Quotes of the Day:

"We are entering a bifurcated world. Part of the globe is inhabited by Hegel's and Fukuyama's Last Man, healthy, well fed, and pampered by technology. The other, larger, part is inhabited by Hobbes's First Man, condemned to a life that is 'poor, nasty, brutish, and short'"

– Robert Kaplan

"Your position never gives you the right to command. It only imposes on you the duty of so living your life that others may receive your orders without being humiliated." 

– Dag Hammarskjold

"We believe in ordinary acts of bravery, in the courage that drives one person to stand up for another." 

 – Veronica Roth

1. Accused 9/11 plotters reach plea deals with U.S. to avoid death penalties

2. Back-to-Back Assassinations in Middle East Scramble Biden’s Hopes for Peace

3. Israel Declares It Killed Hamas Military Chief in July Airstrike

4. Austin Concludes Indo-Pacific Trip With Subic Bay Visit

5. Japan to supply Patriot missiles to US amid stockpile shortage

6. Explained: Japan’s Defense White Paper 2024 And US ‘Extended Deterrence’

7. US arrests a former Green Beret over the failed 2020 raid into Venezuela to remove Maduro

8. Ukrainian HUR Special Forces Deliver Devastating Strike on Russian Base in Syria

9. The retaliation to the killing of Haniyeh will be far greater than 300 missiles

10. The Houthis’ Dream Come True

11. Pentagon report shows what military jobs have highest suicide rates

12. The Big Five - 1 August edition by Mick Ryan

13. U.S. Looks for Ways to Revive Gaza Cease-Fire Talks

14. For Iran and Hezbollah, calibrating response to Israeli strikes leaves no room for error

15. Israel has a long history of targeted killings. Here's a look at some of them

16. Commentary: Watch what China does, not just what it says, after unsurprising economic plenum

17. Climate Cash Pivots to New Reality of a Hotter, Wetter Planet

18. Russia launches one of war’s biggest drone attacks on Ukraine

19. China Expands Military Drone Export Curbs After Ukrainian Visit

20. The Army Bet $11M on The Rock and UFL Ginning Up Enlistments. It May Have Actually Hurt Recruiting Efforts.

21. Keeping the “Best and Brightest” Junior Officers in the U.S. Military

22. Eroding Global Stability: The Cybersecurity Strategies Of China, Russia, North Korea, And Iran

23. Iran’s mortification proves that Israel is quietly winning the war

24. Does China Prefer Harris or Trump?

25. ISIS-K Goes Global

26. The military needs to make human-performance optimization part of daily ops

1. Accused 9/11 plotters reach plea deals with U.S. to avoid death penalties

I have not heard from Harvey in quite some time.

Excerpts:

“They finally got around to recognizing the inevitable — that they were never going to get to a capital sentence,’’ said Gary Brown, who was the legal adviser to the convening authority from 2017 to 2018, Harvey Rishikof. “And it’s time to bring the commissions to a close.”

Rishikof and Brown were in the process of negotiating guilty pleas for the 9/11 defendants in exchange for life sentences when they were fired by Pentagon officials, allegedly for mismanagement. Brown has subsequently settled a whistleblower reprisal case, whose terms are confidential.

“The plea deal with life imprisonment is the most appropriate resolution for this case” because of legal structural problems that made a death penalty conviction hard to sustain by an appellate court, Rishikof said. Those legal problems, he said, included the fact that the defense counsel was given access to only summaries of classified evidence, and that waterboarding of the defendants tainted any admissions of guilt.

Accused 9/11 plotters reach plea deals with U.S. to avoid death penalties

The agreement with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two others charged in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States was approved by a senior U.S. defense official overseeing their cases.

By Ellen Nakashima and Praveena Somasundaram

July 31, 2024 at 7:15 p.m. EDT

The Washington Post · by Ellen Nakashima · July 31, 2024

The man accused of plotting the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and two of his co-defendants have reached plea agreements that will allow them to avoid the death penalty, the Defense Department announced Wednesday — a dramatic development in the decades-long case for the prisoners at the U.S. military detention facility in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi will all plead guilty, according to a letter sent to families of the victims by a senior U.S. defense official overseeing the cases. A panel of military officials eventually will determine the men’s sentences.

“In exchange for the removal of the death penalty as a possible punishment, these three accused have agreed to plead guilty to all of the charged offenses, including the murder of the 2,976 people listed in the charge sheet, and to be later sentenced by a panel of military officers,” according to the letter, signed by Rear Adm. Aaron Rugh, the chief prosecutor in the case.

The deals raise the prospect that some of the most significant cases in the Pentagon’s long legal process stemming from the Sept. 11 attacks may finally be over. Human rights organizations and legal experts have both criticized the proceedings for their secretive nature, conflicts of interest, and repeated delays that have drawn out the effort for years.

The process also has been complicated in part by a 2015 law passed by Congress that restricted the U.S. government from allowing detainees at the naval base at Guantánamo Bay to set foot in the continental United States, even for their criminal trials. Lawmakers did so while citing security concerns, even as the Justice Department has continued to try other terrorism suspects in federal court.

The cases also have been complicated by the brutal nature in which the United States detained, and interrogated individuals involved.

“At the heart of the commissions’ problems is their original sin, torture,” John G. Baker, a Marine Corps general who served as defense counsel of the Military Commissions Defense Organization, told the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2021. “The United States chose to secretly detain and torture the men it now seeks to punish.”

The five defendants were initially charged in 2008, but the cases were dropped in 2010 as the Obama administration sought to try them instead in New York. Military officials refiled charges against all five men in 2011, as the Obama administration shifted gears after failing to close the Guantánamo Bay detention center.

“After 13 years of pretrial litigation this agreement was a critical step toward judicial finality,” said James G. Connell, III, attorney for Ammar al-Baluchi, another 9/11 defendant at Guantánamo who is not covered by the deal. Negotiations are still ongoing in his case.

“They finally got around to recognizing the inevitable — that they were never going to get to a capital sentence,’’ said Gary Brown, who was the legal adviser to the convening authority from 2017 to 2018, Harvey Rishikof. “And it’s time to bring the commissions to a close.”

Rishikof and Brown were in the process of negotiating guilty pleas for the 9/11 defendants in exchange for life sentences when they were fired by Pentagon officials, allegedly for mismanagement. Brown has subsequently settled a whistleblower reprisal case, whose terms are confidential.

“The plea deal with life imprisonment is the most appropriate resolution for this case” because of legal structural problems that made a death penalty conviction hard to sustain by an appellate court, Rishikof said. Those legal problems, he said, included the fact that the defense counsel was given access to only summaries of classified evidence, and that waterboarding of the defendants tainted any admissions of guilt.

Dan Lamothe and Abigail Hauslohner contributed to this report.

The Washington Post · by Ellen Nakashima · July 31, 2024

2. Back-to-Back Assassinations in Middle East Scramble Biden’s Hopes for Peace

Bold and decisive or reckless and escalatory? Which view will prevail?

Back-to-Back Assassinations in Middle East Scramble Biden’s Hopes for Peace

President Biden had anticipated using his remaining time in office to finally bring an end to the war in Gaza. But that was Monday.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/31/us/politics/assassinations-middle-east-biden.html

A young Hamas supporter carrying a flag to pay tribute to Ismail Haniyeh, the organization’s political leader, who was killed in Iran on Wednesday. Credit...Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times

By Peter Baker

Reporting from Washington

July 31, 2024

The White House declared earlier this week that fears of an all-out war in the Middle East were “exaggerated.” But that was Monday. By Wednesday, it was not quite so clear.

In the volatile, anything-can-happen-at-any-time Middle East, a lot can change in 48 hours. For President Biden, the back-to-back assassinations of a Hezbollah commander in Lebanon and the political leader of Hamas in Iran have once again scrambled the geopolitical equation and revised the risk assessment.

Now a grudging lame duck without an election campaign of his own to run, Mr. Biden had hoped to use his remaining time in office to finally bring an end to the war in Gaza and perhaps even reach a paradigm-shifting deal with Saudi Arabia and Israel that would transform the region. Neither goal was made any easier by the targeted killings of the past couple days, at least not in the short term.

But Mr. Biden’s team vowed on Wednesday not to give up. U.S. officials spent the day reaching out to officials in Israel, Lebanon, Iraq, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia in hopes of keeping the spiral of violence from escalating beyond limited strikes and salvaging a possible cease-fire deal after the dust settles. A team of American negotiators pursuing a cease-fire just left Rome, and another team was heading to Cairo from Saudi Arabia to continue the effort.

Image

Palestinians returning to Bani Suhayla in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday. A team of American negotiators in Rome continued to pursue a cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas.Credit...Bashar Taleb/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

“These reports over the last 24, 48 hours, certainly don’t help with the temperature going down, I’m not going to be Pollyannaish about it,” said John F. Kirby, a national security spokesman for the White House. “We’re obviously concerned about escalation,” he added, even while pursuing a cease-fire. “When you have events, dramatic events, violent events, caused by whatever actors, it certainly doesn’t make the task of achieving that outcome any easier.” But, he said, “we still believe there’s a viable process.”

Biden administration officials said they were not informed in advance of the operation targeting Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas based in Qatar, who was killed in an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps guesthouse in Tehran where he was staying after attending the inauguration of President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran.

Top Pentagon and military officials were stunned by the assassination, particularly the decision to order it in the Iranian capital, a move that makes it harder for Iran not to retaliate. But one senior U.S. military officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic matters, said that while Iran must be embarrassed by the extraordinary security lapse, it may also be fearful of engaging in a full-scale war with Israel.

The assassination of Mr. Haniyeh came less than a day after a strike in a suburb of Beirut killed Fuad Shukr, a Hezbollah commander, in retaliation for an attack over the weekend in an Israeli-controlled town that killed 12 children and teenagers. Israel publicly claimed responsibility for the Hezbollah attack while not confirming its involvement in the killing of Mr. Haniyeh, although U.S. officials privately acknowledged that it had been carried out by the Israelis.

“Conventional wisdom last week was that a hostage deal was likely and a war in the north was not,” said Michael Koplow, chief policy officer for the Israel Policy Forum, a research and educational group that favors a two-state solution. “All of this just demonstrates for the umpteenth time how unpredictable events are and how quickly assessments go out the window.”

Image

“We’re obviously concerned about escalation,” John F. Kirby, a national security spokesman for the White House, said after the assassinations. But, he said, “we still believe there’s a viable process” for working toward a cease-fire.Credit...Eric Lee/The New York Times

Mr. Koplow, writing on social media, said Israel had no choice but to take any opportunity that presented itself to kill Mr. Haniyeh, whose Hamas organization killed 1,200 in the Oct. 7 attack on Israel. “The mistake here isn’t killing Haniyeh,” he said, “but having missed opportunities for a hostage deal, which now becomes even more unlikely.”

Mr. Haniyeh was among the Hamas negotiators in the cease-fire talks, but the major decision maker has been Yahya Sinwar, the group’s commander believed to be hiding in Gaza. He and Mr. Haniyeh were seen as antagonists within Hamas and so Mr. Sinwar may not be mourning all that much, analysts said, but he still may feel compelled to resist a deal in the immediate future.

“What was already a convoluted negotiation and decision-making process among Hamas leaders abroad and in Gaza will now be that much more complicated,” said Natan Sachs, the director of the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. “It still remains the key to the Biden administration’s broader hopes to stabilize the situation, and as such will likely remain a central goal, despite the longer odds.”

Indeed, administration officials noted that the cease-fire negotiations had continued despite previous Israeli strikes against Hamas commanders, including one targeting Muhammad Deif, the shadowy leader of Hamas’s military wing, just two and a half weeks ago.

Robert Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said such assassinations are actually in keeping the Biden administration’s pressure on Israel to favor targeted strikes against Hamas leaders instead of wide-scale military operations that inflict civilian casualties.

“In a certain way, this is exactly what the U.S. has been urging Israel to do,” he said. “That’s one reason why you’re not hearing too many people in the administration being critical of this.”

And while it may unsettle the talks, Mr. Satloff argued that it could make it easier for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to make an agreement halting the war. “Maybe this is too hopeful a way to look at it, but if I wanted to close the cease-fire deal, this is exactly what I would want to do,” he said. “I would want to burnish my credentials as a tough son of a bitch.”

Image

A picture of Mr. Haniyeh at the Bourj el Barajneh camp in Beirut on Wednesday.Credit...Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times

“It certainly does now give him more room to maneuver on that front,” Mr. Satloff added. “The question now is will the other side let him play this game or will they escalate. I’m not so sure that Sinwar is upset that Haniyeh is pushing up daisies. They were rivals, they did not see eye to eye. They may do some stuff but I’m not sure this is going to change Sinwar’s calculus.”

Mr. Biden has been intent on avoiding a regional war since the Oct. 7 attack and managed to avert one in April after Iran fired about 300 missiles and drones against Israel in retaliation for its assassination of an Iranian commander. U.S. forces helped ensure that nearly all of the missiles and drones were intercepted and Mr. Biden encouraged Mr. Netanyahu to leave it at that. “Take the win,” Mr. Biden told him.

Now Mr. Biden faces another escalation scenario, even as he passes the baton to Vice President Kamala Harris to become the Democratic presidential nominee.

“The last thing the Biden administration or the putative Democratic nominee needs right now, with an election less than 100 days away, is getting sucked into or failing to manage a major and messy regional escalation,” said Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East peace negotiator now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“It will be difficult, if not impossible, for Biden to shape, let alone control, Iranian or Hezbollah responses,” Mr. Miller added. “Assuming neither wants a full-scale war, Biden might have more success in influencing Israeli reaction once Iran and Hezbollah respond.”

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.

Peter Baker is the chief White House correspondent for The Times. He has covered the last five presidents and sometimes writes analytical pieces that place presidents and their administrations in a larger context and historical framework. More about Peter Baker

A version of this article appears in print on Aug. 1, 2024, Section A, Page 7 of the New York edition with the headline: Assassinations in Middle East Scramble Biden’s Hopes for Peace. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

3. Israel Declares It Killed Hamas Military Chief in July Airstrike

What effects will these "decapitation" operations have? Can leadership targeting lead to the destruction of Hamas?

1. World
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3. Middle East
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Israel Declares It Killed Hamas Military Chief in July Airstrike

Mohammed Deif is the highest-level Hamas military official Israel says it has killed during the war in Gaza

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/israel-declares-it-killed-hamas-military-chief-in-july-airstrike-58535a27?mod=hp_lead_pos1

By Carrie Keller-Lynn

Updated Aug. 1, 2024 5:25 am ET

Palestinians moved a body from the site of a July 13 Israeli strike on Khan Younis, Gaza, when Israel’s military says it targeted Mohammed Deif. Photo: Jehad Alshrafi/Associated Press

TEL AVIV—Israel has determined that it killed top Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif in a July airstrike, the country’s military said Thursday, eliminating a planner of the Oct. 7 attacks and a militant it had tried to kill for decades.

Deif is the most senior military leader of the U.S.-designated terrorist group whom Israel says it has killed in more than nine months of fighting in the Gaza Strip and the third high-ranking enemy of the country to be declared dead in 48 hours. 

Israel said Tuesday it had killed Fuad Shukr, a top commander with the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, in an airstrike in Beirut, and Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed in a mysterious strike just hours later in Tehran.

Mohammed Deif Photo: -/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Those two attacks provoked furious responses from Hezbollah and Iran and have sparked concerns of an escalatory spiral that could lead to a wider Middle East War.

Deif is believed to have been a key planner of the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks that left 1,200 people dead and around 250 taken hostage. Israeli military officials had said earlier in July that they believed they had killed him in a strike on a Hamas-controlled compound, but hadn’t previously claimed that it had succeeded. Hamas said at the time of the strike that Deif wasn’t killed. 

Israel targeted Deif on July 13 with a massive airstrike in which it dropped eight 2,000-pound bombs on western Khan Younis in part of an area that Israel had declared a humanitarian zone. The commander of Hamas’s Khan Younis brigade, Rafa Salama, also was killed in the strike, the Israeli military has said. 

Gaza officials said scores of Palestinian civilians were killed and many more wounded in the strike, which they said was in the Al-Mawasi area of the humanitarian zone, where the military had told civilians to go in previous evacuations. Hamas disputed that Deif was the target, saying Israel was making excuses for killing many civilians.

Israel’s military said it took precautions to limit civilian casualties. It acknowledged the area was surrounded by civilians, but said responsibility for civilian casualties lay with Deif and his fighters for seeking to hide among them.

More than 39,000 people have been killed in the fighting in Gaza, according to health authorities in the enclave, whose figures don’t say how many were combatants. 

Israel had indications in the days before the strike that it might get the opportunity to target Deif, one of Hamas’s most secretive commanders, and had only a short period to act after getting information that he was on site, a military official said.

Israel had made numerous attempts to kill Deif since 2002, which forced him to move between homes. Few people inside Hamas had even met him. He remained in the shadows over the past two decades, hiding from Israeli bombs and bullets. His real name wasn’t believed to be Deif, which in Arabic means “guest” in reference to his nomadic lifestyle, but Mohammed al-Masri, according to the U.S. government, which designated him a terrorist.

Deif is considered to be responsible for the transformation of Hamas’s military wing from an insurgent militia into a capable fighting force, after becoming commander of the wing, known as the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, in the early 2000s. Through this position he rose to be one of the most influential Hamas leaders in the Gaza Strip, second on Israel’s threat list behind Hamas’s Gaza chief, Yahya Sinwar.

According to Israel, Deif was the protégé of Yahya Ayyash, an explosives expert known as the Engineer. Israel later blamed Deif for a series of bus bombings in the 1990s that killed dozens and marred the Israeli-Palestinian Oslo Accords peace process. 

Deif has also been described as a force behind Hamas’s local production of rockets, the development of the group’s extensive subterranean tunnel network in Gaza and the enhancement of Hamas’s organized fighting forces, including the commando units that raided Israel last fall.

In March, Israel killed Marwan Issa, who was considered Hamas’s No. 3 official in Gaza behind Sinwar and Deif.

4. Austin Concludes Indo-Pacific Trip With Subic Bay Visit

A number of key actions, plans, and policies were implemented on this trip.

Austin Concludes Indo-Pacific Trip With Subic Bay Visit

https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3857328/austin-concludes-indo-pacific-trip-with-subic-bay-visit/

July 31, 2024 | By C. Todd Lopez, DOD News |   

Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III today concluded a multiday visit to the Indo-Pacific region with a final trip to Subic Bay in the Philippines.

During the visit, Austin toured a Philippine Navy facility and several defense industrial sites as a way to highlight opportunities there for defense industrial cooperation by the United States, the Philippines, and other regional allies and partners. 

"This is a really transformative time for our relationship, our alliance here," Austin told reporters. "You've seen us announce a number of key initiatives. Yesterday you heard us talk about the $500 million in [foreign military financing] opportunity here that we're going to provide to the Philippines. We're excited about that, and that's going to help them modernize their military a bit further. [And] today we saw some of our industrial base companies out here working together to create additional capability, and that's also very, very exciting." 

During a U.S.-Philippines 2+2 ministerial dialogue on Tuesday, Austin and Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken met with their counterparts in Manila to discuss opportunities to strengthen regional peace, stability and prosperity. 

As part of those discussions, the U.S. committed to $500 million in foreign military financing to help with modernization of the U.S.-Philippines alliance and, among other things, enhance the capabilities of the Philippine military and coast guard. 

Also, part of Austin's visit to Indo-Pacom was a similar 2+2 dialogue in Tokyo, with Japanese counterparts, where the U.S. announced it would transition U.S. Forces Japan, or USFJ, to a joint force headquarters. The new joint force headquarters will be commanded by a three-star officer and will serve as a counterpart to Japan's own Japan Self-Defense Forces Joint Operations Command. 

"We're at the very beginning of this evolution and we'll work with our Japanese counterparts to see how to evolve things as we go forward," Austin said. "The three-star command that we're standing up is focused on the command and control of U.S. forces. And the three-star command in the JJOC [JSDF Joint Operations Command] will be focused on Japanese forces. The fact that we're working together will give us a lot greater agility and get a lot more capability, quite frankly." 

The conversion of USFJ to a joint force headquarters will provide greater control over planning combined missions with Japanese forces. With the conversion, it is expected the headquarters will retain its name, USFJ, and will also retain its three-star leadership.

5. Japan to supply Patriot missiles to US amid stockpile shortageJapan to supply Patriot missiles to US amid stockpile shortage

Thankfully we have allies who can sell us back our weapons systems when our defense industrial base cannot provide our military with what it requires.

Japan to supply Patriot missiles to US amid stockpile shortage

https://defence-blog.com/japan-to-supply-patriot-missiles-to-us-amid-stockpile-shortage/?amphttps://defence-blog.com/japan-to-supply-patriot-missiles-to-us-amid-stockpile-shortage/?amp

By Dylan Malyasov- Jul 30, 2024

Photo by Sadie Colbert

Japan has agreed to sell an undisclosed number of Patriot missiles to the United States for 3 billion yen ($19 million) to help replenish U.S. stockpiles that have been depleted after bolstering Ukraine’s air defenses.

The deal was confirmed by Japan’s Acquisition, Technology & Logistics Agency (ATLA) on Sunday.

While ATLA officials did not specify the number of missiles involved, a former Pentagon official familiar with the negotiations indicated that around 10 missiles are expected to be transferred. These standard PAC-3 missiles from the Self-Defense Forces (SDF) will be delivered to the U.S. military “soon,” according to ATLA.

The Patriot missile system, which stands for “Phased Array Tracking Radar to Intercept on Target,” is the U.S. Army’s most advanced air defense system, capable of detecting and intercepting incoming missiles. In the United States, RTX (formerly Raytheon Technologies) produces the radar and ground systems, while Lockheed Martin manufactures the interceptor missiles.

Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries produces approximately 30 Patriot missiles annually for the Air Self-Defense Force. The SDF currently uses three types of Patriot missiles: PAC-2, PAC-3, and the advanced PAC-3 MSE (Missile Segment Enhancement), which has an extended range of up to 50%. An advanced PAC-3 missile typically costs around $4 million.

The Ministry of Defense emphasized that the PAC-3 missiles sold to the U.S. would not be provided to non-U.S. government entities and are intended solely to backfill U.S. stockpiles. This assurance was confirmed during a two-plus-two meeting of foreign and defense ministers in Tokyo on Sunday.

During the meeting, the U.S. and Japan agreed to expand coproduction of PAC-3 MSEs and begin coproduction of the Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM).

Earlier this month, Reuters reported delays in boosting Patriot missile production due to shortages of a critical component manufactured by Boeing. Specifically, the shortage of missile seekers, which guide the missiles in the final stages of flight, has affected production.

6. Explained: Japan’s Defense White Paper 2024 And US ‘Extended Deterrence’Explained: Japan’s Defense White Paper 2024 And US ‘Extended Deterrence’

Excerpts:

One needs to remember that Japan is the only country to have been attacked with nuclear weapons and the strong anti-nuclear sentiment in the country stems from that unpleasant experience. The talks therefore covered the issue of ‘extended deterrence’ as a means of US reassurance to Japan’s security. The US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific Affairs Daniel Kritenbrink clarified that this was for the first time the issue was discussed at the ministerial level “to further strengthen U.S. extended deterrence bolstered by Japan’s defense capabilities.” 

What does the ‘extended deterrence’ mean? This means the US commitment to using its military capabilities, including nuclear weapons, to protect its ally and deter attacks. (8) South Korea already enjoys this and now Japan is likely to have the same cover. An inaugural joint document was agreed to be issued by the end of 2024. It aims to bolster deterrence by clearly articulating the US’ unwavering commitment to defending Japan amid growing nuclear threats from China, North Korea and Russia. 

Though the details are not yet released, the document is expected to provide direction on what situations Japan should face in order for the US to retaliate, including with nuclear weapons. As it transpires, more new areas of cooperation and collaboration between Japan and the US in the defence sector including industrial collaboration following Tokyo’s revision of strict defense export guidelines in March 2024 are likely in the near future. Both are also likely to partner to repair US warships and aircraft in Japan and jointly develop and produce advanced weapons. Japan is therefore likely to assume a more robust defense posture with the US cooperation to cope with the emerging security challenges emanating from China, North Korea and Russia.

Japan’s Defense White Paper 2024

Explained: Japan’s Defense White Paper 2024 And US ‘Extended Deterrence’

https://www.eurasiareview.com/31072024-explained-japans-defense-white-paper-2024-and-us-extended-deterrence/

 July 31, 2024  0 Comments

By Dr. Rajaram Panda

Introduction

On 12 July 2024, Japan published The Defense of Japan 2024 White Paper. (1) This is its landmark 50th edition, with the inaugural edition published in 1970. Since 1976, the White Paper has come out every year. This year also marks the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the Self-Defense Forces. The annual report was approved by the Cabinet at a meeting the same day. It is packed with tough assessments of what it says is an increasingly fraught regional security environment that includes “an aggressive China, nuclear-armed North Korea and revanchist Russia”. (2)

 The concept behind the front cover of the White Paper showed Japan working hard to forge its “sword” to avoid having to draw it as a deterrent to prevent any aggression against Japan. For the first time, Tokyo sounded a direct warning against the growing risk of a grave situation akin to Russia’s “invasion” of Ukraine occurring in East Asia. Expressing alarm over China, North Korea and Russia, the White Paper stated that a situation similar to Russia’s military operation in Ukraine may occur in the Indo-Pacific region in future, particularly in East Asia. (3)

The popular Asahi Shimbun observed in an editorial that while Japan needs a stable program and strengthens its defences to stay abreast of changes in its security environment, “excessive reliance on armed forces may prove counterproductive as this only generates unwanted tension”. (4)

The nation’s security issue was for the first time understood clearly by former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo. It was he who initiated procedures to secure the country’s security both by strengthening Japan’s own capability and co-opting friendly nations to address the deteriorating situation in Japan’s neighbourhood and in the larger Indo-Pacific region. One major initiative that Abe took was to enact laws that allows Japan to exercise the right of collective self-defence as dramatic overhaul of the country’s security policies by amending Article 9 of the Constitution hit major roadblock. This way the spirit of the Article 9, the peace clause, was substantially diluted even without amending Article 9. What the present Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is doing is taking forward further Abe’s initiatives by making major change in the direction of Japan’s security policy. The Kishida administration has therefore sought the understanding and cooperation of the people as it realises that these are indispensable to national defense. 

As regards China’s militarization and hard-line posture toward others, the White Paper noted that this is “a matter of serious concern for Japan as well as for the international community” and “the greatest strategic challenge”. It also took note of China’s escalating activity surrounding Taiwan, thereby heightening tensions in the Taiwan Strait. China has never reconciled to the existence of Taiwan and considers it a part of its territory and that the island must be incorporated with the mainland by peaceful means and, if necessary by the use of force. Though Beijing might be deterred from pursuing such a course as it is aware that any military intervention in Taiwan could quickly escalate into a major conflagration. In such an event, it could inevitably draw other major powers into the conflict, detrimental to China’s interests and that of others as well.

Regarding North Korea, the White Paper describes this as an imminent threat and more grave now than ever before and thus a security threat to Japan. The White Paper noted that Pyongyang is focusing on qualitatively improving its nuclear and missile capabilities.

Because of such stress to Japan’s security coming from the Ukraine war, China’s militarization and North Korea’s nuclear and missile development programs, Japan is compelled to beef up the nation’s defence capabilities, reinforce the Japan-US alliance and work closely with like-minded nations, so that deterrence will be more powerful and more effective to prevent an enemy from a possible attack on Japan.

Interestingly, the Defense White Paper 2024 contains a column by a researcher at the National Institute for Defense Studies (NIDS) about the power of deterrence. Another section dwells in details Japan’s “right to strike (an enemy) base”. This was earlier endorsed by amendments of three security-related documents, all of which are designed to serve as a deterrent and thereby prevent invasions. The cover of the White Paper with an image of a sword being forged is symbolic of this deterrence strategy.

Need for self-assessment and introspection

It is one thing that the White Paper highlighted issues that are matter of concern for the country and prescribed strategies to mitigate those deficiencies. But there are some loopholes in the system that could inhibit implementation of those strategies. This is because Japan’s Defense Ministry has seen some unpleasant developments in recent times reflecting insufficient governance of the organisation that could prevent result-oriented outcome. This refers to a series of scandals involving the Defense Ministry and the SDF in past months.

The White Paper appropriately therefore stressed the importance of information on security including specially designed state secrets, while also calling for “the creation of working environments in which harassment is not tolerated”. For example, on 12 July the day the White Paper was released, 218 personnel were disciplined over matters such as “power harassment” top-down bullying, improper state secret handling and fraudulently receiving allowances for deep water diving. The alleged gift-giving by staff of Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd to members of the Maritime Self Defense Staff (MSDF) also surfaced, further sullying the image of the Defense Ministry.

Japan’s Defense Ministry is also facing a personnel crunch and the ministry has seen a human resource deficiency in recent times. There are several reasons for this sad state of affairs. The number of new reserves hired is not up to the optimum level and those hired on a term-limited basis is still worse. The reason for this downward trend in the number of applicants is because of the spate of scandals which has dented the enthusiasm of the aspirants willing to join for the defence of the nation.         

Japan-China Defense Cooperation

Despite the apprehensions of Beijing’s suspected military design, Japan has not abjured the option of not cooperating with China on defence issue. A bilateral defense hotline was inaugurated between the two defense authorities on 31 March 2023. Also the Maritime and Aerial Communication Mechanism between the Japan-China Defense Authorities, which included the hotline, aims to foster trust between the Japanese and Chinese authorities as well as to avoid contingencies. (5)

Also, then Defense Minister of Japan Yasukazu Hamada (replaced by current Minoru Kihara on 13 September 2023) and then Chinese State Councillor and Minister of Defense Li Shangfu visiting Singapore for the 20th IISS Asian Security Summit (Shangri La Dialogue) met on 3 June 2023 on the sidelines of the international conference. (6) Hamada expressed Japan’s serious concerns about the situation in the East China Sea, including the Senkaku Islands and the situation in the South China Sea. He also expressed Japan’s grave concerns about China and Russia continuing their joint military activities around Japan. The importance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait as well as North Korea’s relentless surge in ballistic missile development with greater sophistication also figured in their discussion. Besides this, the exchanges between SDF and Chinese army field officers, sponsored by a Japanese think tank which was suspended for four years, is now resumed. 

Notwithstanding the above initiatives keeping the dialogue channel open, Japan cannot afford to loosen its deterrence channel as the communications with China still remain inadequate on multiple levels. The Asahi Shimbun editorial therefore appropriately cautioned that “in order to avert an accidental clash or escalation of tensions from a misunderstanding, the Foreign Ministry and the entire Japanese government must be on board, not just the Defense Ministry and the SDF”. (7)

The Kishida administration is also committed to substantially hike Japan’s defense expenditure by breaking the self-imposed threshold of not exceeding 2 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and aiming to match the standard adopted by the NATO countries. This dramatic departure has raised the heckles in China and South Korea, both of which continue to view Japan’s rising defense posture suspiciously because of their experiences during the World War II. 

The government has planned to increase the defense budget to 43 trillion yen (about $273 billion) over the five-year period starting in fiscal 2023. But in the 6-trillion-yen ($38 billion) budget just for fiscal 2023, about 130 billion yen ($825 million) is expected to go unspent. This trend could be problematic for the government as securing an increased budget without getting the system in order could be subject to criticism as flaws in the system. The strain of securing an increased budget without getting the system in order may already be starting to show. The government could be losing people’s support for its intended plans for strengthening the defence preparedness. The Kishida government needs to introspect and revitalise the organisational culture of the country’s defense forces in order to arrest the plummeting confidence of the public regain in the defense preparedness plans.

Talks of “extended deterrence”

Because of South Korea’s vulnerability stemming from the continuous threats from the neighbouring nuclear-armed North Korea, talks are gathering steam within South Korea to revisit its nuclear option. In order to arrest this trend, the US has time and again assured Seoul of providing ‘extended deterrence’. As another East Asian ally and as reiterating assurance for protection, the US for the first time prepared to talk on bilateral security issues that would cover “extended deterrence’.

The top diplomats and defense chiefs in their high-level “two-plus-two” talks in Tokyo on 28 July 2024 involving Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa and Defense Minister Minoru Kihara and their US counterparts, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, grappled with the nuclear issue sensitive in Japan and not previously discussed in any bilateral talks. This was the first ministerial-level talks on the US extended deterrence to defend Japan. It was the first “two-plus-two” talks between the two countries in 18 months.

During the meeting, Kamikawa apprised her counterpart about the harsh security climate around Japan and therefore stressed the need to strengthen the US extended deterrence. In a related development, South Korea’s Defense Minister Shin Won-sik visited Japan at the same time to hold talks with his Japanese and US counterparts. In addition, Japan, the US, Australia and India as members of the Quad held a foreign ministerial meeting in Tokyo on 29 July 2024 in which the maritime issue because of China’s increasing footprint in South China Sea was extensively discussed. 

One needs to remember that Japan is the only country to have been attacked with nuclear weapons and the strong anti-nuclear sentiment in the country stems from that unpleasant experience. The talks therefore covered the issue of ‘extended deterrence’ as a means of US reassurance to Japan’s security. The US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific Affairs Daniel Kritenbrink clarified that this was for the first time the issue was discussed at the ministerial level “to further strengthen U.S. extended deterrence bolstered by Japan’s defense capabilities.” 

What does the ‘extended deterrence’ mean? This means the US commitment to using its military capabilities, including nuclear weapons, to protect its ally and deter attacks. (8) South Korea already enjoys this and now Japan is likely to have the same cover. An inaugural joint document was agreed to be issued by the end of 2024. It aims to bolster deterrence by clearly articulating the US’ unwavering commitment to defending Japan amid growing nuclear threats from China, North Korea and Russia. 

Though the details are not yet released, the document is expected to provide direction on what situations Japan should face in order for the US to retaliate, including with nuclear weapons. As it transpires, more new areas of cooperation and collaboration between Japan and the US in the defence sector including industrial collaboration following Tokyo’s revision of strict defense export guidelines in March 2024 are likely in the near future. Both are also likely to partner to repair US warships and aircraft in Japan and jointly develop and produce advanced weapons. Japan is therefore likely to assume a more robust defense posture with the US cooperation to cope with the emerging security challenges emanating from China, North Korea and Russia.

Endnotes:

1.  “The Defense of Japan, 2024”, https://www.mod.go.jp/j/press/wp/wp2024/pdf/DOJ2024_Digest_EN.pdf 
2.  Jesse Johnson, “Japan’s new defense white paper delivers strongest words yet on Taiwan”, The Japan Times, 12 July 2024, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2024/07/12/japan/politics/japan-defense-white-paper/
3.  Takahashi Kosuke, “Japan’s Defense White Paper Sounds Alarm Over China, North Korea, Russia”, The Diplomat, 12 July 2024, https://thediplomat.com/2024/07/japans-defense-white-paper-sounds-alarm-over-china-north-korea-russia/ 
4.  “Annual defense white paper calls for increased deterrence”, The Asahi Shimbun, editorial, July 17, 2024, https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/15349207 
5.  “Establishment of the Hotline Between Japan-China Defense Authorities”, Ministry of Defense, 31 March 2023, https://www.mod.go.jp/en/article/2023/03/dd1ddd1e633fe6b16f982cf5fd6762ec152934e7.html  
6.  “Japan-China Defense Ministerial Meeting”, Ministry of Defense, 3 June 2023, https://www.mod.go.jp/en/article/2023/06/dcd0524b778a51103cc052b755aaf6395015a132.html  
7.  “Annual defense white paper calls for increased deterrence”, n. 3. 
8.  Jesse Johnson, “U.S.-Japan security talks to cover ‘extended deterrence’ for first time”, The Japan Times, 23 July 2023, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2024/07/23/japan/politics/japan-us-two-plus-two-meeting-preview/?utm_source=pianodnu&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=72&tpcc=dnu&p 

Dr. Rajaram Panda

Dr. Rajaram Panda, Former Senior Fellow at Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, a think tank under the Ministry of Culture, Government of India, Former ICCR India Chair Professor, Reitaku University, Japan, and former Senior Fellow, IDSA, New Delhi E-mail: rajaram.panda@gmail.com

7. US arrests a former Green Beret over the failed 2020 raid into Venezuela to remove MaduroUS arrests a former Green Beret over the failed 2020 raid into Venezuela to remove Maduro

US arrests a former Green Beret over the failed 2020 raid into Venezuela to remove Maduro

BY JOSHUA GOODMAN, JIM MUSTIAN AND ERIC TUCKER

Updated 8:56 PM EDT, July 31, 2024

Share

AP · by JOSHUA GOODMAN · July 31, 2024

JOSHUA GOODMAN

Goodman is a Miami-based investigative reporter who writes about the intersection of crime, corruption, drug trafficking and politics in Latin America. He previously spent two decades reporting from South America.

twittermailto

JIM MUSTIAN

Mustian is an Associated Press investigative reporter for breaking news.

twittermailto

ERIC TUCKER

Tucker covers national security in Washington for The Associated Press, with a focus on the FBI and Justice Department and the special counsel cases against former President Donald Trump.

twittermailto

AP · by JOSHUA GOODMAN · July 31, 2024

8.  Ukrainian HUR Special Forces Deliver Devastating Strike on Russian Base in Syria

Videos at the link: https://www.kyivpost.com/post/36646

Ukrainian HUR Special Forces Deliver Devastating Strike on Russian Base in Syria

kyivpost.com · by Kateryna Zakharchenko · July 31, 2024

• Exclusive footage from Kyiv Post sources shows HUR special forces carrying out a complex strike on a Russian airbase in Syria, destroying military equipment a day after the Putin-Assad meeting.

by Kateryna Zakharchenko | July 31, 2024, 10:40 am

Kyiv Post has obtained several exclusive videos and photos showing the continuation of a special operation by the Main Intelligence Directorate (HUR) units to degrade Russian military assets in Syria.

According to Kyiv Post sources within the intelligence agency, the Khimik group carried out another complex strike against the positions of the Russian forces in Syria at the end of July 2024.

The target of the attack was Russian military equipment at the Kuweires airbase, which is located east of Aleppo and occupied by Russian forces.

The released videos purports to show key moments of the attack: first, a Russian mobile EW complex is destroyed, followed by drones attacking Russian military objects at the airbase itself. The strike was reportedly carried out the day after a meeting in the Kremlin between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Wednesday, July 24.

The Kuweires airbase has been controlled and used by the Russians for military purposes since 2015.

Ukrainian intelligence tells Kyiv Post that the base was also used for training and transporting foreign mercenaries to the war in Ukraine.

Photo provided by Kyiv Post from sources

In early June, Kyiv Post also published exclusive footage of Ukrainian special forces attacking enemy checkpoints, strongholds, foot patrols, and columns of military equipment in the Golan Heights in Syria.

Other Topics of Interest

Escalating Russian Tactical Nuclear Drills Now Include Forces Involved in Ukraine War

Russia’s defense ministry said the third stage of its drills involves training on the Iskander-M missile systems as well as various types of aircraft.

According to Kyiv Post’s HUR source, since the beginning of the year, insurgents with the support of Ukrainian fighters have delivered numerous strikes against Russian military facilities under the control of the so-called Russian Armed Forces Group in the Syrian Arab Republic.

Photo provided by Kyiv Post from sources

Photo provided by Kyiv Post from sources

What are Ukrainian special forces doing in Syria?

Russia’s intervention in Syria in 2015, initially aimed at supporting President Assad’s regime during the civil war, led to the permanent deployment of thousands of Russian troops there.

In the fall of last year, Moscow transferred some troops and equipment from Syria to the battlefield in Ukraine, potentially making their forces in Syria more vulnerable to Ukrainian attacks in the region.

Due to their prolonged presence in the region, the Russians have created numerous recruitment centers to enlist Syrian mercenaries for the war in Ukraine.

Mercenary recruitment is overseen by the Center for the Reconciliation of Opposing Sides and Refugee Movement Management at the Hmeimim airbase, occupied by Russia.

There, mercenaries are issued Russian passports and then incorporated into the Russian Armed Forces.

In May 2023, HUR chief Lt. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov promised to “destroy Russian war criminals anywhere in the world they may be.”

In addition to Syria, Ukrainian HUR special forces continue hunting for pro-Kremlin Wagner mercenaries in Sudan and other parts of the African continent.

On Monday, July 29, Kyiv Post received a unique photo of Malian Tuareg rebels posing with the Ukrainian flag, showing their support for Ukraine.

In February, Kyiv Post acquired exclusive footage allegedly showing Ukrainian special forces interrogating captured Wagner Group mercenaries in the Republic of Sudan. In the video, the prisoners confess that their mission was to get to Sudan and overthrow the government there.

In January, Kyiv Post published an exclusive video allegedly showing Ukrainian drones destroying “Russian mercenaries” and their “local terrorist partners” in Sudan.

And last November, it got an exclusive video allegedly showing Ukrainian special forces performing “cleaning up” operations of Wagner fighters in Sudan.

Kateryna Zakharchenko

Born and lives in Kyiv. A journalist for Kyiv Post. Writes exclusive articles and interviews.

kyivpost.com · by Kateryna Zakharchenko · July 31, 2024

9. The retaliation to the killing of Haniyeh will be far greater than 300 missiles

The retaliation to the killing of Haniyeh will be far greater than 300 missiles

Tzvi Gottlieb

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-retaliation-to-the-killing-of-haniyeh-will-be-far-greater-than-300-missiles/

JUL 31, 2024, 2:13 PM

The recent assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran marks a significant escalation in the ongoing conflict between Israel and its adversaries. While the killing of Mohammad Reza Zahedi in Damascus earlier this year prompted a retaliatory strike of 300 missiles from Iran, that were dealt with by a coalition of the US, Israel, UK, France and Jordan, the implications of Haniyeh’s assassination are far more severe and potentially explosive.

The gravity of this situation stems from the profound importance of hospitality in Islamic culture. In the Muslim world, protecting a guest is not merely a courtesy but a sacred duty. By targeting Haniyeh, a high-ranking Hamas leader, while he was under the protection of the Iranian government, in Muslim eyes, Israel has done the unspeakable.

This act goes beyond a mere tactical strike; it’s a direct challenge to Iran’s honor and its ability to safeguard its allies. The Iranian regime now faces immense pressure to respond forcefully, not just to avenge Haniyeh but to restore its credibility as a protector of the “Axis of Resistance” against Israel.

The timing and location of this assassination suggest either a deliberate attempt to provoke a major conflict or utter stupidity and blindness of Israeli decision makers. 

It’s hard to believe that the United States would have sanctioned such a provocative action, especially given the proximity to its upcoming elections. An all-out war in the Middle East would have severe repercussions for global stability and the U.S. economy, most probably influencing the electoral outcome.

This assassination also assassinated the slim chance we had to cut a deal to release the Israeli hostages. This strengthens the thought that the U.S. approved such an act that will endanger its citizens being held by Hamas in Gaza. 

It is gut wrenching to think that our hostages are in even greater danger now and might be killed by Hamas in retaliation to the latest assassination. 

The international community must now brace for the fallout. Iran’s response is likely to be severe and could extend beyond its usual proxies. We may see direct action from Iran itself, potentially drawing in other regional powers and escalating the conflict to unprecedented levels.

As we stand on the brink of a potential regional conflagration, it is crucial for cooler heads to prevail. Diplomatic channels must be urgently activated to prevent further escalation. The international community, particularly those nations with influence in the region, must step in to mediate and de-escalate tensions.

This assassination may have been intended as a strategic move, but its consequences could prove catastrophic. Unfortunately, Israel and Iran are led by pyromaniacs while the people of both nations, the region and the world are hostages of this insanity.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Attorney, former communications director for the Israeli government, lobbyist, strategy, former reporter for Galei Tzahal and Haaretz, former Shaliach to the US, CEO of The Israeli TV & Film Producers Association, Campaign manager for several parties and incumbents. Led several social causes, organizations, causes and unions. Life-long volunteer and student.

10. The Houthis’ Dream Come True

The Houthis’ Dream Come True

They have wanted a war with Israel for decades.

By Robert F. Worth

The Atlantic · by Robert F. Worth · July 31, 2024

The Houthi militia, born in the wilds of northwestern Yemen, has been wanting a war with Israel for decades. Its distinctive five-line motto, printed on flags and chanted at rallies by the group’s faithful, includes the lines “Death to Israel” and “Curses on the Jews.”

The Houthis got their wish on July 19, when one of their drones struck a high-rise in Tel Aviv, killing one man and wounding four others. The blast signaled a troubling new reality: Already embattled with Hamas in the south and Hezbollah in the north, Israel is now fighting yet another Islamist group, one that has succeeded—however modestly—in penetrating its fabled air defenses.

The Houthis are not a threat just to Israel, which promptly retaliated with air strikes on a Houthi-controlled Red Sea port. They have grown steadily more dangerous and volatile in recent months. They have maintained and even stepped up their attacks against commercial shipping in the Red Sea—ostensibly in support of Gaza—despite a large-scale U.S.-military effort to stop them. In a dramatic video that surfaced on July 20, Ukrainian guards on the deck of a container ship in the Red Sea fired at an unmanned “suicide boat” streaming toward them, until it exploded in a ball of fire. The top U.S. commander in the Middle East recently issued an alarming report saying that the military effort to constrain the Houthis is failing and must be expanded.

The group, which seized the capital city of Sana’a a decade ago, has also made warlike gestures closer to home, arresting scores of people who work for the United Nations and other organizations in Yemen in recent weeks, and opening violent skirmishes with rivals in the country’s south. In mid-July, it got Saudi Arabia to make a humiliating retreat in a financial-sanctions dispute by threatening to attack it.

All of this has set back long-standing efforts to reach a regional peace deal between the Houthis and their neighbors, according to Tim Lenderking, the U.S. special envoy for Yemen. “Pressure is building to designate the Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization,” Lenderking told me. The U.S. government currently categorizes the Houthis at a lower level of terrorist activity; designating them as a foreign terrorist organization, as the Trump administration did, would have serious consequences for them, including heavier sanctions.

The Gaza war has been a great boon to the Houthis, who had been facing some domestic resistance before it broke out. The Houthis’ staunch public support for Gaza has helped them recruit new soldiers at home and maintain their immense popularity across the Arab world. That popularity has translated into much-needed financial contributions (though not nearly enough to meet the needs of the Yemeni people).

The Houthis’ rise to power has been so swift that it is still baffling, even to Yemenis. Twenty years ago, they were an obscure rebel group in Yemen’s remote northwest, fueled by feelings of historic entitlement and oppression. They took advantage of their enemies’ corruption and ineptitude and cannily allied with Iran, which has provided essential weapons and military training.

Read: The Houthis are very, very pleased

But the group’s power is partly a measure of its neighbors’ extreme vulnerability. One successful missile strike on a Dubai hotel or a Riyadh conference center is a devastating reputational blow, worth billions of dollars in lost business and tourist revenue. The Houthis have no such worries; they are accustomed to being bombed, and revel in martyrdom. They are also used to living in caves.

Only a few months ago, United Nations negotiators were voicing guarded optimism that if the Gaza war wound down, they could finalize a deal to end the conflict between the Houthis and their Saudi neighbors, which started in 2015. (The fighting has mostly been on hold since the parties reached a truce two years ago.)

That diplomatic effort, known as the “road map,” would provide incentives for the Houthis to find a modus vivendi with their rivals in southern Yemen, where the officially recognized (but very weak) Yemeni government is based. The road map would also provide money to help ease the suffering of the Yemeni people, who are heavily dependent on dwindling supplies of food aid from abroad.

But the road map threatened to reward the Houthis with legitimacy and large new revenue streams at the very moment when they were effectively blocking the waterway that carries 15 percent of the world’s trade. Maritime traffic through the Red Sea has dropped by almost 80 percent since the Houthis began attacking ships last November, and that was before they struck Tel Aviv on July 19, prompting the Israelis to bomb the city of Hodeida, on the Red Sea coast. Traffic has fallen further since.

The Houthis also appear to be evading international efforts to stop them from importing weapons. The British ambassador to the United Nations said in May that there has been a surge since October in vessels entering Houthi ports without submitting to required inspections. They’ve been using ever more sophisticated weapons since they started attacking ships in the Red Sea last year, and the situation could get worse. American intelligence officials have warned that Russia may arm the Houthis with advanced anti-ship missiles, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal, in retaliation for Ukraine strikes, using American weapons, on targets inside Russia.

With the road map on hold, Yemen’s internationally recognized government, based in the southern port city of Aden, began making efforts in recent months to weaken the Houthis by cutting off their access to the international banking system. But the Aden-based government has no money and is utterly dependent on the Saudis. In July, the Houthis threatened to attack the Saudis if they did not put an end to the financial sanctions, and the Saudis quickly caved. The pattern has repeated itself again and again in recent years.

The Houthis have also been reorganizing the government they inherited when they took control of northern Yemen a decade ago, often in ways that suggest warlike intent. They have created a “general mobilization” force that appears to be modeled on the Basij, Iran’s youth paramilitary force, I was told by Mohammed Albasha, an analyst with Navanti, an international research and security company. “They are all trained to fight both domestic and foreign enemies, and to conduct surveillance—even on their neighbors, tribes, and friends,” he said.

Where all this militancy will end is anyone’s guess. The Houthi leaders are isolated and inscrutable. One thing is beyond doubt: Their successful drone strike on Israel was a dream come true, and they seem reluctant to trade their militancy for desperately needed money. Their leader, Abdelmalik al Houthi, declared in a speech last week: “We have been very happy” to be involved directly in a war with Israel and the United States.

The Atlantic · by Robert F. Worth · July 31, 2024

11. Pentagon report shows what military jobs have highest suicide rates

The infantry is still one of the toughest jobs.

Kipling's poem still applies:

.(Conclusion)

You talk o' better food for us, an' schools, an' fires, an' all: 

We'll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational. 

Don't mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face

The Widow's Uniform is not the soldier-man's disgrace. 

For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' Chuck him out, the brute!"

But it's "Saviour of 'is country" when the guns begin to shoot; 

An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please; 

An' Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool - you bet that Tommy sees!

And Jagger and Richards paid respect to them:

Say a prayer for the common foot soldier

Spare a thought for his back breaking work

Say a prayer for his wife and his children

Who burn the fires and who still till the earth

Pentagon report shows what military jobs have highest suicide rates

Defense News · by Jonathan Lehrfeld · July 31, 2024

Editor’s note: This report contains discussion of suicide. Troops, veterans and family members experiencing suicidal thoughts can call the 24-hour Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988 and dial 1, text 838255 or visit VeteransCrisisLine.net.

The military jobs performed by troops who were found to be most at risk of suicide include infantry, ordnance disposal and diving, combat engineering, medical care and those for technical specialists “not elsewhere classified,” according to a Department of Defense study finalized this month and shared with Military Times.

The report studied rates of suicide in the armed forces between 2011 and 2022 by military occupational specialty and identified trends to help the Pentagon address suicide risk among certain jobs.

As the challenge of reducing suicide across the military community continues, lawmakers are hoping the report can facilitate constructive action.

“These key findings show trends that will guide the DOD in its efforts to curb suicide rates and hopefully save lives,” Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement shared Tuesday with Military Times.

King helped facilitate the provision into law that required DOD to study the issue. Along with others in Congress, he called on the Pentagon to provide the report so that policies addressing suicide risks across the armed forces may be created, Army Times previously reported.

The newly released report uses data on suicide deaths beginning in calendar year 2011. Prior to that, the Pentagon was unable to provide reliable information because of a lack of a standardized reporting methodology.

It identified 5,997 service members who died by suicide, a number that included 3,665 active duty, 930 Reserve and 1,402 National Guard troops.

Enlisted service members with the occupation code 101 (infantry) were found to have higher suicide mortality rates than those from 21 other occupation codes. That was followed by service members with the job codes 143 (ordnance disposal and diving), 103 (combat engineering), 130 (medical care) and 149 (technical specialists “not elsewhere classified”).

Additionally, 14 occupation codes had evidence of a higher suicide mortality rate as compared to the civilian U.S. adult population. Of those, the three with the highest adjusted rates were occupation codes 101 (infantry), 102 (armor and amphibious) and 103 (combat engineering). U.S. population suicide data for those comparisons was available through 2021 at the time the report was authored.

Meanwhile, enlisted troops in occupation code 195 (not occupationally qualified) and 191 (officer candidates and students) had a lower suicide rate than 38 other occupation codes, followed by service members with the occupation codes 153 (data processing) and 115 (ADP computers).

Comparisons across services

Army: Soldiers in certain occupation codes (infantry, combat engineering, and armament and munitions) showed strong evidence of higher suicide mortality rates than the rate for the total enlisted Army population, while soldiers in other occupation codes (data processing, other functional support, and officer candidates and students) had strong evidence of lower rates.

Only the Army had occupation codes with enough data to make a comparison to the total Army officer suicide rate. Occupation codes 2203 (helicopter pilots) and 2205 (ground and naval arms) had suicide rates consistent with the total officer Army rate.

Additionally, Army Times previously reported that Army tank brigades experienced a suicide rate twice as high as the rest of the active duty force between 2019 and 2021.

Navy: Only sailors in occupation code 183 (law enforcement) had strong evidence of a higher suicide mortality rate than the total enlisted Navy rate.

Marine Corps: Marines in the occupation code 101 (infantry) had a higher suicide rate than the total enlisted Marine Corps rate, while Marines in the occupation code 195 (not occupationally qualified) had a lower rate.

Air Force: All occupation codes had suicide mortality rates consistent with the total enlisted Air Force rate, except for those in the occupation code 195 (not occupationally qualified), which had a lower rate.

Coast Guard: During the time reviewed, the Coast Guard experienced relatively low suicide death counts per year, ranging from 4 to 14 total events annually, making a comparative analysis difficult. Additionally, the Coast Guard does not currently collect data on a member’s occupation at the time of death, limiting the ability to incorporate Coast Guard suicide and occupational data into the report, the study noted.

Space Force: Established in 2019, the Space Force was excluded from the analysis since there were no deaths by suicide in the service between 2019 and 2022.

About Jonathan Lehrfeld

Jonathan is a staff writer and editor of the Early Bird Brief newsletter for Military Times. Follow him on Twitter @lehrfeld_media

12. The Big Five - 1 August edition by Mick Ryan

A useful roll-up.

The Big Five

The Big Five - 1 August edition

My weekly update on conflict and confrontation in Ukraine, the Middle East and the Pacific, accompanied by recommended readings on the character of modern war and planning for future conflict.

https://mickryan.substack.com/p/the-big-five-1-august-edition?utm

Mick Ryan

Aug 01, 2024

This week’s cover image is a photo taken by Ukrainian photographer, Maryan Kushnir. Her images have provided an exceptional, if heartbreaking, visual record of the war in Ukraine and the courage of Ukraine’s soldiers and citizens. You can follow her amazing work here.

The week began with a series of Ukrainian strikes deep in Russian territory. Perhaps the most interesting one was a Ukrainian attack on a Russian airbase near Murmansk, about 1800 kilometres from Ukraine. One Russian Tu-22 bomber was allegedly damaged. The range at which the Ukrainians struck the Russians at this base is a new benchmark for deep strike operations in this war.

This week also saw a further escalation of tensions on the northern Israel border. Hezbollah attacked northern Israel with a rocket attack which killed multiple people including children at a soccer match in the Israel-controlled Golan Heights on July 27.. In response, Israel conducted a strike operation in Beirut which reportedly killed a senior Hezbollah military commander. The IDF Air Force targeted the Hamas commander, Fuad Shukr, in response to the Hezbollah rocket attack.

Cross border attacks have significantly increased since the 7 October 2023 Hamas attacks on souther Israel. These northern area attacks are tracked by multiple organisations. One of the better maps is maintained by The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. It’s latest map of cumulative cross border attacks since 7 october 2023 is below.

Source: The Washington Institute for Near East Policy

The trends in this northern border confrontation at the moment are all bad.

Mid week also saw the killing of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh at his residence in Tehran. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has subsequently been quoted that Iran sees it as its duty to avenge the killing of Haniyeh because he was killed on Iranian soil. 

After the 7 October Hamas massacres in southern Israel, the lsraeli government vowed to hunt down all of those responsible for 7 October. The Israeli’s killed the deputy head of Hamas in Beirut in January, and this latest strike against Hamas leadership is likely to part of Israel making good on its promise. It is also a none-too-subtle reminder to Iranian leaders that they too are ‘gettable’ should they engage in any further direct hostilities against Israel.

Where is all this leading? Nowhere good. I have seen some reports that Iran is planning a larger strike on Israel than its failed attempt earlier this year. If so, it would probably be supported by Hezbollah and Hamas in an attempt to saturate the Israeli air defence network. If, and this is a big if, they achieved this and caused significant casualties in Israel, we might actually be leaping over the precipice of a major conflagration in the Middle East.

Emotions are high at the moment. As Samuel Zilincik wrote in a 2022 article in the Texas National Security Review, “emotions shape the choices that strategists make about the employment of military power. At the most fundamental level, emotions enable strategic choices by drawing strategists’ attention toward what matters to them in any given moment.” The question over the coming days is whether decision-makers in Tehran and Israel can use their emotions to avoid a war rather than pursue one.

Back to Ukraine, the Russians continue to make small gains on the ground while continuing to suffer significant casualties. They are also losing significant quantities of armoured vehicles, and at some point in the coming year or so, their massive reserves that were built up over decades during the Cold War will run dry. There have been many different stories on this topic over the last few months, with one of the better examinations being conduced by The Economist.

The bigger issue however is this: how long can Russia continue its current large-scale offensive which has multiple axes of advance in the north-east, east and southern regions of Ukraine? At some point, the Russians will culminate. But that point is likely to be a month or two away given Russian reserves and the likelihood that Putin is driving the military very hard to seize as much ground before the elections in the U.S. in November. He will be keen to be in an advantageous position if there is a ceasefire (which is by no means assured) and he will also want to portray to U.S. voters that a Russian victory is inevitable (which is not).

Earlier this week also saw one of the largest single drone raids on Ukraine with 89 Shahed drones being launched at targets including Kyiv. It appears nearly all were shot down. However, it shows that Putin is throwing everything at the Ukrainian people in the lead up the U.S. presidential election and the coming winter. President Zelenskyy noted after the attack that:

Ukrainians can fully protect their skies from Russian strikes when they have sufficient supplies…The same level of defense is needed against Russian missiles and the occupier’s combat aircraft.

Source: Ukrainian armed forces

One issue related to drones that I have been tracking closely has been the growing numbers of uncrewed ground vehicles (UGVs) that are being deployed by both sides. There are many reasons these systems are seen as attractive by both sides. This includes sending robots on missions where humans are more likely to become casualties (reconnaissance, mine clearance), to provide lower signature vehicles for sensitive missions (EW, mine detection, surveillance), and to supplement people in units where there are shortfalls in the numbers of people.

Image: @DefenceU on Twitter / X

As a recent social media post by the Ukrainian military noted:

Reconnaissance drones, remote-controlled machine guns, sapper robots, and ground logistics drones in service with UAarmy. These are our weapons of victory that will preserve the lives of our defenders.

Just as we have witnessed an explosion in the use of aerial and maritime uncrewed systems in the past two years, technological developments and shortfalls in personnel are likely to drive a massive increase in the use of UGVs by both sides this year and into 2025.

Indeed, I think that UGVs offer some capabilities that if used cleverly, might allow ground forces to return to the conduct of offensive operations at a manageable cost. I have written on this issue in the past, as well as on the developments in UGVs, and will do so again in the near future.

Late this week, images emerged which reportedly show the first Ukrainian F16 flying over Lviv. I have no particularly strong views on this aircraft other than: 1. It is probably an upgrade on the current Ukrainian fighter fleet; 2. They are coming too slow and in too-small quantities but this is a training issue as well as an airframe availability thing; and, 3. They will contribute but not be a silver bullet in the war. The War Zone has some useful coverage of this issue.

Finally, continuing on the issue of aircraft, this week saw the continuation of Exercise Pitch Black in northern Australia. This is the Royal Australian Air Force’s largest annual exercise and includes air forces from across the region and around the world. This year, for the first time, USAF F-22 fighters participated as did Italian Navy’s aircraft carrier ITS Cavour.

Image: Royal Australian Air Force

All up, 140 aircraft, around 4,400 personnel and 20 different nations are participating in this year’s exercise. As I finish writing this update, I am in Darwin and have seen a nice selection of fighter aircraft from different nations flying overhead.

This week, I also published two other articles here. The first explored the Ukrainian long-range strike of the past week, the broader development of this capability and the challenges the Ukrainians might face with strike operations in 2024 and into 2025. I also provided an update on the release of my new book, The War for Ukraine, which occurs on 13 August.

So, to this week’s readings….

The recommended articles include an interesting piece on group think from Sir Lawrence Freedman, a study on different options that China might consider to coerce Taiwan into becoming a part of the PRC, recruiting in military organisations and the trajectory of the war in Ukraine. As always, if you only have time to read a single article, the first one is my pick of the week.

Happy reading!

1. The Perils of Groupthink

Many of us have experienced situations where the teams or organisations we were members of made bad decisions because key assumptions were not sufficiently challenged, or challenged at all. In this article, Sir Lawrence Freedman explores the concept of groupthink. His article makes many great points, including this one: “The starting point for groupthink about scenarios for a future crisis tends to the supposed ‘lessons’ derived from the last one. The assumption the past is always be a reliable guide to the future is the first that should be challenged.” You can read the full article here.

2. On China and Taiwan

Recently, U.S. scholars Hal Brands and Jude Blanchette assembled a series of papers that explored how China might think about a takeover of Taiwan, short of a full scale military invasion. The resulting papers cover a range of different scenarios that included subversion, enhanced coercion and other measures short of war. Brands and Blanchette write in their introduction that “the more successful Washington and its friends are in deterring the “D-Day” scenario, the more Beijing may be incentivized to focus on lower-intensity, or less obvious, forms of aggression instead.” This is a worthy collection of articles, and can be read here.

3. The Return of Conscription

During the Cold War, conscription or national service was an unremarkable and normal element of many democratic nations’ security strategies. At the end of the Cold War, many of these systems were reduced in scope or dropped altogether. However, now that it is finally dawning on politicians that post-Cold War solutions will not meet the challenge of more aggressive and large authoritarian nations, the concept of conscripting people to serve their nation is one again being considered in many democracies. This commentary from RAND provides some useful insights on the issue as debate continues. You can read the piece here.

4. The Trajectory of the War in Ukraine

The team at Frontelligence Insight are one of the foremost analytical groups that watch and assess different aspects of the Russo-Ukraine War. In this piece, they provide a very useful assessment of the current status of the war, and challenges that both sides are likely to face between now and the end of 2024. A highly recommended read for anyone who is interested in the war, you can read the full assessment here.

5. Russia’s War Industry

One of the very important issues that has been re-highlighted by the war in Ukraine is the industrial capacity of nations to support sustained combat in a long war. This is hardly a new lesson; since the beginning of the First Industrial Revolution, industrial capacity has been a key determinant in the outcome of wars. In this article from The Jamestown Foundation, the author explores Russian industrial output to support its war against Ukraine. You can read the full article here.

13. U.S. Looks for Ways to Revive Gaza Cease-Fire Talks

U.S. Looks for Ways to Revive Gaza Cease-Fire Talks

The killing of Ismail Haniyeh, one of the key negotiators, has dimmed hopes for freeing hostages held by Hamas

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/u-s-looks-for-ways-to-revive-gaza-cease-fire-talks-38bbb265?mod=latest_headlines

By Lara Seligman

Follow

Updated Aug. 1, 2024 12:02 am ET

Protesters in Sidon, Lebanon, hold a photo of the late Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. Photo: alkis konstantinidis/Reuters

WASHINGTON—The Biden administration is scrambling to salvage prospects for a Gaza cease-fire after the political leader of Hamas was killed in a strike in Tehran, dealing a potentially fatal blow to the talks and leaving officials worried that Israel may now face major retaliatory attacks on two fronts. 

On Tuesday, Israel said it was responsible for an airstrike in southern Beirut that killed a senior leader of Lebanon-based Hezbollah. Hours later, Ismail Haniyeh, one of the key negotiators in the long-stalled cease-fire talks, was dead in a mysterious strike in Iran’s capital.

Israel hasn’t claimed responsibility for the strike on Haniyeh, but Hamas and Iran blamed the attack on Israel.

While U.S. officials said they expected the Beirut attack, the Tehran strike caught Washington off guard and almost immediately darkened the already remote prospects for a U.S.-brokered Gaza cease-fire. Even more alarming to the U.S., the killings threatened to unleash new and more severe reprisals against Israel and potentially American forces in the region by Iran and its proxies.

Iran Holds Funeral for Hamas Chief Ismail Haniyeh

Iran Holds Funeral for Hamas Chief Ismail Haniyeh

Play video: Iran Holds Funeral for Hamas Chief Ismail Haniyeh

Large crowds attended the funeral procession of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, a day after he was killed in a targeted strike in the Iranian capital. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/Reuters

Securing a cease-fire “was always complicated. It remains complicated,” said National Security Council spokesman John Kirby.

“We don’t believe escalation is inevitable,” he added.

U.S. officials acknowledge that Haniyeh’s killing makes securing a cease-fire more difficult but insist the talks aren’t dead. Following the strike in Tehran on Wednesday, senior administration officials were already engaged in negotiations with Israeli, Qatari, Iraqi and Saudi officials, among others, to try to salvage a deal, a U.S. official said.

Biden hasn’t personally made any calls to his regional counterparts, as he did in April after Iran launched drones and missiles against Israel in retaliation for an airstrike in Syria that killed an Iranian general, the U.S. official said, but the president has been “very engaged with his team on it.”

In the wake of the Tehran attack, Secretary of State Antony Blinken asked Qatari officials to send messages to Iran, Hezbollah and others in the region to de-escalate the tensions, and the Qataris agreed, according to another official familiar with the discussions. Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani told Blinken that his country remains committed to a deal, but expressed frustration that the Israeli strikes could jeopardize the hostage talks.

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby says reaching a cease-fire agreement remains complicated. Photo: brendan smialowski/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

“How can mediation succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on the other side?” the Qatari prime minister, a party to the negotiations, wrote in a post Wednesday on X.

It has been seven months since the last formal pause in Gaza fighting, which has killed more than 39,000 people in the enclave, according to Palestinian health authorities, who don’t say how many were combatants. U.S. and Arab mediators have worked for months to negotiate a cease-fire agreement that would help end the war, which began after the Hamas-led attacks on Oct. 7 left 1,200 dead in Israel and 250 taken hostage, according to Israel authorities. 

But Haniyeh’s death is potentially the most damaging blow yet to U.S. hopes of bringing a halt to the fighting and easing the tensions inflaming the region. It comes days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Washington, vowing to continue the war until Hamas is destroyed. Netanyahu left the White House without committing to a cease-fire.  

Months ahead of a U.S. election, an all-out war in the tumultuous region could complicate Democrats’ efforts to hold on to the White House. Vice President Kamala Harris, who has become the Democratic Party’s expected nominee, has spoken forcefully for a cease-fire.

Buildings in Beirut damaged by an Israeli strike this week that killed a senior Hezbollah leader. Photo: Marwan Naamani/Zuma Press

The U.S. has faced repeated spasms of violence that have threatened to escalate hostilities since the beginning of the Gaza war. Iranian-backed militants attacked U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria, Houthi militants have targeted international shipping in the Red Sea, and in April, Tehran launched more than 300 drones and cruise and ballistic missiles at Israel, almost all of which were shot down.

Iran, which backs both Hamas and Hezbollah, has repeatedly pulled back from an all-out confrontation with Israel and the U.S., and it is possible that, despite vowing to retaliate for the latest strikes, it will again keep its response limited.

The strike in Tehran is embarrassing to Iran’s leadership and highlights Israeli intelligence’s penetration in the country, said Joost Hiltermann of the International Crisis Group, a nonprofit based in Brussels. “But it doesn’t harm Iran’s strategic interests, and so it won’t let its regional allies go all-out,” he said.

Still, the killings in Beirut and Tehran push the wider Middle East conflict into uncharted territory. U.S. officials are particularly concerned about the prospect of Israel facing retaliatory attacks from Iran and Hezbollah. 

On Wednesday, Iranian officials vowed to respond, with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei saying Tehran would “seek revenge” for the strike in the capital. The Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military wing, said in a statement that Haniyeh’s killing “will have major repercussions across the entire region,” according to an Iranian state news agency.

Mick Mulroy, who was deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East during the Trump administration, said Hezbollah and Iran would be looking for ways to retaliate, unless efforts are made to de-escalate tensions.

“This is the closest the region has been to an all-out conflict in the last 10 months,” he said.

Jared Malsin, Gordon Lubold, Dustin Volz, and Brett Forrest contributed to this article.

Write to Lara Seligman at lara.seligman@wsj.com

​14. For Iran and Hezbollah, calibrating response to Israeli strikes leaves no room for error

Maybe they should consider negotiating in good faith to prevent future attacks. (note my attempt at sarcasm).

For Iran and Hezbollah, calibrating response to Israeli strikes leaves no room for error

By  ABBY SEWELL

Updated 4:21 AM EDT, August 1, 2024

AP · August 1, 2024

BEIRUT (AP) — Two back-to-back strikes in Beirut and Tehran, both attributed to Israel and targeting high-ranking figures in Hamas and Hezbollah, have left Hezbollah and Iran in a quandary.

Analysts agree that both strikes hit too close to home to pass without a response, and were serious security breaches for Iran and Hezbollah. Calibrating that response to restore deterrence without sparking an even more damaging escalation may be the most delicate balancing act in nearly a year of teetering on the brink of a regional war.

Tuesday’s rare strike in Beirut’s southern suburbs killed a top Hezbollah commander who Israel says was responsible for a missile strike on a soccer field in the town of Majdal Shams in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights, killing 12 children and teenagers. Hezbollah has denied responsibility for the attack.

While the target of the strike in Beirut was a military figure, it hit a densely populated urban neighborhood on the outskirts of the capital where Hezbollah has many of its offices, killing at least five civilians — three women and two children — and wounding dozens more.

Less than 12 hours later, the Palestinian militant group Hamas — a Hezbollah ally also backed by Iran — announced that the chief of its political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, had been killed in an Israeli airstrike in Tehran, where he was attending the inauguration of the new Iranian president.

Israel has neither claimed nor denied responsibility for that strike, which comes nearly 10 months into the brutal war in Gaza sparked by Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel. It also coincides with another push by mediators to close a cease-fire and hostage-exchange deal.

Haniyeh’s assassination left Iran’s new president, the reformist politician and heart surgeon Masoud Pezeshkian, facing a major crisis within hours of taking office. The decision on how to retaliate will fall to Iran’s national security council, of which the president is the chief, although in practice the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has the final say.

Analysts said both Hezbollah and Iran will feel compelled to retaliate, but their calculations differ.

Mohanad Hage Ali, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center who researches Hezbollah, said that although Israel also struck in Beirut’s southern suburbs in a January attack that killed Hamas official Saleh Arouri, Tuesday’s strike targeted a top Hezbollah commander and killed civilians.

“This time, we’re too far into the war, and a Hezbollah commander is the target. Hezbollah has to respond, and if they don’t, this would be a new rule: Killing civilians on the Israeli side would lead to targeting of” the Beirut suburbs, he said. “Hezbollah cannot afford this.”

Hezbollah began firing rockets over the Lebanon-Israel border the day after the war in Gaza began, in what it described as a “support front” for Hamas. Although the near-daily clashes have been deadly and have displaced tens of thousands in both Lebanon and Israel, they have remained mostly confined to the border region.

In order to reestablish deterrence after Tuesday’s strike, Ali said, “Hezbollah would need to respond beyond its now-limited geographical scope of operations. They need to strike deeper in Israeli territories, and this brings with it great risks.”

Andreas Krieg, a military analyst and senior lecturer in security studies at King’s College London, agreed that Hezbollah will feel the need to carry out a significant retaliatory strike.

“I think Hezbollah has been hit much harder, much more where it hurts” than Iran, he said. “In the Israeli-Hezbollah confrontation, this is a major escalation whereby Hezbollah has to respond adequately in a more or less timely fashion” to restore deterrence.

However, the militant group will probably hit a significant military target — such as an air force base near Haifa that appeared in a video of surveillance drone footage the group released in July — rather than a civilian target, he said, and will most likely try to calibrate the attack to cause only material damage to limit further escalation.

Nabih Awada, a Lebanese political and military analyst close to the Iranian-backed “axis of resistance” and a former fighter with the Lebanese Communist Party who spent a decade in Israeli prisons along with some of the current Hamas leaders, said Hezbollah saw the strike in Beirut as a “violation of all rules of engagement” because it targeted a civilian residential area and because Hezbollah commander Fouad Shukur was targeted “in his home rather than in a military headquarters.”

Hezbollah, he said, “has developed many equations,” including that the response to a strike in Beirut’s southern suburbs will be in Haifa.

For Iran, the situation is more complicated.

In some ways, the current moment mirrors the time in April when Israel and Iran risked plunging into a war after Israel hit an Iranian consular building in Damascus, killing two Iranian generals. Iran retaliated with an unprecedented direct strike on Israel. At that time, diplomatic efforts managed to contain the escalation.

But there are key differences. The assassination of Haniyeh took place on Iranian soil, embarrassing Tehran and making clear that Israel can easily hit targets there.

While some analysts believe that will be mitigated by the fact the target was not an Iranian figure, Iranian officials have vowed a harsh response.

Krieg said that while Haniyeh’s death was “damaging reputationally” for Iran and “humiliating” because it showed that Tehran was unable to protect high-profile visitors, “Haniyeh is not an integral part of the axis of resistance.”

“His death has no strategic implications for Iran other than it being a slap in the face because you’re the host and your guest was killed while you were on watch,” he said.

As such, Krieg said he believes Iran could choose to mitigate its response.

Nomi Bar-Yaacov, an associate fellow in the International Security Programme at Chatham House, said Iran might turn to its proxies to retaliate.

“They have got their people, training, arming, planning everywhere, and they can reach anywhere in the world,” she said. “They can also hit Israeli or Jewish targets globally.”

Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, said he expects Iran’s response to be another direct hit on Israel.

The strike on Haniyeh “wasn’t just on Iranian territory, it was in Tehran,” he said. “It was at the inauguration. It doesn’t matter who was targeted” and whether or not the target was Iranian.

Iranians, he said, are likely feeling that “if the demonstration of force in April managed to restore deterrence in the short run, that deterrence is now gone” and that they are “going to have do way more than what they did in April in order to be able to restore the balance of power.”

The exchange in April did not spiral because of the diplomatic intervention by the United States and others, and the Iranian strike itself appeared carefully choreographed to cause minimal damage.

Still, Parsi said, there was also “a lot of luck” that went into keeping the escalation limited.

“It’s a pivotal moment in this conflict. I don’t think we’ve been in as difficult a moment in this conflict, given that we’ve seen what Iran is capable of in April,” Bar-Yaacov said.

If the response to the strikes does not cause Israeli casualties, a wider war could still be avoided, Ali said.

But, he added, “We are in the territory of too many ‘ifs’ to avoid a war, and this doesn’t bode well.”

___

Associated Press writers Sarah El Deeb in Beirut and Danica Kirka in London contributed to this report.

AP · August 1, 2024

15. Israel has a long history of targeted killings. Here's a look at some of them

A helpful historical timeline.

Israel has a long history of targeted killings. Here's a look at some of them

By  ASSOCIATED PRESS

Updated 5:06 AM EDT, July 31, 2024

AP · July 31, 2024

JERUSALEM (AP) — A pair of strikes on militant leaders in Beirut and Tehran has escalated tensions in a region already on edge and adds to a long list of targeted killings attributed to Israel.

Hamas said Israel was behind the assassination of its supreme leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran’s capital, although there was no acknowledgement from Israel. And Israel claimed responsibility for a strike on Fouad Shukur, a top Hezbollah commander in Beirut, that the military said killed him.

Both strikes threaten to drag the region into a broader conflagration after nearly 10 months of war in Gaza.

Here is a look at previous targeted assassinations attributed to Israel over the years:

July 2024

FILE - Palestinians evacuate a body from a site hit by an Israeli bombardment on Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, on July 13, 2024. Israel said it targeted Hamas’ military commander Mohammed Deif in a massive strike Saturday. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi, File)

Israel targets Hamas’ shadowy military commander Mohammed Deif in a massive strike in the crowded southern Gaza Strip. The strike killed at least 90 people including children, according to local health officials. Deif’s fate remains unknown.

April 2024

FILE - Emergency services work at a building hit by an air strike in Damascus, Syria, on April 1, 2024. An Israeli airstrike that demolished Iran’s consulate in Damascus, killed two Iranian generals and five officers, Syrian and Iranian officials said Monday. (AP Photo/Omar Sanadiki, File)

Two Iranian generals are killed in what Iran said was an Israeli strike on Iran’s consulate in Syria. The deaths prompt Iran to launch an unprecedented attack against Israeli territory, launching 300 missiles and drones, most of which are intercepted.

January 2024

FILE - Smoke rises from a destroyed apartment as civil defense workers search for survivors following a massive explosion that killed Saleh Arouri, a top official with Hamas, in the southern Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh, on Jan. 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein, File)

An Israeli drone strike in Beirut kills Saleh Arouri, a top Hamas official in exile as Israeli troops fight the militant group in Gaza.

December 2023

Seyed Razi Mousavi, a longtime adviser of the Iranian paramilitary Revolutionary Guard in Syria, is killed in a drone attack outside of Damascus. Iran blames Israel.

2019

FILE - Palestinians chant angry slogans as they carry the body of Islamic Jihad commander, Bahaa Abu el-Atta, killed with his wife by an Israeli missile strike on their home, during his funeral in Gaza City, on Nov. 12, 2019. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra, File)

An Israeli airstrike hits the home of Bahaa Abu el-Atta, a senior Islamic Jihad commander in the Gaza Strip, killing him and his wife.

2012

Ahmad Jabari, head of Hamas’ armed wing, is killed when an airstrike targets his car. His death sparks an eight-day war between Hamas and Israel.

2010

Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a top Hamas operative, is killed in a Dubai hotel room in an operation attributed to the Mossad spy agency but never acknowledged by Israel. Many of the 26 supposed assassins were caught on camera disguised as tourists.

2008

FILE - Hezbollah deputy leader Sheik Naim Kassem, third from right, prays with other Hezbollah members over the coffin of their slain top commander Imad Mughniyeh, who was killed in a car bombing in Damascus, Syria, in Beirut southern suburbs, on Feb. 14, 2008. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla, File)

Imad Mughniyeh, Hezbollah’s military chief, is killed when a bomb planted in his car exploded in Damascus. Mughniyeh was accused of engineering suicide bombings during Lebanon’s civil war and of planning the 1985 hijacking of a TWA airliner in which a U.S. Navy diver was killed. Hezbollah blamed his killing on Israel. His son Jihad Mughniyeh was killed in an Israeli strike in 2015.

2004

FILE - Thousands of Palestinian mourners carry the coffin of Hamas spiritual leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin, left, during his funeral in Gaza City, on March 22, 2004. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra, File)

Hamas spiritual leader Ahmed Yassin is killed in an Israeli helicopter strike while being pushed in his wheelchair. Yassin, paralyzed in a childhood accident, was among the founders of Hamas in 1987. His successor, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, is killed in an Israeli airstrike less than a month later.

2002

Hamas’s second-in-command military leader Salah Shehadeh is killed by a one-ton bomb dropped on an apartment building in Gaza City.

1997

Mossad agents try to kill then-Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal in Amman, Jordan. Two agents entered Jordan using fake Canadian passports and poisoned Mashaal by placing a device near his ear. They were captured shortly afterward. Jordan’s then-King Hussein threatened to void a still-fresh peace accord if Mashaal died. Israel ultimately dispatched an antidote, and the Israeli agents were returned home. Mashaal remains a senior figure in Hamas.

1996

Yahya Ayyash, nicknamed the “engineer” for his mastery in building bombs for Hamas, is killed by answering a rigged phone in Gaza. His assassination triggered a series of deadly bus bombings in Israel.

1995

Islamic Jihad founder Fathi Shikaki is shot in the head in Malta in an assassination widely believed to have been carried out by Israel.

1988

Palestine Liberation Organization military chief Khalil al-Wazir is killed in Tunisia. Better known as Abu Jihad, he had been PLO chief Yasser Arafat’s deputy. Military censors cleared an Israeli paper to reveal details of the Israeli raid for the first time in 2012.

1973

Israeli commandos shoot a number of PLO leaders in their apartments in Beirut, in a nighttime raid led by Ehud Barak, who later became Israel’s top army commander and prime minister. His team killed Kamal Adwan, who was in charge of PLO operations in the Israeli-occupied West Bank; Mohammed Youssef Najjar, a member of the PLO’s executive committee; and Kamal Nasser, a PLO spokesman and charismatic writer and poet. The operation was part of a string of Israeli assassinations of Palestinian leaders in retaliation for the killings of 11 Israeli coaches and athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

AP · July 31, 2024

16. Commentary: Watch what China does, not just what it says, after unsurprising economic plenum

Excerpts:

Perhaps the most telling sign that businesses should keep their eyes on China’s actions is that the plenum specified a timeline to achieve the reforms. In past plenums, the CCP had not set such timelines.

This time, unusually, Beijing has given clear indication of a 2029 deadline - an important year as the People’s Republic of China celebrates its 80th anniversary. Some analysts see this as an effort to focus the CCP on implementing the reforms.

This, in a way, provides a direction for businesses and markets on China’s roadmap.

While the road ahead is fraught with challenges, businesses that can navigate these complexities and leverage emerging opportunities will be well-positioned to thrive.

Commentary: Watch what China does, not just what it says, after unsurprising economic plenum

Businesses and investors should keep their eyes on China’s actions after the third plenum concluded without surprises. Perhaps the most telling sign is that the party specified a timeline to achieve the reforms, says Penta Group’s Hong Kong managing director Thomas Kwan.

Thomas Kwan

31 Jul 2024 06:00AM

channelnewsasia.com

HONG KONG: The third plenum of China’s Communist Party (CCP) concluded recently without new stimulus or deep reforms, but that does not mean there isn’t welcoming news.

While the communique released after the closed-door meeting led by President Xi Jinping contained few surprises, it could also be viewed as maintaining stability and certainty. In a major election year for many countries where we have already seen drastic changes or uncertainties in governments, the less-than-surprising outcome may provide what the market seeks in an uncertain world.

The broad goals emphasised in the plenum have not changed - economic recovery, technological innovation, market reforms.

Despite its economic challenges, China seems more cognisant that any drastic measures may introduce volatility and potentially derail plans in achieving its 5 per cent growth target for 2024.

LONG-TERM SHIFT VS SHORT-TERM STIMULUS?

A long-term shift is what the world’s second-largest economy is gunning for, when the drivers of its meteoric rise have been slowing down.

Before the plenum, official data showed the Chinese economy expanded by just 4.7 per cent in the second quarter this year, among its slowest growth in recent years. When combined with the first quarter data of 5.3 per cent growth, China may still be on track to meet its year-end target.

But for the market, it may be cutting too close for comfort, given the short-term challenges ahead. This may explain why the plenum has focused on the long term, and placed emphasis on enhancing people’s quality of life as one of the means to boost overall consumption which some economists have been urging for, among others.

Still, the plenum offered some positive signals for businesses.

One of the most notable aspects of the communique was the emphasis on giving "fuller play to the role of market mechanisms", which could increase efficiency and competition, reduce bureaucracy and regulatory hurdles, and enhance the role of the private sector.

Businesses could have more freedom to innovate and compete. Better products and services for consumers could be a more reliable way of addressing sluggish domestic consumption and shift to consumption-led growth. In addition, the aim of unleashing the consumption power of people in rural areas and giving them access to urban public services may have a trickle effect on boosting overall consumer demand in the country.

Fewer regulatory hurdles could allow quicker adaptation to market demands, crucial in tech-heavy sectors that Beijing is targeting as “future industries” for more innovation-led growth.

That said, China also aims to “build a high-level socialist market economy system”, so the pace of reform and growth may not be at the same pace that other markets are accustomed to. The silver lining is that the plenum affirmed the need to address market inefficiencies, which can be taken as a sign that the country acknowledges there is work to be done to bridge the expectations gaps.

UNCERTAINTY IN IMPLEMENTATION

But the lack of detailed implementation plans creates uncertainty for businesses at a time when foreign direct investment shrank 29.1 per cent year-on-year to US$49.9 billion in June.

For tech companies, the emphasis on innovation and self-reliance is a double-edged sword: It opens up opportunities for growth, but the absence of detailed policies on funding and regulatory support needed to make informed investment decisions can hinder long-term planning.

Similarly, financial institutions are left guessing about the specifics of financial market reforms and regulatory changes, which are crucial for future investments and risk management.

The property market, already facing a significant slump, remains volatile without clear policies to stabilise prices and address debt issues. Similarly, infrastructure projects depend heavily on local government funding and stability. Suggestions of local government tax reforms may sound intuitive, but the lack of concreate policies or directives at this stage may complicate long-term planning and investment in public projects, affecting sectors reliant on local incentives and infrastructure development.

Consumer goods companies involved in export-import activities face uncertainty regarding tariffs, trade agreements, and market access, impacting their global operations.

WATCH WHAT CHINA DOES, NOT JUST WHAT IT SAYS

That said, businesses and investors should watch what China does, not just what it says.

There are useful policies that are already in place, such as the Real World Evidence (RWE) programmes for medical technology companies entering China. The first RWE programme, launched in Hainan province in 2019 and followed by the Greater Bay Area in 2020, gives medtech companies early access to the market through trials and studies for rare diseases and clinically urgent needs, and the opportunity to fast-track regulatory approvals, reimbursement listing, and/or commercialisation, potentially enabling them to influence and shape the market.

The plenum stated that it is focused on creating a “beautiful China”, by accelerating green transformation and pursuing green, low-carbon development, among others. This alone may not say much.

But if taken together with its directions of improving the mechanism for modern infrastructure construction and the resilience and security of industrial supply chains, the opportunities in environmental sustainability could be vast.

For instance, the plenum proposed deeper reforms of its railway system and further develop the “low-altitude economy” (such as drones and flying cars). This means demand for renewable energy will likely increase. The need to secure the supply chain in the production of these assets would be critical.

Perhaps the most telling sign that businesses should keep their eyes on China’s actions is that the plenum specified a timeline to achieve the reforms. In past plenums, the CCP had not set such timelines.

This time, unusually, Beijing has given clear indication of a 2029 deadline - an important year as the People’s Republic of China celebrates its 80th anniversary. Some analysts see this as an effort to focus the CCP on implementing the reforms.

This, in a way, provides a direction for businesses and markets on China’s roadmap.

While the road ahead is fraught with challenges, businesses that can navigate these complexities and leverage emerging opportunities will be well-positioned to thrive.

Thomas Kwan is Managing Director of Hong Kong at Penta Group.

channelnewsasia.com

17. Climate Cash Pivots to New Reality of a Hotter, Wetter Planet

Adaptation may be the better path than prevention. Can climate change be prevented? Or can we better mitigate the effects?

I listened to a keynote speech from Robert Kaplan yesterday. It was a geographic tour de force as all his presentations are. He surveyed the economic and environmental challenges around the world. The effects of environmental conditions on geopolitics is obvious but not something we want to consider because "climate change" has become so politicized.

I was reminded that his 1994 Atlantic article, "The Coming Anarchy" has aged well.  https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1994/02/the-coming-anarchy/304670/. (subtitle: "How scarcity, crime, overpopulation, tribalism, and disease are rapidly destroying the social fabric of our planet") When I was in CGSC in 1994 his article along with Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations" were the most discussed and debated readings of the entire year.

Climate Cash Pivots to New Reality of a Hotter, Wetter Planet

Funding for climate adaptation is surging as mitigation efforts fall short

By Amrith RamkumarFollow

Aug. 1, 2024 5:30 am ET

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/climate-environment/climate-cash-pivots-to-new-reality-of-a-hotter-wetter-planet-f0554119?mod=latest_headlines

Efforts to address the cause of climate change have fallen short so far. That is leading to a big push to treat the symptoms.

Government and private money is pouring into plans to control flooding, address extreme heat and shore up infrastructure to withstand more severe weather caused by climate change.

Nearly all of the spending on climate change has gone to prevention, including reducing fossil-fuel use and developing technologies to lower carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Those mitigation efforts haven’t been enough. 

Funds aimed at addressing the effects of climate change recently accounted for about 5% of the roughly $1.3 trillion spent annually on all climate efforts, according to a report from the Global Center on Adaptation and the Climate Policy Initiative, a pair of nonprofits.

“Adaptation has been the unpopular kid at the party for a long time. That is starting to change,” said Jay Koh, managing director at the Lightsmith Group, an investment firm with one of the few adaptation funds. Its investments include an environmental consulting firm and an artificial-intelligence startup that focuses on protecting critical utility and energy assets. 

For private-sector investors, putting money into adaptation is a bet that mitigation won’t fully address climate change or will take longer than expected. The cost of adaptation is immense, particularly if mitigation efforts are delayed. The longer society waits to address climate change, the more it will spend to fend off the impact of hotter, wetter weather, researchers say.

Government money to limit the effects of climate change is going to places such as the low-lying Philadelphia neighborhood of Eastwick, where streets named after the planets have flooded with increasing frequency in recent years.

During big storms, including Tropical Storm Isaias in 2020, nearby Darby Creek and Cobbs Creek overflowed, creating streams of muddy water several feet high that swept up cars and ruined basements.

Brenda Whitfield, a 76-year-old retiree who has lived in Eastwick since the 1970s, said the disruptions have become more frequent. “Every time a heavy rain comes, we have anxiety,” said Whitfield, who is part of a community group called Eastwick United CDC that advocates for actions to protect the area from flooding.

When it rains, Whitfield and her grandchildren check the water level of Cobbs Creek and alert their neighbors so they can prepare or evacuate when needed. Flood insurance now costs Whitfield’s family and her neighbors thousands of dollars a year, up from roughly $800 when her family first got it about 30 years ago.

A car driving through several feet of water in Eastwick after Tropical Storm Isaias in 2020. A door in Whitfield’s home showing flood damage following the storm.

BRENDA WHITFIELD

Sea-level rise because of climate change is making flooding more common. To address the situation in Eastwick, the federal government is spending more than $10 million to construct flood barriers several feet high and restore nearby wetlands to help control flooding. The local government plans to install flood gauges, which would allow the city to send alerts to residents.

The Eastwick grants are a sliver of the billions of dollars being awarded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for similar projects such as sewer and drainage upgrades, dam and utility pole reinforcement and coastal restoration efforts.

“If we don’t make our coastal communities more resilient, then the people who live in these communities and rely on our coasts for their livelihood will be very severely affected,” Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said on a recent call about funding awards. 

The money is part of a slew of climate tax credits, grants and loans mostly funded by the 2021 infrastructure law and 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. The Energy Department, Environmental Protection Agency and other offices are racing to award funds and show progress before November’s elections. Many analysts expect that a second Donald Trump term would slow climate-spending programs.

Some Eastwick residents have needed emergency rescues during heavy flooding. Photo: Kenyatta Whitfield

It is difficult for investors to put money into adaptation because projects such as flood barriers, tidal gates and raising roads threatened by rising water levels often don’t offer attractive returns and are mainly jobs for governments, which have long funded flood-prevention projects.

That is increasing the need for new programs, but many local and state agencies don’t have the money for these projects.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams recently called for more federal support for coastal projects after announcing the start of construction on a $200 million effort to rebuild and raise a portion of the southern tip of Manhattan to protect against rising water levels.

Adaptation efforts are also starting to go beyond grant funding. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration recently proposed a rule that would require companies to give workers enough rest and water to manage extreme heat.

Overseas, there are efforts to protect poor people from the cost of weather events. A nonprofit called Climate Resilience for All joined with insurance company Swiss Re and the Self-Employed Women’s Association in India to award 50,000 low-income women small payments to compensate them for the cash lost to extreme heat earlier this year.

The women contributed to the insurance products and most of the money came from philanthropists. 

“The longer that we delay the transition, the counterbalance to that is the more money has to be spent on adaptation and resilience,” said Chris Goolgasian, a portfolio manager at giant asset manager Wellington who manages one of the few other private-sector adaptation portfolios. It holds public companies such as heating, ventilation and air-conditioner equipment makers, engineering firms and water companies.

Eastwick flood-prevention measures include flood barriers several feet high along the creek and flood gauges that will allow the city to send alerts to residents. Photo: Hannah Yoon for WSJ

Eric Niiler contributed to this article.

Write to Amrith Ramkumar at amrith.ramkumar@wsj.com

18. Russia launches one of war’s biggest drone attacks on Ukraine

Russia launches one of war’s biggest drone attacks on Ukraine | CNN

CNN · by Lauren Kent · July 31, 2024

A screengrab taken from video released by the Ukrainian Air Force shows a drone on fire, falling from the sky and landing in a field — causing a large cloud of smoke but no visible damage.

HAndout/Ukrainian Air Force

Kyiv, Ukraine CNN —

Russia has launched one of the largest drone attacks on Ukraine since the war began, mainly targeting overnight the region in and around the capital Kyiv, according to the Ukrainian military, which said all 89 drones fired were shot down.

It marks the largest attack on the capital so far this year, and the seventh time Russia has targeted Kyiv this month, military officials said on Wednesday.

The “massive” attack lasted more than seven hours and the drones came in two waves, Kyiv officials said, adding that “not a single drone reached its target.”

There were no hits to residential or critical infrastructure and no casualties in the Kyiv region, according to regional military head Ruslan Kravchenko. However, 13 houses were damaged and rescuers extinguished one fire caused by the downed drones. “The majority of the UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] debris fell outside of the settlements,” he added.

Dramatic video released by the Ukrainian Air Force shows one drone on fire, falling from the sky and landing in a field — causing a large cloud of smoke but no visible damage.

Russia also attacked the country’s Mykolaiv region with an X-59 guided missile from the airspace of the occupied Kherson region, which Ukraine said it also shot down. However, separate attacks on eastern and southern Ukraine killed at least two people Wednesday morning.

The Kremlin did not comment on the attacks in its regular briefing with reporters on Wednesday.

Repeated calls for more air defense systems

Ukrainian Air Force Commander Mykola Oleshchuk called the drone barrage targeting Kyiv “one of the most massive attacks by Shahed-131/136” drones, comparing it to the Russian attack on New Year’s Eve in which 90 Shaheds were launched.

“Just like then, today the Ukrainian air defense has withstood and repelled a massive attack by enemy drones,” he said. “Mobile fire groups of all the Ukrainian Defence Forces, tactical aviation of the Air Force and Army Aviation of the Land Forces, anti-aircraft missile units and electronic warfare units of the Air Force were involved in repelling the air attack.”

During another wave of aerial attacks days before the New Year’s Eve holiday, Russia fired an unprecedented number of drones and missiles at targets across Ukraine, killing at least 31 people and injuring more than 150 others, according to Ukrainian officials at the time.

Since then, Ukraine has repeatedly pleaded for allies to provide more air defense systems.

“Ukrainians can fully protect their skies from Russian strikes when they have sufficient supplies,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Wednesday.

“The same level of defense is needed against Russian missiles and the occupier’s combat aircraft. And this can be achieved. We need sufficiently courageous decisions from our partners — enough air defense systems, enough range,” Zelensky added. “And Ukrainians will do everything correctly and precisely.”

The Biden administration announced on Monday a new lethal aid package for Ukraine totaling about $1.7 billion and largely consisting of missiles and ammunition for missile, artillery and air defense systems that the US has previously provided to Ukraine.

Deaths in eastern and southern Ukraine

In southern Ukraine, a 68-year-old man in Kherson was killed in a drone strike on Wednesday morning, according to the region’s military head. A 73-year-old woman was also injured in that attack, and elsewhere in the region three people were injured in Russian shelling, the official said.

In the Donetsk region, one resident in the city of Toretsk was killed, and four others were injured in attacks elsewhere.

Ukraine’s Armed Forces said it will “continue to effectively hit important military targets of the Russian occupiers,” claiming that on Tuesday night Ukraine carried out a strike on a weapons and military equipment storage facility near the city of Kursk, Russia.

The governor of Russia’s Kursk region said a fire broke out at a facility there “after an attack by the Ukrainian armed forces.”

CNN’s Michael Conte contributed to this report.

CNN · by Lauren Kent · July 31, 2024

19. China Expands Military Drone Export Curbs After Ukrainian Visit

China Expands Military Drone Export Curbs After Ukrainian Visit

By Bloomberg News

July 31, 2024 at 6:15 AM EDT

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-07-31/china-expands-military-drone-export-curbs-after-ukrainian-visit?sref=hhjZtX76

China has adjusted its export controls on drones intended for military use, as Beijing faces growing criticism from the US and it allies over bolstering Russia’s battlefield efforts in Ukraine.

Drones with high-precision measurement equipment were added to a blacklist by a range of agencies including the Central Military Commission on Wednesday. The changes modify a list published last year and will take effect from Sept. 1.

While officials removed export bans on consumer-grade drones, the Ministry of Commerce reiterated its stance that civilian equipment should not be used for the “proliferation of mass destruction weapons, terrorism or military purposes.”

Read more: China Seizes Chance to Play Peacemaker in Ukraine Before US Vote

President Xi Jinping’s government rolled out the directive days after Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba visited China for the first time since Russia invaded his nation in 2022. Beijing has repeatedly pushed back against criticisms from the West that it is sending Moscow dual-use items that have military applications.

European officials recently claimed Chinese and Russian companies are developing an attack drone similar to an Iranian model deployed in Ukraine, Bloomberg News reported. China has denied such allegations, saying the Asian country has not provided weapons to any parties of the Ukraine conflict and strictly controls exports of dual-use articles.

China “opposes drone exports being used for non-peaceful purposes, and opposes individual countries imposing illegal sanctions on Chinese companies and individuals on the pretext of using drones,” the Ministry of Commerce added.

— With assistance from John Liu, Jing Li, and Qianwei Zhang

20. The Army Bet $11M on The Rock and UFL Ginning Up Enlistments. It May Have Actually Hurt Recruiting Efforts.

Someone's analysis must have informed us that this could have a positive effect on recruiting.

But it does not seem possible to me to determine that The Rock did "lead to a single new recruit." I suppose when a recruit says "The Rock, who?" i guess we can make the evaluation that theThe Rock did not help.

Was this the measure of effectiveness? And like anything else that deals with attempting to influence a target audience can we always expect immediate effects? Is there a straight cause and effect line from The Rock to a recruit? Should we expect there to be?

The Army Bet $11M on The Rock and UFL Ginning Up Enlistments. It May Have Actually Hurt Recruiting Efforts.

military.com · by Steve Beynon · July 31, 2024

The Army is seemingly having buyer's remorse after an $11 million marketing deal with the United Football League and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.

The high-dollar, high-profile deal likely didn't lead to a single new Army recruit and may possibly have had a negative impact on finding new enlistments, internal documents and emails reviewed by Military.com show. The service may even seek to get some of its money back.

The Army inked the deal earlier this year with the UFL, the upstart minor league alternative to the NFL that had an inaugural season from March through June with a disappointing debut. More importantly, the deal included Johnson, a global superstar and owner of the league, who was supposed to serve as a pseudo brand ambassador for the Army -- though the service said he did not fulfill his end of the bargain to publish a specific number of service-related posts on his social media accounts.

The news comes as the Army is in the midst of a historic recruiting crisis that has been partially worsened by the service struggling to navigate modern marketing trends. Much of its efforts are still geared toward funneling money into cable TV-style ads and marketing deals with other traditional television broadcasts, such as sports, even as Gen Z's media diet has left most of those old-school mediums behind.

The UFL deal was so catastrophic, it led to a projected loss of 38 enlistments, an internal review of the plan shows. Army planners use various metrics to judge whether time and money could be better spent in other efforts, and the effort and resources spent on the UFL were seen by the service as a net negative for recruiting.

The bulk of the deal included prominent Army branding during UFL games, including the service's logo on players' uniforms. But the center of gravity was Johnson, whom service planners were hoping could elevate the Army brand, as he is among the most revered celebrities in the world with strong cross-demographic appeal.

Part of the allure of the deal was Johnson's social media reach and an agreement that he would tout the Army. A titan on social media, Johnson has 396 million followers on Instagram. The Army valued each social media post at $1 million, service documents show, and it was expecting five of them. But Johnson did not fulfill his end of the deal -- making only two of the five social media posts, Army documents show.

In total, the Army wants to recoup $6 million from the UFL, documents show. However, it was unclear how the service came up with that figure.

"We are in the process of working with the UFL to determine the final cost," Laura DeFrancisco, a spokesperson for the Army's marketing arm, told Military.com.

DeFrancisco told Military.com that some of the materials the publication reviewed on the Army's UFL deal were out of context, but declined to go into specifics or say whether anything was inaccurate. She also declined the publication's requests for interviews.

The United Football League and Johnson's publicist did not respond to a request for comment.

From the beginning, Army staff warned against a partnership with the UFL -- or the XFL and USFL, the two minor football leagues that would eventually form the UFL through a merger. Service officials said the financial burden was way too high and viewership was too low, and even the most optimistic estimation showed the partnership would not yield many recruits.

One senior Army marketing official, in an interview with Military.com, said the deal echoed the National Guard's $88 million NASCAR sponsorship that reportedly didn't lead to a single new soldier joining the ranks. But the UFL partnership was ultimately pushed through directly by Gen. Randy George, the Army chief of staff, according to an email between him and senior staff reviewed by Military.com.

Johnson hasn't posted anything on his Instagram related to the Army since April. One post mostly featured photos of him with generals, including a photo of him hugging George. Another was clips of his tour of Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland.

"In terms of The Rock, it's unfortunate he was pulled away at a time when we expected him to be present with us to create content for his social media channels," Col. Dave Butler, a spokesperson for George, told Military.com in a statement. "But we're working with the UFL to rebalance the contract. The Rock remains a good partner to the Army."

One internal Army document pointed out "inexperienced" UFL staff causing numerous breakdowns in communication. "UFL lack of experience liaising between brand/networks was very apparent during planning [the] process, and created a significant amount of additional work," the document said.

The internal report added that Army marketing officials have a "lack of confidence" future deals with the UFL can be successful. Some officials within the Army also expressed concerns behind the scenes that the UFL was not a cost-effective way of reaching potential recruits. The UFL deal cost about half of what the service spent on the NCAA, but viewership on an average NCAA game is roughly 10 times that of the UFL, according to the Army's own internal metrics.

Meanwhile, Gen Z has almost completely moved away from traditional television and is significantly less interested in sports compared to other generations -- 33% of Gen Zers do not watch live sports compared to 22% of Millennials, according to a 2022 Morning Consult poll.

But part of the Army's marketing strategy is also reaching parents and older people who may be in a potential recruit's orbit, given young Americans spend much of their viewing time on TikTok, which the Pentagon is barred from advertising on because of concerns on Capitol Hill that the platform's parent company can give sensitive user data to the Chinese government.

military.com · by Steve Beynon · July 31, 2024

21. Keeping the “Best and Brightest” Junior Officers in the U.S. Military

​I always wonder how the rest of us who stayed in the military for a career feel about being "mediocre and dim" rather than the "best and the brightest" who left for greener pastures and a civilian career.

My snarky remark aside, there is some interesting analysis and many thoughtful recommendations for consideration.

Excerpts:

Closing Thoughts

This essay is not about retention of all officers, which is an important but different topic, it is about retaining the “best and brightest” lieutenants, captains, and young majors. Through the years, a key strength of U.S. military culture has been its egalitarian ethos, the recognition that no one is better than anyone else, especially amongst peers. Though informal good-old-boy systems of treating some officers as “special” can be highly problematic, in an era of intense competition for talent, limited resources, and expanding national security challenges, deliberately managing high-potential personnel differently is a talent-management concept worth considering. In fact, it is already indirectly done by senior unit leaders and the Human Resources Command through the officer evaluation report system and its second-order effects. Perhaps Army leaders can do targeted talent management thoughtfully by always remembering that “potential” is only valuable if it converts to performance, to minimize biases while gathering numerous data points whenever evaluating junior officers, and to give junior officers repeated opportunities to confirm (or invalidate) their excellence, as there are many late bloomers and spotlight rangers yearning to be identified.

Our world is increasingly dangerous and complex. To achieve better outcomes, the Army should do things differently, even though new initiatives and perspectives on talent management are likely to be met with (well-intentioned) resistance. Being bold to keep the “best and brightest” junior officers in the Army is essential to helping maintain a well-led fighting force that can successfully protect the nation and its freedom for generations to come.

Keeping the “Best and Brightest” Junior Officers in the U.S. Military - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Everett S. P. Spain · August 1, 2024

How would our world be different if Douglas MacArthur, Chester Nimitz, John Lejeune, and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin had resigned after five or 10 years in uniform? As junior officers, they all likely knew they were among their peer group’s “best and brightest.” Thankfully, even though talent has options, they all chose to remain in the military for a career. Subsequently, the Allies won World War II, and the United States walked on the moon.

A recent empirical analysis of West Point-commissioned officers, based on data collected in 2013, used separate performance indicators to identify officers who qualified as “best” and who qualified as “brightest.” It then compared the retention trends among those who qualified as both “best” and “brightest,” hereafter “best and brightest,” with the retention trends of their average-performing peers. It found that while the “best and brightest” officers retained to become company commanders at the same rate as their average-performing peers, they stayed at even higher rates to become field-grade officers. The “best and brightest” officers who were ethnic minorities, however, were much less likely to stay to become field-grade officers than both their average-performing peers and the subset of “best and brightest” officers who were white.

To better retain the “best and brightest,” Army battalion and brigade commanders should identify their “best and brightest,” let them know that they are, develop them individually, support them in striving for excellence, and give them meaningful missions with autonomy. Unit commanders should also strive to live lives worth emulating (both at work and home) while holding low-effort junior officers accountable. Similarly, the Department of the Army and Human Resources Command should enable the “best and brightest” officers to have alternative career paths, fiercely protect the integrity of the new Command Assessment Program, reestablish the primary path for promotion to colonel as being through battalion command, and increase two-year advanced civil schooling opportunities. Doing so can help the U.S. military retain more of its most talented members, making it more likely to win future wars and provide the astronauts who walk on Mars. Though this article uses an Army context to provide specific retention challenges and recommendations, most of them apply across the military services.

Become a Member

To Battalion and Brigade Commanders

Battalion commanders (for O-1/2s) and brigade commanders (for O-3/4s) are the first group to have a significant impact on junior officer retention. What can you do?

Seek and ye shall find. Leaders should actively and quietly look for various signals and indicators that can help identify their “best and brightest” junior officers. When officers arrive at your unit from the Basic Officers Leadership Course and Captains Career Course, take an interest in them and examine signs of conceptual ability, such as their basic and career course’s Academic Evaluation Reports, Graduate Record Examination result if military-funded, and signs of diligence such as previous Army Combat Fitness Test scores. Encourage and watch which of your lieutenants volunteer for challenging activities, including intellectual ones like submitting professional publications in branch-specific journals or entering innovation competitions. Hold best-platoon and best-lieutenant competitions, to include multi-day events. Have a staff captain host an optional professional reading group and quietly find out which junior officers are active in it. Require your rated officers to submit confidential 360-degree evaluations of peers, assessing competence, teamwork, concern for others, and character (all important components of “best”). Ask your senior and mid-grade non-commissioned officers for feedback on them. When you see officers who regularly offer ideas that are both novel and useful, especially those that do not align with previous guidance, do not assume they lack loyalty. Instead, consider approaching this behavior as a signal of their integrity, courage, and high potential.

Let your high-potential officers know, “I see you and I’ve got you.” Senior leaders should let the “best and brightest” junior officers know they recognize how good they are, or these officers may seek acknowledgement of their talents elsewhere. You can do this quietly, as most do not want or need public acknowledgment. Examples include verbal affirmation, finding and offering them special developmental opportunities, or connecting them with like-minded senior officers. It is not enough for a senior mentor (outside of their chain of command) to know. Someone with formal influence over them ought to know. Reach out to them deliberately. Tell them the truth, such as, “You are very talented, we are fortunate to have you leading in our Army, and we need you for higher levels of leadership.” Additionally, leaders should remember that the “best and brightest” captains who are ethnic minorities may be more likely to leave the Army after command, so investment in this population may be especially impactful.

Let your eagles soar. Many of your best officers will want to shoot for aspirational units, schools, and jobs — let them go. A high-performing maneuver branch platoon leader asked his chain of command for approval to try out for the 75th Ranger Regiment. His battalion commander called him “a disloyal f*&k” and disapproved his application packet. A top-performing Special Forces A-Team leader captain asked for a slot to free-fall parachute school so he could qualify to lead a specialty team in his battalion. When his battalion commander found out he wanted to teach at West Point after leading his second Special Forces team (who were currently excelling in difficult combat), the commander pulled the captain’s miliary free-fall school slot and took it himself. Reframe what may feel like short-term loss with the truth, that a junior officer trying out for an elite unit or competing for a broadening assignment is likely a win for the Army, and your unit now has a great ambassador making positive impacts across the force.

Grant autonomy with high expectations. Expect your “best and brightest” to excel at making their and your organization better, not just performing standard quality work. Having high expectations is one of the seven transformational leader behaviors and doing so will help meet high performers’ need for growth at work while improving your organization. Build meaningful and challenging missions for your “best and brightest” platoons or companies to accomplish alone and give them to your “best and brightest” officers. During the planned liberation of Haiti in October 1994, an 82nd Airborne platoon leader received the mission to ruck 12 miles with his platoon alone to raid a key enemy communications outpost. Two years earlier he had been one of the top cadets at the Citadel. He and his troopers were pumped.

Show poor performers the road or your boot. Minimize your high potentials’ dissatisfaction by holding low-performing officers accountable. A lazy junior officer typically receives the same Army benefits, promotions, awards, and roles as the hardest-working junior officers, who certainly notice when peers are allowed to shirk. Being an Army officer is an incredible honor and responsibility. It feels less so when you see some of your peers’ perennially mediocre or lazy behavior tolerated and implicitly rewarded.

To the Department of the Army and Human Resources Command

The second set of key influencers of the “best and brightest” junior officers’ retention decisions are the Army’s enterprise-wide personnel policy makers: the Headquarters, Department of the Army, and the U.S. Army Human Resources Command. There are a number of key steps that you should take.

Expect the “best and brightest” to have atypical career paths. Correspondingly, have the Army assume their timeline risks, so they do not have to. High-potential officers may be drafted into or request roles in emerging or developmental jobs that may not be coded as key and developmental. Assignments in emerging roles such as the Army’s Software Factory, robotics platoons, and Army Intelligence Integration Center should be considered strengths, not risks in files. If atypical assignment leads to timeline “risk,” the Army should promote these officers with strong officer evaluation reports conditionally, asking them to complete any pending key and developmental or similar timeline requirements within the following four years. Human Resources Command deserves much credit for trending in this direction over the past five years, though more flexibility is needed.

Fiercely protect the integrity of the Army’s new Command Assessment Program. The “best and brightest” need to know that if they decide to stay in past company command to remain competitive for battalion command, the process that will decide their selection will be as objective as possible. Protect the Command Assessment Program from undue influence from well-meaning senior leaders and advocacy groups, including relentlessly minimizing the subjective parts of the process. And continue to do everything possible to encourage the “best and brightest” officers to opt-in to command, including deliberately calling them one-on-one, especially during periods where they are considering whether or not to opt-in to the next level of command, asking them how the Army can keep them in and letting them know that they are needed and valued.

Reestablish that the primary path to colonel is through battalion command. To choose to stay in the Army, the “best and brightest” will need to know that their desire to command a battalion will be met with a reasonable likelihood of continuing upward mobility after that command. Yet the well-intended changes resulting from the 1996 Army Officer Personnel Management System XXI Task Force moved many O-6 billets from the Army’s operational branches into its functional areas, significantly dropping the likelihood of promotion to O-6 after battalion command. For example, the O-6 promotion board that just released results in April 2024 reported an in-the-zone (i.e., primary zone) selection rate for the operations branches as 38.2 percent, the lowest of all four branch categories. Though officers in all branches and functional areas deserve a reasonable path to O-6, since the Army’s total number of O-6 billets are limited by Congress, the Army should reallocate a disproportionate number of O-6 billets towards operational branches, which will restore the strong likelihood of upward mobility after battalion command.

Increase opportunities for advanced civil schooling, specifically two-year master’s programs at top-10 graduate schools. Bright officers often are attracted to higher education. In the 1980s, the Army sent 5,500–7,000 officers for civilian degrees annually, but dropped that number to below 400 in 1995, resulting in less than one in ten officers receiving a fully-funded graduate degree from 1990-2005. Bring back civilian education programs such as graduate school incentive program, allowing the “best and brightest” cadets (Reserve Officers’ Training Corps and U.S. Military Academy) and junior officers to sign up for guaranteed graduate schooling in exchange for continued service — a transaction where everyone wins, especially with two-year degrees. The officer meets his or her intellectual/educational goals while in uniform, and the Army gets a smarter officer locked in for six years post-graduation, getting them close to the start of battalion command.

Fix capacity issues at on-post Army childcare centers and issue interim vouchers for high-quality civilian childcare to waitlisted families. Highly educated servicemembers are more likely to have highly educated spouses, which makes them more likely to have jobs, in turn making them more likely to require dependable child-care. If a family cannot find a dependable childcare option, the servicemember is incentivized to leave active duty. Thankfully, the Army, Department of Defense, and White House have worked hard to enable more interstate government job availability and professional licensing reciprocity for working spouses.

Stop over-commissioning lieutenants to compensate for predicted future manning shortfalls. Lieutenants should be platoon leaders and company executive officers, not assistant staff officers. Among the key attractions of a junior officer’s job is the opportunity to lead others. If the “best and brightest” lieutenants only get 12 or fewer months as a platoon leader, they will interpret staff time as their long-term Army future, possibly incentivizing them to leave. Additionally, over-commissioning active-duty officers leads to a direct decrease in the average quality of officers, which is not good for the Army. Many (including me) would argue that as far as leaders (including officers) go, quality is much more important than quantity.

Consider expanding active-duty service obligations for elite assignments. Want to serve in the 75th Rangers, Special Forces, Joint Special Operations Command, or other nominative units that have a comprehensive selection process? These jobs likely attract a disproportionate amount of the “best and brightest” officers. Requiring a healthy active-duty service obligation upon completion of extended selection and training pipelines would ensure these officers take their incredible experiences to subsequent Army formations. This can be tricky, as adding active-duty service obligations can unintentionally discourage high-potential officers from opting-in to challenging assignments, which is the opposite of what the nation needs. So, this option, if implemented, should be approached with great care.

To the “Best and Brightest” Junior Officers

Finally, to the most important influencers, the “best and brightest” lieutenants, captains, and young majors themselves. Thank you for originally volunteering, and for leading well, often in difficult circumstances. You have met your obligations and then some. Please strongly consider staying on the best team in the world. The nation needs you. Also, please lean towards remaining in operational branches, where there is the most opportunity to directly lead and care for soldiers and their families.

Seek out the Army’s biggest challenges and assignments. Try out for the hardest things in the Army. It needs you there, and you will enjoy and develop during the application, assessment, and selection processes. Opt-in for and compete for every command opportunity you can. The Army needs you to compete to lead the most consequential formations at the nation’s future decisive points. If you are not chosen, bloom where you are planted, and try out for the next opportunity. Lift others along the way.

In the words of James Tuite, do not strive to be the best officer in the battalion, strive to be the best officer for the battalion. The “best and brightest” of today are often watched closely by peers and subordinates. Be humble, give more than you get, advocate for and support your peers and sister units, do the harder right over the easier wrong, always seek to learn from others (regardless of their rank), and invest in your subordinates and their families.

Remember, there is no rush to get out. If you choose to retire after battalion command, you will be in your early forties, which leaves many years to thrive in one or more subsequent careers out of uniform. And as a former mentor told me, company and battalion command become (a great) part of you.

Closing Thoughts

This essay is not about retention of all officers, which is an important but different topic, it is about retaining the “best and brightest” lieutenants, captains, and young majors. Through the years, a key strength of U.S. military culture has been its egalitarian ethos, the recognition that no one is better than anyone else, especially amongst peers. Though informal good-old-boy systems of treating some officers as “special” can be highly problematic, in an era of intense competition for talent, limited resources, and expanding national security challenges, deliberately managing high-potential personnel differently is a talent-management concept worth considering. In fact, it is already indirectly done by senior unit leaders and the Human Resources Command through the officer evaluation report system and its second-order effects. Perhaps Army leaders can do targeted talent management thoughtfully by always remembering that “potential” is only valuable if it converts to performance, to minimize biases while gathering numerous data points whenever evaluating junior officers, and to give junior officers repeated opportunities to confirm (or invalidate) their excellence, as there are many late bloomers and spotlight rangers yearning to be identified.

Our world is increasingly dangerous and complex. To achieve better outcomes, the Army should do things differently, even though new initiatives and perspectives on talent management are likely to be met with (well-intentioned) resistance. Being bold to keep the “best and brightest” junior officers in the Army is essential to helping maintain a well-led fighting force that can successfully protect the nation and its freedom for generations to come.

Become a Member

Everett S. P. Spain is a U.S. Army officer, and professor of management, and the head of the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at the U.S. Military Academy. He has served with the 82nd Airborne Division, V Corps (U.S. Army Europe), and U.S. Army Special Operations Command; deployed to Kosovo and Iraq; and commanded the U.S. Army Garrison-Schweinfurt (Germany). He is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy and the Harvard Business School.

The author would like to thank many colleagues for sharing their thoughts on the topic and feedback on earlier versions of this essay. The views expressed herein are those of the author alone and do not purport to represent the U.S. Military Academy, the Department of the Army, or the Department of Defense.

Image: Jeremy Todd

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Everett S. P. Spain · August 1, 2024

22. Eroding Global Stability: The Cybersecurity Strategies Of China, Russia, North Korea, And Iran

Excerpts:

Implications for Global Security

China’s, Russia’s, North Korea’s, and Iran’s collaborative and individual cyber strategies have significant implications for global security. Their activities undermine the stability provided by NATO and Western powers, posing complex, asymmetric, and irregular challenges to international norms and, more broadly, cybersecurity. State-sponsored cyber operations, like state-sponsored terrorism or political violence, are sophisticated attempts to erode trust in digital infrastructure and government or institutional functions by disrupting the integrity, availability or confidentiality of data, services, and other aspects of online and physical security. For example, China’s cyber activities, including Volt Typhoon, have heightened tensions with the US, particularly over Taiwan. Similarly, Russian cyber operations have exacerbated conflicts in the former Soviet Bloc nations and strained relations with Western nations.

The cyber collaboration between China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran varies in scope; however, its aim always aligns with political goals that negatively impact the existing rules-based world order. For example, Russia leverages malware to attack Ukraine, which was developed by Scarab, a Chinese government-linked cyber group, and shares techniques on how best to leverage AI for attacking targets and “living off the land” persistence to avoid detection by cyber defenders.

Moreover, the cyber strategies’ collaborative and sophisticated characteristics pose significant challenges for cybersecurity defenders. Traditional cybersecurity measures are often insufficient to counter the advanced tactics used by state-sponsored actors. NATO and Western powers must adopt a comprehensive approach that includes enhancing defensive capabilities, leveraging advanced technologies, fostering international cooperation, and developing offensive cyber strategies to effectively counter these threats. By doing so, they can safeguard the stability and security that have been our world’s cornerstone since World War II’s end.

Eroding Global Stability: The Cybersecurity Strategies Of China, Russia, North Korea, And Iran - Irregular Warfare Initiative

irregularwarfare.org · by Evan Morgan · August 1, 2024

Editor’s note: This article is part of Project Cyber, which explores and characterizes the myriad threats facing the United States and its allies in cyberspace, the information environment, and conventional and irregular spaces. Please contact us if you would like to propose an article, podcast, or event environment. We invite you to contribute to the discussion, explore the difficult questions, and help.

In recent years, declarations like “no-limits partnership,” “comprehensive agreement,” and “security partnership” between the United States’ adversaries have become increasingly common. On May 16, 2024, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese Communist Party Leader Xi Jinping reaffirmed their comprehensive partnership during their historic 43rd meeting. Since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Russian-Iranian collaboration has reached new levels, with Iranian drones becoming a familiar site over the battlefields. North Korea too, has upped its cooperation with Russia, working closely on schemes to avoid Western sanctions and even signing a mutual defense pact on June 19, 2024. The extent to which America’s adversaries cooperate on cybersecurity remains less understood but is a growing concern.

However, as unified Western actions against rogue and adversarial states have increased (e.g., sanctions, public shaming, etc.) and hot wars roil Ukraine and Israel, the agreements and cooperation among China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran have similarly grown stronger and more unified. In this context, the cybersecurity strategies of China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran have emerged as significant and irregular threats to global stability, threatening the contemporary geopolitical landscape. Furthermore, each nation has developed sophisticated cyber capabilities designed to asymmetrically attack the international security frameworks established by NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) and Western powers. It is, therefore, important to assess how US adversaries collaborate in cyberspace and are using asymmetric and irregular tactics to undermine the liberal world order.

Eroding Global Stability: The Cybersecurity Strategies Of China, Russia, North Korea, And Iran – Insider: Short of War

Strategic Cybersecurity Alliances

State-sponsored malicious cyber actors from China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran increasingly dominate the cyber threat landscape and are driven by geopolitical, economic, and military objectives. Moreover, adversaries develop capabilities for strategic ends, blurring the line between irregular and conventional warfare in cyberspace. Importantly, their efforts are not strictly unilateral, as evidence increasingly points toward formal and informal collaboration among rogue states in cyberspace. For example, Chinese and Russian cyber actors have been known to share malware and exploit kits, enabling more sophisticated attacks. Additionally, joint operations, like coordinated disinformation campaigns, have been observed, highlighting our adversaries’ willingness to coordinate influence operations.

Furthermore, China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran also leverage emerging technologies, like artificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI, to enhance their cyber capabilities. Disruptive technologies can enhance already sophisticated cyber operations and allow for automated attacks, deep-fakes, and advanced social engineering tactics. AI in cyber operations poses new challenges for cybersecurity defenders as it increases the complexity, scale, and pace of potential attacks. How these nations use cyber capabilities, and leverage asymmetric advantages for strategic ends, underscores the need for greater international cooperation and more robust policy coordination to counter these irregular threats.

People’s Republic of China

China’s journey toward becoming a cyber power began in the early 2000s. At the helm is the Central Commission for Cybersecurity and Informatization (CCCI), chaired by President Xi Jinping, as well as the Ministry of State Security, the Ministry of Public Security, and the Cyberspace Administration of China. The “Great Firewall of China” exemplifies China’s commitment to information control, both domestically and internationally, and allows government control over the internet and information. By limiting domestic information access, the government controls the population’s understanding of other nations and restricts external access to Chinese-focused content, sites, etc.

A key component of China’s cyber strategy is the concept of military-civil fusion, which encourages collaboration between the private sector and military and integrates resources. The fusion is evident in the activities of major Chinese tech firms like Huawei, Alibaba, and Tencent, which play significant roles in advancing China’s cyber ambitions and provide irregular approaches to securing technological control over an increasing percentage of the world’s telecommunications and digital infrastructure outside China.

China’s cyber strategy is also characterized by its use of state-sponsored hacking groups to conduct widespread and far-reaching cyber espionage and sabotage campaigns. The discovery of Volt Typhoon, a Chinese state-sponsored hacking group, and its activities underscores China’s focus on gaining asymmetric advantage over the US and its allies by gaining persistent access to their critical infrastructure. The group uses the unconventional and irregular warfare tactic of “living off the land,” utilizing existing resources in the operating system of the targeted devices and systems rather than introducing new files that could trigger cybersecurity sensors or be more easily detected through forensic analysis. Volt Typhoon’s objective appears to be long-term persistence within the target environment, or pre-positioning, giving China the placement and access to conduct future acts of sabotage and disruption.

Russian Federation

Russia’s evolution as a cyber power began in the late 1990s and early 2000s and is encapsulated in initiatives like, the Information Security Doctrine of the Russian Federation. Moreover, Russia’s cyber strategy is deeply rooted in the concept of political warfare and its understanding of cyberspace as a theater of military operations akin to land, sea, air, and space. However, political warfare for Russia includes a cognitive dimension that influences how they leverage cyberspace to achieve political outcomes. Russia’s approach to cyberspace, therefore, differs from the concepts espoused by US and other NATO-aligned nations and is characterized by a decentralized and asymmetric approach to cyber operations.

The Russian government views cyberspace as a critical domain for exerting influence and achieving geopolitical goals and their cyber ecosystem is a complicated tangle of state and non-state actors. The Federal Security Service, the Foreign Intelligence Service, and the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation all have cyber units that conduct operations domestically and internationally. These agencies also recruit cybercriminals to carry out operations on their behalf, providing them with legal protection and resources in exchange for their services.

A key component of Russia’s cyber strategy is the concept of information confrontation, an approach that integrates cyber operations, psychological operations, electronic warfare, and traditional military operations to achieve strategic objectives. Russia has been implicated in numerous cyber espionage and disruptive activities targeting both governmental and private sector entities worldwide. For instance, Russian cyber actors have been implicated in attacks on US election systems, energy grid, water systems, and other critical sectors. The operations are designed to foster instability, leveraging cyber operations, cyber espionage, influence campaigns, and other asymmetric tactics as force multipliers in geopolitical conflicts.

Furthermore, Russia has a long history of integrating cyber operations into its broader military strategy, relying on cyber capabilities during conflicts, like its ongoing invasion of Ukraine. The integration of cyber operations into Russia’s broader political warfare framework, reminiscent of Soviet-era “active measures,” further complicates attribution and response measures. Importantly, Russia’s approach to leveraging cyber operations and capabilities to disrupt critical infrastructure, spread disinformation, and conduct espionage underscores its asymmetric and irregular approach to confrontation with Western powers.

Democratic People’s Republic of Korea

North Korea’s growth as a cyber power also began in the early 2000s and is largely focused on leveraging its cyber capabilities to circumvent economic sanctions and finance its regime through illicit means. Directing North Korea’s cyber activity is its Reconnaissance General Bureau, with “Bureau 121” being responsible for conducting cyber espionage, financial theft, and disruptive cyberattacks. However, North Korea’s cyber capabilities are divided among several units, including the now-infamous Lazarus Group, Kimsuky, and APT37, known for their sophisticated cyber operations.

North Korea’s cyber strategy seeks to develop defensive and offensive capabilities. On the defensive side, North Korea has invested heavily in protecting its critical infrastructure and sensitive data from cyberattacks. On the offensive side, North Korea has developed various capabilities to conduct cyber espionage, disinformation campaigns, and disruptive cyberattacks.

North Korea has been implicated in numerous cyber espionage and disruptive activities targeting both governmental and private sector entities worldwide. One of the most notable North Korean cyber operations is the 2014 Sony Pictures hack but the most significant is likely the 2017 WannaCry ransomware. WannaCry ransomware infected more than 200,000 computers in over 150 countries, causing widespread disruption by encrypting files on infected computers and demanding ransom payments in cryptocurrency. The attack is an example of North Korea’s ability to conduct large-scale disruptive cyber operations and the regime’s willingness to engage in asymmetric and irregular attacks to fund its government.

Islamic Republic of Iran

Iran’s cyber proliferation began after the Stuxnet attack in 2010, an attack that targeted Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities. Stuxnet highlighted the vulnerability of Iran’s critical infrastructure to foreign intervention and pushed the regime to invest heavily in developing cyber capabilities. As a result, Iran’s cyber strategy has been focused on retaliatory cyber capabilities and driven by its perception that it is engaged in an ongoing conflict with the West over its nuclear program and other geopolitical issues. Unlike China and Russia, which primarily engage in cyber espionage, or North Korea, which engages in cybercrime and theft, Iran’s regime views cyber operations as a means of retaliating against sanctions and other forms of pressure from the international community.

Similar to North Korea, Iran’s cyber strategy focuses on the development of defensive and offensive capabilities. On the defensive side, Iran has invested in protecting its critical infrastructure and sensitive data from cyberattacks and crafted defensive cyber doctrine to guide how the regime repels and mitigates cyberattacks against Iran. Offensively, Iran has developed various capabilities to conduct cyber espionage, disinformation campaigns, and disruptive cyberattacks.

Iran’s focus on retaliatory capabilities makes them a particularly volatile cyber actor, that is willing and able to launch disruptive attacks with little warning. For example, a significant Iranian cyber operation was Operation Ababil, which disrupted services at US financial institutions through a series of distributed denial-of-service attacks between 2011 and 2013. The Iranian hacking collective, Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters, carried out the attacks and is believed to be state-sponsored. The operation was designed to impact major US banks and is understood as the regime’s retaliation against economic sanctions.

To date, Iran has been implicated in numerous cyber espionage and disruptive activities targeting both governmental and private sector entities worldwide. The Shamoon attack, which targeted Saudi Aramco in 2012, is among the most notable Iranian cyber operations. The attack used malware to cause irreparable damage to thousands of computers, rendering them useless by overwriting the master boot record, partition tables, and most files with random data. Shamoon demonstrated Iran’s ability to conduct large-scale destructive cyberattacks and highlighted its willingness to use asymmetric attacks to achieve strategic goals.

Implications for Global Security

China’s, Russia’s, North Korea’s, and Iran’s collaborative and individual cyber strategies have significant implications for global security. Their activities undermine the stability provided by NATO and Western powers, posing complex, asymmetric, and irregular challenges to international norms and, more broadly, cybersecurity. State-sponsored cyber operations, like state-sponsored terrorism or political violence, are sophisticated attempts to erode trust in digital infrastructure and government or institutional functions by disrupting the integrity, availability or confidentiality of data, services, and other aspects of online and physical security. For example, China’s cyber activities, including Volt Typhoon, have heightened tensions with the US, particularly over Taiwan. Similarly, Russian cyber operations have exacerbated conflicts in the former Soviet Bloc nations and strained relations with Western nations.

The cyber collaboration between China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran varies in scope; however, its aim always aligns with political goals that negatively impact the existing rules-based world order. For example, Russia leverages malware to attack Ukraine, which was developed by Scarab, a Chinese government-linked cyber group, and shares techniques on how best to leverage AI for attacking targets and “living off the land” persistence to avoid detection by cyber defenders.

Moreover, the cyber strategies’ collaborative and sophisticated characteristics pose significant challenges for cybersecurity defenders. Traditional cybersecurity measures are often insufficient to counter the advanced tactics used by state-sponsored actors. NATO and Western powers must adopt a comprehensive approach that includes enhancing defensive capabilities, leveraging advanced technologies, fostering international cooperation, and developing offensive cyber strategies to effectively counter these threats. By doing so, they can safeguard the stability and security that have been our world’s cornerstone since World War II’s end.

Evan Morgan is the Founder of Cyber Defense Army, a cybersecurity consultancy and services firm that incorporates geopolitical risk in their cybersecurity practices for clients. He is a United States Air Force veteran.

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

Capt. Taiwan Veney, cyber warfare operations officer, watches members of the 175th Cyberspace Operations Group in the Hunter’s Den at Warfield Air National Guard Base, Middle River, MD, June 3, 2017. (U.S. Air Force photo by J.M. Eddins Jr.)

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23. Iran’s mortification proves that Israel is quietly winning the war

Excerpt:

So the rounds of violence continue. Right now, there is no end in sight. The killing of Haniyeh will almost certainly cause chances of a hostage deal to fade, which will heap more domestic pressure on the Israeli leader. In Jerusalem, however, there will be a sense of quiet satisfaction that the name Netanyahu strikes fear into the heart of the Ayatollah once again.

Iran’s mortification proves that Israel is quietly winning the war

The Telegraph · by Jake Wallis Simons 31 July 2024 • 11:37am

Comment

The name Netanyahu strikes fear into the heart of the Ayatollah once again

Credit: AFP

Since October 7, Israel has had one geostrategic imperative: to reinstate deterrence. In the Middle East – and increasingly in Ukraine and further afield – states live or die on the strength of their ability to cow their enemies, and none more so than the Jewish one.

This morning, as the dust settles over the former safe house in Tehran in which the Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, was living in luxury until death came upon him from the skies, that deterrent is well on the way to being restored.

The Iranian regime is in a state of shock. The last time Israel targeted a terrorist perceived as too high in value to tolerate, Tehran unleashed a night of 300 projectiles on the Jewish state, only one of which hit the target. The west united to play defence, but the Israeli response was surgical and designed to send a message of fear, not pain.

This is a move of a different order. The humiliation suffered by the Iranians is profound. The paranoia spreading through the upper echelons of the regime is tangible. If Israel – Jerusalem has not claimed responsibility but let us work on that assumption – can reach a figure like Haniyeh in a place like Tehran, nowhere and nobody is safe.

According to Iran experts like Kasra Aarabi, director of Iranian Revolutionary Guard research at the respected United Against Nuclear Iran thinktank, last night’s assassination will only deepen the regime’s fear of Benjamin Netanyahu. They have watched while the Israeli leader has withstood unprecedented pressure both internationally and domestically, pressing Hamas to the brink of destruction.

They know his views on Iran. He has been vocal about the threat for years, memorably brandishing a visual aid of a cartoon nuclear bomb in a speech at the United Nations, and has put cunning and steel behind his concerns. In 2018, when the Mossad pulled off the audacious theft of Iran’s nuclear archive from a nondescript commercial district on the outskirts of Tehran, Bibi was at the wheel.

Two years later, when Israeli spies carried out the remarkable assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the “father of the bomb”, whose fingerprints were found all over the archive, as a Mossad source told me, Bibi was once again in office. Fakhrizadeh was killed, as I revealed at the time, by way of a one-ton automated gun that was smuggled into the country piece-by-piece by a 20-plus team of Israeli and Iranian spies. The myth of Israel’s superhuman espionage was assured.

These are different times. Even as war rages and Netanyahu is on the ropes, however, he has shown that when it comes to Iran, even the 300 projectiles in April were not enough to dent his resolve. Haniyeh is dead; Tehran is in a state of panic and embarrassment; just hours earlier, Fuad Shukr, a veteran Hezbollah commander close to leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed in another precision Israeli strike, dying with a $5 million American bounty on his head, cleverly wrapping the White House into the equation.

The Iranians are boxed in. The law of the region dictates that they will need to mount a response. But dare they provoke Netanyahu further?

There will be those within the Ayatollah’s high command who are baying for blood. With the election of Donald Trump in November looking like a distinct possibility, the window of American weakness may be closing. In acknowledgement of this, Iran has been accelerating its progress towards a nuclear weapon, which may lie just “one or two weeks” away, as Secretary of State Anthony Blinken confirmed in Aspen two weeks ago. The hawks will argue that now is the time to make a dash for nuclearisation, which would redraw the balance of power in the Middle East.

These same voices – including, apparently, that of Masoud Pezeshkian, the new president, who set aside the “moderate” mask that fooled the west by vowing to “make the terrorist occupiers regret their cowardly act” – will be urging the Ayatollah to hit back hard. This may yet unfold, but today it seems more unlikely than likely. In the old world, when Trump was in office and the deterrent was strong, even the killing of Qasem Soleimani in 2020 was met with no escalation from Iran. Despite the war in Gaza, the memory of that dynamic will be conjured today. There will inevitably be some retaliation from the regime, but, as Aarabi told me, this is more likely to take the form of a terror attack on an Israeli embassy overseas than another night of rocket fire on Israel.

So the rounds of violence continue. Right now, there is no end in sight. The killing of Haniyeh will almost certainly cause chances of a hostage deal to fade, which will heap more domestic pressure on the Israeli leader. In Jerusalem, however, there will be a sense of quiet satisfaction that the name Netanyahu strikes fear into the heart of the Ayatollah once again.

The Telegraph · by Jake Wallis Simons 31 July 2024 • 11:37am

24. Does China Prefer Harris or Trump?

No hope for China?

Conclusion:

Given the broad similarities of both the Trump and the Biden administrations’ approach to China, Beijing is preparing itself for the outcome of the U.S. elections with great caution and limited hope. In April, Xi restated to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken that “China welcomes a confident, open, prosperous, and thriving United States and hopes the United States will also look at China’s development in a positive light.” Unfortunately, the likelihood that the next U.S. administration will view China’s development positively is low. As China continues to prioritize domestic development and security, it will likely strive to defend its economic and governance models while preserving space for global trade and investment. For a long time to come, U.S.-Chinese relations seem unlikely to return to the deep exchanges and cooperation that occurred at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Yet if a rapprochement is out of the question, China and the United States can still maintain stability and avoid catastrophe, whoever is in the Oval Office.

Does China Prefer Harris or Trump?

Why Chinese Strategists See Little Difference Between the Two

By Wang Jisi, Hu Ran, and Zhao Jianwei

August 1, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by Wang Jisi, Hu Ran, and Zhao Jianwei · August 1, 2024

Over the past few weeks, the upheavals in the U.S. presidential election season have drawn enormous global attention. Even before the summer began, countries were weighing the implications of former President Donald Trump’s return to the White House and, conversely, what a second term for U.S. President Joe Biden might bring. To many countries, these two possibilities presented markedly different prospects for geopolitics and for the future role of the United States in world affairs.

Then came nine remarkable days in July, during which Trump was almost assassinated and Biden abruptly announced that he would not seek reelection. Upending the U.S. presidential race for both parties, these events have created further uncertainty about the coming direction of the United States. Many countries see an increasingly stark divergence between the anticipated continuation of Biden’s internationalist foreign policy under a future President Kamala Harris and a far more isolationist approach under a reelected President Trump and his running mate, J. D. Vance.

From China, however, the view is somewhat different. Eight years ago, the first Trump administration ushered in a far more confrontational approach to relations with Beijing, which many Chinese observers found bewildering. Rather than treating China as a trading partner and sometimes a rival, the United States began to call it a “revisionist power,” strategic competitor, and even threat. More striking still, despite changes in tone, the Biden administration, has reinforced that shift and even taken it further on some issues. Indeed, there seems to be a bipartisan consensus in Washington that China must now be treated as a major adversary, with a growing contingent of analysts arguing for a cold war framing.

To Chinese observers, rather than offering alternative approaches to their country and the world, the two major U.S. parties both reflect a general approach to China that has emerged in recent years, one that is strongly informed by domestic U.S. political concerns. What is more important than either party’s views are the several gradations of U.S. analysis of China and what they could mean in practice. Most Chinese observers do not expect significant changes in U.S. policy toward China. But they are trying to understand which strands of current thinking in Washington may ultimately dominate.

PLAYING TO THE HOME CROWD

Owing to China’s political structure and the close government management of Chinese public opinion, it is difficult to fathom how the leadership in Beijing views and reacts to U.S. debate about China. Nevertheless, some general points can be made about the forces that many in China see as driving that debate. First, a country’s external actions tend to reflect its domestic politics. This phenomenon appears to be especially true in the United States, in which major domestic debates can easily spill over into foreign affairs. And it has come to play a particular role in how Washington approaches China.

Thus, both Trump’s “America first” mantra and Biden’s “foreign policy for the middle class” catchphrase vividly demonstrate the close relationship between domestic politics and foreign policy in the United States. After Trump took office, the deeply polarized political climate in the United States shaped his foreign policy, particularly toward China. The “America first” approach was largely a response to American voters’ concerns about globalization and immigration. As a result, the Trump administration raised trade barriers, restricted immigration, and limited U.S. participation in international organizations, prioritizing the United States’ economic interests and national security.

Biden’s foreign policy shares similar political considerations with Trump’s.

Yet the Biden administration has also made clear that its foreign policy decisions are aimed to align with the interests of voters at home and that the prosperity of ordinary Americans also has an international dimension. Thus, Biden’s foreign policy shares similar political considerations with Trump’s, as it aims to rebalance domestic industrial policies and international economic rules to promote domestic interests. Some U.S. issues themselves have both domestic and foreign components. A continuous influx of immigrants is not only a driving force behind U.S. prosperity but also affects its border security and its relations with the outside world. Since the Trump administration, the fentanyl crisis in the United States has required cooperation with China, and China has responded positively. Nevertheless, members of Congress continue to blame China for the fentanyl entering the United States from Mexico.

A second feature of U.S. foreign policy in recent years is the growing role that China plays in it. Although Russia’s armed conflict with Ukraine and Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza draw much attention, China continues to be the top priority in Washington’s pronounced global strategy. At this critical juncture, many U.S. strategists are renewing calls for Washington to accelerate its pivot to Asia. For example, in their new book, Lost Decade, the foreign policy analysts Robert Blackwill and Richard Fontaine contend that the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations have all, in various ways, fallen short in developing strong and coherent policies toward China and the rest of Asia. Despite the continuing challenges for the United States in Europe and the Middle East, they argue, it is crucial for U.S. policymakers to hasten the shift toward Asia.

The importance of China policy has already become clear in the U.S. presidential contest. Both parties are vying to produce the strongest rhetoric about getting tough on Beijing and restricting its global role. And this points to yet another feature of the American debate about China: in the current U.S. political context, the traditional binary of “doves” and “hawks” cannot capture the complexities of U.S. perceptions of China. Given the broad bipartisan consensus that China poses a major challenge, it is more meaningful to examine the range of policy perspectives that has emerged within this general view.

A THREE-SIDED DEBATE

Observed from afar, U.S. strategists on China can be broadly divided into three schools. The first might be called the New Cold Warriors. People in this group believe that the U.S.-Chinese rivalry is a zero-sum game and that Washington and Beijing are engaged in a cold war that requires even more aggressive tactics from the United States. As former U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser Matt Pottinger and former U.S. Congressman Mike Gallagher argued in Foreign Affairs, the competition with China “must be won, not managed.” In making this argument, they and others have drawn on U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s example of setting the Soviet threat as a top priority, in order to pursue victory in the Cold War.

The second school could be described as the Competition Managers. Contrary to the New Cold Warriors, those in this camp hold the idea that the U.S.-Chinese rivalry is not a zero-sum game and, consequently, that it is essential to have a strategy for coexisting with China. The intellectual origins of this approach can be traced to an article that Kurt Campbell and Jake Sullivan wrote for Foreign Affairs in 2019, before they both joined the Biden administration. As they argued, the contest with China is “a condition to be managed rather than a problem to be solved.” Along with Rush Doshi, who was deputy senior director for China and Taiwan Affairs at the National Security Council from 2021 to 2024, and others, they suggest that Washington’s best approach to China is leading with competition, followed by offers of cooperation.

The third might be called the Accommodationists. Although they share the other schools’ dislike for China’s political system and its global influence, they tend to be more concerned than their counterparts that competition could devolve into confrontation. As prominent figures in this camp, the international relations scholars Jessica Chen Weiss and James Steinberg are against waging a cold war with China because cold wars are inherently dangerous. In their view, Pottinger and Gallagher offer an illusory appeal to victory, because, “U.S. efforts to bring about change through pressure are as likely to consolidate authoritarian rule as to undermine it.” Chen Weiss and Steinberg argue therefore that it is in the interest of both Beijing and Washington to reduce the risk of war and to cooperate on issues of mutual concern, such as climate change and public health.

Despite this diversity of opinion, all three schools agree that China poses a significant challenge to the United States. They also concur that U.S. policy toward China needs bipartisan foundations to succeed. Nonetheless, there appears to be no prevailing view in Washington on which approach is best or on what aspect of the challenge—political, military, economic, or global governance—is most serious.For Beijing, this unsettled debate has meant that it is crucial to understand how these different approaches are influencing U.S. policies and, specifically, how they might shape the incoming U.S. administration.

DIFFERENT TACTICS, SAME AIMS

Americans may be tempted to ask whether China prefers a Harris administration or a second Trump administration—or more broadly, whether it prefers Democrats or Republicans. After all, in 1972, Chairman Mao Zedong told President Richard Nixon that he liked the political right in the United States and other Western countries. Although Mao did not give a reason for this preference, it seems likely that he saw Nixon and other right-leaning Western leaders as paying more attention to the economic and security interests of their countries, whereas politicians on the left tended to base their policies on ideology and political values.

Yet it is difficult to judge whether the Democrats or the Republicans have made a greater contribution to U.S.-Chinese relations. For instance, although Nixon, a Republican, first broke the ice with China, it was President Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, who decided to establish diplomatic ties with Beijing. Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, there have been seven Democratic presidents and seven Republican presidents in the United States, and major breakthroughs and crises in bilateral ties have occurred under both.

The same uncertainty holds true with Chinese assessments of the two parties today. When Trump took office, in 2017, his foremost concern about China was the enormous U.S. trade deficit, and for the first time in U.S. history, the deficit, as well as China’s technological edge, was treated as a national security issue. Not only did the Trump administration label China a “revisionist power” and a strategic competitor; it also identified the Chinese Communist Party as a threat to the American way of life and “the free world.” Launching an aggressive yet inconsistent “whole of government” approach, the Trump administration set out to compete with and confront China on almost every issue.

U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Osaka, Japan, June 2019

Kevin Lamarque / Reuters

Starting with trade, the Trump administration began with punitive tariffs on Chinese imports and then expanded its campaign to include increased scrutiny and restrictions on Chinese investments, tightened high-technology export controls, and targeted actions against specific Chinese companies with large overseas presences, such as Huawei. On security issues, the Trump administration also took new steps to maintain U.S. supremacy in what strategists now consistently called the “Indo-Pacific” region, a geographical term that had been used only occasionally earlier. The Trump administration gave Taiwan special security assurances and downplayed the long-standing “one China” policy; put new resources into the Quad (the grouping of Australia, India, Japan, and the United States) in an effort to collectively balance China; and stepped up U.S. military activities in the Western Pacific to challenge China’s territorial claims.

As for the political relationship between the United States and China, Trump did not hold rigidly ideological views on the Chinese system and leadership, but he allowed his administration officials and the U.S. Congress to stridently criticize China’s ruling party and its domestic governance, particularly its policies toward Xinjiang and Hong Kong. And as his administration adopted a broader “China threat” narrative, it severely damaged the academic, scientific, and societal exchanges between the two countries that had existed for decades. In multilateral diplomacy, Washington also began to demonize Beijing and strongly counter its international influence, trying to constrain China’s expanding global role in its Belt and Road Initiative and in its growing involvement in United Nations bodies.

Then, in 2020, amid a complicated election year in the United States, the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the downward spiral of relations between Washington and Beijing. The Trump administration blamed the public health crisis on the Chinese government, suspended most bilateral dialogues, and adopted a hostile stance toward China itself. In July 2020, the U.S. government even ordered China’s consulate general in Houston to close down, accusing it of being a “hub of spying and intellectual property theft.”

Yet overall, the Trump administration maintained a degree of flexibility toward China. Despite its punitive tariffs and other measures, it remained open to trade talks and demonstrated some willingness to compromise on thorny issues such as technological competition and Taiwan. What’s more, “America first” also meant that Washington held less credibility and leverage in coordinating with other countries on their own policies toward China, with the result that the Trump administration did not build and lead a strong multilateral front to counter China. This encouraged a popular perception among some Chinese commentators that Trump was primarily interested in business benefits and making a deal with China. In November 2017, Trump paid a state visit to Beijing—a step that Biden has failed to take during his administration—and in January 2020 signed a phase one trade agreement with China to begin to resolve trade tensions. By the end of the Trump presidency, many in the United States characterized his administration’s trade war with China as a failure.

Despite its punitive tariffs, the Trump administration remained open to trade talks.

For all its putative differences from the Trump administration, the Biden administration has shown noticeable continuity with its predecessor on China. Mainly, Biden has cemented the generally adversarial orientation of Trump-era policies by way of a more systematic and multilateral approach, which his administration has called “invest, align, and compete.” In his first foreign policy speech, in February 2021, Biden called China the United States’ “most serious competitor” and pledged to “take on directly” the challenges it posed to U.S. “prosperity, security, and democratic values.”

Thus, Biden has worked closely with Congress to implement large-scale infrastructure investments and industrial policies aimed at making the United States more competitive and less reliant on China. To better compete on advanced technologies, the Biden administration has also sought tighter export controls, new tariffs on China’s green technology products, and more coordinated international efforts such as the Chip 4 alliance—a semiconductor partnership between Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and the United States.

In the Asia-Pacific, the Biden administration has intensified its military presence in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea and added a regional economic dimension to the United States’ Asian security alliances. Biden has also rallied G-7 leaders to push forward the Build Back Better World initiative and the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment—both aimed at providing a Western answer to China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Prompted by China’s growing ties with Russia amid the war in Ukraine, the Biden administration has imposed sanctions on Chinese companies that trade with Russia. Washington has also given the contest with China a new overlay of ideology—what the administration calls “democracy versus autocracy”—in an effort to build a grand alliance against Beijing.

Although it has competed fiercely with China, the Biden administration has maintained regular high-level communication channels and continued to explore areas of cooperation. Despite its emphasis on what it sees as China’s political influence, the Biden team has taken steps to depoliticize and restore bilateral academic and societal exchanges, such as ending the Trump administration’s China Initiative—a controversial crackdown on researchers in the United States who had contacts with Chinese entities. Biden also had direct meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Bali, Indonesia, in November 2022, and in San Francisco in November 2023, in which the two leaders pledged to maintain a stable and healthy bilateral relationship.

BIG YARDS OR BROAD COALITIONS

Chinese strategists hold few illusions that U.S. policy toward China might change course over the next decade. Given U.S. public opinion polls and the bipartisan consensus about China in Washington, they assume that whoever is elected in November 2024 will continue to prioritize strategic competition and even containment in Washington’s approach to Beijing, with cooperation and exchanges taking a back seat.

A new Trump administration would almost certainly pursue a more aggressive trade policy toward China. Trump has already proposed a 60 percent tariff on all goods manufactured in China, as well as revoked China’s permanent normal trade relations status, which has granted nondiscriminatory, favorable trade terms and market access since 2000. He has also called for a “big yard, high fence” doctrine—an explicit expansion of the Biden administration’s “small yard, high fence” concept that only protects critical and emerging technologies with robust security measures—to enable a broader technological decoupling from China.

Still, given Trump’s predilection for dealmaking, he might decide to pursue bilateral agreements with Beijing on consumer goods, energy, and technology. He might also try to use the Taiwan issue as a bargaining chip to gain leverage in other areas, such as offering to restrain Taiwan’s provocative actions in exchange for Beijing’s compromise on trade. But it is highly unlikely that China would agree to such a deal, and Trump’s foreign policy advisers might also oppose it. Once again, with his general preference for bilateral diplomacy over multilateralism, Trump might also be less capable of mobilizing allies and partners against China and might seek a separate U.S. accommodation with Russia, a staunch strategic partner of China.

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Bangkok, November 2022

The White House / Reuters

For its part, a Harris administration, assuming it retained much of the Biden approach, would likely intensify strategic competition with Beijing and consolidate Biden’s efforts to build a coalition of Western and Asian countries to counterbalance China. Compared with Trump’s arbitrary and fickle policymaking, these strategies would likely remain more organized and predictable.

Yet overall, from a Chinese perspective, the China policies of a new Trump administration and a Harris administration will likely be strategically consistent. As presidents, both candidates would present challenges and disadvantages for China, and neither seems likely to want a major military conflict or to cut off all economic and societal contacts. Therefore, Beijing is unlikely to have a clear preference. Moreover, China has strong incentives to maintain a stable relationship with the United States and to avoid confrontation or major disruptions. Given the political sensitivities regarding the election and U.S.-Chinese relations, any Chinese action to interfere would likely backfire.

As the 2024 U.S. presidential race heats up, officials in Beijing have made cautious and reserved remarks about it, with government officials describing the election as “America’s internal affair.” At a press briefing in July, Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Lin Jian stressed that China “has never and will never interfere in the presidential elections of the U.S.” Lin also said, however, that the Chinese government “staunchly rejects anyone making an issue of China and damaging China’s interests for election purposes” and that the two U.S. political parties “should not spread disinformation to vilify China and should not make China an issue.” That signals that Beijing may feel compelled to respond, at least rhetorically, if it is attacked during the campaigns. Despite its declared principle of noninterference, Beijing may not be able to silence sensational, irresponsible, and provocative voices in Chinese-language social media. Some of these are aired outside China and may reflect the specific agendas of particular external Chinese communities and should therefore not be construed as representing China’s official position.

CAUTION, NOT CATASTROPHE

Like Washington, Beijing’s primary concern in 2024 is its domestic situation. In contrast with the political polarization and volatile election season in the United States, China appears to be politically stable and socially cohesive under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party. In mid-July, the 20th CCP Central Committee concluded its third plenary session with a positive assessment of China’s economic recovery, despite below-expectation economic growth figures for the first half of 2024, and made a proposal for comprehensively deepening reforms to advance China’s modernization. Seeking to balance economic development and national security, Beijing’s top priority remains institution building, particularly strengthening the CCP leadership and enforcing party discipline.

On the one hand, Beijing recognizes that sustaining economic growth is imperative for domestic stability and takes incremental measures to enhance foreign trade, investment, and technological cooperation. In this regard, it sees no advantage in antagonizing the United States and the West. On the other hand, the Chinese government has spared no effort in guarding against what it sees as Western—and in particular, American—attempts to undermine its authority and legitimacy at home, and it will not sacrifice political principles and national security for economic gains.

Although it seeks stability with Washington, Beijing has also been preparing for growing turbulence in the bilateral relationship. In March 2023, Xi observed, “Western countries led by the United States have implemented all-around containment, encirclement, and suppression against us, bringing unprecedented severe challenges to our country’s development.” Two months later, at the first meeting of the new Central National Security Committee, Xi called on the party to “be prepared for worst-case and extreme scenarios and to be ready to withstand the major test of high winds, choppy waters, and even dangerous storms.” In foreign affairs, Beijing still depicts the world as comprising both developing and developed countries rather than framing it as Western and anti-Western blocs competing for influence in the global South.

China has adamantly resisted U.S. interference in what it regards as its domestic affairs, particularly on issues such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang, and human rights. China regards the Taiwan question, in particular, as holding core importance. Beijing believes it has exercised significant restraint toward Taiwan and is far from exhausting its potential policy options for preventing the island from obtaining de jure independence. Under these circumstances, the Chinese leadership will adhere to its declared principle of peaceful unification with Taiwan and “one country, two systems” unless it is drastically and irreversibly provoked. In its territorial dispute with the Philippines in the South China Sea, China views its approach as calibrated and confident. In its tensions with the United States over trade and technology, China sees itself focusing on measured counteractions and compelled to double down on pursuing self-reliance.

Given the broad similarities of both the Trump and the Biden administrations’ approach to China, Beijing is preparing itself for the outcome of the U.S. elections with great caution and limited hope. In April, Xi restated to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken that “China welcomes a confident, open, prosperous, and thriving United States and hopes the United States will also look at China’s development in a positive light.” Unfortunately, the likelihood that the next U.S. administration will view China’s development positively is low. As China continues to prioritize domestic development and security, it will likely strive to defend its economic and governance models while preserving space for global trade and investment. For a long time to come, U.S.-Chinese relations seem unlikely to return to the deep exchanges and cooperation that occurred at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Yet if a rapprochement is out of the question, China and the United States can still maintain stability and avoid catastrophe, whoever is in the Oval Office.

• WANG JISI is Founding President of the Institute of International and Strategic Studies, Peking University, China.
• HU RAN is a research associate at the Institute of International and Strategic Studies, Peking University.
• ZHAO JIANWEI is a research associate at the Institute of International and Strategic Studies, Peking University.

Foreign Affairs · by Wang Jisi, Hu Ran, and Zhao Jianwei · August 1, 2024

25. ISIS-K Goes Global

Excerpts:

A common commitment to intelligence sharing seems to be a casualty of the shift from the post-9/11 era, when many governments of different stripes collaborated in the war on terrorism, to the current phase of great-power competition. The United States and its European allies still cooperate, and it is likely that U.S. intelligence helped identify at least some of the foiled plots in Europe this year. But among countries separated by geopolitical fault lines, counterterrorism assistance has become more cumbersome and less frequent.

ISIS-K and other terrorist groups exploit the seams between great powers. Not only do they avoid detection when countries do not share information, but they also deliberately launch attacks that exacerbate sectarian tensions, making it even more difficult for governments to prevent further violence. Terrorist activity is a global problem, as ISIS-K’s newly ambitious strategy shows, and counterterrorism efforts must be global, as well. As long as intelligence agencies remain wary of cooperating or passing along critical information about this shared threat, they will cede the initiative to the groups that would do their countries harm.

ISIS-K Goes Global

The World Is Not Ready to Confront a New International Terror Threat

By Colin P. Clarke and Lucas Webber

August 1, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by Colin P. Clarke and Lucas Webber · August 1, 2024

Over the past few weeks, French authorities have uncovered several terrorist plots targeting the 2024 Olympic Games, which began last week in Paris. In one of them, an 18-year-old Chechen man planned to attack an Olympic soccer match in the French city of Saint-Étienne. He was allegedly in contact with a member of the Islamic State (also known as ISIS). The disrupted plot was just the latest in a spike of terrorist activity linked to ISIS. The group’s affiliate, the South Asian–based Islamic State Khorasan (ISIS-K), is responsible for several successful international terrorist attacks this year alone—at a memorial service in Kerman, Iran, in early January; at a church in Istanbul later that month; and at a concert hall outside Moscow in March. The attacks in Iran and Russia combined left nearly 250 people dead and hundreds more wounded. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, where ISIS-K is based, the group claims responsibility for multiple smaller-scale attacks each month.

ISIS-K is not the only source of a heightened terror threat. In a recent essay in Foreign Affairs, the scholar Graham Allison and the former CIA deputy director Michael Morell compared the current security environment to that of the period leading up to al Qaeda’s attacks on September 11, 2001. The warning lights for large-scale violence, they concluded, are flashing as brightly today as in the years before 9/11, when high-profile attacks targeted U.S. embassies in East Africa and the USS Cole off the coast of Yemen. Of the many threats Allison and Morell outlined, however, ISIS-K is among the most concerning, given its capabilities and intent.

When ISIS-K emerged in 2015, the group primarily concentrated on growing its ranks with new recruits not just from Afghanistan and Pakistan but from countries across Central Asia, particularly Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Like other ISIS affiliates, ISIS-K pursued a highly sectarian agenda. The group laced its propaganda with anti-Shiite screeds and frequently attacked the Hazara, a Shiite minority in Afghanistan. Between 2015 and 2018, the Afghan military, U.S. and NATO troops, and Pakistani forces were all conducting counterterrorism operations against ISIS-K, though these operations were not always coordinated. The Afghan Taliban were also battling the group in certain parts of the country. During this period, ISIS-K was pushed out of pockets of territory it once controlled and suffered significant manpower losses, particularly among its leadership.

Even at this nadir, the group continued to conduct deadly attacks within Afghanistan, many of them in the capital, Kabul. ISIS-K has proven stubbornly resilient in the years since. It has overcome its personnel challenges by further expanding its recruitment efforts, first among battle-hardened Pakistani militants, then across Central Asia. It has adapted its strategy, too. ISIS-K conducts fewer strikes inside Afghanistan than it once did, and many of the attacks it has planned recently are designed to be more lethal and focus on high-profile targets abroad. Intelligence agencies and law enforcement organizations are rightfully on high alert, but the competitive turn in global politics has made it more difficult for them to coordinate their efforts. To quell the international threat that ISIS-K presents, countries will need to overcome this obstacle to effective counterterrorism.

THE COMEBACK

ISIS-K attacks declined between 2018 and 2021, the group’s receding presence a result of the success of the U.S., Afghan, and allied military campaign. That trend might have continued if not for the disastrous U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021. One of the most harrowing episodes of the chaotic evacuation was an ISIS-K suicide attack at the Kabul airport, which killed 13 U.S. servicemembers and dozens of Afghans. The blast was an ominous demonstration of ISIS-K’s lethal capabilities, but U.S. forces were on their way out, leaving the Afghan Taliban as the only entity combating the group on the ground. Without a consistent U.S. military and intelligence presence in Afghanistan, it was only a matter of time before ISIS-K was able to regroup.

The United States has not ended its counterterrorism efforts in the region entirely. But with no physical presence in Afghanistan, it relies on what President Joe Biden has called an “over-the-horizon” approach, using signals intelligence, cooperation with regional partners, and armed drones to attack high-value targets deemed a threat to national security. When a U.S. drone killed the al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri at a safe house in Kabul in July 2022, the Biden administration offered the strike as evidence that its over-the-horizon approach could keep Americans safe.

The day-to-day job of containing the threat from ISIS-K, however, fell to the Taliban, which became the de facto government of Afghanistan after the United States withdrew and the political and security institutions it had been supporting rapidly collapsed. At first glance, the Taliban appear to have been surprisingly successful at counterterrorism. Between September 2022 and June 2023, ISIS-K attacks dropped substantially, according to research conducted by Amira Jadoon, Andrew Mines, and Abdul Sayed. During that time, ISIS-K averaged four attacks per month in Afghanistan, down from 23 per month during the first year of the Taliban’s rule. But these figures do not necessarily indicate a degradation of the group’s operational capacity, nor is it clear that the Taliban’s tactics were the primary cause of the decline.

ISIS-K has proven stubbornly resilient.

More likely, the reduced frequency of ISIS-K attacks inside Afghanistan is a result of the group’s strategic pivot. Under its current leader, Sanaullah Ghafari (also known as Shahab al-Muhajir), who assumed this role in June 2020, ISIS-K has expanded its recruitment and propaganda efforts and sought ways to internationalize its agenda. Whereas previously its ambitions were largely local, recently it has ramped up its attacks across the border in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan and on foreign interests within Afghanistan. In 2022, for example, ISIS-K struck the Russian embassy and a hotel frequented by Chinese businesspeople in Kabul.

ISIS-K now has even wider horizons. It is both pushing its propaganda to a more global audience and threatening attacks farther afield. In addition to outreach across its core area of operations in South and Central Asia, ISIS-K is disseminating media content in multiple languages to reach more people. It mainly does so through its in-house outlet, the Al-Azaim Foundation for Media Production, which primarily publishes in Pashto but also produces regular content in English, Farsi, Russian, Tajik, Turkish, Urdu, and Uzbek. To further amplify its messages, ISIS-K encourages its supporters around the world to create their own propaganda that aligns with its positions. The group’s official messaging this year has included direct threats against targets in foreign countries, such as Euro 2024 in Germany, the Olympic Games in France, and the Cricket World Cup in the United States. (Before the start of Euro 2024 in June, a man who had unsuccessfully applied for a job related to the event was arrested at the airport in Cologne, Germany, charged with sending money to ISIS-K.) After the Moscow attack in March, a website affiliated with ISIS-K released an image bearing the text “After Moscow…Who Is the Next?” and listing the names of four European cities—London, Madrid, Paris, and Rome.

ISIS-K’s efforts to threaten the West include radicalizing members of Central Asian diasporic communities in Europe and North America and inciting individuals to violence. In this “virtual entrepreneur” model, which the group has used successfully in the past, operatives in Afghanistan or Pakistan make contact with would-be ISIS-K supporters abroad to try to convince them to carry out attacks in the countries where they reside. If they agree, ISIS-K handlers feed them instructions remotely and put them in touch with operatives on the ground who can provide the fake documentation, weapons, and other logistical support necessary to conduct a terrorist attack.

Since the group’s physical and virtual networks reinforce each other, effective counterterrorism requires disrupting both. Breaking up physical networks involves measures like the ones U.S. officials took just weeks ago when they arrested eight Tajik nationals who had entered the United States via the southern border and were later identified as potentially having links to ISIS-K. To dismantle virtual networks, governments must work with social media and other tech companies to identify and take down accounts and content promoting terrorist propaganda. This alone is not sufficient; no cleanup campaign catches everything, and the low barriers to entry for building a presence online make content removal a cat-and-mouse game. Still, it is necessary as part of an ongoing effort to limit the reach of extremist propaganda.

GLOBAL PROBLEM, GLOBAL SOLUTION

The increasing frequency of foiled ISIS-K plots underscores the need for such measures. One of the first major ISIS-K plots uncovered abroad was in Germany in April 2020, when German police thwarted a plan to attack U.S. and NATO military bases in the country. The Washington Post reported that by February 2023, counterterrorism officials had identified no fewer than 15 separate ISIS-K plots targeting sites around the world, including churches, embassies, and the 2022 World Cup in Doha, Qatar. Authorities foiled ISIS-K plots in Germany and the Netherlands in July 2023, as well as a planned attack on New Year’s Eve celebrations in Cologne, Germany, and Vienna, Austria, in December 2023. This year, in March, President Emmanuel Macron announced that France had disrupted multiple ISIS-K plots on French soil. The same month, German police arrested two Afghan nationals who had been communicating with ISIS-K handlers while planning an attack on the Swedish parliament as an act of revenge for Quran burnings in Stockholm.

The pattern is unnerving policymakers. After the ISIS-K attack in Moscow in March, Christopher Wray, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, warned that “the potential for a coordinated attack” on U.S. soil was “increasingly concerning.” Wray added, “As I look back over my career in law enforcement, I’m hard-pressed to come up with a time when I’ve seen so many different threats, all elevated, all at the same time.”

Dealing with many threats at once requires cooperation. ISIS-K propaganda has denounced a long list of countries—including not just the United States and its European friends but China, India, Iran, and Russia, too—putting all of them in the group’s crosshairs. In a sense, the scope of its threats is similar to that of ISIS in Iraq and Syria from 2014 to 2017. The original ISIS also lashed out against a diverse group of adversaries, including the governments of Iraq and Syria, Kurdish militias, Iranian-backed paramilitary forces, and U.S. and allied forces operating in the region. At its peak, the U.S.-led Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS boasted 87 members. Strange bedfellows worked together or in parallel to squash ISIS and evict the group from the territory it had conquered.

Terrorist groups exploit the seams between great powers.

It is hard to imagine a similar degree of coordination today, however, with intensifying competition leaving countries fewer incentives to cooperate—even when it comes to facing down a group that threatens them all. Countries that might have a shared interest in stopping terrorism, including China, Iran, Russia, Turkey, and the United States, are instead trying to stymie one another’s attempts to project power and build influence in regions where ISIS-K and other terror groups operate, such as Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the Sahel. Before the ISIS-K attacks in Iran and Russia this year, the U.S. intelligence community provided advance notice to Tehran and Moscow in keeping with its “duty to warn” when it has knowledge of impending violence toward civilians. Yet by all accounts the Iranian and Russian governments both shrugged off the warnings.

A common commitment to intelligence sharing seems to be a casualty of the shift from the post-9/11 era, when many governments of different stripes collaborated in the war on terrorism, to the current phase of great-power competition. The United States and its European allies still cooperate, and it is likely that U.S. intelligence helped identify at least some of the foiled plots in Europe this year. But among countries separated by geopolitical fault lines, counterterrorism assistance has become more cumbersome and less frequent.

ISIS-K and other terrorist groups exploit the seams between great powers. Not only do they avoid detection when countries do not share information, but they also deliberately launch attacks that exacerbate sectarian tensions, making it even more difficult for governments to prevent further violence. Terrorist activity is a global problem, as ISIS-K’s newly ambitious strategy shows, and counterterrorism efforts must be global, as well. As long as intelligence agencies remain wary of cooperating or passing along critical information about this shared threat, they will cede the initiative to the groups that would do their countries harm.

• COLIN P. CLARKE is Director of Research at The Soufan Group and a Senior Research Fellow at The Soufan Center.
• LUCAS WEBBER is a co-founder of Militant Wire and a Research Fellow at The Soufan Center.

Foreign Affairs · by Colin P. Clarke and Lucas Webber · August 1, 2024

26. The military needs to make human-performance optimization part of daily ops

​There is no more important "weapon system" in our military than the individual human.

We need to focus on the physical, mental, and intellectual (education and critical thinking) health. We need to develop and sustain our physical abilities, our mental health defenses, and our intellectual/cognitive capabilities.

The military needs to make human-performance optimization part of daily ops

Congress is about to pass new legislative prodding the Pentagon to do better.

defenseone.com · by Katherine Kuzminski

Ukraine’s fierce defense against Russia’s better-on-paper invasion force underscores—once again—how soldiers represent human weapons systems, bringing cognitive, physical, and tactical attributes to the mission in ways that technology still cannot replicate. But while the U.S. military has long valued physical fitness, it has been slow to pursue a fuller range of efforts to optimize human performance. Now Congress is getting involved, mulling a trio of legislative proposals, and the Pentagon should do more besides.

To be sure, the special operations community has long viewed operators as “tactical athletes,” and recent years have seen conventional forces join in; examples include the Army’s Holistic Health and Fitness program and the Air Force Research Lab’s human performance program.

But more can be done—and should be. A human performance optimization framework is essential for operation in the Pacific theater, particularly among ground operators. A conflict with the China would require small teams of stand-in forces to operate with a light footprint and signature to remain undetectable, requiring a certain level of self-reliance away from consistent logistics hubs, in a communications-degraded environment, and outside the reach of medical evacuation within the golden hour. Casualties in such environments not only put the lives of individual service members at risk; they put the entire joint force mission at risk. Under such conditions, it won’t be enough for the service members to be trained and equipped to avoid injury. The services will need to optimize the performance of every individual assigned to the theater.

DOD has traditionally been averse to experimentation with “human weapons systems”—and for good reason. Experimentation with machines typically follows a linear path: the introduction of a new material or parameter can be tested, and the decision to incorporate or reject such a change depends on performance in testing. But human beings are not machines, and the impact of interventions is more cyclical. Human beings require recovery periods and consistent monitoring. Most importantly, no service wants to learn about human performance at the cost of permanent injury or death.

Still, recent decades have brought advances in human performance optimization, most notably in elite athletics. Collegiate, Olympic, and professional sports programs have produced evidence-based approaches to superior human performance in cognition, nutrition, supplementation, physical training, rest and recovery, and the impact of hormonal cycles on training and performance for both men and women.

Now Congress is urging the Pentagon to do more, in three provisions in the draft House Armed Services Committee Fiscal Year 2025 National Defense Authorization Act.

One calls for a pilot program that would use sleep-tracking technology to collect data on service members with newborn and infant children. It’s a narrow scope, but it has implications for broader integration of sleep data, behavioral interventions, and military performance. The impact of sleep on military operations is well known—its lack contributed to the deadly 2017 collisions of two Navy destroyers—yet crew rest is largely only enforced among aviators. The pilot program would provide the services with natural experimental data among servicemembers with interrupted sleep patterns.

The second provision would urge the military to consider distributing creatine in Meals Ready to Eat. This would reflect a major shift from old understandings of the risks and rewards associated with creatine consumption—but it is also backed by a deep bench of medical and performance research across the civilian population. As late as 2007, DOD policy rendered creatine off-limits to service members. However, the medical community found that creatine in appropriate doses increases muscle recovery; it may also make the human brain more resilient against traumatic brain injury and increase cognitive processes in high-stress environments. The HASC’s recommendation may sound novel, but consider that MREs have long included powdered coffee and tea for caffeine and “sports drinks” for electrolytes, both intended to increase human performance. The Army’s Natick Soldier Systems Center has also experimented with creations such as caffeine-infused beef jerky to link caffeine and protein. The consideration of creatine in MREs can be viewed as an evolution of existing supplementation.

Most importantly, the draft legislation includes a provision that DOD should embrace state-of-the-art technology, techniques, and supplementation to drive resilience and performance across the force. Given the future operating environment, the military can no longer only view human performance through the lens of daily physical training requirements; the military must consider the role of nutrition, sleep, recovery, hormonal balance, stress, and temperature at the individual, unit, and force-wide levels of analysis.

These provisions are to be applauded—and the Pentagon must not stop there. The changing battlefield demands a change. The military must work to human performance across the force for the long run, provide the resources to make it happen and enable the flexibility necessary to adopt best practices from elite athletics into the day-to-day management of its personnel.

Katherine Kuzminski is Deputy Director of Studies and Director of the Military, Veterans, and Society Program at the Center for a New American Security.

defenseone.com · by Katherine Kuzminski

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

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