Quotes of the Day:

"Grandfather says: When you feel powerless that's because you stopped listening to your own heart, that's where power comes from."

– Gianni Crow

"Care about what other people think and you always be their prisoner."

– Lao Tzu

"Ludicrous concepts..like the whole idea of a 'war on terrorism'. YOu can wage war against another country, or on a national group within your own country, but can't wage a war on an abstract noun. How do you know you've won? When you've got it removed from the Oxford English Dictionary?"

– Terry Jones, Monty Python team member

1. The U.S. Must Prepare to Fight China and North Korea at the Same Time

2. Campus Protests Embolden Terrorist Groups By David Fridovich & Kim Cole , Jacob Olidort

3. Critique of FY25 NDAA Section 1254: A Critical Misdirection for a Counter-PLA Strategy

4. Ukraine pierces Russian border, triggering fierce clashes

5. Pilots, Family Members Say Crew Is Being Unfairly Blamed for November's Deadly Air Force Osprey Crash

6. Kinmen Is Unlikely to Become Taiwan’s Crimea

7. Paul Nitze: A Career of Thinking About the Unthinkable

8. The New National Defense Report Misses the Point

9. Enhancing Military Diplomacy in the Indo-Pacific: A US Foreign Area Officer’s Perspective

10. Kyle Balzer, “Knowing Your Enemy”: James Schlesinger and the Origins of Competitive, Tailored Deterrence Strategies

11. Wu Yongping: An Emerging "Western Bloc" on the Taiwan Question

12. The Will and the Power: China’s Plan to Undermine Pax Americana

13. National Character and Wartime Abuses

14. Analysis: Alleged Taylor Swift terror plot fits a worrying pattern as ISIS targets teens online

15. The Annexation Of Taiwan In Xi Jinping’s Timeline

16. Preparing for the Possibility of a Draft Without Panic

17. How to Prevent a Spiral of Political Violence in America

18. The Ukrainian prisoners going into combat

19. Can Ukraine Get Back on the Offensive? By Mick Ryan

20. Where is U.S. Foreign Policy Headed?

21. Army's Top Sergeant on Modern Warfare & Recruiting Tactics (Jedburgh Podcast)

22. The Link Between Two Wars

1. The U.S. Must Prepare to Fight China and North Korea at the Same Time

The most dangerous security situation for the US and its allies is a simultaneous conflict in Taiwan and on the Korean peninsula and the second most dangerous is a sequential one.

The question is if China moves against Taiwan will it pressure Kim to take action on the Korean peninsula or will Kim Jong Un seize an opportunity to achieve his objective of domination of the Korean peninsula even if he is not pressured by China? Either course of action is dangerous for the region.

It is necessary to understand the nature, objectives, and strategy of the Kim family regime, particularly its political warfare and blackmail diplomacy strategies in support of the ability to ultimately use force when conditions are right to use force to dominate the Korean peninsula under the rule of the Guerrilla Dynasty and Gulag State to ensure the survival of the regime.

I think it is necessary to understand that China cannot control north Korea's actions. Kim will not act as China's proxy or puppet. Dating back to the Korean War and the Kim family regime has effectively played Russia and China against each other and it appears to be doing so today.  

China will be unlikely to pressure or influence Kim to attack the South to support Chinese actions in Taiwan without substantial incentive for Kim which can only be a guarantee that his actions will be successful. But China will be unable to make such a guarantee especially if it is engaged in a conflict over Taiwan. Kim will only take action if he believes he can achieve his objectives. In order to achieve his objectives he must continue to strive to set the conditions for successful operations. And the most important condition is to drive US forces from the Korean peninsula and end US extended deterrence. While Kim may be irrational from our perspective he is smart enough to know that if he attacks into the strength of the ROK/US alliance that he will not be successful. Therefore it is imperative that the strength of the ROK/US alliance be sustained politically and militarily as the only way to continue to deter an attack. That said, deterrence is never guaranteed and Kim could choose to act, so the ROK and US and their allies, including the UN Command, must continue to conduct aggressive planning and effective training to be prepared to defend the ROK even when China attacks Taiwan.

The bottomline is that I concur with the authors that we must be prepared to fight two wars and being prepared to do so is the only way to ensure deterrence.

However the one thing the authors did not discuss is the importance of information and specifically influence. The major line effort for the ROK/US combined PSYOP forces should be focused on the north Korean People's Army (nKPA) and the second tier leadership. There should be an aggressive military PSYOP effort focus on the nKPA and its leadership. Here is the specific task I would give to the ROK/US PSYOP forces:

• Direct ROK and US military psychological operations forces to create and aggressively execute a campaign targeting the north Korean People’s Army (nKPA) with two objectives: First, to prevent an attack on the South. Second, to disobey orders directing the suppression of any collective action by the Korean people. The nKPA must decide not to attack the South nor put down any resistance to the Kim family regime.

The U.S. Must Prepare to Fight China and North Korea at the Same Time

A conflict in Taiwan is likely to draw Pyongyang in—and the U.S. military isn’t ready for it.

By Markus Garlauskas, the director of the Indo-Pacific Security Initiative in the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security and served as the U.S. National Intelligence Officer for North Korea from 2014 to 2020, and Matthew Kroenig, a columnist at Foreign Policy and vice president and senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/08/06/war-north-korea-china-taiwan-kim-xi-prepare-pentagon-defense/?utm

Foreign Policy · by Markus Garlauskas, Matthew Kroenig

• North Korea
• Taiwan
• Matthew Kroenig

August 6, 2024, 8:24 AM

Last month, the U.S. Commission on the National Defense Strategy released a report proposing that the Pentagon develop a “Multiple Theater Force Construct” sized to tackle simultaneous threats in the Indo-Pacific, Europe, and the Middle East. This will be necessary to address the growing risk of war with both China and Russia in overlapping timeframes, as one of us has previously written in these pages. Less obvious, but also important, however, is the need to address the threat of a simultaneous war with both China and North Korea.

Last month, the U.S. Commission on the National Defense Strategy released a report proposing that the Pentagon develop a “Multiple Theater Force Construct” sized to tackle simultaneous threats in the Indo-Pacific, Europe, and the Middle East. This will be necessary to address the growing risk of war with both China and Russia in overlapping timeframes, as one of us has previously written in these pages. Less obvious, but also important, however, is the need to address the threat of a simultaneous war with both China and North Korea.

There is a real and growing risk of conflict between the United States and China over Taiwan, and the Pentagon already considers war with China as its most important “pacing” threat for prioritizing future military capabilities and resources. Contrary to conventional assumptions, however, it is unlikely that such a conflict would be contained to the Taiwan Strait.

Rather, a U.S.-China conflict over Taiwan would almost certainly become a region-wide war, engulfing the Korean Peninsula, and pulling in both North Korea and South Korea. This is because China would have a strong incentive to strike U.S. bases in South Korea and to urge North Korea to provoke and tie down U.S. forces there. Similarly, North Korea could choose to join the fight to preempt a feared U.S. attack, take advantage of a distracted United States to settle old scores with its rival in Seoul, or influence the outcome of a war that would have profound implications for its own security.

Further, a lack of preparedness for this two-front war scenario gives Beijing and Pyongyang an additional incentive to attack precisely to exploit this U.S. and allied vulnerability. The United States and its allies must, therefore, update their defense strategies and postures to prepare to deter, and if necessary, win, a simultaneous war against both China and North Korea.

As part of a two-year series of studies and tabletop exercises sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense, we analyzed the risk of a simultaneous U.S. conflict with both China and North Korea. We concluded that a war with China would also likely become a war with North Korea, and conversely, a war with North Korea could lead China to intervene. While the second scenario has already received some attention, we believe that the most likely and dangerous path to a two-front U.S. war with both China and North Korea actually starts with a U.S.-China conflict over Taiwan.

If China were to attack Taiwan, Washington would likely employ military forces operating from bases in the region against China’s attacking forces. In retaliation, or to preempt this possibility, Beijing would have a strong incentive to strike regional U.S. bases, including those in Japan and South Korea.

Even if Beijing were only to strike bases in Japan, Chinese aircraft and missiles would need to fly over or past the Korean Peninsula, threatening U.S. and South Korean forces there, while also risking being shot down by U.S. and South Korean air and missile defenses. In addition, or alternatively, China might also actively encourage North Korea to provoke or attack South Korea and Japan, in order to tie down and distract U.S. forces from the ongoing fight around Taiwan.

Furthermore, North Korea might have compelling reasons of its own to join the conflict. Seeing Washington distracted in Taiwan, Pyongyang may engage in opportunistic aggression against what North Korean leader Kim Jong Un now calls its “principal enemy,” South Korea. In addition, as the U.S. military mobilizes large-scale reinforcements to the region, Pyongyang may assess this buildup will enable a “regime change” attack on North Korea either while or after the United States defeats China. North Korea has repeatedly declared that its doctrine is to strike first if it sees a threat to its regime “on the horizon.”

Ultimately, North Korea is unlikely to stand by as its most powerful patron battles its most powerful enemy in a war that would determine the fate of the region, with profound implications for Pyongyang’s security. A Chinese defeat would likely leave North Korea dangerously isolated, whereas a U.S. defeat could drive U.S. forces from the region and dramatically improve North Korea’s military position.

Even if Korea does not become a second front, the possibility would still impinge on U.S. efforts to defend Taiwan. The need to deter and, if necessary, defeat a North Korean attack would tie down some portion of U.S. forces, attention, and resources. Seoul might even seek constraints on whether and how Washington could operate its forces within and from South Korea in a war over Taiwan, to avoid provoking China or tempting North Korean opportunism.

Many analysts wrongly assume that Washington and Beijing have a shared interest in maintaining stability on the Korean Peninsula, particularly to avoid North Korean nuclear escalation, and that they would tacitly agree that North and South Korea are out of bounds in a war over Taiwan.

This is a flawed premise. It applies peacetime logic to wartime and was born out of the optimism of a more cooperative era in China-U.S. relations. If China starts a war with Taiwan, that is evidence that its leaders have decided that regional stability is no longer a top priority. Even if Beijing moves cautiously at the outset of a conflict by, for example, foregoing strikes on U.S. bases and encouraging North Korean restraint, such caution would quickly evaporate as the war continues, especially if Beijing fears that it might be losing. Moreover, while Beijing may hope to control Pyongyang, past evidence shows that Kim often marches to the beat of his own drum.

At the same time, it is likely that China would intervene in any war that starts in Korea. Like in the 1950s, China would not stand by as the United States and South Korea decisively defeat, and threaten to potentially end the regime in, North Korea. While it is unlikely that Beijing would seek to engineer a war on the Korean Peninsula, it could benefit from such a conflict by bogging down and exhausting the military resources of the United States, South Korea, and other allies.

China would have many options to hamstring a U.S. and allied campaign, including supplying Pyongyang’s war effort, establishing “buffer zones” to preclude operations near China’s borders, and intervening directly with military force. Then, when the time is right, Beijing could also take advantage of the expenditures and commitment of U.S. and allied military resources to attempt military action against Taiwan or elsewhere in the region, like in the South China Sea, before U.S. and allied militaries can fully recover. This logic holds even if Beijing and Pyongyang do not coordinate in advance, and even if Beijing is unhappy that Pyongyang’s recklessness provoked the initial conflict.

Unfortunately, the United States and its allies are largely unprepared for such scenarios. U.S. and allied capabilities, command-and-control arrangements, and posture (including forces, bases, and agreements with allies) are not well suited for simultaneous conflict with China and North Korea. Rather, all of these considerations are designed primarily for one fight or the other. This gap is reinforced by organizational biases, stovepipes, and various misalignments between allies and U.S. military warfighting headquarters.

Deterring and fighting a war with North Korea is the responsibility of the bilateral U.S.-South Korean Combined Forces Command (CFC), supported by U.S. Forces Korea and by the multinational United Nations Command (UNC). Seoul emphasizes the North Korea threat and, in an attempt to steer clear of antagonizing Beijing, avoids discussing what these commands might do in the event of a Taiwan conflict, particularly skirting the possibility that U.S. forces could operate from South Korea in a war against China. This reticence precludes systematic preparation for such scenarios, and might even encourage China to believe that it could get away with attacking Taiwan while maintaining Seoul’s neutrality and sidelining America’s forces in South Korea.

Meanwhile, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, headquartered in Hawaii, is responsible for deterring and defeating Chinese aggression in the region. U.S. Indo-Pacific Command lacks established multinational military structures like the CFC, UNC, or NATO to integrate with allies to deter and defeat China. Therefore, a multinational force to counter a Chinese attack today would have to be centered on U.S. Indo-Pacific Command with allies plugging in, or by inventing a model for coordination on the fly. Most worrisome, it is unclear how a U.S.-led multinational force defending against Chinese aggression would coordinate with or incorporate the CFC.

Indeed, this current lack of preparedness may even make a two-front war scenario more probable by giving both Beijing and Pyongyang an incentive to expand the conflict to exploit U.S. and allied vulnerabilities.

To prevent this nightmare scenario, the United States and its allies should re-conceptualize preparing for a conflict with China or North Korea as part of a broader Indo-Pacific campaign that will require deterring—and potentially defeating—both adversaries simultaneously. The first step in making this possible is to openly acknowledge that preparing to simultaneously confront China and North Korea is both prudent and vital. This will require changes to military planning, command and control arrangements, allied interoperability, and force posture.

Most importantly, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and the CFC must integrate their efforts and prepare together to fight both adversaries at the same time.

To make this possible, Seoul should publicly declare that its alliance with Washington will approach threats from China and North Korea as realistically interconnected rather than artificially separated. It should ensure that there are no illusions in Beijing that South Korea will stay neutral if U.S. bases in the region come under attack from China. Similarly, Washington should ensure Pyongyang knows that the United States will maintain its ironclad commitment to help defend South Korea even in the event of conflict with China.

Next, the ongoing transformation of the U.S. military headquarters in Japan and of U.S.-Japan command and control arrangements should be explicitly designed to facilitate combined military operations with other allies—such as Australia and the Philippines—to confront both China and North Korea simultaneously.

Finally, the United States, Australia, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, and other allies and partners should openly engage in robust planning and military exercises to prepare to simultaneously fight China and North Korea in various scenarios—while protecting operational details.

Once this hard work has been completed, Washington should clearly communicate its increased preparedness in order to strengthen deterrence against China and North Korea and reassure regional allies. No one wants a simultaneous war with China and North Korea, but failing to prepare visibly and properly for this very real possibility is the surest way to bring it about.

Foreign Policy · by Markus Garlauskas, Matthew Kroenig

2. Campus Protests Embolden Terrorist Groups By David Fridovich & Kim Cole , Jacob Olidort

Excerpts:

Finally, the United States must integrate these responses with a coherent and constructive foreign policy regarding Israel, the main foil for these campus agitators. Whatever waffling, in either rhetoric or actions, the administration has done in recent days in terms of support to Israel, there is clearly a new urgency to demonstrate “no daylight” with Israel – a theme the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA) has advanced in recent years – given the immediate U.S. homeland security risks not doing so would present.

That message should be mirrored in our foreign policy in explaining that Israel must finish off Hamas – a group that holds six Americans as hostages – and that the Rafah operation is essential to that objective.

Supporters of Hamas’s actions – whether their tents are on U.S. campuses or in the Syrian desert – need to hear the same message of “don’t” from the October 8th version of President Biden.

Campus Protests Embolden Terrorist Groups

By David Fridovich & Kim Cole , Jacob Olidort

August 08, 2024

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2024/08/08/campus_protests_embolden_terrorist_groups_1050349.html?mc_cid=a719421bbf&mc_eid=70bf478f36

The aftermath of the burning of an effigy of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and also an Israeli flag as protestors look on, Wednesday, July 24, 2024, in Washington near Union Station and the U.S. Capitol. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

Although colleges are closed for the summer, the anti-Israel demonstrators continue to provide fodder to terrorist groups and leaders, including Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei who praised the protesters as a “branch of the Resistance Front” who are “on the right side of history.”

The encampments – which mushroomed to over 40 campuses in less than a week in late April and whose stated goal is divesting U.S. universities from Israel – have been a key propaganda tool for global jihadists’ radicalization campaign since their emergence.

In early May, U.K.-based al-Qaeda preacher Hani al-Siba’i lauded university protests as “the university intifada” – referencing Palestinian terrorist waves in the late 1990s and early 2000s – and called on followers to support their efforts against the United States, which he described as “based on terrorism” and “founded on murder and blood.”

Hezbollah’s deputy head Naim Qassam similarly praised the protesters in an early May interview, noting not only how they help change U.S. policy but can help drive terrorist recruitment. “The Israelis and the Americans will discover that with this type of aggression, they have laid the foundation for perpetual resistance of children and fetuses at an earlier age than the age fighters become qualified in the past,” he explained. “They will have an impact on the American position,” he noted, “Even if Biden says that he will not be influenced by this, he will whether he likes it or not.”

Terror sympathizers and Iranian regime supporters on social media have seized on footage of responses to demonstrators as evidence of the United States oppressing Muslims. Among the graphics circulating on these social media platforms is one that says it all. It features Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the head of the Houthis Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and masked Qassam Brigades and Quds Force fighters, against a red and green background – the colors of the Palestinian flag – with the words “The Good Guys Are Winning.”

All of this indicates that what has been taking place on college campuses is far from a matter of campus security, but rather of homeland security and foreign policy that the United States must frame and respond to accordingly.

Indeed, these terrorist groups have already been exploiting the war in Gaza as a way to plot their next attacks.

In early March, the Intelligence Community released its Annual Threat Assessment. In her opening testimony to Congress, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines warned that “it is likely that the Gaza conflict will have a generational impact on terrorism. Both al-Qa’ida and ISIS, inspired by HAMAS [sic], have directed supporters to conduct attacks against Israeli and U.S. interests.”

Following the ISIS attack on a concert hall in Moscow later that month, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Christopher Wray noted that the potential for “a coordinated attack here in the homeland” akin to the one in Moscow, “is now increasingly concerning.”

What should the United States do?

Einstein was credited with saying “if I have an hour to solve a problem, I spend the first 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about solutions.”

How the United States leadership describes what is happening on campus is key to the solution. That means President Biden is right, but incomplete, in condemning the rise of antisemitism on campus, as he did in early May. Rather, he must point out that terrorists are looking to exploit this rhetoric to harm Americans and that what we are seeing on campus is the product of planning by organizations with ties to terrorist groups rather than students’ expression of their first amendment rights.

Second, the United States must highlight the consequences for these actions, that rhetoric that promotes violence – any violence, but certainly any directed according to racial and ethnic categories, to include antisemitic rhetoric – must result in disciplinary actions by the university. Thus far many of the arrests have been for trespassing, assault, or damage to property.

Finally, the United States must integrate these responses with a coherent and constructive foreign policy regarding Israel, the main foil for these campus agitators. Whatever waffling, in either rhetoric or actions, the administration has done in recent days in terms of support to Israel, there is clearly a new urgency to demonstrate “no daylight” with Israel – a theme the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA) has advanced in recent years – given the immediate U.S. homeland security risks not doing so would present.

That message should be mirrored in our foreign policy in explaining that Israel must finish off Hamas – a group that holds six Americans as hostages – and that the Rafah operation is essential to that objective.

Supporters of Hamas’s actions – whether their tents are on U.S. campuses or in the Syrian desert – need to hear the same message of “don’t” from the October 8^th version of President Biden.

Lt. Gen. David Fridovich, (U.S. Army, ret.) is former Deputy Commander, U.S. Special Forces Command (USSOCOM) and is a 2013 participant in JINSA’s Generals & Admirals trip to Israel. Sheriff Kim Cole is the sheriff of Mason County, Michigan, and is a 2024 participant in JINSA’s Homeland Security Program trip to Israel. Dr. Jacob Olidort is Director of Research of JINSA’s Gemunder Center for Defense & Strategy.

3. Critique of FY25 NDAA Section 1254: A Critical Misdirection for a Counter-PLA Strategy

I am afraid this thought provoking proposal would be dead on arrival as there is no stomach within our military or the national security apparatus for USSOCOM to lead this type of effort.

And of course the main focus on the "pacing item" of China is to be able to conduct large scale combat operations (which of course is critically important). Our military in particular is hardly concerned with China's malign activities.  I hate to beat a dead horse but the only way to compete with China's unrestricted warfare and three warfares of psychological warfare, legal warfare or lawfare, and media or public opinion warfare is through a superior political warfare strategy which of course must be led by civilian political leaders and supported by the military where appropriate. USSOCOM possesses most of the capabilities to support a political warfare strategy but political warfare must be planned, led, and executed at the national level with appropriate support from the military, with perhaps USSOCOM providing the major supporting effort with its unique special warfare capabilities.

But again I was told at a recent conference by a Pentagon official that the words political warfare will never be used in the Pentagon or within the US government. This is of course what will lead to our loss in strategic competition in the "gray zone" as we fail to deal with the world as it really is rather than what we would wish it to be.

Critique of FY25 NDAA Section 1254: A Critical Misdirection for a Counter-PLA Strategy

https://www.strategycentral.io/post/critique-of-fy25-ndaa-section-1254-a-critical-misdirection-for-a-counter-pla-strategy?utm

By Jeremiah Monk

INTRODUCTION

Section 1254 of the proposed Fiscal Year 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) directs the Secretary of Defense (OSD) to develop and submit to Congress a transregional strategy to counteract malign activities by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of China.[i] This strategy, due within 180 days of enactment, focuses on addressing the PLA’s efforts to expand overseas military bases, spread misinformation and disinformation, infringe on the sovereignty of U.S. allies and partners, and proliferate Chinese-made military equipment. The Bill requires the designation of lead components within each Geographic Combatant Command (GCC), excluding the United States Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM), with the aim to coordinate efforts across multiple regions.

SECTION 1254: GETTING OFF ON THE WRONG FOOT

As currently proposed, Section 1254 (“the Bill”) is packed full of critical shortcomings that will undermine the value of this strategy from inception. The Bill starts with a predisposition to geographic segmentation, completely omitting participation by the Global Combatant Commands. By directing planning to the Defense Department (DoD) without mention of the non-military aspects of the PLA’s malign activities, it orients the strategy to the military instrument of power. These two failings of orientation beget a third, where the strategy will inevitably be created by warfighting commands primarily as a justification for force posture and allocation. Most significantly, the draft Section 1254 misses an opportunity to specifically direct OSD to leverage the global expertise, posture, and planning experience offered by the one military command ideally suited to this task. Each of these points warrants a detailed examination to fully understand the potential implications and to argue for a more comprehensive approach to develop a strategy to counter the PLA.

Of primary concern is the Bill’s focus on GCCs to coordinate efforts against the PLA’s activities. This segmentation by geographic region is inherently flawed, as it risks creating fragmented, unsynchronized, and inconsistent responses. The PLA’s actions are not confined to any single region; they span across the globe, affecting multiple continents and domains. Geographic segmentation can lead to a lack of cohesion and continuity in strategy, leading to uncoordinated effects, an absence of command unity, and a less effective approach to transregional issues. For example, the PLA’s influence extends beyond the Indo-Pacific to regions like Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East, where they engage in activities such as establishing military bases, spreading military technology, and investing in critical infrastructure projects under initiatives like the Belt and Road Initiative. A strategy that is developed by commands with regionally limited areas of interest runs the risk of being segmented, and may potentially miss larger systemic context, obscure asymmetric opportunities, and may fail to present an integrated response to the PLA’s global efforts.

Section 1254 also makes the significant oversight of excluding the five Global Combatant Commands, namely USCYBERCOM, USSPACECOM, USSOCOM, USSTRATCOM, and USTRANSCOM. Each of these commands holds unique equities, capabilities, and transregional and domain-specific perspectives to addressing the PLA’s malign activities, and their inclusion is crucial for a comprehensive and coordinated strategy. USCYBERCOM, for instance, plays a vital role in cybersecurity, essential for countering the PLA’s disinformation campaigns and cyber intrusions. Similarly, USSTRATCOM oversees strategic deterrence, including nuclear and missile defense, which is critical in countering the PLA’s military advancements. By omitting these commands from the planning process, the proposed strategy potentially underutilizes key military resources and expertise and opens critical gaps in the United States’ defense posture. A truly global threat like the PLA requires a unified and all-encompassing approach, leveraging all available assets and expertise across commands. This imperative is specifically recognized by the 2022 National Defense Strategy, which directs the DoD operate in a cross-domain manner.[ii]

The Bill directs OSD to develop the strategy, but OSD does not have the capability or capacity to do so. Nor does the Joint Staff. Therefore, without specific direction, OSD will inevitably delegate this task to the geographic combatant command in which China resides: USINDOPACOM. However, this default delegation would be short-sighted, and would invariably create several additional problems. As USINDOPACOM is tasked with overseeing security in the Indo-Pacific, its constrained regional focus may limit its ability to develop a strategy that adequately addresses the PLA’s larger global activities. The PLA’s reach and operations are expansive, and confining the strategy to the Indo-Pacific could result in a narrow approach that neglects other areas of strategic importance. For instance, the PLA’s activities in Africa, where they have established a military base in Djibouti, or their growing influence in the Arctic, are not fully within the purview of USINDOPACOM. This narrow focus risks leaving other regions vulnerable and inadequately defended, as the PLA continues to expand its global footprint.

Another issue is the potential for an imbalanced allocation of resources as Commands seek to prioritize their regional activities. This predisposition could result in resource requests that are more geared to address regional issues instead of to generate larger, transregional effects. Furthermore, as a warfighting command, USINDOPACOM must also prepare for the potential of armed conflict against China, a task for which there will never be a sufficient amount of available force. As the DoD’s force supply is limited, USINDOPACOM must compete with other commands for allocation. This competition creates a strong motivation for USINDOPACOM to develop this strategy in such a fashion as to justify additional force deployment within USINDOPACOM, particularly those of low density and high demand. Following this path will inevitably divert resources toward regional warfighting preparation in the Pacific, and away from opportunities in other regions to counter the PLA’s malign activities. A more coordinated and intentional approach to resource distribution is necessary to ensure regions have the capabilities necessary to most effectively address the PLA’s wide-ranging threat in the areas where they are conducting malign activities.

Furthermore, should the DoD delegate this task to the USINDOPACOM warfighting command, the resulting strategy could potentially neglect the broader non-military spectrum of challenges posed by the PLA. USINDOPACOM’s primary mission and expertise lie in regional military operations and defense, which could lead to an emphasis on conventional and strategic military responses. However, the PLA’s influence extends beyond military might; it includes significant economic, diplomatic, and informational tactics that China uses to project power and influence globally. This includes leveraging economic investments through initiatives like the Belt and Road Initiative, exerting diplomatic pressure on other nations, and conducting information operations to sway public opinion and obscure China’s true intentions. By focusing primarily on the military dimension, the strategy may overlook these critical non-military aspects, failing to address the comprehensive and multifaceted nature of the threat, and could even effectively undermine diplomatic or economic efforts in other regions. An effective strategy must integrate all elements of national power—military, economic, diplomatic, and informational—to fully counter China’s global ambitions and actions.

THE BETTER OPTION: US SPECIAL OPERATIONS COMMAND

Fortunately, there is still time for Congress to change the text of Section 1254 to give the strategy a much better chance for success. The addition of one sentence is all that is required:

    (d) the Secretary shall task US Special Operations Command with the responsibility to lead and coordinate the development of this strategy. 

Why USSOCOM? There are several reasons:

• USSOCOM is a Global Combatant Command, with an existing transregional presence, transregional command structure, and global visibility.[iii]
• USSOCOM has decades of experience developing, coordinating, and synchronizing transregional strategies, operations, and effects oriented against malign activities.
• USSOCOM has well-established relationships and expertise coordinating with other U.S. government agencies, allies, partner nations, Global Combatant Commands, and all Geographic commands, and can bring together a network to address the full scope of PLA military and non-military malign activities.
• By law, USSOCOM is the DoD lead for unconventional warfare, foreign internal defense, civil affairs, and military information support operations - the tools available to the military best suited to address malign activities.[iv]
• Most of the PLA’s malign activity falls within the “Grey Zone,” where irregular tactics and hybrid warfare strategies intentionally remain below the threshold of open conflict. This realm is best suited for US Special Operations, as warfighting commands like USINDOPACOM focus on the realm of open conflict.
• USSOCOM’s ability to operate across multiple regions and domains would ensure a more agile and adaptable strategy that is more responsive to the PLA’s diverse and evolving tactics.
• USSOCOM established its China-focused campaign planning team for precisely this purpose nearly a decade ago.
•  

The global reach and experience offered by US Special Operations Command make it a much more compelling choice to lead this effort than any regionally-focused warfighting command. USSOCOM currently has seven Theater Special Operations Commands (TSOCs), an existing planning, command, and control network nested under each Geographic Combatant Command, which could easily be designated as the lead coordination entity for each respective GCC. USSOCOM could then serve as the overarching coordinating authority to synchronize the DoD’s transregional counter-PLA effort, then carried out by the TSOCs. For over twenty years, this approach and structure have proven highly effective in the conduct of the Counter Terrorism fight.

Ultimately, the correct approach to counter the PLA’s malign influence should be transregional, asymmetric, and must stay below the threshold of conflict. It should not be segmented by regions or polluted by warfighting preparation. USSOCOM is the obvious answer to lead the effort, as it is the only command that can offer the existing transregional infrastructure, visibility, authority, experience, and relationships necessary to lead the development of a comprehensive strategy to counter the PLA’s transregional malign activities.

CONCLUSION

As written, Section 1254 of the proposed Fiscal Year 2025 NDAA has significant shortcomings in the Bill’s current form. The reliance on geographic segmentations, the exclusion of essential Global Combatant Commands, the limitations of a regionally focused approach, concerns about resource allocation, and the underutilization of USSOCOM are all critical issues that need to be addressed. However, the Bill has yet to take final form, and there is still time to make a necessary course correction. For an effective counter-strategy against the PLA’s global activities, the United States must adopt a holistic and integrated approach that leverages the strengths of all relevant commands and ensures a balanced allocation of resources.

This comprehensive strategy will be crucial to safeguarding U.S. national security interests in an increasingly complex global landscape dominated by a more assertive and globally active China. Congress and OSD should be wary of taking the easy path of defaulting responsibility for development to USINDOPACOM solely because the Chinese state happens to be within its geographical responsibility. A smarter move for Congress would be to focus the Section 1254 strategy on countering malign actions instead of the actor, then delegate responsibility to the command best suited for the task: USSOCOM.

NOTES

[i]118th US Congress, “S.4638 - National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2025.” Introduced July 8, 2024. https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/4638/text?s=2&r=1&q=%7B%22search%22%3A%22National+Defense+Authorization+Act+for+Fiscal+Year+2025%22%7D

[ii] US Department of Defense, “National Defense Strategy of the United States.” Washington, DC, 2022. https://media.defense.gov/2022/Oct/27/2003103845/-1/-1/1/2022-NATIONAL-DEFENSE-STRATEGY-NPR-MDR.PDF

[iii] Jeremiah Monk, “Function… then Form: Rethinking the Operational Command Structure of US SOF.” Strategy Central, Jun 29, 2024. https://www.strategycentral.io/post/function-then-form-rethinking-the-operational-command-structure-of-us-sof

[iv] US Code, Title 10 – Armed Forces, section 167. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2011-title10/pdf/USCODE-2011-title10-subtitleA-partI-chap6-sec167.pdf

4. Ukraine pierces Russian border, triggering fierce clashes

​Soldiers usually fight hardest defending their homeland. Beware.

Ukraine pierces Russian border, triggering fierce clashes

By Guy Faulconbridge and Lidia Kelly

August 7, 20248:25 PM EDTUpdated 11 hours ago

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-keeps-up-air-attacks-russias-kursk-regional-governor-says-2024-08-07/?utm

Item 1 of 2 A view shows a damaged house following what local authorities called a Ukrainian military strike, in the course of the Russia-Ukraine conflict in the town of Sudzha in the Kursk Region, Russia, in this handout image released August 6, 2024. Acting Governor of Kursk Region Alexei Smirnov via Telegram/Handout via REUTERS

[1/2]A view shows a damaged house following what local authorities called a Ukrainian military strike, in the course of the Russia-Ukraine conflict in the town of Sudzha in the Kursk Region, Russia, in this handout image released August 6, 2024. Acting Governor of Kursk Region Alexei Smirnov via... Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab Read more

SummaryCompanies

• Ukraine pierces Russian border near KurskPutin says attack is a major provocationRussia says major battles under wayFighting rages near major gas transit pointNational guard boosts security at nuclear plant

MOSCOW, Aug 7 (Reuters) - Russia said on Wednesday it was fighting intense battles against Ukrainian forces that had penetrated its southern border near a major natural gas transmission hub, in one of the largest incursions into Russian territory since the war began.

The acting governor of Kursk region, Alexey Smirnov, said he had introduced a state of emergency in the border region. Regional officials said that meant restricting access to specific areas.

Russia's health ministry said 31 civilians, including six children, had been wounded. Smirnov said on Tuesday that five people had been killed.

No information on military casualties was available.

Russia's National Guard said it had beefed up security around the nearby Kursk nuclear power station and its four reactors.

Russia has advanced this year after the failure of Ukraine's 2023 counteroffensive to achieve major gains, and has taken 420 square km (162 square miles) of territory from Ukrainian forces since June 14, Russian officials say.

Ukraine struck back on Tuesday, and battles continued through the night into Wednesday as Ukrainian forces pushed to the northwest of the border town of Sudzha, 530 km (330 miles) southwest of Moscow, Russia's defence ministry said.

"The Kyiv regime has launched another major provocation," President Vladimir Putin told members of the Russian government, referring to the attack in Kursk region.

NEARLY 1,000 UKRAINIAN SOLDIERS

The chief of Russia's general staff, Valery Gerasimov, told Putin that Russian forces had halted a thrust by up to 1,000 Ukrainian soldiers - more than three times the figure that Russia's defence ministry had stated on Tuesday - and would push them back to the border​.

The advance was stopped by "the actions of the units covering the state border together with border guards and reinforcement units, with airstrikes, missile and artillery fire," Gerasimov said in televised comments.

The Ukrainian military appeared to have adopted a strategy of strict silence.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in his nightly video address on Wednesday, made no reference to the attack, while exhorting Kyiv's soldiers to press on and weaken Russian forces.

Ukraine's General Staff also made no acknowledgment in its daily battlefield update. In a late evening report, it said fighting had intensified in Sumy region -- across the border from Russia's Kursk region.

The General Staff said Russian forces had deployed aircraft, helicopters and heavy weapons in the area "but made no headway and suffered significant losses".

'NO VIOLATION' OF RULES ON WEAPONS, WASHINGTON SAYS

In Washington, White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said the United States was seeking an understanding from Ukraine of the incursion, and said it had had no advance knowledge of it.

State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said U.S. rules on Ukrainian use of U.S. weapons - authorised in areas over the Russian border - remained in effect, but that Ukraine's actions were "not a violation of our policy."

The Russian ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Antonov, said on Telegram that U.S. statements on the Ukrainian action were "outrageous...not a word criticising their clients, not a regret about the victims of the tragedy".

There was fighting around Sudzha, the last operational trans-shipping point for Russian natural gas to Europe via Ukraine. The Urengoy–Pomary–Uzhhorod pipeline carried about 14.65 billion cubic metres of gas in 2023, about half of Russia's gas exports to Europe.

Ukraine's gas transmission operator said Russian gas was transiting to European consumers normally. Just 60 km to the northeast lies the Kursk nuclear power station.

The battles around Sudzha come at a crucial juncture in the conflict, the biggest land war in Europe since World War Two. Kyiv is concerned that U.S. support could drop off if Republican Donald Trump wins the November presidential election.

Trump has said he would end the war, and both Russia and Ukraine are keen to gain the strongest possible bargaining position on the battlefield. Ukraine wants to pin down Russian forces and show the West it can still mount major battles.

Russian military bloggers depicted the situation in Kursk region as more serious than the official accounts, with some suggesting that Ukraine had opened a new front. Russia has sent reserves to help shore up its defences.

Some bloggers suggested that Ukraine might be planning an advance on the Kursk nuclear plant.

Both Kyiv and Moscow say they do not target civilians in the war, triggered by Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Russian Telegram channels carried unverified footage of shelled houses.

Forces describing themselves as voluntary paramilitaries fighting on Ukraine's side penetrated parts of Kursk and the adjacent Belgorod region earlier this year, triggering a push by Russian troops to set up a buffer zone in Ukraine's northeast.

Get the latest news and expert analysis about the state of the global economy with the Reuters Econ World newsletter. Sign up here.

Reporting by Reuters in Moscow and Kyiv; Writing by Guy Faulconbridge in Moscow and Mark Trevelyan in London; Editing by Angus MacSwan, Ron Popeski, Rod Nickel and Leslie Adler

5. Pilots, Family Members Say Crew Is Being Unfairly Blamed for November's Deadly Air Force Osprey Crash

A tragic and troubling situation in many ways from the accident to the investigation to the findings to the families.

Pilots, Family Members Say Crew Is Being Unfairly Blamed for November's Deadly Air Force Osprey Crash

military.com · by Thomas Novelly,Konstantin Toropin · August 7, 2024

Pilots, military aviation experts and family members are voicing concerns about a recently released investigation report into a CV-22 Osprey crash off the coast of Japan last year that killed eight service members, saying the Air Force's findings that the crew were partially to blame for the incident isn't fair.

Findings released publicly last week by Air Force Special Operations Command, or AFSOC, probing a 2023 crash off the southern coast of Japan that led to the deaths of the eight airmen pointed to their "decision-making" and "ineffective crew resource management" as contributing factors to the crash, as well as a mechanical failure in the gearbox that lead to the deadliest CV-22 crash in the service's history.

But crash documents obtained by Military.com, including some that were marked as "Controlled Unclassified Information," along with interviews with a half dozen family members briefed on the findings and pilots who have flown the Osprey, reveal that the crew was doing exactly what they were trained to do and what was expected of them, with pilots saying that the warnings cited by Air Force investigators are commonplace and not often cause for immediate concern. In addition, data about developing problems on the aircraft wasn't relayed to the crew.

"I think the report probably went a little far in criticizing them for what they did," an Air Force CV-22 pilot who spoke with Military.com said, describing having seen "a fair share" of the type of system warnings that popped up before the Osprey crashed in November. "I don't see a lot of people doing anything that drastically different in that scenario."

The Osprey, flying under call sign Gundam 22, was on an AFSOC training mission near Yakushima Island, Japan, on Nov. 29. The gearbox components started to chip and shed debris that wedged in, causing the left proprotor to stop spinning and the aircraft to fall out of the sky. The crew had decided to land the aircraft, but didn't deem the situation an emergency and were following normal landing procedures.

Killed in the crash were Maj. Jeffrey T. Hoernemann; Maj. Eric V. Spendlove; Maj. Luke A. Unrath; Capt. Terrell K. Brayman; Tech. Sgt. Zachary E. Lavoy; Staff Sgt. Jake M. Turnage; Senior Airman Brian K. Johnson; and Staff Sgt. Jake Galliher.

Gailliher's mother, Kim Krautter, has tried to process her grief in the months since her son's passing, but the findings in the accident investigation report, namely that the crew was partially to blame, have made it harder to get closure.

"That's what I can't process, that this blame has been put on the crew -- when the V-22s have a history of problems, and there was a problem that day," Krautter said.

In the minutes before the crash, the pilots discussed several warnings that sensors had flashed about metal flakes and chips in the oil of the gearbox, according to logs of the voice recorder from the crashed Osprey reviewed by Military.com.

When metal chips are detected by the sensors, a small electrical current is used to dissipate them, and a "chip burn" warning flashes for the pilots.

One of the Gundam 22 pilots in the minutes leading up to the crash recalled his experience of getting "100 and some chip burns in a space of like 15 minutes" but without any other detectable issues on a flight earlier in his career.

Another crew member mentioned in the log that he'd encountered the issue "on training sorties at Cannon" Air Force Base in New Mexico.

The warnings are sufficiently common that pilots often don't view them as critical, according to the pilots who spoke to Military.com.

Residents of Angaur load a ‘Gundam 22’ tribute bundle onto a truck after receiving bundles of humanitarian aid during Operation Christmas Drop 2023 in Angaur, Republic of Palau, Dec. 7, 2023. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Spencer Tobler)

Air Force policy says that after three "chip burn" lights, Osprey crews should "land as soon as practical" -- the first and least serious of three landing conditions -- but the policy also gives pilots the opportunity to press on.

According to the logs of the flight voice recorder, the crew not only discussed the warnings for several minutes after a series of alarms, but also talked about whether they were experiencing any sort of "secondaries" -- additional signs or symptoms like vibration, noise or leaking that would corroborate a potential issue.

That's exactly what they should have been doing, according to the pilots who spoke to Military.com and those who spoke to investigators after the crash.

"I'd be flipping through the status layers just to ensure that everything is still kind of working as it should be for that," one pilot told investigators.

Another pilot said that they would be "looking at gauges to look for fluctuating pressures, temperatures within the gearbox and then possibly a gearbox oil pressure and temp trending in a certain direction," before adding that "with chips, I expect the gearbox to start tearing itself up, so I would expect erratic indications within those gauges."

Air Force investigators confirmed that the crew of the fatal Osprey flight in November never saw any further indications of problems.

Retired Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Steven Rudder, a former helicopter pilot and prior commanding general of United States Marine Corps Forces, Pacific, told Military.com in an interview that examining a crew's actions in the wake of a tragedy is difficult, complicated further by hindsight.

"As far as I know, this crew did all the right things. I would offer, for a Marine crew, I can't say whether they would have done anything different," Rudder said, adding that, in his experience in the Pacific, it is a paramount concern for crews to know where an aircraft should land in case of an emergency when operating over water.

But Rudder also pointed out that that's a call that the pilot is allowed to make on his own.

"That aircraft commander has that discretion, as per the book, to make those calls," he added.

A History of Problems

Since 1992, the Osprey has been involved in numerous crashes, accidents and mishaps, leading to more than 60 deaths, though investigations after those crashes have almost uniformly blamed pilot error. Officials have routinely noted that the number of mishaps the aircraft has for every 100,000 hours of flight is not unusual, and chalked the incidents up to heavy usage.

In the last several years, the aircraft has received heightened scrutiny because the services were forced to disclose that the Ospreys have been suffering from a clutch issue for more than a decade that was not known to the public. The problem -- called a hard clutch engagement -- appeared to be costly but not deadly until June 2022 when it brought down a Marine Corps Osprey, killing five Marines.

Since the crash, the office that manages the Osprey has tried to assure reporters and the public that it has a handle on the hard clutch engagement issue, but unanswered questions about the overall airworthiness of the airframe remain.

The Air Force's investigation, a summary of which was publicly released last week, found that the Gundham 22 pilots' choice to keep flying amid the warnings was one of the two causes for the crash.

Shortly before the Air Force released the summary, it allowed the man who oversaw that investigation, AFSOC Commander Lt. General Michael Conley, to speak with reporters.

Conley specifically argued that the pilots should have had more conversations about the choice to keep flying after a third chip warning came up.

"My expectation is that there should have been more conversation about the decision to press on and talk about the risks," he told reporters, before adding, "Unfortunately, there wasn't a lot of dialogue."

Later in the briefing, he also suggested that some in the crew may not have felt comfortable speaking up.

"We train our crew members to interact assertively and speak up when they're uncomfortable -- this did not happen in this case," he said.

Conley, however, acknowledged that the "chip burn" warnings shouldn't automatically have caused alarm among the crew members, describing them as "kind of like a check engine light in your car."

"You could drive your car for 10 years and not get any, or you could drive next week and get three different ones for multiple reasons," Conley said.

But though the crew didn't see further indications of a major issue in the minutes leading up to the crash and supporting materials from both the publicly released Accident Investigation Board report and a copy of the internal Safety Investigation Board report obtained by Military.com show that the aircraft's systems detected vibrations in the driveshaft that was powering one of the Osprey's proprotors and connected to the gearbox that was chipping. The crew had no way of knowing the onboard systems had spotted the problem.

In a section dedicated to this vibration detection system, the public accident report simply notes that an onboard system "recorded an increase in vibration in the left pylon drive shaft." The entire section is just a paragraph long.

Meanwhile, the unreleased, internal safety report said that this system detected a 10-fold jump in vibrations after the first chip burn light, and "it steadily persisted for the remainder of the mishap flight."

However, this system is designed only to show select data to the crew, and these vibrations didn't meet the criteria, the report noted. As a result, the pilots were unaware that there were more serious issues with the aircraft.

Even as the crew planned to divert the aircraft after discussing the warnings, the flight engineer remarked that "everything looks normal for temperature and pressure."

Just minutes before they would crash, the pilots told Japanese air traffic controllers that the airport didn't need to stop traffic for them.

"I don't want to land right in front of him," one pilot said. "Our situation is not that dire."

The fact that systems on the aircraft detected vibrations immediately after the first warning light but failed to report it to the crew was the fourth of 12 findings in the internal safety report.

Conley argued that he didn't think having the "data being available would have made a significant difference."

But, at the same time, Air Force officials have acknowledged that the data could be potentially useful to pilots in the future.

A U.S. Air Force Special Operations aircraft maintenance squadron crew chief inspects the engine of a CV-22 Osprey, April 23, 2024. (U.S. Air Force photo by 2nd Lt. Charles Moye)

Jennifer Gonzalez, an AFSOC spokesperson, said that AFSOC was working with the V-22 Joint Program Office, which oversees the aircraft's use for all the services "to see if the VSLED data could be helpful and if it would be something we want to provide aircrew to increase safety."

The result appears to be that, despite having an incomplete technical picture of the issues going on with the aircraft and policies that supported the decision to keep flying, the Air Force's investigation concluded that the entire Osprey crew was partially at fault for the crash.

"Ultimately, the report has the mishap pilot decision making as a causal factor," Conley said, before adding that "it is a crew aircraft and they made decisions together."

Meanwhile, Conley told The Associated Press that "there's nothing we could have done to detect" the gearbox problem that brought down the aircraft, while also telling reporters that the crew's decision to keep flying was deadly.

"The investigation indicates that time mattered. … I do believe that there was an alternative ending," he told reporters last week.

Processing Grief, Remembering the Fallen

In the months following their loved ones' deaths, family members were left to grieve and wonder what went wrong. Now that the summary of the investigation has been released, new grieving paired with anger has taken root for some family members.

"I enthusiastically believe the crew is being unfairly criticized and graded on a situation in which command withheld critical information, as they have admitted," said one family member, who requested anonymity. "How can a crew make wise and effective decisions if they aren't given accurate and up-to-date information for the foundation of their decisions?"

Other family members, like Jim Turnage, the father of Jake Turnage, said that, while they didn't feel like the report was overtly critical of the crew, he thought his son was put in a tough situation.

"The crew, from my perspective, made choices based on best understood procedures and the best information that they had at the time," he said. "I think those procedures are going to be adjusted. Because maybe they should have landed earlier, but the checklist said when you have the opportunity, it's under your discretion to proceed. And as they're weighing all the things in the moment, they're making their best decision."

For the airmen who flew alongside Gundam 22, the reaction and fear of chip burns was even more swift.

One airman from one of the two other Ospreys that accompanied Gundam 22 told investigators that they landed at Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni after the crash. The two Ospreys were set to return home to Yokota, Japan, but then one of them revealed it had a chip burn warning as well.

"My aircraft commander, called … [and] told them it was the same thing that [Gundam 22] had," the airman told investigators. "And that's when we decided we're not gonna fly back to Yokota that night."

A maintenance supervisor for the squadron later told investigators that the crews took a train home and the squadron had to go to Iwakuni to do maintenance on the then-stranded Ospreys.

Conley told reporters last week that AFSOC has changed some of its protocol, and crews are now being advised to land as soon as practical after a single chip burn and "as soon as possible" after a second chip burn, he said.

"Before the crash, I didn't think prop box chips were going to change into a lost rotor system as rapidly as it seems like it might have," one airman told investigators after the crash, before adding that the investigation results would likely "change the calculus on how I handle a proprotor gearbox chip."

Last week, Military.com reported that an attorney is representing two of the families as they probe the cause of the crash. That same lawyer, Timothy Loranger, is also representing families of Marines who died in a 2022 V-22 Osprey training crash in California and filed a wrongful death lawsuit in May against Bell Textron and Boeing, which design and manufacture the aircraft, and Rolls-Royce, which designs and manufactures the engines. Another Osprey crash occurred in August 2023, which led to the deaths of three Marines in Australia.

Krautter, whose son Jake Galliher died in the Japan crash, said that many of the mothers who lost loved ones in the Gundam 22 accident as well as other recent crashes stay in touch, referring to themselves as "sisters" who have learned to look out for one another amid the grief.

"I'm now connected with a mom from the Australia crash, I'm now connected with a mom from the California crash. They've reached out to say, we know what this is like, and we're here," Krautter said.

"We're all still trying to process, and there's moms who are carrying this on their shoulders because their sons are being blamed."

military.com · by Thomas Novelly,Konstantin Toropin · August 7, 2024

6. Kinmen Is Unlikely to Become Taiwan’s Crimea

Again, I ask what will we do if the PRC's political warfare strategy (subversion of Taiwan) results in a democratic vote by the Taiwan people to unify with the PRC?

Excerpts:

Instead, the people of Kinmen want a stable and peaceful life, so they believe it is better to be ruled by the KMT – which is perceived in Beijing as a China-friendly party – than the DPP, which is seen in the PRC as a party of “Taiwan independence” provocateurs who seek to make China-Taiwan relations unstable. In other words, this may be a pragmatic approach on the part of the Kinmen people. This may also explain why the Taiwan People’s Party and Ko Wen-jie were quite popular in Kinmen in the recent elections on January 13.

Finally, from Beijing’s point of view, there seems to be no logical reason for the annexation of Kinmen (with an important caveat: we do not know what Xi Jinping really thinks and how he perceives reality). If Xi argues that the KMT is the best option for Taiwan as a ruling party, what would be the logic of attacking an island whose people consequently vote for the KMT and are well connected to China? Punishing KMT supporters would also be hard to understand from Beijing’s point of view.

Kinmen Is Unlikely to Become Taiwan’s Crimea 

thediplomat.com

China’s gray zone and cognitive warfare tactics are one issue; a Crimea-like scenario is another. We should not confuse the two.

By Justyna Szczudlik

August 07, 2024

A long-abandoned army tank on Oucuo Beach, Kinmen Island.

Credit: Depositphotos

Subscribe for ads-free reading

As a China and Taiwan analyst, the so-called Kinmen issue has been on my mind, especially amid Xi Jinping’s increasing intimidation of Taiwan. I have to admit that it was very easy for me to imagine why Xi would want to seize Kinmen (or/and the Matsu Islands, or even the Pescadores) and then wait and see what the United States and the world would do. Annexing Kinmen and Matsu in particular seems very easy given their geographical proximity and the capabilities of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), or – even easier – the option of cutting off Kinmen’s water supply from the PRC.

This scenario seems very appealing – easy, cheap, and a good way to test Taiwan’s defense capabilities, U.S. commitments, and the free world’s true adherence to international law. But after visiting Kinmen and talking to people in Taiwan about this particular scenario, I realized that my assumptions were, at the very least, oversimplified.

I fully agree with Sam Goodman’s thesis, put forth in a recent Diplomat article, that Kinmen is the frontline of China’s gray zone operations against Taiwan. I also agree with his recommendations that the international community should be aware of and consider the possibility that a crisis between China and Taiwan could begin with the annexation of Kinmen. No scenario can be ruled out.

However, I disagree with Goodman’s main idea that Beijing could follow the Crimea example and use Russia’s playbook of “encouraging local actors to publicly push for reunification,” which would “create a smokescreen for the PRC to annex Kinmen.” China’s gray zone and cognitive warfare tactics are one issue; a Crimea-like scenario is another. We should not confuse the two. The latter, in my view, is too simplistic and unlikely to happen in Kinmen for five reasons.

First of all, when it comes to Crimea, it held a unique status even before Russia’s seizure of the territory: the Autonomous Republic of Crimea governed most of the peninsula, with the separate municipality of Sevastopol within Ukraine covering the rest. Crimea has its own parliament and government with powers over agriculture, public infrastructure, and tourism. Kinmen is not an autonomous region of Taiwan, so comparing it to Crimea is very risky.

Second, the Crimean referendum in 2014 was something new and unexpected at the time. The fact that we are now discussing a repeat of this scenario in the case of Kinmen makes it less possible because of the lack of surprise. In the case of China’s so-called “reunification” with Taiwan, surprise is one of the prerequisites for Beijing’s victory. Even if Xi Jinping decides to annex Kinmen and does so without any problem, for example as the result of a referendum (which is unlikely – a good example, mentioned by Goodman himself, is the Taiwanese government’s reaction to the proposed referendum on the Xiamen-Kinmen bridge), it would be clear to the international community, especially the United States, what Xi’s real intentions are – preparation for an attack on, or at least a blockade of, all of Taiwan. No surprise whatsoever.

On the contrary, China’s seizure of Kinmen could give Taiwan, the United States, and the rest of the international law-abiding world an opportunity to better prepare for the escalation of the crisis and to coordinate their actions. Even if the U.S. does nothing in the case of Kinmen and limits its response to verbal condemnation – which is actually very unlikely, since annexation would be a unilateral change in the status quo, which the U.S. officially opposes – this does not mean that nothing will happen in the region. Taiwan’s government (especially the current one led by the Democratic Progressive Party) will certainly respond in some way.

This means that the outbreak of a hot kinetic conflict following a PRC annexation of Kinmen is quite likely, and other regional powers such as Japan, but also the U.S., would be involved whether they like it or not. I doubt whether this scenario of Kinmen annexation – from China’s point of view a baby step that could turn into a full-scale war – is in Beijing’s interest. In short, a repeat of Crimea in the case of Kinmen and Taiwan is not very feasible.

Third, and following on from the second argument: Xi’s primary goal is to “reunify” all of Taiwan (and then have access to the first island chain). Given the differences between Ukraine and Taiwan in terms of geography and terrain (an island, a mountainous area, highly variable and violent weather conditions, etc.), China’s blockade or attack should cover the whole of Taiwan and must be carried out by surprise. Only under these circumstances can the PLA succeed. Simply taking Kinmen and waiting would be counterproductive.

Fourth, it is a bridge too far to assume that the people of Kinmen, who – as Goodman has rightly pointed out – vote overwhelmingly for the Kuomintang (KMT), want to live in the PRC. Supporting the KMT is not the same as supporting unification with China. It is worth noting that the KMT, like the DPP, is officially opposed to unification (even former President Ma Ying-jeou, famed for his administration’s reconciliation with China, rejected unification as one of the “three noes”).

Instead, the people of Kinmen want a stable and peaceful life, so they believe it is better to be ruled by the KMT – which is perceived in Beijing as a China-friendly party – than the DPP, which is seen in the PRC as a party of “Taiwan independence” provocateurs who seek to make China-Taiwan relations unstable. In other words, this may be a pragmatic approach on the part of the Kinmen people. This may also explain why the Taiwan People’s Party and Ko Wen-jie were quite popular in Kinmen in the recent elections on January 13.

Finally, from Beijing’s point of view, there seems to be no logical reason for the annexation of Kinmen (with an important caveat: we do not know what Xi Jinping really thinks and how he perceives reality). If Xi argues that the KMT is the best option for Taiwan as a ruling party, what would be the logic of attacking an island whose people consequently vote for the KMT and are well connected to China? Punishing KMT supporters would also be hard to understand from Beijing’s point of view.

Authors

Guest Author

Justyna Szczudlik

Justyna Szczudlik is the deputy head of research, a China analyst, and the former Head of Asia-Pacific Program (2016-2021) with the Polish Institute of International Affairs (PISM).

Subscribe for ads-free reading

thediplomat.com

7. Paul Nitze: A Career of Thinking About the Unthinkable

So who will be the 21st Century Paul Nitze to operate in the modern and dangerous strategic environment described here:

Excerpt:

In the second decade of the 21st century, the United States now faces a peer competitor in China, which is steadily growing its nuclear arsenal. Meanwhile, Russia, which has a “strategic partnership” with China, fields the largest deployment of nuclear weapons. North Korea has nuclear weapons, as do the countries of England, France, Israel, India, Pakistan, and probably soon Iran. We need to start thinking about the unthinkable again. We are going to need a Paul Nitze in the near future to help us navigate the dangerous nuclear developments of this century. Our very survival as a free nation may depend on it.

Paul Nitze: A Career of Thinking About the Unthinkable 

spectator.org · by Francis P. Sempa · August 6, 2024

• Donate

American Heroes

Paul Nitze: A Career of Thinking About the Unthinkable

A new biography provides an opportunity to reflect on the life of a foreign policy great.

by

August 6, 2024, 10:25 PM

Paul Nitze in 1983 (Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain)

The publication of a new biography of Paul Nitze, who served in national security posts in Democrat and Republican administrations between 1940 and 1989, is a good moment to reflect on the need for knowledgeable, informed, and courageous experts to help guide and, at times, provide critical assessments of American national security policies. Nitze’s career is a testament to the invaluable contributions that such experts can make to help presidents and other policymakers navigate the often dangerous international political arena. In Nitze’s case, this meant thinking about the unthinkable — nuclear war — for more than 40 years.

Paul Nitze was seven years old and was vacationing in Austria with his family in August 1914, when the First World War began. Like his friend and colleague George Kennan, Nitze came to regard war as having a devastating impact, according to his autobiography From Hiroshima to Glasnost, “on the structure of civilization, the disillusionment and brutalization of man and his humanity . . . such that the civilized world was never again the same.”

At the end of the Second World War, Nitze, after a successful career on Wall Street and service in several wartime agencies, traveled to Hiroshima and Nagasaki to assess the effects of the strategic bombing of Japan, the first and only use of atomic weapons in wartime. Thus began his intellectual and policy-making career of thinking about the unthinkable — a potential war between nuclear-armed powers.

Keeping The US Ahead in the Nuclear Game

In his autobiography, Nitze wrote that his experience in Hiroshima and Nagasaki “influenced my perception of how the postwar military establishment should be organized.” This included taking into account “the possibility that our enemies would have weapons as powerful and as destructive as our own.” This meant, Nitze wrote, that the United States’ defense establishment needed to carry out “a vigorous research and development program, to assure the optimum exploitation of science and technology for national defense,” including a much-improved intelligence gathering and intelligence analysis system “to avoid a repetition of the Pearl Harbor disaster.”

Nitze joined the State Department in 1946, where he helped Will Clayton devise the Marshall Plan to aid the devastated countries of Western Europe. When Secretary of State George Marshall established the Policy Planning Staff, Kennan became its director and later named Nitze deputy director. In July 1947, Kennan had anonymously written his famous “X” article in Foreign Affairs, which explained the Truman administration’s policy of containment. Nitze recalled that he found it “persuasive.” Three years later, after Nitze succeeded Kennan as head of the Policy Planning Staff, he oversaw the drafting of NSC-68, the classified national security document that, building on Kennan’s containment policy, set forth a long-term strategy for winning the Cold War. That strategy, which was inspired by James Burnham’s analysis and recommendations in The Coming Defeat of Communism, called for conventional military and nuclear weapons build-up, a tripling of the defense budget, and political/psychological/economic warfare to undermine the Soviet empire.

Nitze also weighed in on the debate within the Truman administration as to whether the United States should move forward with the development of the hydrogen bomb. He favored moving forward with the project (Kennan, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and David Lilienthal of the Atomic Energy Agency opposed it) after meeting with Edward Teller regarding its feasibility. He also guessed, correctly, that the Soviets might be working on a similar bomb. Indeed, as Nitze explains in his autobiography, Stalin had decided to develop a Soviet H-bomb three months before Truman made the final decision to move forward with the American H-bomb. “There can now be little doubt,” he wrote, “that had Mr. Truman not acted when he did, the Soviets would have achieved unchallengeable nuclear superiority by the late 1950s.” (READ MORE: Becoming a Moral Person Takes Work)

Throughout the 1950s, Nitze became more and more involved in a field that became known as “strategic studies.” That field attracted other experts, including Bernard Brodie, Herman Kahn, Albert Wohlstetter, Henry Kissinger, William Kaufmann, and later Raymond Aron, Edward Luttwak, Andrew Marshall, and Colin Gray. Nuclear weapons would eventually be fielded on intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, bombers, and intermediate and short-range tactical delivery systems. The nuclear strategists dealt with arcane issues such as missile “throw weight,” warhead accuracy (circular error probable), megatonnage, fixed and mobile launchers, anti-ballistic missile systems, multiple independent reentry vehicles (MIRVs), “first-strike” possibilities, counterforce and counter value weapons, civil defense, and anti-satellite and other space weapons.

We Need Another Paul Nitze

In the 1950s, Nitze criticized the Eisenhower administration’s doctrine of “massive retaliation,” which he claimed relied too heavily on nuclear as opposed to conventional deterrence. In the 1960s, while serving in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations in the defense department, Nitze participated in the ExComm meetings during the Cuban Missile Crisis and later opposed Defense Secretary Robert McNamara’s commitment to Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) as a nuclear doctrine. Nitze believed that the only thing preventing a Soviet takeover of Western Europe was U.S. strategic nuclear superiority, and he argued that we should do whatever it takes to maintain that superiority.

Despite his Democratic Party credentials, President Richard Nixon appointed Nitze as our chief arms control negotiator in the SALT and ABM talks with the Soviets. Nitze later wrote that Nixon and Kissinger were too eager for an agreement to buttress Nixon’s reelection effort. Both the SALT I and ABM Treaties, he believed, were flawed because they failed to place sufficient limits on Soviet heavy missiles, such as the SS-18. He believed that the Soviets were using arms control to develop a “first-strike” capability. He feared that as nuclear weapons became more accurate, the Soviets could attain the theoretical capability of destroying most of our fixed, land-based missiles, many submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) bases, and intercontinental bomber bases in a first strike, which would leave an American president with the unenviable choice of responding by targeting Soviet cities and thereby inviting Soviet retaliation (i.e, committing national suicide) or surrender. (READ MORE: Biden’s Awfully Bittersweet Deal For Hostages)

Nitze’s fears grew when Jimmy Carter, whom he voted for in 1976, became president. Carter’s approach to arms control and the negotiations of SALT II caused Nitze to join the Committee on the Present Danger. David Callahan in his biography of Nitze, Dangerous Capabilities: Paul Nitze and the Cold War, recounts a meeting between the Committee and Carter where Nitze and Eugene Rostow attempted to persuade the president to increase defense spending and change his approach to the SALT II talks. Carter dismissed their concerns, leading Rostow to later say that “the degree of ignorance and naivete by the President was appalling. We were just stunned . . . The notion that that fellow was President was just frightening.” In his memoirs, Nitze recalled that he found Carter’s “attitude towards politics grounded in a hortatory Wilsonian approach, which had been impractical even in Wilson’s day, and which seemed even more out of tune with the realities of the 1970s.” Nitze later wrote a lengthy critique of the SALT II agreement that Carter signed (but which was never ratified by the U.S. Senate after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan), which accused the administration of ignoring the “counterforce aspect of nuclear strategy” and creating a “perilous situation” for the United States.

Ronald Reagan was a member of the Committee on the Present Danger, and when he became president he appointed Nitze as his chief arms control negotiator in talks which initially dealt with intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe but later spread to strategic missiles. Reagan first engaged in a conventional military and nuclear weapons build-up. He also promoted the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). James Graham Wilson notes in the new biography that Nitze supported Reagan’s nuclear and conventional build-up but was initially a skeptic of SDI. He later viewed SDI as a useful bargaining chip in dealing with his Soviet counterparts. As the Cold War wound down, much to Nitze’s surprise, arms control became more feasible. The Soviet empire collapsed. The United States won the Cold War. Paul Nitze was present at both its beginning and its end, and his expertise and critical analyses helped the United States bring about a peaceful end to the U.S.-Soviet rivalry.

In the post-Cold War era, Nitze continued to comment on international relations. He opposed the first Gulf War and U.S. intervention in Somalia but supported U.S. air actions in Bosnia. He signed a letter with other experts urging President Bill Clinton to refrain from enlarging NATO, which he believed would revive Russian imperialism. And he bought into the theology of climate change, viewing it in his last years as an existential threat to the planet. Nitze died in 2004 at the age of 97.

In the second decade of the 21st century, the United States now faces a peer competitor in China, which is steadily growing its nuclear arsenal. Meanwhile, Russia, which has a “strategic partnership” with China, fields the largest deployment of nuclear weapons. North Korea has nuclear weapons, as do the countries of England, France, Israel, India, Pakistan, and probably soon Iran. We need to start thinking about the unthinkable again. We are going to need a Paul Nitze in the near future to help us navigate the dangerous nuclear developments of this century. Our very survival as a free nation may depend on it.

spectator.org · by Francis P. Sempa · August 6, 2024

8. The New National Defense Report Misses the Point

The always contrarian view from Doug Bandow though I expect many do agree with him.

Conclusion:

The world may be dangerous, but the U.S. remains surprisingly secure. The greatest threats against America result from Washington policymakers making other nations’ enemies America’s own. How to better safeguard U.S. interests? Stop confusing them with the wishes of foreign friends and fantasies of Washington officials.

The New National Defense Report Misses the Point

The American Conservative · by Doug Bandow · August 8, 2024

The American public must be informed, explains the Commission on the National Defense Strategy in a new report. Despite war propaganda daily flooding Washington, the CNDS complained that people “have been inadequately informed by government leaders of the threats to U.S. interests—including to people’s everyday lives—and what will be required to restore American global power and leadership.”

In the Commission’s view, the United States is at great risk. Threats are multiplying around the globe. Only great effort can save the country. Americans must turn over more of their money and sacrifice more of their liberties. They must be scared into compliance.

Advertisement

In fact, this is nonsense. For decades the United States has been the most secure great power ever. The U.S. has dominated its continent and entire hemisphere since the mid-19th century. Surrounded by deep waters east and west and weak neighbors north and south, America is largely invulnerable to attack.

Which enabled it to become the most dominant great power ever. With middling effort at home, the U.S. turned into the decisive power abroad. World War II left America as the globe’s most powerful nation, with half the world’s economic production as a foundation for the world’s most sophisticated military. Almost all of its allies remain dependent on US money and production. Today’s world is becoming multipolar, but military threats against the continental US remain minimal, other than assorted nuclear arsenals, most importantly Russia’s.

With Americans living in an extraordinary security cocoon, the 9/11 attacks came as a shock. Of America’s many conflicts, only the Civil War occurred at home. And it ended 159 years ago. Compare the U.S. to the other major powers. Russia, Germany, China, France, Japan, Ukraine, Iran, Iraq, South and North Korea, and so many other nations have been attacked, invaded, occupied—often repeatedly, and sometimes by the U.S.

The fact that Washington almost always fights overseas demonstrates that US policy is usually offensive. Most of what America does militarily has little to do with its own security. Wars of choice have been constant, which explains President Joe Biden proudly informing journalist George Stephanopoulos that “I'm running the world.” (Or at least purporting to.)

Yet the Commission is worried, declaring, “The threats the United States faces are the most serious and most challenging the nation has encountered since 1945 and include the potential for near-term major war.” Worse, apparently, than during the Cold War and Korean War. China is “the pacing and global threat.” Russia is the "chronic and reconstituting threat.” Iran, North Korea, and terrorism constitute “an axis of growing malign partnerships.”

Advertisement

Indeed, warned the CNDS,

There is a high probability that the next war would be fought across multiple theaters, would involve multiple adversaries, and likely would not be concluded quickly. Both China and Russia independently have global reach and have committed to a ‘no-limits friendship,’ with additional partnerships developing with North Korea and Iran, as described previously. As U.S. adversaries are cooperating more closely together than before, the United States and its allies must be prepared to confront an axis of multiple adversaries.

The commissioners quail before this supposedly imposing phalanx: “Although China poses the most consequential threat to the United States and its allies, all five adversaries threaten vital American interests and cannot be ignored. Attempts to deprioritize theaters and significantly reduce U.S. presence—notably in Europe and the Middle East—have emboldened U.S. adversaries and required the United States to surge forces back.”

Hence America faces an emergency. What to do? Mobilize the public! Spend more money on the military! Station more troops overseas! More of everything is required. We must even be prepared, apparently, to invade China and Russia: “Landpower remains central to American security, no matter the adversary or theater. In large-scale operations, the Army remains critical to dominating adversaries.”

Yet there is a lot less to this seemingly daunting threat list than initially meets the eye. Terrorism is only a minor national problem (individual victims understandably feel differently). It is best addressed by doing less overseas, especially the bombing missions, foreign occupations, and miscellaneous interventions that trigger foreign hostility and vengeful attacks.

Iran and North Korea are nasty regimes but have no intrinsic interest in tangling with America. For instance, if Washington were not in the Middle East backing both Israel and the Sunni Gulf monarchies, the Iranian ayatollahs would pay the U.S. little mind. Today the Biden administration is preparing for war with Iran, not to defend America but Israel—a regional superpower, with conventional superiority, nuclear weapons, and security relations with leading Arab states. Pyongyang directs abundant threats against the U.S. because the U.S. is there, on and around the peninsula threatening the North day and night. If Washington left the Republic of Korea, vastly more powerful than the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, to defend itself, America would hear little more from DPRK Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un. The U.S. should ignore rather than confront Tehran and Pyongyang.

Russia is no threat to America. Moscow has no territorial conflicts or inevitable disputes with the U.S. In fact, the two governments have cooperated against Islamic terrorism and nuclear proliferation. Russia is authoritarian, but neither ideological nor evangelistic. Vladimir Putin has been in power for more than a quarter century and originally demonstrated no animus to America. Putin’s attitude changed after the allies did their best to antagonize all Russians with an aggressive, even reckless foreign policy.

As for territorial conquest, Putin, though a criminal aggressor, is no Hitler. In 2008, he promoted preexisting separatism in South Ossetia and Abkhazia against Georgia, which he attacked after it fired on Russian troops. He invaded Ukraine after years of warnings against bringing Kiev into NATO—which the allies did indirectly by bringing NATO into Ukraine. Putin’s government is challenging the Biden administration elsewhere in retaliation for Washington helping to kill thousands of Russian soldiers in Ukraine. The U.S. could defuse today’s Russian threats by adopting the “humble foreign policy” that candidate George W. Bush once promoted and stopping attempts to dominate everywhere up to Russia’s border. As for Europe’s security, why cannot a continent with ten times the GDP and three times the population of Russia protect itself?

Finally, there is the People’s Republic of China. Even if it is the “pacing” challenge, as the Commission claimed, Beijing is not a serious military threat to America. The Chinese Communist Party is Leninist, determined to hold on to power, rather than Marxist, determined to revolutionize the world. Nevertheless, Beijing has become an important geopolitical rival. It possesses a large and sophisticated economy and is the world’s greatest trading nation. Its armed forces are ranked third in the world, amid an ongoing nuclear buildup. Required is a nuanced and multinational response.

The primary bilateral battleground is economic, not military. Although Chinese military power is expanding, that doesn’t mean the threat is significant, at least in the sense of putting America’s people, territories, independence, and liberties at risk. Beijing has neither the desire nor the ability to attack the United States, conquer its Pacific possessions, exclude it from global markets, or otherwise turn America into a tributary state.

There is a military issue, but it involves U.S. influence in East Asia. Members of the Washington Blob, like Biden, continue to believe that they are entitled by birth to “run the world.” As such, their objective is not to defend America from attack by China, but to coerce China, along with any other nation so ill-mannered as to reject U.S. hegemony.

Beijing seeks what America has, dominance in its own region. If the U.S. refuses to accommodate a more powerful PRC, military friction is inevitable and military conflict is possible, perhaps likely. Nevertheless, while the U.S. benefits from its unnatural role in East Asia and surrounding waters—effectively ruling the Pacific up to China’s shores—that position is not vital to American security, and thus does not warrant war with a serious conventional power that possesses nuclear weapons over interests it believes to be vital.

The U.S. should not be indifferent to increasing Chinese influence. Rather, it should help friendly states acquire the wherewithal necessary for their own defense and encourage them to work together to constrain the PRC. They can rely on anti-access/area denial strategies, just as Beijing does against Washington. America has committed to the defense of its treaty allies, most importantly Japan, Philippines, and South Korea, but what matters is their independence, so far not threatened by Beijing, rather than their control over every barren rock that they claim in contested waters. The U.S. should calibrate its commitments to its interests, avoiding war over peripheral matters.

The most incendiary issue is Taiwan, which matters to China both because of history, having been lost to Japan during “the century of humiliation,” and security, since possession by a hostile power would threaten the Chinese homeland. Although Beijing’s objective is to regain control through coerced negotiation, it is widely believed that the PRC would act militarily if Taiwan declared independence. Although there is no evidence that the Xi government has any firm deadline in mind, some Western analysts believe that an impatient China might act in the coming years.

Like Russia’s attack on Ukraine, a Chinese assault on Taiwan, though a moral atrocity, would be only a geopolitical inconvenience for America. From a U.S. security standpoint, the island is useful in impeding the PRC, not defending America. Taiwan is not worth a war, one against a nuclear power which has both nationalistic ego and serious security interests at stake. Washington should promote other forms of deterrence, not risk this nation’s very survival.

The report warns “that the U.S. military lacks both the capabilities and the capacity required to be confident it can deter and prevail in combat.” Confidence to do what? Americans should not expect to defeat China and occupy Beijing. What matters is preventing China from defeating the U.S. and occupying Washington, D.C. Which we can do.

The Commission on the National Defense Strategy’s report reads like a long litany of militaristic screeds emanating from America’s military industrial think tank university complex. The proposed solution is always a frenzied military buildup and war against all.

The world may be dangerous, but the U.S. remains surprisingly secure. The greatest threats against America result from Washington policymakers making other nations’ enemies America’s own. How to better safeguard U.S. interests? Stop confusing them with the wishes of foreign friends and fantasies of Washington officials.

The American Conservative · by Doug Bandow · August 8, 2024

9. Enhancing Military Diplomacy in the Indo-Pacific: A US Foreign Area Officer’s Perspecti

The entire two page essay is only available for download in PDF at this link: https://www.eastwestcenter.org/sites/default/files/2024-08/APB%20676%20-%20Enhancing%20Military%20Diplomacy%20in%20the%20Indo-Pacific%20-%20%20A%20US%20Foreign%20Area%20Officer’s%20Perspective.pdf

Enhancing Military Diplomacy in the Indo-Pacific: A US Foreign Area Officer’s Perspective

eastwestcenter.org

Asia Pacific Bulletin Asia Pacific Bulletin

Lt. Col. Matthew House

Washington, DC: East-West Center

Contact

Lance D. Jackson

[email protected] [email protected]

Number 676

Lt. Col. Matthew House, US Army Foreign Area Officer and EWC Adjunct Fellow, underscores “the pivotal role of military diplomacy in orchestrating significant global events...” and highlights “the invaluable expertise of [Foreign Area Officers] in managing complex international relations."for additional titles in the

Asia Pacific Bulletin

"Strengthening military diplomacy in the region requires increased funding and resources for critical areas, including language training programs for FAOs, investing in technological advancements for communication and intelligence sharing, and strengthening United States embassies’ defense attaché offices."

In February 2019, the bustling streets of Hanoi, Vietnam, were abuzz with preparations for the historic Trump-Kim Summit, capturing the world's attention. As a newly promoted US Army Major and Foreign Area Officer (FAO), I was deeply immersed in the crucial role of military diplomacy, facilitating seamless communication between the US interagency delegations and Vietnamese officials. Trained in Vietnamese, I navigated cultural sensitivities and negotiated the high-stakes logistics surrounding the arrival of Air Force One at Hanoi’s Nội Bài International Airport. This experience underscored the pivotal role of military diplomacy in orchestrating significant global events, highlighting the invaluable expertise of FAOs in managing complex international relations..

Read More

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect East-West Center policies or positions.

Number 676

Lt. Col. Matthew House, US Army Foreign Area Officer and EWC Adjunct Fellow, underscores “the pivotal role of military diplomacy in orchestrating significant global events...” and highlights “the invaluable expertise of [Foreign Area Officers] in managing complex international relations."for additional titles in the

Asia Pacific Bulletin

"Strengthening military diplomacy in the region requires increased funding and resources for critical areas, including language training programs for FAOs, investing in technological advancements for communication and intelligence sharing, and strengthening United States embassies’ defense attaché offices."

In February 2019, the bustling streets of Hanoi, Vietnam, were abuzz with preparations for the historic Trump-Kim Summit, capturing the world's attention. As a newly promoted US Army Major and Foreign Area Officer (FAO), I was deeply immersed in the crucial role of military diplomacy, facilitating seamless communication between the US interagency delegations and Vietnamese officials. Trained in Vietnamese, I navigated cultural sensitivities and negotiated the high-stakes logistics surrounding the arrival of Air Force One at Hanoi’s Nội Bài International Airport. This experience underscored the pivotal role of military diplomacy in orchestrating significant global events, highlighting the invaluable expertise of FAOs in managing complex international relations..

Read More

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect East-West Center policies or positions.

Asia Pacific Bulletin

View All

eastwestcenter.org

10. Kyle Balzer, “Knowing Your Enemy”: James Schlesinger and the Origins of Competitive, Tailored Deterrence Strategies

Excerpt below. Download the entire 13 page paper at this link: https://nipp.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/IS-596.pdf

Kyle Balzer, “Knowing Your Enemy”: James Schlesinger and the Origins of Competitive, Tailored Deterrence Strategies, No. 596, August 8, 2024

“Knowing Your Enemy”: James Schlesinger and the Origins of Competitive, Tailored Deterrence Strategies

Dr. Kyle Balzer

Dr. Kyle Balzer is a Jeane Kirkpatrick Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

In the years ahead, the United States will confront an unprecedented geopolitical challenge that threatens its far-flung alliances and, more directly, the security of the American homeland. For the first time in the nuclear age, the United States will face two peer nuclear adversaries, China and Russia. The bipartisan Strategic Posture Commission recently addressed this unparalleled situation, concluding that the United States “must urgently prepare for the new reality, and measures need to be taken now to deal with these new threats.”[1]

But how should the United States prepare for a two-peer threat environment? The strategic sensibility of James R. Schlesinger, a pioneering Cold War strategist who confronted the rise of a peer nuclear adversary, can help address this question. Given the confounding nature of the emerging strategic landscape, it may seem puzzling to turn to the past. Schlesinger, after all, thought and wrote about deterring just one great-power adversary, the Soviet Union.

Notwithstanding this glaring difference, Schlesinger recognized a fundamental feature of peacetime competition that transcends time, space, and number of peer rivals: Adversaries hold distinctive values and behavioral tendencies that defy “rational” mirror-imaging. Moreover, a wise competitor, as Schlesinger understood, will exploit his opponent’s self-damaging proclivities to secure competitive advantages. U.S. nuclear strategy, as such, should be tailored to adversary thinking—not that of American planners. The totality of Mutual Assured Destruction—the idea that the nuclear balance is irreversibly stalemated—has not nurtured a community of like-minded nuclear powers. Nor has it erased the need to compete for comparative advantage.

This Information Series proceeds in three parts, stretching Schlesinger’s career as a University of Virginia economics professor (1956-1963), RAND Corporation analyst (1963-1969), and secretary of defense (1973-1975). The conclusion offers lessons for today, underscoring that “knowing your enemy” is a demanding challenge that deserves sustained attention.

Diagnosing the Enemy

“Strategy,” Schlesinger wrote in 1968, “depends on the image of the foe.”[2] He lamented, then, that projections of the Soviets in the 1950s and 1960s had swung wildly from “commie rats who only understand force,” to enthusiastic partners-in-detente “who are just as urbane, civilized, and intent on the eradication of differences as are those on our side.”[3] Both projections, Schlesinger contended, arose from a flawed image of a “rational” adversary that shared American values and behavioral predispositions.[4]

In a series of RAND papers, Schlesinger criticized U.S. analysts for ignoring two “non-rational” factors of strategic analysis: historical legacies and organizational behavior. Regarding the former, he argued that profound national experiences helped explain why U.S. nuclear superiority lasted through the mid-1960s. An “underlying Pearl Harbor complex” had compelled the United States, a maritime power experienced in global power projection, to rapidly build up heavy bombers and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) to close presumed, though imaginary, deterrence gaps.[5] Assuming the Soviets shared the same strategic values, it was only natural for U.S. analysts to project that the Kremlin—whose command economy allowed for vast military expenditures—was far ahead in long-range missile and bomber production. Notwithstanding American expectations, however, Soviet defense planners, imbued with a continental mindset, had actually programmed “skimpy” intercontinental forces in favor of shorter-range capabilities.[6] While U.S. intelligence estimators complained about the “difficulty understanding the Soviet rationale,”[7] Schlesinger surmised that the devastating German invasion in 1941 had focused the Soviets on “an attack from Western Europe—this time abetted by the United States.”[8]

Schlesinger maintained that historical legacies also conditioned Soviet organizational behavior, the second non-rational factor of analysis. On this point, RAND colleagues Joseph E. Loftus and Andrew W. Marshall, who had examined long-term trends in Soviet military spending,[9] shaped his thinking. Loftus and Marshall diagnosed that the Soviets, scarred by the Nazi German invasion, were predisposed to invest heavily in territorial air defenses and theater-range nuclear forces.[10] Unlike the Americans, the Soviets had a separate air defense service that enjoyed a preeminent position within the defense establishment.[11] Moreover, the Soviet Ground Forces, which did not share the U.S. Air Force’s interest in intercontinental strike, initially controlled the strategic missile arsenal and prioritized continental missions.[12] Schlesinger and his colleagues thus concluded that the Kremlin “was pursuing the competition with the United States in quite different ways.”[13]

Schlesinger characterized Loftus and Marshall’s work, along with the literature on organizational behavior, evolutionary anthropology, and psychopolitical analysis, as “a revelation on the road to Damascus.”[14] In the mid-1960s, he joined Marshall on trips to Harvard Business School to exchange ideas with management experts.[15] Schlesinger and Marshall also discussed anthropologist Robert Ardrey’s book, The Territorial Imperative,[16] which emphasized the deep-seated primal instincts that drove humans to commit self-damaging behavior, as well as the psychopolitical analysis of Nathan Leites, a RAND colleague working on the cultural roots of national perceptions.[17] This eclectic body of work crystalized for Schlesinger why the Soviets held to expired strategic views, and why the Soviets plowed vast resources into obsolescing territorial air defenses.[18]

Schlesinger ultimately concluded that “soft” non-rational factors blended with “hard” realities—namely, economic and technological constraints—to generate a distinctive Soviet posture. The Kremlin, for instance, initially relied on theater-range nuclear forces due to “the greater ease of such a deployment for a nation with limited resources and with limited experience in advance R&D.”[19] Schlesinger thus lamented that American economic orthodoxy had projected a Soviet command economy that would transcend opportunity costs and compete more efficiently.[20]

Schlesinger, by contrast, had a more optimistic long-term outlook. Dating back to his tenure as a University of Virginia economics professor, he had criticized the image of a Soviet economic miracle. Indeed, his 1960 book The Political Economy of National Security had indicted the U.S. intelligence community for “drastically underestimating” the “immense” Soviet defense burden.[21] When Schlesinger departed Charlottesville for Santa Monica in 1963, he suspected Soviet military spending “might be so high as to be unsustainable in the long run.”[22]

In retrospect, Schlesinger’s diagnosis of Soviet behavior has aged well. Soft factors like historical trauma and organizational behavior did, in fact, generate peculiar predispositions. Nazi German air raids on Moscow left a searing “psychological imprint” on Soviet leaders, who, from 1945 to the early 1960s, plowed more resources into obsolescing air defenses than strategic offensive forces.[23] Prioritizing regime survival above all else, the Kremlin even committed a shocking 1-2 percent of GDP to the construction of a vast network of underground command centers.[24] Perplexed U.S. defense planners, like Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, disparaged these efforts as “the greatest single military error in the world.”[25] Soviet history and organizational culture, however, said otherwise.

Moreover, “hard” technical constraints limited Soviet intercontinental forces until technological breakthroughs enabled a massive buildup in the late 1960s. The first-generation Soviet ICBM “proved so poorly suited to the rapidly changing strategic environment that the program had to be curtailed,” which forced the diversion of scarce resources to theater-range missiles.[26] Even if more “rational” calculations had driven planning, Moscow still lacked the defense-industrial base to match its rival.

When the Soviet nuclear buildup finally arrived in the late 1960s, Schlesinger’s analytic sensibility equipped him to assess the evolving situation. His empirical approach allowed him to move beyond McNamara’s abstract image of a like-minded opponent and accurately diagnose the nature of the competition.

11. Wu Yongping: An Emerging "Western Bloc" on the Taiwan Question

A view form China and the Center for China and Globalization (CCG).

"Pan-securitzation?"

Excerpts:

It is important to recognize that such a narrative is based on de-historicalization. It completely overlooks the origins of the Taiwan question, Taiwan's historical status as part of China, the relationship between the Taiwan question and the evolution of modern Chinese history and the fate of the Chinese nation, and the connection of the Taiwan question with domestic political changes in China in 1949. These historical elements that determine the nature of the Taiwan question are completely absent from this narrative.

Meanwhile, some in the United States are attempting to reinforce this narrative by introducing the Theory of the Undetermined Status of Taiwan. They interpret United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2758 in a one-sided manner, avoid the legal implications of the Cairo Declaration and the Potsdam Proclamation regarding Taiwan's status, and disregard Taiwan's recognized position within China as stated in various diplomatic communiqués and bilateral agreements with China. The goal is to detach China's sovereignty from the Taiwan question. While most Western countries in this bloc have not yet fully embraced this stance, the push remains active.

The danger of this discourse system lies in its potential to mislead the international community towards "de-sovereignizing China" regarding the Taiwan question. It creates a false perception that "Taiwan and China are not subordinated to each other, the Taiwan question is unrelated to China's sovereignty, and cross-strait reunification is an international matter rather than a domestic issue for China." This narrative dilutes and undermines China's national reunification discourse, presenting a new challenge for China in handling the Taiwan question. The formation of a "Western bloc" based on this discourse further complicates China's efforts to address and resolve the Taiwan question.

Wu Yongping: An Emerging "Western Bloc" on the Taiwan Question

Director of Tsinghua Institute for Taiwan Studies warns of Western rhetoric that victimizes Taiwan and pan-securitizes China.

https://www.eastisread.com/p/wu-yongping-an-emerging-western-bloc?utm

Jiaoyang Du and Yuxuan JIA

Aug 08, 2024

Issue 3, 2024 of the Reunification Forum, published by the China Council for the Promotion of Peaceful National Reunification, features an analysis of the "Western bloc" on the Taiwan question.

Wu Yongping, Professor and Director of the Institute for Taiwan Studies, Tsinghua University, says Western countries, led by the U.S., have formed a unified bloc on the Taiwan question, including Japan, Australia, Europe, and recently, South Korea. He says that the U.S. and its allies are portraying Taiwan as a victim needing protection and a democratic ally, aiming to "de-sovereignize China," foster ideological confrontation, and promote self-interest and pan-securitization on the Taiwan question. Wu also highlights the linking of the war in Ukraine with the Taiwan question.

Professor Wu has kindly proofread this translation.

西方国家台湾问题立场的阵营化

An Emerging "Western Bloc" on the Taiwan Question

The Taiwan question is becoming increasingly internationalized, evident in two aspects: first, other countries have gotten involved; second, it has transformed from a domestic matter to an international hotspot. As a result, it has evolved from a rarely talked-about issue to one that captures significant attention. This represents both a factual and a perceptual change, which is ongoing and threatens to intensify.

These developments create a new external environment and challenges for addressing and resolving the Taiwan question and achieving national reunification. Understanding and studying these changes are crucial for implementing China's policy to resolve the Taiwan question in the new era.

The emerging bloc of Western countries is coming to the fore in the undergoing internationalization of the Taiwan question.

What is the "Western Bloc" on the Taiwan Question?

The international community's perception of the Taiwan question is comprised of three levels: the views of the general public, the perspectives of elites (including academia, think tanks, and media), and the positions and policies of various governments. At these three levels, Western countries have nearly reached a consensus and formed a unified bloc. In contrast, non-Western countries hold diverse opinions on Taiwan-related issues and do not share a unified stance, thereby not forming a bloc.

The "Western bloc" on Taiwan-related issues consists of the United States and its allies. The U.S. is the core of this bloc, with other countries aligning with the U.S. stance to varying degrees due to American influence, agitation, pressure, or their own interests. To serve its strategic purposes and contain China, the U.S. has used Taiwan as a pawn. From the Trump administration to the Biden administration, the U.S. has significantly upgraded its relations with Taiwan. This is evident in the increased quality and quantity of arms sales to Taiwan, the elevation of U.S.-Taiwan military relations, the strengthening of U.S.-Taiwan economic ties, particularly in high-tech sectors such as semiconductors, and the effort to build a pro-Taiwan bloc by rallying allies.

Japan is the most proactive U.S. ally and the most active and steadfast member of this bloc. Australia also plays a major role in the Asia-Pacific region. Europe is another significant member, as both the European Union as a whole and most EU member states, along with the UK, have joined this bloc. Notably, South Korea has recently shifted from avoiding the Taiwan question to moving closer toward this bloc. Overall, all Western allies of the U.S. have aligned with this "Western bloc" on the Taiwan question.

The "Western bloc" on the perception of the Taiwan question means that the U.S. and its allies have developed similar perspectives and positions, adopted comparable policies, and referenced, influenced, and reinforced each other regarding the Taiwan question.

Why is there a "Western Bloc" on the Taiwan Question?

The formation of this Western bloc is the result of changes in the international landscape, China-U.S. relations, China-Western relations, and globalization. The United States and Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) are the primary architects and promoters of this bloc. Of course, the formation of this bloc also reflects Western countries' assessment of their own interests.

The bloc-like stance of Western countries on the Taiwan question is closely linked to their position on China; it is both a component and a consequence of their broader stance on China. Additionally, it results from their evolving perceptions of Taiwan.

The United States is the primary driver of this bloc, which is based on a new narrative regarding the Taiwan question. The U.S. is the most important architect of this new narrative. The DPP has also played a crucial role in the formation and dissemination of this narrative. The DPP's role is reflected in promoting a "protect Taiwan" narrative, which is composed of three parts.

1. Taiwan as a Victim: Taiwan is depicted as a vulnerable "victim" in the face of the gigantic Chinese mainland, unable to defend itself and in need of protection from the international community.
2. Taiwan as an Important Member of the Democracy Bloc: Taiwan is portrayed as a successful democratic society with values aligned with those of Western countries. It is seen as part of the global democracy bloc and as an ally worthy of international protection. If the Chinese mainland were to launch a military attack on Taiwan, not only would Taiwan's democratic system be destroyed, but international democratic and liberal values would also be threatened. Thus, the international community must protect Taiwan, equating the protection of Taiwan with safeguarding international democratic and liberal values.
3. Taiwan as a Contributor to the International Community: Taiwan is a crucial link in global industrial and supply chains, with its chip production playing a key role. A conflict across the Taiwan Strait would disrupt Taiwan chip production, damaging the global supply chain and threatening global economic security. Additionally, Taiwan actively participates in international affairs and is therefore a contributor to the international community.

The DPP promotes this meticulously crafted narrative in the international community through various methods. This includes having prominent figures such as Tsai Ing-wen and Jaushieh Joseph Wu publish articles in mainstream international media, give interviews, and provide manuscripts to international media for publication. These efforts convert the DPP's perspectives into Western media viewpoints, thereby influencing Western elites, Western governments, and the Western public.

A New Discourse System behind the "Western Bloc"

What underpins this bloc is a new Western discourse system regarding the Taiwan question, which "de-sovereignizes China", highlights ideological confrontation, emphasizes self-interest, and pan-securitizes on the Taiwan question.

1. "De-Sovereignizing China". Western countries formally acknowledge the "One China" policy, yet they frequently separate the Taiwan question from the principle of China's sovereignty and territorial integrity in their narratives. They promote the notion that "the two sides of the Taiwan Strait are not subordinate to each other." By doing so, they internationalize China's internal affairs and mischaracterize the issue of China's national reunification as an "attempt to unilaterally change the status quo by force" and "aggression" of the Chinese mainland towards Taiwan.
2. Highlighting Ideological Confrontation. Western discourse on Taiwan distorts the cross-strait regime dispute, a remnant of the Chinese Civil War, into a values-based confrontation between "autocracy" and "democracy." This framing portrays cross-strait reunification as an autocratic system annexing a democratic one, threatening not only Taiwan's democracy but also the global democratic bloc. Consequently, protecting Taiwan is depicted as safeguarding global democratic systems and values, positioning the Taiwan question as an ideological confrontation between blocs.
3. Emphasizing Self-Interest. Given the significant role cross-strait relations play in global industrial value chains, particularly Taiwan's crucial position in the semiconductor supply chain and the strategic importance of the Taiwan Strait, Western countries increasingly assert that the Taiwan question affects their own economic, commercial, and technological interests. They emphasize their role in maintaining peace, security, and stability in the Taiwan Strait, claiming that peace in this region is crucial for global supply chain security.
4. Pan-securitizing. Amid frequent international geopolitical crises and, in particular, the escalating U.S.-China competition, Western policies and rhetoric on China increasingly veer towards pan-securitization, portraying the Chinese mainland as a "security threat" and thus framing the Taiwan issue as one of the world's most critical security concerns. Rhetoric and propaganda, coupled with U.S.-Taiwan military cooperation and other actions, accelerate the portrayal of Taiwan as a powder keg in global discourse.

It is important to recognize that such a narrative is based on de-historicalization. It completely overlooks the origins of the Taiwan question, Taiwan's historical status as part of China, the relationship between the Taiwan question and the evolution of modern Chinese history and the fate of the Chinese nation, and the connection of the Taiwan question with domestic political changes in China in 1949. These historical elements that determine the nature of the Taiwan question are completely absent from this narrative.

Meanwhile, some in the United States are attempting to reinforce this narrative by introducing the Theory of the Undetermined Status of Taiwan. They interpret United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2758 in a one-sided manner, avoid the legal implications of the Cairo Declaration and the Potsdam Proclamation regarding Taiwan's status, and disregard Taiwan's recognized position within China as stated in various diplomatic communiqués and bilateral agreements with China. The goal is to detach China's sovereignty from the Taiwan question. While most Western countries in this bloc have not yet fully embraced this stance, the push remains active.

The danger of this discourse system lies in its potential to mislead the international community towards "de-sovereignizing China" regarding the Taiwan question. It creates a false perception that "Taiwan and China are not subordinated to each other, the Taiwan question is unrelated to China's sovereignty, and cross-strait reunification is an international matter rather than a domestic issue for China." This narrative dilutes and undermines China's national reunification discourse, presenting a new challenge for China in handling the Taiwan question. The formation of a "Western bloc" based on this discourse further complicates China's efforts to address and resolve the Taiwan question.

Changes in European Countries' Positions on the Taiwan Question

The European Union and its member states are a significant part of the "Western bloc" on the Taiwan question. Like other members of this bloc, European countries claim their one-China policy remains unchanged, but they have quietly altered their policy on Taiwan. Understanding the shifts in their positions provides insights into the Western bloc. Overall, the positions of the European Union and some of its member states on the Taiwan question are undergoing the following changes.

Europe is changing its stance on the Taiwan question. Before 2020, they rarely mentioned Taiwan and did not have a clear "One China policy," typically responding to China's statements. However, in recent years, the EU has become more attentive to distinguishing between the "One China policy" and the "One China principle." The EU's "One China policy" acknowledges the People's Republic of China as the sole legitimate government of China but does not involve recognizing Taiwan as part of China or addressing Taiwan's status. Under the "One China policy", the EU does not establish formal relations with Taiwan.

Recent years, however, have shown signs of a shift. Aside from the "Five Key Positions" (the leader and deputy leader of the Taiwan region, the head of the executive body of the Taiwan region, the head of external affairs of the Taiwan region, and the head of defense of the Taiwan region), officials from other levels in the Taiwan region are now permitted to visit Europe. Furthermore, Europe has expanded its exchanges and contacts with Taiwan in fields such as the economy, culture, education, science, and academia.

The European Parliament has its stance on Taiwan, engaging more actively in Taiwan-related issues. In 2021, the European Parliament issued its first report on Taiwan, urging the EU to strengthen relations with Taiwan, negotiate an investment agreement, and rename the EU office in Taiwan from "European Economic and Trade Office in Taiwan (EETOT)" to "European Office in Taiwan." Its 2022 report further emphasized Taiwan as a "key partner and democratic ally" of the EU in the Indo-Pacific region and supported Taiwan's bid to join international organizations like the World Health Organization as an observer. The frequency of exchanges between the European Parliament and Taiwan has increased, recently exemplified by Hsiao Bi-khim's visit to the European Parliament in March.

EU member countries interpret the "One China policy" according to their individual circumstances, resulting in variations from country to country. For instance, countries like Lithuania and the Czech Republic have expanded their relations with Taiwan. Conversely, Denmark recently changed the nationality of Taiwanese residents to "Chinese" on their residency permits, causing dissatisfaction from Jaushieh Joseph Wu.

The Russia-Ukraine conflict is also influencing the EU and its member states' views and positions on the Taiwan question. Following the outbreak of the conflict, the EU and Western European countries believed that China did not condemn Russia and even appeared to lean towards it. Although China did not directly supply weapons to Russia, it provided various forms of assistance that mitigated the impact of Western sanctions. Recently, there have been allegations that China is selling components and raw materials to Russia that can be used in weapon production, thereby enhancing Russia's defense capabilities. Some countries are intentionally or unintentionally linking the Ukraine crisis with the Taiwan question, a trend that warrants serious attention.

12. The Will and the Power: China’s Plan to Undermine Pax Americana

Excerpts:

This enumeration vividly demonstrates China’s comprehensive policies to undermine each of America’s five vital national interests that safeguard and enhance Americans’ survival and well-being in a free and secure nation and bolster international order. As U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin explained in late 2022, “The PRC is the only country with both the will and, increasingly, the power to reshape its region and the international order to suit its authoritarian preferences.”

In weakening these five vital U.S. interests by threatening nuclear annihilation, Beijing could deter the United States from acting in a crisis. In attempting to dominate Asia, China could prompt nuclear proliferation across the region, beginning with South Korea or even Japan, as countries seek a last-ditch nuclear deterrent capability. A China-dominated Asia could fatally fragment the United States’ Asian alliance system, as one U.S. ally after another kowtows to Beijing. The PRC could undermine U.S. ties with Mexico and other countries in Latin America to distract the United States from pursuing its national interests in Asia and elsewhere. A China that dominated Asia would alter global values, rules, and practices to the United States’ disadvantage.

Steve Tsang, director of the China Institute at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, summed up the Chinese president’s ambitions. “Xi Jinping,” he said, “is not trying to out-compete America in the existing liberal international order dominated by the [United States]. His long-term goal is to change the world order into a Sino-centric one.”

The Will and the Power: China’s Plan to Undermine Pax Americana

Here’s how China threatens five core American national interests. 

The National Interest · by Robert D. Blackwill · August 8, 2024

Editor’s Note: The following article contains excerpts from Lost Decade: The U.S. Pivot to Asia and the Rise of Chinese Power (Oxford University Press, 2024) with the permission of the publishers.

From Washington’s Farewell Address to Biden’s national security strategy, the core U.S. national interest, unsurprisingly, has not changed: to ensure the fundamental security of the homeland and its people in freedom. As Alexander Hamilton put it, “Self-preservation is the first duty of a nation.” Vital U.S. interests are all increasingly threatened by China and can be defined as the following:

1) To prevent the use and reduce the threat of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons and catastrophic conventional terrorist attacks or cyber attacks against the United States, its military forces abroad, or its allies.

China’s burgeoning intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and nuclear capabilities present a threat to the American homeland and its forces abroad. China plans to increase its stockpile of strategic nuclear warheads from an estimated 500 in 2022 to 1,500 by 2035. This rise is accompanied by increased infrastructure-building to produce and separate plutonium. Beijing is reportedly constructing 300 new missile silos in the country’s western desert—a tenfold increase over the number operational in 2022—in addition to its arsenal of an estimated one hundred road-mobile ICBM launchers.

2) To stop the spread of nuclear weapons, secure nuclear weapons and materials, and reduce further proliferation of intermediate and long-range delivery systems for nuclear weapons.

Beijing continues to permit state-owned enterprises and individuals to violate the Missile Technology Control Regime (MCTR) and “proliferate technology that Iran has used to improve the accuracy, range, and lethality of its ballistic missiles.” At the same time, Beijing has undermined sanctions against Tehran by dramatically boosting its economic support for the Islamic Republic. China has steadily remained the Islamic Republic’s top trading partner, and commerce between the two countries exceeds $15 billion annually. If Iran eventually acquires a nuclear weapon, Beijing, through its economic and technical assistance, will bear substantial responsibility.

Beijing has also looked away as its citizens and corporations violate the MTCR vis-à-vis North Korea, despite China’s stated aim of finding a peaceful solution to Pyongyang’s nuclear program. A January 2023 Congressional Research Service report indicates that “Chinese financial companies set up paper companies to act as agents for North Korean financial institutions, evading sanctions to finance the North’s proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and ballistic missile programs.”

3) To maintain a global and regional balance of power that promotes peace, stability, and freedom through domestic robustness, international power projection and influence, and the strength of alliance systems.

Beijing has mounted an all-out assault on the military, economic, and diplomatic balance of power in Asia and on America’s alliance system in the region. China’s military modernization, made possible by unprecedented increases in defense spending, laid the foundation for this rapid change. The People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) modernization includes a new command-and-control structure, upgraded equipment across the navy, air force, and army, expanded and improved training for cadets, and the establishment of the Strategic Support Force to centralize its new combat capabilities. In addition to the buildup of its nuclear arsenal, Beijing now boasts the world’s most oversized navy, as well as the largest ballistic and cruise missile inventory.

On the economic front, China has pursued two strategies to undermine American power in the Indo-Pacific. First, Beijing threatens and coerces America’s partners in Asia to adopt policies conducive to Chinese regional dominance. Second, the People’s Republic (PRC) created and now promotes international economic organizations and initiatives that exclude the United States, privilege China’s position, and undermine global rules and standards.

China also sought to expand its leadership in international governing institutions and weaken U.S. influence. At the United Nations (UN), in particular, Beijing has become more assertive and activist, mounting an assault on democratic norms, including the rule of law, human rights, transparency, and accountability.

4) To prevent the emergence of hostile powers or failed states in the Western Hemisphere.

Beijing has successfully attempted to deepen its strategic involvement with Latin American nations, increasingly at the expense of the United States.

China is now South America’s top trading partner and the second largest for Latin America as a whole, after the United States. That is a significant leap for a country that, in 2000, accounted for less than 2 percent of Latin America’s exports. China has built ports, railroads, and dams, installed 5G networks throughout Latin America, and loaned the region’s nations $138 billion.

Notably, China has made a concerted attempt to engage Latin America and the Caribbean in the security domain. Beijing’s 2008 and 2016 policy papers for the region outline Chinese commitments to increase “military exchanges and cooperation,” assist the “development of the army in Latin American and Caribbean countries,” and “enhance cooperation in military trade and military technology.” Between 2002 and 2019, senior PLA leaders conducted 215 visits to the region, with Chile, Cuba, Brazil, and Argentina accounting for over half of these interactions.

5) To ensure the viability and stability of major international systems (trade, financial markets, public health, energy supplies, cyberspace, the environment, freedom of the seas, and outer space).

Over the past fifteen years, China has sought to weaken virtually all these major global systems.

Through its repeated violations of international commercial practices, Beijing has disrupted the stability of world markets. It uses hundreds of billions of dollars in government subsidies and intentional overproduction to flood global markets with artificially low-priced Chinese goods and services. Beijing also restricts market access to foreign companies and imposes arbitrary non-tariff barriers.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, China delayed the transmission of crucial data for weeks and continues to resist any serious inquiry into the origins of the virus.In addition, China’s role in the fentanyl epidemic poses a direct threat to American citizens. China has created a sprawling and immensely powerful cyber operations command, which it employs to interfere with other nations and repress its own citizens. It uses cyberattacks and cyber espionage as elements of influence campaigns in the United States, through which it tries to shape public perceptions of China, suppress criticism, and mislead American voters. It has penetrated U.S. infrastructure and critical facilities and continues to steal data from hundreds of millions of Americans.

China consistently hampers global efforts to slow climate change and mitigate its impact. It emits more greenhouse gases than any other country and constructs new fossil fuel infrastructure across the world as part of its Belt and Road Initiative. It also exposes its own air, soil, and waterways to immense pollution.

China claims sovereignty over the South China Sea (SCS) and declares the area its “inherent territory,” inconsistent with the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Beijing’s assertive behavior in the South China Sea challenges established norms in the maritime domain, such as geographical boundaries, the rights of countries to control natural resources within their delineated zones, and international dispute resolution mechanisms.

In pursuit of Xi’s “eternal dream” for China to become a “space power,” Beijing has also made a concerted effort to expand its private and state industries rapidly. The PLA draws an explicit link between space and conflict; its 2020 Science of Military Strategy document describes “the dominance of space [as] inseparable from the outcome of war.”

This enumeration vividly demonstrates China’s comprehensive policies to undermine each of America’s five vital national interests that safeguard and enhance Americans’ survival and well-being in a free and secure nation and bolster international order. As U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin explained in late 2022, “The PRC is the only country with both the will and, increasingly, the power to reshape its region and the international order to suit its authoritarian preferences.”

In weakening these five vital U.S. interests by threatening nuclear annihilation, Beijing could deter the United States from acting in a crisis. In attempting to dominate Asia, China could prompt nuclear proliferation across the region, beginning with South Korea or even Japan, as countries seek a last-ditch nuclear deterrent capability. A China-dominated Asia could fatally fragment the United States’ Asian alliance system, as one U.S. ally after another kowtows to Beijing. The PRC could undermine U.S. ties with Mexico and other countries in Latin America to distract the United States from pursuing its national interests in Asia and elsewhere. A China that dominated Asia would alter global values, rules, and practices to the United States’ disadvantage.

Steve Tsang, director of the China Institute at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, summed up the Chinese president’s ambitions. “Xi Jinping,” he said, “is not trying to out-compete America in the existing liberal international order dominated by the [United States]. His long-term goal is to change the world order into a Sino-centric one.”

Robert D. Blackwill is the Henry A. Kissinger senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Richard Fontaine is the chief executive officer of the Center for a New American Security. Follow him on LinkedIn and X @RHFontaine.

Mr. Blackwill and Mr. Fontaine are the co-authors of Lost Decade: The US Pivot to Asia and the Rise of Chinese Power, published by Oxford University Press in June 2024.

13. National Character and Wartime Abuses

Excerpts:

Harris’s firm stand regarding torture is admirable, as is a wider sentiment—by no means universal, but now held by many Americans—that torture is an unacceptable national security tool. The unacceptability involves the ineffectiveness as well as the immorality of the practice.

What was largely missing, however, from the focus on the Haspel nomination and what was going on inside CIA detention centers was how the torture reflected a broader condoning of “gloves-off” methods amid the wave of anger that swept across the nation after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Although the Senate committee’s report on the subject asserted that the CIA had misled Congress and the administration about the extent and success of the interrogation techniques, the use of torture was not kept secret from members of Congress and specifically members of the intelligence oversight committees, who could have objected at the time. However, in the prevailing post-9/11 mood, members quietly looked the other way (this did not involve Harris, who did not enter the Senate until 2017). It was only with the passage of time and the quelling of some of the rage that was the immediate reaction to the terrorist attacks that second thoughts about torture arose and became politically significant.

National Character and Wartime Abuses

How nations respond to immoral or abusive conduct by national security officials can reveal much about their overall ethos.

The National Interest · by Paul R. Pillar · August 8, 2024

With the record of newly minted Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris being freshly scrutinized, one recently recalled item is her reaction to revelations several years ago of the torture of suspected terrorists who the CIA detained. As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Harris was a leading interrogator of Gina Haspel, then-nominee for CIA director, regarding the torture issue. She eventually voted against Haspel’s confirmation. Another recent reminder of this black chapter in American history is the first public release of a photograph of the gaunt, naked body of one of the prisoners involved.

Harris’s firm stand regarding torture is admirable, as is a wider sentiment—by no means universal, but now held by many Americans—that torture is an unacceptable national security tool. The unacceptability involves the ineffectiveness as well as the immorality of the practice.

What was largely missing, however, from the focus on the Haspel nomination and what was going on inside CIA detention centers was how the torture reflected a broader condoning of “gloves-off” methods amid the wave of anger that swept across the nation after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Although the Senate committee’s report on the subject asserted that the CIA had misled Congress and the administration about the extent and success of the interrogation techniques, the use of torture was not kept secret from members of Congress and specifically members of the intelligence oversight committees, who could have objected at the time. However, in the prevailing post-9/11 mood, members quietly looked the other way (this did not involve Harris, who did not enter the Senate until 2017). It was only with the passage of time and the quelling of some of the rage that was the immediate reaction to the terrorist attacks that second thoughts about torture arose and became politically significant.

A similar pattern arose with some intrusive investigative powers that were hastily granted to law enforcement agencies in the aftermath of 9/11, but later—again, with the passage of time and a changing of national mood—many came to perceive as unjustified invasions of personal privacy. Harris’s California colleague in the Senate, the late Dianne Feinstein, who, as chair of the intelligence committee, spoke prominently about the torture issue, later acknowledged—to her credit—that Congress may have gone too far with some of its post-9/11 measures taken in the name of fighting terrorism.

Recollection of these issues from a few years ago happens to coincide with a couple of other recent items in the news that are relevant to how nations respond to arguably immoral or abusive conduct by national security officials—and what this says about a larger national ethos. One is belated reporting of the death of William Calley, who, as an Army lieutenant, led the platoon that in 1968 perpetrated the My Lai massacre, in which hundreds of South Vietnamese villagers were slaughtered. Although several other persons were charged with offenses related to either the massacre or a cover-up, Calley was the only one convicted.

As the officer leading the unit that did the killing, Calley probably was more responsible for the massacre than any other individual. But to pretend that responsibility stopped with him was a misinterpretation not only of what happened at My Lai but also of the larger tragedy that was the Vietnam War. Calley was in a chain of command that set objectives, defined standards of conduct and influenced how American soldiers viewed Vietnamese. That chain, in turn, was tasked with fighting a war based on a gross misperception—the notion that what was really an armed struggle by an Asian nationalist movement was instead a theater in a noble American effort to save the world from communism.

Today, almost no one would excuse what U.S. troops did at My Lai. And most Americans—though again not all—regard fighting the Vietnam War in the first place as a mistake. But the national response to an especially ugly facet of the war such as My Lai falls into an all-too-familiar pattern of equating accountability with finding a head or two to roll while not facing up to relevant failings—moral as well as political—of the nation as a whole.

Another batch of recently reported inhumane conduct toward foreign nationals under physical control involves not the United States but instead Israel. Mistreatment by Israeli forces of captured or detained Palestinians is not new. Israel has a long history of exercising no accountability for such conduct or of administering only token punishment or the occasional rolled head if someone happened to record an incident with a video that became public.

One thing that is new is the issuance by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights of a report on Israeli treatment of detained Palestinians since the beginning of the Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip last October. The mistreatment of detained Palestinians has been compared to the U.S. torture of suspected terrorists and mistreatment of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison during the Iraq war, and there are indeed similarities. But both the scale and the nature of what Israel is doing to Palestinians far exceed the U.S. abuses of prisoners.

For one thing, the sheer number of detainees involved is of a different order of magnitude. The longstanding Israeli practice of arresting and detaining without charge many Palestinian residents of the occupied territories has been magnified since last October. The UN report states that the detentions have numbered in the thousands and probably have reached five figures. The detained include “men, women, children, doctors, journalists, human rights defenders”— “most of them without charges or trial and in conditions that raise concerns of the abuse of administrative detention.” The huge numbers involved imply that many, and probably most of the detainees involved, are as innocent as were most of the villagers at My Lai.

Moreover, what we know of the nature of the abuse is more severe than what came out of Abu Ghraib or the “enhanced interrogation” at CIA detention facilities. That knowledge is partial, based on evidence such as the statements and physical injuries of released detainees. Much of what has gone on, especially at the notorious Sde Teiman detention facility in the Negev, has taken place beyond the view of foreign eyes. But one measure of the severity of treatment is that, according to the UN report, at least fifty-three detainees from Gaza and the West Bank have died in Israeli custody just since last October.

One severe case that recently became public involved a prisoner at Sde Teiman who was sodomized with a serious injury to his rectum, requiring hospitalization. An Israeli military police investigation focused on nine military reservists who appeared to be directly involved in this abuse. The stage was set for another instance of making a show of accountability by punishing—probably lightly, if conforming with past patterns—a few individuals without addressing larger underlying policies and attitudes.

But here, this case took a more extreme twist. A riot took place outside the military base where the accused reservists were detained. Far from calling for complete accountability, the rioters, who attempted to storm the base, said there should be no accountability at all and demanded that the accused reservists be released. The rioters included an assortment of right-wing activists but also parts of the official face of Israel, including uniformed soldiers carrying their weapons, an undefined number of members of the Knesset, and at least one government minister. Defense minister Yoav Gallant has called for an investigation into whether another member of the government—national security minister and right-wing extremist Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has responsibility for the police—effectively facilitated the riot with a weak and tardy police response. Ben-Gvir has directly expressed his view on the case by declaring on social media, “Take your hands off the reservists.”

A gap is apparent between American and Israeli responses to the abuse of prisoners who are of a different nationality or ethnicity from those who imprison them. In the United States, there has been widespread recognition that such abuses are wrong. The shortcomings mainly have involved the recognition sometimes coming too late and accountability often being too narrow. In Israel, many of those in power do not consider the abuses to be wrong at all. Typifying the attitude is how a member of the Knesset of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party replied when asked whether it was legitimate to insert a stick into someone’s rectum: “Yes! If he is a Nukhba [Hamas militant], everything is legitimate to do! Everything!”

Some observers have interpreted what happened in this case as one manifestation of a battle for the soul of Israel, and there certainly are Israelis who are appropriately appalled by the abuses. But decades of living by the sword and forcibly subjugating people of different ethnicities have nurtured a malign attitude toward not just Hamas militants but Palestinian Arabs in general that is more widespread than current differences within the political elite might suggest. It is an attitude reflected in finance minister Bezalel Smotrich (who also has responsibilities in administering the West Bank) calling for “total annihilation” of several Gazan cities and saying that starving two million Gazans “to death” may be “right and moral” as long as Israeli hostages are held. Defense minister Gallant announced the “complete siege” of the entire Gaza Strip that has led to the enormous suffering there over the past ten months and said that Israel was going against “human animals.”

Such characterizations echo how some Americans in uniform during the Vietnam War—no doubt including some who participated in the My Lai massacre—disdained Vietnamese as “gooks.” The American nation, which now enjoys cordial relations with Vietnam, has overcome that foul attitude.

Anyone arguing that the U.S.-Israeli relationship is based on “common values” needs to take such differences into account.

Upon a closer look, there are some similarities between relevant attitudes in Israel and those in significant political segments in the United States, including xenophobia on the American Right. The spectacle of someone in power encouraging a riot and attack on a government installation in defiance of the rule of law took place in Washington just four years ago. The president who instigated the riot promised to pardon the rioters if he returned to power.

Perhaps it is most accurate to say that there are similarities in ethos and character between one segment of the American polity and the dominant political strain in Israel. Still, these similarities do not involve any values about which either nation ought to be proud.

Paul R. Pillar retired in 2005 from a twenty-eight-year career in the U.S. intelligence community, in which his last position was as the National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia. Earlier, he served in a variety of analytical and managerial positions, including as chief of analytic units at the CIA, covering portions of the Near East, the Persian Gulf, and South Asia. His most recent book is Beyond the Water’s Edge: How Partisanship Corrupts U.S. Foreign Policy. He is also a contributing editor for this publication.

Image: Shutterstock.com.

The National Interest · by Paul R. Pillar · August 8, 2024

14. Analysis: Alleged Taylor Swift terror plot fits a worrying pattern as ISIS targets teens online

Analysis: Alleged Taylor Swift terror plot fits a worrying pattern as ISIS targets teens online | CNN

Analysis by Nick Paton Walsh, CNN

 5 minute read 

Updated 12:36 AM EDT, Thu August 8, 2024

CNN · by Nick Paton Walsh · August 8, 2024

Analyst on why she thinks Taylor Swift concerts were canceled in Vienna

01:45 - Source: CNN

London CNN —

The details emerging of the alleged terror plot aimed at Taylor Swift’s three Vienna concerts are scant, but already adhere to a chilling pattern familiar to European counterterrorism officials.

Austrian police said Wednesday that a 19-year-old man was arrested in Ternitz, about an hour’s drive from where Swift was scheduled to perform Thursday, Friday and Saturday for an expected 65,000 fans each night at the Ernst Happel Stadium.

“Chemical substances” possibly linked to bomb-making were discovered in a search of the Austrian citizen’s home, police said, declaring that “specific preparatory measures have been undertaken” to target Swift’s concerts.

The search of the area around the home led to 60 households being evacuated, local media reported, with police adding it continued into the evening.

A second suspect was arrested in Vienna that afternoon. Police did not give their age or gender, citing an ongoing investigation that appeared to be widening in scope. “Further detentions have also been carried out,” police said.

Both suspects had been radicalized online, police said, adding the 19-year-old had sworn allegiance to ISIS’ new leader last month.

Police also alluded to the role of social media in both the radicalization of the suspects and alleged planning of the attacks.

“Communication of the perpetrators is undertaken usually in an encrypted form,” often masking their conversations from routine counter-terror surveillance, General Director for Public Security Franz Ruf told reporters.

The Ernst Happel Stadium after the organizer canceled all three of Taylor Swift's concerts due to the risk of an attack in Vienna, Austria, on August 7, 2024.

Max Slovencik/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

Online chatter to action

The path of online teenage chatter turning to real-world plotting has become alarmingly common in recent months. A study by terrorism expert Peter Neumann, which CNN reported last month, showed teenagers accounted for nearly two thirds of ISIS-linked arrests in Europe in the previous nine months.

The study of 27 ISIS-linked attacks or disrupted plots since October last year revealed that of the 58 suspects, 38 were aged between 13 and 19, according to Neumann, professor of Security Studies at King’s College London. CNN verified most of Neumann’s data with European security officials.

Neumann noted the latest Europol data showed “the number of attacks and planned attacks has more than quadrupled” since 2022.

LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND - JUNE 13: EDITORIAL USE ONLY. NO BOOK COVERS. Taylor Swift performs on stage during during "Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour" at Anfield on June 13, 2024 in Liverpool, England. (Photo by Gareth Cattermole/TAS24/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management)

Gareth Cattermole/TAS24/Getty Images

Related article Taylor Swift concerts in Vienna canceled over alleged planned terrorist attack

Among the cases Neumann referenced was another in Austria, in which a 14-year-old girl from Montenegro was arrested in May in the southern city of Graz after buying a knife and axe for an attack she was allegedly plotting. ISIS material was also found on her computer.

Teenagers were also arrested during France’s security sweep ahead of the Paris Olympics.

In late May, an 18-year-old man of Chechen origin was indicted for “terrorist criminal association,” for alleged plans to target spectators in the city of Saint-Étienne during the Games, according to a statement from French anti-terror prosecutors.

About a fortnight earlier, two teenagers were arrested in northeast and southern France for plotting a terror attack, the target unclear, the statement said.

And in April, a 16-year-old from the Haute-Savoie department in southeastern France was arrested for allegedly researching how to make an explosives belt and die as an ISIS martyr, possibly targeting the Olympics, the statement added.

German police have also publicized two alleged terror plots involving teenagers in recent months.

In April, officials in the western city of Dusseldorf said they arrested two girls, aged 15 and 16, and a 15-year-old boy accused of planning a terror attack.

Another alleged plot involving a possible knife attack on a Heidelberg synagogue, which was disrupted in May, involved an 18-year-old man, a German prosecutor’s statement said.

Meanwhile in Switzerland, police in March arrested a 15-year-old Swiss boy and a 16-year-old Italian boy for alleged ISIS support and plotting bomb attacks, according to a police statement.

ISIS targets teenagers as it tries to rebuild its ranks

03:25 - Source: CNN

Neumann, the terrorism expert, said teenagers were often recruited online, where ISIS and its Central Asian affiliate ISIS-K only needed to see success in a handful from hundreds of potential recruits.

“Groups like (ISIS-K are) specifically targeting young teenagers,” Neumann said. “They may not be very useful. They may mess up. They may change their mind,” he said, but they are “not least less suspicious. Who would think of a 13-year-old as a terrorist? One is enough.”

Teenagers were being recruited through social media platforms like TikTok, dragged through algorithms into “bubbles” online where jihadist recruiters can reach them, Neumann said.

ISIS-K was “by far the most ambitious and aggressive part of ISIS right now,” plotting complex attacks and recruiting online, he added.

TOPSHOT - Members of emergency services work at the scene of the gun attack at the Crocus City Hall concert hall in Krasnogorsk, outside Moscow, on March 23, 2024. Gunmen who opened fire at a Moscow concert hall killed more than 60 people and wounded over 100 while sparking an inferno, authorities said on March 23, 2024, with the Islamic State group claiming responsibility. (Photo by STRINGER / AFP) (Photo by STRINGER/AFP via Getty Images)

Stringer/AFP/Getty Images

Related article Who are ISIS-K?

A TikTok spokesperson told CNN last month: “We stand firmly against violent extremism and remove 98% of content found to break our rules on promoting terrorism before it is reported to us.”

While details of the alleged plans to attack Swift’s concerts remain unclear, European security sources have been increasingly concerned that terror plots are becoming more “directed” – or organized by a more experienced or resourced recruiter from afar.

A British security source told CNN the so-called “directed terror threat” had become a greater concern over the past 18 months, with ISIS-K the most potent group under scrutiny. Young people accessing extremist spaces and media online also continues to be a significant issue, the source said.

European counter-terror officials are also struggling with a fast-morphing terror threat emerging from parts of the former Soviet Union, including Russia’s North Caucasus region and Central Asian states like Tajikistan.

Last month, Austrian counter-terror police said they had detained eight men and a woman for fundraising for ISIS. Laptops, cash, fake passports and a vehicle were confiscated, and authorities said the suspects, originally from Chechnya in the Russian Federation, might have their Austrian residence permits revoked.

CNN · by Nick Paton Walsh · August 8, 2024

​15. The Annexation Of Taiwan In Xi Jinping’s Timeline

The Annexation Of Taiwan In Xi Jinping’s Timeline – OpEd

eurasiareview.com · August 6, 2024

The conflict between China and Taiwan regarding independence or annexation has persisted since the end of World War II. However, since the mid-2000s, this issue has escalated significantly, largely due to the intensifying global competition in economic, political, and geopolitical spheres between the United States and China, which has become a defining element of the new world order. Additionally, Taiwan’s transformation into a major hub for semiconductor production—crucial to modern industrial, technological, financial, and logistical advancements—has heightened tensions among Beijing, Taipei, and Washington.

Taiwan’s strategic geographical location further underscores its importance. China is encircled by archipelagos hosting U.S. military bases and allied nations. For the United States, Taiwan serves as a critical pressure point on China’s access routes, whereas for China, it represents the “first island chain.” By integrating Taiwan and artificial islands under construction, China aims to complete its Anti-access/Area denial (A2/AD) strategy in the Western Pacific, thereby disrupting the U.S. containment efforts.

In 1972, Mao Zedong told Richard Nixon that Beijing could wait a century to reclaim Taiwan. However, Xi Jinping appears far less patient. According to U.S. intelligence, Xi has instructed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready for an operation to annex Taiwan by 2027. Various factors, however, could accelerate this timeline, potentially prompting a forcible annexation sooner.

Taiwan seeks independence and requires the support of a major power to counter China, making the United States its best ally. Taiwan leverages its semiconductor production capabilities to gain this support. It manufactures over 60% of the world’s advanced digital, analog, and mixed-signal chips, serving as a primary supplier to U.S. tech companies and defense contractors. Moreover, Taiwan fully cooperates with U.S. sanctions against China, especially regarding the use of integrated circuits made by Taiwanese companies like TSMC, thereby intensifying China’s determination to pursue Taiwan’s annexation more seriously.

China urgently needs specialized microelectronics, currently produced in Taiwan, to develop its military technologies and AI-related industries. To achieve this, China faces two options: either integrate its domestic production with the latest global technology—a challenging task due to Western sanctions preventing companies like ASML from selling chip-making machines to China—or annex Taiwan to utilize its top-tier manufacturing capabilities.

The potential transformation of Taiwan into a strategic military base for U.S. and NATO forces could prompt China to act preemptively. Under the pretext of aiding Taipei against an imminent Chinese attack, the U.S. aims to bolster its military presence on the island, solidifying its foothold near China’s borders. Presently, China is surrounded by U.S. and allied forces: to the northeast by Japan, South Korea, and Okinawa; to the south by Australia and New Zealand; and to the east by the Marshall Islands, Mariana Islands, and Guam, home to active U.S. military personnel. Given this encirclement and the placement of nuclear submarines and unmanned underwater vehicles (UUA), ballistic missiles (IRBM, ICBM, SLBM), B2 bombers in the Andersen Guam base, as well as the deployment of the navy’s 7th in the region, China views Taiwan as crucial to connecting with other recently constructed artificial islands to effectively implement its A2/AD strategy.

Considering the geographical positioning of U.S. forces in the Western Pacific, the capabilities of A2/AD systems will be crucial upon the first shot being fired. Advanced weaponry like hypersonic missiles, unless integrated with reliable A2/AD monitoring systems, will be ineffective in detecting, locating, and tracking enemy ships and aircraft. In such a scenario, Taiwan would serve as both the first and last line of defense for both sides. Should Beijing perceive Taiwan as becoming such a strategic position for the Western alliance, it would promptly initiate an early operation against Taiwan.

Another factor potentially accelerating China’s 2027 timeline is the U.S. presidential election. If Kamala Harris wins the election, NATO’s Indo-Pacific policy and the vision of NATO 2030 will likely continue, intensifying the military presence of the Atlantic alliance in East Asia and the Pacific. Taiwan’s geographical significance in this context will be more pronounced than ever. Conversely, if Donald Trump wins, the situation could differ. Trump’s non-interventionist rhetoric, aimed at reducing financial and human costs for American soldiers, could create an environment more conducive to China’s ambitions. Beijing would exploit the isolationist policies of a new administration to further its goal of reclaiming Taiwan.

Currently, China is disinclined to engage in a conflict over Taiwan, which could lead to a direct confrontation with the U.S. and its regional allies, as the economic and financial repercussions would be severe. Instead, China continues to make implicit threats and conduct military drills around Taiwan, such as the “Joint Sword A-2024” exercise, to maintain a constant threat over Taiwan and potential Western actions. However, if conditions change and certain factors emerge, China might act against Taiwan sooner than the end of this decade or 2027. If Western sanctions on Chinese technology intensify and the U.S. significantly widens its technological and military lead, Beijing will take decisive action to annex Taiwan, a key to 21st-century advancements. Should Washington expand the Indo-Pacific NATO idea and integrate Taiwan as a critical military outpost, it would be akin to chaining the wings of the Chinese dragon. In such a scenario, the People’s Liberation Army would launch a swift, decisive, and surprise operation to seize Taiwan.

If Trump enters the White House, his anti-NATO, non-interventionist, and anti-coalition policies would offer a glimmer of hope for Beijing. This would embolden Chinese leaders to pursue the annexation of Taiwan. If Beijing realizes that the U.S. is unwilling to bear the substantial costs of protecting Taipei’s political aspirations, it will seize the opportunity to annex the island.

eurasiareview.com · August 6, 2024

16. Preparing for the Possibility of a Draft Without Panic

Conclusion:

The all-volunteer force was always intended to be supported by a stand-by draft. That being said, it should be understood — by political leaders, military leaders, and, perhaps more importantly, by the American public — that conscription is and must necessarily be the option of last resort. The political will that would be necessary to move the needle on any issue involving conscription is nearly insurmountable. As such, it is likely that the only circumstance where the reintroduction of conscription would be even plausible is a crisis of the highest order — the very same motivation that is spurring Ukraine, Taiwan, and many others to reexamine their conscription systems.

Preparing for the Possibility of a Draft Without Panic - War on the Rocks

Taren Sylvester and Katherine Kuzminski

warontherocks.com · by Taren Sylvester · August 8, 2024

Conscription — a practice most Americans believe should be relegated to the dustbin of history — has returned as an uncomfortable topic of conversation among U.S. allies and adversaries alike. This has generated concern and even conspiracy theories among American voters. But a candid discussion would be healthier. The fact is, if the United States hopes to deter or defeat a Chinese attack on Taiwan, it should be prepared to effectively implement a draft. To be clear, this is a solution of last resort, but one that may be necessary.

Right now, U.S. mobilization has not been tested in decades. As a result, current ideas about how it would function are woefully out of date. Being prepared to execute a draft requires buy-in from across all branches of government — and society writ large.

At a minimum, the executive branch and Congress should actively pursue a more proactive approach. The National Security Council should take the lead on mobilization exercises. Congress should also get out ahead on expanding Selective Service System registration to all Americans between the ages of 18–25, thereby preventing future legal challenges to the current all-male registration system when time may be of the essence. Policymakers should also consider the skills that would be required in a future conflict and how the nation would sustain its economy while maintaining the human capital required in large-scale combat operations. Finally, the professional all-volunteer force should consider and train for a possibility in which they would have to absorb conscript forces into their ranks.

Become a Member

Changing Times

The world has watched as Russia and Ukraine wrestle to align operational requirements with social and political considerations. In August 2016, Norway implemented a universal conscription model — including, for the first time, a requirement for women. Sweden — which introduced an all-volunteer model in 2010 — reauthorized conscription in 2017. Lithuania reintroduced conscription in 2015 after removing it in 2008 and Latvia reintroduced conscription in January 2024 after removing it in 2006. France, which ended conscription in 1996, and Germany, which ended conscription in 2011, have recently begun political debates about the potential for future conscription. In a historic and controversial move, the Israeli government passed a law to conscript ultra-Orthodox men for the first time in history. The widespread resurgence of conscription across the globe has started to raise the question among Americans: Could a draft ever happen again in the United States? What would that look like?

A recent proposal to automate Selective Service System registration for men on their 18th birthdays coupled with debate that the current all-male registration should be expanded to include all Americans has generated public rumors that the nation is on a wartime footing. These concerns are unfounded, but Americans’ confusion and anxiety over the use of the draft is understandable. The nation’s last experience with the draft — the Vietnam War — was atypical and continues to generate controversial questions. Was the threat existential to America’s existence, requiring the level of conflict necessary to use a draft? Was the draft implemented equitably across race and social class? For many, the answer to both questions was “no.” Any use of a draft in a future conflict will require addressing the errors of Vietnam.

For several reasons, the United States actively decided to move from a mixed force of conscripts (draftees) and professional service members to the all-volunteer force in 1973. The all-volunteer force provides a smaller but more professionalized force than its predecessor, increasing the standards of those who serve across metrics including mental aptitude, physical strength, training, and unit cohesion.

Yet just because the United States transitioned to volunteers does not mean that the nation would never need to call upon a draft in the future. The United States may still need to mobilize forces in a conflict that poses an existential threat to the nation’s existence. Existing analysis indicates that the opening salvos of a conflict over Taiwan would generate U.S. casualty rates not seen since the two World Wars. In considering the possibility of a draft in support of a future Taiwan scenario, it is worth examining the history of the draft in the United States and the circumstances under which a draft was considered and enacted.

Prior to World War I, conscription was the exception — not the norm — for the U.S. military. For the first 140 years of American history, the peacetime military was a barebones institution, relying on mobilization of state militia forces to expand to meet threats and then quickly demobilized again. There was no large standing peacetime army. There were significant limits to the use of militia forces in the 19th century — namely, federalized militia forces could not be used outside the territorial bounds of the United States. Such constraints emphasize historical debates regarding the proper use of the military beyond its geographical borders and the nation’s role in the world — questions that were highlighted during the Spanish-American War, when the American military was deployed overseas for the first time.

The World Wars differed from anything the United States had previously experienced. War in Europe was not fought on the fringes — it crawled across the entirety of the continent. The introduction of trench warfare, chemical weapons, and a terrible revolution in munitions churned through men at a terrifying pace. Britain and France could not sustain their forces through recruitment alone and both resorted to conscription. For their part, American leaders sought an answer to mobilization that would provide the necessary manpower to prevail on the battlefield while maintaining domestic interests. Enter the 1917 Selective Service Act.

The priority for the architects of the 1917 Selective Service Act was designing a system to produce the required manpower with a selection mechanism that was as equitable as possible. They further prioritized making allowances for local involvement in a federal process and weighing competing priorities from different states, economic sectors, and societal interest groups. The challenge then, as it has been throughout U.S. history, was balancing the conflicting social mores of personal freedom and collective equality that are both foundational to the American experiment. In total, 2.8 million men were drafted in World War I.

When Adolf Hitler invaded Poland in 1939, the U.S. Army had fewer than 200,000 soldiers, a fraction of the more than 4 million serving at the end of World War I. As the page turned on another grim chapter in history, the United States once again found itself without a sufficient mobilization capacity to meet the operational demands of protracted conflict with high casualty rates. In the case of World War II, Congress moved to enact a draft before the United States was forced to join the war. This allowed for open debate on the parameters of conscription across American society before the constraints of mobilization were imminently necessary. Besides resulting in a more equitable application of conscription than in World War I, the peacetime draft prepared the nation to respond swiftly and decisively to Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Over the course of the conflict, more than 19 million men were drafted.

Americans tend to look at conscription during the world wars through the lens of nostalgia, with the perception that these conflicts were more pure expressions of good versus evil than in recent conflicts. But the reality is that conscription was controversial among contemporaries. In World War I, 15 percent of men refused to register with Selective Service and a further 12 percent of those drafted deserted the military after induction. In World War II, nearly 375,000 men evaded the draft.

During the Cold War, the U.S. desire to deter Soviet aggression prompted political and military leaders to reinstate a draft in 1948. Even at the height of the Korean War, the manpower need was never so great as it was during the World Wars. More men were granted exemptions for education and dependence, especially in the 1960s interwar period. As time passed with minimal resistance to a peacetime draft, it became the new normal. However, the burden of service was no longer shared by all American men, as many in the upper and middle classes could avoid it with relative ease. When the demand for and deployment of conscripts increased as the United States entrenched itself in Vietnam, resistance to the draft grew rapidly.

In the years since the transition to the all-volunteer force, any discussion of reintroducing conscription has generated fear of returning to the Vietnam-era draft. However, current circumstances more closely mirror the political state of the nation in the mid-1910s than the 1960s. Today, the United States is as far from the last use of conscription during the Vietnam War as the drafters of the 1917 Selective Service Act were from the Civil War. While the United States has been involved in a number of conflicts in this time and has taken an ever-growing role in world affairs, domestic concerns are remarkably similar and the challenge of consensus-building in Congress is equally difficult. What is different is the existence of the all-volunteer force — an advantage that the U.S. military did not have preceding both World Wars. This offers a more professionalized force than existed before the World Wars and increases the threshold at which the conscription of citizens would be a politically viable option.

Contemporary Considerations

Set against this history, current debates about potential uses of conscription in peacetime fuel fears that the United States is on a path to a modern draft. At the same time, some commentators have recommended conscription as a solution to the military’s recruiting troubles or as a way to reinvigorate civic duty among an apathetic American populace.

Yet the threshold to execute a draft is high — as it should be. Conscription has never had a political constituency in Congress. It remains a serious, costly, and potentially deadly tool meant to protect Americans from the extreme consequences of an existential threat. Furthermore, a draft cannot happen overnight. Before a draft can be enacted, Congress would have to pass an amendment to the Military Selective Service Act reauthorizing induction, which would allow those registered with the Selective Service System to be conscripted into the military. Age-old debates over deferments, exemptions, service time commitments, and conscientious objector parameters, as well as newer debates like whether women should be included in the draft, will need to be hashed out. Assuming Congress has successfully amended the Military Selective Service Act, it is up to the president to call for a draft to begin. Once the president has authorized a draft, the Selective Service System must expand from four regional offices to 56 state and local offices nationwide and begin activating thousands of local draft boards.

All of these steps would be conducted under the full scrutiny of the American public, the media, and U.S. allies and partners — and will be visible to America’s adversaries. For the very reason that conscription is the nation’s option of last resort and will unfold before the eyes of the world, the mechanisms that oversee and administer the draft should be ready to work if they are needed. This makes recent legislative moves intended to shore up the Selective Service System all the more important.

We recently conducted a year-long study examining the potential challenges the United States may face in executing a draft, given that the systems and processes required to do so have not been stress-tested in over 50 years. And there are plenty of them: the potential for legal objections to the all-male registration system; the current rates of ineligibility for military service; the current strain on Military Entrance Processing Stations to meet steady-state requirements; a lack of data regarding expected exemption, deferment, or conscientious objector requests; a lack of general understanding across society of what may be required of alternative service for conscientious objectors; and a lack of training among the professionalized military on how best to absorb and fight alongside conscripts in the future. Each of these challenges is worth examining and rectifying for the sake of strengthening the nation’s ability to defend itself without advocating for a draft. The nation’s ability to credibly signal its potential to endure and prevail in a protracted conflict can serve as a deterrent to future conflict provocation by would-be adversaries.

As our research revealed, time will be of the essence in any conflict that would require a draft. Many of the challenges listed above can be reckoned with right now — saving valuable time when it will matter most. Congress can prevent drawn out legal battles regarding the constitutionality of an all-male draft by addressing the question of Selective Service System registration for all Americans between the ages of 18–25. Regular whole-of-government exercises testing the nation’s mobilization capacity can expose unforeseen logistical challenges and address them before they are stressed. And the Department of Defense, along with individual services, can study how conscripted forces would be trained, equipped, and absorbed within the context of the all-volunteer force.

Conclusion

The all-volunteer force was always intended to be supported by a stand-by draft. That being said, it should be understood — by political leaders, military leaders, and, perhaps more importantly, by the American public — that conscription is and must necessarily be the option of last resort. The political will that would be necessary to move the needle on any issue involving conscription is nearly insurmountable. As such, it is likely that the only circumstance where the reintroduction of conscription would be even plausible is a crisis of the highest order — the very same motivation that is spurring Ukraine, Taiwan, and many others to reexamine their conscription systems.

Become a Member

Taren Sylvester is a research assistant in the Military, Veterans, and Society Program at the Center for a New American Security.

Katherine Kuzminski is deputy director of studies and director of the Military, Veterans, and Society Program at the Center for a New American Security.

Image: U.S. National Archives

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Taren Sylvester · August 8, 2024

17. How to Prevent a Spiral of Political Violence in America

Not mentioned in this essay is the recent media focus on President Biden's rhetoric about a "bloodbath" after the election depending on the outcome as well as is lack of confidence in a peaceful transfer of power. This is dangerous rhetoric as well.

Biden 'not confident at all' that there will be peaceful transfer of power if Trump loses election

“He means it, all the stuff about if we lose there’ll be a bloodbath,” Biden said in an interview with CBS News.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/biden-not-confident-peaceful-transfer-power-trump-loses-election-rcna165647

All political leaders must refrain from this violent rhetoric.

Excerpts:

And our research shows that it is these three forces—rhetoric, culture, and an aggressive Republican coalition—that encourage violence or public support for it. These forces are pushing the United States closer to the edge. Extraordinarily few Americans would shoot a presidential candidate. Yet the opinions Americans hold about the use of violence matter. Even if most of them would not engage in violent acts, they shape the opinions of their family members and friends and may encourage volatile individuals to commit acts of violence.

Since 2017, we have studied the American public’s views about political violence using national surveys. This research suggests that the percentage of Americans who believe that violent retaliation is justified if their political opponents commit violent acts is rising dramatically. A slight majority of Americans who identify with a political party now believe that. Whenever someone carries out political terrorism, it can prompt reprisals. Around the world and throughout American history, attacks by social and political groups frequently provoke counterviolence.

Our studies also suggest that the most important factor that diminishes Americans’ support for political violence is responsible leadership from party leaders: a decrease in their violent rhetoric and a rise in anti-violence messaging. American political leaders need to consistently, explicitly, and without caveat denounce political violence when it occurs. This is especially true, however, of Republicans. The data is undeniable: although public support for political violence is increasing across the partisan spectrum, people on the right are far likelier to translate this sentiment into real-world, violent action. Given the trajectory of Americans’ growing tolerance for violent acts in politics, without a substantial rhetorical shift among Republican Party leaders, the kind of disturbing act that occurred in July in Pennsylvania may well recur.

How to Prevent a Spiral of Political Violence in America

The Trump Shooting and the Risk of More Bloodshed

By Lilliana Mason and Nathan Kalmoe

August 8, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity · August 8, 2024

On July 13, a gunman scaled a rooftop outside a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and shot at former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate. The gunman lightly wounded Trump, killed one rally goer, and critically injured two others. He was, in turn, quickly killed by a Secret Service sniper.

As news of the attack broke, many assumed that the shooter was a Democrat or someone who held left-wing views. Such an affiliation would, after all, seem natural, given Democrats’ antipathy toward Trump and growing alarm about the prospect of a second Trump term. For years, many American pundits and politicians have worried that increased partisan polarization would directly drive a rise in political violence. And there has been no shortage of Republican-aligned political violence in the United States—violence that could prompt some Democrats to respond in kind.

Yet as it turned out, the 20-year-old shooter was a registered Republican. Nothing in his record suggests that he was driven by a hatred for Trump or for conservatives. In fact, his motive remains unclear. The only thing that is certain is that he came of age in a country in which prominent right-wing leaders increasingly call for violence. He inhabited a national culture that is becoming more accepting of political attacks. The party in which he was registered has become especially open to violent acts and threats.

And our research shows that it is these three forces—rhetoric, culture, and an aggressive Republican coalition—that encourage violence or public support for it. These forces are pushing the United States closer to the edge. Extraordinarily few Americans would shoot a presidential candidate. Yet the opinions Americans hold about the use of violence matter. Even if most of them would not engage in violent acts, they shape the opinions of their family members and friends and may encourage volatile individuals to commit acts of violence.

Since 2017, we have studied the American public’s views about political violence using national surveys. This research suggests that the percentage of Americans who believe that violent retaliation is justified if their political opponents commit violent acts is rising dramatically. A slight majority of Americans who identify with a political party now believe that. Whenever someone carries out political terrorism, it can prompt reprisals. Around the world and throughout American history, attacks by social and political groups frequently provoke counterviolence.

Our studies also suggest that the most important factor that diminishes Americans’ support for political violence is responsible leadership from party leaders: a decrease in their violent rhetoric and a rise in anti-violence messaging. American political leaders need to consistently, explicitly, and without caveat denounce political violence when it occurs. This is especially true, however, of Republicans. The data is undeniable: although public support for political violence is increasing across the partisan spectrum, people on the right are far likelier to translate this sentiment into real-world, violent action. Given the trajectory of Americans’ growing tolerance for violent acts in politics, without a substantial rhetorical shift among Republican Party leaders, the kind of disturbing act that occurred in July in Pennsylvania may well recur.

TERRITORIAL AGGRESSION

The United States has been awash in political violence since its founding. The country was born from a revolutionary war, and internal conflicts between racial and religious supremacists and opposing liberation movements date back to the late 1700s. These include brutal wars between Native Americans and the U.S. government, uprisings by enslaved Black Americans, devastation during the Civil War, violence during Reconstruction, attacks during the civil rights era, Black urban uprisings, and ongoing anti-Black violence by police. Christian nationalism has also motivated political violence, such as the nineteenth-century killings of Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses and vicious efforts to disenfranchise Catholics and Jews. Plutocracy-inspired antiunion violence in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw bosses employing private militias and calling on the military to suppress labor action. The 1960s and early 1970s were a time of heightened political violence and general social unrest, with historic levels of protests and attempted and successful assassinations. Notably, this upheaval occurred as movements to expand rights challenged traditional social hierarchies.

Over the past few decades, pollsters have occasionally asked Americans about their views on political violence. In 1970, a Gallup survey asked U.S. adults if violence is sometimes justified to bring about change in American society. Eighty-one percent of respondents said no. In 1985, when the monthly magazine Business Week (now Bloomberg Businessweek)surveyed Americans about attacks on abortion clinics, 81 percent of respondents agreed with the statement, “It is not the American way to resort to violence when you disagree with a national policy.” In 1992, Gallup asked whether the violent protests that followed the acquittal of three police officers who had assaulted Rodney King were justified. Eighty percent said they were not justified.

Between November 2017 and June 2024, in partnership with the polling firm YouGov, we conducted over a dozen surveys—each with a national sample of between 1,000 and 3,000 adults—to more deeply investigate Americans’ views on political violence. When we asked the most basic questions, our studies did not show a large increase in support for political violence. One question we asked repeatedly was, “How much do you feel it is justified for [your political party] to use violence in advancing their political goals these days?” In October 2022, for instance, fewer than 20 percent of respondents said that violence could be justified, in line with earlier studies.

But we teased out meaningful changes when we asked questions that considered different contexts around, rationales for, and degrees of violence. We found that partisans were twice as likely to endorse political violence if it was framed as retaliation against prior violence committed by people affiliated with the opposing political party. And this support for retaliatory violence has grown sharply. In early November 2020, 39 percent of Democrats and 48 percent of Republicans agreed that political violence might be justified if the opposing party was violent first. In a June 2024 survey, however, 58 percent of Democrats and 60 percent of Republicans agreed that violence could be justified if the other party went first—a stark increase.

VIOLENT DELIGHTS

Faced with this data, many analysts have connected rising support for political violence in the United States with growing partisan conflict. Behind that abstraction, however, the reasons Americans approve of political violence are complex. One driving force is the views on violence espoused by top political leaders, which can help normalize violence among supporters. In surveys conducted in 2019 and 2020, for example, we found that more loyal partisans were more approving of political violence.

But leaders can also help make violence less appealing. When these same partisans first listened to an anti-violence message from a leader they admired, they became less supportive of violence than less partisan respondents. In 2019 and 2020 surveys, we read respondents quotes from Trump or then Vice President Joe Biden condemning political violence. When these respondents were subsequently asked for their views on political violence, more than 30 percent fewer respondents expressed support for it. The effect of this priming was the most pronounced among the respondents most committed to a political party. Intriguingly, hearing anti-violence messages from a leading politician had a similar effect on respondents affiliated with the politician’s own party as it did on those affiliated with the opposing party, possibly because, in the case of opposing partisans, they perceived a lower threat of violence by the other party.

The impact of anti-violence messages is visible outside of polling data. On January 6, 2021, Trump’s belated call for rioters supporting him to vacate the U.S. Capitol convinced some of them to leave. Video footage released from that day vividly demonstrates the effect of a political leader’s call to halt violent acts. In one clip, a leading protester dubbed the “QAnon Shaman” announced that he was leaving the Capitol because “Donald Trump asked everybody to go home.”

Conversely, recent research by the Dangerous Speech Project, a Washington-based nongovernmental organization, has found that hateful or violent speech by influential messengers can directly inspire real-world violence. Just weeks after Trump announced his candidacy for president in the summer of 2015, he began touting violence and repression as a solution to political problems, mocking U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, for allowing protesters to grab a microphone at a public event. “That will never happen with me,” Trump bragged. “I don’t know if I’ll do the fighting myself or if other people will.” Later in his campaign, he infamously vowed to get “a little more violent” with protesters and led his fans in “Lock her up!” chants against his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. Trump routinely dehumanizes groups—a common precursor to mass violence—calling his political opponents “vermin” and declaring that immigrants are “animals” who are “poisoning the blood” of America. So do his fellow partisans: in early July, the Republican nominee for North Carolina governor, Mark Robinson, raged that “some folks” in the United States “need killing.”

Political rhetoric can create an environment in which violence is tolerated or encouraged.

Rising violent rhetoric corresponds with a rise in violent plots, attacks, and threats against leaders. Our research has found that threats against Congress grew tenfold between 2016 and 2021. In 2020, ABC News identified more than 50 criminal cases in which the defendants had invoked Trump’s name to explain their own violent acts, threats of violence, or alleged assaults. After January 6, 2021, many fellow Republicans blamed Trump for inciting the storming of the Capitol. They have nonetheless endorsed his 2024 run for president.

Political rhetoric can create an environment in which violence is tolerated or encouraged. But that is not the only force at work. Culture can also foster violence, and the United States has a society that disproportionately tolerates bloodshed. The United States currently holds the record as the most heavily armed country in the world, with over 120 firearms per 100 Americans. The next-closest competitor, the Falkland Islands, boasts only 61 guns per 100 people. The vast number of guns in the United States gives violent threats credence and makes it easier for individuals to kill, particularly on a large scale. (The Trump shooter’s gun was legally purchased by his father.)

The way people interact with their social circles can boost or dampen tolerance for political violence, too. In a survey run in March 2024, we found that Americans who agreed that they talked about politics with “a good mix of Democrats and Republicans” or who did not talk about politics with anyone were more than twice as likely to reject the legitimacy of political violence compared with respondents who talked about politics only with Democrats or only with Republicans.

PARTY WHIPS

In the wake of the July attack on Trump, politicians and pundits—Democrats and Republicans alike—were careful to call on everyone to turn the temperature down on inflammatory rhetoric. Such statements imply that political violence is as much a problem on the left as it is on the right. Republicans have even suggested that Democrats are largely to blame for the attack on Trump. Ohio Senator JD Vance, the Republican vice presidential candidate, for example, has blamed Democrats for espousing violent rhetoric.

But the truth is that the American right is now disproportionately responsible for politically violent acts—a contrast with the 1970s, when political violence was predominantly associated with the left wing. A 2024 study by the National Institute of Justice—the Department of Justice’s research wing—found that since 1990, far-right extremists have committed many more ideologically motivated homicides than far-left extremists or radical Islamist extremists. Over that period, 227 incidents of extremist right-wing violence took more than 520 lives. In the same time period, left-wing extremists committed 42 ideologically motivated attacks that claimed 78 lives. In 2020, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, right-wing attacks and plots (around 110) outnumbered far-left attacks and plots (just under 40) by nearly a factor of three in 2020—a sharp rise from the 18 far-right and 10 far-left attacks and plots that occurred in 2009. The right also far surpasses the left in incidents of armed intimidation, which are also on the rise.

Why do violent rhetoric and acts now emerge mostly from the right? Part of the answer is that violent actors disproportionately belong to the Republican Party. Although similar numbers of Democrats and Republicans professed support for political violence in our most recent survey, the reality on the ground is that many more right-wing actors translate these views into action. The most obvious reason for this discrepancy is that Republican leaders have been far more willing to endorse violent views in recent years.

A fuller and more nuanced explanation, however, must turn to the divide between Democrats and Republicans on their views of American social and political equality. After all, if leaders’ rhetoric was the only thing that mattered, then Democrats’ anti-violence messaging ought to have diminished right-wing extremists’ threat perception. But Republican leaders and voters are simply more likely to deny the existence of systemic racism; to believe the conspiracy theory that Democrats are trying to replace white, Christian Americans with non-Christian people of color; to believe the United States should be governed based on conservative Christianity; to believe—according to a survey we ran in 2022—that women’s efforts to gain parity in society are an attempt to get “control over men”; and to believe that society was better when it was organized according to traditional hierarchies. And our research shows that if people hold inegalitarian views, they are more likely to support both state-sponsored violence and general political violence. In fact, in our surveys, inegalitarian views were among the strongest predictors of support for political violence, matching the predictive power of aggressive personality traits.

CONTAINING THE FIRE

Whatever his motivation, the young man who shot at Trump in July grew up in an environment in which support for political violence is on the rise—and in which violent threats now emerge directly from Republican leaders. Deepening political polarization adds fuel to these fires: extensive research on other countries has shown that when a polity becomes divided along racial, ethnic, or religious lines, it is at far greater risk of experiencing widespread political violence and even more so when political parties are organized along those fissures.

But broad appeals to “both sides” to calm down are misplaced when specific leaders in one party are driving the volatility. Democratic leaders tend to oppose political violence no matter who is targeted, as evidenced by their rapid condemnation of the July assassination attempt on Trump. Especially when episodes of political violence do not result in deaths, Republican leaders do not always do the same, given how often the perpetrators are from their side. It is crucial for ordinary people to speak up, too, when they hear others in their social circles talk about committing violent acts or even report them to authorities if personal intervention seems unlikely to succeed. Many studies in the fields of political psychology, sociology, and political science have that interpersonal influence by trusted friends and family members is generally the strongest persuasive force in politics.

The violent rhetoric regularly espoused by Trump and the Republicans who support him, however, may be even more inflammatory than many pundits acknowledge. It has certainly boosted support for political violence in far more people than a single shooter in Pennsylvania. The fact that Trump himself was a victim of violence is disturbing; perhaps it could inspire a decrease in Republican leaders’ violent and dehumanizing rhetoric. But an even deeper necessity is a Republican shift to accept the country’s pluralistic multiracial democracy, the rejection of which motivates right-wing violence. Without these shifts in course, the United States’ political future could be more violent than our recent past.

• LILLIANA MASON is Associate Professor of Political Science at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University and the author of Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity.
• NATHAN KALMOE is Executive Administrative Director of the Center for Communication and Civic Renewal at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and the author of With Ballots and Bullets: Partisanship and Violence in the American Civil War.
• They are the co-authors of Radical American Partisanship: Mapping Violent Hostility, Its Causes, and the Consequences for Democracy.

Foreign Affairs · by Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity · August 8, 2024

18. The Ukrainian prisoners going into combat

The Ukrainian prisoners going into combat

https://www.counteroffensive.news/p/the-ukrainian-prisoners-going-into?utm

A controversial new law allows parole for prisoners convicted of less serious crimes – if they serve in the Ukrainian military. We shine a light on those who have made this decision:

Oleh Tymoshenko

Aug 08, 2024

6

3

Share

Editor’s Note: Deeply personal, human-centered – The Counteroffensive focuses on feature writing that illuminates the people living through this vicious war. Support our work by becoming a paid subscriber now!

Upgrade now!

Volodymyr Barandich has been making barbed wire in a penal colony near Kyiv for the past six months. 

But now he can be released, and plans to join the Ukrainian Armed Forces… again.

In 2018 Volodymyr was accused of drug trafficking by the Ukrainian authorities. He wasn’t sentenced for six years. He was not in pre-trial detention, so when the full-scale war started, he decided to go to war and fight for his country.

Before the war, Volodymyr had served in the National Guard of Ukraine, and in February 2022 he joined the Armed Forces. He ended up fighting near the city of Avdiivka, in the Donetsk region.

Volodymyr Barandich, 32, sits on his bed in a barracks where convicts live in a penal colony near Kyiv on July 19, 2024 in Kyiv Region, Ukraine (Photo by Oleh Tymoshenko)

During the fiercest battles for Avdiivka in January 2024, when Russians were already breaking into the city, the court sentenced Volodymyr to eight years in prison. His brigade's headquarters received a letter from the prosecutor, and Volodymyr was sent away to serve his sentence in a penal colony near Kyiv.

The tactic of mobilizing prisoners into the armed forces is not new, and was used by countries such as the United States during World War II, and Britain during World War I. 

But this option was legally forbidden in Ukraine, as the Ukrainian government did not want to imitate Russia, which was harshly criticized for mobilizing murderers and rapists into its armed forces.

The usage of these soldiers show how, after almost three years of war, Ukraine is facing an acute shortage of manpower. The military needs at least 450,000 mobilized people, but the number of people willing to be mobilized is much lower than in 2022. 

A new law lowering the age of eligibility and expanding categories for mobilization also falls short, adding only 50,000 soldiers. One way to help is to apply the practice of including prisoners in the war, but while trying to avoid the mistakes made by Russia. 

In May, President Zelenskyy signed a law allowing prisoners to voluntarily mobilize into the Armed Forces in exchange for parole. However, unlike in Russia, those convicted of serious crimes like premeditated murder, rape or other serious offenses will not be eligible.

Prisoners who decided to mobilize line up in a penal colony near Kyiv on 30 May, 2024 in the Kyiv Region, Ukraine (Photo by Press service of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine)

Volodymyr is a professional soldier, and before his imprisonment, he had almost two years of military experience. But even he wasn’t prepared for the full-blown war.

"At first, you don't realize where you are… Later on, you can tell, for example, when a mortar is firing, you can tell by the sound whether it is flying at you or somewhere else. Then I just enjoyed it, it's what I knew how to do and wanted to do," Volodymyr said with a smile, recalling his war experience.

In the fall of 2023, the Russians began constant assaults on the Avdiivka spoil heap, a strategic height on the outskirts of the city, made from the remains of a nearby coke plant. Volodymyr and his comrades defended the position in front of the spoil tip. 

During his service near Avdiivka, Volodymyr came under direct tank fire twice, and both times had to dig himself out after shelling. When he got out of the ground the second time, he saw not only the destroyed positions around him, but also that he was one of only two of his eight comrades-in-arms who was still alive.

To prevent the Russians from advancing the command had to return to the positions those soldiers whom Volodymyr and his comrades had replaced only two days earlier and who were supposed to be resting at the time. "There were not enough people, the shifts were bad," he explained.

Despite heavy fighting in the Donetsk region and a shortage of soldiers, Volodymyr was still taken from his positions to serve his prison time in a colony.

And his case is not unique. Ukrainian media have previously reported similar stories. For example, Andrii Sozontsev was also sentenced to eight years for drug smuggling and was sent to prison in August 2022 directly from the frontline near Zaporizhzhia.

Volodymyr, who was assaulting enemy positions near Avdiivka six months ago, is now confined to a small courtyard, a barrack where he lives with others, a dining room, gym, and a workroom where he is crafting low-visibility obstacles, mostly thin wire, from morning to evening – still doing his bit for the war effort.

The yard of the penal colony near Kyiv, where Volodymyr Barandich is serving his sentence on July 19, 2024 in Kyiv Region, Ukraine (Photo by Oleh Tymoshenko)

That is why he applied for mobilization immediately after the new law allowing prisoners to fight was passed. Many of his fellow prisoners, Volodymyr explained, have also expressed the same desire, because they want to be useful. "I didn't ask for a vacation. It's a bit of a shame that my guys are on the front line, and I'm here doing just nothing,” Volodymyr said.

"In 2022 there was a peak of mobilization, [but] in 2023-2024 people became much less motivated. The same thing is happening now in prison –- there is a peak in the number of people who want to mobilize, but it will pass," explained a sergeant of the 47th Magura Brigade, call sign Kyt, who personally visited various penal colonies to interview prisoners. "[Now] this is a second chance for such people."

Before Ukraine, Russia legalized the mobilization of prisoners in November 2022, with few restrictions: even allowing serial killers and rapists to fight. 

In addition, it initially granted such convicts a presidential pardon. That meant that after six months of service, if the convict survived, he had the right to return home. This led to a wave of murders and rapes as those convicted of serious crimes began to return from the war. So only earlier this year, Russia replaced pardons with parole and the inability of mobilized prisoners to return home until the end of the war.

The Ukrainian government has learned from Russia's mistakes. Premeditated murderers and rapists were not given the opportunity to mobilize. The contract for a convicted person is valid until the end of martial law, and does not allow for vacations. Under the terms of this contract, a convicted person receives parole after the end of the war.

Since the adoption of the law, more than 6,000 prisoners have expressed a desire to join the armed forces – including seven women – who have already signed a contract with the Armed Forces, according to the Ministry of Justice.

Andrii Soldatkov, 25, convicted under the same crime as Volodymyr, is also a professional soldier. Before the full-scale invasion, he graduated from the Kharkiv National Air Force University with a degree as a MIG-29 technician and engineer, and served in the air force.

Andrii Soldatkov, 25, serving in the 47th Magura Brigade on July 24, 2024 in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine

However, in 2021, Andrii was sentenced to six years in prison. Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, he and his cell mates have been writing letters to President Zelenskyy expressing their desire to join the Armed Forces. So, when the new law was passed, he immediately mobilized to the 47th Brigade, which recruited prisoners.

In prison, Andrii spent his time repairing and restoring the premises. A month after he submitted his application, the court decided to allow him to join the army.

"The training now compared to the one I had back at university is like heaven and earth. Back then, the most we could do was running, obstacle running, shooting once, and that was it," Andrii explained. "The current war is a war of drones, so the instructors focused a lot of attention on this."

Prior to his combat missions, Andrii underwent a month and a half of training, which included tactical and firearms training, and basic tactical medicine. This preparation for Ukrainian ex-prisoners for battle is better than on the Russian side, who often throw poorly trained soldiers into so-called "meat assaults."

The skills that Andrii learned in the air force are of little use now, as he is now a soldier, and is doesn’t plan to choose another position: "There are enough qualified personnel in the air force, and there is always a high demand for good infantry, so I am much more useful here," he said.

Expert Brigade Chief Sergeant Kyt says ex-prisoners are often dedicated to the cause. 

"These fighters are one for the price of ten," he explained. "Firstly, they are ready for action, they have no childish fear, but rather a certain adventurousness. Secondly, they are disciplined and responsible, they understand orders and carry them out, they do not need to be persuaded."

Brigade Chief Sergeant Kyt hands over chevrons of the 47th Brigade to the soldiers of the special battalion "Shkval", which consists of former prisoners on July 14, 2024 in Donetsk Region, Ukraine (Photo by Press service of the 47th Magura Brigade)

Kyt personally visits the colonies and conducts interviews with prisoners before they are selected for the army. 

His interviews include questions about the potential soldier's motivation, and awareness of the possible consequences of choosing to serve in the army. There are also health checks, including tests for various chronic diseases such as hepatitis. Not everyone is selected, Kyt explained: only about 70% of those he interviewed.

In his opinion, the army can actually influence people better than prison. This is because many of the ex-prisoners now have a purpose, ambitions for advancement, and many of them have quit bad habits they might have picked up during their time behind bars. 

The ex-prisoners especially like that the army does not have the "prison culture and hierarchy," which is replaced by brotherhood.

"We have made mistakes, but we can fix them. And we can prove it only on the battlefield," Andrii said.

The Counteroffensive with Tim Mak is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Subscribe

NEWS OF THE DAY: 

Good morning to readers! Kyiv remains in Ukrainian hands.

UKRAINE LAUNCHES INCURSION INTO RUSSIA, LARGEST SINCE INVASION: Local authorities have declared a state of emergency and evacuation of the civilian population in the Kursk region after more than 1,000 Ukrainian troops crossed the border. 

The advance of the Ukrainian armed forces into Russian territory is estimated at about 15 kilometers, with a dozen settlements captured, according to reporting by ABC News. The border town of Sudzha, 10 kilometers from the border, is also reported to be under control of the Ukrainian forces.

GAS PRICES IN EUROPE REACHES RECORD HIGHS: Sudzha, the town in Kursk region now controlled by Ukraine, remains the last transshipment point for Russian liquefied natural gas to Europe via Ukraine.

Amid potential risks to gas supplies to Europe, prices have risen to the highest level since December 2023, Bloomberg reports. Since the EU has not sanctioned Russian gas, some European countries still depend on its supplies.

SANCTIONS PUSH RUSSIA, CHINA TO BARTER TRADE: If the deals planned for this autumn succeed, it would be the first time the two countries have bartered in the last 30 years, according to Reuters. 

With Russia's and China's payment systems unlinked and more traditional means of banking like SWIFT subject to Western sanctions, the two countries are trying to find another way to trade. Earlier this year, in February, the Russian Ministry of Economic Development even published a detailed guide for Russian companies on how to conduct barter transactions.

UKRAINE PRESSES TO ALLOW MULTIPLE CITIZENSHIP: President Zelenskyy submitted a draft bill to the Ukrainian parliament to legalize multiple citizenship, Ukrainska Pravda reports. If passed, the law will allow foreigners to acquire Ukrainian citizenship without having to renounce their own citizenship, and Ukrainians to acquire the citizenship of another country while retaining their own. 

The draft law also allows those foreigners who have joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine to submit an expired passport document to obtain a residence permit, and generally regulates the legal status of such individuals. 

Share

DOG OF WAR: 

Today’s dog of war is this massive dog – can we even call him a pup at this point? – being carefully petted by a young girl in a cafe in Kyiv. 

Stay safe out there. 

Best,

Oleh

19. Can Ukraine Get Back on the Offensive? By Mick Ryan

Excerpts:

It must do so with NATO’s help. In fact, Ukraine should coordinate its whole new theory of victory with the West. This theory cannot focus exclusively on the defense of Ukraine; it must also focus on defeating Russia. That will require an increase in Western resourcing and training and a change in the West’s mindset. Kyiv must, accordingly, get its backers on board.

To succeed, Ukraine should remind its partners that there is no way to end the war as long as Putin still believes he can win. Moscow could agree to talks today, but if Putin remains confident, he would simply use any cease-fire to rearm before attacking again—as he did in Chechnya and by invading Ukraine in 2022, in violation of peace agreements in the Donbas. It is true that almost all wars end with negotiations. But the best negotiations are those in which the enemy is on its knees, as Germany and Japan were at the end of World War II, or in which they are exhausted to the point where withdrawal is the only real option, as the Soviets were in Afghanistan. Ukraine will have to make fighting so intolerable and unsustainable for Russia that the latter is willing to agree not just to a temporary respite but to an actual termination of the war.

Kyiv has what it takes to succeed. Despite facing wave after wave of devastating attacks, it has frustrated a Russian military that has many advantages. Ukraine has done so while experiencing significant manpower and firepower deficits. Now Moscow’s window of maximum opportunity has almost passed. Over the coming months, as Russian momentum wanes, Ukraine will be preparing, reconstituting, and watching for chances. Success is never certain in war, but Ukraine will be better placed in 2025 than it has been this year to liberate territory and to convince Russia that the cost of the war is not worthwhile. But to prevail, Kyiv will have to rebuild its offensive capacity, carry out diplomatic efforts, influence operations, and come up with a new theory of how to win.

Can Ukraine Get Back on the Offensive?

How Kyiv Can Capitalize on Russia’s Waning Momentum

By Mick Ryan

August 8, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by The War for Ukraine: Strategy and Adaptation Under Fire · August 8, 2024

Toward the end of 2023, the Russian military was presented with an opportunity to truly transform the war in Ukraine. Kyiv’s ground forces had run out of steam in their southern counteroffensive. Ukraine had blown through large quantities of munitions and air-defense interceptors and was struggling to resupply its lines. At the same time, a controversial bill to expand mobilization stalled in Ukraine’s parliament, as the country’s manpower shortages became acute. It only passed parliament in April after months of debate, coming into force in May. And in the United States, support for Ukraine was fracturing along party lines, holding up a $61 billion aid package in Congress.

But over the past six months, Russia has generally failed to capitalize on this convergence of openings. It has launched air and missile attacks against Ukraine’s power grid—dramatically reducing the country’s capacity to generate electricity—and it has terrorized civilians. Yet Russian ground forces have only managed to gain small bits of land. All in all, the total amount of territory seized by Russia since January 2024 adds up to around 360 square miles, an area roughly two-thirds the size of New York City. It is hard to describe these gains as a success when they came at the cost of more than 180,000 Russian casualties, according to Western intelligence estimates.

Moscow’s forces are not done with their offensive. They keep attacking across multiple fronts on the ground and bombing Ukrainian infrastructure from the air. But even the largest and most capable military organizations cannot sustain offensives forever, and after losing so many troops, Russia’s window of opportunity may soon close. The soldiers who have died in combat were disproportionately Russia’s best. Its equipment reserves are being slowly run down. Moscow will eventually have no choice but to pause its offensive and regroup.

In military institutions, this is known as a culminating point: the time when the attacking force runs out of the people, equipment, and capacity it needs to be effective. The timing of culminating points is difficult to predict, and Russian President Vladimir Putin appears comfortable fighting on in this offensive for as long as his country possibly can. But Russia has been attacking for more than half a year, and it can probably sustain its current tempo for only has a month or two more. The military will likely be able to carry out some ground and aerial attacks afterward, but at a significantly reduced rate.

That means Ukraine must begin planning for how best to capitalize on Russia’s impending wane. Doing so will not be easy: its people are suffering, and many of the factors that will determine its success are beyond its control. Kyiv, for example, cannot determine when or where Russian forces will culminate, and it cannot be certain that the West will provide continuous support. But Ukraine can closely study the battlefield for signs of Russian weakness. It can work with NATO to train and prepare for new offensives. It can manage outside expectations. And it can devise a new theory of victory—one that makes Russia’s military position truly untenable. It is then, and only then, that Ukraine will be able to negotiate on favorable terms and secure a durable win.

UP IN THE AIR

Ukraine may have brighter days ahead. But analysts should make no mistake: the past six months have been the country’s lowest ebb. Moscow failed to make great territorial gains during its recent offensive, but Ukraine lost substantial numbers of troops in its tenacious defense. Although the United States finally passed a new aid package, in April, Western weapons and munitions flows have yet to return to the levels they were at throughout most of 2023, before U.S. aid to Kyiv became entrapped in partisan congressional debates. Ukraine faces a critical shortfall in air-defense systems, and its national budget is on life support. The country’s power plants and generators have only half the capacity they need to handle Ukrainians’ requirements this winter.

These challenges are just the starting point for Kyiv. Unfortunately, Ukrainian officials will have to contend with additional obstacles—ones that are outside of its control. The first of these is their enemy: Moscow. Despite enormous losses in personnel and equipment, the Russian military remains extraordinarily dangerous. It is producing long-range missiles and rockets that can rain down on Ukrainian infrastructure. It is now able to make up for its own deficiencies by sourcing weapons from its Iranian and North Korean partners, forming a kind of arsenal of authoritarians. Moscow can purchase dual-use technologies—goods that have both civilian and military purposes, such as microchips—from China. The Russians have also demonstrated they can learn and adapt at the tactical and strategic levels; the old saying that the enemy always gets a vote continues to hold true. And nothing the United States or Europe has done thus far has changed Putin’s mind or his destructive strategy for Ukraine.

The United States and Europe can also be fickle partners. Their decisions, like Russia’s, will shape Ukraine’s ability in 2025. Scared out of their post–Cold War slumber by an aggressive Russia and a NATO-skeptic Republican presidential nominee in Donald Trump, most European countries have increased their defense budgets. The continent’s defense-manufacturing capability is expanding, as well. But the growth will not by itself meet the current requirements of the Ukrainian military, let alone the much larger requirements of any 2025 offensives.

Even if Democrats triumph, Ukraine could see U.S. support dip.

The odds that a Democrat will remain in the White House have gone up since President Joe Biden dropped out of the United States’ November elections. But the outcome of the race is still uncertain, and so, for Ukraine, Washington is even more of a question mark than Europe. Pew Research Center polling in July found a split in support for Ukraine between Democratic and Republican voters: less than 15 percent of Democrats believe the United States is providing too much assistance to Ukraine, but nearly half of Republicans do. Should Trump win in the presidential race and should Republicans win the Senate and House, Russia may find itself surprisingly well positioned for the year ahead. Both Trump and Ohio Senator J. D. Vance, his vice-presidential pick, have indicated they favor reducing U.S assistance and pursuing a negotiated end to the war.

If Trump and Vance win the election, they may, naturally, switch course. It is easy to imagine Trump, frustrated by a Putin unwilling to seriously negotiate over Ukraine, pivoting to backing Kyiv. But Ukrainian and NATO planners must consider the possibility that Washington will not be of much help.

In fact, even if Democrats triumph, Ukraine could see U.S. support dip, depending on what happens in other parts of the world. Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel fundamentally decreased the global visibility of the war in Ukraine, affecting support for Kyiv. Although the munitions required by the Israeli Defense Forces were often different than those requested by Ukraine, the IDF’s needs have made decision-makers in Washington and elsewhere spend more time and resources on the Middle East, leaving less for Kyiv. The war in Gaza also spurred a massive shift in media attention away from Ukraine, which, in turn, had a negative effect on popular support for the country. If conflicts in the Middle East expand, it will only further drain Ukraine of resources and attention—particularly if Israel’s war with Hezbollah heats up. A full-blown Hezbollah-Israeli conflict would consume almost exactly the same kinds of artillery and air-defense weapons that Ukraine needs, such as 155-millimeter munitions, tank ammunition, and even aircraft-dropped precision bombs. Expanded fighting with Iran or the Houthis might eat up similar provisions.

COMMAND AND CONTROL

Ukraine cannot control global geopolitics, and it has little sway over the domestic politics of its partners. But much of what will shape 2025 is well within Kyiv’s power to influence. Consider, for instance, training. The ground forces Ukraine employed in the south did not receive enough high-level collective instruction before the 2023 counteroffensives, with little in the way of simultaneous battalion or brigade-level operations. The most experienced formations were kept in eastern Ukraine, and there simply was not enough time to raise and train new brigades so they would be highly competent in simultaneous, higher-level combined arms operations. To have any chance of successful offensives in 2025, Ukraine will have to remediate this shortcoming. Some of this will require the support of the United States and NATO partners, particularly when it comes to developing more senior leaders and planners. But Kyiv can take the lead on giving basic recruits better training. Consequently, Ukraine will need to find rapid and effective solutions for raising and instructing more individual soldiers as well as for equipping new brigades.

Ukraine also has agency over its operational and strategic targeting campaigns. The country has developed a powerful strike capability, featuring indigenously developed missiles; long-range unmanned systems, especially drones; Western missiles, such as those fired from U.S. Army Tactical Missile Systems and European Storm Shadow missiles; and some remaining Soviet-era weapons. This capability also employs a mix of Ukrainian and NATO sensor data. And Ukraine has learned to use NATO’s joint-targeting doctrine, a standardized method for planning, conducting, and assessing long-range strike activities.

Kyiv’s strike complex is currently being employed against three key targets: the Russian oil industry; standard military assets, such as airfields, headquarters, troop reserves, air defenses, and logistics hubs; and Crimea and Russia’s Black Sea fleet. Over the next few months, Ukraine will have to make difficult tradeoffs about how to prioritize these targets and how many weapons it should keep in reserve. But these choices are entirely within Ukraine’s remit.

So are decisions about the timing and location of future offensive operations. The country’s ultimate selections will have to remain closely guarded secrets in order to give Kyiv the best chance of surprising Moscow. That will not be easy given current technologies, which have provided Russia with extensive sensor networks. But as the Russians showed in their 2024 Kharkiv offensive and as the Ukrainians showed in their 2023 Kharkiv counteroffensive, it is possible—especially when it comes to timing. It is harder to keep secrets about geography, but Ukraine can still be guarded and wise about where it launches counteroffensives.

Ukraine should coordinate its whole new theory of victory with the West.

Kyiv has no shortage of potential targets. It could choose to start in the Donbas, in order to frustrate Putin’s aim of taking Ukraine’s entire east. It could select Kharkiv, to ensure Ukraine’s second-largest city remains outside the range of Russian artillery. Other possibilities include parts of southern Ukraine, because of its economic importance, or even Crimea.

As the country considers when and where to start fighting, one of the most important factors will be opportunity. Ukrainian intelligence, working with NATO and other partners, will monitor Russian troop strength and morale, Russia’s holdings of key munitions, and Russia’s reserves, for indications of weakness across different fronts. Kyiv may choose to start fighting along several axes in order to generate uncertainty about the location of its main effort, or to figure out which front is most vulnerable. But every potential zone will be difficult, given how many forces Moscow now has in Ukraine and the dense networks of defenses it has constructed across the east and south. A successful counteroffensive anywhere will require sustained strike operations beforehand, significant intelligence, and stockpiles. Training and rehearsals for the military forces involved in each region will be slightly different.

As should be the case in all democratic countries, Ukraine’s elected leader, President Volodymyr Zelensky, will have the final say in both the location and the timing of Ukrainian offensives. Zelensky and his closest advisers will, therefore, carefully evaluate Russia’s capabilities as well as their own, and look for the best possible openings. He will receive advice from Oleksandr Syrsky, Ukraine’s commander in chief. At the political and strategic levels of wartime decision-making, there is no such thing as military autonomy. The interplay of civil and military personnel can improve military planning by testing different options from different perspectives.

As they make choices, Zelensky and his team will also monitor Western support, including via polls and comments from Western politicians. His team will work to manage partner countries’ expectations. In the lead-up to the southern 2023 counteroffensive, Americans and Europeans believed that Kyiv would succeed, thanks to media reporting, statements by politicians, an influx of new equipment, and Kyiv’s victories at the end of 2022. Unfortunately, these expectations were dashed on the battlefield. This disappointment had significant political consequences. The long U.S. debate over whether to keep assisting Ukraine was probably influenced by the outcome. So, too, was Kyiv’s civil-military crisis of late 2023, which led to the February dismissal of Valery Zaluzhny, the country’s then commander in chief. Ukraine cannot afford to have such a letdown happen again, and so it will need to work with NATO and foreign leaders to better control perceptions. Kyiv’s military operations must also achieve political outcomes and ensure Ukraine is optimally placed if it is forced into early negotiations.

PREPARATION AND OPPORTUNITY

Ukraine’s specific geographic, logistical, tactical, and timing decisions are all essential. But ultimately, the country’s success will hinge on whether Kyiv can develop a theory of victory that draws from its own resources and from those of its supporters.

This theory of victory is likely to have military, economic, diplomatic, and informational components. It will seek a political outcome—including the liberation of all Ukrainian territory, Crimea and the Donbas among it—but it must consider the range of strategic and operational realities presented by the current state of the war. The theory will require battlefield victories on the ground, in the air, and at sea which at least double the number of casualties that Ukraine is currently imposing on Russia. Doing so is necessary to force Moscow, which is currently drafting as many men as it is losing, to make harder political choices about who it recruits or conscripts. Ukraine, therefore, will need to develop new, more effective offensive military doctrines and incorporate larger masses of unmanned systems in the air and on the ground. Defensive operations are now the dominant form of war for Ukraine, but Kyiv will need new offensive maneuvers to approach and break through Moscow’s lines. Much hinges on Ukraine successfully developing such concepts before Russia does.

It must do so with NATO’s help. In fact, Ukraine should coordinate its whole new theory of victory with the West. This theory cannot focus exclusively on the defense of Ukraine; it must also focus on defeating Russia. That will require an increase in Western resourcing and training and a change in the West’s mindset. Kyiv must, accordingly, get its backers on board.

To succeed, Ukraine should remind its partners that there is no way to end the war as long as Putin still believes he can win. Moscow could agree to talks today, but if Putin remains confident, he would simply use any cease-fire to rearm before attacking again—as he did in Chechnya and by invading Ukraine in 2022, in violation of peace agreements in the Donbas. It is true that almost all wars end with negotiations. But the best negotiations are those in which the enemy is on its knees, as Germany and Japan were at the end of World War II, or in which they are exhausted to the point where withdrawal is the only real option, as the Soviets were in Afghanistan. Ukraine will have to make fighting so intolerable and unsustainable for Russia that the latter is willing to agree not just to a temporary respite but to an actual termination of the war.

Kyiv has what it takes to succeed. Despite facing wave after wave of devastating attacks, it has frustrated a Russian military that has many advantages. Ukraine has done so while experiencing significant manpower and firepower deficits. Now Moscow’s window of maximum opportunity has almost passed. Over the coming months, as Russian momentum wanes, Ukraine will be preparing, reconstituting, and watching for chances. Success is never certain in war, but Ukraine will be better placed in 2025 than it has been this year to liberate territory and to convince Russia that the cost of the war is not worthwhile. But to prevail, Kyiv will have to rebuild its offensive capacity, carry out diplomatic efforts, influence operations, and come up with a new theory of how to win.

• MICK RYAN is a Senior Fellow for Military Studies at the Lowy Institute in Sydney, an Adjunct Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and a retired Australian Army major general. He is the author of the forthcoming book The War for Ukraine: Strategy and Adaptation Under Fire.

Foreign Affairs · by The War for Ukraine: Strategy and Adaptation Under Fire · August 8, 2024

20. Where is U.S. Foreign Policy Headed?

Excerpt:

Broadly speaking, the options for U.S. grand strategy include: (1) Godzilla Rex, or what has sometimes been termed “liberal hegemony”; (2) offshore balancing; (3) globalization unlimited; and (4) selective engagement and enlargement. Isolationism is eliminated as an option because, in today’s world of complex interdependence and media saturation, it would not be possible, even if deemed desirable by some.

Where is U.S. Foreign Policy Headed?

Four distinct, but not necessarily exclusive, strategies present themselves for the next administration.

by Lawrence J. Korb​  Stephen Cimbala

The National Interest · by Lawrence J. Korb · August 6, 2024

The first presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump resulted in a media blitzkrieg of hysteria about Biden’s performance, which continued through the Republican convention and led to Biden’s eventual withdrawal from the race. The New York Times editorial board and other prestige media sites, supported by some leading Democratic fundraisers and politicians, including from the Democratic Senate and House leaders, called for Biden to withdraw from the race for the White House. It’s understandable to some extent that the media, whose professional obsession is with communication, and the many Democratic members of the House and Senate, who are concerned about their own elections, would declare Biden’s performance a disaster. On the other hand, with respect to the substance of policy, as opposed to the optics of stage performance, the debate was one blip in a journey that will require more months of campaigning and electioneering between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris to sort out.

Of particular importance in this regard are the candidates’ and parties’ respective positions on foreign policy and U.S. military strategy. The world is transforming an immediate post-Cold War euphoria of American triumphalism and liberal democratic hubris to a more complicated picture. The return of wars and other conflicts among major powers, especially with respect to the rising capabilities and aspirations of China and Russia, creates uncertainty about the United States’ political objectives and military readiness in Europe and Asia. In addition, unprecedented challenges in climate change and pandemics; efforts to dethrone the dollar as the benchmark currency for international transactions; mass migration in unprecedented numbers; and new technologies for cyberwar, artificial intelligence, and the military uses of space all contribute to a possible bow wave of political regime destabilization and military planning vexation. Today’s certainties for politicians and their military advisors are tomorrow’s guesswork.

Therefore, in choosing among competing presidential candidates, we need to understand their perspectives on this international environment of political complexity and military uncertainty. No country has unlimited resources, and even the United States, facing a cumulative deficit of more than $35 trillion, cannot continue unrestrained binge spending on domestic and foreign policy priorities. What, going forward, is America’s preferred geopolitical orientation or grand strategy? What military commitments and obligations derive from that grand strategy? And third, what assumptions should drive military preparedness for deterring wars and, if necessary, for fighting them?

Broadly speaking, the options for U.S. grand strategy include: (1) Godzilla Rex, or what has sometimes been termed “liberal hegemony”; (2) offshore balancing; (3) globalization unlimited; and (4) selective engagement and enlargement. Isolationism is eliminated as an option because, in today’s world of complex interdependence and media saturation, it would not be possible, even if deemed desirable by some.

Godzilla Rex was the U.S. position in the 1990s following the end of the Cold War and the demise of the Soviet Union. An end to history and the perpetual triumph of liberal democracy was assumed by optimists about the post-Soviet world. The United States was a singular global superpower with no serious military rival. However, President Clinton reduced national focus on security and defense, including intelligence, which came back to haunt us after the attacks on 9/11. Nonetheless, the United States invaded Afghanistan to depose the Taliban in 2001 and struck down the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq in 2003. A Global War on Terror was declared, and both conflicts became “forever wars” that lasted well into the second decade of the present century.

Offshore balancing was an alternative grand strategy favored by some academics and prominent policy analysts. From this perspective, the United States should limit large-scale military intervention to threats by a hostile power to dominate an essential region in ways inimical to U.S. and allied vital interests. Regional rivals would include a resurgent Russia in Europe, a rising China in Asia, and lesser but still dangerous disruptors in Asia (North Korea) or the Middle East (Iran). Under this approach, the United States would first seek to rely on regional allies to take the lead if they were prepared to do so, although the United States would otherwise act if our vital interests were threatened.

A third grand strategy, favored by many postmodern politicians and a worldwide community of activists, would emphasize transnational challenges over national rivalries and argue for moving issues such as climate change, poverty, migration, urbanization, pandemics, and disarmament to the front end of national policy agendas. From this perspective, great power rivalries and wars for hegemony are outdated relics of hyper-nationalism and excessive military influence over policy. Resources spent on defense and war-fighting should be diverted to international scientific collaboration and peacekeeping overseen by the United Nations or other international bodies.

A fourth grand strategy is selective engagement and enlargement. This approach was supported by some in the Bill Clinton administration and emphasized economic growth through international cooperation and investment. Although there was broad agreement among Democrats and Republicans in the 1990s that liberalized free trade would be a rising tide that lifted all boats, it eventually became clear that some states would benefit much more directly than others. Military interventions were undertaken in the wake of a famine in Somalia in order to curb the power of warlords, resulting in the “Blackhawk Down” episode that led to a U.S. military withdrawal from that failed state. Elsewhere, the United States and NATO intervened to restore order in Bosnia in 1995 and waged war against Serbia in 1999 in order to prevent ethnic cleansing and sectarian strife in Europe. NATO’s attacks on Serbia in 1999 enraged the Russian government and its otherwise U.S.-friendly President Boris Yeltsin, a precursor of later objections to NATO enlargement by his successor, Vladimir Putin.

Among these competing grand strategies, the foreign and defense policies of the Biden administration have included some elements from each of the first three options. A Harris administration would most likely expand them. Growing defense budgets and robust U.S. and NATO military support for Ukraine against Russian invasion show that Godzilla Rex remains aspirational among both Democrats and many Republicans in Washington. U.S. support for Israel in the Middle East is close to offshore balancing against dangerous regional rivals (Iran and its proxies). Also, it reflects the historical American commitment to defending Israeli sovereignty against regional enemies.

But so-called progressives in the Biden administration, including globalists as described above, have objected to Israel’s military tactics in the war against Hamas in Gaza. With regard to China, the Biden policy has been divided between options one and two: emphasizing a U.S. defense buildup and greater preparedness for an attempted Chinese military takeover of Taiwan or seeing China as more of an economic and informational competitor than an immediate military threat—although China’s growing capabilities for cyberwar and in space are admittedly of major concern. Still, others see China’s rise as a science and technology challenge that does not have to evolve into an arms race or war, which is more like option three.

Where would a second Trump administration place itself in selecting among these grand strategies (or others)? It’s unknowable at the moment because Trump relies on his personal ability to engage with other heads of state in order to resolve international disputes. Some of his comments seem to endorse option one, Godzilla Rex. Still, he also prizes his ability to woo hostile leaders into more favorable alignments by grand summitry and selective engagement. Trump promises to crack down on illegal migration and on trade deals that disadvantage U.S. producers and manufacturers.

In this respect, he combines old-style nationalism with an aggressive globalism turned upside down. He claimed credit for keeping the United States out of major wars during his administration, although he did authorize selective strikes against terrorists and rogue regimes. In public events during this year, he asserted that he would end the war in Ukraine between the time of his election in November 2024 and his inauguration in January 2025. Whether Ukrainian president Zelensky and Russian president Putin are on board with this timetable remains to be seen. In addition, during his term in the White House, some members of Congress and other commentators worried about Trump’s finger on the nuclear button should a Cold War-style nuclear crisis present itself. However, others noted that the U.S. decision-making process has safeguards against any presidential impetuosity.

Stephen Cimbala is a Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Penn State Brandywine and the author of numerous books and articles on international security issues.

Lawrence Korb, a retired Navy Captain, has held national security positions at several think tanks and served in the Pentagon in the Reagan administration.

Image: GreenOak / Shutterstock.com.

The National Interest · by Lawrence J. Korb · August 6, 2024

21. Army's Top Sergeant on Modern Warfare & Recruiting Tactics (Jedburgh Podcast)

​The one hour podcast is available on YouTube at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEQH6J4wD4s

​There is a lot of talk on social media about a provocative statement he made: 

"I have a fair amount of combat, maybe more than the average individual, I've never been to war."

I have seen positive and negative comments about this statement.  But those comments accomplished what I think the SMA's objective is and that is to get people to talk about war and the future of war. 

The SMA covers a lot of important ground in this podcast. Topics and times are listed below.

Army's Top Sergeant on Modern Warfare & Recruiting Tactics

The Jedburgh Podcast

10.6K subscribers

Subscribe

452

Share

Download

Clip

15,553 views Aug 2, 2024 Government and Military Leadership

Professional war-fighting is the difference between compliance and commitment. It also requires consistency and an understanding that people are the Army’s most important weapon system.

The responsibility for recruiting, training and retaining US Army soldiers sits on the shoulders of the Sergeant Major of the Army; a job in which there is no training course and where experience is the defining factor.

To break down what the Sergeant Major of the Army does, the current state of the Army, and where the Army is headed, Fran Racioppi traveled deep into the center of the Pentagon for a conversation with Sergeant Major Mike Weimer, the 17th Sergeant Major of the Army and the first Green Beret selected for the role.

The SMA defined professional war fighting and the importance of an all volunteer force. He broke down the art and science relationship between commissioned and non-commissioned officers. He shared how his experience in the Special Forces shadows prepared him for the limelight of the SMA role.

And they talked about the future, including his vision for solving the recruiting challenge, how warfare is evolving from the kill chain to the kill web, how he’s planning to retain the right people, and how the integration of Special Operations and the regular Army is more important now than ever.

Take a listen, watch, or read our conversation with the Army’s most senior non-commissioned officer, then head over to our YouTube channel or your favorite podcast platform to catch up on our entire national security series from Washington, DC and Fort Liberty, NC.

Highlights:

0:00 The Army is busy

2:33 The Professional Warfighter

4:19 How does it set the US Army apart?

6:57 Why is discipline critical?

12:50 People are the Army’s weapons system

17:32 The relationship between Commanders and NCOs

23:30 SMA Weimer’s transition from the shadows

27:00 The Army’s recruiting challenges

37:14 CTCs and the Kill Web

40:40 Retaining the best and brightest

47:15 Integrating Special Forces and the regular Army

54:51 The Army’s biggest opportunity

57:07 Daily Foundations to Success

Quotes:

“Those that are committed, I remind them; the audio and video has got to match.”

“Once people get in the Army, they find the purpose and the people worth continuing to serve.”

“All of the services are platform centric. The Army’s platform is its people.”

“The non-commissioned officer is the asymmetric advantage.”

“The things that are usually the hardest in life are the things that are usually the most rewarding.”

“Whatever you’ve done prior to coming into this seat is how you’ve prepared.”

“We’re on track to make our numbers this year….We need those numbers to be higher in upcoming years.”

“I have a fair amount of combat…I’ve never been to war.”

“You don’t necessarily get do-overs in the fight that we’re preparing for now.”

“It’s not just about retaining people; it’s about retaining the right people.”

“Standards and discipline can’t just be some whimsical thing we throw around.”

The Jedburgh Podcast and the Jedburgh Media Channel are an official program of The Green Beret Foundation. Learn more on The Jedburgh Podcast Website. Subscribe to us and follow @jedburghpodcast on all social media. Watch the full video version on YouTube.

#SergeantMajorOfTheArmy

#JedburghPodcast

#USArmy

#ArmyLeadership

#MilitaryLeadership

#ArmyStrong

#ArmyLife

#USMilitary

#MilitaryPodcast

#LeadershipLessons

#ArmySergeantMajor

#recruiting

#MilitaryCareer

The opinions presented on the The Jedburgh Podcast and the Jedburgh Media Channel are the opinions of the guests and the host. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Green Beret Foundation and the Green Beret Foundation assumes no liability for their accuracy.

The Jedburgh Podcast Media Links:

Website: https://greenberetfoundation.org/the-...

Podcast Platforms: https://pod.link/1558608802

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7cjwLO3...

Instagram:   / jedburghpodcast  

LinkedIn:   / the-jedburgh-podcast  

Twitter:   / jedburghpodcast  

Facebook:   / jedburghpodcast  

Email: fran@jedburghpodcast.com

22. The Link Between Two Wars

The Link Between Two Wars

https://geopoliticalfutures.com/the-link-between-two-wars/?utm

By George Friedman -

August 7, 2024

Open as PDF

Over the past few days, two statements have come to redefine the Middle East – though they were issued not by Israel or Hamas but by the belligerents in a conflict more than a thousand miles away. The first came from Moscow, which said the conflict in Ukraine would be resolved by the end of 2024. The other came from Kyiv, which gave a similar timeframe for a resolution.

Russia’s strategy at the outset of the invasion was to crush Ukraine quickly and decisively. Ukraine’s strategy was to resist long enough to exhaust the Russian will to fight. Neither was successful, and the war has pressed on for over two years. The announcements that the conflict would soon be over, then, were more of a problem for Russia than Ukraine since its reputation for having a formidable army was shattered. In war, success can turn into failure in a matter of days, and the two statements did not seem to be a coordinated effort. Nothing is certain until it is done. Still, the rationale behind both statements seems sound considering the history and current state of the war.

In the meantime, Ukraine must rebuild an economy that not only sustains itself but puts Ukraine on a level relative to the rest of Europe, all while rapidly generating military supplies that can deter further Russian action. Russia’s task is somewhat different. It invaded Ukraine to give itself strategic depth from NATO. Having failed to occupy the country, Moscow has the same imperative but must now look for other, less optimal buffer zones. This may prompt the Kremlin to enhance its influence, and perhaps establish better deterrence, in other potential avenues into Russia – the Baltics, Poland, Hungary and the Balkans, to name just a few. For Moscow, these can be managed politically and economically, so it isn’t exclusively a military matter, but geography dictates that the military threat remains.

Russia must also maintain the balance in the Caucasus, where threats to southern Russia can emanate and where the U.S. and NATO lurk. Perhaps the most important nation in this region is Iran, which is linked by religion and culture to Azerbaijan, a Caucasian nation that poses a potential threat to Russia if backed by a significantly powerful nation. Azerbaijan has served as a buffer between Russia and Iran and is now allied with Russia. Dominating the Caucasus is difficult, but a potential opportunity has opened up in the Middle East.

(click to enlarge)

There is a credible threat of war between Iran on one side and Israel and the United States on the other. The U.S. has little to gain from a war but much to lose. Russia supports such a war, as it would trap the U.S. far to the Russian south while opening the door to Russian support and influence. It would also open the possibility of joint ventures with Iran in the Caucasus via Azerbaijan. Russia and Iran have the same enemy in the U.S. and a network of nations friendly to them both. Together, they make a formidable force. If Russia had influence over a state it previously did not have strong relations with, it would put Russia in a powerful position, particularly after the hit it took in Ukraine. Russia would secure its southern flank and position itself well for future operations.

As it stands, Moscow appears to be sending weapons to Iran while Israel is preparing for a major offensive to which Washington is opposed. This rift is yet another gift to the Russians since it weakens a U.S.-Israel relationship that has been a constant threat to Russian interests in the Middle East. For its part, Iran is wary of a relationship with Russia and the baggage it might bring. But a war could nudge Tehran closer to Moscow despite its misgivings.

This is the link between the Ukraine war and the Arab-Israeli war. The U.S. may find itself fighting a war against Iran when it does not want to. But Russia dominating the Caucasus and having Iran as an ally would make up for its underperformance in Ukraine. It would make Russia a power in the Middle East and put the U.S. in a position of either abandoning the battlefield (and appearing defeated) or entering a brutal and dangerous war (which Russia, through its relationship with Iran, would have some degree of control over).

This may not come to pass, of course. But Israel is on a rampage, the U.S. is riding along, Russia needs a win after Ukraine, and Iran wants to be a major player. This scenario is not as unlikely as it may seem.

• TAGS
• Caucasus
• Iran
• Russia
• ukraine war

FacebookTwitterLinkedinEmail

George Friedman

https://geopoliticalfutures.com/author/gfriedman/

George Friedman is an internationally recognized geopolitical forecaster and strategist on international affairs and the founder and chairman of Geopolitical Futures.

Dr. Friedman is also a New York Times bestselling author. His most recent book, THE STORM BEFORE THE CALM: America’s Discord, the Coming Crisis of the 2020s, and the Triumph Beyond, published February 25, 2020 describes how “the United States periodically reaches a point of crisis in which it appears to be at war with itself, yet after an extended period it reinvents itself, in a form both faithful to its founding and radically different from what it had been.” The decade 2020-2030 is such a period which will bring dramatic upheaval and reshaping of American government, foreign policy, economics, and culture.

His most popular book, The Next 100 Years, is kept alive by the prescience of its predictions. Other best-selling books include Flashpoints: The Emerging Crisis in Europe, The Next Decade, America’s Secret War, The Future of War and The Intelligence Edge. His books have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Dr. Friedman has briefed numerous military and government organizations in the United States and overseas and appears regularly as an expert on international affairs, foreign policy and intelligence in major media. For almost 20 years before resigning in May 2015, Dr. Friedman was CEO and then chairman of Stratfor, a company he founded in 1996. Friedman received his bachelor’s degree from the City College of the City University of New York and holds a doctorate in government from Cornell University.

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com