gravity

There are several crucial functions filled by Ukraine’s constantly evolving strike complex. 

The first function is to support the achievement of Ukrainian operational and tactical activities. An example of this was the January downing of a Russian air force A-50 Mainstay command and control aircraft this month. It was providing sensor coverage of Crimea and southern Ukraine, which potentially degraded Ukrainian strikes in those locations. The destruction of this aircraft was designed to increase the effectiveness of the Ukrainian strike system in that area. Other examples of this function are the attacks against key Russian headquarters, transport routes and logistics nodes in occupied Ukraine.

A second function of the Ukrainian strike system is to expand the number of dilemma’s that Russia must face in its war against Ukraine. Ukraine is attempting to present Russia with threats on multiple fronts, aside from those it faces on the ground. This is aimed at forcing the Russians to make hard decisions about the allocation of resources in its defence industry and about the apportionment of scarce resources such as air defence units. While Russia is a big country with a large military, it still has weaknesses that can be exploited.

A third function is to engage in economic warfare and to degrade Russian energy and industrial capacity. However, as the allied strategic bombing campaign discovered during the Second World War, destroying an enemy industrial system using long-range bombing operations is very difficult. While the Ukrainian strikes on Russian energy infrastructure continue, with the latest occurring in the past 48 hours, the strategic effectiveness of this campaign is not yet clear. As a recent report from the Carnegie institution found, “Russia’s refining sector, unlike its Black Sea Fleet, has proven to be resilient to the recent type of attacks, rather than the Achilles’ heel of the Russian economy that many were hoping it would be.” There may well also be a significant opportunity cost to this campaign; scarce long-range weapons might be better used on other targets.

Finally, the Ukrainian strikes are political. The 2023 and 2024 strikes on Moscow using drones, the Kerch bridge, airfields and oil refining infrastructure within Russia have all been calculated to paint a picture of Russian military and political incompetence for the Russian people. This is intended to keep political pressure on Putin and demonstrate to Russian citizens that the war is not going their way. The other political purpose, which will be vital in 2024, is to demonstrate to Ukraine’s western supporters that it is still in the fight and that Russian strategic propaganda about inevitable Russian victory are not true.

At the beginning of the article, I quoted an excellent report by Andrew Krepinevich on strategic strike operations. A crucial part of this quote was his proposal that “strategic-strike operations have, as their primary focus, the goal of disabling the enemy’s center of gravity.”

Ukraine is targeting the four elements of the Russian war-making system as an attempt to target what it may perceive as the Russian centre of gravity in this war: the will of Putin and his government to continue the war against Ukraine. The Ukrainians are seeking to use strike operations, along with ground operations and diplomatic activities, to impose a disproportionate cost on Russia, and convince Putin that he cannot succeed in Ukraine.

It is important however to get the balance right between strikes with political purpose, those designed to degrade Russian strategic warmaking capacity, and those that are designed to attrit Russian forces and degrade their offensive capacity in 2024. That is a very difficult balancing act. It is the final topic examined in this article.

Tu-22 destroyed in August 2023 airfield attack. Source: The War Zone

Challenges Moving Forward

Notwithstanding the major achievements of the Ukrainian strike complex that has developed in the past 28 months, several challenges remain if it is to be the most effective strategic and operational capability for the Ukrainian armed forces in degrading Russian warfighting potential.

Challenge 1: Orchestration. Orchestration refers to the capacity of an institution to be able to synchronise operations in way that gives it the best chance of success by presenting the enemy with multiple dilemmas they cannot resolve.

Back in April this year, after my last Ukraine visit, I wrote then about the problem of orchestrating tactical and strategic action. I noted that there are “ongoing challenges with integration of joint operations, different strike capabilities and the gap between strategy and tactical operations. The lack of an established command echelon above brigades means there is a gap between strategic direction and tactical action. This prevents coordination of wide-scale offensives as well as the operational strike necessary to attack Russian second and third echelon troops, and glide-bomb carrying aircraft, before they engage in combat with Ukrainian ground forces.” This is likely to make orchestration of strike operations more difficult.

But it is also apparent that there are multiple different strike campaigns being run by different Ukrainian organisations and it is not clear that they are being synchronised. The Ukrainian strategic strike complex appears to be three separate and competing systems. 

The first element is the Ukrainian Navy’s strike system. This includes its semi-submersible attack drones and missiles, as well as the surveillance, planning and command systems to support them. The second system is the Ukrainian armed forces aerial attack systems which are used to attack military targets. This includes HIMARS, ATACMS, aircraft launched missiles such as SCALP and Storm Shadow, as well as the many planning, intelligence and post-strike assessment systems that support them. The third element is the strategic strike capability of the intelligence services, which is employed to strike Russian energy infrastructure and strategic defence factories. 

There is potential for these three systems to work at cross purposes. A greater level of orchestration and collaboration in planning, and cooperation in development of weapon systems, would be desirable.

Challenge 2: Prioritisation. The challenge of prioritisation is related to that of orchestration. What should be the priority for limited missiles and long-range strike systems? Should the degradation of Russian oil infrastructure be the highest priority because of the potential economic impacts? Or should strikes against strategic military targets, such as airfields and factories, be the priority because of the political and humanitarian costs of Russia’s strikes against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure?

Alternatively, an argument could be made that operational strike should be prioritised over strategic strike. This would involve deciding to focus on operational targets that enable Russian offensive operations being undertaken by the Russian Southern, Eastern and Central group of forces in Ukraine. Key targets would include headquarters, logistics, operational reserve and maintenance locations, as well as air defence and EW units.

Another important aspect of such a focus on operational targets would be the airfields that are used to launch tactical aviation that employ the long-range glide bombs which are now used in their hundreds each week. Many of these targets have been moved further back from the Ukrainian border and attacking them will force a tighter prioritisation on the longest-range weapons with large warheads. And, of course, it will require a relaxation of the current U.S. policy on strikes inside Russia.

A final prioritisation issue is the 2024 versus 2025 quandry. How much of its strike capacity does Ukraine expend this year as opposed to husbanding its weapons for 2025 in advance of any 2025 Ukrainian offensives? This predicament is made more difficult because of the anticipation of a Trump election potentially resulting in either declining quantities, or even a total cutoff, of longer-range munitions from America.

Challenge 3: Access to weapons. While the issue of a Trump election will have an influence on access to long-range strike weapons as well as their launchers (including Western fighter aircraft), the complexity and cost of strike weapons will also have a major impact on Ukrainian access to weapons. Missiles such as Storm Shadow and ATACMs are not built in the same quantity as artillery munitions and are much more expensive. There is a limit to how many of these weapons might be provided.

In recognition of this, the United Kingdom in January this year pledged to spend around $250 million to rapidly procure, produce, and deliver 1000 one-way attack drones for Ukraine. Ultimately, the quantity of weapons available to Ukraine will shape their thinking about strategy and operational planning and will influence their responses to the other two challenges described above.

Challenge 4: Assessment. Assessment is used to measure progress of any major operation, campaign or strategy. In U.S. doctrine, assessment is defined as “determination of the progress toward accomplishing a task, creating a condition, or achieving an objective. A continuous process that measures the overall effectiveness of employing capabilities during military operations.” Those responsible for the Ukrainian strike complex will need to continuously hone their assessment process so that the strike complex can be employed most efficiently and to best effect.

There are multiple reasons for adapting assessment processes. First, it improves planning and weapons employment. Second, it can provide insights into whether operations strike activities are degrading the capability of Russian military forces deployed in, or proximate to, Ukraine. Finally, improving assessment activities will allow for better strategic appreciations about whether their strike operations are having an impact on Russia’s operational, strategic and national warmaking capacities.

This needs to be a continuous process. It must also be integrated across the strike operations being conducted in multiple domains, and those conducted by the military and intelligence organisations. It must also be integrated with government decision making on future strategy for Ukraine.

Ultimately, the Ukrainian government needs sufficient information to assess whether the resources invested in the various strike capabilities are the getting the best return on investment, or whether there are other more efficient and effective ways to achieve the strategic outcomes in this war that it desires.

Challenge 5: Political Issues. While countries such as Britain have endorsed Ukraine using long range missiles in strikes against Russian targets, the Americans have been more limited in their support. The U.S. administration is yet to change its current policy, which restricts the use of U.S.-provided weapons and munitions to use on Ukrainian soil and in the region just across the border from Kharkiv. A July 2024 article from Politico explored this issue in detail, noting that:

European allies are ramping up pressure on the Biden administration to further loosen restrictions on Ukraine’s use of U.S. weapons to strike inside Russia, arguing that the limits still in place hurt Kyiv’s ability to defend itself…U.S. officials acknowledge that at multiple points in the conflict, Washington has been reluctant to give Ukraine something it wants — only to give in at the last minute.

Some European nations are advocating for these limitations to be lifted. On 13 July, Poland's Foreign Minister noted that“Days ago the Russians hit a children’s hospital… would it really be escalatory to take down the strategic bombers that launch these missiles or to hit the airport from which they fly?"

But others are using American restrictions to justify their own risk-adverse approach to supporting Ukraine. Germany has followed America’s lead and held back on providing the very capable Taurus missiles to Ukraine. Following the recent NATO summit, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz stated that “there has been a clear decision and the American president has said it again and again, that the weapons should not be used outside Ukrainian territory.”

This is a sensitive issue for the U.S.-Ukraine relationship. But it will be one that must be resolved if the Ukrainians are to increase the suffering felt by the Russian military, particularly now that it has moved more of its strategic assets further away from the Ukrainian border.

An Impressive, Adaptive Strike Complex

Overall, Ukraine’s constantly adapting and improving strike complex has been an impressive achievement over the past 28 months. This strike complex has played an important role in in Ukraine’s 2024 military strategy and will do so again in 2025.

There are also lessons from Ukraine’s development of a strike complex for other nations in their efforts to build military strike capabilities. Few nations can afford the kind of strike capabilities deployed by the U.S. military. The high-end / low-end, foreign/indigenous mix of capabilities deployed by Ukraine will be attractive to many other middle powers.

But for Ukraine, challenges remain. The key strategic challenges described in this article will need to be addressed if Ukraine’s very capable strike complex is to be used to best effect and support the achievement of the Ukrainian government’s war aims.

29. Joint Statement on the Philippines-United States Fourth 2+2 Ministerial Dialogue

The SECDEF and SECSTATE are hard at work in Asia.

RELEASE

IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Joint Statement on the Philippines-United States Fourth 2+2 Ministerial Dialogue

https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/3854902/joint-statement-on-the-philippines-united-states-fourth-22-ministerial-dialogue/

July 30, 2024 |   

Secretary for Foreign Affairs Enrique A. Manalo, Secretary of National Defense Gilberto C. Teodoro, Jr., Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, and Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III (referred to collectively as "the Secretaries") convened the fourth Philippines-United States 2+2 Ministerial Dialogue in Manila on July 30, 2024 — the first to be held in Manila.

The Secretaries discussed opportunities to further enhance both countries' commitment to the Philippines-United States Alliance, and concrete ways to achieve enhanced economic ties and broad‑based prosperity. They likewise exchanged views on persistent challenges to regional peace, stability, and the rules-based international order.

The Secretaries also took stock of the historic achievements in bilateral relations since the third 2+2 Ministerial Dialogue in April 2023. They outlined specific measures to further operationalize President Marcos's and President Biden's "shared vision of partnership, peace, and prosperity."

A. Fortifying a Maturing and Modern Alliance

Both sides celebrated the unprecedented progress in the Philippines-United States Alliance over the past two years. The Secretaries reiterated the importance of the security alliance and shared commitments under the 1951 United States-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty in an increasingly complex environment. The Secretaries reaffirmed that the Mutual Defense Treaty extends to armed attacks against either country's armed forces, aircraft, and public vessels — including those of their coast guards — anywhere in the South China Sea. The Secretaries also reaffirmed the critical importance of the 1998 Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) and 2014 Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) as the foundation for building enhanced Alliance coordination and interoperability.

Both sides recognized that modernizing the Philippines' defense and civilian law enforcement capabilities is crucial to ensuring individual and collective security. Understanding the importance of interoperability and cooperation in both conventional and non-conventional domains, the Secretaries also discussed the nature of threats in various domains — including land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace — and effective responses. The Secretaries welcomed further defense and security coordination with Japan and Australia to address shared regional challenges.

Delivering and building on plans from the 3rd 2+2 Ministerial Dialogue in April 2023 and 11th Bilateral Strategic Dialogue in April 2024, the Secretaries committed to:

• Allocate USD $500 million in Foreign Military Financing (FMF) from the FY 2024 Indo-Pacific Security Supplemental Appropriations Act, working with the U.S. Congress. This unprecedented investment demonstrates the United States' commitment to modernizing the Philippines-United States Alliance and deep support for enhancing the capability of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine Coast Guard to fulfill their territorial defense mission and contribute to regional security;
• Establish the Roles, Missions, Capabilities (RMC) Working Group to ensure more frequent and regular policy and operational coordination. The establishment of the RMC will support strengthening bilateral planning and interoperability by providing policy guidance for joint operations, activities, and investments consistent with the Philippines-United States Bilateral Defense Guidelines signed during the working visit of President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. to Washington, D.C. in May 2023;
• Implement the Philippines-Security Sector Assistance Roadmap (P-SSAR), finalized on July 29, 2024, in Manila, which outlines the bilaterally determined priority capability requirements of the AFP and the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) to be supported by Philippine national funds and U.S. capacity-building efforts, programs, and activities. The P‑SSAR, which aligns the joint priorities of the Philippines and the United States, will guide shared defense modernization planning and investments and inform the delivery of priority platforms over the next five to ten years;
• Increase investments in EDCA agreed locations with a view to further supporting combined training, exercises, and interoperability between the Philippine and U.S. Armed Forces, as well as the Philippines' civilian-led disaster preparedness and response capacities. The U.S. President's Budget Request for Fiscal Year 2025 includes an additional USD $128 million for EDCA infrastructure projects across seven locations. The Philippines has invested an estimated budget of PhP 5.2 billion (USD $88.6 million) at EDCA locations. USAID also plans to implement an initiative to pre-position humanitarian relief commodities at an EDCA site for Philippine civilian disaster response authorities to help provide urgent assistance if needed in times of crisis. Both sides will continue exploring ways to incorporate likeminded partners and allies into activities at EDCA sites;
• Conclude the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA) by the end of 2024. Together with the Philippines-United States Communications and Information Security Memorandum of Agreement (CISMOA), a Philippines-United States GSOMIA would lay the foundation for enhanced, expanded, and timely sharing of information and defense technology;
• Advance cybersecurity cooperation by investing in the cybersecurity capabilities of the Philippines, including the United States providing an integrated cyber range and training platform and on-demand training to develop and sustain a capable and skilled cyber workforce, which would support the AFP's efforts to stand up a new Cyber Command. The United States and the Philippines are also integrating cyber into military exercises, including Exercise BALIKATAN;
• Bolster maritime cooperative activities to promote security cooperation and expand operational coordination with other likeminded partners, including Australia and Japan.  These joint efforts demonstrate resolve, strengthen bilateral security ties, and expand multilateral cooperation and training. The Secretaries agreed that cooperation and interoperability, including with both countries' respective Coast Guards, are essential tenets in maintaining stability and supporting a free and open Indo-Pacific. The Secretaries welcomed the signing of the Japan-Philippines Reciprocal Access Agreement and looked forward to greater trilateral and multilateral cooperation. They commended the conduct of the April 2024 Philippines-United States-Japan-Australia maritime cooperative activity in the Philippines' exclusive economic zone to strengthen interoperability and uphold international law as reflected in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS); and,
• Convene on an annual basis the Philippines-United States 2+2 Ministerial Dialogue, with the fifth meeting to be hosted by the United States in 2025.

B. Fostering Economic Resilience for a Prosperous and Sustainable Future

Both sides reiterated the importance of ensuring that the Alliance promotes security in its broadest sense — building more resilient and sustainable communities and economies, increasing trade with more diverse and reliable partners, and deterring, countering, and mitigating harm from potential economic coercion. The Secretaries welcomed progress in bolstering economic engagement over the past year, particularly through the conduct of the first-ever U.S. Presidential Trade and Investment Mission, the Philippines' co-hosting of the 2024 Indo-Pacific Business Forum, and the launch of the Luzon Economic Corridor (LEC) under the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGI)-Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) Investment Accelerator. They also recognized the range of bilateral trade and investment priorities discussed at the July 2024 United States-Philippines Trade and Investment Framework Agreement meeting and reinforced the importance of making progress towards strengthening the bilateral trade relationship.

The Secretaries also noted the convening of the following dialogues:

• Philippines-United States Technical Aviation Dialogue (16 May 2023) — discussions allowed expansion of air connectivity in the last year and subsequent engagements to explore the possibility of modernizing both countries' existing air transportation agreement;
• Philippines-United States Joint Committee on Science and Technology (30 April 2024) — discussions exchanged views on some of the most important science and technology endeavors of the two countries, and prioritized future collaboration;
• Philippines-United States-Japan Luzon Economic Corridor Steering Committee (21 May 2024) — discussions identified priority sectors for engagement and reviewed potential projects with the aim to drive infrastructure investment and development along the Corridor;
• Philippines-United States Space Dialogue (2 May 2024) — discussions advanced cooperation on using space-based technologies for disaster management, mapping of resources, pollution monitoring, and maritime domain awareness; and,
• Philippine-United States Cyber-Digital Policy Dialogue (15-16 July 2024) — discussions reaffirmed a shared commitment to an open, interoperable, secure, and reliable Internet, including cyberspace stability and deeper bilateral cooperation on cybersecurity.

To sustain the momentum of cooperation in key sectors, notably renewable energy, agriculture and food security, critical minerals processing and semiconductors, and infrastructure investments, the Secretaries committed to the following:

• Follow through on the vital, ongoing discussions and cooperation in connection with the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), and the PGI, among others. The Secretaries emphasized the need to advance both countries' shared agenda for inclusive and sustainable economic growth through infrastructure investments, a secure and stable digital ecosystem, enhanced agricultural productivity, resilient supply chains, safeguarded critical and emerging technologies, robust renewable energy and green technologies, and workforce development and advancing workers' rights;
• Drive progress on identifying initial priority projects later this year for investment along the Luzon Economic Corridor through the trilateral Steering Committee with a focus on critical transportation infrastructure in ports and rail, clean energy deployments to bolster the semiconductor industry, and commercial development of Subic Bay, and other projects as they arise;
• Work towards the completion of a Threshold Program Agreement between the Philippines and MCC as soon as possible following the finalization of initial analyses that would inform program development;
• Continue collaborating to create more resilient, secure, and sustainable global value chains in critical sectors of mutual interest to the Philippines and the United States — to include in the Philippine and U.S. semiconductor industries — and to safeguard critical infrastructure and emerging technologies. Both countries reaffirmed their commitment to further cooperate on critical minerals processing and to strengthen private sector partnerships — which may include shipbuilding and ship repair — recognizing the imperative of increasing economic growth in both countries;
• Convene the 2nd U.S.-Philippines Energy Policy Dialogue in Manila later this year to advance energy cooperation. The Dialogue provides a platform to accelerate efforts to diversify critical minerals supply chains, promote renewable energy deployment, foster reliable and resilient power grids, and elevate energy security;
• Operationalize opportunities for closer bilateral cooperation on civil nuclear energy following the Philippines-United States bilateral 123 Agreement entering into force on 2 July 2024, through subsequent activities, including by working together to help the Philippines develop the workforce, regulatory environment, and strong commercial partnerships that will enable development of a robust, safe civil nuclear sector. Both governments committed to hold a Nuclear Supply Chain Forum in Manila in November 2024, which will bring together leading U.S. companies with government and private sector stakeholders to discuss partnership opportunities;
• Advance private sector-led investment opportunities across the Philippines in partnership with the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) through the opening of a DFC office in Manila in 2024; and,
• Welcome the Philippines' forthcoming participation in the Minerals Security Partnership Forum.

C. Ensuring Respect for the Rules-Based Order in the Indo-Pacific

Acknowledging that the futures of both countries are intertwined with each other, the region, and the rest of the world, the Secretaries reaffirmed their support for unimpeded lawful commerce and full respect for international law, including freedom of navigation and overflight, and other lawful uses of the sea. They exchanged views on key regional and global developments that challenge global peace and the international rules-based order. The Secretaries:

• Expressed serious concerns about dangerous behavior in the South China Sea over the past year that resulted in injury and damage to property, as well as militarization of reclaimed features and unlawful maritime claims;
• Reaffirmed the importance of Philippine vessels' freedom of navigation in the South China Sea;
• Called on the PRC to comport with the international law of the sea as reflected in the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (the "Convention"), to respect the Philippines' sovereign rights and jurisdiction, and to comply with the final and legally binding July 12, 2016, ruling in the Philippines v. China arbitration;
• Welcomed diplomatic efforts to support routine and regular rotation and resupply (RORE) missions; and,
• Reiterated the importance of maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait as an indispensable element of global security and prosperity.

The Secretaries committed to:

• Deepen coordination on issues related to the South China Sea between and among their foreign and defense ministries; and,
• Explore additional opportunities to strengthen global support for upholding the international law of the sea.

D. Investing in People-to-People Ties

The Secretaries reiterated the special bonds between the peoples of the Philippines and the United States, which are rooted in a long and deeply interwoven history, shared democratic beliefs, and common values. The strong people-to-people ties are an indispensable pillar of bilateral ties.

Reaffirming the shared vision of our two Presidents that the special ties between both nations and their people will only grow stronger in time, the Secretaries committed to the following:

• Convene the inaugural Philippine-U.S. Democracy Dialogue in late 2024, which both countries recognize as a new major platform for ensuring that efforts to enhance our bilateral relationship as well as mutual economic gains are broad based, inclusive, and firmly anchored on shared democratic values and principles;
• Continue to support the partnerships that the Philippine Fulbright Commission has established with the Philippine Commission on Higher Education, Department of Agriculture, Department of Health, Competition Commission, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, Space Agency, and Department of Energy, and to further explore avenues for harnessing these partnerships to achieve capacity building in areas critical to Philippine development and economic growth; and,
• Support ongoing USAID higher education partnerships strengthen the Philippine education system, working with Philippine universities to expand their innovation, entrepreneurship, and workforce development capabilities. This flagship education partnership is expected to advance Philippine human capital priorities by supporting universities' curriculum development, faculty training, higher education policy and management, research, and community engagement. 

30. Rebels in Mali Display Ukrainian Flag After Wagner Defeat

Ukrainian psychological operations?

Rebels in Mali Display Ukrainian Flag After Wagner Defeat

kyivpost.com · by Kateryna Zakharchenko · July 29, 2024

Kyiv Post obtained an exclusive photo of Tuareg rebels posing with a Ukrainian flag after defeating Wagner mercenaries over the weekend.

by Kateryna Zakharchenko | July 29, 2024, 4:23 pm

• Kadyrov
• Africa

Kyiv Post obtained an exclusive photo Monday, July 29 from sources in Ukraine’s defense and security sector showing Tuareg rebels posing with a Ukrainian flag after having just dealt a major defeat to Russian state-funded Wagner mercenaries in Mali.

Andriy Yusov, a representative of the Main Intelligence Directorate (HUR), stated, during a national telethon on Monday, July 29, that “the rebels received necessary information, which enabled a successful military operation against Russian war criminals,” adding, “We won’t discuss the details at the moment, but there will be more to come.”

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This photo seems to indicate the Tuaregs’ support for Ukraine – which has been pursuing Wagner mercenaries' across the African continent.

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Wagner mercenaries have helped the Russian government extract natural resources in Africa, including, according to The Blood Gold Report, an estimated $2.5 billion worth of gold in the past two years, which Russian leader Vladimir Putin has used to help fund his full-scale invasion of Ukraine, ongoing since February 2022.

Tuareg rebels from the Permanent Strategic Framework for Peace, Security and Development (CSP-PSD) earlier shared photos and videos of a destroyed Wagner column.

More footages and details of the incident in Mali, where the Russian Wagner unit has been destroyed, have appeared.

Among the killed Russians is Anton Yelizarov. This individual with callsign “Lotus” led the assaults again Soledar and Bakhmut in 2023. Along him it is now… pic.twitter.com/hIF4H7QWW1

— (((Tendar))) (@Tendar) July 28, 2024

The battles with Wagner occurred in the town of Tinzaouatene, near Mali’s border with Algeria on Thursday and Friday, July 25 and 26. At least 20 Wagner militants were killed, and others captured, they reported.

Other Topics of Interest

Macron Warns Iran Against Support of Russia's Ukraine War

He also called on the Iranian president "to put an end to the worrying escalation of Iran's nuclear program", pleading for a diplomatic solution.

In June, Kyiv Post obtained exclusive video allegedly showing Ukrainian special forces working with Syrian rebels to decimate Russian mercenaries in Syria.

In February, it got exclusive video allegedly showing Ukrainian special forces interrogating captured Wagner mercenaries in the Republic of Sudan. In the video, the prisoners admit that their task had been to go to Sudan and overthrow the government there.

In January, Kyiv Post published an exclusive video allegedly showing Ukrainian drones destroying “Russian mercenaries” and their “local terrorist partners” in Sudan.

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And last November, it got an exclusive video allegedly showing Ukrainian special forces performing “cleaning up” operations of Wagner fighters in Sudan.

Russia has encountered a “Ukrainian trace” in many of its defeats in Africa.

Russia's state-funded news agency, Russia Today (RT), said Ukraine's Defense Intelligence (HUR) has been “training local Tuareg separatist militants, as well as covertly bringing at least two groups of them to Ukraine to teach them to use FPV drones,” citing Wagner-affiliated Telegram channel GREY ZONE.

Kyiv Post’s source said: “Russian propagandists continue talking about the involvement of the head of Ukrainian intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, in everything that happens to their terrorists in Africa.”

HUR was likely very active over the weekend. According to a Kyiv Post source, early Saturday morning HUR also conducted dronestrikes on three Russian air bases, plus an oil refinery.

Also on Saturday, a Kyiv Post source reported that HUR hackers wiped out ATM services in many parts of Russia, part of a group of mass-scale cyber-attacks its lately been carrying out, primarily aimed at Russian financial institutions.

kyivpost.com · by Kateryna Zakharchenko · July 29, 2024

31. Russia is relying on unwitting Americans to spread election disinformation, US officials say

Come on. Some of our political leaders have told us that the Rusians do not interfere with elections.

But again, as I have written many times in the past, our 2017 NSS recognized the threat and how we must address it.

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."

Russia is relying on unwitting Americans to spread election disinformation, US officials say

BY  DAVID KLEPPER

Updated 8:43 PM EDT, July 29, 2024

https://apnews.com/article/russia-trump-biden-harris-china-election-disinformation-54d7e44de370f016e87ab7df33fd11c8

AP · July 29, 2024

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Kremlin is turning to unwitting Americans and commercial public relations firms in Russia to spread disinformation about the U.S. presidential race, top intelligence officials said Monday, detailing the latest efforts by America’s adversaries to shape public opinion ahead of the 2024 election.

The warning comes after a tumultuous few weeks in U.S. politics that have forced Russia, Iran and China to revise some of the details of their propaganda playbook. What hasn’t changed, intelligence officials said, is the determination of these nations to seed the internet with false and incendiary claims about American democracy to undermine faith in the election.

“The American public should know that content that they read online — especially on social media — could be foreign propaganda, even if it appears to be coming from fellow Americans or originating in the United States,” said an official from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity under rules set by the office of the director.

Russia continues to pose the greatest threat when it comes to election disinformation, authorities said, while there are indications that Iran is expanding its efforts and China is proceeding cautiously when it comes to 2024.

Groups linked to the Kremlin are increasingly hiring marketing and communications firms located within Russia to outsource some of the work of creating digital propaganda while also covering their tracks, the officials said during the briefing with reporters.

Two such firms were the subject of new U.S. sanctions announced in March. Authorities say the two Russian companies created fake websites and social media profiles to spread Kremlin disinformation.

The disinformation can focus on the candidates or voting, or on issues that are already the subject of debates in the U.S., such as immigration, crime or the war in Gaza.

The ultimate goal, however, is to get Americans to spread Russian disinformation without questioning its origin. People are far more likely to trust and repost information that they believe is coming from a domestic source, officials said. Fake websites designed to mimic U.S. news outlets and AI-generated social media profiles are just two methods.

In some cases, Americans and American tech companies and media outlets have willingly amplified and parroted the messages of the Kremlin.

What to know about the 2024 Election

• Democracy: American democracy has overcome big stress tests since 2020. More challenges lie ahead in 2024.
• AP’s Role: The Associated Press is the most trusted source of information on election night, with a history of accuracy dating to 1848. Learn more.
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“Foreign influence actors are getting better at hiding their hand, and getting Americans to do it,” said the official, who spoke alongside officials from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security.

Sen. Mark Warner, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said last month that he worries the U.S. may be more vulnerable to foreign disinformation this year than it was before the 2020 election. On Monday he said the warning from intelligence officials shows the U.S. election is “in the bullseye of bad actors across the globe.”

“It also, disturbingly, emphasizes the extent to which foreign actors — and particularly Russia — rely on both unwitting and witting Americans to promote foreign-aligned narratives in the United States,” Warner, a Virginia Democrat, said in a statement.

In one measure of the threat, officials tracking foreign disinformation say they have issued twice the number of warnings to political candidates, government leaders, election offices and others targeted by foreign groups so far in the 2024 election cycle as they did in the 2022 cycle.

Officials won’t disclose how many warnings were issued, or who received them, but said the significant uptick reflects heightened interest in the presidential race by America’s adversaries as well as improved efforts by the government to identify and warn of such threats.

The warnings are given so the targets can take steps to protect themselves and set the record straight if necessary.

Russia and other countries are also quickly pivoting to exploit some of the recent developments in the presidential race, including the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump as well as President Joe Biden’s decision to drop out of the race in favor of Vice President Kamala Harris.

Following the attack on Trump, for instance, Russian disinformation agencies quickly amplified claims that Democratic rhetoric led to the shooting, or even baseless conspiracy theories suggesting that Biden or the Ukrainian government orchestrated the attempt.

“These pro-Russian voices sought to tie the assassination attempt with Russia’s continuing war against Ukraine,” concluded the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, which tracks Russian disinformation.

Intelligence officials have in the past determined that Russian propaganda appeared designed to support Trump, and officials said Monday they have not changed that assessment.

Eroding support for Ukraine remains a top objective of Russian disinformation, and Trump has praised Russian President Vladimir Putin in the past and is seen as less supportive of NATO.

While China mounted a sprawling disinformation campaign before Taiwan’s recent election, the nation has shown much more caution when it comes to the U.S. Beijing may use disinformation to target congressional races or other down-ballot contests in which a candidate has voiced strong opinions on China. But China isn’t expected to try to influence the presidential race, the officials said Monday.

Xie Feng, the Chinese ambassador to the U.S., said Monday that his government has no intention to interfere with U.S. politics.

Iran, however, has taken a more aggressive posture. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said earlier this month that the Iranian government has covertly supported American protests over Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza. Groups linked to Iran have posed as online activists, encouraged protests and have provided financial support to some protest groups, Haines said.

Iran opposes candidates likely to increase tension with Tehran, officials said. That description fits Trump, whose administration ended a nuclear deal with Iran, reimposed sanctions and ordered the killing of a top Iranian general.

Messages left with representatives from the Russian and Iranian governments were not immediately returned Monday.

__

Associated Press writers Didi Tang and Tara Copp contributed to this report.

AP · July 29, 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