​Quotes of the Day:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world."

– In Congress, July 4, 1776

“When dictatorship is a fact, revolution becomes a right.”

– Victor Hugo

“To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.”

– Ella Wheeler Wilcox

1. Do I love America? On patriotism and my country.

2. Americans Love Their Country—and Their States

3. America Has Always Been a Dangerous Idea

4. Revolution Among the Hedgerows (An Ode to Guerrilla Warfare in the American Revolution)

5. The American Revolution Was a Really Big Deal

6. America needs an honest reckoning over its spy agencies

7. China is building an entire empire on data

8. What Drones Can—and Cannot—Do on the Battlefield

9. ‘Made-in-America’ drone maker Neros awaits its big Pentagon break

10. Iran Is Terrorizing Its Own Citizens. The World Needs to Respond.

11. An Emerging Trump Doctrine?

12. Afghanistan review could lead to change in promotions for NCOs, officers

13. China's foreign minister tells EU that Beijing cannot afford Russia to lose in Ukraine, media reports

14. Beyond The Bombs: Who Really Won The 12-Day War Between Israel And Iran? – OpEd

15. U.N. Pulls Nuclear Inspectors Out of Iran for Safety Reasons

16. Can AI and Drones Replace Soldiers and Jets?

17. The Quad Isn’t Quitting

18. Beijing’s Reactions to Lai Ching-te’s Position on Taiwan Sovereignty

19. Lawmakers want all troops wearing American-made boots

20. Strategic Narratives to Counter Global Threats

21.  Ombra Secures IWTSD Contract for RF Sensing System

22. TSMC to Delay Japan Chip Plant and Prioritize U.S. to Avoid Trump Tariffs

23. What’s in a name? Fighters, bombers and modern aerial combat

24. NATO allies sound alarm on Russia chemical weapons

25. Book Review | China’s Second Continent

1. Do I love America? On patriotism and my country.

​Excerpts:

This is America.

And maybe this is just the story I tell myself because this is my home, but it’s a story I love. It’s a story of love. Do I love America? Shoot, I think so. I care for it. I want it to be good and fair and just and kind and confident and strong and welcoming and capable of brute force strength whenever the calling comes. I don’t mind if it slaps me around every now and then, but I’d love if it could just function a little better, avoid a few more wars, and allow us to share a reality and lean on wisdom and look to evidence and treasure our elderly and be forgiving and fair and nice to our children — even if just a little more than we are.

I’ve been thinking a lot about whether I love America. And on this Independence Day I want to. I do. I love America, I tell myself. I think I do.

I think I always might.

Do I love America?

On patriotism and my country.

https://www.readtangle.com/do-i-love-america/

215 comments

Personal essay

Photo by Aaron Burden / Unsplash

I’m Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”

Today is a special edition for the 4th of July — a personal essay from our Executive Editor Isaac Saul. Would you rather listen? You can find our podcast here.

A record low 58% of U.S. adults now say they are extremely (41%) or very (17%) proud to be an American.

I’ve been thinking a lot these days about my pride in America — more to the point, about whether I love America. I tell myself I do. And I tell other people that I do, too. In my chest, I want to say it, and I do say it: “Yes, I love America. I love my country.” America is my home, and there is virtue in being proud of the place where you live.

If I close my eyes and think of “America," I first imagine all the places that I’ve lived, that I love, that I’ve called home. I think of the neighborhood I live in now in Philadelphia, the working class side by side with the white collar newcomers side by side with the sports-obsessed lunatics who love this place with a destructive passion and an unconditional fervor. I think of New York City, where I spent nearly a decade, and the way everyone in the city seems to be in a perpetual battle together against the minor injustices around us — a subway car’s broken air conditioning, a double-parked Mack truck, a crowded sidewalk. I think of how we all unified, scowling at the city, a hearty laugh at the absurdities just beneath the surface. I think of the rural West Texas desert where I cut my teeth in the summers as a teenager and just finished building a house last year. I think of the bays of Cape Cod, where I learned to love cold ocean water and fresh seafood and the rocking deck of a boat as a young boy. I think of the immeasurable beauty of the Grand Tetons or the Pittsburgh winters or southern California in the fall or Seattle in the summer or New Orleans at any time and the way Idaho looks like a scene out of The Land Before Time, just waiting for a dinosaur to lurch around the corner. 

There is so much I love about America that I have no other answer than to say, well, yes — I do love this country. I love the fresh-cut grass of a minor league baseball outfield and the warm bun of a hot dog in my hand. I love big trucks and electric cars and good medicine and cheap technology and seeing our athletes dominate all the Olympic events. I love being able to write that the president or governor or my local city council representative is an idiot when they’re acting like an idiot and then sleep soundly without fear of repercussions. Sometimes, I love being loud and bombastic for the sake of being loud and bombastic, and being accepted as such because it’s America. I love redemption, and few countries celebrate redemption as America does. I love a society that insists on telling each other our grand dreams are within reach — that all you need is some hard work and little luck and a good idea, even if it’s not always the reality for all people.

I love the convenience of traversing state lines where food and laws and culture change as if you’ve entered a new country, yet we still share a common language. Some days I love being gluttonous, and I love that this country makes it easy. I love the dumb slang these dumb American teenagers are using these days. I love a cold shitty beer at the end of a long day of work, and America specializes in both shitty beer and long work days. Man, I love the sports and the entertainment. I love the NBA, the NFL, a crowded stadium of drunk and rowdy fans or the way my heart rate goes up when a new, highly anticipated movie trailer is released. I hate Hollywood with a love I can’t explain. This tacky, cheesy, ritzy, awful, imaginative place that people cross oceans and countries to come to just so they can tell their story, just so we can watch it on a giant screen and talk about how beautiful or boring or meaningful it really was. 

Do I love democracy and freedom and individual rights and the pursuit of improving and expanding it all? Hell yeah, I do. But how many of these things are unique to us? How much of this is America? What about those things that make America, America, but in a bad way?

“Do I love prisons?” that voice in my head asks. Do I love obesity? Do I love gun violence? Do I love addiction and depression and loneliness and expensive healthcare to treat it all?

Do I love ideals that people want to quote, or put on placards, or keep in their email signatures, but can’t live up to in practice? Do I love our floundering schools or the fact that nearly half of our country doesn’t vote, or the way we demand you must love this place to live in it?

If I’m honest with myself, if I’m really honest with myself, I love America for some of the same reasons other people hate it. Sometimes I like sticking my chest out and thumping it. Sometimes I feel a little tinge of pride when I read that we’ve used our military might to threaten another country that has been threatening others and our threat has “worked.” I like feeling safe and strong and big and in control. I love being important, and I love that my ancestors built this important thing, and I love that even if you hate America you care about it — that we matter, that our country has influence and control and sets the standard. Even with our leaders, as corruptible and spineless as they can sometimes be, I’m often glad it isn’t the other people running the show.

Shoot, I even love the guns! Not in schools or in the streets or in the hands of abusers. But I sure do love hearing the crack of a rifle echo across the land, watching the spoons spin or the can flop or the milk jug explode; and I love the notion of self-protection and independence infused into so much Second Amendment culture. 

Do I just love America because it’s mine? Is my love unconditional, as it is with friends or family I’ve known my whole life?  

I think about the things I hate about this country — the injustices, the partisanship, the conspiracies, the hackery, the materialism, the way simple, scared, angry people have gotten so good at climbing to the top — and I wonder, isn’t that enough not to love this country?

I think of how some of the great writers answered this question. C.S. Lewis put it like this:

It is like loving your children only "if they're good," your wife only while she keeps her looks, your husband only so long as he is famous and successful. "No man," said one of the Greeks, "loves his city because it is great, but because it is his." A man who really loves his country will love her in her ruin and degeneration.

Or, I think of how my predecessors answered the question. John Lewis, however you feel about his politics, loved his country even though it beat him for asking for a vote, even though it treated him like less than a man, even though it dragged him through the streets for the crime of struggling for equality. “When historians pick up their pens to write the story of the 21st century, let them say that it was your generation who laid down the heavy burdens of hate at last and that peace finally triumphed over violence, aggression and war,” Lewis said in his final piece of writing. “So I say to you, walk with the wind, brothers and sisters, and let the spirit of peace and the power of everlasting love be your guide.”

Who am I to not love this country, when John Lewis did? 

I remember the first few months I lived in New York City. There was something about it that was so different from Philadelphia or Pittsburgh or Jerusalem or any other big city I’d spent a lot of time in. There was the obvious: Everything was on your block. Grocery store, bank, liquor store, park, laundromat, restaurants, bars, hordes of people unlike any you’d see elsewhere — you could walk to it all and soak it all in.

But there was something else, too. There was this way people walked with each other, this silent unified front against the beast of the city that you could not see. “Sometimes New York just slaps you in the face,” I once told a group of my friends. Many of them laughed because they knew exactly what I meant. The City has a personality — a being, an energy, and this symphony of smells and sounds and characters and tastes and barely functioning things your taxes are paying for. Sometimes New York hands you the best night of your life out of the blue, for no particular reason, just by virtue of you opening your heart to it. 

And, sometimes, it slaps you in the face.

I often think of America as the New York City of the world: It’s the best country on the planet but it smells like piss and nothing really works how it’s supposed to. As I sit here thinking about this country — its partisan rancor, rising political violence, exportation of militarism across the globe, and often not-functioning Congress — I can see why so many people struggle to feel a love of country right now. 

But the visibility of these flaws — the ability to not just discuss them openly but also elicit change and try to fix them — that is the fundamentally American project. We are a sometimes great, sometimes loathsome, eternally imperfect nation built on a set of ideas that are so fundamentally superior to anything else civilization has come up with that they’ve been copied and pasted across the globe.

And when you spend time in this place, when you view it with fresh eyes, it’s impossible to ignore how beautifully we’ve built a country to fit the needs, wants, and desires of so many. Ski or swim. Hard work or laziness. Religious zealotry or rabid atheism. Blue or red or purple or “mad and not paying attention.” Cheesesteaks or the tastiest Nigerian food west of Nigeria. I once counted six languages on a 30-minute commute to work in New York City; I once stopped at a peach stand in Mississippi and couldn’t understand the English that was being spoken to me by the American owner.

This is America.

And maybe this is just the story I tell myself because this is my home, but it’s a story I love. It’s a story of love. Do I love America? Shoot, I think so. I care for it. I want it to be good and fair and just and kind and confident and strong and welcoming and capable of brute force strength whenever the calling comes. I don’t mind if it slaps me around every now and then, but I’d love if it could just function a little better, avoid a few more wars, and allow us to share a reality and lean on wisdom and look to evidence and treasure our elderly and be forgiving and fair and nice to our children — even if just a little more than we are.

I’ve been thinking a lot about whether I love America. And on this Independence Day I want to. I do. I love America, I tell myself. I think I do.

I think I always might.

One more thing...

Okay, imagine this in a very convincing, old-timey, salesperson voice: Happy Independence Day! What better way to celebrate our independence than by supporting independent journalism? If you haven’t yet, please consider joining 60,000+ Tangleers and becoming a Tangle member! This Fourth of July only, we’re offering a 25% discount off a “bundle” subscription that unlocks all of our ad-free, members-only content — newsletter, podcast, website, everything. All for just $6/month when you subscribe for the year and claim the offer. Freedom! Independence! Great journalism! Subscribe here.

Don't forget: Last night, I sat down with Tangle Editor-at-Large Kmele Foster to discuss his piece on the 2020 racial reckoning. Check out our live conversation, where were took questions from the Tangle audience, here:

2. Americans Love Their Country—and Their States

​Excerpts:

Our federalist system still gives us the best path to exercise and practice self-government. Our challenge is to embrace the Founders’ wisdom. Doing so can not only cool the temperatures of national strife and divide but also renew civic trust and help us improve our local communities. Independence Day is a welcome reminder not to fret obsessively over who is running Washington. Rather, we should work to remember our inheritance and govern our local communities with renewed conviction and accountability.

When we celebrate the sovereignty of the several states, and the richness of our regional differences, we affirm the genius of America: E pluribus unum. Out of many, one.

Americans Love Their Country—and Their States

When the Declaration was signed in 1776, it marked 13 distinct rebellions across separate colonies.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/americans-love-their-countryand-their-states-70ff9fad?mod=opinion_lead_pos9

By Ray Nothstine

July 3, 2025 6:47 pm ET

A statue of Maj. Gen. John Stark on the statehouse lawn in Concord, N.H., Feb. 26, 2015. Photo: AP

Americans love their states. You’ve likely felt a sense of devotion to the place where you grew up or now live. It’s a pride built on sports loyalties, local dishes and the familiar landscapes of home. But this affection isn’t only about culture or bragging rights. It reflects something deeper: the abiding truth that our identity and self-government began not in Washington or even Philadelphia, but in the states and communities we call home.

We should remember the independent spirit of the colonies and their multitude of rebellions that helped shape our federalist system—one in which states and citizens aren’t subjects of a distant authority, but active participants in self-government. The revolutionary belief that people need not be ruled by a sovereign took root in county courthouses, churches and local assemblies—long before it was declared in Philadelphia in 1776.

America’s system of government gives more power to the states, and therefore, the people, than to Washington. States and communities are largely in charge of the policies and laws that shape our everyday lives. The states are the foundation of our political system. Yet while state pride is still booming, the nation has lost hold of too much of the self-governing sentiment that sparked the revolution. The 10th Amendment, designed to keep power close to the people, has become one of the Constitution’s most ignored protections.

When the Declaration of Independence was signed in the summer of 1776, it marked not just one revolt but 13 distinct rebellions brewing across separate colonies. In the words of John Adams, it wasn’t until that year that “thirteen clocks were made to strike together.” Massachusetts offered one of the main sparks of the armed rebellion with the shots fired at Lexington and Concord. Virginia added not only George Washington as commanding general but much of the intellectual heft of the rebellion in Thomas Jefferson.

North Carolina’s flag proudly displays two dates that predate the revolution. May 20, 1775, refers to what’s known as the Mecklenburg Declaration, when the residents of Mecklenburg County reportedly declared themselves no longer subjects of the British crown. April 12, 1776, marks the Halifax Resolves, when North Carolina became the first colony to proclaim independence from Britain. That sense of autonomy and local control still lives on in the bold words many states chose to define themselves—mottos like “Live Free or Die” (New Hampshire) “Thus Always to Tyrants” (Virginia), “Mountaineers Are Always Free” (West Virginia) and “We Dare Defend Our Rights” (Alabama).

In 1932, Justice Louis Brandeis dubbed the states “laboratories of democracy” given their energy and innovation at crafting public policy. While states tend to borrow and adapt successful approaches from one another, Washington typically offers one-size-fits-all solutions. These usually fail because they can’t account for the differences in Oklahoma, New York, Idaho or Vermont.

Our federalist system still gives us the best path to exercise and practice self-government. Our challenge is to embrace the Founders’ wisdom. Doing so can not only cool the temperatures of national strife and divide but also renew civic trust and help us improve our local communities. Independence Day is a welcome reminder not to fret obsessively over who is running Washington. Rather, we should work to remember our inheritance and govern our local communities with renewed conviction and accountability.

When we celebrate the sovereignty of the several states, and the richness of our regional differences, we affirm the genius of America: E pluribus unum. Out of many, one.

Mr. Nothstine is a writer and editor at the State Policy Network.

Inside View: Ignore the haters pushing a revisionist history, and recognize the American experiment for the success that it is.

3. America Has Always Been a Dangerous Idea

I​, too, remain bullish on our America. Ironically those who claim we are a republic and not a democracy and quote Ben Franklin do not realize that he was talking about the most democratic act of all - "you" have to keep it.

If we judge every action through the lens of the Declaration of Independence (and the preamble to the Constitution)** we will survive.

Conclusion:

When asked at the Constitutional Convention what kind of government this new United States would adopt, Ben Franklin famously responded, “A republic, if you can keep it.” That quote is usually dusted off as a kind of warning, but it is also a source of hope. If “you” can keep it; already the republic isn’t somebody else’s business but everyone’s. How you feel about that depends on how you feel about your fellow citizens, and perhaps even your fellow human beings. Though there are always plenty of reasons to worry for the future, in the end I’m an optimist. Who would have thought that a government founded in revolution, whose charter asserts the right to shake off the chains of tyrants, would last 250 years? Will we last another two and a half centuries? I don’t know the answer, but we have a fighting chance so long as we never lose sight of the indelible truths contained in the Declaration of Independence.

** "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.​"

America Has Always Been a Dangerous Idea

https://www.thefp.com/p/america-has-always-been-a-dangerous-idea?utm

July 4, 2025

Eli Lake

52M

The Declaration of Independence wasn’t just a break from empire. It was a challenge to every regime that came after.

s

Happy Holiday! Nellie is busy celebrating America’s 249th birthday, but don’t worry: TGIF will be back in your inbox next Friday. In honor of Independence Day, we’re bringing you the latest episode of Breaking History, the podcast where Eli Lake goes back in time in order to make sense of the present. To mark July 4, we’re looking back at the document that began the remarkable experiment of this nation: the Declaration of Independence. You can listen to the episode, which features voices from the past and present, here:

And if you’re a paying subscriber, scroll down to read Eli’s brilliant companion essay, which illuminates why America has always been a dangerous idea.

Last month there was a spate of protests across America united by a two-word slogan: No Kings. This was the rallying cry of the Democrats against the bold prerogatives assumed by President Donald Trump, echoing the Tea Party, the popular movement that emerged in 2009 to hold President Barack Obama to account.

In fact, whether it’s the Black Panthers, the Daughters of the American Revolution, or Arthur Schlesinger Jr. warning about The Imperial Presidency, Americans of all creeds and passions tend to voice their protest of the government in the language of the Declaration of Independence, even in 2025. This is understandable; it’s a remarkable document that marks the official birth of America.

Most national origin stories are about a great man—sometimes with divine authority—who creates a new country in a specific land for a particular bloodline. One’s nationality was determined by blood and soil, and people lived according to the whims of their rulers. America, on the other hand, was founded on an idea. And what an idea it was.

What the founders said in the Declaration was that the government does not derive its power from the heavens or the sword, but from the consent of the people it governs. And the people have a God-given right to dissolve the government when it violates their God-given rights.

Read

Bari Weiss: American Regeneration

The founders did not take the right to break ties with the British Empire lightly. Revolution is serious business and should not be done for trivial reasons. Go to the Declaration and you find that most of the complaints listed against King George III are about his interference with local and state legislatures and courts. Yes, there’s all the stuff we remember from middle school too, like taxation without representation, quartering an army in private homes during peacetime, and my favorite: “He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.” But that last one, which alone would seem to be enough to justify “dissolv[ing] the political bands which have connected” the young Americans to the British Empire, is the 24th of 27 complaints against the king. The bulk of the Declaration’s bill of particulars are about depriving Americans of rights and democratic institutions that the vast majority of the world at the time did not know or have reason to believe their government owed to them.

And in this respect, the Declaration of Independence was dynamite. It was not only a statement of a self-evident truth about the nature of human beings and society; it was an assertion that everyone is entitled to these rights. And this idea has resonated throughout the last two and a half centuries. It has served at home as a promissory note, in the words of Martin Luther King Jr. And it has inspired revolutions and uprisings all over the world. It is what makes America exceptional. The Declaration of Independence, the idea of America, in this sense is much larger than the charter of our nation.

Jefferson, Adams, and the other founders did not discover a new political insight; they were tinkering with the political philosophy of their era.

To understand the Declaration we have to understand its principal author, Thomas Jefferson, our third president, a man who has recently gone through a brutal historical revision focusing on the fact that the apparent author of our liberty owned slaves, and sired children with his slave Sally Hemings. Statues of Jefferson were targets during the Great Awokening of 2020 and 2021.

And it is true that the man who penned the words about inalienable rights endowed by their Creator owned slaves. It’s hard to imagine a more profound example of hypocrisy than that. In this sense, you could say that Jefferson was the 18th-century version of a limousine liberal, except that the principles he placed at the center of the future republic did not exempt him from judgment, as he well knew. He wasn’t justifying the system he inherited, but articulating the foundation for a better one.

We focus on Jefferson because he was the man tasked to write the Declaration of Independence by the Continental Congress. But it’s important to note here that he was more of a curator. The Declaration is akin to a quilt or a collage: It’s a reordering and restatement of prominent ideas that were circulating in this age of enlightenment. The biggest tributary came from John Locke’s “Second Treatise on Government.” He first came up with inalienable rights and enumerated them as the rights to life, liberty, and property, more or less. Jefferson would later write that one of his fellow Virginia delegates to the Continental Congress, Richard Henry Lee, had said the Declaration’s preamble was copied from Locke’s “Second Treatise on Government.”

Locke himself was influenced by the Hebraic monotheism he found in the Old Testament. He literally begins the “Second Treatise” with a disquisition on why God did not grant Adam the right to rule over all of his descendants. Think of the Book of Genesis, which states that Man is created in God’s image. That right there gets you a kind of radical equality of all men, even though it is couched in the supernatural. One sees the echo of that immortal phrase from Genesis in the Declaration’s phrase endowed by their Creator.

Does this mean that Thomas Jefferson was a plagiarist? No more than endowed by their Creator makes people a cheap imitation of the divine. He himself did not believe he was creating a work of original philosophy in the Declaration of Independence. In an 1823 letter to James Madison, Jefferson wrote: “I did not consider it as any part of my charge to invent new ideas altogether and to offer no sentiment which had ever been expressed before.”

Read

American Vulgarity, from Lenny Bruce to Kanye West

There were other influences as well. George Mason’s draft of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which we know Jefferson had with him in Philadelphia when he wrote the Declaration, for example, contains this phrase: “That all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent natural rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.”

Mason’s draft Declaration of Rights was in turn influenced by the English Declaration of Rights, which was later ratified as the English Bill of Rights in 1689, the same year Locke published his Two Treatises of Government. The events of 1688 and 1689 in some ways were a dress rehearsal for the American Revolution. It was a confessional war between James II, England’s Catholic king, and the Protestant majority led by William of Orange, a Dutch noble. King James was forced to abdicate his throne and flee to France. William and his wife, Mary, both Protestants, then assumed the throne. And in this swift transition, Parliament drafted a set of basic rights limiting the powers of future kings. For example, taxation required an act of Parliament and excessive bail was banned.

I bring this up to acknowledge the debt the colonists paid to their mother country. Jefferson, Adams, and the other founders did not discover a new political insight; they were tinkering with the political philosophy of their era. But they were also putting these ideas into action. The English Bill of Rights secured a new contract between Parliament and King, a notable accomplishment for sure. The Declaration, though, went further. The rights it enumerates are inalienable and their truth is self-evident. They are not based in English tradition; they are based in human nature. They are not negotiable, and these rights apply to everyone.

That is the intellectual context of the Declaration. But there is also an important political context. What is often overlooked in the studies of the American Revolution is that even in 1775, when Massachusetts was in rebellion and Boston was under siege, the Continental Congress still held out hope to negotiate a new agreement with King George III. And here is a great irony of the American Revolution. King George had already decided by 1774 to treat the patriots as traitors and rebels. He knew before the Founding Fathers themselves that their agenda was revolution. Had the king not been so stubborn, there is a good chance that New York and Pennsylvania would have continued to push for what they called a middle way. But the king wouldn’t budge, so even the Quaker pacifists of Philadelphia ended up endorsing revolution.

The French Revolution is impossible to imagine without the American Revolution that preceded it, and the declaration that let the liberty cat out of the bag.

Allow me to anticipate an objection thus far. As you may have noticed, I have only lightly touched on America’s original sin: slavery. And yet even though it was debated hotly at the Constitutional Convention, the practice was not abolished until nearly a century after the Declaration of Independence. Women and landless whites—let alone the native tribes—were not afforded the inalienable rights and equality promised by our national charter. In this respect, one could argue that the document was nothing more than marketing material for a revolution staged by a bunch of white elites who didn’t want to pay their taxes. They just dressed up their economic grievances in flowery prose. This is the standard view these days from what might be called the post-American left. But here is what I think they get wrong. Let’s look at Jefferson’s original draft of the declaration:

He [King George] has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation hither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain an execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.

Talk about contradictions. In this section of the document, Jefferson is attacking the English king for imposing the slave trade on the colonies and preventing legislatures from ending what he calls an “execrable commerce,” and also for inciting these slaves to rise up against their masters. But even here, we can see that Jefferson acknowledges that the slaves are human beings who have the same inalienable rights as their masters. The language did not make it into the Declaration because the Southern delegates did not see things the way Jefferson, their fellow Southerner, did. All of that said, Jefferson, Washington, and Madison, all slave owners at the end of their lives, acknowledged that eventually the young republic would have to end the practice of slavery.

But the big flaw in the left’s argument about the Declaration is its failure to appreciate how this document was a standard by which Americans, who were deprived of their rights, could hold their country to account and obtain them. This was the playbook for the abolitionists of the 19th century and the civil rights movement of the 20th century. This was how the suffragettes argued for the right of women to vote. So in this respect, the Declaration is a kind of engine of American progress. Because the rights enumerated are self-evident truths, there is no appeal to celestial, ethnic, or government authority. Just consider the Declaration of Sentiments that emerged from the Seneca Falls Convention, the first meeting of American women to organize for voting rights. It’s the Declaration with one important edit.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

We can also look at the righteous fury of Frederick Douglass in his July 4, 1852 address. Here he turns our national identity on itself.

Americans! your republican politics, not less than your republican religion, are flagrantly inconsistent. You boast of your love of liberty, your superior civilization, and your pure Christianity, while the whole political power of the nation (as embodied in the two great political parties), is solemnly pledged to support and perpetuate the enslavement of three millions of your countrymen.

In the 19th century, Douglass and the other abolitionists amplified the contradictions of a republic whose charter asserted the equality of all people and their rights to live in freedom while allowing the practice of chattel slavery. That contradiction, identified by Jefferson himself, could not hold. It was left for Abraham Lincoln, our greatest president, to resolve through the Civil War. Lincoln argued that his decision to emancipate the slaves was to fulfill the promise of the Declaration. It’s right there in the opening sentence of the Gettysburg Address.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

The Civil War was of course necessary, but it was not sufficient. Black people would remain second-class citizens for another century. But notice again, the argument remains couched in the power of the Declaration of Independence. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech, delivered in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial, borrows heavily from the language and spirit of the Declaration.

In 1789, only 13 years after the Founding Fathers declared their independence from Great Britain, the French decided to take that idea even further and abolished the Bourbon Dynasty altogether. The new national anthem sounded like something an American patriot would sing, with lines like “the bloody flag of tyranny is raised.” And then there’s the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. It’s another nod to the Declaration of Independence, but it went a bit further. For example, the first article asserts that “all men are born and remain free and equal in rights,” a restating of the Declaration’s famous preamble. But then it says “social distinctions may be based only on common utility.”

Even Ho Chi Minh opened Vietnam’s own declaration in 1945 by quoting directly from Jefferson’s famous second paragraph.

Though clearly different, the French Revolution is impossible to imagine without the American Revolution that preceded it, and the Declaration that let the liberty cat out of the bag. And boy, did the cat run. Because after 1789, the Declaration really began to go viral. There is the Haitian Revolution, which began in 1791. Seven years after it ended in 1804, Venezuela, under Simón Bolívar, declared independence from Spain. By 1817, the European powers had begun to notice. John Quincy Adams that year, from his post as the American minister in England, observed in a letter to his father John Adams:

The universal feeling of Europe in witnessing the gigantic growth of our population and power is that we shall, if united, become a very dangerous member of the society of nations.

The power of the Declaration’s ideas continued to spread. Our DNA is all over the independence movements of the twentieth century. Even Ho Chi Minh opened Vietnam’s own declaration in 1945 by quoting directly from Jefferson’s famous second paragraph. It resurfaced in Israel, whose 1948 Declaration of Independence echoes the American one in both structure and spirit.

Across continents and centuries, the Declaration’s assertion of universal liberty continues to be one of the most contagious ideas in political history. Even during the Cold War, when so much anti-colonial ferment was motivated by the Russian Revolution and the ideas of Marx and Engels, rooted in materialist theories of historical inevitability, the beacon of our national charter lit the way for freedom fighters. Nelson Mandela, whose African National Congress was aligned with the Soviet Union during apartheid, sang a hymn of praise to the Declaration before the U.S. Congress in 1990. And my hope is that we will see the power of the Declaration today inspire a new generation of revolutionary patriots fighting for freedom in Iran as their regime reels from the humiliation of the 12-day war.

This American scripture is something all of us should still revere. Because we are closer to the ideals of the Declaration of Independence today than we were in 1776. Its words inspired Lincoln, Douglas, King, the suffragettes, and countless other Americans to demand that we live up to its ideals. That is not a criticism of the Declaration but a tribute to its power. This is why I reject the fashionable theory today that America was founded in 1619—a century before any of its founders were born—and the date the first African slaves, kidnapped by Portugal, were sent to the British colony of Virginia. In the end the spirit of 1776 defeated the spirit of 1619 in the Civil War, and later in the civil rights movement.

When asked at the Constitutional Convention what kind of government this new United States would adopt, Ben Franklin famously responded, “A republic, if you can keep it.” That quote is usually dusted off as a kind of warning, but it is also a source of hope. If “you” can keep it; already the republic isn’t somebody else’s business but everyone’s. How you feel about that depends on how you feel about your fellow citizens, and perhaps even your fellow human beings. Though there are always plenty of reasons to worry for the future, in the end I’m an optimist. Who would have thought that a government founded in revolution, whose charter asserts the right to shake off the chains of tyrants, would last 250 years? Will we last another two and a half centuries? I don’t know the answer, but we have a fighting chance so long as we never lose sight of the indelible truths contained in the Declaration of Independence.

4. Revolution Among the Hedgerows (An Ode to Guerrilla Warfare in the American Revolution)

Revolution Among the Hedgerows

The fascinating history of Dutch-Americans in the fight for independence

https://www.independent.org/article/2025/07/02/revolution-among-hedgerows/

By William F. Marina

July 2, 2025

Editor's note: Many believe guerrilla warfare emerged in the late 20th century, but this is incorrect. Guerrilla tactics have existed throughout history, with records from ancient Egypt, China, the Bible, and historians like Polybius, Tacitus, and Josephus. These methods also shaped the American Revolution. Armed colonists clashed with British troops and loyalists in small-scale fights, making the quelling of the rebellion highly costly and unlikely to succeed. Long before The Patriot and other popular depictions, the late Prof. William Marina of Florida Atlantic University—a leading advocate of the view that the American Revolution was a classic guerrilla war—wrote an insightful essay on this often-overlooked aspect of the colonial struggle. Circulated by Independent Institute in the 1980s, this work was first published in Christianity & Civilization, Vol.2, The Theology of Christian Resistance, Geneva Divinity School Press, Tyler, Texas, 1983. Reprinted with permission.

Until recently, few historians had analyzed the American Revolution from the perspective of what in the twentieth century has come to be known as “revolutionary warfare.” The military history of the Revolution was usually separated from the political, social, or economic history of the War, and dealt mostly with battles between traditionally organized armies.

John Shy, whose essay “The American Revolution: The Military Conflict Considered as a Revolutionary War,” is recognized as a path-breaking study in this area, later acknowledged that the piece emerged out of some contract work which he did for the Pentagon in 1965 during the Vietnam War, having to do with “Isolating the Guerrilla” from his civilian support. “Skeptical of the project as a whole,” he confessed, “I justified taking its modest stipend by thinking that the American Revolutionary War had a few lessons for our own time.”

In terms of revolutionary warfare, however, much of his study had to do with what is usually considered “partisan,” or irregular, “warfare, rather than what is often described as guerrilla war.” In contrast to regular armies fighting each other from essentially fixed lines, irregular warfare involves skirmishes, sometimes behind enemy lines, by small army or militia units. Continued operations by such formally organized regular units indicate that the country is far from under the control of, or pacified by, the invader. On the other hand, in a technical sense, guerrilla warfare is revolutionary war at its most basic level. The occupying forces are enough in control of the area that local guerrillas fight as, in effect, part-time soldiers, usually attacking by surprise at night, and then resuming their civilian occupations during the day.

In a sense, therefore, theories of revolutionary war, or counter-insurgency, are really the opposite sides of the same coin. Once a country has been occupied and its regular forces defeated, an insurgency begins with the initiation of guerrilla warfare. While this may continue in some areas, as the enemy is weakened in others, a shift to irregular warfare may be undertaken, and, finally the emergence of a regular army to face the occupying forces in the field. Militarily, counter-insurgency means smashing the regular army, mopping up any attempts at irregular warfare by small units, and the restoration of order by eliminating the local guerrillas through isolating them from the rest of the population.

If this rough scenario, outlined in numerous books on revolutionary warfare, has any validity, then despite the many traditional military books to the contrary, the British were never anywhere near “victory” in the American Revolution. The main American Army-there were at times several others also-under George Washington was never smashed. After his defeats in New York during 1776, “the Old Fox” withdrew into the hills in New Jersey from which, in any emergency, he could have thrown his limited forces along a perimeter stretching from Boston to Philadelphia. Far from being overly cautious, with even the slightest hint of advantage, Washington repeatedly engaged the British forces. When the British tried a strategy of extending a line of garrisons into the interior, much as the United States tried in Vietnam, he beat them so badly with a surprise attack on Trenton that they were dissuaded from any further pursuit of that tactic.

Every time the British ventured into the interior, as Tom Paine predicted, they lost an army. This was true at Saratoga, where militia units, coming from as far away as New England, attacked as irregulars, and then meshed together into an army, which resulted in the surrender of General Burgoyne. Certainly, the French fleet offshore and the American and French forces surrounding him were significant factors in Lord Cornwallis’s decision to surrender, but we must not forget that his army had been severely weakened from numerous encounters with the regular army and partisan forces. Far from liberating the interior of the Carolinas, he found himself losing men and leaving behind war materials as he drove to reach the coast for an attempted evacuation. Even in the case of Philadelphia, the British had abandoned it because, despite the use of considerable manpower, it was simply too difficult to keep it supplied in the face of constant harassment by militia.

In short, the British were simply never in control of very much of North America. During the period when their fleet was transferring the army from Boston to New York, in the face of Washington’s artillery on the heights above the former, there were no British in the colonies. Except for relatively short periods, from 1776 until 1781, the British, on any continuing basis, controlled little more than the city of New York.

Given these circumstances, there was really very little opportunity, or need, for the Americans to organize, or attempt to sustain, a classic guerrilla insurgency. On the other hand, after the failure at a negotiated peace during early 1778, the British began to develop the outlines of a pacification plan.

One way to examine the course of the war and the effectiveness of British strategy, especially with respect to pacification, is to study its effect in a small area. That is, after all, what the English and Hessian commanders seemed to be asking for, a single county that could be pacified, and from which, like a row of dominoes, they could work out in various directions, until a whole state, and then others, were secured.

New Jersey: “The Middle Ground”

The British never entertained much hope that New England would be an initial area for pacification. Connecticut, for example, had only six percent Loyalists, and no British army ventured into the New England countryside after the losses at Lexington and Concord. Late in the war, it was in the South that the British sought to establish the pacification program, but there, too, the image of a vast reservoir of Loyalists in the interior, waiting to be liberated, proved illusory. We noted above the partisan attacks on Cornwallis, so incessant that the British soldiers labeled the area around Charlotte, North Carolina, “the hornet’s nest.”

The middle area, however, was always supposedly the most vulnerable. Inhabited by more minority groups, General Burgoyne’s planned march and occupation of this area would have split the New England states off from the South. Even if this notion had not been held by the British, they had to start somewhere, if the pacification program was ever to get underway. Since they held New York City from mid-1776 until the end of the war, what better place to begin, working out from that secure area, not toward Connecticut, but to the west and south?

New Jersey, which has been called “the cockpit of the Revolution,” was the natural place to begin. In this “neutral ground” the two sides contended for the duration of the war. The struggle to control this area was evident in 1776, long before any formal British commitment to a pacification program.

If ever there was a location where the British had “time,” that precious commodity for which the counter-insurgency expert is always asking, it was in New Jersey. In those areas close to New York City, it would be difficult for American partisan units to operate, if at all. Instead, for five years, the major theme would be the classic confrontation of American guerrilla forces opposing whatever British and Loyalist units invaded the area. Finally, any pacification program would apparently be aided by the fact that the area contained numerous Dutch settlers, one of those minorities which, as William Nelson has noted, was constituted of certain segments susceptible to Toryism.

Unfortunately, we lack detailed studies of local areas during the years of the Revolution. Fortunately, however, what Shy has called “the only intensive study made of a single community during this period” is of Bergen County, New Jersey, the area around Paramus, on the Jersey side of where the George Washington Bridge now crosses the Hudson River. Thus, the only area of which we have an “intensive study” turns out to be one of the few areas with any potential for examining the American Revolution for examples of classical guerrilla warfare, with the British in virtual control of the area for an extended period of time.

Curiously, Shy made no real use of this study in his own essay, remarking that from its data, “it is apparent that the local and bloody battles between rebel and Loyal militia were related to the prewar animosities between ethnic groups, political rivals, churches, and even neighbors.” The work in question is Adrian C. Leiby’s The Revolutionary War in the Hackensack Valley: The Jersey Dutch and the Neutral Ground, 1775–1783, which Shy in both versions of his essay mistakenly cites as The Hackensack Valley in the American Revolutionary War.

In what follows, we hope to demonstrate, contrary to Shy’s implication, that there is an enormous amount of data in Leiby’s work relevant to the study of revolutionary warfare and how that whole process develops over time. This is true in a strictly military sense, but, even if that were not the case, Shy’s comment suggests that internal struggles between the local population involving ethnicity, politics, religion, and neighbors, is somehow not related to revolutionary warfare. But, if anything, the opposite is true! The struggle in Vietnam, for example, involved the Vietnamese divided against each other around such issues as ethnicity, politics, and religion, long before the Americans made the scene.

What this really suggests is how truly difficult a task the American revolutionary forces in this area faced. Divided by various issues, and with a considerable Loyalist population, the revolutionaries were also confronted by large British and Hessian forces. Any effective operations against the British and their Loyalist allies could only be mounted after the revolutionaries had consolidated their own forces. This brings us to an area which most theorists of the sociology of revolution have regarded as crucial: the winning over and commitment, or at the very least acquiescence, of those who would, in many respects, wish to remain neutral. Often they may want the program of the revolutionists, but as classic examples of what economists call “the free rider,” they do not wish to involve themselves needlessly in a risk to achieve that goal.

The purpose of this essay is not a critique of Shy’s work, but it is clear that military historians have tended to ignore, or touch lightly, upon the fact that revolutionary warfare is primarily a question of psychology and politics, often including ideology. But all great theoreticians of revolutionary war have recognized that it is a struggle over legitimacy. One of us has dealt with this question in some detail elsewhere, and, as we shall see, that theme underlies much of the activities of the Americans in Leiby’s description of the war in the Hackensack Valley. With these preliminary comments about revolutionary warfare in mind, let us examine Leiby’s study for any illumination it might offer toward understanding this phenomenon as one aspect of the American Revolution.

The Patriot Militiaman

Leiby’s characterization of “the patriot militiaman” who “farmed during the day and did sentinel duty at night” is almost a classic description of the guerrilla. In the “middle” actually, rather than “neutral,” ground the battle raged back and forth, and if the British came often to forage among the inhabitants of that rich farm area, so too, at times, did the Americans.

To understand what was to occur there during the Revolution we must go back a few years earlier. The Dutch communities in that whole area had been deeply split by a schism, and greatly affected by the Great Awakening of the 1740s, which had taken place up and down the colonies, also influencing other denominations in a similar fashion. On one side was the smaller “conferentie” which still held to a strong link back to Amsterdam, and had a “violent hatred for all things American.” From this group were to come the Dutch Tories. The other, and much larger group was the “coetus,” which sought much lesser ties with Amsterdam, and much influenced by the Great Awakening, hoped to institute a more personal religion on a more than Sunday basis, along with a more democratic church polity. It has been called “the American party,” and from it came the Dutch Whigs who were to bear the brunt of the militia struggle for the area.

The Dutch who formed the backbone of the patriotic cause were members of the Dutch Reformed Church, sharing the democratic church polity, essentially congregational, of the Presbyterians, who so angered the British, and whose churches, as rebel meeting houses, bore the brunt of many of their raids. Of the New York Dutch, the Loyalist historian Thomas Jones wrote, “the Presbyterian party was in possession [of the Reformed church] and . . . their leaders were nearly all on the American side, [so the British] took possession of their edifices as rebel property.” One British policy maker sent to America put the matter succinctly: “When the war is over, there must be a great reform established, . . . for, Presbyterianism is really at the bottom of this whole conspiracy, has supplied it with vigor, and will never rest till something is decided upon it.”

These prosperous Dutch farmers were hardly radicals, but a few of them were from the beginning quite militant in defense of American rights. Early in 1775, New Jersey was one of those states that made the transition from Royal to revolutionary government “without the firing of a gun,” as the Provincial Congress replaced the Provincial Assembly, the Bergen County delegates to the meeting of May 23, 1775, having been selected by the local Committee of Correspondence. The Bergen County resolutions of May 12 were typical of those throughout the colonies in the aftermath of Lexington and Concord. They called for a union of the inhabitants and freeholders to ensure safety and prevent a “State of Anarchy and Confusion” which might accompany the “present Struggle for our Liberty, unless the proper Steps are taken to preserve Regularity and Unanimity among us,” and were circulated in both English and Dutch. The Provincial Congress took over the functions of government, including taxation, and established a number of militia companies.

But the fluid attitudes during this interim period before the first real battles of the war were obvious in the elections in late September 1775. A more moderate group of men was elected which still included some of the earlier selectees of the patriot committees from some sections of New Jersey, more cautious moderates, and even a few who would later become Loyalists. Leiby attributes this to a decline of peak enthusiasm after Concord, but it more likely represents the differences between a cautious electorate and a more committed Committee of Correspondence. Bergen County was one of those areas where the moderates scored most heavily. But what this demonstrated, more than anything else, was the American commitment to legal and representative procedures, for we find no “rump” trying to manipulate the population.

As American defense measures got underway, Leiby tells us that one “Robert Erskine had evidently enlisted a company of soldiers for the Jersey Line [of the Continental army] from the workers at the ironworks, and outfitted them at his own expense.” On the other hand, “Few Jersey Dutchmen in the Hackensack valley enlisted in the Continental army, and of the few who did, most enlisted late in the war.” A few of these men, who came from among the laborers or artisans, fought with the army in the South. But, speculates Leiby, “Perhaps most Jersey Dutchmen were too well settled and prosperous to be professional soldiers; perhaps they were not sufficiently exercised about the war when it began. As it turned out, they may well have been more useful as militiamen in the neutral ground than they would have been in the regular army.” The most accurate appraisal is that the Jersey Dutch Whig majority was solidly in favor of defending American rights. As an organized militia they had no intention of attacking the British, but hoped that the problems separating the two parties could be worked out short of war.

The battles in and around New York City in the last part of 1776 were indicative of the recognition that war was a reality. We might recall that it was the election of the new delegation from New Jersey arriving in Philadelphia late in June that turned the tide for independence. The American defeat of late 1776 made Bergen County a refuge for many patriots. Washington had hoped to set up a hospital in Orange County, New York, just north of Bergen, but his chief medical officer reported that no homes were available because of all the refugees, and it would be impossible short of evicting some other persons. What is glimpsed here is the patriot’s concern for the inhabitants, which was not to be demonstrated by the British.

The New Tactic: Foraging

As the British advanced, Washington this time ordered the potential forage supplies destroyed, as had not been done in New York, so that “not a blade should remain” for British use. Nathanael Greene was sent to convince the people to do so, or do so himself, but in the end there was insufficient time to destroy the crops and cattle, which would have denied them to the British. Even in a hurried retreat, the Americans themselves did take considerable cattle. Thereupon began the foraging expeditions in New Jersey by British troops described earlier.

Leiby points out that “Between one third and one half of the people of the Hackensack valley appear to have been Tories and Tory minded neutrals” at this point in the war. As the British moved into the area, they began to take vengeance on the population including destruction of some of the parsonages of ministers sympathetic to the American cause. American patriot groups struck back at the Tories, especially when British troops vacated an area, but on the whole lacked the forces to halt the continued foraging by British soldiers. While, as others have pointed out, one might under such circumstances take a Loyalist or neutral position out of self-interest, “No one was a patriot of convenience in the Hackensack valley in December 1776.”

It was during this period that Charles Lee tried to rally American forces to fight a continuing partisan war in New Jersey. Then Howe, at the insistence of the Loyalists, spread his troops at Trenton, which caused the British to abandon the strategy and spelled the end of plans to be in Philadelphia that winter. Henry Muhlenberg, a captured German officer, complained that he could not understand the American people: “When the Hessians entered Trenton and occupied the region, the inhabitants swore their allegiance to the King of Britain. But as soon as the American troops attacked on Christmas, the inhabitants shot at the Hessians from their houses. In fact, even a woman fired out of a window and mortally wounded a Captain.” That the same people who had sold the Hessians food should do this is not difficult to understand. They did not consider binding an oath that had been inflicted upon them by force, and when they had the chance to retaliate on the conqueror, they did so.

It was at that point that Bergen County truly began to take on the appearance of a middle ground between the two sides, as the British moved back to New York. But it was now the Loyalists who were the more exposed, as attacks and plundering raged on both sides. Given all of the foraging that took place, it was “amazing” that the people in the area not only found enough food and fuel to carry them through the winter, but that a thriving business in hard currency sprang up with the British in New York.

A Guerrilla Civil War

Faced with the reality of perpetual warfare in their area, the majority in Bergen County in 1777 began to establish a militia that would function on a permanent basis. The nature of the American militia in the area began to change during that year. From a passive force trying to organize defensive measures against an aggressor, it became a highly mobile force that could strike back at the invader. The dynamics of how this came about are important.

During the same period, the “farmer-soldier” of the militia came under the usual criticism of regular army officers such as Colonel Aaron Burr and General Alexander McDougall, though, as Leiby notes, “neither of them had any real reason to regard himself as a professional military man. Burr complained that ‘not a man of the militia are with me. Some joined last night but are gone.’” Even as they began to learn the ways of guerrilla warfare, the militia, as one would expect, chose to follow their elected leaders, whom they knew and in whom they had confidence, rather than simply any officer sent by the Continental army.

And, as Lei by further observes, “McDougall, for his part, was entirely unembarrassed by the thought that the militia could hardly be expected to do what his nine hundred troops could not do, seeing no irony whatever in complaining that the untrained Jersey Dutch militia, less than one hundred in number, would not venture near the Regulars, at the same time that he reported that he could not even attack Clinton’s pickets because, as he put it, it was ‘too hazardous an experiment, considering our strength and theirs, by the lowest computation.’” Because the Continental army has had so many defenders with respect to their problems, and the militia so few, Leiby’s comments are worth citing: “Since it was the Continental officer and not the militiaman who left his journals and letters for the historian, over the years the militiaman’s faults have been multiplied and his virtues forgotten. There are few Jersey Dutch militiamen’s writings to tell how seldom any Continentals ventured down into the really dangerous part of the neutral ground when the British were near; none to note that, while the Bergen County militia daily risked brushes with Sir Henry’s raiders from New York, all too many Continentals did not hear a gun fired in battle from one year to the next.”

Clinton’s move into New Jersey with four thousand troops in the fall of 1777 was not an attempt to bring the area under British control, but to take all of the forage possible for the winter ahead, and there was little the militia or the American army could do to prevent such a force from doing that, and returning to New York. With the large British force gone, the battle in the middle ground settled down to a guerrilla civil war.

On the whole, the American troops who foraged among the population that supported the Revolution did not do so on a massive scale, and they sought, in many cases, to leave a script for what was taken. The most committed Loyalists had revealed themselves during the period when British soldiers had been in the area. Their farms were now recommended as the preferred places to forage. But the most important distinction was the way in which the two populations, Whig and Loyalist, reacted and interacted with each other and with the British, American, and external Loyalist forces that entered the area. Thus, the American majority did exercise a kind of “coercive persuasion” on the minority of Loyalists, and this could and did involve violence at times. But such violence tended to be directed at specific Loyalists and the actions which they had taken against patriots when they had the protection of British troops behind them.

On the other hand, the actions of the British and Loyalists were of two kinds. Neither the British nor the Hessians were familiar with the area or the people. While their foraging might to some extent be directed at known and conspicuous patriots, it could also fall on those who were neutral in attitude (of which there were few by this time), on those who were neutral in the sense of not having become an active and mobilized patriot, and even upon those who were secret Loyalists, or known Loyalists, but unknown to the soldiers on that foraging patrol. Beyond such actions of the regular soldiers were those of the Loyalist units, made up of militants, but also comprising men with established reputations as thieves and malcontents. As a conscious minority in their own community, local Loyalist raids against patriots tended to be directed, not toward bringing them into line with the views of the majority, as was a dominant patriot motive for such activities, but in violent retaliation against a majority which they had no hopes of changing, and toward which they consequently harbored a passionate hatred. On the other hand, Loyalist bands of brigands not familiar with the local population were simply indiscriminate in their license to pillage and would attack families from the staunchest patriot to the most dedicated Loyalist. Whether in vindictiveness or in pillaging, it was among the Loyalist raiders that violence tended toward atrocities, not directed at any political goal. Clinton was but touching the top of the iceberg when he wrote, “I could not but view with concern the very afflicting damage [the raids] had already been productive of to private property, it never having been my intention to extend the destruction to homes of individuals, much less to those of public worship.” He was able to stop most of those in Long Island, but not in Bergen County.

The net effect of this indiscriminate British raiding seems to have been to drive the neutrals, whether in thought or in action, toward some participation in the American cause. The only real protection could come from involvement in the Bergen County militia. “Free riding” grew expensive. The militia not only grew with the need to organize for constant patrol and skirmishing with raiders, but with the passage of time, changed from a hastily called and inexperienced defensive group into a hardened band of guerrilla fighters. About this organization Leiby comments, “As the winter of 1777–78 set in, it must have been hard for Jersey Dutchmen to realize that but a single year had passed since the dread days of the British occupation; . . . a year since Bergen County had been a conquered land, helpless in the hands of its enemies. The improvement in patriots’ affairs during the past twelve months was little short of miraculous, . . . A year earlier, patriotic Jerseymen had been the hapless victims of a cruel invader; in the fall and winter of 1777, though by no means beyond the reach of British power, they were again actors in the war, not mere sufferers from its cruelty.”

1777: A Revitalized Militia

The leader in this change was Major John Mauritius Goetschius, a graduate of the College of New Jersey, who had studied for the ministry but had been urged to do more work before application. Leiby suggests that his “spelling and grammar” were not that of an intellectual, but, as we shall see, his skill as a guerrilla tactician and leader of men was unsurpassed. In reading of his exploits and those of his militia, it is difficult to disagree with Leiby’s assessment that “as the war progressed, it would have been hard to find any more active and spirited officer on the continent.” One may venture the guess, however, that as American historians finally begin to explore the deeds of the local American militia, where records exist to do so, they will find numbers of men who functioned much as did this heroic Dutchman.

In late 1776, the militia had marched out to the sound of fife and drum, but “had flown apart before it could fire a shot.” The militia scrapped the silly foot drills that were featured in drill manuals of the time, and only much later did the musical instruments reappear. Goetschius was not the only guerrilla who was a hunted man. One of his officers was Samuel Demarest, who had seen some action with Washington’s army in New York. Leiby quotes the pension records on Demarest: “He was unable to attend to his business or even to remain at home except by stealth on account of his exposure to capture by the enemy … they having made repeated attempts to effect his capture from his own house.” Unable to farm during this period, Demarest later had to sell his farm to pay off debts contracted to maintain his family.

The way in which the “farmer-soldiers” organized themselves is best told in their own words. One of them, Cornelius Board, described their preparations: “It was necessary to keep up a constant guard each night in order to protect our families and ourselves from the depredations of the Cow Boys [British-Loyalist raiders].” His group “would assemble according to orders . . . just after sundown upon the heights and keeping themselves and their station concealed as much as possible would remain under arms through the night, those not engaged on sentry or on patrols sleeping on their arms until it came their turn to relieve those on guard and keeping out sentinels and patrols through the night, then returning to our ordinary business in the morning.”

A further account is added by Cornelius Blauvelt: The companies “were divided into classes of four men in a class, and the arrangement was made that one man in a class should guard one week and be relieved by another, and so continue until each had served his week, that a continued guard might be kept and their necessary labor at home might be done in which manner the militia served until the end of the war from early in the spring until winter and often in the winter.” Each class served one month in four.

Such militia service was difficult, but slowly the men became a fighting unit in constant contact with British and Loyalist elements. That kind of defense was extremely hard, for the British could strike at any point in a radius of twenty-five miles, and the Americans never knew where they might hit next. When the British treated the captured American militia badly, the patriots threatened to reciprocate on captured British soldiers. Clinton’s acceptance of the American argument simply angered the Tories, who felt a hard policy should be pursued at all times. The most important result of the British raids and the American organization was to mobilize any persons who were left in the middle, if they wished to protect their property, and to push the American militia into the formation of a fighting organization undreamed of in 1776. For men thus committed, the British idea of pacification in 1778 was irrelevant. Though few, if any, would have recognized it at the time, even in the middle ground, the war had essentially been decided by the end of 1777. Though the continental army in the area did not grow much stronger, the militia continued to do so. As Leiby notes,

To the patriots the Revolution was no mere nationalistic revolt against legitimate government, it was a rebellion against Toryism in politics, economics, and religion, a Toryism that bred poverty, ignorance, and despair in Europe and would, given a free hand, do the same in America. … To patriots far more than allegiance to Britain was at stake; Tory success would have meant a far different England and a far different world.

The Jersey Dutch were no provincials, but understood the larger context of the war.

The Militia Becomes Dominant

Very slowly, the militia began to assert American control of the area. Two of the more important American victories of 1779 were in the area; General Anthony Wayne’s surprise bayonet and sword night attack on Stony Point, and the raid on Paulus Hook, which, while not major engagements, threw off Clinton’s plans for the year. Wayne’s large foraging expedition was also a success, though the farmers probably were not happy about losing their produce and animals to the American army either. Thus, “it was plain for anyone to see that it was” the Americans, not the British “who dominated the neutral ground in 1779; and the land that had filled the storehouses of the British during 1776, 1777, and 1778 now supplied” the American forces.

Late in 1779, a “remarkable indication” of how “the British cause had lost ground in the past three years” occurred, “for which there must be few parallels indeed in the history of war and Revolution.” In 1776, dozens of young men from families in the valley who were of Loyalist sympathies had enlisted for three years in the British forces. As their enlistments expired, these men sought to return to their homes and begin farming again, almost as if there had been no war. The American patriot militia began arresting them to be put on trial for high treason, but the men claimed to be deserters from the British army.

General Wayne ordered them released on the basis that such desertion ought to be encouraged, and that prosecution “would inevitably deter all others under similar circumstances from coming over . . . and shutting the door of mercy against poor deluded wretches who wish to return to the bosom of their country.” Though the Americans did not know of it, and no formal effort was ever made to implement it, the British were at this very time considering planting deserters among the Americans to serve as spies.

The winter of 1779-80 was a very bad one, made worse by a drought. In late March, the British, with six hundred men, launched a raid into New Jersey from two directions. In the ensuing skirmishes, it appears that the American militia was less prone to retreat than the regular forces. The British burned many of the homes of patriots in Hackensack, and carried off all of the adult males they could find, but the American harassment was so fierce that they could take little or no plunder with them. As Leiby concludes, “The time was long past when the British could attack Bergen County as a refreshment for their troops.” The prisoners were later exchanged, but the British acts only increased the enmity of the Americans. It was hardly the kind of “pacification” that would win over the inhabitants. In fairness to Clinton, it appears that the idea for such reprisals had come from the Loyalist refugees in New York, who, in the absence of Sir Henry in the South, had convinced the Hessians that such raids were a good policy. On his return Clinton was “furious,” and later wrote that the raid was “ill-timed . . . malapropos” based upon “the ill-founded suggestions of . . . over-sanguine Refugees.” In April, the British staged a raid on Paramus, much less interested in retaliation than in foraging. While some of the regular army units were surprised by the action, it was the militia which “again turned out like veterans, hanging on the flanks and rear of the withdrawing troops in the best tradition of the embattled farmer, firing from behind every stone fence and tree from Paramus to Fort Lee, inflicting heavy casualties on the British columns and finally forcing them to slow their march and throw out flanking parties to protect their main force from the galling fire, with the result that a great many prisoners escaped and a good deal of booty had to be abandoned.” Pursuing the British right to the edge of the Hudson, the Americans recaptured four wagons and sixteen horses.

The Problem of Paper Money

Leiby’s information about the regular army in the area tends to confirm other data about it. Washington continued to have supply problems, the lack of anything but inflated paper money being a prime factor. As William Pennington, a Jersey soldier stationed at Tappan, reported: “We are encamped near a pleasant little village about two miles from the Hudson. The inhabitants are principally low Dutch, though there are some refugees from New York. I am told that there are some very good Whigs here. Silver and gold is the only established currency in the country as the Dutch have substantial wealth. We are in the heart of a delightful and plentiful country, but for the want of specie cannot reap much advantage from it.” Others in the regular army had far less scruples, for they foraged and plundered among the farms of Orange County while the militia in that area was away fighting Loyalist and Indian raiders farther west. A major reason for such actions was the composition of the American army, for one could not “fail to see that the troops of the line were no longer farm boys with muskets. The Continentals at Tappan were campaign-hardened professional soldiers, a good number of them captives and deserters from the redcoats, men who knew very well how to live on the country when the commissaries failed them, and plundering was only a part of the story.” British intelligence files are filled with reports and information from the men who re-deserted after the British issued a proclamation of pardon to all such deserters. (Since many of those in the British army were foreigners, the deserters help, in part, to explain the high proportion of foreigners in the American army.) The militia was active in pursuing these men as they re-deserted and tried to make their way to the British lines in New York.

The “middle ground” was thus the locale for an incredible number of different levels of fighting during the war. It was near here that the most serious mutiny, that of the Pennsylvania Line, took place late in 1780. The plight of these men during the war, many of them foreign-born, was no doubt severe, they having received little or no pay for months. Some were deserting, but a larger number simply were tired of fighting without pay, and went on a rampage of plundering. Major Goetschius reported to Washington that “the wicked and inconsiderate soldiery” were “entirely destroying the Schraalenburgh neighborhood,” having taken all sorts of farm animals and produce, “and in a violent manner abuse the well-affected in this place, running about with clubs and bayonets upon pikes by whole companies as bad as our enemies ever have done.” General Nathanael Greene wrote, “There have been committed some of the most horrid acts of plunder by some of the Pennsylvania Line that has disgraced the American army during the war… Two soldiers-were taken that were out upon the business, both of which fired upon the inhabitants to prevent their giving intelligence. A party plundered a house yesterday in sight of a number of officers, and even threatened the officers if they offered to interfere.” Greene recommended that such offenders be hanged without trial, while Goetschius and the militia sought to halt any deserters from reaching New York.

Washington also found the plundering outrageous. “Without a speedy change in circumstances . . . either the army must disband, or what is if possible worse, subsist upon the plunder of the people.” The army had at this point been without any meat for over a week, and foraging raids had raised only a supply for several days. “Military coercion is no longer to any avail, as nothing further can possibly be collected from the country in which we are obliged to take a position without depriving the inhabitants of the last morsel. This mode of subsisting, supposing the desired end could be answered by it, besides being in the highest degree distressing to individuals, is attended with ruin to the morals and discipline of the army; during the few days which we have been obliged to send out small parties to procure provisions for themselves, the most enormous excesses have been committed.” As an American officer, Major Samuel Shaw, put it, “The country between us and the enemy, and below him, has been pretty thoroughly gleaned by us of the little the enemy left there. We call this foraging, but it is only a gentle name for plundering.”

Goals of Guerrilla Troops

It was, of course, in this area that the treason of Benedict Arnold was uncovered, and Major John Andre was captured and hanged as a spy. As the foraging began to run short, Washington moved his army to the north and west. His orders to Goetschius as he did so are revealing of the different way in which the commander of the army perceived the war in contrast to a leader of the local militia. Washington ordered Goetschius to detach about twenty men for duty around Dobbs Ferry in New York “to protect and cover the country below as far as possible.” The Dutch leader did so, but he wrote,

It makes a great uneasiness among the inhabitants at the lines of this country. My detachment is particular enlisted for a guard at the frontiers of this country. To complete the number, the inhabitants at the liens paid a large sum of money to the soldiery particular to have rest themselves and to follow their employ … Garrisoning the blockhouse at Dobbs Ferry which lays in York State is little or no guard to this country . . . [which] lays now open [and] horse thieves and robbers slip through to ruin of the inhabitants.

Goetschius understood that such warfare involves people, not places, and that protecting the patriot population was more important than anything else. He might also have added that only a few months before Loyalist raiders had burned his own home and barn and carried away all he owned. But perhaps even more important than his theory of warfare is his information that the militia was a paid defense force. It helps to explain the way in which Americans chose to support the war effort, and how reluctant inhabitants were to pay for the regular army, after having contributed toward the local militia.

Away from his home base, Goetschius and his militia were faced with the same provision problem that plagued the regular army. Thus, he wrote to the Governor of New Jersey that the militia had served some weeks “whilst the army laid here, [under] about fifteen different commanders as picket to the whole army,” having to take orders from all these officers while receiving rations from none. He had applied to Washington, to the State, and to the several surrounding counties, but had received nothing. On Washington’s advice, his men had also foraged, but there was little left about, and “it must be taken by force of arms. The inhabitants will not sell any longer for certificates.” With all these problems, nonetheless, the militia continued to patrol the dangerous territory between the two armies, in which occurred most of the fighting. Leiby’s comment is worth noting: The militia,

would have been more than human, however, if they had not observed the Continental’s contempt for all militiamen and if they had not observed, even more clearly, how often Continentals marched and countermarched during a whole campaign without seeing a redcoat, how seldom any Continental ventured down as close to the British as the militia headquarters posts.

After the war, when Goetschius’ old militia men stood outside the South Church at Schraalenburgh on Sunday mornings waiting for the service to begin and boasting quietly about their exploits in low Dutch, if some of them were a little scornful of Continental officers who never saw a British gun, it was perhaps natural jealousy over their own unsung feats. No Continental need have troubled himself for a moment about their mild grumbling, there were none but Jersey Dutchmen to hear them, there was to be no Bancroft or Longfellow to tell of their deeds.

1781: The End of the War

By the middle of 1781, things were little changed in the Hackensack valley. Cornwallis was in Virginia, but the British force remained in New York, able to raid into New Jersey. Washington kept his army nearby, but was unable to mount assault on the British base. “The neutral ground continued to be the stage for probing raids, espionage, and partisan warfare.” In March, the British made a large raid, but the militia drove them back before any Continental units had time to get organized to meet the threat. In these closing months of the war occurred some of the worst retributions of all. Early in 1781, the government in London agreed with the demands of the Loyalists to charter an organization, the Associated Loyalists, “to wage a private war-within-a-war, to take their own prisoners, and to treat military booty as their own; in a word to wage war without let or hindrance from British headquarters.” Though Clinton opposed it, the Loyalists were, in effect, given a license to pillage and plunder, taking out their frustrations on the population.

In May, some Loyalist forces occupied old Fort Lee, and Goetschius and the militia moved to dislodge them. In the meantime Washington heard about the Loyalists and ordered several regular army units “and any Jersey militia that you may find … but … trust no officer among them . . .” to attack the fort. Before the army could make such preparations, the word arrived that the militia had taken the fort. Leiby notes that “The British command was fortunate that the Bergen and Orange County militiamen [who had quickly assembled, two hundred strong, for the joint attack] were not thrown against a more important objective.”

If there is any weakness in Leiby’s study, it is his account of the last months of the fighting, and the year and a half from the British surrender at Yorktown late in 1781 until the signing of the peace agreement early in 1783. It would appear that many Loyalists and some neutrals, who had done little in the war effort, did reintegrate themselves back into the society, much to the consternation of many of the more committed Whigs. This upset Washington also, but we can close this account of Leiby’s with a comment by Governor William Livingston: “I have seen Tory members of Congress, Judges upon tribunals, Tory representatives in our Legislative councils, Tory members of our Assemblies . . . J have seen self-interest predominating and patriotism languishing.”

It is not clear from Leiby’s account how willingly the patriots accepted the reintegration of these Loyalists back into their society. That they did so at all seems to disturb him somewhat. There is no research on this question, but the suggestion offered by Leonard Liggio seems the most likely explanation. That the Jersey Dutch did have a number of Loyalists would tend to confirm Nelson’s views about the prime source of that outlook among minority groups. At the end of the conflict, the patriot Dutch would have been caught in a quandary! whether to punish their deviant fellow ethnics, or very quickly to re-assimilate them back, thus affirming the idea that the Dutch were solidly a part of the patriot movement, and thus good Americans. Such an interpretation certainly fits into later patterns of American ethnic behavior. Thus, the ethnic factor may have played a part in the apparently light reaction to the Loyalist reintegration into Dutch society.

Some Observations About Revolutionary Warfare

It is impossible in this brief summary of a few of Leiby’s points about the Revolution in the Hackensack Valley, to do justice to what must be regarded as a magnificent, detailed account of local history and the interaction of military events with socio-economic developments. Anyone at all familiar with the basic concepts of revolutionary warfare, and the process by which a community organizes itself to fight a guerrilla war virtually under the gun of the invader, must acknowledge that Shy was incorrect when he suggested that Leiby’s study was simply an example of “local” history dealing with “bloody battles” growing out of “prewar animosities.”

It is a microcosmic account of what most areas have experienced as they became involved in the process of revolutionary change, but unique in the American Revolution because the area was dominated by British forces for most of the war, and thus forced the Americans into fighting a true guerrilla war. Commitment from those in the middle came less because of ideology, than from the realization that there would be no free riders, and that those who did not participate in the militia would not be offered protection against British incursions. Indiscriminate British, and especially Loyalist, plundering and retaliations further polarized the population toward the American cause.

As the war progressed, the militia became, in many ways, a more effective fighting force than the regular army, which contained a large segment of some of the less desirable elements in American society. In Major John M. Goetschius we glimpse an American military officer whose grasp of the principles of people’s guerrilla warfare was equal to any of the great historical theorists of those concepts. Complaints about the militia by officers such as General George Washington reflected an unwillingness to recognize these concepts of warfare and how such a force could most effectively be used.

Unlike the inflated script used to pay sporadically the regular army, the Bergen County militia was paid, apparently, in gold. Their commitment was to attacking the British and Loyalists whenever they chose to attack that county, and the militia leaders felt less effective when told to encamp in other, distant areas. This attitude toward the militia of some army officers is indicative of one of the major “fault lines” within the revolutionary coalition. Some leaders had always desired imperial territorial gains from the war, as well as independence. This desire ran so deep that they had launched an attack on Canada early in the war, greatly over-extending American resources. Such leaders were not interested in securing peace in 1778 unless it also included Canada and Florida. Local farmer militia self-defense forces, as those in Bergen County, were simply not excited by such imperial adventures. A good example of this was evident late in the war, in 1781, when Washington sent General Lafayette north to attempt again to mount an assault. The leaders of the Vermont militia replied that they would not enlist unless they were promised “double pay, double rations, and plunder,” a clever way of aborting the whole idea.

For any Americans who have spent these years of the Bicentennial reading back on the origins of the Republic, it must have become apparent how much yet needs to be learned about the history of this period. Even such a perceptive historian as Shy, for example, repeats the myth about John Adams’ statement that it was a minority Revolution. What is apparent from some of the very careful local studies, such as Leiby’s, drawn from a variety of obscure and long-forgotten records, is that perhaps the American Revolution has more than “a few lessons for our own time.”

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• William F. Marina(1936–2009) was a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute and Professor Emeritus in History at Florida Atlantic University.

5. The American Revolution Was a Really Big Deal

​Excerpts:

“As to the history of the Revolution, my Ideas may be peculiar, perhaps Singular. What do We mean by the Revolution? The War? That was no part of the Revolution. It was only an Effect and Consequence of it. The Revolution was in the Minds of the People, and this was effected, from 1760 to 1775, in the course of fifteen Years before a drop of blood was drawn at Lexington.”

John Adams

...

The American vision has a high degree of tolerance for inequality and a robust commitment to individual liberty, because in the American revolutionary tradition, the pursuit of happiness is an individual right, while in the French revolutionary tradition, the pursuit of happiness is an obligation of the state to impose collectively.

This difference is everything, not least because it helps explain the success of the American Revolution. The Founders took human nature into account in their nation-building project, creating a system of checks and balances that constructively built on our natural tendency to form factions and to disagree on what constitutes happiness. The French revolutionary tradition is the totalitarian tradition, because it assumes that the state, run by the right people, can dictate what happiness is for society as a whole, and therefore has license to transform not just society, but our souls.

So yes, the American Revolution was a really big deal, and all of the would-be revolutionaries who seek to cosplay the Jacobins or Bolsheviks while denigrating the American experiment reveal their profound ingratitude. Not only do they ignore the material prosperity that makes their radicalism possible, they forget that the freedom to peacefully call for revolution of any sort is a freedom created by the American tradition. Before the shot heard ‘round the world, the response to even rhetorical revolutionaries and other foes of the status quo was prison, excommunication, and/or summary execution. For this reason alone, even the most ungrateful detractors of the American Revolution should offer a modicum of praise and appreciation for the liberal and radical revolution wrought by the Founders.

Even if you hate America, the Fourth of July recognizes your profoundly radical right to say so.

The American Revolution Was a Really Big Deal

It’s become popular to downplay the revolution’s historical importance. It’s also wrong.

By Jonah Goldberg

Published July 4, 2025

https://thedispatch.com/next-250/american-revolution-big-deal-250/

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“As to the history of the Revolution, my Ideas may be peculiar, perhaps Singular. What do We mean by the Revolution? The War? That was no part of the Revolution. It was only an Effect and Consequence of it. The Revolution was in the Minds of the People, and this was effected, from 1760 to 1775, in the course of fifteen Years before a drop of blood was drawn at Lexington.”

John Adams

Letter to Thomas Jefferson, August 24, 1815

Today, July 4, marks the 249th birthday of the United States of America. That puts America 365 days from the big 250, a pretty good run for something as temporary-sounding as the “American Experiment.” In light of this, The Dispatch is launching a year-long series of essays on that experiment and how it’s going two-and-a-half centuries in. I’m honored to offer the first course in this feast.

I thought we should start by making a very basic, though sadly controversial, point: The American Revolution was a really big deal.

Though I of course have an abiding love and gratitude for this country, I don’t mean that merely as a patriotic pronouncement; one could be a bitter critic of the United States and make the same claim. Indeed, most strains of anti-Americanism hold that America is a significant force for ill in the world, so of course its founding is a big deal—in a bad way. (Nearly two decades ago, I debated the proposition, “This House regrets the founding of The United States of America” at the Oxford Union. My opponents would agree with me that the American Revolution was a really big deal. They’d just add an “alas.”)

The birth of the United States of America was not merely the most important geopolitical event since the fall of Rome, or the most important intentional political event ever (Rome’s fall wasn’t exactly a planned-out exercise). It was the signature catalyst for the real-world realization of various Enlightenment principles like democracy, human rights, free speech, and representative government. The unfolding success of that experiment over the subsequent two-and-a-half centuries—with America becoming the single most influential and powerful country in the world—lends even more weight to the momentousness of the American Founding. And it certainly ranks among the most consequential events in all of human history, political and non-political alike.

I suspect most people, including many detractors and minimizers of the American Revolution, can agree on much of this. What they have a harder time conceding is that the American Revolution was cool. For good and ill, Western culture associates rebellion and revolution with heroism, romantic sacrifice, edginess, and even glamor. From James Dean’s Rebel Without a Cause to Che Guevara T-shirts and Vladimir Lenin posters, revolution is popularly perceived as transgressive, anti-bourgeois, or punk rock. But the American rebels wore powdered wigs, spoke funny, and were earnest to the point of nerdiness about things like taxes and trade. That stuff isn’t cool, and even worse, neither are the people who tend to unapologetically celebrate the American Founding today—at least according to the arbiters of cool.

John Godzieba, holding a looking glass, plays the role of George Washington during the annual re-enactment of George Washington crossing the Delaware River at Washington Crossing Historic Park in Pennsylvania, on December 25, 2010. (Photo by PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP via Getty Images)

A more legitimately damning fact about the American Revolution was that many of its leaders were slaveholders, and even the ones who opposed slavery compromised their beliefs in our founding charter(s). I don’t want to minimize the role of slavery as a reason for ambivalence or hostility to the Founding; that will be a focus of future essays in this series. But at the same time, slavery was widespread prior to the American Founding. The principles of equality enshrined in the Declaration of Independence undermined the institution—as Abraham Lincoln, Barack Obama, Martin Luther King Jr., and countless others have recognized—even if the Constitution shamefully extended it for too long. In other words, the hypocrisy of America’s Founding with regard to slavery put a clock on the deplorable practice as the country rectified its error. That, too, is worth celebrating.

Sadly, the American Revolution has been dumbed down in the minds of too many people today as either an overhyped and “rather grubby contest about taxes,” or an unforgiveably insincere fight for freedom and equality—for white men only.

This erasure is tragically unfair. If you think radicalism, revolution, and rebellion are cool, or that moving the wheel of history toward human rights, equality, democracy, and representative government is a worthy cause, then you should recognize that the American Revolution was what got the party started. If you think economic progress and economic freedom are not only moral goods unto themselves but inextricably linked and mutually reinforcing, then the American Revolution was arguably the greatest thing to ever happen for material progress and human liberation from poverty.

And yet for nearly two centuries, the fact that the American Revolution was an authentically radical and revolutionary event has been whitewashed, erased, belittled, and mocked. Why? Because for those who feel intellectual or moral ownership over what some call “the revolutionary tradition,” the American Revolution doesn’t count. Since those American colonists did not seek to transform all social relations and construct a utopian society, the American Revolution has been downgraded to an intra-British bourgeoisie squabble.

“Even if you hate America, the Fourth of July recognizes your profoundly radical right to say so.”

Even popular historians I greatly admire have bought into the idea that the American Revolution wasn’t really a revolution at all. One can forgive such decidedly English historians as Thomas Holland and Dominic Sandbrook for harboring some bitterness toward the ungrateful North American colonists and their humiliation of the British Empire, but to fawn over the importance of the failed French Revolution while dismissing the significance of the American Revolution smacks of putting the interests of intellectuals and romantics ahead of the historical facts. I am a massive fan of Holland and Sandbrook’s The Rest is History podcast, but they occasionally fall short of the mark when they turn their gaze on America. In an early episode on the French Revolution, for example, Holland insisted that the French Revolution is “massively” more important than the American Revolution because it introduced concepts of left and right, as well as progress and reaction, into global politics. When Holland noted that there is no evidence of any major French revolutionaries quoting the Declaration of Independence, Sandbrook added, “Yeah, but that’s because I think the American Revolution wasn’t seen beyond America as a revolution.”

Indeed, in her book On Revolution, political philosopher Hannah Arendt went so far as to assert that “neither the spirit of [the American Revolution] nor the thoughtful and erudite political theories of the Founding Fathers had much noticeable impact upon the European continent is a fact beyond dispute.”

I dispute this, and so does the historical record.

Far from being a mere preface or sideshow to intellectual ferment and political upheavals in Europe, the American Revolution is the event that transformed the Enlightenment from an abstract intellectual exercise into, in George Washington’s words, a real-world, tangible “experiment.” Because all ideas have long histories and pre-histories, we can trace the roots of the American Revolution to previous societies and events—from Ancient Greece and Rome (the wellsprings of democratic and republican theory) to the Glorious Revolution (which limited royal authority and elevated the power and legitimacy of parliament)—but the truth is that the American Revolution was less a continuation of existing trends and more a culmination of them. It summoned ideas and aspirations into the political realm and translated abstractions into actions. Sentiments were hardened into structures, and temporary principles became permanent commitments.

Just as a matter of geopolitics, America’s break with the British Empire was a huge deal—and would have been so even if the liberated colonists simply reinvented the 18th-century British system on American soil, naming George Washington king of “New Britain.” But they did not do that. As Yuval Levin put it in the introduction to the American Enterprise Institute’s own indispensable series on America’s 250th birthday, “The American Revolution was essentially the first successful colonial revolt in the known history of humanity. And the colonists chose to announce their rebellion by declaring a set of universal truths about humanity and then rooting their new nation in those bold assertions. It was an even bigger moment than the Declaration claimed.”

To the uninitiated, the claim that the American Revolution marked the beginning of the revolutionary tradition may seem unremarkable. It came first, after all, preceding the French Revolution by more than a decade. But for generations of historians, modernity begins not with Lexington and Concord but with the storming of the Bastille. Indeed, the progenitors and popularizers of the very concept of a revolutionary tradition—especially as promoted by Marxist and/or Francophile historians like Eric Hobsbawm, Francois Furet, and Georges Lefebvre—insist on starting the clock of modernity in Europe. The phrase “the long 19th century,” popularized by Hobsbawm (but tellingly coined by a Soviet historian), begins with the French Revolution in 1789 and ends with the onset of World War I, which led to the Bolshevik Revolution—itself an exercise in Jacobin cosplay. In the fashionable historical narrative, the American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence are considered the last gasps of the Old World of monarchy, aristocracy, and primogeniture rather than the most significant and successful overturning of such Ancien Régime concepts.

A couple views 'Liberty Leading the People' by Eugene Delacroix. (Photo by Farrell Grehan via Getty Images)

The bias in favor of the French Revolution is, first and foremost, ideological and emotional. To intellectuals, the French Revolution was cool, in large part due to intellectuals’ tendency to care more about ideas than reality. It worked great in theory, but came up short in practice, ultimately failing on its own—and increasingly grandiose—terms. It did not eradicate privilege, poverty, inequality, or any of the other sins the political “left” associates with the “right.” Indeed, this tragic failure is what gave it its romantic allure. The American Revolution, on the other hand, is denigrated precisely because it was successful, as Irving Kristol noted in his address on the 200th anniversary of the Declaration.

But let’s get to the facts. You know who considered the American Revolution a massively significant revolution? French revolutionaries.

Consider Tom Holland’s dog that didn’t bark.

It’s true, French radicals did not go around quoting the Declaration of Independence. But that’s because they were pushing the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, a French knock-off of the American Declaration, drafted by the heroic Americanist and former aide to Gen. George Washington, the Marquis de Lafayette—who also had considerable editorial assistance from a fellow named Thomas Jefferson. Lafayette explicitly sought to translate the principles of the American Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Declaration of Rights into the French context. Abbe Sieyès and Honoré Mirabeau crafted the final draft of the French Declaration, and Sieyès, an irreligious radical Catholic priest, had little to say about America. But that makes him more of an exception to the rule among the early French revolutionaries.

Mirabeau, however, was a close friend of Benjamin Franklin and deeply influenced by the American Revolution, which he called the “most astonishing of all revolutions.” Nicolas de Condorcet, who would become one of the most important intellectual leaders of the French Revolution (before possibly being murdered by Jacobins), wrote in his The Influence of the American Revolution in Europe (De l’influence de la Révolution d’Amérique sur l’Europe):

It is not enough for these rights to be written in the books of philosophers and in the hearts of men, ignorant or weak men must be able to read them in the example of a great people. America has given us this example. Its Declaration of Independence is a simple and sublime exposition of these rights, so sacred and so long forgotten. No nation has known them so well or preserved them with such perfect integrity. … The example of a great people among whom the rights of man are respected is useful to all others despite differences in climate, manners, and constitution. It shows that these rights are everywhere the same.

As the great historian of the French Revolution, Simon Schama, wrote, “For France, without any question, the Revolution began in America.”

Jonathan Israel writes in his book, The Expanding Blaze: How the American Revolution Ignited the World, of the leaders of the “positive phase” of the French Revolution, when high-minded philosophes and patriotic liberals “concerned with promoting democratic republicanism and freedom of expression and the press, underpinned by universal and equal rights, stressed not just the American origins of the democratic French Revolution and its essential ideological principles but also the power of those universal principles to encompass the Western world.” Jacques Pierre Brissot, leader of the French political faction known as the Girondins, insisted in 1789 that “the American Revolution gave birth to ours,” adding that “ours will without doubt revolutionize the whole of Europe.”

But I’ve spent too much time on the intellectuals and, frankly, the French. The American Revolution was viewed as a staggeringly revolutionary event throughout Europe. After news of the “shot heard round the world” reached England, for example, The London Evening Post reported that “the prevailing toast in every company of true Englishmen is, ‘Victory to the Americans, and re-establishment to the British Constitution.’” Danish Foreign Minister Andreas Peter Bernstorff wrote to a friend, “The public here is extremely occupied with the rebels [in America], not because they know the cause, but because the mania of independence in reality has infected all the spirits, and the poison has spread imperceptibly from the works of the philosophes all the way out to the village schools.”

News about the American Revolution was heavily censored in many German states, forcing support for the American cause underground, where it was discussed in newly formed secret societies of rebels and freethinkers. In Paris, a Spanish ambassador warned that, although “this federal republic is born a pigmy, a day will come when it will be a giant, even a colossus.” Its chief threat, he added, came from the introduction of a revolutionary ideology on a vast continent far from European influence. “Liberty of conscience, the facility for establishing a new population on immense lands, as well as the advantages of the new government, will draw thither farmers and artisans from all nations,” the ambassador wrote. “In a few years we shall watch with grief the tyrannical existence of this same colossus.”

In Italy, Holland, Belgium, Spain, and Denmark (or in the principalities and city-states that were later subsumed by them), the American Revolution was hailed as the beginning of a new age. European newspapers reprinted the Declaration of Independence along with the new state constitutions, particularly Pennsylvania’s radically democratic charter. Gaetano Filangieri, a Neapolitan political theorist whose work was banned by the pope, was one of the most influential radicals of the Enlightenment. Filangieri, Israel wrote, viewed “the American Revolution as the commencement of a generalized revolt against all despotism, oligarchy, and colonial oppression, and the hierarchical character of Old World society generally.” He was so smitten with the state of Pennsylvania, in fact, that he told Franklin in 1782 that he would like to settle in that “refuge of virtue” and “country of heroes.”

“The effects of the American Revolution, as a revolution, were imponderable but very great,” the historian Robert Roswell Palmer wrote. “It inspired the sense of a new era. It added a new content to the conception of progress. It gave a whole new dimension to ideas of liberty and equality made familiar by the Enlightenment. It got people into the habit of thinking more concretely about political questions, and made them more readily critical of their own governments and society. It dethroned England, and set up America, as a model for those seeking a better world. It brought written constitutions, declarations of rights, and constituent conventions into the realm of the possible.”

As Robert Kagan documented in his indispensable book Dangerous Nation, the American Revolution served not only as an inspiration for those seeking to throw off the yoke of the old order, but also as an existential threat to those seeking to conserve that old order. “If this flood of evil doctrines and pernicious examples should extend over the whole of America,” Klemens von Metternich, the famous foreign minister of the Austrian Empire, asked, “what would become … of the moral force of our governments, and of that conservative system which has saved Europe from complete dissolution?” According to Kagan, the Venetian ambassador in Paris predicted that, if the new American confederation held together, “it is reasonable to expect that, with the favorable effects of time, and of European arts and sciences, it will become the most formidable power in the world.”

Few would end up denying the prediction that America would become the most formidable power in the world, but many ended up denying America’s revolutionary influence and importance. Why?

In the half-century after the French Revolution flamed out, what we would today call “the left” formed two broad, often overlapping factions, often referred to as the moderate and radical wings of the Enlightenment. Another way to understand these factions might be the “liberals”—as in the champions of liberal democracy or constitutional liberalism—and the socialists, or later Marxists. The moderate or liberal wing was primarily concerned with answering the “political question,” while the radical or socialist wing was more interested in solving what was widely called “the social question,” an omnibus term addressing how all of society should be organized.

Those fixated on the political question sought liberal or republican government. Constitutions, the rule of law, free(er) trade, property rights, and representative government. Those fixated on the “social question” sought to ameliorate or erase all hierarchies and privileges; to resolve inequality, poverty, and all forms of “injustice.”

These were not necessarily two distinct camps, but rather opposite ends of a spectrum that, in many ways, mirrored the famous seating arrangements in the French National Assembly, from which we derive the categories of “left” and “right.” Prior to the Revolutions of 1848, what united these two factions most was that they were not “conservative,” which in Europe still meant defending the status quo of monarchy, clericalism, and empire. As Friedrich Hayek observed, “until the rise of socialism,” the opposite of conservatism was “liberalism.”

Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto was published in 1848, at which point the “classical liberals” began to be seen as denizens of the right. The full story is too lengthy and complicated to explore in detail here, but suffice to say that the swelling ranks of the middle classes, as well as many revolutionary liberals—including the handful of French ones who survived the Terror—feared a replay of the French Revolution almost as much as the rulers did. This created a schism on “the left,” in which the liberals and well-to-do people in various countries contented themselves with modest reforms and compromises—a constitution here, a legal reform there—in lieu of a wholesale campaign of regicide and radicalism. The liberals who couldn’t accept the deal fled—or were exiled—to the United States of America, among other places, where their supposedly revolutionary dreams were considered more like a conventional fact of everyday life.

In other words, the liberals in Europe were relegated out of the “revolutionary tradition” for lack of revolutionary ardor.

While Arendt was wrong about the influence of American ideas and ideals on European politics, she was correct that the French revolutionary tradition became defined by its approach to the “social question.” Its heirs and imitators rejected limitations on state power, because state power—and the political will to do what was “necessary”—came to define revolutionary commitment. That is what modern Jacobins, from Vladimir Lenin to Mao Zedong, admired about the French Revolution. And while the modern American left should not be painted with the same brush, the obsession with permanently resolving the “social question” still justifies a role for the state at odds with the American political tradition. New York City’s Democratic Party just nominated for mayor a man who likes to talk about “seizing the means of production.”

Those sorts of remedies lie outside of America’s revolutionary tradition, because that tradition—our tradition—was centered on limiting state power, not marshaling it for social transformations. The Founders’ answer to the political question can be found the Declaration of Independence, which we celebrate today: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

The American vision has a high degree of tolerance for inequality and a robust commitment to individual liberty, because in the American revolutionary tradition, the pursuit of happiness is an individual right, while in the French revolutionary tradition, the pursuit of happiness is an obligation of the state to impose collectively.

This difference is everything, not least because it helps explain the success of the American Revolution. The Founders took human nature into account in their nation-building project, creating a system of checks and balances that constructively built on our natural tendency to form factions and to disagree on what constitutes happiness. The French revolutionary tradition is the totalitarian tradition, because it assumes that the state, run by the right people, can dictate what happiness is for society as a whole, and therefore has license to transform not just society, but our souls.

So yes, the American Revolution was a really big deal, and all of the would-be revolutionaries who seek to cosplay the Jacobins or Bolsheviks while denigrating the American experiment reveal their profound ingratitude. Not only do they ignore the material prosperity that makes their radicalism possible, they forget that the freedom to peacefully call for revolution of any sort is a freedom created by the American tradition. Before the shot heard ‘round the world, the response to even rhetorical revolutionaries and other foes of the status quo was prison, excommunication, and/or summary execution. For this reason alone, even the most ungrateful detractors of the American Revolution should offer a modicum of praise and appreciation for the liberal and radical revolution wrought by the Founders.

Even if you hate America, the Fourth of July recognizes your profoundly radical right to say so.

Jonah Goldberg

Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief and co-founder of The Dispatch, based in Washington, D.C. Prior to that, enormous lizards roamed the Earth. More immediately prior to that, Jonah spent two decades at National Review, where he was a senior editor, among other things. He is also a bestselling author, longtime columnist for the Los Angeles Times, commentator for CNN, and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. When he is not writing the G-File or hosting The Remnant podcast, he finds real joy in family time, attending to his dogs and cat, and blaming Steve Hayes for various things.

Please note that we at The Dispatch hold ourselves, our work, and our commenters to a higher standard than other places on the internet. We welcome comments that foster genuine debate or discussion—including comments critical of us or our work—but responses that include ad hominem attacks on fellow Dispatch members or are intended to stoke fear and anger may be moderated.

6. America needs an honest reckoning over its spy agencies

​Intelligence is not evidence or proof. This is why leaders require "coup d'oeil" - a Clausewitzian trait we should all aspire to develop, cultivate, and practice.

Clausewitz’s concept of coup d’œil (French for “stroke of the eye” or “glance”) is a central idea in his theory of military genius, as articulated in On War. It refers to the intuitive ability to instantly grasp the truth of a situation in war, often in the face of incomplete, contradictory, or rapidly changing information.

Conclusion:

Good intelligence is rarely black-and-white, and members of the intelligence community say presidents are right to approach the agencies’ work critically, probing for nuances and disagreement. (The FBI dissented from the Tren de Aragua consensus.) That is a way to avoid disasters such as the Iraq war. Approaching intelligence cynically, assuming bad faith or incompetence when it disappoints, is a way to make poorly informed decisions. And trashing the intelligence agencies publicly, without clear cause, is a way to make Americans feel less safe and more cynical about their government. But Mr Trump does not do nuance and good-faith dispute well, at least not in public. It’s too bad, including for Mr Trump. Acknowledging that he had to make his decision on whether to bomb Iran on the basis of imperfect or even conflicting intelligence would not only have honoured Americans’ maturity and common sense. It would have made the decision seem even lonelier and braver—that is, more presidential

America needs an honest reckoning over its spy agencies

Donald Trump says they missed an existential threat from Iran. Why should anyone trust their findings now?

https://www.economist.com/united-states/2025/07/03/america-needs-an-honest-reckoning-over-its-spy-agencies

Illustration: David Simonds

Jul 3rd 2025

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5 min read

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he question of how far America has set back Iran’s nuclear programme clearly matters. That can be far less certain of any of the answers America is coming up with. While the strikes on Iran showed the supremacy of American air power, they also may have revealed a weakness in its national security. According to Donald Trump, the country’s spy agencies failed before the assault in a critical mission, assessing the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear programme. Mr Trump’s claim should heighten doubts now about intelligence reports and White House statements regarding the effectiveness of the air assault. Should anyone trust the conclusions? Which ones? Is the president getting it wrong himself?

Much of the attention about the clash over pre-attack intelligence has focused on whether Mr Trump disdains his director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard. While that is an interesting question, it is not the most important one. Ms Gabbard testified to Congress in March that Iran had not decided to build a nuclear bomb. But she was merely relaying the consensus of the many intelligence agencies her office was created to oversee, as described in the “Annual Threat Assessment”. It read that while pressure had “probably” built on Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, to build a bomb, “we continue to assess Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and that Khamenei has not reauthorised the nuclear weapons programme he suspended in 2003”.

Mr Trump appears to have given far more credence to an Israeli claim that its intelligence showed Iran had reached a “point of no return” in seeking a nuclear weapon. He went out of his way to humiliate Ms Gabbard—“I don’t care what she said,” he shrugged—but, when reporters correctly described the consensus to him, he also delivered a broad-gauge blast: “My intelligence community is wrong.” That was a devastating assessment. Ms Gabbard’s office was proposed in the wake of an intelligence failure to stop the attacks by al-Qaeda on September 11th 2001, and it came into existence after another one, to correctly determine whether Iraq was building weapons of mass destruction. For America’s spy agencies to have underrated the Iranian threat may well have amounted to an even more damaging failure of intelligence, had the Israelis not stepped in. “Was it really wrong, and if so, why?” asks Paul Pillar, a longtime CIA officer who is now a fellow at Georgetown University. “If that’s not the case, why did the president blow it off? This is certainly something both the House and Senate Intelligence Committees should be seized by.”

Mr Trump has had a turbulent relationship with America’s spies. On his first full day in office in 2017 he visited the CIA and pledged to be “with you 1,000 percent”. But he has shown little sign of forgiving the intelligence agencies for concluding that Russia meddled in the American election in 2016. At a meeting in Helsinki in 2018, he indicated that he accepted President Vladimir Putin’s denials over the agencies’ conclusions. When he swore in Ms Gabbard as director of National Intelligence in February, Mr Trump lamented the “weaponisation of government” by “the very evil regime” of President Joe Biden, and he said she would “restore honesty, integrity and trust to the national-security state”. A former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii and a presidential candidate in 2020, Ms Gabbard became a Republican in 2024, saying her former party was “led by an elitist cabal of woke warmongers” who “don’t believe in freedom”.

Ms Gabbard has shown every sign of dedication to Mr Trump’s priorities, possibly to a fault: like hunting for moles, hunting for politicians among spies is a good way to polish the halls of mirrors in which they work, heightening suspicions of everyone. This spring an intelligence assessment undercut claims by Mr Trump that Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang, was operating at the behest of the Venezuelan regime. Ms Gabbard fired two senior career officers who oversaw the report. Her office said they had politicised the work, but, given her credentials as a partisan, she was even more vulnerable to accusations of seeking that outcome.

Artificial intelligence

Mr Trump’s pattern is to embrace intelligence that supports his view of the world and to demean intelligence that doesn’t. It’s a damaging approach, and an unnecessary one. When Ms Gabbard relayed the threat assessment in March, she warned that Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium had reached a level “unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons”. A taboo had eroded against discussing nuclear weapons in public, she also said, “likely emboldening nuclear-weapons advocates within Iran’s decision-making apparatus”. Such findings are not so hard to reconcile with the Israeli intelligence. One could reasonably infer that Iranian engineers were putting the pieces in place to rapidly produce a nuclear weapon, once the decision was made to do so.

Good intelligence is rarely black-and-white, and members of the intelligence community say presidents are right to approach the agencies’ work critically, probing for nuances and disagreement. (The FBI dissented from the Tren de Aragua consensus.) That is a way to avoid disasters such as the Iraq war. Approaching intelligence cynically, assuming bad faith or incompetence when it disappoints, is a way to make poorly informed decisions. And trashing the intelligence agencies publicly, without clear cause, is a way to make Americans feel less safe and more cynical about their government. But Mr Trump does not do nuance and good-faith dispute well, at least not in public. It’s too bad, including for Mr Trump. Acknowledging that he had to make his decision on whether to bomb Iran on the basis of imperfect or even conflicting intelligence would not only have honoured Americans’ maturity and common sense. It would have made the decision seem even lonelier and braver—that is, more presidential. ■

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This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline “The looking-glass wars”

7. China is building an entire empire on data

​Do we have independence and freedom if someone controls all the data?

Peter Sondergaard, former SVP at Gartner (2011):

“Information is the oil of the 21st century, and analytics is the combustion engine.”

– This directly links the control of data (information) to power in the modern age.

Geoffrey Moore, technology consultant and author:

“Without big data, you are blind and deaf and in the middle of a freeway.”

– Implies the centrality of data in navigating and shaping the modern world.

Vladimir Putin (paraphrased, often misattributed):

“Whoever becomes the leader in AI will become the ruler of the world.”

– Often conflated with data control, as AI dominance requires access to massive datasets.

Tim O’Reilly, founder of O’Reilly Media:

“We're entering a world where data may be more important than software.”

– A more subtle but powerful endorsement of data’s centrality to global influence.

China is building an entire empire on data

It will change the online economy and the evolution of artificial intelligence

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2025/07/03/china-is-building-an-entire-empire-on-data

Photograph: Getty Images

Jul 3rd 2025

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3 min read

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HINA’S 1.1BN internet users churn out more data than anyone else on Earth. So does the country’s vast network of facial-recognition cameras. As autonomous cars speed down roads and flying ones criss-cross the skies, the quality and value of the information flowing from emerging technologies will soar. Yet the volume of data is not the only thing setting China apart. The government is also embedding data management into the economy and national security. That has implications for China, and holds lessons for democracies.

China’s planners see data as a factor of production, alongside labour, capital and land. Xi Jinping, the president, has called data a foundational resource “with a revolutionary impact” on international competition. The scope of this vision is unparalleled, affecting everything from civil liberties to the profits of internet firms and China’s pursuit of the lead in artificial intelligence.

Mr Xi’s vision is being enacted fast. In 2021 China released rules modelled on Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Now it is diverging quickly from Western norms. All levels of government are to marshal the data resources they have. A sweeping project to assess the data piles at state-owned firms is under way. The idea is to value them as assets, and add them to balance-sheets or trade them on state-run exchanges. On June 3rd the State Council released new rules to compel all levels of government to share data.

Another big step is a digital ID, due to be launched on July 15th. Under this, the central authorities could control a ledger of every person’s websites and apps. Connecting someone’s name with their online activity will become harder for the big tech firms which used to run the system. They will see only an anonymised stream of digits and letters. Chillingly, however, the ledger may one day act as a panopticon for the state.

China’s ultimate goal appears to be to create an integrated national data ocean, covering not just consumers but industrial and state activity, too. The advantages are obvious, and include economies of scale for training AI models and lower barriers to entry for small new firms.

Some of the disadvantages are equally clear, however. The state has a poor record of managing personal data: Shanghai’s police lost 1bn records to a hacker. If private firms lose control over the data they create, profits could suffer, diminishing the incentives to innovate. Although the digital-ID scheme may supersede the existing clunkier online surveillance system, in which low-level enforcers abuse their enormous powers, the new approach looks a lot like a paradise for Big Brother.

Most countries are grappling with how to manage and control data. According to some reports, the Trump administration may consider hiring Palantir, a private tech firm, to consolidate government data pools. The European Union may have to update its GDPR rules. India’s Aadhaar system for IDs emphasises privacy at the possible expense of boosting the economy.

All countries need scale and efficiency in data management. Yet for democracies the task is harder, because they must build in checks and balances that safeguard property rights, privacy and civil liberties. As it embraces its vast experiment, China will put less weight on such things and could build an efficient and dystopian system of surveillance. For decades it has been a “fast follower” of Western innovations. If China now races ahead in showing the financial value of its national data ocean, its method of centralisation will pose not just an economic challenge, but also a political one. ■

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8. What Drones Can—and Cannot—Do on the Battlefield

​Excerpts:

The United States could comfortably spend ten times as much on precise mass capabilities—including on one-way attack drones and surveillance platforms—than it does by reprogramming money invested elsewhere in the Pentagon’s vast budget. The Pentagon could also easily draw on the vision of uncrewed and crewed aircraft flying alongside one another and acquire large numbers of inexpensive, uncrewed, autonomous surface naval craft to add firepower and surveillance capabilities at sea. But even in this new era of precise mass, the Pentagon should continue investing in stealthy bombers and submarines that are hard to locate and destroy.

Historically, countries that fail to adapt effectively to changes in the character of war are less capable of deterring their adversaries and more likely to lose future wars. Japanese airpower destroyed supposedly impregnable British battle cruisers in the Pacific at the outset of World War II. In the Hundred Years’ War, England used the longbow to end the era of the mounted knight by defeating France at the Battle of Crécy. If the United States continues to underinvest in precise mass to complement its legacy investments, it may not face such a dramatic fate. But its deterrence may deteriorate at the hands of adversaries who believe they can bleed U.S. resolve. At the same time, however, Washington should not lose sight of the high-end, stealthy platforms and weapons that are cornerstones of U.S. military power and simply chase the newest, shiniest technologies in the hopes that they represent a magic bullet. Preparing for the future of warfare has never meant abandoning the past. But it does require a nimbleness the United States has not yet shown.

What Drones Can—and Cannot—Do on the Battlefield

Foreign Affairs · by More by Michael C. Horowitz · July 4, 2025

The Pentagon Should Learn From Israel and Ukraine

July 4, 2025

A Ukrainian serviceman launches a combat drone in Zaporizhzhia region, Ukraine, April 2025 Stringer / Reuters

MICHAEL C. HOROWITZ is Senior Fellow for Technology and Innovation at the Council on Foreign Relations and Richard Perry Professor and Director of the Perry World House at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Force Development and Emerging Capabilities.

LAUREN A. KAHN is Senior Research Analyst at the Center for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown University.

JOSHUA A. SCHWARTZ is Assistant Professor of International Relations and Emerging Technology at the Carnegie Mellon Institute for Strategy and Technology. He is a former Grand Strategy, Security, and Statecraft Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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Within the space of two weeks in June, the Ukrainian and Israeli armed forces executed two of the most audacious operations in recent military history. On June 1, using hundreds of short-range one-way attack drones smuggled deep into Russian territory, Ukraine was able to significantly damage or destroy at least 11 Russian strategic bombers as part of its Operation Spider’s Web. Then, starting on June 13, in Operation Rising Lion, Israel used one-way attack drones that had been smuggled into Iran piece by piece to destroy Iranian air defenses, helping Israel gain full control of Iranian airspace. In each case, drones that cost no more than a few thousand dollars each were able to wipe out tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of advanced weapons systems that cannot be easily replaced.

These two stunning tactical successes herald a broader shift in the conduct of warfare. Both Ukraine and Israel also continue to rely on traditional, expensive weapons systems, and Israel’s success in Iran in particular required the extensive use of crewed fighter jets. But for modern militaries, uncrewed weapons systems—increasingly enabled by artificial intelligence—are becoming critical for success on the battlefield. This should be no surprise: according to Ukrainian officials, one-way attack drones are now responsible for 70 percent of the frontline casualties in the war between Russia and Ukraine. In 2024, Eric Schmidt, the chair of the U.S. National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence and Google’s former CEO, argued that the rise of cheap drones has rendered older technologies such as tanks “useless” and advised the United States to “give them away” and buy drones instead. In posts on X in 2024, Elon Musk suggested that “idiots are still building manned fighter jets like the F-35” and said that “future wars are all about drones.”

Despite this growing consensus, the U.S. Department of Defense still devotes most of its funding to expensive legacy weapons systems. Operation Midnight Hammer—the June 22 U.S. attack on Iranian nuclear sites involving more than 125 U.S. aircraft, including seven B-2 bombers—showed that high-cost, crewed weapons systems still have an important role on the battlefield. But as modern warfare evolves, so must the world’s most powerful military. The Pentagon spends tens of billions of dollars annually sustaining and upgrading aircraft carriers, F-35s, and tanks. But it invested just $500 million in low-cost drones through the first round of its signature Replicator Initiative in 2023. Although the Replicator Initiative represents a good start, U.S. investment in the low-cost drones necessary to fight a high-intensity, modern war is still at least an order of magnitude too small.

Making the shift to a high-low mix of forces—larger numbers of inexpensive assets paired with lower numbers of expensive platforms and weapons—will not be easy. After decades of focusing nearly exclusively on building a military made up of small numbers of advanced systems, the United States must recoup lost time and invest in and develop the capacity to deploy large numbers of cheap but accurate uncrewed systems, or what could be called “precise mass” capabilities. It must also integrate this new generation of capabilities with its existing legacy systems so it can operate more effectively in creative ways. If the Pentagon does not adjust to the new realities of warfare, it will lose the ability to deter adversaries’ aggression before it occurs—and perhaps the ability to win wars.

ADAPT OR DIE

The Ukrainian and Israeli operations show that precise mass attacks can be devastatingly effective, even against sophisticated adversaries. In Operation Spider’s Web, Ukraine made use of several emerging technologies. One was an open-source autopilot system that enables its drones to operate autonomously when the signal between human pilot and drone is jammed or weak. Another was an AI-enabled targeting system trained to identify Russian bombers based on three-dimensional scans of Russian and Soviet aircraft housed in Ukrainian aviation museum collections. Spider’s Web’s success—and Ukraine’s ability to smuggle more than a hundred drones over 2,000 miles into Russian territory in preparation for the operation—reinforces a pattern evident from the outset of the conflict: expensive military platforms are more susceptible than ever to attacks by precise mass weapons, especially when they are parked out in the open in airfields or seaports.

Israel’s Operation Rising Lion demonstrates the vulnerability of other expensive systems, such as air defense, to cheap, precise mass capabilities, no matter how deep into a country’s territory they are. Well before the mid-June attack began, Israeli agents had smuggled drone parts into Iran, then reassembled them so that they could strike Iranian air defense systems quickly and without detection.

By using cheap uncrewed weapons systems to carry out their attacks, Ukraine and Israel also imposed asymmetric costs on their adversaries. Although the full scope of Russia’s losses from Operation Spider’s Web is not yet clear, Ukraine claims to have destroyed over 40 aircraft. The 11 Russian bombers that commercial satellite imagery has verified were destroyed or severely damaged were alone hundreds of times more valuable than the drones used in the attack. If Russia lost even one of each kind of the advanced aircraft Ukraine supposedly destroyed, it would have incurred serious costs: a single Russian airborne early warning and control system aircraft has an estimated price tag of $330 million, and Russia’s long-range bombers cost up to $270 million. By contrast, Ukraine’s quadcopters cost between $600 and $1,000 each, meaning that the total capabilities used in Spider’s Web likely cost Ukraine no more than $117,000, a fraction of the cost of a single Kh-101 missile carried by one of the destroyed Russian bombers, and less than the $200,000 per-unit Javelin antitank missiles the United States has provided to Ukraine.

U.S. investment in low-cost drones is still at least an order of magnitude too small.

Although they took place in vastly different contexts, Spider’s Web and Rising Lion underscore an emerging dynamic in modern warfare: militaries that rely too heavily on expensive legacy systems may struggle in longer wars of attrition, and if wealthy countries do not adapt, they will be able to afford to lose only so many of these systems before the costs become financially or politically unsustainable.

Precise mass weapons are not just cheaper than their legacy counterparts, affording even underresourced militaries the ability to compete with stronger foes. They can also be produced much faster. Ukraine is now producing millions of drones each year, whereas it will take many years for Russia to rebuild its degraded bomber fleet. Such a gap in replacement times could help level the playing field or even determine the outcome of a protracted conflict between a state that overinvests in expensive, difficult-to-replace legacy weapons systems and one that can rapidly scale production of precise mass systems.

Ukraine and Israel are not the only countries that are exploiting these advantages. Their adversaries are, too. Moscow retaliated against Spider’s Web with some of the largest drone attacks of the war, nearly overwhelming Kyiv’s already overstretched air defenses. Iran responded to Israel’s initial attacks by launching its own waves of relatively cheap drones and missiles against Israeli targets. Although Israeli air defenses intercepted most of these attacks, the Iranian response was effective enough to prompt concerns from Israeli and U.S. officials that the Israel Defense Forces could run out of interceptors. The counterattack also forced Israel to use its fighter jets to further target Iranian launch sites over the course of a 12-day war that cost Israel hundreds of millions of dollars a day.

BRING OUT THE BIG GUNS

Even as low-cost drones become increasingly important on the battlefield, legacy capabilities, such as stealthy submarines and fighter and bomber aircraft, remain useful, especially in combination with cheap systems. For example, Israel’s June 13 strikes on Iranian air defenses with one-way attack drones allowed advanced Israeli and (subsequently U.S.) aircraft and pilots to enter Iranian airspace to bomb the country’s most sensitive nuclear sites and other strategic targets virtually unimpeded. Notably, Iran did not fire a single surface-to-air missile at any U.S. aircraft, and the Israeli government claims that none of its crewed aircraft were shot down.

Israel’s early use of uncrewed weapons systems to weaken Iran’s air defense reduced the monetary and human risks in the event that the initial attack failed and the drones were shot down. Then, once the skies were cleared, Israel used its crewed aircraft to strike targets such as the Natanz nuclear facility with an accuracy and payload beyond drones’ capability. Russia has similarly combined cheap systems such as Shahed-136 drones with advanced missiles to exhaust or destroy air defenses and then strike high-value targets.

Stealthy legacy weapons systems are expensive and take a long time to produce. But they can be extremely effective. To successfully degrade the deeply buried Fordow and Natanz enrichment facilities, the United States not only had to use 14 30,000-pound massive ordnance penetrator bombs that only it possesses; it also had to dispatch seven $2 billion stealth B-2 bombers, the only aircraft in the world equipped to carry and deliver such bombs. For all their advantages, one-way attack drones simply cannot carry over 400,000 pounds of firepower.

Investing exclusively in precise mass systems would limit the targets a military is capable of destroying. In fact, Iran’s military exemplifies the pitfalls of such an overreliance on low-cost weapons systems. Tehran has one of the most extensive drone programs in the world, but because it lacks a modern air force, it couldn’t successfully strike well-protected Israeli military and civilian targets and force Israel to rethink its war plans.

HIGH AND LOW

The Allies’ victory on D-Day in 1944 required the integration of air, naval, and artillery fire to soften Nazi defenses and clear the way for ground forces to seize and hold territory in Normandy. That victory required mastering the cutting edge of combined arms warfare at the time. Today, operating with a mix of low-cost and high-end systems is the new combined arms warfare.

Taken together, Spider’s Web, Rising Lion, and Midnight Hammer suggest that well-resourced militaries need to invest in both types of capabilities to strengthen their deterrence. As China rapidly modernizes its military in every domain, including precise mass, the United States has invested too little in “low end” systems that can be easily acquired at scale and updated as needed. The Replicator Initiative’s initial $500 million expenditure amounted to just 0.05 percent of the U.S. defense budget in fiscal year 2024.

The United States could comfortably spend ten times as much on precise mass capabilities—including on one-way attack drones and surveillance platforms—than it does by reprogramming money invested elsewhere in the Pentagon’s vast budget. The Pentagon could also easily draw on the vision of uncrewed and crewed aircraft flying alongside one another and acquire large numbers of inexpensive, uncrewed, autonomous surface naval craft to add firepower and surveillance capabilities at sea. But even in this new era of precise mass, the Pentagon should continue investing in stealthy bombers and submarines that are hard to locate and destroy.

Historically, countries that fail to adapt effectively to changes in the character of war are less capable of deterring their adversaries and more likely to lose future wars. Japanese airpower destroyed supposedly impregnable British battle cruisers in the Pacific at the outset of World War II. In the Hundred Years’ War, England used the longbow to end the era of the mounted knight by defeating France at the Battle of Crécy. If the United States continues to underinvest in precise mass to complement its legacy investments, it may not face such a dramatic fate. But its deterrence may deteriorate at the hands of adversaries who believe they can bleed U.S. resolve. At the same time, however, Washington should not lose sight of the high-end, stealthy platforms and weapons that are cornerstones of U.S. military power and simply chase the newest, shiniest technologies in the hopes that they represent a magic bullet. Preparing for the future of warfare has never meant abandoning the past. But it does require a nimbleness the United States has not yet shown.

Foreign Affairs · by More by Michael C. Horowitz · July 4, 2025

9. ‘Made-in-America’ drone maker Neros awaits its big Pentagon break

​Excerpts:

“We’ve gone from having conversations where we’re sort of trying to do the convincing to now we’re just constantly getting cold outreach asking us about our systems, asking if we can train soldiers on FPV drones,” Monroe-Anderson said. “It’s basically gone from nothing to some of our customers doing live-fire demonstrations to senior leaders in 12 months, which is a really, really fast timeline.”

While the company may not have a contract in hand that requires a major production ramp up, Monroe-Anderson said its strategy is to be ready to fulfill higher orders when that time comes.

That applies to the near-term expansion to 10,000 systems per month and the longer-term push for one million annually, which he noted will require a revamp of the company’s entire manufacturing approach.

“Availability is one of the most critical things here,” he said. “I think the companies who are going to win in this space are the ones who are able to ramp production capacity very quickly. Part of that looks like actually just proving it out to ourselves so we can go to our customers with something we believe in versus just overpromising and underdelivering.”

‘Made-in-America’ drone maker Neros awaits its big Pentagon break

Defense News · by Courtney Albon

FAIRBANKS, Alaska — When Neros Technologies was founded in 2023, there wasn’t much demand in the U.S. military for small, first-person-view drones.

“It took us a while to find the right customers and end users who were excited about the technology and wanted to move very quickly,” Soren Monroe-Anderson, Neros CEO and co-founder, told Defense News during a recent Defense Innovation Unit test event here.

But the company believed strongly there was military utility for small, cheap, attack drones — a reality playing out daily on the battlefield in Ukraine. So, in the firm’s early days, Monroe-Anderson and others traveled to the war-torn country to better understand how the systems were being used and what capabilities were needed.

Those visits helped sharpen the company’s focus in three areas: production, supply chain and rapid iteration, said Monroe-Anderson, a 22-year-old professional drone racer and hobbyist turned weapons-maker.

Neros worked quickly to raise the private capital it needed to build a 15,000 square foot facility in Los Angeles from funders like Peter Thiel and Sequoia Capital. It scoured its supply chain for alternatives to Chinese components. And it continuously upgraded its systems based on lessons it was seeing in Ukraine, where it has since established an office.

That early work is starting to yield results for the firm. In February, Neros won a contract from the International Drone Coalition to provide 6,000 drones to Ukraine over six months. The IDC was formed to help fuel the country’s drone supply — factories in Ukraine produced more than 2.2 million drones in 2024 — and the contract is among the largest known awards to a U.S. supplier.

Neros is now building about 1,500 of its Archer drones per month, an 8-inch quadcopter that has a range of over 12 miles and can carry a 4.5 lb. payload. Two-thirds of those systems go to Ukraine and the remaining 500 to the U.S. military, including the Marine Corps, Army and U.S. Special Operations Command, Monroe-Anderson said.

The company is currently one of two FPV companies on DIU’s list of firms whose drones meet DOD’s supply chain requirements, which prohibit the use of Chinese suppliers for key components. Last December, Neros was placed on a list of 13 U.S. defense companies sanctioned by China. The firm called the move “a badge of honor.”

Neros Technologies CEO Soren Monroe-Anderson, center, flies one of the company's Archer drones on June 26 during a Defense Innovation Unit test event in Fairbanks, Alaska. (Courtney Albon)

Monroe-Anderson said Neros wants to increase its production capacity to 10,000 drones monthly by the end of this year. Its longer-term vision is to build a factory that can produce one million drones per year with the U.S. Defense Department as its primary customer. It’s a target that Monroe-Anderson says is “absolutely required” for the U.S. to defend itself in future wars.

“Even if the government right now isn’t handing out a contract for a million drones a year, we know that’s what the country needs,” he said. “That’s what we believe as a company, that’s what our investors believe.”

The Pentagon in recent years has made a rhetorical push to increase its inventory of low-cost, throwaway drones, but has struggled to restructure its acquisition and funding processes and realign priorities within the military services to follow through on its claims.

In 2023, the department launched a program called Replicator to address the challenge, pledging to field thousands of drones by August of this year and create a repeatable process for scaling innovation in the department. The results of that effort are due next month, and while DOD leaders say it is meeting its target, experts say the numbers it’s aiming for are much lower than what the department actually needs.

Trent Emeneker, who oversees several DIU autonomy efforts, said demand in DOD is growing for FPV drones similar to what Neros is building. The challenge is matching that demand, which is largely flowing from troops on the ground, with resources and programmatic support.

“There is enormous demand, but that demand is not backed up by funding and it’s not backed up by the program offices,” he told Defense News.

Monroe-Anderson said that as a company trying to sell to the department, he’s seen a significant posture shift in the last year. In fact, he called today’s demand “pretty aggressive” compared to Neros’ early days.

“We’ve gone from having conversations where we’re sort of trying to do the convincing to now we’re just constantly getting cold outreach asking us about our systems, asking if we can train soldiers on FPV drones,” Monroe-Anderson said. “It’s basically gone from nothing to some of our customers doing live-fire demonstrations to senior leaders in 12 months, which is a really, really fast timeline.”

While the company may not have a contract in hand that requires a major production ramp up, Monroe-Anderson said its strategy is to be ready to fulfill higher orders when that time comes.

That applies to the near-term expansion to 10,000 systems per month and the longer-term push for one million annually, which he noted will require a revamp of the company’s entire manufacturing approach.

“Availability is one of the most critical things here,” he said. “I think the companies who are going to win in this space are the ones who are able to ramp production capacity very quickly. Part of that looks like actually just proving it out to ourselves so we can go to our customers with something we believe in versus just overpromising and underdelivering.”

About Courtney Albon

Courtney Albon is C4ISRNET’s space and emerging technology reporter. She has covered the U.S. military since 2012, with a focus on the Air Force and Space Force. She has reported on some of the Defense Department’s most significant acquisition, budget and policy challenges.

10. Iran Is Terrorizing Its Own Citizens. The World Needs to Respond.

​Someday Iran will celebrate its Independence Day.

Silence is complicity.

Opinion

Guest Essay

Iran Is Terrorizing Its Own Citizens. The World Needs to Respond.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/04/opinion/iran-israel-arrests.html

July 4, 2025

Credit...Kaveh Kazemi/Getty Images

By Karen Kramer

Ms. Kramer is deputy director of the Center for Human Rights in Iran.

Over the past week, Iran has begun a quiet campaign of terror — not against an outside adversary but against its own people.

After the U.S.-brokered cease-fire between Iran and Israel took effect on June 24, the Islamic republic began a brutal domestic crackdown. Nearly 1,500 Iranians have been arrested, according to activists and human rights lawyers in Iran. They include professors, musicians, students, dissidents, poets, former political prisoners, members of Iran’s religious and ethnic minorities and grieving parents of slain protesters. Executions are underway. Due process is nonexistent.

This is not a mere tightening of authoritarian control. The Iranian regime, reeling from the humiliating losses it suffered at the hands of Israel and the United States, appears to be using the trauma of last month’s short but intense war to settle domestic scores and reassert absolute authority through fear. Silence from the international community risks enabling this campaign, opening the door to state violence on a mass scale.

The Center for Human Rights in Iran has confirmed that most, if not all, of those swept up in mass arrests are being denied access to legal counsel and subjected to sham trials. Many have been charged with espionage or national security offenses — broad, ill-defined accusations routinely used by Tehran to imprison or execute dissidents. Since the war began, at least six Iranians have been hanged on such charges. Many more may face death sentences in the coming days.

The arrests are surgical, systematic and sweeping — an effort to extinguish the last embers of civic resistance ignited during the 2022 Women, Life, Freedom protests and sustained by countless ordinary Iranians since then demanding dignity, liberty and justice. The regime is sending a chilling if all too familiar message: Dissent equals death.

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Entire communities are under siege, according to the activists and lawyers the Center for Human Rights in Iran has spoken to in communities across the country. In Kurdish-majority areas, checkpoints controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps now encircle cities, and civilians are being detained at will, these people say. One activist from a Kurdish city told the center that intelligence agents had summoned and interrogated relatives of Kurdish political activists who live abroad and that the agents “have pressured and threatened the families to force their relatives overseas to stop their activism.” Religious minorities, especially Baha’is, have also seen arrests spike, and hundreds of citizens have reportedly been arrested and charged with antigovernment propaganda for posting comments on social media.

Making matters worse, Iran’s Parliament has moved to fast-track legislation that would codify and escalate this repression. The measure’s vague language would equate online activism and information sharing with terrorism and treason. Anyone accused of undermining national security or sharing content with foreign media could face life imprisonment or death.

To be sure, this is not the regime’s first crack at mass violent suppression. It killed over 500 people during the Women, Life, Freedom protests and more than 1,000 people in protests in 2019. But Iranian activists have noted that the current number of arrests in just one week is exceptional, as are the checkpoints for people heading into and out of many cities. And this time, the government is not arresting protesters. Instead, ordinary citizens are being swept up, creating a climate of fear throughout the population — which is perhaps the intention.

The United States and its allies must not treat this unfolding human rights catastrophe as a sideshow to geopolitical diplomacy. Any talks between the United States and Iran would provide a vital opportunity for Washington to make clear that engagement with Tehran requires these conditions: an immediate halt to arbitrary arrests and detentions, transparency regarding the condition and whereabouts of detainees and political prisoners, a moratorium on executions and a commitment to due process and legal representation.

To ignore this moment is to validate the regime’s strategy: to eliminate dissent at home while the world’s attention is elsewhere, too distracted to intervene. It’s a strategy that has long been central to the Islamic republic’s survival. In 1988, after a badly weakened Iran reluctantly agreed to a cease-fire with Iraq after eight brutal years of war, the regime ordered the executions of up to 5,000 political prisoners, most of whom had been tried and were serving their prison sentences.

The casualty of the Islamic republic’s unchecked aggression will be Iranian civil society, which is deeply at odds with the regime’s domestic and foreign policies and, if supported, could one day form the foundation of a new, free Iran.

The United States has the leverage — and thus the lead role to play. Yet the broader international community, especially other democratic governments, must also act. They can strengthen sanctions targeting human rights violators, coordinate diplomatic isolation, apply pressure at the United Nations and use public accountability measures that include prosecution of responsible officials in national courts under the principle of universal jurisdiction. These actions are essential.

Iran’s leaders are counting on the fog of war to obscure their crimes. Let the world prove them wrong. If we fail to respond now, we will not only abandon the people of Iran; we will help write a dangerous new chapter in the history of impunity.

More on Iran

Opinion | Karim Sadjadpour

What Bombs Can’t Do in Iran

June 23, 2025

Opinion | Morteza Dehghani

The Moral Paralysis Facing Iranians Right Now

June 28, 2025

Karen Kramer is the deputy director of the Center for Human Rights in Iran.

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A version of this article appears in print on July 4, 2025, Section A, Page 25 of the New York edition with the headline: Iran’s Quiet Campaign of Domestic Terror. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

11. An Emerging Trump Doctrine?

​Conclusion:

On the heels of his success in achieving an Israel-Iran cease-fire—and with isolationist sentiment waning within his MAGA base—Trump has the political capital at home and the diplomatic heft abroad to implement this new approach. Its application to the Russia-Ukraine war could dramatically reverse the dire trends of recent weeks by ratcheting up pressure on the Kremlin. If the administration pursues this path, then Putin will be far more likely to settle a peace and provide a second major foreign-policy success for the U.S. president.

An Emerging Trump Doctrine?

Foreign Policy · by Adrian Karatnycky

Success in the Middle East could be a template for a new approach to Russia’s war.

By Adrian Karatnycky, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and the founder of Myrmidon Group.

July 3, 2025, 8:52 AM

Trump’s Second Term

Ongoing reports and analysis

Commenting on U.S. President Donald Trump’s successful brokering of a cease-fire between Israel and Iran on June 24, a Ukrainian pundit observed: “Donald Trump has demonstrated to Donald Trump how to negotiate an end to a conflict from a position of strength.” But does Trump’s Middle East success suggest a more fundamental new approach—perhaps an emerging doctrine—for his conduct of foreign and security policy going forward?

Given that Trump’s foreign-policy views are often instinctive, situational, transactional, and unpredictable, the idea of his administration pursuing a consistent doctrine may seem far-fetched. Yet above all, Trump values success, and his experience intervening in the Middle East could give momentum to a more muscular foreign policy in the coming months.

In three successive presidential campaigns, Trump tried to straddle the wide gulf in his electoral coalition between traditional national security conservatives and MAGA isolationists by supporting significant increases in defense spending while emphasizing his reluctance to use force that might entangle Washington in “forever wars.” The Reagan-era slogan “peace through strength” was Trump’s means of keeping both parts of his coalition contented. In the Middle East, geopolitical realities may have led him to conclude that peace does not always come from strength alone, but from the strategic application of that strength.

Indeed, Trump’s recent actions in Iran and support for NATO at the bloc’s recent summit in The Hague dispel the notion that the United States has entered an isolationist phase. Instead, they point to the contours of a new foreign and security policy with ramifications that go far beyond the Middle East.

Addressing a Republican audience on June 25 in Lima, Ohio, Vice President J.D. Vance took a stab at defining what might be called the Trump doctrine: “Number one, you articulate a clear American interest, and that’s, in this case, that Iran can’t have a nuclear weapon. Number two, you try to aggressively diplomatically solve that problem. And number three, when you can’t solve it diplomatically, you use overwhelming military power to solve it, and then you get the hell out of there before it ever becomes a protracted conflict.”

Vance’s narrow description of Trump’s actions in Iran deserves a broader interpretation. Indeed, the administration’s approach to Iran may be a harbinger of an evolving doctrine for the limited use of U.S. power to assist vulnerable allies at a crucial tipping point of a strategically important conflict. This doctrine also underscores the United States’ readiness to help those countries that, like Israel, are seriously committed carrying the main burden of their own defense.

This approach was on full display at the NATO summit in The Hague last week. There, an upbeat Trump, basking in the success of the Iran mission, signaled robust support for NATO in the context of its members’ commitment to major increases in defense spending. Against all expectations, Washington endorsed an alliance statement recognizing the looming Russian security threat to Europe and confirming NATO members’ ongoing commitment to assist Ukraine in its effort to resist Russian aggression.

There are four reasons to believe that Trump’s intervention in the Middle East could lead the administration toward a new approach to the Russia-Ukraine war.

First, nothing succeeds like demonstrable success. And the initial success—in creating space for a cease-fire agreement—of Trump’s decision to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities convincingly demonstrates that conflicts involving an aggressive and brutal tyranny cannot be resolved solely by an appeal to reason, comity, or commercial interests, but require the exertion of intense U.S. pressure and power.

Second, Trump’s attack on Iran has deflated the arguments of semi-isolationist voices inside the administration, including Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. These are now shifting to Trump’s embrace of a more activist U.S. posture. He has also sidelined isolationists in the MAGA sphere, such as U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, media personality Tucker Carlson, far-right ideologue Steve Bannon, and U.S. Sen. Rand Paul (who has pushed back against the label but nonetheless opposed aid to Ukraine). Most of these have either outright opposed NATO and Ukraine or been lukewarm in their support.

Third, as recent polling by the Ronald Reagan Institute clearly shows, the emerging Trump doctrine aligns with the views of his base. Most Republican voters do not reject U.S. engagement in the world. They understand the threats posed by China, Iran, and Russia. Moreover, many Republican voters deeply respect martial courage and admire Ukrainians and Israelis for their commitment to their own self-defense. What Trump voters don’t want is a direct engagement in the conflict by U.S. forces. They expect major burden-sharing by U.S. allies.

Fourth, the glad-handing diplomacy practiced by U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff—who has praised Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “great leader” and offered him a slew of unilateral U.S. concessions—has reached a dead end. Indeed, Witkoff’s approach has frustrated Trump’s peacemaking ambitions and contributed to an upsurge in Russian attacks on Ukraine’s main cities, with hundreds of civilians deliberately killed and wounded far from the front line. And much of this has occurred with the use of Shahed drones provided by Russia’s strategic ally, Iran. While Trump continues to hold open the possibility of a peace “deal” with Moscow, as underscored by the U.S. decision on July 1 to halt some weapons shipments to Ukraine, Putin’s indifference to Trump’s peacemaking ambitions is likely to revive tensions with the Kremlin in the near term.

As his conflict with Elon Musk demonstrates, Trump is capable of rapidly turning on his allies and counterparts. Consequently, the glaring contrast between the failed concessions and inducements to Putin on the one hand and the successful, tough-minded measures against Iran on the other could open the door to a muscular new approach to Russia. This, of course, does not mean direct U.S. military engagement. But it should mean the application of hard-hitting economic sanctions on Russia and the enhancement of Ukraine’s defensive and offensive capabilities, a two-pronged approach that gained momentum at the recent NATO summit.

Europe has greatly raised its financial obligations for self-defense and significantly increased its support for Ukraine, compensating Trump’s deep reductions in U.S. support. But if Putin is to be stopped in his tracks, then Europe will also need Trump’s consent to purchase U.S. arms for Ukraine, and Washington will need to continue sharing intelligence with Kyiv. Indications from the NATO summit point to U.S. willingness to do just this.

The best way to deter Putin is to show that the alliance is committed to supporting Ukraine’s defense over the long haul. And the best way to do this in a way that meets the self-help requirement of the emerging Trump doctrine also rests with Europe. Its banks hold the bulk of $300 billion in frozen Russian hard currency reserves, whose confiscation is advocated by various European leaders and parliaments as well as U.S. experts such as former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, former State Department counselor Philip Zelikow, and former World Bank President Robert Zoellick.

These Russian reserves represent the equivalent of many years of U.S. funding for Ukraine and would allow Ukraine to defend itself from Putin’s massive recent attacks on civilian targets. A bit of Trump-induced pressure could be decisive in driving Europe to stop prevaricating and finally make use of these assets, which in turn would relieve the United States of any major financial burden for the war. Using Russian assets to fund Ukraine’s defense—including for buying U.S.-made weapons—is, in its essence, a very Trumpian idea: the geopolitical equivalent of getting Mexico to pay for a border wall.

On the heels of his success in achieving an Israel-Iran cease-fire—and with isolationist sentiment waning within his MAGA base—Trump has the political capital at home and the diplomatic heft abroad to implement this new approach. Its application to the Russia-Ukraine war could dramatically reverse the dire trends of recent weeks by ratcheting up pressure on the Kremlin. If the administration pursues this path, then Putin will be far more likely to settle a peace and provide a second major foreign-policy success for the U.S. president.

This post is part of FP’s ongoing coverage of the Trump administration. Follow along here.

Foreign Policy · by Adrian Karatnycky

12. Afghanistan review could lead to change in promotions for NCOs, officers

​Since Sean Parnell is commenting about his time as "battle captain" it might be useful to know his background (at least according to the trusted source of Wikipedia).

Outlaw Platoon is a 2012 war story memoir written by Captain Sean Parnell and author John R. Bruning. The book details Parnell's 2006–2007 experiences as an infantry platoon leader during the War in Afghanistan.

After receiving his commission through the Army Reserve Officers' Training Corps program at Duquesne University, Parnell led 3rd Platoon, B Company, 2nd Battalion, 87th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division.^[1] The company was based near the Pakistani border in Barmal District of Paktika Province on an extended 16-month deployment. After the deployment, Parnell was awarded two Bronze Star Medals and a Purple Heart.^[2] Parnell left duty as a lieutenant and retired as a captain. Before embarking on Outlaw Platoon. Parnell's coauthor, military historian John R. Bruning, embedded himself with a unit in Afghanistan in 2010 in preparation for writing the book for Parnell.^[3]

The book was discussed as part of the Commandant's Book Club at the United States Military Academy in 2013.^[4]

Parnell discussed writing the book for an episode of Pritzker Military Presents^[5] and for the Episode 192 of the Jocko Podcast.^[6]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlaw_Platoon#:~:text=After the deployment%2C Parnell was,and retired as a captain.

Afghanistan review could lead to change in promotions for NCOs, officers

The Pentagon’s review into the withdrawal from Afghanistan could lead to an overhaul of how young enlisted leaders and officers are evaluated and promoted.

Jeff Schogol

Published Jul 3, 2025 10:52 AM EDT

taskandpurpose.com · by Jeff Schogol

The Pentagon’s ongoing review into the U.S. military’s withdrawal from Afghanistan could prompt the Defense Department to “reform the way that we evaluate and promote young noncommissioned officers and young officers,” Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell told reporters recently.

“If you think back to my time in Afghanistan as a young commander, giving battle update briefs as a captain to my battalion commander, if I were constantly saying that my area of operations was a disaster, it didn’t have the ammo or troops that I needed to accomplish the mission, the likelihood of me getting promoted was probably not great,” Parnell said Wednesday Pentagon news conference. “So, how do we set the conditions in the [Defense] Department to create a sense of honesty where our officers are reporting what they believe to be accuracy — they’re concerned about maybe their area of operations; they’re concerned about the truth and, maybe, less about their careers.”

Parnell added that his comments were not meant as an indictment of officers who served in Afghanistan. “It’s just the way that our system is constructed,” he said.

In January 2020, John Sopko, then serving as special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, told lawmakers that the U.S. government had “created an incentive to almost require people to lie” about progress in Afghanistan.

“I’m not going to name names, but I think everybody has that incentive to give happy talk — to show success,” Sopko told Task & Purpose at the time. “Maybe it’s human nature to do that. I mean most of the lying is lying to ourselves. We want to show success.”

More than a year later, the Taliban captured Kabul on Aug. 15, 2021, marking the start of a chaotic evacuation of American citizens and Afghans who had worked for the U.S. government. Over two weeks, U.S. troops rescued more than 124,000 people.

Thirteen service members and about 170 Afghans were killed in an Aug. 26, 2021, suicide bomb attack at Abbey Gate outside Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul.

On Wednesday, Parnell said the Defense Department review, which was announced on May 20. will look into key questions about the withdrawal, such as why U.S. forces withdrew from Bagram Airfield in July 2021. As a result, the evacuation the following month had to be conducted from the airport in Kabul, leaving the troops guarding Abbey Gate exposed, an investigation later found.

Parnell also said that he believes the U.S. defeat in Vietnam during which Americans and Vietnamese were evacuated by helicopter from the U.S. embassy in Saigon, left an imprint on a generation of officers who later became generals. He noted that these leaders were in charge during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, in which the U.S. military had a clearly stated mission and American service members withdrew when the operation’s goals had been accomplished.

When those general officers retired, a lot of their institutional knowledge based on lessons from the pain of the Vietnam War was likely lost, Parnell said.

“Flash forward 10 years: 9/11 happens; 20 years of war in Iraq Afghanistan; and we find ourselves at the end of Afghan War in a remarkably similar situation that we were in in Vietnam,” Parnell said. “So, the question that I have here, and that the department has, is what happened? How do we as a department make sure that something like in Vietnam and something there again that happened in Afghanistan never happens again?”

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Each week on Tuesdays and Fridays our team will bring you analysis of military tech, tactics, and doctrine.

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Jeff Schogol

Senior Pentagon Reporter

Jeff Schogol is a senior staff writer for Task & Purpose. He has covered the military for nearly 20 years. Email him at schogol@taskandpurpose.com; direct message @JSchogol73030 on Twitter; or reach him on WhatsApp and Signal at 703-909-6488.

taskandpurpose.com · by Jeff Schogol

13. China's foreign minister tells EU that Beijing cannot afford Russia to lose in Ukraine, media reports

​There you have it.  Did he let his inside voice out?

China's foreign minister tells EU that Beijing cannot afford Russia to lose in Ukraine, media reports

https://kyivindependent.com/chinas-foreign-minister-tells-eu-that-beijing-cannot-afford-russian-loss-in-ukraine-media-reports-6-2025/

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by Dmytro Basmat

July 4, 2025 2:03 AM2 min read

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi speaks during a press conference for domestic and foreign journalists as part of the National People's Congress and Two Sessions in Beijing, China, on March 7, 2024. (Photo by Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

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China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi reportedly told the EU's top diplomat Kaja Kallas on July 3 that the country cannot afford for Russia to lose the war in Ukraine amid fears the U.S. would shift focus towards Beijing, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported, citing sources familiar with the conversation.

As the war in Ukraine drags on, Wang's reported comments suggest that Russia's war in Ukraine may serve China's strategic needs as focus is deviated away from Beijing's mounting preparation to launch its own possible invasion into Taiwan.

China has been a key ally to Russia during its full-scale war, helping Moscow evade Western sanctions and becoming the leading source of dual-use goods fueling the Russian defense industry.

U.S. President Donald Trump, who has not managed to broker a promised ceasefire between Moscow and Kyiv, has long viewed China as the United States' main adversary and is predominantly focused on relations between the two nations.

In June, Bloomberg reported Trump is pulling back from pressuring China over its support for Russia’s war effort, instead prioritizing other aspects of the U.S.-China relationship. The publication reported that the administration lowered the issue of Russia's war against Ukraine on its list of foreign policy priorities and is focusing on bilateral issues with Beijing, though they noted Trump could still shift course.

The frankness of Wang's reported admission was greeted with surprise by EU official, according to Hong Kong-based SCMP, amid China's past public statements in favor of a peace deal. Two sources familiar with the meeting told SCMP that they believed Wang was providing Kallas with a lesson in realpolitik during the four-hour encounter.

Wang on July 3 again reportedly rejected Western accusations that it was providing funding and weaponry to support Moscow's war effort in Ukraine.

President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly accused Beijing of providing weaponry to Moscow. On May 29, Zelensky said that China had stopped selling drones to Ukraine and Western countries while continuing to supply them to Russia.

Wang's comments come amid waning support from Kyiv's main military backer, the United States. On July 1, the U.S. Defense Department paused shipments of key weapons systems to Ukraine, including Patriot air defense missiles and precision-guided munitions.

As Russian-Chinese relations continue to grow, Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to meet Chinese President Xi Jingping in September in China for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit.

14. Beyond The Bombs: Who Really Won The 12-Day War Between Israel And Iran? – OpEd

​Excerpts:

A large-scale air war against Iran “also carried enormous risks,” such as the Iranians closing the Strait of Hormuz or targeting oil infrastructure across the Gulf states hosting U.S. bases. Either approach would “lead to a spike in oil prices, and plunge the economies of imperialist nations into a deep recession,” McKay observes. As it was, the 12-Day War led to a brief surge in oil prices, which reversed once the ceasefire commenced. Meanwhile, vessels traversing Hormuz are subject to “intense levels of GPS jamming.”

Such moves suggest that while Tehran’s missile onslaught may be over, it is under no illusions that it effectively remains at war with Israel and Tel Aviv’s Western puppetmasters, and must remain ever-vigilant as a result.

It is evident that this perspective is widely shared among Iranian citizens. Far from destabilizing and fracturing the country and triggering the revolutionary government’s collapse, the population is more united than ever against Western powers. As one patriotic Iranian celebrated on ‘X’:

We are now aware of our shortcomings more than ever and in dire need of some changes. Iran’s biggest achievement or gift wasn’t on the battlefield but at home amongst the people, becoming as one. Younger generations who had not experienced…the Revolution or the [war with Iraq] now tasted something beyond themselves. It gave them the identity they were longing for.”

Should Israel again attempt to foment all-out war with Iran, it will be up against an adversary far more prepared than this time round, with nigh-universal domestic support for total victory, which may mean Tel Aviv’s final destruction, and the vanquishing of U.S. bases across West Asia. Tehran is also likely to emerge better armed, given that on June 26, China convened an emergency meeting with Iran and Russia’s defense ministers. It is now up to Netanyahu to make the next move, which may be his very last.

Beyond The Bombs: Who Really Won The 12-Day War Between Israel And Iran? – OpEd

https://www.eurasiareview.com/04072025-beyond-the-bombs-who-really-won-the-12-day-war-between-israel-and-iran-oped/

 July 4, 2025  0 Comments

By Kit Klarenberg

On June 13, 2025, Tel Aviv launched what many international observers and Iranian officials have described as an unprovoked military strike on Iran. Israeli jets bombed military and nuclear sites, while Mossad-run sleeper cells carried out sabotage missions against air and missile defense systems from within Iran, and drones smuggled into Tehran were launched against local missile launch bases.

Dozens—perhaps more—of nuclear scientists and top military commanders were murdered with surgical precision, often in the presence of innocent family members, who were themselves frequently killed. A climate of chaos and uncertainty seemed to engulf everything.

These early results so exhilarated Israeli officials that they talked a big game on where their operation would lead, making several incendiary claims along the way. They boasted of operating in Iranian airspace without hindrance, invited the U.S. to get formally involved with the “elimination” of Tehran’s nuclear weapons program, and anonymously briefed the media that “a multi-faceted misinformation campaign”—in which Donald Trump was an “active participant”—had been conducted “to convince Iran that a strike on its nuclear facilities was not imminent.”

Internationally-wanted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu forecast on June 15 that Israel’s war on Iran “could certainly” produce regime change, as the government was “very weak,” and that “80% of the people would throw these theological thugs out.”

A hard-hitting response to Netanyahu’s premonitions and Tel Aviv’s military strike quickly arrived from Tehran in the form of a wave of missile attacks. Wreaking unprecedented damage on Tel Aviv and Haifa. The impact on Israeli military installations is difficult to assess due to its strict policy of internal censorship.

Visibly, though, Iran’s bombardments sent Israelis scurrying for shelter, while many others fled the country outright. Such was the exodus, from a country that has already suffered mass depopulation since October 7, 2023—the Israeli government has since scrambled to implement legally questionable bans on its citizens leaving.

By June 19, officials in Tel Aviv had dropped the braggadocio, and Western media were publishing explainer guides to explain why Israel’s much-vaunted Iron Dome air defense system had failed to repel Iranian strikes.

Iran’s unmolested battering of Israel continued apace until June 22, when the U.S. officially entered the war. Iranian nuclear sites at Fordow, Isfahan, and Natanz were targeted, allegedly using heavy-duty B-2 bombers that dropped earth-shattering bunker busters.

Trump boasted that Iran’s nuclear program was “obliterated,” and Tehran struck an unmanned U.S. base in Qatar in response. Iran and Israel then traded missile barrages, which inflicted significantly greater damage on the latter, for two more days, before begrudgingly agreeing to a ceasefire.

So far, the ceasefire holds. In the meantime, U.S. claims of having damaged, let alone destroyed, Iran’s nuclear facilities have quickly unraveled, as have Israeli allegations that the June 13 strike was an urgent necessity conducted as Iran was on the imminent verge of acquiring nukes.

As the dust settles, it is becoming increasingly clear that the so-called “12 Day War” was long in the making, and an unmitigated disaster for Tel Aviv and Washington, with wide-ranging ramifications for the region and beyond.

“Netanyahu wanted to incite regime change in Tehran, while drawing the U.S. into a wider war. He failed on both counts, and now Iran is stronger, its citizens more united with one another, and behind their government,” Ali Abunimah, Electronic Intifada cofounder, tells MintPress News.

This has enormous implications for West Asia and the world. Israel proved itself more vulnerable than ever. Tehran, while still facing enormous dangers from determined enemies, proved itself far more resilient than its adversaries expected.”

‘Burning Through’

“Meanwhile, as many Iranian commentators note,” Abunimah says, another deleterious upshot of the fiasco is “Western-oriented segments of Iranian society have been left disillusioned—even discredited—by Washington’s brazen deceit.”

Bragging about how Trump’s nuclear negotiations were a ruse “means not only Iran but many other countries globally will never again trust U.S. diplomacy.” Still, he believes Washington and Tel Aviv’s “efforts to destroy” Iran shouldn’t cease, and could intensify.

For the time being, Tehran has made clear it will observe the ceasefire and only strike back if it is attacked again. As Abunimah puts it, “Some have criticized Iran for not linking a ceasefire to Israel ending the Gaza genocide.” However, he believes “such a demand could’ve triggered serious U.S. aggression, rather than the meaningless strikes that happened, and civilians could’ve ended up in the firing line.”

Tehran has never envisaged direct defeat via a single blow, but wearing Israel down. The Resistance, including Iran, is the weaker side in an asymmetrical war, facing the full might of the U.S.-led Western empire. Ironically, although Israel started this war, it advanced the Resistance’s objective.

Israel appears weak, unstable, and unsafe, while totally reliant on foreign support in a world where it is more hated than ever after nearly two years of its livestreamed genocide in Gaza.”

Tyler Weaver, a U.S. military veteran who runs a popular X account publishing military analysis and commentary, echoes Abunimah’s analysis. “Iran demonstrated a consistent capability to pierce Israeli missile defenses and damage or destroy Israeli infrastructure and combat systems – several IDF air defense missile batteries were struck and destroyed,” he observes.

And while Iran may not have secured an outright victory against its attackers, “Israel sure lost” the 12-Day War. “This was their ‘big show’ against Iran, and its results did not meet the effort expended. The most effective weapon the Israelis had wasn’t their vaunted Air Force, but instead an elaborately constructed attack network inside Iran courtesy of Mossad, which is now gone, and likely cannot be reconstructed.”

“Infrastructure can be repaired, weaponry can be replaced, but they’re not going to be able to rebuild anything like that network again,” Weaver warns.

Furthermore, Israel’s high-risk bid to overpower Iran consumed enormous amounts of munitions and came at great financial expense. A former financial adviser to the IDF chief of staff estimates that just the first 48 hours of Tel Aviv’s botched campaign cost $1.45 billion, with almost $1 billion spent on defensive measures alone. Meanwhile, government economists estimated the daily cost of military operations at $725 million.

Tel Aviv was reportedly running perilously low on missile interceptors within five days, despite the U.S. having been aware of “capacity problems” for months prior, and spending intervening months “augmenting Israel’s defenses with systems on the ground, at sea and in the air.” This, in turn, has created “concern about the U.S. burning through its own interceptors” within the Pentagon. As a July 2024 report by the Department of Defense-funded RAND concluded, Washington cannot replenish its stockpile of those munitions at any pace or scale.

Haaretz estimates that the civilian and economic toll of the 12-Day War on Israel could reach into the billions of dollars. Thousands of residents have been displaced, with reconstruction costs projected in the hundreds of millions. Most industries were brought to a halt during the conflict, deepening the strain on Tel Aviv’s already fragile economy.

Taken together, Israel’s ability to sustain a longer or more intense confrontation with Iran—militarily or financially—and the U.S. capacity to provide continued support appear increasingly uncertain.

‘Idiotic Decision’

Reports suggest Trump was motivated by fears of a drawn-out war and saw military strikes on Iran as the most direct path to a ceasefire. This interpretation is greatly reinforced by a high-ranking Iranian official claiming the White House gave Tehran advance notice of the bombings, insisting they were intended as a “one-off,” opening the door for a “symbolic” Iranian counterattack, and cessation of hostilities.

Media reports suggest that the strikes were part of a broader effort by the President to de-escalate the conflict by offering a negotiated off-ramp for all parties involved. Despite these disclosures, Trump has repeatedly avowed in his typically brash style that the June 22 attack on Iran was decisive, and “one of the most successful military strikes in history.”

The New York Times later cited a senior U.S. official who said Iran’s nuclear sites were not destroyed but targeted in a way that temporarily took them “off the table,” contradicting the president’s more emphatic characterization.

Even that more modest assessment was further challenged on June 25, when CNN reported on the findings of a leaked Defense Intelligence Agency analysis. The report concluded that U.S. strikes on Fordow, Isfahan, and Natanz had not destroyed the core components of Iran’s nuclear program and had likely only delayed it by months. These conclusions were echoed by multiple informed sources, who noted that Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium had been relocated prior to the attack, and that the facilities’ centrifuges remained largely intact.

Weaver, who has studied photo and video evidence of the 12-Day War extensively, concurs “there’s little indication” the Iranian nuclear sites were “meaningfully damaged.” What can be detected from satellite imagery on the ground “is simply inconsistent with the use of earthquake bombs as claimed by Trump and the Pentagon.”

Weaver points to several inconsistencies in mainstream reporting and White House statements regarding both the execution and outcomes of the attack. He notes that the strike “passed entirely under the radar of the usual nightly exchange of fire between Iran and Israel,” and was not acknowledged by either side until Trump announced it.

For the official account to hold, he argues, B-2 bombers—aircraft the U.S. had previously avoided using in Yemen—would have had to penetrate deep into Iranian territory, strike heavily fortified sites with gravity bombs, and return across hundreds of miles of monitored airspace without being detected, all while Iran’s air defense systems remained operational.

I think Trump tried to rescue Netanyahu from the consequences of his idiotic decision to start a war with Iran he manifestly wasn’t capable of finishing, and do so in a manner the Iranians weren’t going to be provoked into responding to in a major way. As an American taxpayer and former DoD employee, I would hope this wasn’t the most impressive attack the U.S. military could put together on a week’s notice, and it reflects deliberate restraint rather than a lack of capability.”

Despite extensive planning reportedly dating back to the Biden administration, including war-game scenarios focused on Iran’s nuclear program, analysts have questioned the limited impact of Israel’s strike. Furthermore, it has been revealed that senior Israeli officials had been preparing for the June 13 attack since March, and sought to strike before Iran “rebuilt its air defenses by the latter half of the year.”

‘Polite Fiction’

CNN’s report on the leaked DIA assessment was quickly met with coordinated responses from across the U.S. government disputing its conclusions.

First, a dedicated article was published on the White House website, “Iran’s Nuclear Facilities Have Been Obliterated — and Suggestions Otherwise are Fake News.” The article collated quotes from numerous high-ranking administration officials, including the President, and Israeli government and military apparatchiks, testifying to the attack’s triumph. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fulminated, “Anyone who says the bombs were not devastating is just trying to undermine the President and the successful mission.”

Simultaneously, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard separately issued statements declaring “new intelligence” indicated Iran’s nuclear facilities had in fact been “destroyed” by U.S. airstrikes. Neither provided any evidence to support this bold conclusion. Later that day, Politico revealed that the aggressive flurry of disavowal was a determined “blitz” by the administration, “to counter media reports…the strikes had not significantly set back Iran’s nuclear program.”

The DIA leak reportedly provoked an angry response from Trump, leading to federal investigations into the breach. Like many administrations, the White House and U.S. agencies have typically resisted admitting to failures in military operations. Nonetheless, the determination of so many officials to push back against any suggestions that the strike wasn’t a historically ruinous cataclysm could point to a different motive than covering for Trump, or being forced to admit that Washington’s once-vaunted military machine isn’t what it once was.

The assertion that Iran’s nuclear program has been eliminated offers a convenient rationale for ending discussions that, even before the conflict, had reached an impasse and now appear permanently derailed. In the wake of Tel Aviv’s strike, Iran canceled nuclear talks with the U.S. that had been scheduled for June 21 in Oman, citing what it called Israel’s “barbarous” actions, backed by Washington, as rendering the summit “meaningless.”

If, as some analysts have suggested, the negotiations were never intended to succeed and successive U.S. administrations were aware of Israel’s plans in advance, then Tehran has little reason to resume talks. In addition, Iranian officials have stated that International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors will no longer be permitted entry to nuclear sites on Iranian soil.

On June 12, Press TV published documents exposing how the Association previously provided Israeli intelligence with the names of several Iranian nuclear scientists who were subsequently assassinated, and its chief, Rafael Grossi, enjoys a close, clandestine relationship with Israeli officials.

Under the terms of Tehran’s July 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) deal with the Obama administration, the IAEA was granted unimpeded access to Iran’s nuclear complexes to ensure the country was not using the facilities to develop weapons. Its inspectors collected a wealth of information on and in the sites, including surveillance camera photos, measurement data, and documents.

It is an open question whether this intelligence bonanza was shared with the U.S. and Israel, and played any role in the 12-Day War. Iranian lawmakers aren’t waiting for proof, and on June 25, they unanimously passed legislation to suspend cooperation with the Association indefinitely.

Exiting the Non-Proliferation Treaty is being openly debated in the Islamic Republic as well. Maintaining the narrative that Iran’s nuclear program has been eliminated may serve a strategic purpose for Washington, allowing it to argue against further diplomatic engagement. “The polite fiction that Fordow, Isfahan, and Natanz were destroyed is helpful to keep the peace,” says Tyler Weaver.

‘Beyond Themselves’

The question of what happens next is likewise an open one. Alex McKay, of the Marx Engels Lenin Institute and Decline & Fall, notes that while “this latest regime change attempt is over, plots against Iran by the Anglo-American empire, and its Israeli proxy, will continue,” as “the imperialist powers cannot countenance Iran being a sovereign, independent nation.”

However, he believes the “total failure” of the recent operation against the Islamic Republic cannot be understated, and left U.S.-Israeli weakness and vulnerability writ unambiguously large.

“Once it became clear the hoped-for palace coup or color revolution wouldn’t materialize, the U.S. was left without many options, and a number of unpalatable choices, McKay tells MintPress News.

To actually destroy the Islamic Republic would take a long-term military campaign, possibly including a ground invasion. The U.S. has avoided wars as dangerous as this would be ever since their defeat in Vietnam. Imperialist powers of the world prefer to wage their wars via air power, terrorist acts, proxy armies, espionage and cultural subversion.”

A large-scale air war against Iran “also carried enormous risks,” such as the Iranians closing the Strait of Hormuz or targeting oil infrastructure across the Gulf states hosting U.S. bases. Either approach would “lead to a spike in oil prices, and plunge the economies of imperialist nations into a deep recession,” McKay observes. As it was, the 12-Day War led to a brief surge in oil prices, which reversed once the ceasefire commenced. Meanwhile, vessels traversing Hormuz are subject to “intense levels of GPS jamming.”

Such moves suggest that while Tehran’s missile onslaught may be over, it is under no illusions that it effectively remains at war with Israel and Tel Aviv’s Western puppetmasters, and must remain ever-vigilant as a result.

It is evident that this perspective is widely shared among Iranian citizens. Far from destabilizing and fracturing the country and triggering the revolutionary government’s collapse, the population is more united than ever against Western powers. As one patriotic Iranian celebrated on ‘X’:

We are now aware of our shortcomings more than ever and in dire need of some changes. Iran’s biggest achievement or gift wasn’t on the battlefield but at home amongst the people, becoming as one. Younger generations who had not experienced…the Revolution or the [war with Iraq] now tasted something beyond themselves. It gave them the identity they were longing for.”

Should Israel again attempt to foment all-out war with Iran, it will be up against an adversary far more prepared than this time round, with nigh-universal domestic support for total victory, which may mean Tel Aviv’s final destruction, and the vanquishing of U.S. bases across West Asia. Tehran is also likely to emerge better armed, given that on June 26, China convened an emergency meeting with Iran and Russia’s defense ministers. It is now up to Netanyahu to make the next move, which may be his very last.

• Reprinted with permission from MintPressNews.

Kit Klarenberg

Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. His work has previously appeared in The Cradle, Declassified UK, and Grayzone. Follow him on Twitter @KitKlarenberg.

15. U.N. Pulls Nuclear Inspectors Out of Iran for Safety Reasons

U.N. Pulls Nuclear Inspectors Out of Iran for Safety Reasons

Move intensifies standoff over agency’s oversight of Iran’s nuclear work

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/u-n-pulls-nuclear-inspectors-out-of-iran-for-safety-reasons-b65d84ef

By Laurence Norman

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Updated July 4, 2025 8:15 am ET

IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi Photo: elisabeth mandl/Reuters

Key Points

What's This?

• The U.N. atomic agency is removing inspectors from Iran due to safety concerns and Iran suspending cooperation.
• Iran’s move follows attacks on its nuclear sites and accusations against the IAEA, escalating tensions.
• The IAEA’s absence raises concerns about unchecked nuclear activities, prompting international condemnation and potential action.

The United Nations atomic agency is pulling its inspectors out of Iran over safety concerns, severing the link between the agency and Tehran, which earlier this week suspended cooperation with the international monitor, according to people familiar with the matter.

The International Atomic Energy Agency’s team of inspectors were driven by road out of Iran on Friday despite international departures from Iran’s main airports resuming normal operations in the wake of a 12-day conflict with Israel, two of the people said. 

The inspectors have been housed in Tehran unable to visit Iran’s nuclear sites since Israel attacked the country on June 13. They were housed at a hotel in the capital but may have later moved to a U.N. location, according to one of the people. 

Iran has ratcheted up years-old rhetoric against the agency since then and there have been death threats against IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi from lawmakers and regime-tied media. 

The IAEA later confirmed the inspectors’ departure. In a tweet on X, the agency said Grossi “reiterated the crucial importance of the IAEA discussing with Iran modalities for resuming its indispensable monitoring and verification activities in Iran as soon as possible.”

Their departure makes the prospect of any significant international access to Iran’s nuclear sites extremely unlikely, allowing it to carry out nuclear work unchecked. Iran’s activities are, however, being watched closely by Western and Israeli intelligence agencies, and the IAEA has access to satellite imagery of its sites. It also raises the prospect of a standoff over Iran’s participation in the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which bans it from nuclear weapons and requires regular inspections of its atomic program. 

For decades, Iran has been subject to rigorous inspections of its core nuclear sites. Inspectors would visit its enrichment sites and check its stockpile of enriched uranium every couple of days, ensuring that Iran wasn’t diverting fissile material for a nuclear weapon. 

Iran has always said its nuclear work is for purely peaceful purposes. President Trump said Thursday that Iran wants to meet to resume nuclear talks. There has been no confirmation of that by Tehran. 

Tensions between Iran and the agency had been simmering for years as Iran became the only non-nuclear-weapons state to produce 60% highly enriched uranium and Tehran stonewalled a six-year probe into the presence of undeclared nuclear material in the country. For two years now, the IAEA has said it can’t be sure that Iran’s nuclear work is for purely peaceful purposes.

A satellite image provided by Maxar Technologies shows an overview of Iran’s Fordow complex. Photo: Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Earlier this week, in the face of international pressure, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian implemented a new law from Iran’s parliament suspending cooperation with the agency.

That move meant the IAEA would be blind to Iran’s nuclear work and the state of its nuclear facilities, following Israeli and U.S. attacks last month on the country’s main sites.

Trump says the attacks on Iran obliterated Iran’s nuclear program. A Pentagon official said the strikes had set Iran’s program back by up to two years.

Washington condemned this week’s Iranian decision as “unacceptable,” while European countries called on Tehran to reverse it, saying that ending oversight of Iran’s nuclear program would make a diplomatic solution to the nuclear crisis harder to reach. Any nuclear agreement would require a baseline understanding of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and its enriched uranium stockpile.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Thursday that Iran remains committed to the NPT. However, Iranian officials have previously said they could leave it if the country was attacked, and there has been a chorus of officials in recent weeks questioning the value of staying in the treaty.

The departure of inspectors could escalate the standoff. Tehran is obliged to accept inspections under the NPT. Its refusal to cooperate with the agency would likely spark action by the IAEA board of member states, Grossi has said, which could place the issue before the U.N. Security Council for a response. Iran has in the past reacted strongly to such pressure, further slashing oversight of its program.

French President Emmanuel Macron has called his U.S. and Russian counterparts to discuss the situation in recent days. After Tuesday’s call with President Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin said Iran’s continued cooperation with the agency was crucial.

Israel is pushing European countries to exercise their option to reimpose all international sanctions lifted by the 2015 nuclear deal in response to Iran’s suspension of work with the inspectors. Trump pulled the U.S. out of that deal during his first term.

The agency has said Iran in the past harassed inspectors in the country and accused Tehran of taking confidential internal reports from it.

The agency at the end of May circulated a report ordered up by European powers detailing Iran’s failure to answer questions about the presence of undeclared nuclear material in Iran. It set out a pattern of Iran giving contradictory responses to the agency, which the IAEA said weren’t credible. Following the report, Iran was declared noncompliant with the IAEA by the agency’s board

The following day, Israel launched its attacks on Iran. Tehran has said Grossi’s actions set the stage for the Israeli attack and said he has failed to condemn the U.S. and Israeli attacks. Iranian officials have resurfaced longstanding claims, dismissed by the IAEA, that the agency has given Israel information to help hunt down Iranian nuclear scientists.

Write to Laurence Norman at laurence.norman@wsj.com

16. Can AI and Drones Replace Soldiers and Jets?

​Blend old and new, and low-tech and high-tech.

The key point:

This is a warning to democracies, especially the U.S. The wars of the 21st century won’t be won by choosing between drones and jets, analog and digital, artificial intelligence and human intuition. They will be won by militaries that combine them—creatively and continuously.

Can AI and Drones Replace Soldiers and Jets?

Strikes by Ukraine and Israel show modern militaries need to blend military tech old and new.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/can-ai-and-drones-replace-soldiers-and-jets-modern-warfare-7c66e9dc

By Aaron Kaplowitz

July 3, 2025 6:49 pm ET

Israeli military aircraft prepare for airstrike operations in Iran, June 13. Photo: Israel Defense Forces/Zuma Press

When Ukrainian drones struck deep inside Russia last month and damaged strategic bombers once considered untouchable, it sent shock waves through military circles. Operation Spider’s Web was more than a display of technological ingenuity; it challenged longstanding assumptions about modern warfare. An outgunned but nimble force using off-the-shelf drones disrupted a far larger adversary. Speed, asymmetry and creativity outmatched legacy systems.

Weeks later, Israel’s strike on Iranian nuclear facilities offered a sharper, more enduring lesson: the future of warfare isn’t about drones replacing jets—it’s about integration. While Ukraine revealed how smart, agile tactics can disrupt an adversary, Israel put on a masterclass in modern warfare by blending conventional and new battlefield technologies.

In Israel’s opening strike, more than 200 aircraft dropped 300 precision munitions on 100 Iranian targets, according to the Israel Defense Forces. Simultaneously, Israeli quadcopters launched from a clandestine drone base inside Iran destroyed missile launchers aimed at the Jewish state. Using vehicles reportedly smuggled into Iran, Israeli operatives deployed weapons systems and precision missiles to destroy antiaircraft batteries. Acting on intelligence collected over decades, Israel targeted and killed dozens of Iranian military and nuclear officials. Human intelligence, cyber operations, unmanned systems and manned air power operated in the pre-emptive strike—it was a feat of modern military orchestration.

The lesson is clear: Successful military operations no longer depend only on overwhelming firepower or technological novelty. They now require synthesis—air and ground, legacy and next-generation, human and machine.

Israel’s opening strike redefined how the IDF thinks about conflict. According to a former IDF general I spoke with days after the operation, Israeli military leaders accelerated their planning cycles from five years to five months. The pace of technological change, the blurring of operational environments and the shifting tactics of adversaries demanded the faster timeline. To stay ahead on the battlefield, there is no longer time for slow adaptation.

This is a warning to democracies, especially the U.S. The wars of the 21st century won’t be won by choosing between drones and jets, analog and digital, artificial intelligence and human intuition. They will be won by militaries that combine them—creatively and continuously.

Ukraine’s drone campaign exemplifies adaptation. Facing a vastly superior military, Kyiv equipped commercial drones with explosives and software. Ukraine destroyed more than 40 Russian aircraft hundreds of miles from the front for a fraction of the cost of a single fighter jet.

But while cheap drones represent the tip of the spear, they aren’t the spear itself. Israel’s air assault required a blend of stealth and brute force, AI and human judgment, unmanned systems and pilots. This was military doctrine catching up to technology.

That distinction is where the U.S. military faces its most serious challenge. America’s legacy weapons platforms—tanks, ships, aircraft—remain formidable, but they are often disconnected from one another and from the networked, AI-enabled architecture that defines modern conflict. Innovation is bolted onto outdated hardware rather than built into the organization’s DNA. AI enhances precision targeting but rarely informs strategy. Interoperability between old and new remains patchy, held back by legacy procurement and bureaucratic stovepipes.

Meanwhile, competitors are rapidly advancing. In 2021 China stunned U.S. officials with a hypersonic missile test that circumnavigated the globe. Gen. Mark Milley, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified that it was “very close” to China’s Sputnik moment. The real shock was the integration behind the weapon: space-based guidance, hypersonic propulsion and precision targeting functioning in coordination. Beijing rewired its military around how that capability fits into the broader strategy.

By contrast, the U.S. often treats technological upgrades as plug-ins rather than catalysts for larger transformation. This leaves critical gaps—against China, but also against ragtag adversaries in Afghanistan and Iraq who showed they can outmaneuver American forces with cheaper tech and ingenuity.

To close this gap, democracies must embrace the entrepreneurial power of the private sector. Venture-capital firms and startups are increasingly driving battlefield innovation. In Silicon Valley and Tel Aviv, small companies often push the edge of what’s possible faster than traditional defense contractors. But for this innovation to translate into strategic advantages, defense establishments must connect emerging technologies with military requirements. That means rethinking procurement, creating incentives for experimentation, and making startup integration the norm.

If the U.S. can’t reconcile its industrial-age forces with digital-age demands, even a massive defense budget won’t guarantee superiority. AI and unmanned systems must be treated as integral components of training, war-fighting culture, and objectives. A truly modern military trains every commander to think with drones, and it writes AI into the rules of engagement. Integration is a continuous process of aligning tools, talent, and tactics with the future fight.

That future fight is here. Hypersonic weapons, cyberattacks, and autonomous swarms are already operational. Militaries must move faster—on the ground and especially in their thinking. What will separate winners from losers in this new era will be the creativity and coherence with which militaries combine their assets. Ukraine’s battlefield improvisation and Israel’s strategic integration both underscore this point: Tools matter, but how you use them matters more.

The U.S. military can either lead this transition or risk being overtaken by forces quicker to adapt. Democracies, constrained by public accountability and limited by budgets, have no choice but to do more with less—and to do it smarter. They must lead this evolution not only with brute force, but with imagination.

Mr. Kaplowitz is founder of 1948 Ventures, a U.S.-based venture-capital firm that invests exclusively in Israeli dual-use technology companies.

Will an increase in defense spending enable the U.S. to close the gap in the drone market? According to North Carolina Rep. Pat Harrigan, 'China's drone output in 2024 was $29.4 billion, at least four times the amount of money that the United States is spending, with far lower, by an order of magnitude, unit costs.'

17. The Quad Isn't Quitting

​Excerpts:

India’s trade delegation has been in Washington since last week trying to negotiate an agreement, while Trump told reporters on Wednesday that he doubted a deal with Japan would materialize. Australia technically already has a free trade agreement with the United States, but that didn’t stop Trump from slapping a 10 percent tariff on Australian goods—a tariff that Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said this week “should be zero.”

There’s also India’s discomfort with Trump taking credit for a cease-fire between India and Pakistan last month, Australia’s worries about a Pentagon review of the trilateral AUKUS submarine pact, and Japan’s reported cancellation of an annual “2+2” security dialogue with the United States—which had been scheduled for this week—over a U.S. demand that it spend more on defense.

“One thing [about] the Quad: it is strong when the bilaterals underlying it are strong,” Tanvi Madan, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Brookings Institution, wrote on X ahead of the meeting. “If those weaken, the Quad will be weaker.”

Trump himself hasn’t engaged directly with the Quad in his second term thus far, instead leaving that task to Rubio, but the U.S. president is expected to attend the group’s leaders’ meeting in India later this year.

The Quad Isn’t Quitting

Washington, New Delhi, Tokyo, and Canberra make common cause on common ground.

By Rishi Iyengar, a reporter at Foreign Policy, and John Haltiwanger, a reporter at Foreign Policy.

Foreign Policy · by Rishi Iyengar, John Haltiwanger

• Foreign & Public Diplomacy
• Military
• United States
• Russia
• India
• Middle East and North Africa
• Australia
• Japan
• Ukraine
• Rishi Iyengar
• John Haltiwanger

July 3, 2025, 4:27 PM

Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Situation Report, where at least one of your co-authors is spending the long July 4 holiday weekend at the beach in Delaware. (No sighting thus far of former U.S. President Joe Biden, but stay tuned.) We also want to wish a fond farewell to our departing colleague Lili Pike, who is embarking on an exciting new journey. Be sure to follow her on social media at @lilipike.bsky.social on Bluesky and @lili_pike on X.

Alright, here’s what’s on tap for the day: The Quad meets in Washington, the Pentagon suspends some weapons shipments to Ukraine, and Iran allegedly hacks Trump.

Quad Goals

For the second time in less than six months, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue—better known simply as “the Quad”—convened in Washington. Just as he did the day after U.S. President Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration, Secretary of State Marco Rubio hosted the foreign ministers of Japan, Australia, and India for a meeting of the informal but influential security grouping aimed largely at countering China’s influence in the Indo-Pacific region.

Originally set up to coordinate humanitarian assistance during the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the Quad has gone through multiple iterations and even nearly a decade of dormancy before being resurrected in its current form during Trump’s first term. The group has since endured and even strengthened through multiple administrations, helped in part by Biden’s love for “minilaterals,” which stood in sharp contrast to Trump’s distaste for anything involving more than himself and one other leader.

This week, too, Rubio and his counterparts—Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong, and Japanese Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya—sought to present a united front. They once again coalesced around their shared opposition to China without actually naming the country in the joint statement that they released Tuesday, reaffirming their “steadfast commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific” and opposition to “any unilateral actions that seek to change the status quo by force or coercion.” The statement also included condemnation of North Korea’s ballistic missile launches and cybercrime as well as the April 22 terrorist attack in Indian-controlled Kashmir.

The main collective deliverable came in the form of the creation of the Quad Critical Minerals Initiative, which seeks “to strengthen economic security and collective resilience by collaborating to secure and diversify critical minerals supply chains,” the production of which China dominates and has increasingly shown a willingness to weaponize.

“These are very important strategic partners and allies of the United States, and together we have a lot of shared priorities,” Rubio told reporters on Tuesday.

“The vibes were strong,” Lindsey Ford, who played a key role in the Biden administration’s engagement with the Quad as deputy assistant secretary of defense for South and Southeast Asia, told SitRep. “There’s a lot to commend in this joint statement, which is the first one that gives us any sense of how the Quad may evolve under the Trump administration,” added Ford, who is now a senior advisor at the consulting firm Clarion Strategies. “In a lot of ways, this joint statement—by 2025 standards, at least—seems almost quaint in its normalcy.”

Yet new tensions among the member countries (mostly the Trump administration’s with each of the other three) could threaten to unravel the otherwise tightly knit Quad.

Touchy topics. Looming over the Quad camaraderie is Trump’s unpredictable and disruptive trade policy, with all three countries—along with dozens of others—racing to secure deals that will earn them a reprieve from sweeping U.S. tariffs that are set to take effect next Wednesday unless Trump delays them again.

India’s trade delegation has been in Washington since last week trying to negotiate an agreement, while Trump told reporters on Wednesday that he doubted a deal with Japan would materialize. Australia technically already has a free trade agreement with the United States, but that didn’t stop Trump from slapping a 10 percent tariff on Australian goods—a tariff that Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said this week “should be zero.”

There’s also India’s discomfort with Trump taking credit for a cease-fire between India and Pakistan last month, Australia’s worries about a Pentagon review of the trilateral AUKUS submarine pact, and Japan’s reported cancellation of an annual “2+2” security dialogue with the United States—which had been scheduled for this week—over a U.S. demand that it spend more on defense.

“One thing [about] the Quad: it is strong when the bilaterals underlying it are strong,” Tanvi Madan, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Brookings Institution, wrote on X ahead of the meeting. “If those weaken, the Quad will be weaker.”

Trump himself hasn’t engaged directly with the Quad in his second term thus far, instead leaving that task to Rubio, but the U.S. president is expected to attend the group’s leaders’ meeting in India later this year.

China quiet. Even opposition to China, purportedly the glue holding the Quad together, has been muddled under Trump—as Lili reports in her final piece for FP. Washington’s China strategy has swung between antagonism and appeasement over the past six months, raising questions on how much Trump can be relied upon to pick an Indo-Pacific fight should the need arise.

Beijing has been uncharacteristically muted on the Quad over the past few months, a sharp contrast from its previous railing against the group as an “Asian NATO” aimed at containing China. That may be because China now sees the Quad—and indeed U.S. alliances in general—as weakened by internal disagreements, according to Ford.

“My own general experience is if China isn’t complaining loudly about what you’re doing in Asia, you’re doing it wrong,” she said.

Let’s Get Personnel

The iconic J. Edgar Hoover Building in downtown Washington, D.C., will soon relinquish its role as the FBI headquarters, FBI Director Kash Patel announced on Wednesday. The agency will instead move a few blocks down the street to the Ronald Reagan Building, which was until recently home to the now-defunct U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

Lynne M. Tracy departs Moscow after serving two and a half years as the U.S. ambassador to Russia.

On the Button

What should be high on your radar, if it isn’t already.

Bibi goes to Washington. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to travel to Washington on July 7 as Trump pushes for a new cease-fire and hostage deal in Gaza. Netanyahu’s visit will come in the wake of Israel’s 12-day war with Iran, which culminated with historic U.S. strikes on key Iranian nuclear sites and a Trump-brokered cease-fire that started on shaky ground but appears to be holding for the moment.

Israeli Minister for Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer, one of Netanyahu’s top advisors, is already in Washington this week to discuss Gaza and Iran. Netanyahu’s impending visit will occur as questions continue to swirl around the full extent of the damage from the Israeli and U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites, despite repeated assertions from Trump that the Iranian nuclear program was “obliterated.” Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell estimated on Wednesday that the strikes had set the nuclear program back by one to two years.

Trump and Netanyahu are also set to discuss Syria amid signs that Israel is interested in moving toward normalizing ties with the new Syrian government. However, an array of issues—ranging from the Israeli annexation of the Golan Heights to Palestinian statehood—are likely to present obstacles to this goal. The Israeli military has also been operating in parts of Syria since late last year, following the ouster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Washington suspends some Ukraine weapons. The United States is halting the shipment of certain weapons promised to Ukraine, citing concerns that Washington’s own stockpiles of those weapons are too low. The decision “was made to put America’s interests first following a DOD [Department of Defense] review of our nation’s military support and assistance to other countries across the globe,” White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly said in a statement to Politico.

This comes as Russia has been seemingly struggling to make major territorial gains in a summer offensive despite advantages in terms of manpower and military equipment. Still, Ukraine faces significant challenges as the grinding war of attrition with Russia rages on.

Over the course of June, Russia launched 5,438 drones at Ukraine—a new monthly record, according to The Associated Press. Meanwhile, roughly 50,000 Russian troops have assembled near the northeastern Ukrainian city of Sumy, the capital of the Sumy region. The region was the staging ground for Ukraine’s stunning offensive across the border in Russia’s Kursk region last year. Ukraine has since been forced to retreat from most of Kursk, though Ukraine’s top military commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said in late June that his forces still controlled a small sliver of territory in the region.

Though Ukrainian forces near Sumy are reportedly outnumbered 3-to-1, Syrskyi said last week that Russian advances in the region had been halted. The Institute for the Study of War, which closely tracks the situation on the ground in Ukraine, has also said that Russia hasn’t made advances in the region lately.

Trump aides hacked. Hackers reportedly linked to Iran are threatening to release emails taken from Trump aides and others linked to the president—including White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, advisor Roger Stone, and porn actor Stormy Daniels. The hackers told Reuters that they might try to sell the emails.

The same group, which operates under the pseudonym “Robert,” was responsible for hacking the Trump campaign last year—though this ultimately had no bearing on the result of the 2024 presidential election.

After the reporting from Reuters on the hackers’ threats, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) warned in a statement that a “hostile foreign adversary is threatening to illegally exploit purportedly stolen and unverified material in an effort to distract, discredit and divide.” CISA said this represented a “calculated smear campaign” against Trump.

This comes several days after Trump railed against Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for declaring victory over the United States and Israel. Trump responded by stating that he was dropping any steps toward sanctions relief for Iran.

Snapshot

Palestinian children line up to receive a hot meal at a food distribution point in Nuseirat, Gaza, on June 30.

Palestinian children line up to receive a hot meal at a food distribution point in Nuseirat, Gaza, on June 30.Eyad Baba/AFP via Getty Images

Put On Your Radar

Sunday, July 6: A BRICS summit hosted by Brazil is set to begin.

Wednesday, July 9: U.S. reciprocal tariffs on specified countries are poised to take effect.

By the Numbers

More than 14 million people could die over the next half decade, including 4.5 million children under the age of 5, due to the Trump administration gutting and dismantling USAID, according to a new analysis published in the Lancet on Monday. From 2001 through 2021, USAID-funded programs helped prevent close to 92 million deaths across 133 countries, according to the analysis.

Rubio on Tuesday announced that USAID would “officially cease to implement foreign assistance.” Rubio said the State Department was assuming responsibility over foreign assistance programs that “align with administration policies.”

Quote of the Week

“DOGE is the monster that might have to go back and eat Elon. Wouldn’t that be terrible?”

—Trump on his onetime buddy Elon Musk, who has slammed Trump’s spending bill and deepened a feud that began after Musk left the unofficial Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Trump also said he would “have to take a look” at potentially deporting Musk, who is a U.S. citizen, and mused about cutting the South African-born billionaire’s numerous U.S. government contracts.

This Week’s Most Read

• The End of Modernity by Christopher Clark
• How to Sell a Clash of Civilizations by Nick Danforth

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

It has now been nearly three weeks since a British F-35 fighter jet was first grounded in Thiruvananthapuram in the Indian state of Kerala after having to make an emergency landing—and the state government clearly feels that it’s no longer too soon to make jokes about it. “Kerala, the destination you’ll never want to leave,” the state’s tourism board wrote in a post on X, complete with a fake five-star review from the aircraft.

Foreign Policy · by Rishi Iyengar, John Haltiwanger

18. Beijing’s Reactions to Lai Ching-te’s Position on Taiwan Sovereignty

​Excerpt:

The main point: Speeches made by Taiwan President Lai Ching-te in late June, which asserted Taiwan’s sovereignty and independence in bolder language than before, touched off a harsh reaction from Beijing. The dueling narratives between Taipei and Beijing have further strained already tense cross-Strait relations, and neither side is likely to compromise on what it identifies as core concerns of national sovereignty.

Beijing’s Reactions to Lai Ching-te’s Position on Taiwan Sovereignty | Global Taiwan Institute

John Dotson

John Dotson is the director of the Global Taiwan Institute and editor-in-chief of the Global Taiwan Brief.

globaltaiwan.org · by Global Taiwan Institute · July 2, 2025

The Controversy Over Legislative Recalls and Lai Ching-te’s Speeches on Sovereignty

Taiwan’s politics, sharply polarized at the best of times, have been particularly contentious entering the summer months of this year. Taiwan’s January 2024 elections produced a divided government, with Lai Ching-te (賴清德) of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP, 民主進步黨) winning the presidency; and a coalition of the Kuomintang (KMT, 中國國民黨) and the Taiwan’s People’s Party (TPP, 台灣民眾黨) taking a majority of the seats in the Legislative Yuan (立法院). Following serious controversies in 2024 over matters such as the government budget, legislative authority, and the role of the constitutional court (see analysis here and here), civic activists upset over the actions of the majority legislative caucus organized recall efforts against a large number of KMT legislators.

As of the end of June, 24 KMT legislators now face first-stage recall elections (for potential removal from office) scheduled for July 26. (Possible recall elections for two DPP legislators are pending.) As the recall elections approach, both sides of Taiwan’s Green/Blue divide have been seeking to mobilize excitement and engagement amongst their supporters. The KMT has called on its supporters to “safeguard Taiwan’s democratic institutions” by defeating the recall efforts—while further decrying in histrionic language the “Green Communism” (綠共) it claims is embodied in “the creeping authoritarianism of President Lai Ching-te and the [DPP].”

For his part, in late June President Lai Ching-te commenced a series of speeches promoted as “Ten Talks on Uniting the Country” (團結國家十講). The first of these speeches—which was delivered before a Rotary Club International chapter in New Taipei City on June 22—might be viewed either as a follow-up to Lai’s March 13 speech on countering hostile Chinese subversion (see analysis here), or as a form of indirect campaigning for the recalls (or perhaps, as some combination of the two).

In the June 22 speech, Lai offered a full-throated assertion of Taiwan’s sovereignty, while still keeping within the framework of Taiwan’s official statehood identity as the Republic of China (ROC). Lai pointedly asserted that the ROC and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) are “not subordinate to one another” (互不隸屬). Lai asserted that: “The Republic of China, the Republic of China (Taiwan), Taiwan, these are all the names of our country… these all are our names, and all are equally resonant! Regardless of what name we use to call ourselves, we are an independent and sovereign country!” (“中華民國，中華民國台灣， 台灣， 都是我們的國家… 都是我們國家的名字，都一樣響亮啊！無論用哪個名字稱呼我們， 我們都是獨立自主的國家啦!”)

Image: ROC President Lai Ching-te delivering a speech on the theme of “Uniting and Protecting Our Country” before an audience in New Taipei City (June 22). (Source: ROC Overseas Community Affairs Council)

Beijing’s Reactions and the Continuing Denial of Taiwan’s Sovereignty

The June 24 People’s Daily Editorial

The reaction of Beijing to Lai’s speech was as swift as it was predictable. On June 24, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s official mouthpiece People’s Daily (人民日报) responded with a commentary (under the official pseudonym “Zhong Yiping” [钟一平]) titled “Lai Ching-te Falsifies History, Distorts Facts, and Inevitably Courts Self-Destruction” (赖清德篡改历史、歪曲事实，必将自取灭亡). The editorial repeated the CCP’s consistent assertion that China’s sovereignty over Taiwan is a universally accepted fact: “Taiwan from ancient times has belonged to China, history is clear, [and] legal facts are clear; the One China Principle [一个中国原则] is the international consensus, deeply understood by everyone, completely without dispute.”

The editorial further declared that Lai’s speech “broadly spread ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist speech, pushing out the ‘New Two States Theory’ [‘新两国论’]. This speech was full of various factual falsehoods, historical errors, false reasoning and heresy [邪说]; the provocation was strong [and] the harm was great, it was a ‘Taiwan independence’ declaration that nakedly incited cross-Strait antagonism” (是一篇赤裸裸煽动两岸对立对抗的“台独”宣言).

Perhaps most striking of all was the way that the editorial zeroed in on Lai himself in highly personal and pejorative terms. Per the commentary, Lai’s speech “once again demonstrated Lai Ching-te’s ignorance and insanity (无知与疯狂), it revealed again his thick-headed and unchanging ‘Taiwan independence’ nature and repulsive countenance, [and] confirmed him as a ‘troublemaker’, ‘peril maker’, [and] ‘war maker’ (‘麻烦制造者’ ‘危险制造者’ ‘战争制造者’).” The editorial warned that “Lai Ching-te vainly attempts to mislead thinking [and] to manufacture opposition—this is [Lai] talking to himself, caught up in narcissism, [which will] eventually bring disgrace upon himself and invite his own self-destruction (终究是自取其辱、自取灭亡).”

Such highly personal invective is consistent with a larger, ongoing effort to vilify Lai on a personal level—as was seen in the early April Strait Thunder-2025A exercise, during which the CCP propaganda system released material depicting Lai as a venomous parasitical insect. The tone of such propaganda goes beyond the level of vilification that was directed at former DPP President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), and appears to reflect the further hardening of the CCP’s narratives towards the DPP and its leadership.

Image: The People’s Daily editorial of June 24—issued in response to Lai Ching-te’s June 22 speech on Taiwan’s sovereignty—which labeled Taiwan’s president as a “troublemaker, peril maker, [and] war maker” (“麻烦制造者”“危险制造者”“战争制造者”). (Image source: People’s Daily)

The May 2025 White Paper on China’s National Security

The harsh language of the People’s Daily editorial—while particularly strident—is consistent with both long-standing and rigid CCP positions towards Taiwan, as well as a pattern of escalating rhetoric towards the Lai Administration. [1] In another recent example of such discourse, on May 12 the PRC State Council Information Office (the alter ego of the CCP Central Propaganda Department) published China’s National Security in the New Era (新时代的中国国家安全), a white paper that presented the CCP’s official perspectives on the intertwined issues (as seen by the party) of sovereignty and national security.

Aside from the issue of internal regime security (always the preeminent concern of the party), the white paper reveals again the regime’s preoccupations with “Taiwan independence forces”—which are aided and abetted by sinister “Western anti-China forces” lurking in the background. Taiwan features as a prominent topic in the white paper: Section (5)(2) of the document lists the “Taiwan problem” as one of the “four red lines that are not subject to challenge”—alongside “democracy and human rights,” “the path of our system” [e.g., continued CCP rule], and “development rights” (台湾问题、民主人权、道路制度、发展权利的4条红线不容挑战).

As stated in Section (1)(3) of the white paper:

External pressure on national security is increasing. Western anti-China forces seek, by all means, to encircle, pressure, and constrain (围堵, 打压, 遏制) China; [and they] direct Westernization, dissolution strategies, infiltration, and sabotage activities (对中国实施西化, 分化战略, 进行渗透, 破坏活动) towards China. […] Certain countries crudely interfere with China’s internal affairs: causing trouble and agitation in the Taiwan Strait, South China Sea, and East China Sea; [and] interfering in Xinjiang, interfering in Tibet, interfering in Hong Kong, etc. again and again. Some foreign forces incessantly scheme to play the “Taiwan card” (“台湾牌”), [and] “Taiwan independence” forces (“台独”势力) obstinately insist on a separatist position, provoking risks.

Section (3)(4) of the white paper is the part that reiterates the CCP’s policies towards Taiwan—including its rigid insistence that Taiwan is a province of the PRC and subject to Beijing’s authority, with no rightful sovereignty of its own. The document states that:

[We must] resolutely advance national security unification. Persist in the One China Principle and “92 Consensus,” and implement the Chinese Communist Party’s Comprehensive Plan for Resolving the Taiwan Problem in the New Era. [2] [Regarding] basic Taiwan policy, [we must] promote the peaceful development of cross-Strait relations [and] integrated development, draw the cord tight on cross-Strait feelings (拉紧两岸情感纽带) and mutual benefit, [and] deeply plant a foundation for national unification. Unite the broad mass of Taiwan compatriots, firmly support patriotic unification forces within the island, strengthen cross-Strait dialogue and democratic consultation (民主协商), mutually discuss great matters of unification, [and] mutually collaborate on the great cause of unification. [3]

This section goes on to further state that:

[We must] resolutely oppose the “position that Taiwan’s status is unresolved,” [for] the legal effect of U.N. Resolution 2758 is unquestionable. [4] Taiwan is a province of China, [and] there is no basis, reason, or right for it to join the United Nations or other international organizations that only sovereign states can join. Resolutely oppose “Taiwan independence” separatism and the interference of foreign forces; on the basis of law, strike at “Taiwan independence” diehards (“台独”顽固分子), [and] powerfully frighten “Taiwan independence” separatist forces (有力震慑“台独”分裂势力). From start to finish, China will strive for peaceful unification with the greatest sincerity and effort—but will never renounce the use of armed force, [and] will continue to exercise the option for all necessary measures.

The reassertion of the PRC position regarding U.N. Resolution 2758—which the PRC falsely insists conveys UN recognition of PRC sovereignty over Taiwan—has been advanced by the CCP propaganda system with renewed emphasis in spring 2025. The assertion of the need to “powerfully frighten ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist forces” is also noteworthy, and possibly portends more direct and aggressive actions directed at Taiwan’s political leaders—as with the alleged plot to crash a car into the motorcade of Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim during a visit to Prague in March 2024.

Conclusions

The dueling cross-Strait narratives over Taiwan’s sovereignty status, which are thorny at the best of times, became even more heated in the months of May and June. Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te appears to be motivated by both sincere belief and political calculation in more actively asserting Taiwan’s sovereign and independent status—while leaving some ambiguity as to whether that means Taiwan as “Taiwan,” or as the “Republic of China.” On this point, Lai’s position is largely consistent with that of his predecessor Tsai Ing-wen: Tsai similarly asserted that Taiwan was an independent country not subject to PRC sovereignty, while adhering to the formal state identity and constitutional framework of the ROC. In this, Lai’s position is not a departure—but he has been more assertive than Tsai in pressing that position forward.

Beijing, for its part, has grown increasingly strident, in terms of both its ownership claims over Taiwan and in its personal vilification of Lai. With some prominent exceptions—often focused on scurrilous internet disinformation stories around election times—the CCP propaganda system often seemed satisfied to belittle Tsai by ignoring her, and by focusing on engagement with other Taiwanese figures who could be lured into the orbit of its united front system. By contrast, Lai’s more proactive stance—no doubt motivated in part by the desire to spur public engagement for the July recall elections—has clearly struck a chord that the CCP leadership feels it cannot ignore. However, Beijing’s harsh and vituperative reaction will win it few friends in Taiwan—and is likely to further perpetuate the estrangement of Taiwan’s people from their menacing authoritarian neighbor across the Taiwan Strait.

The main point: Speeches made by Taiwan President Lai Ching-te in late June, which asserted Taiwan’s sovereignty and independence in bolder language than before, touched off a harsh reaction from Beijing. The dueling narratives between Taipei and Beijing have further strained already tense cross-Strait relations, and neither side is likely to compromise on what it identifies as core concerns of national sovereignty.

[1] For a more detailed discussion of the CCP’s official narratives regarding Taiwan, see: John Dotson,

The Chinese Communist Party’s Ideological Frameworks for Taiwan Policy, Global Taiwan Institute (August 2024), https://globaltaiwan.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/OR_CCP-Ideological-Frameworks-for-TW-Policy.pdf.

[2] For an analysis of this “plan” and its component elements, see: John Dotson, “What Is the CCP’s ‘Comprehensive Plan for Resolving the Taiwan Problem’?” Global Taiwan Brief (Feb. 9, 2022),

[3] The language of this sentence includes coded language that is significant in the context of the CCP’s discourse on united front work. “Patriotic unification forces” (爱国统一力量) are persons willing to act on behalf of CCP goals; while “democratic consultation” (民主协商) is code for engagement with the CCP united front bureaucracy.

[4] The PRC consistently (and falsely) advances the position that U.N. Resolution 2758, passed in 1971, conveys U.N. recognition of PRC sovereignty over Taiwan. For discussion of this, see: Russell Hsiao, “Resolution 2758 and the Fallacy of Beijing’s UN ‘One-China Principle’,” Global Taiwan Brief (Oct. 20, 2021), https://globaltaiwan.org/2021/10/resolution-2758-and-the-fallacy-of-beijings-un-one-china-principle/; and John Dotson, The Chinese Communist Party’s Ideological Frameworks for Taiwan Policy, Global Taiwan Institute (August 2024), pp. 3-5, https://globaltaiwan.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/OR_CCP-Ideological-Frameworks-for-TW-Policy.pdf.

globaltaiwan.org · by Global Taiwan Institute · July 2, 2025

19. Lawmakers want all troops wearing American-made boots

Lawmakers want all troops wearing American-made boots

Stars and Stripes · by Svetlana Shkolnikova · July 2, 2025

Army soldiers march along the streets of Washington on June 14, 2025. (Gianna Gronowski/Stars and Stripes)

WASHINGTON — All service members would wear combat boots manufactured entirely in America and made with U.S.-sourced materials under a new bill introduced by a bipartisan group of lawmakers.

The legislation aims to ensure troops are equipped with “high-quality, safe and reliable” footwear and seeks to reduce reliance on foreign supply chains that have flooded the market with cheap, imported boots.

Defense Department regulations now allow troops to purchase foreign-made boots that have the appearance of regulation boots but fall “far short in quality and durability,” according to lawmakers.

“Ensuring our military’s readiness means every part of our service members’ uniforms must be functional, reliable and safe — and that we can surge supplies in crisis or conflict,” said Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., an Army combat veteran.

Rep. Nikki Budzinski, D-Ill., said a military boot manufacturer in her district — Belleville Boots — has faced unfair competition from countries such as China, undercutting jobs and posing a threat to national security.

“This legislation will safeguard our service members while supporting good-paying manufacturing jobs in Belleville and across the country,” she said.

The Better Outfitting Our Troops, or BOOTS, Act mandates all boots worn by troops, including optional boots that serve as alternatives to the military’s standard-issue boot, are 100% made and sourced in the United States or are compliant with the Berry Amendment.

The amendment requires the Pentagon to give purchasing preference to clothing produced in the United States.

Bill McCann, the executive director of the U.S. Footwear Manufacturers Association, said the introduced legislation closes a gap in the Berry Amendment by requiring all military footwear sold through Defense Department exchanges to be domestically sourced.

“Alarmingly, up to 50% of our service members currently wear foreign-made ‘optional’ boots, primarily from China and Vietnam, while on duty,” McCann wrote in a letter to President Donald Trump in May.

Lawmakers said the influx of foreign-made boots has led to a decrease in quality and undermined the domestic defense supply chain to the point that it would be too fragile to meet demand in the event of a major conflict.

The Pentagon is orienting itself to counter Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific region and expects Beijing to potentially use military force to bring Taiwan under its control.

“This bipartisan bill would help avoid supply disruptions in times of crisis, create more jobs and investment domestically and better outfit our nation’s troops,” said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine.

Sponsors of the bill include Duckworth, Collins and Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, as well as Budzinski, and Reps. Mike Bost, R-Ill., and Jared Golden, D-Maine.

Golden, a Marine Corps veteran who completed two combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, said the legislation was good for service members, jobs and domestic manufacturing.

“American warfighters should be supplied American gear,” he said, “including footwear.”

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Svetlana Shkolnikova

Svetlana Shkolnikova

Svetlana Shkolnikova covers Congress for Stars and Stripes. She previously worked as a reporter for The Record newspaper in New Jersey and the USA Today Network. She is a graduate of the University of Maryland and has reported from Estonia, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Russia and Ukraine.

Stars and Stripes · by Svetlana Shkolnikova · July 2, 2025

20. Strategic Narratives to Counter Global Threats

​Please go to the link below to view the tables/charts.

But there is no greater strategic narrative than our Declaration of Independence.

Excerpts:

This article argues that the National Security Strategy is an important narrative tool for informing public opinion about national security interests. Using polling data and word count textual analysis, we demonstrated that the current National Security Strategy’s emphasis on an international rules-based order as the impetus behind national security lacks resonance with the American public. The national mood trends toward an isolationist perspective and demands a security strategy closely linked to tangible homeland issues such as secure borders, reduced domestic terrorism, and illegal drugs. While these domestic issues matter, Russia and China remain an international threat to American prosperity.

Indeed, the United States truly is at a strategic inflection point, and the next National Security Strategy should emphasize the international threat in terms directly tied to US domestic security and the economic prosperity of ordinary citizens. The current administration’s strategy should communicate without jargon to the American people. During the Cold War, Truman and Reagan exemplified how to communicate the global struggle of democracies versus authoritarian governments in a way that Americans could understand. Now, in the era of great-power competition, some aspects of the Cold War are resurfacing, albeit in a different, much more interconnected world. Therefore, national security narrative themes must remind the public of America’s great-power responsibilities, a position beneficial to every citizen. If an updated narrative commits to coherence and fidelity around the central idea of American prosperity, the historical record suggests that the public will support increased investments in national security.

June 18, 2025

Strategic Narratives to Counter Global Threats

https://publications.armywarcollege.edu/News/Display/Article/4218012/strategic-narratives-to-counter-global-threats/

Jerry E. Landrum, Chase Metcalf, and Michael M. Posey

ABSTRACT: This article argues that the current National Security Strategy lacks the necessary coherence and fidelity to mobilize collective action against the emerging Russia-China axis. It merges multiple theoretical concepts to assert that the “rules-based order” theme is insufficient for mobilizing public support. This article uses textual analysis of the strategy compared with publicly available polling to determine levels of popular resonance and finds that the “rules-based order emphasis” does not resonate. This study’s conclusions will assist practitioners as they develop an updated National Security Strategy with the advent of the new presidential administration.

Keywords: strategic narrative, mobilization, Russia, China, public opinion

In the 2022 National Security Strategy (NSS), President Joe Biden stressed that the world is at an “inflection point.” This term, adapted from mathematics, is “a point on a curve at which the sign of the curvature (concavity) changes.” Thus, US strategic leaders believe, as expressed in the document, that the international order may curve toward democracy or in the opposite direction toward autocracy. Furthermore, the document asserts that the United States has an “enduring role” in defending the current “rules-based order,” which is “free, open, prosperous, and secure” but challenged by China and Russia. The strategy identifies support for the UN charter, human rights, the environment, and territorial integrity as key aspects of this rules-based order. Unfortunately, the international rules-based order narrative does not resonate with the American public.1

We argue that the strategy establishes narrative themes legitimizing collective action. For example, the commitment of public resources for national security objectives. To be sure, few Americans read the strategy to form their opinions on foreign policy prioritization. Nonetheless, the lexicon of the document manifests in public pronouncements from senior leaders about America’s national security threats. For example, then–Secretary of State Antony Blinken asserted in a May 2022 speech at George Washington University that China was “the most serious long-term challenge to the international order.” This speech effectively communicated the March 2021 Interim National Security Strategy’s emphasis on the rules-based international order concept. As our analysis demonstrates, the rules-based order concept of the interim strategy was carried forward and amplified in the October 2022 NSS. Thus, in a February 2023 interview with Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic posted on the Department of State website, then–Secretary Blinken argued for “a rules-based order, an order that functions on the premise of international law.” Similarly, in a 2024 speech at Georgetown University, retired General Mark Milley stressed that China threatened the “so-called rules-based international order,” which are the rules that “have kept great power peace.”2

Speeches and NSS formulation are an iterative process. We are not arguing for a linear relationship between the publication of the strategy and the circulation of the themes therein. Indeed, the document does not cause public pronouncements, nor do pronouncements necessarily need to be antecedent to the document. Both are mutually informing and reflect each other. The more important point is that the document is a narrative artifact that directly and indirectly enters public discourse. The puzzle is why the rules-based order theme falls short in mobilizing the public toward a common threat. The strategy’s themes were widely propagated in speeches and interviews in various media outlets. These themes made the public case for the importance of maintaining the international rules-based order, but the concept’s lack of coherence and fidelity decreased its resonance with ordinary Americans. Our analysis suggests there is a misalignment between the themes of national security leaders and what Americans prioritize, and this misalignment hinders the marshaling of finite public resources to deter and, if necessary, defeat Russian and Chinese aggression. Elinor Ostrom’s work identifying common-pool resources, private goods, public goods, and toll goods are indispensable in studying collective action problems. Our definition draws heavily on her distinction of national defense as a public good.3

The National Security Strategy is one artifact informing public discourse on national security (others include the state of the union, congressional speeches, political ads, and such). We could focus on any or all these artifacts to demonstrate the problems of the international rules-based order as a narrative theme. Given the advent of a new presidential administration, however, an updated strategy will soon be emerging, and we hope to offer a modest contribution to professional discourse on this topic.

Despite the lack of resonance in the current NSS, China and Russia remain national security threats requiring collective action. The bipartisan Commission on the National Defense Strategy recently concluded that “China is outpacing the United States and has largely negated the US military advantage in the Western Pacific through two decades of focused military investment.” The Commission further concluded that the Russian threat is “chronic— ongoing and persistent.” In fact, the report notes that the Kremlin has increased its Army by 15 percent since the start of the Russia-Ukraine War and established cooperative security ties with China, Iran, and North Korea. To meet this threat, the Commission argues for mobilizing public support behind increased defense spending from the current levels of 3 percent of GDP to Cold War levels, which ranged from 4.9 to 16.9 percent. This proposed increase in public spending would fund significant defense modernization, investments in force structure to support a “multiple theater force construct,” and support for “increased levels of public and civic service” as part of a “national mobilization for military service.” The cost of competing with China and Russia will only increase in the coming years, especially as these two powers cooperate to challenge the United States. In 2024, for example, the US Indo-Pacific Command asked for a budget of $26.5 billion, over $11 billion more than the previous year.4

The Commission identified domestic constraints as the biggest challenge for achieving collective action for this type of significant mobilization. Decreasing popular support for a strong military, alliance participation, and engagement in international affairs indicates a general lack of understanding about the nature of the threat. “US leaders,” the Commission points out, “must make the case publicly why these challenges matter and why the United States remains the indispensable nation to maintain peace, stability, and a flourishing economy” because success is impossible without popular support. This support is lacking because the public is unaware of “the costs (financial and otherwise) required to adequately prepare. They do not appreciate the strength of China and its partnerships or the ramifications to daily life if a conflict were to erupt.”5

In line with the Commission’s claim that strategic leaders have failed to communicate the emerging threat, we introduce the importance of the National Security Strategy as a narrative tool for articulating threats and a vision to the American public. Then, we will briefly cover narrative theory, our analysis of the current strategy and how it relates to polls of the American public, discuss problems of coherence and fidelity in the strategic narrative, and note the trend toward US isolationism. We recommend that the next strategy emphasizes a free, open, prosperous, and secure world and its importance to American security and prosperity while de-emphasizing international rules- based order themes. The NSS should explain why national mobilization—not the international rules-based order—is necessary to protect the American homeland and other vital interests.

The National Security Strategy, Public Opinion, and Military Mobilization

The first formal National Security Strategy was published in 1987 following the passage of the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986, which significantly reformed the Defense enterprise. Since then, administrations have published 17 strategies that, to varying degrees, played important roles in identifying and prioritizing US interests, threats to those interests, and objectives that advance those interests. All these documents contributed to a national strategic narrative. As the military invests in modernization for the Joint Warfighting Concept (JWC) to win in competition and prevail in armed conflict, national leadership must communicate a coherent strategic narrative to legitimize those investments.6

The language used in articulating those interests is vital as it impacts public opinion, which sets the boundaries of legitimacy for military leaders. Collective public opinion represents constituent preferences for legislators who make budget appropriations. As political scientists Benjamin I. Page and Robert Y. Shapiro have persuasively argued, public policy preferences are real, knowable, consistent, and predictably adjusted to changing circumstances. These policy preferences enable tangible outcomes such as “when to use US military force abroad” and “what kinds of assistance to provide which allies.”7

The difficulty in getting a Ukrainian aid package through Congress, for example, is understandable when a 2023 CNN poll revealed that 55 percent of the American public was against sending more aid to Ukraine, which is a 30 percent increase since 2022. This level of support was down from a 2022 poll where 62 percent believed the United States should be doing more to help Ukraine. Weak public support for a national security policy allows representatives to link the issue to rival policy preferences to gain leverage for preferred outcomes. For example, Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming explained his opposition to providing Ukraine military assistance, saying he could not vote for a “national security bill that neglects the security of our nation” while the “southern border remains wide open to terrorists and criminals who wish to do us harm.” Essentially, the American people did not have a coherent narrative linking American security interests to the defense of Ukraine, which weakened public support and left an opening for policymakers to transition from Ukraine to security matters with greater perceived support— such as the southern border. We argue that this linkage would be less likely if the policy of supporting Ukraine had broader public support. A strong strategic narrative, informed by the National Security Strategy, should explain national security threats within the context of public preferences to gain public support.8

Public shifts in foreign policy preferences are predictable in that they are related to an interpretation of objects, facts, and events worldwide. William Inboden has suggested that the current neo-isolationist trend might be related to disillusionment from events such as the 2008 financial crisis, the failure of the engagement strategy with China, and the troubled wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The exact reason for the trend toward isolationism is less critical than accepting its reality and engaging the public according to its preferences. The American public might not see the utility of upholding an international rules-based order without an explicit connection to national interests. Indeed, the recently concluded 2024 Commission on National Defense Strategy suggested that “bipartisan support for a strong military, preservation of alliances, and engagement in international affairs is waning.” We deduce that the strategic narrative surrounding the international rules-based order as reflected in the current National Security Strategy lacks coherence and fidelity, thereby diminishing the US government’s ability to mobilize collective action.9

Strategic Narrative

Walter Fisher’s theory of “narrative paradigm” highlights the importance of coherence and fidelity in creating effective communication. He defines a coherent story around the concept of “narrative probability,” which is the idea that stories must make logical and causal sense. To be sure, the hearing audience is engaged in the “constant habit of testing narrative fidelity, whether the stories they experience ring true with the stories they know to be true in their lives.” Fisher’s interpretation of narrative is nested with Jurgen Habermas’ theory of the communicative act in which speakers use language to interpret objects and facts in the world as speaker and hearer to coordinate the actions of individual agents. This understanding is especially important when marshaling support for public goods such as national security. A coherent narrative helps the public make sense of requests for increased resources.10

Indeed, narratologists suggest that rational thought is impossible without narrative because objects and facts do not speak for themselves. The world only makes sense when objects and facts are filtered through a structurally sound narrative that resonates with the receiver and illuminates why public good is more important than narrow self-interest. In terms of strategic narrative, Ronald Krebs argues that a compelling strategic narrative “does not abolish political differences or render exchange trivial,” but it does “legitimate . . . preferred policies.” Thus, an effective strategic narrative today must legitimate policies that enable the mobilization of public resources to defend against a Russian and Chinese threat. To this end, a chosen strategic narrative must have coherence in that listeners can derive “a linear structure of cause and effect” and fidelity in that the actions of the United States are in line with the narrative. Thus, coherence and fidelity are essential if the strategy to provide context for collective action against national security threats.11

While seemingly esoteric concepts, Fisher and Habermas’ communicative theories align well with Information in Joint Operations, Joint Publication 3-04, which suggests that the Joint Force uses narrative to generate understanding about the “purpose of military operations” and how they “link military activities with the activities of the other [United States Government] departments and agencies, and reflect policy objectives.” To be sure these policy objectives are broadly outlined in the strategy. Thus, when national security professionals argue for mobilization of public resources to defend against threats, the ideas align in a way that matches the preferences of the public. A close examination of the current National Security Strategy reveals a stark misalignment with public preferences.12

Model for Textual Analysis

Our textual analysis measures resonance by comparing NSS major themes with public opinion polls that indicate public preferences for foreign policy prioritization. Political scientists Anja Durovic and Tinette Schnatterer suggest that polls are important to democratic legislators for a couple of reasons. They help determine which election promises politicians should prioritize (promissory representation) and illuminate future voter preferences (anticipatory representation). Some criticize an emphasis on public polling because of the fickle nature of the polity; however, Shapiro and Page empirically demonstrate that “Americans’ policy preferences do not in fact change in a capricious, whimsical, or evanescent fashion.” Public opinion about foreign policy changes predictably with sudden events such as the Tet Offensive in 1968, which drastically influenced public opinion on the Vietnam War. We use established legal scholarship to define resonance according to the logic of “majority rule” in that consent of the governed provides “a sense of legitimacy” for collective action, and it also indicates the power of a preferred military option to resist challenges from congressional opposition groups.13

To operationalize our textual analysis, we identified seven general themes of the 2022 National Security Strategy: 1) strategic competition between the United States, China, and Russia; 2) global leadership of the United States and strengthening alliances; 3) defending democracy at home and abroad; 4) addressing global challenges such as pandemics, and economic instability; 5) economic and technological leadership through critical investments; 6) military modernization to maintain deterrence of China and Russia; and 7) maintaining and promoting a rules-based order. Each theme was associated with related “word markers” that further defined the scope of our analysis.

Our textual analysis uses a Pew Research Center poll of 3,600 randomly selected individuals who prioritized 22 foreign policy priorities to determine resonance around these seven themes and word markers. Although word markers are an imperfect tool to gauge policy emphasis, they help in grouping the “rhetorical importance” of themes around a generalized lexicon, which amplifies certain textual consistencies. Drawing on the logic of the majority rule mentioned above, we defined polling data below 50 percent of survey participants as low resonance and susceptible to challenge in the legislature. Poll numbers ranging from 50 to 64 percent of survey participants were low-moderate resonance, which are strong but sometimes contested. Poll numbers ranging from 65 to 80 percent were high-moderate resonance and very resistant to challenge. Anything above 80 percent in polling represents high resonance levels and is unlikely to be contested. Finally, we correlated the measured resonance with a word count search of the strategy to determine what themes the document emphasized. Based on this model, we assess that the international rules-based order narrative does not resonate with an American public that seems to prioritize domestically focused foreign policy issues.14

Analytical Findings

Table 1 demonstrates that six of the seven national security strategy themes resonated with the American public at low levels. The exception to this trend was modernizing the military force, mentioned 65 times, which resonated at a low-moderate level. The Pew Research Center poll results indicate ambivalence about prioritizing strategic competition, which was mentioned 136 times, with the American public identifying Russia at 50 percent and China at 49 percent as high priorities. These numbers sit on the boundary between low and low-moderate resonance. The data suggests that America is weary of its “enduring role” as a global leader, especially in terms of supporting organizations associated with maintaining an international rules-based order. For example, the National Security Strategy highly emphasizes working with allies, with 244 mentions in the document, but the Pew poll shows that only 27 percent of the public prioritize supporting NATO. The United Nations fared little better with 31 percent. These two organizations are important for maintaining a rules-based order, and the lack of prioritization from the American public is telling. Despite the National Security Strategy’s commitment to protecting democracy and human rights norms with 58 mentions, the public shows little appetite for investment in this type of activity, with only 31 percent of Americans prioritizing the defense of democracy.

Table 1. Low-resonating priorities

(Source: Created by authors)

Major Theme in 2022 NSSNumber of Mentions in the 2022 NSSWord CountPoll Data (Pew April 2024) “What are Americans’ top foreign policy concerns?”Level of Resonance< 50% - Low60–65% - Low Moderate65–80% - High Moderate> 80% - HighStrategic competitionRussia (71)135Russia (50%)LowChina (54)China (49%)LowNorth Korea / DPRK (3)North Korea (38%)LowIran (7)Iran (37%)LowGlobal leadership and alliancesNATO (17)244Supporting NATO (27%)LowAllies (68)Supporting Israel (22%)LowPartners (145)Supporting Ukraine (23%)LowLeadership (14)Other countries maintaining order (42%)LowReducing military committments overseas (24%)LowDefending democracyDemocracy (38)58Promoting democracy (18%)LowHuman rights (20)Human rights (29%)LowEconomics and technologyArtificial intelligence (3)19Artificial intelligence (32%)LowSpace (16)Space exploration (25%)LowMilitary modernizationModern (16)65Maintaining military advantage (53%)Low moderateModernizing (9)Deter (13)Deterrence (23)Deterring (4)Rules-based international orderInternational order (4)52United Nations (31%)LowRules-based order (24)UN (8)United Nations (8)World Trade Organization / World Bank (0)World Health Organization (2)International law (6)

It is worth noting that the only significantly moderating theme in table 1 was military modernization, which highlights a sense of domestic concern about defending the homeland and brings to the forefront how the national security strategy is misaligned. This misalignment of security priorities is especially stark compared to the issues that resonate highly with the American public depicted in table 2 but are mentioned less often in the National Security Strategy. As is demonstrated, the highest resonating priorities are related to more domestically focused issues, such as defending against terrorism, which resonates at a high-moderate level but is only mentioned 24 times in the strategy. Countering illicit drug trafficking was mentioned only seven times in the strategy but resonates at low-moderate levels with the American public. Weapons of mass destruction and controlling infectious disease are only mentioned 39 and 18 times, respectively, in the strategy but resonate at low-moderate levels with the American public.

Table 2. High-resonating priorities

(Source: Created by authors)

High Resonating in 2024 Pew PollNumber of Mentions in 2022 NSSWord CountLevel of Resonance< 50% - Low50–65% - Low Moderate65–80% - High Moderate> 80% - HighTerrorism (73%)Terrorism (10)24High moderateViolent extremist organizations (0)Extremism (2)Transnational criminal organizations (12)Illegal drugs (64%)Drugs (4)7Low moderateFentanyl (2)Methamphetamines (1)Weapons of mass destruction (63%)Weapons of mass destruction (2)39Low moderateDestruction (2)Nuclear (23)Biological (11)Chemical (3)Infectious diseaseInfections (2)12Low moderateCOVID (10)

One explanation for the misalignment between narrative and public perception is that Americans are trending toward isolationism. A 2023 Chicago Council on Foreign Affairs survey shows that 57 percent of Americans feel that the United States should take an active role in world affairs, one of the lowest numbers since the survey started in 1974. The polling numbers support Kori Schake’s claim in Foreign Affairs that Americans today “do not respond well to abstract appeals about preserving the ‘international order.’ ” Nonetheless, we assert that they understand that China places American businesses at a disadvantage and could leave historical allies vulnerable to aggression. The public seems to understand that China and Russia pose some kind of threat to America, but the international rules-based narrative does not provide a coherent rationale that prompts them toward collective action as the low-level resonance indicates.15

Problems of Coherency and Fidelity in the NSS

Scholars have noted that strategic narrative legitimizes collective action supporting national security priorities. For example, Michael Barnett and Stuart Kaufman have argued that narratives are essential to understanding the ongoing nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is tempting to view this conflict as merely a territorial dispute, but this explanation falls short unless one considers the narrative of both sides. How can Israeli security concerns be fully understood without an understanding of displacement, the Temple Mount, the Pale of the Settlement, and the Holocaust? From their perspective, securing the territory is necessary as there is no place in the world left for Jews to retreat. Conversely, the Palestinians have their own post-1967 story of displacement from what they consider sacred lands. The humiliation of refugee camps, loss of property, lack of recognition, and general marginalization shape their narrative. The disputed territory is a story about honor, respect, and injustice. In the historical tragedy of the Middle East, how each community frames this story provides legitimacy for forms of collective action ranging from occupation to terrorism.

The Cold War provides another illustration of the power of strategic narrative. During the Cold War, US leaders demonstrated considerable competence when developing a coherent strategic narrative for collective action. Although it waxed and waned over the years, the Cold War consensus displayed the significance of a resonating strategic narrative in mobilizing resources for competition. For example, Harry Truman’s 1947 speech to Congress outlined America’s unique role in confronting Soviet aggression, resulting in a $400 million congressional appropriation to support Greece and Turkey (now Türkiye). Known as the Truman Doctrine, this speech for decades served as the foundation of the Cold War policy of containment. In the years following World War II, a Gallup poll revealed that three-quarters of Americans believed the Russians sought world domination. After a period of détente with the Soviets, Ronald Reagan successfully employed a mobilizing narrative in a 1983 speech that contrasted “America’s greatness and genius” with the Soviet Union as an “evil empire.” At the time, more than 60 percent of Americans polled believed that the Soviet Union was a very serious or serious threat. Reagan’s exhortation in that speech to achieve “peace through strength” enabled the operationalization of AirLand Battle with expensive investments in the early 1980s for the “Big Five” weapons platforms. The resilience of this narrative was so strong that a 1990 Chicago Council Survey revealed that 58 percent of the public viewed containment of the Soviets as “very important,” even though the Cold War was rapidly winding down. Strategic leaders today must find a similar narrative that resonates with the American public.16

For strategic leaders in the United States, framing a linguistically coherent strategic narrative to legitimize collective action for mobilization against China and Russia today is just as essential as it was for Harry Truman in 1947 and Ronald Reagan in 1983. The current foundational concept of international order lacks coherence because there is no consensus on America’s role in maintaining international order. G. John Ikenberry, one of the top scholars of the liberal international order, describes three “varieties of order:” balance of power, hegemony, or constitutionalism. A balance of power order is one in which anarchy reigns and states join alliances and bandwagon to counterbalance the power of strong states. A hegemonic order is hierarchical and maintained by the most powerful state. Balance of power and hegemonic orders rely on relative power distribution. In constitutional orders, state power is restrained with tightly bound international institutions and regimes administering agreed upon rules.17

The National Security Strategy lacks coherency for how to maintain international order. On one level, it takes a constitutionalist approach in its appeal to strengthening the United Nations and “basic laws and principles governing relations among nations.” Thus, the United States must uphold its international commitments to support agreed-upon rules and norms. On a different level, however, the strategy appeals to the balance of power notions of order with its appeal to alliances and partnerships as “our most important strategic asset and indispensable element contributing to international peace and security.” Finally, the strategy resorts to hegemonic appeals in which America has an “enduring role” to “compete with major autocratic powers to shape the international order.” The incoherent notions of order communicated in the strategy decrease its effectiveness in directing collective action. Their emergence in the NSS creates contradictions that are difficult to explain to the American public. Professor Patrick Porter, an international security fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, captured the challenge well when he suggested that coming to terms with an idea of international order is like “wrestling with the fog” because the concept is “amorphous, a belief system without a stable shape.” Nonetheless, the lack of fidelity in the international rules-based order is arguably its most damaging indictment in terms of generating motivation for collective action.18

While the National Security Strategy sometimes invokes liberal notions of a rules-based order backed by international law, critics sometimes highlight a lack of fidelity to its propositions. For instance, distinguished international lawyer John Dugard highlighted how the United States is selective in the rules it follows. The United States is not a party to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the 1977 Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions of 1949, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the Convention on Cluster Munitions, and the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-personnel Mines and on Their Destruction. Also, the United States has disregarded legal arguments claiming that military campaigns in the Balkans (1999), Iraq (2002), and Libya (2011) were illegal, and there is widespread legal consensus that targeted killings with unmanned drones are a significant violation of international human rights law. So, while the strategy ostensibly claims a commitment to the concepts of a rules-based international order connected to international law, the actions of US do not maintain fidelity to the strategic narrative, and critics claim that US commitment to an international rules-based order is only a manifestation of US interests at a given time.19

This lack of coherence and fidelity contributes to a partisan divide about the role of the United States in world affairs. According to the Chicago Survey Council, only 57 percent of Americans believe the United States should actively participate in world affairs. Although 57 percent does constitute a clear majority of the US population, it is among the lowest numbers since 1974. The divide between Democratic and Republican support is even more concerning, with only 54 percent of Republicans and 68 percent of Democrats supporting US involvement in world affairs. Although there are internal divisions about the role of America, the threats from China and Russia remain constant, as highlighted by the bipartisan Commission on the National Defense Strategy. Critically, these divisions embolden our adversaries and make it increasingly difficult for national security leaders to garner the necessary support to deter Chinese and Russian aggression. Thus, it is vitally important that national security leaders develop a strategic narrative that inspires the public to invest in defense.20

Toward Coherency and Fidelity as a National Security Imperative

Given the problems and pitfalls of communicating a strategic narrative based on the concept of a rules-based international order, future iterations of the National Security Strategy should de-emphasize (note eliminate) references to this concept. This narrative approach is merely an acknowledgment of the polling data indicating that Americans are less interested in international engagement that is not directly linked to national interests. We do not make a normative claim about the value of the rules-based international order. The idea of an American-led rules-based order is valid, but strategic leaders must communicate its value in ways that resonate with ordinary Americans. As former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently suggested, “generating support for an internationalist foreign policy requires a president to paint a vivid picture of what the world would look like without an active United States” in ways that an “unemployed coal miner and steelworker” understand. To craft a strategy that communicates the vision and threat in a way that resonates with ordinary Americans, we make the following four thematic recommendations.21

Clearly Identify the Nature of the Threat

Reagan’s 1983 speech serves as an exemplar of national security clarity. He urged the audience not to “ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire.”22 The emerging Chinese, Iranian, North Korean, and Russian threats present a similar challenge today:

China and Russia’s ‘no-limits’ partnership . . . has only deepened and broadened to include a military and economic partnership with Iran and North Korea, each of which presents a significant threat to US interests. This new alignment of nations opposed to US interests creates a real risk, if not likelihood, that conflict anywhere could become a multi-theater or global war.23

Australia’s chief intelligence officer, Andrew Shearer, recently echoed this concern, suggesting that the “emerging axis” between China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia is “a profoundly concerning strategic development.” Indeed, Chinese economic assistance, Iranian drones, and North Korean missiles are creating an autocratic alliance of convenience. The National Security Strategy should clearly articulate the need to counter this axis, and it should, in the spirit of Reagan’s communication in 1983, highlight that the American-led democratic side is on the right side of history.24

Communicate America’s Unique Role

In his 1947 speech to Congress, Truman clearly articulated Greece’s precarious situation as it confronted communist insurgents seeking to depose the government. Britain lacked the fiscal capability to continue its support of the Greek government, which was poorly equipped and in dire circumstances: “There is no other country to which democratic Greece can turn. No other nation is willing and able to provide the necessary support for a democratic Greek government.” Similarly, the United States is the only country that can successfully lead the necessary international coalition to counter the axis. Small countries such as Australia, the Baltic States, the Philippines, Poland, Malaysia, and Singapore count on the United States to support them. As Hedley Bull proposed in his book The Anarchical Society, great powers such as the United States are responsible for using their preponderance of force to preserve a balance of power, manage crises, contain wars, and work with other powers to protect international commerce. America is a great power, which comes with global responsibilities. Just as Truman demonstrated the need for America to ensure its allies’ safety from the Soviet Union, so too must the next strategy remind Americans of America’s unique role. The current National Security Strategy rightly articulates a unique role for America, but the concept gets lost within the language of a rules-based order. The next strategy should amplify the special role of the United States and de-emphasize the theme of a rules-based order.25

Connect Themes with American Prosperity

The current National Security Strategy stresses the need to protect the rules-based order that has evolved since World War II. It also rightly acknowledges Chinese and Russian ambitions to subvert America’s leadership role. Instead of linking American leadership to protecting this rules-based order, the next version should highlight how America is acting to protect its prosperity. It should talk in plainer terms about the benefits of the dollar as the global currency reserve, which allows the United States to borrow money at cheaper rates, fueling employment and prosperity. International demand for the dollar increases its purchasing power, making daily life cheaper for Americans and enabling investments in military modernization efforts that maintain America’s position. Finally, the United States uses its economic power to gain diplomatic leverage to achieve its political ends.26

Be Honest About the Need for Sacrifice

Days after forming a government and in the early stages of the Nazi threat, Winston Churchill addressed parliament with only a promise of “blood, toil, tears, and sweat.” While not yet as dire as that time, deterring the “emerging axis” threatening America and its allies will require significant investment from the American public. The future national security strategy should explicitly communicate that investments to maintain America’s prosperous position are necessary. It is up to Congress and beyond the scope of this article to identify where savings should be secured. The Commission on the National Defense Strategy does an excellent job explaining the costs to inform appropriation decisions, and the national security strategy should communicate the nature of those costs effectively. It will take more than a strategic document to communicate these themes, but the National Security Strategy is an excellent place to begin reframing the argument. The plain language of Truman, Reagan, and Churchill are examples of clear communication to influence this ongoing national security discourse.27

Addressing Counterarguments

There will inevitably be criticism of any suggestion to downplay the term rules-based international order and increase the emphasis on the United States’ national interests and the growing threat posed by key adversaries. These criticisms revolve around three arguments against dropping international rules-based order in the NSS: 1) weakening of global governance, 2) erosion of American legitimacy and soft power, and 3) potential for misperception by our adversaries leading to conflict. These legitimate concerns should be considered and addressed.

We are not advocating the abandonment of a rules-based order in practice. We are suggesting a change in narrative emphasis that engages the American people in collective action against the Russian and Chinese threats. To that end, our proposed narrative stresses the need to engage in the global arena, which implicitly includes international and regional security organizations, but there are challenges to this approach. For instance, Gallup polling shows that Americans are ambivalent about the United Nations, with support fluctuating from 54 percent in 1990 to 33 percent in 2024. A separate Pew Research Center poll in April 2024 showed that American support for strengthening the United Nations declined from 39 percent in 2018 to 31 percent in 2024. Both polls indicate that using the United Nations as a proxy for engaging in the global arena might not be a stable long-term alternative to direct action. Nonetheless, the US Congress has continued to fund US obligations to the United Nations, which equates to less than 1 percent of the US federal budget. While Americans are increasingly skeptical of the rules-based order, continued funding of the United Nations indicates an implicit commitment to international order, but the United Nations should not take this commitment for granted, as public opinion always has the final say in liberal democracies. To ensure continued support from political leaders, the narrative themes of the National Security Strategy must better communicate the linkage between global cooperation and the increased well-being of regular Americans.28

The second major argument critics will make is that a shift in US messaging that emphasizes US interests will undermine US legitimacy and soft power. Again, this is a valid critique. Polling by the Pew Research Center shows that favorability ratings of the United States declined in 26 of 33 countries between 2002 and 2007. This example highlights the cost of acting in ways others see as outside the norms of a rules-based order. The United States can mitigate the risks of emphasizing US interests by crafting a narrative demonstrating how allies and partners share those interests and, where possible, highlighting how partner aid can decrease costs and magnify benefits. For example, cooperating with Australia and the United Kingdom in AUKUS shows how pursuing shared interests can enhance soft power with select audiences. Such mitigation requires careful messaging and selective cooperation but should be possible in a world where US allies and partners increasingly see China and Russia as potential military and economic threats.29

Finally, there is the potential that China and Russia will perceive US retrenchment from an international rules-based order as an opportunity to act in pursuit of their national objectives. Consequently, the US strategic narrative needs to state clearly that the United States will act to defend its interests and those of its allies and partners. In doing so, strategic leaders should be more explicit about how allies and partners strengthen America and deter war. The Commission on National Defense Strategy makes a case for strength through allies—which national security professionals should take seriously given its analysis and the bipartisan nature of its findings. There is risk in adapting the strategic narrative as described above. The greater risk might be a lack of collective action that leaves the country unprepared for competition and, if necessary, war.30

Conclusion

This article argues that the National Security Strategy is an important narrative tool for informing public opinion about national security interests. Using polling data and word count textual analysis, we demonstrated that the current National Security Strategy’s emphasis on an international rules-based order as the impetus behind national security lacks resonance with the American public. The national mood trends toward an isolationist perspective and demands a security strategy closely linked to tangible homeland issues such as secure borders, reduced domestic terrorism, and illegal drugs. While these domestic issues matter, Russia and China remain an international threat to American prosperity.

Indeed, the United States truly is at a strategic inflection point, and the next National Security Strategy should emphasize the international threat in terms directly tied to US domestic security and the economic prosperity of ordinary citizens. The current administration’s strategy should communicate without jargon to the American people. During the Cold War, Truman and Reagan exemplified how to communicate the global struggle of democracies versus authoritarian governments in a way that Americans could understand. Now, in the era of great-power competition, some aspects of the Cold War are resurfacing, albeit in a different, much more interconnected world. Therefore, national security narrative themes must remind the public of America’s great-power responsibilities, a position beneficial to every citizen. If an updated narrative commits to coherence and fidelity around the central idea of American prosperity, the historical record suggests that the public will support increased investments in national security.

Jerry E. Landrum

Colonel Jerry E. Landrum, US Army, is an assistant professor and chair of the Department of Military Strategy, Planning, and Operations at the US Army War College. He holds a bachelor of arts degree from the University of North Georgia, a master of military art and science degree from the School of Advanced Military Studies, and a PhD from Kansas State University.

Chase Metcalf

Colonel Chase Metcalf, US Army, is an assistant professor and active-duty Army strategist assigned as the director, campaign planning in the Department of Military Strategy, Planning, and Operations at the US Army War College. He was a US Army War College Fellow at Yale University for the class of 2020.

Michael M. Posey

Commander Michael M. Posey, US Navy, is an assistant professor and active-duty naval flight officer assigned to the Department of Military Strategy, Planning, and Operations at the US Army War College. He holds a subspecialty in information systems and operations.

Disclaimer: Articles, reviews and replies, review essays, and book reviews published in Parameters are unofficial expressions of opinion. The views and opinions expressed in Parameters are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Department of Defense, the Department of the Army, the US Army War College, or any other agency of the US government. The appearance of external hyperlinks does not constitute endorsement by the Department of Defense of the linked websites or the information, products, or services contained therein. The Department of Defense does not exercise any editorial, security, or other control over the information you may find at these locations.

Endnotes

1. Joe Biden, National Security Strategy (The White House: October 2022): 6-10, https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/8-November-Combined-PDF-for-Upload.pdf; and Eric W. Weisstein, “Inflection Point,” Wolfram Math World, n.d., accessed August 8, 2022, https://mathworld.wolfram.com/InflectionPoint.html. Return to text.
2. Antony Blinken, “The Administration’s Approach to the People’s Republic of China” (speech, The George Washington University, May 26, 2022), https://au.usembassy.gov/secretary-blinken-speech-the-administrations-approach-to-the-peoples-republic-of-china/; “Interview: Secretary Antony J. Blinken with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic Festival,” September 28, 2023, U.S. Department of State, https://2021-2025.state.gov/secretary-antony-j-blinken-with-the-atlantics-jeffrey-goldberg-at-the-atlantic-festival/; and Aamir Jamil, “Jurist Lecture: Retired General Milley Warns of Foreign, Domestic Challenges,” The Hoya, April 5, 2024, https://thehoya.com/news/jurist-lecture-retired-general-milley-warns-of-foreign-domestic-challenges/. Return to text.
3. Walter Fisher, Human Communication as Narration: Toward a Philosophy of Reason (University of South Carolina Press, 1989), 105–24; Frederick W. Mayer, Narrative and Collective Action: Stories and Collective Action (Oxford University Press, 2014), 14–16; and Elinor Ostrom “Beyond Markets and States: Polycentric Governance of Complex Economic Systems” (Nobel Prize Lecture, Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, Indiana University Bloomington and Arizona State University, December 8, 2009), 412–14, https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2018/06/ostrom_lecture.pdf. Return to text.
4. Jane Harman et al., Commission on the National Defense Strategy (RAND National Security Research Division, July 2024), https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/misc/MSA3057-4/RAND_MSA3057-4.pdf, v, vii, x, 7; and Noah Robertson, “Pacific Leaders Say They Need More Funding to Compete with China,” Defense News, March 14, 2024, https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2024/03/14/pacific-leaders-say-they-need-more-funding-to-compete-with-china/. Return to text.
5. Harman et al., Commission, 20, viii. Return to text.
6. Paul Lettow, “U.S. National Security Strategy: Lessons Learned,” Texas National Security Review 4, no. 2 (Spring 2021), https://tnsr.org/2021/04/u-s-national-security-strategy-lessons-learned/; Nick Blas, “Beyond Storytelling: Strategic Narratives in Military Strategy,” ÆTHER: A Journal of Strategic Airpower & Spacepower 2, no. 1 (Spring 2023): 46-57; Jason Phillips, “Partnership and Narrative in National Security Strategy,” The Strategy Bridge, April 27, 2021, https://thestrategybridge.org/the-bridge/2021/4/27/partnership-and-narrative-in-national-security-strategy; and Mark A. Milley, “Strategic Inflection Point: The Most Historically Significant and Fundamental Change in the Character of War Is Happening Now— While the Future Is Clouded in Mist and Uncertainty,” Joint Forces Quarterly 110, no. 3 (July 7, 2023), https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Portals/68/Documents/jfq/jfq-110/jfq-110_6-15_Milley.pdf. Return to text.
7. Benjamin I. Page and Robert Y. Shapiro, The Rational Public: Fifty Years of Trends in Americans’ Policy Preferences (The University of Chicago Press, 1992), 384. Return to text.
8. Jennifer Agiesta, “CNN Poll: Majority of Americans Oppose More US Aid for Ukraine in War with Russia,” CNN, August 4, 2023, https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/04/politics/cnn-poll-ukraine/index.html; Nicholas Riccardi, “How Stalled U.S. Aid for Ukraine Exemplified GOP’s Softening Stance on Russia,” PBS, February 19, 2024, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/how-stalled-u-s-aid-for-ukraine-exemplifies-gops-softening-stance-on-russia; and Leo Wolfson “Wyoming Delegation United in Saying No to $61 Billion for Ukraine War,” Cowboy State Daily, April 25, 2024, https://cowboystatedaily.com/2024/04/25/wyoming-delegation-united-in-saying-no-to-61-billion-for-ukraine-war/. Return to text.
9. Harman, et al., Commission, 20. Return to text.
10. Walter R. Fisher, “Narration as a Human Communication Paradigm: The Case of Public Moral Argument,” Communication Monographs 51, no.1 (March 1984): 7–9; and James Gordon Finalyson, Habermas: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2005), 33–35. Return to text.
11. Ronald R. Krebs, “How Dominant Narratives Rise and Fall: Military Conflict, Politics, and the Cold War Consensus,” International Organization 69, no. 4 (Fall 2015): 809–15; Leslie H. Gelb and Richard K. Betts, The Irony of Vietnam: The System Worked (Brooking Institution Press, 2016); Ronald R. Krebs, Narrative and the Making of US National Security (Cambridge University Press, 2015), 33; and H. Porter Abbott, The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative, 3rd ed. (Cambridge University Press, 2021), 60. Return to text.
12. Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), Doctrine for the Armed Forces of the United States, Joint Publication (JP) 1 (JCS, 2023); and Information in Joint Operations, Joint Publication (JP) 3-04 (JCS, 2022), II 5-6. Return to text.
13. Page and Shapiro, The Rational Public, 386; Anja Durovic and Tinette Schnatterer, “Why Governments Want to Learn about Citizens’ Preferences: Explaining the Representational Logic Behind Government Polling,” European Journal of Political Research (September 23, 2024): 1–5; Page and Shapiro, Rational Public, 56; and Rebecca L. Brown, “The Logic of Majority Rule,” Journal of Constitutional Law 9, no. 1 (October 2006): 24, https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1228&context=jcl. Return to text.
14. Jacob Poushter and Laura Clancy, “What Are Americans’ Top Foreign Policy Priorities?,” Pew Research Center, April 23, 2024, https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2024/04/23/what-are-americans-top-foreign-policy-priorities/; and John J. Chin et al., “Understanding National Security Strategies through Time,” Texas National Security Review 6, no. 4 (Fall 2023), https://tnsr.org/2023/09/understanding-national-security-strategies-through-time/. Return to text.
15. Dina Smeltz et al., A Cost of Conflict: Americans Turn Inward: Results of the 2023 Chicago Council Survey of American Public Opinion and US Foreign Policy (Lester Crown Center on US Foreign Policy / The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, 2024), 7–8, https://globalaffairs.org/sites/default/files/2024-03/Chicago Council Survey 2023 Overall Report.pdf; Kori Schake, “The Case for Conservative Internationalism: How to Reverse the Inward Turn of Republican Foreign Policy,” Foreign Affairs (January/February, 2024), https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/case-conservative-internationalism; and Alexandra Stevenson, “China Is Full of Risks. So Why Can’t Corporate America Leave?,” The New York Times, September 8, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/08/business/china-us-business.html. Return to text.
16. Krebs, “Dominant Narratives”; Gelb and Betts, Irony of Vietnam; Michael Barnett, “Culture, Strategy and Foreign Policy Change: Israel’s Road to Oslo,” European Journal of International Relations 5, no. 1 (March 1999): 8; Stuart J. Kaufman, “Narratives and Symbols in Violent Mobilization: The Palestinian-Israeli Case,” Security Studies 18, no. 3 (October 2009); Lydia Saad, “Gallup Vault: 70 Years Ago, Five Grievances against Russia,” Gallup, August 3, 2017, https://news.gallup.com/vault/215171/gallup-vault-years-ago-five-grievances-against-russia.aspx; Ronald Reagan, “Evil Empire Speech” (8 March 1983), Voices of Democracy: The U.S. Oratory Project, n.d., accessed February 10, 2025, https://voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/reagan-evil-empire-speech-text/; Alvin Richman, “The Polls–Poll Trends: Changing American Attitudes Toward the Soviet Union,” Public Opinion Quarterly 55, no. 1 (Spring 1991): 135–48; Robert M. Gates, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How they Won the Cold War (Simon & Schuster, 1996), 195–97; Eric J. Wesley and Jon Bates, “To Change an Army—Winning Tomorrow,” Military Review (May-June 2020), https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review/English-Edition-Archives/May-June-2020/Wesley-WinningTomorrow/; John E. Rielly, ed., American Public Opinion and U.S. Foreign Policy 1991 (The Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, 1991), https://globalaffairs.org/sites/default/files/2020-11/1990-Chicago-Council-Survey-PDF-Report.pdf; and Harry S. Truman, “Address of the President of the United States before a Joint Session of the Senate and the House of Representatives Recommending Assistance to Greece and Turkey,” March 12, 1947, National Archives, transcript, https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/truman-doctrine. Return to text.
17. G. John Ikenberry, After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order after Major Wars (Princeton University Press, 2001), 21–31. Return to text.
18. Patrick Porter, “Wrestling with Fog: On the Elusiveness of Liberal Order,” War on the Rocks, July 15, 2020, https://warontherocks.com/2020/07/wrestling-with-fog-on-the-elusiveness-of-liberal-order/. Return to text.
19. Joe Biden, National Security Strategy, 7, 11; John Dugard, “The Choice Before Us: International Law or a ‘Rules Based Order’?,” Leiden Journal of International Law 36, no. 2 (February 21, 2023): 223–32, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/leiden-journal-of-international-law/article/choice-before-us-international-law-or-a-rulesbased-international-order/7BEDE2312FDF9D6225E16988FD18BAF0; Peter Beinart, “Opinion – Guest Essay: The Vacuous Phrase at the Core of Biden’s Foreign Policy,” The New York Times, June 22, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/22/opinion/biden-foreign-policy.html; Ruxandra Oana Vlad and John Hardy, “Signature Strikes and the Ethics of Targeted Killing,” International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 0, no. 0 (2024): 1–29; and Paul Lushenko et al., “Multilateralism and Public Support for Drone Strikes,” Research & Politics 9, no. 2 (April, 2022), https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/20531680221093433. Return to text.
20. Dina Smeltz, “American Support for Active US Global Role Not What It Used to Be,” The Chicago Council on Global Affairs Survey, August 22, 2024, https://globalaffairs.org/research/public-opinion-survey/american-support-active-us-global-role-not-what-it-used-be; and Harman et al., Commission, 5–10. Return to text.
21. Condoleezza Rice, “The Perils of Isolationism: The World Still Needs America—and America Still Needs the World,” Foreign Affairs, August 20, 2024, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/perils-isolationism-condoleezza-rice. Return to text.
22. Reagan, “Evil Empire Speech.” Return to text.
23. Commission on the National Defense Strategy of the United States, Report of the Commission of the National Defense Strategy (Commission on the National Defense Strategy, July 2024), vi, https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/misc/MSA3057-4/RAND_MSA3057-4.pdf. Return to text.
24. Reagan, “Evil Empire Speech”; Kirsty Needham, “Russia, China ‘Emerging Axis’ Troubling, Says Australia Intelligence Chief,” Reuters, November 5, 2024, https://www.reuters.com/world/russia-china-emerging-axis-troubling-says-australia-intelligence-chief-2024-11-06/. Return to text.
25. Truman, “Address of the President”; and Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics, 3rd ed. (Columbia University Press, 2002), 200. Return to text.
26. “The Global Role of the U.S. Dollar,” Council on Foreign Relations / CFR Education, last updated June 18, 2019, video and transcript, https://education.cfr.org/learn/video/global-role-us-dollar?_gl=1%2A1hgttna%2A_gcl_au%2AMTE1NTg5NjUzMy4xNzMzODYxNDM1%2A_ga%2AMjA5MDMyODY1NS4xNzMzODYxNDM1%2A_ga_24W5E70YKH%2AMTczMzg2MTQzNS4xLjAuMTczMzg2MTQzNi41OS4wLjA. Return to text.
27. Winston Churchill, “Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat,” May 13, 1940, International Churchill Society, https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/speeches/1940-the-finest-hour/blood-toil-tears-sweat/. Return to text.
28. “United Nations: Do You Think the United Nations Is Doing a Good Job or a Poor Job in Trying to Solve the Problems It Has Had to Face?” Gallup, n.d., accessed February 10, 2025, https://news.gallup.com/poll/116347/united-nations.aspx; Poushter and Clancy, “Top Foreign Policy Priorities?”; and “The Scales of Assessment: Understanding the UN Budget,” Better World Campaign, n.d., accessed February 10, 2025, https://betterworldcampaign.org/us-funding-for-the-un/un-budget-formula. Return to text.
29. “Global Public Opinion in the Bush Years (2001–2008),” Pew Research Center, December 18, 2008, https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2008/12/18/global-public-opinion-in-the-bush-years-2001-2008/. Return to text.
30. Harman et al., Commission. Return to text.

21. Ombra Secures IWTSD Contract for RF Sensing System

Ombra Secures IWTSD Contract for RF Sensing System

Ombra to Develop RF Sensing System for Special Operations Forces

https://www.asdnews.com/news/defense/2025/07/02/ombra-secures-iwtsd-contract-rf-sensing-system

Ombra ©

Ombra LLC announces it has been awarded a contract by the Irregular Warfare Technical Support Directorate (IWTSD) in the amount of $1,174,484.00 to develop EAGLE (Early Airbourne Ground Layered Evaluation) for RF transmitter detection. The contract started in November 2024 and focuses on developing an advanced RF sensing and geolocation system for small unmanned aerial systems (UAS), designed to detect and localize enemy radar and RF transmissions across a wide frequency range, enhancing electronic warfare and situational awareness for Special Operations Forces missions.

“EAGLE represents a paradigm shift in Special Operations capability—our breakthrough RF sensing technology doesn’t just enhance missions, it redefines what’s possible in the most critical scenarios where failure is not an option. This isn’t incremental improvement; this is the future of tactical superiority.” – Michael Fieldson, Founder and President of Ombra. 

Military Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) - Market and Technology Forecast to 2032

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22. TSMC to Delay Japan Chip Plant and Prioritize U.S. to Avoid Trump Tariffs

​"Winning" against our allies?

TSMC to Delay Japan Chip Plant and Prioritize U.S. to Avoid Trump Tariffs

Taiwanese semiconductor maker accelerates investment in Arizona

https://www.wsj.com/tech/tsmc-to-delay-japan-chip-plant-and-prioritize-u-s-to-avoid-trump-tariffs-f623c07e

By Yang Jie

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Updated July 4, 2025 6:49 am ET

TSMC is known for its meticulous approach to capital spending. Photo: ann Wang/Reuters

Key Points

What's This?

• TSMC is delaying its second Japanese plant while increasing investment in U.S. expansion, influenced by potential Trump tariffs.
• It is the latest example of how an aggressive stance on trade is pulling some investment toward the U.S. at the expense of allies.
• TSMC plans to invest at least $100 billion more in the U.S. in the coming years.

TOKYO—Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing is delaying construction of a second plant in Japan partly because it is pouring funds more quickly into U.S. expansion ahead of potential Trump administration tariffs, people familiar with the plans said. 

The revised schedule is the latest example of how President Trump’s aggressive stance on trade is pulling some investment toward the U.S. at the expense of allies. Major technology companies have committed to expand U.S. production of artificial-intelligence servers that are currently made in places such as Mexico and Taiwan.

Many regions around the world are eager for more investment by TSMC 2330 -0.46%decrease; red down pointing triangle, which serves clients such as Apple and Nvidia and has a market capitalization of nearly $1 trillion. The U.S., Japan, Europe and TSMC’s home base of Taiwan all see semiconductors as a strategic industry and have helped finance the company’s expansion.

However, TSMC is known for its meticulous approach to capital spending, and it is concerned about building more capacity than the market can bear, analysts said. Ensuring sufficient U.S. capacity is a priority because Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on imported chips.

TSMC said early last year that it would build a second plant in southern Japan’s Kumamoto prefecture, part of a $20 billion investment plan in the country that has brought in more than $8 billion in promised support from the Japanese government.

TSMC chairman C.C. Wei, with the striped tie. Photo: An Rong Xu/Bloomberg News

The first Japanese site started producing chips last fall for customers such as Toyota. Construction of the second plant was initially slated to start early this year. TSMC’s chairman, C.C. Wei, said in June that there would be a slight delay because of excessive car traffic in that region of Japan.

People familiar with TSMC’s plans said further delays to the second Japanese plant were likely and the timing of the construction start could no longer be forecast with accuracy.

The delay is a blow to Japan, whose economy is beginning to suffer from 25% tariffs Trump placed on imported autos and steel. Tokyo had hoped to reach an early trade deal with the U.S., but negotiations have bogged down and Trump in recent days has attacked what he described as Japan’s unwillingness to open its markets.

A Japanese government representative said the government hasn’t heard directly from TSMC that local traffic conditions were responsible for the construction delay and doesn’t believe that was the reason. Despite the delay, Japan believes that the second factory’s production start date and planned output remain roughly the same, the representative said.

TSMC also began construction on its first European manufacturing facility in Germany in late 2024, with production targeted to begin by the end of 2027.

In March, TSMC’s Wei visited the White House and, standing alongside Trump, announced plans to invest at least $100 billion more in the U.S. over the next several years, on top of $65 billion in previously announced investments. 

In April, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick visited Arizona for the groundbreaking of TSMC’s third chip-making facility in the Phoenix area.

TSMC’s Arizona factories are the only ones outside Taiwan that are designed to produce leading-edge chips for American tech giants such as Apple, Nvidia and AMD. That aligns with the push by both the Biden and Trump administrations for greater domestic semiconductor manufacturing. 

Trump has called for semiconductors to be made in America, and his administration has opened a probe that could result in semiconductor tariffs.

Write to Yang Jie at jie.yang@wsj.com

22. What’s in a name? Fighters, bombers and modern aerial combat

What’s in a name? Fighters, bombers and modern aerial combat

Defense News · by Gregory Malandrino · July 3, 2025

Aerial combat has evolved from dogfights between high-speed, maneuverable fighters to duels among missile-armed aircraft at long range. In 2015, John Stillion presciently analyzed this transformation. His research demonstrated that victory no longer results from the fastest, most maneuverable fighter destroying an enemy in a dogfight. Instead, air combat today favors larger, less detectable aircraft using networked information to defeat adversaries with long-range missiles. This shift has ushered in a new regime of aerial combat where future air superiority aircraft may resemble bombers more than fighters. The Chinese J-36, J-50 and the multinational GCAP aircraft appear to embody Stillion’s principles. The extent to which the Air Force’s F-47 and the Navy’s F/A-XX embody these design principles remains unclear.3Current U.S. Air Force efforts to achieve air superiority against the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) reflect the assumption that aircraft with traditional fighter characteristics — high maneuverability, high speed and small size — will remain the centerpiece of air combat. These include increasing the number of missiles each F-35 can carry, buying F-15EXs, developing unmanned Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) and fielding the F-47 Next Generation Air Dominance aircraft. These efforts are in tension with the changing character of modern aerial combat and magnify the challenge to keep pace with the PLAAF. Fielding survivable bomber-sized aircraft for long-range aerial combat could mitigate these shortfalls.

From the earliest days of air-to-air combat, “seeing first and shooting first” has delivered victory. Whereas aircraft maneuverability and speed were long fundamental to these goals, this is no longer the case. Long-range sensing and extended-range missiles have profoundly altered air-to-air combat. When an information advantage is paired with a weapon kinematic advantage, it allows one aircraft to see first and shoot first. Today, aircraft survivability depends upon reducing signatures to foil long-range detection, tracking, identification and engagement. Speed and maneuverability still matter, but these traits now reside in weapons more than aircraft.

Increasingly, aerial combat favors larger aircraft that can carry a greater number of long-range missiles and other payloads over vast distances. A historical example illustrates this trend. Over the past 33 years, the Air Force has averaged a .46 probability of kill for each beyond-visual-range AIM-120 missile fired. These engagements occurred in benign electromagnetic environments. Against the PLAAF, U.S. aircraft would face sophisticated electronic countermeasures, further decreasing each missile’s probability of kill and increasing the number of weapons required to destroy a single target. An aircraft’s ability to carry a large number of missiles is imperative in contemporary air warfare.

Fighters are traditionally small aircraft, which limits the number and size of missiles they can carry. Further, a fighter’s small weapons bays constrain missile length and diameter, and thus the range of an attack. These factors leave the Air Force’s traditional fighter inventory poorly positioned to capitalize on the critical role that aircraft size plays in contemporary aerial combat.

What options exist for increasing the Air Force’s aerial firepower in the face of these challenges? One is to field more fighters. Another is to increase the number of missiles per fighter. A third is to fly more fighter sorties.

These approaches appear less attractive when viewed in detail. Although buying more fighters, including CCA, could help, the range and payload constraints inherent in small aircraft limit this option’s effectiveness. Crucially, the People’s Liberation Army’s threat to airfields and supporting aircraft, combined with the vast distances in the Pacific theater, may make significantly increasing the number of fighter sorties impossible.

Instead, the Air Force should consider nonfighter options for meeting the challenges of contemporary air combat. If the Pentagon moves to embrace Stillion’s vision of aerial combat, the size of “fighters” should increase, perhaps to the size of today’s bombers. For example, still in testing, the B-21 Raider appears to possess the survivability and payload required to excel in contemporary aerial combat. Although the aircraft’s range and payload remain classified, it is safe to say that they exceed those of today’s fighters. Although designed and designated as a bomber, it can more usefully be thought of as a stealthy, networked, long-range aircraft capable of employing a considerable payload of large weapons.

The PLAAF presents a resolute challenge to the Air Force. Compounding that threat is air warfare’s evolving character, which favors reduced signature and magazine depth over speed and maneuverability. Moreover, the Chinese and other air forces appear to have come to this conclusion and are fielding aircraft that embody these design principles. The United States would do well to pay attention. Fielding larger, survivable aircraft for long-range air-to-air combat would take advantage of aerial combat’s transforming character. The Air Force has a rich history of setting new airpower precedents. Now is the time to break paradigms, set new standards for air superiority and strike fear in the Chinese air force.

Gregory Malandrino is a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. Thomas G. Mahnken is CSBA’s president and chief executive officer.

24. NATO allies sound alarm on Russia chemical weapons

NATO allies sound alarm on Russia chemical weapons

Newsweek · by Shane Croucher · July 4, 2025

Dutch and German intelligence services believe Russia is intensifying its use of chemical weapons in Ukraine, including the deployment of the chemical agent chloropicrin, which can be deadly.

The assessment was revealed by the Dutch defense ministry on Friday, July 4. It said the conclusion on Russia's use of chloropicrin is shared by the Dutch military and general intelligence services, MIVD and AIVD, and Germany's foreign intelligence service, the BND.

Chloropicrin is banned in war under the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). Russia is already widely using tear gas, the Dutch defense ministry said, and called the deployment of chloropicrin a "grave violation" of the CWC.

Newsweek has contacted the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for comment, and also the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which administers the convention.

"Russia is going ever further in deploying chemical weapons. It is happening systematically and on a substantial scale," said Dutch Defense Minister Ruben Brekelmans in a statement.

"This is a slippery slope. It is utterly unacceptable and again highlights the brutal aggressor Ukraine is facing.

"We are making this public now because the use of chemical weapons by Russia must not be normalized. If the threshold for deploying this type of weapon is lowered, it poses a danger not just to Ukraine, but to all of Europe and the world.

"More sanctions, further isolation of Russia, and unwavering military support for Ukraine are warranted."

Shane Croucher is a Breaking News Editor based in London, UK. He has previously overseen the My Turn, Fact Check and News teams, and was a Senior Reporter before that, mostly covering U.S. news and politics. Shane joined Newsweek in February 2018 from IBT UK where he held various editorial roles covering different beats, including general news, politics, economics, business, and property. He is a graduate of the University of Lincoln, England. Languages: English. You can reach Shane by emailing s.croucher@newsweek.com

This is a breaking news story. Updates to follow.

25. Book Review | China’s Second Continent

​Conclusion:

Thoughtful and even-handed, the book raises more questions than answers, and maybe that’s okay. (French continues to explore China’s grand ambitions from a broader perspective in a second book. Overall, policymakers and practitioners should read China’s Second Continent to better understand the human terrain of this phenomenon that foreshadowed the current competition on the continent.

Book Review | China’s Second Continent

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/07/04/book-review-chinas-second-continent/

by Kyle J. Wolfley

|

07.04.2025 at 06:00am

China’s Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa. Howard W. French. New York: Penguin Random House, 2015. ISBN 9780307946652. pp. 1, 304. $18.00.

Looking back ten years from its publication, China’s Second Continent is a prescient tale and subtle warning about China’s expansion beyond the Pacific. Even in 2014, author Howard W. French noticed how the rising power was already pulling Africa away from the West’s orbit “while few in that part of the world were paying attention.” To be sure, awareness grew as it was hard to ignore what some are labelling a new scramble for Africa. Yet even a decade ago, French was onto something, and his work did not get the attention it deserved in defense circles. Policymakers and practitioners should have a closer look and grapple with the question as to how—and to what consequence—increased Chinese presence in Africa affects U.S. foreign policy and strategy.

China’s Second Continent is an intimate account of Chinese settlement in Africa told through the eyes of immigrants and the local Africans it affects. As a journalist with familial ties to the continent, French travels through West and Southern Africa to interview local Africans, Chinese entrepreneurs, immigrant families, and government officials. While scholars usually explain China’s expansion as the product of its centuries-old strategic culture or simply the tragic way that great powers behave, French’s on-the-ground perspective paints a holistic portrait that belies these simple theories.

French mentions that at a broader level, it’s a story about the rise of the East and decline of the West, and the international competition for soft power (or “influence” if the former term is no longer popular today). The tools of influence differ: China builds physical infrastructure like stadiums, hospitals, railways, and bridges, while the West invests in less tangible advances in health and education. China and the West also part ways on the expectations of the African partner receiving assistance: Chinese officials seem unconcerned with partners’ levels of corruption or adherence to liberal values, while the West generally demands it. Surprisingly, China’s soft power doesn’t appear to be undermined by the consistent racism, paternalism, or sense of a “Chinese burden” that French records in nearly every interaction with Chinese migrants. This gives the reader the impression that large, concrete symbols of generosity may be more effective to increase one’s influence than invisible investments like training and vaccines.

From a strategic perspective, the book’s most interesting question is whether this phenomenon is driven top-down or bottom-up. In other words, is the push for overseas immigration and subtle domination orchestrated by Chinese state leaders, or propelled by individual economic incentives? Most of his interviews indicate that this wave is largely bottom-up, as Chinese immigrants advance the narrative that they are frontiersman frontiersmen “eating bitter” (i.e., enduring hardship) to escape the poverty, cutthroat competition, and corruption of China. Yet, French drops hints that something from above is setting the conditions for more presence. For instance, his interaction with a former Zambian finance minister reveals how Chinese Communist Party officials would point out China’s generosity to ask for the removal of immigration controls on Chinese settlers.

Another central question for strategists is whether China’s economic activity in Africa is threatening or calming. From one perspective, the West is engaged in a zero-sum game on the continent where interests clash and China’s advance must be confronted. Conversely, if China’s aim is to lift its population out of poverty and grow its middle class, international trade may provide stability by developing a region ripe for terrorism. Here, French doesn’t paint Chinese activity on the continent as harmful but observes that China is playing the long game while the West is short-sighted.

Tellingly, French concludes with a discussion about whether China should be considered a modern empire. Throughout the book, the Chinese government officials he engages distance their efforts from any imperial ambitions, instead arguing the relationship is “win-win” to such a degree that French recognizes it to be the party line. Reflecting on what he’s learned, French believes China’s efforts are more comparable to migration-led empires of Portugal in the sixteenth century and Japan in the 1930’s, rather than the administrative empires of Britan or France during the nineteenth century (acknowledging that any comparison is imperfect, especially one with a militant Japan).

At some points throughout the book, it is easy to get lost in the details of the author’s intimate interactions with taxi drivers, restaurant servers, or embassy officials. However, French is at his best when he matches his fact-gathering on the ground with the strategic shadow that hangs over his conversations. For instance, he realizes through interviews that China was beginning to cultivate future markets for its export-oriented industry when demand from the West would eventually fade (again, prescient). Yet French ultimately concludes in the epilogue, “There was little hint of a grand or even deliberate scheme, but in the end, that’s not so important…it is the outcomes that count.”

However, for American foreign policy, the driving force matters. If settler expansion is merely the pursuit of a better life, then there is little to worry about. On the other hand, if it’s the first chapter of a master plan, then U.S. statecraft should prioritize Africa. Since its publication, China’s presence on the continent has only increased and on all fronts: not only economically through control of telecommunications,  commercial ports, and critical mineral mining, but also militarily to shape the environment in its favor. Perhaps the approach has shifted from bottom-up to more top-down over time. But since the truth lies on a spectrum somewhere between the two, any coherent policy response is challenging but also perilous for the West to ignore.

Thoughtful and even-handed, the book raises more questions than answers, and maybe that’s okay. (French continues to explore China’s grand ambitions from a broader perspective in a second book. Overall, policymakers and practitioners should read China’s Second Continent to better understand the human terrain of this phenomenon that foreshadowed the current competition on the continent.

(The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Department of the Army, US Africa Command, or Department of Defense)

Tags: China's influence in Africa, China's soft power, International Competition, Statecraft

About The Author

• 
  
• Kyle J. Wolfley
• Kyle J. Wolfley is an Army Strategist at US Africa Command. He holds a PhD in Government from Cornell University and is the author of Military Statecraft and the Rise of Shaping in World Politics (Rowman and Littlefield, 2021).

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