Quotes of the Day:

"They always say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself."

– Andy Warhol

"Nothing is so firmly believed as what is least known." 

– Michel de Montaigne

"Our power is our ability to decide." 

– Buckminster Fuller

1. A Course Correction on National Security by Jane Harmon and Eric Edelman

2. ‘New era’ of war beginning, Israel says, as more Hezbollah devices explode across Lebanon

3. Here's what we know about the pager and walkie-talkie explosions in Lebanon

4. Israel’s Strategic Win

5. Secret single-stage deal could see all hostages released, Sinwar exiled from Gaza2.

6. How Israel Built a Modern-Day Trojan Horse: Exploding Pagers

7. How a Covert Attack Against Hezbollah Unfolded Across Lebanon’s Streets and Malls

8. Small Business: Instruments and Casualties of the Censorship – Industrial Complex

9. Air Force Ospreys Set to Again Deploy Abroad After Deadly Crash, But Concerns Linger on Mechanical Issues

10 . AFSOC still wants 75 light attack aircraft despite Congress’ doubts

12. US special ops cuts armed overwatch buy, still needs to justify need

12. Pentagon Worries Israel Is Close to Launching Ground War in Lebanon

13. Putin Is Under Pressure to Call Up More Troops for War of Attrition

14. Suspected Trump Gunman Touted Potential ‘Taiwan Foreign Legion’

15. With exploding pagers, deterrence gets personal

16. Talk of US Iraq withdrawal is disconnected from ISIS threat

17. Lessons from Red Sea and Ukraine's Black Sea fight help prep Navy for possible conflict with China

18. China's Ambiguous Meddling in Myanmar's Complex Conflicts

19. Exclusive: Ammunition from India enters Ukraine, raising Russian ire

20. Soldiers Set to Get New Deployment Bonus as High Operations Tempos Strain the Army

21. Iranian hackers sent stolen Trump campaign information to Biden campaign

22. Can the West Revive Multilateralism?

23. Strengthen the Army with debate

24. Boxing with Shadows: Drawbacks in US Counterstrategies Against the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Russian Wagner Group

25. A Two-State Solution That Can Work

26. Is Ukraine’s Offensive Working? Perhaps

27. The inhumanity of the CCP’s war on free speech

28. Japan walkie-talkie maker Icom says it no longer makes radio reportedly used in Lebanon blasts

29. US FBI strikes second Chinese hacking group, director says

1. A Course Correction on National Security by Jane Harmon and Eric Edelman

A bipartisan recommendation (actually 5 important recommendations):

Excerpt:

Specifically, rather than tripling down on the national security strategies of the past two presidents, the next administration should get rid of the post-Cold War mentality and plot a new course.

Conclusion:

Neither major candidate for president is talking much about threats to U.S. national security—that conflict could come to the United States or that we might lose a war with China if one broke out. Important debates over support to Ukraine, the conduct of Israel’s war of self-defense against Hamas and other Iranian proxies, or the advent of artificial intelligence rarely feature explanations of why these things matter to the United States and its ability to secure our interests. It is a failure of leadership across both parties on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue that the public doesn’t understand why U.S. global leadership is needed or that the next war could be affect us at home.

Achieving a national consensus will take time and must start from the top. The next president should speak openly and directly about the threats and propose bold responses. Congress should debate needed legislative reforms and how to pay for the national security system we need. Students should learn about the world and opportunities where they can make a difference—whether in the military, other public service, in industry, or elsewhere. Businesses should consider how their ingenuity can promote national security—just as companies shifted production to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. When presented with the facts, the American people will do what is needed. Waiting for the next Pearl Harbor or 9/11 to start the conversation will be too late.

None of this will be easy, but the next president and right-minded members of Congress have the opportunity to chart a new course.

A Course Correction on National Security

The next president will need to embark on a radically different path from the past two administrations.

September 18, 2024, 11:47 AM

By Jane Harman, the chair of the Commission on the National Defense Strategy, and Eric S. Edelman, the vice chair of the Commission on the National Defense Strategy.

Foreign Policy · by Jane Harman, Eric S. Edelman

• Geopolitics
• Military
• United States

The next president of the United States will be confronted with a very different strategic environment than the one that greeted President Joe Biden.

Supporting Ukraine and Israel in wars that didn’t exist four years ago, the U.S. military is stretched, and the defense industrial base lacks the capacity to provide the equipment, weapons, and platforms needed. Every day brings additional evidence that our competitors are cooperating more closely across military, industrial, and economic lines. The viability of the all-volunteer force is in question. Private sector innovation increasingly outpaces the government’s ability to adopt new technology. Perhaps most importantly, as it underpins all other problems, the American public is not attuned to the threats the United States faces or prepared to support what is necessary to surmount them.

China and Russia see U.S. political dysfunction and growing strains of isolationism on both the left and the right and believe that the United States is unable and likely unwilling to stand in their way. Ukraine is the test case of U.S. commitment; the jury is still out.

As chair and vice chair of the Commission on the National Defense Strategy, charged with providing Congress and the president an independent review of the 2022 National Defense Strategy, we recently released a unanimous, bipartisan report. In this report, we found that the strategy is woefully out of date and insufficient to address the urgent threats. We recommend that the next president make major changes in the overall U.S. approach to national security—at the Defense Department and far beyond.

Specifically, rather than tripling down on the national security strategies of the past two presidents, the next administration should get rid of the post-Cold War mentality and plot a new course.

For nearly 40 years, the United States had the luxury of being the world’s global superpower, enjoying uncontested primacy and shouldering the immense international responsibilities that came with it. It wielded overwhelming military force for rapid and decisive victory at a time and place of its choosing with comparatively little loss of life or treasure. The Pentagon could afford to take decades and spend billions of dollars (generally behind schedule and over cost) on small numbers of enormously capable systems to provide nearly invulnerable battlefield advantage. It benefited from the U.S. network of alliances for basing and access but didn’t rely on other nations to supply forces for a decisive edge. The U.S. democratic system of governance and capitalist economic philosophy faced no significant challenge worldwide.

But today, China has systematically built a military capability designed specifically to counter the U.S. advantage, fusing it with diplomatic, economic, and social policies to spread global influence. Our commission studied the methodical 20-year effort by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to build sufficient quantity and quality of conventional weapons as well as space, cyber, and strategic forces to make it a peer competitor. Analyses and wargames show that China has clear advantages in operations west of the international date line, given its ability to contest U.S. logistics, target U.S. ships and other platforms at long range, and outproduce the United States and its allies. The PLA is on track to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping’s tasking to be able to invade Taiwan by 2027. (Xi’s other stated goal is to be the world’s sole superpower by 2049, and China is moving out on that one as well.)

If we did go to war in the Taiwan Strait or the South or East China Sea, we could lose. In fact, China has the cyber-capability to disrupt our critical infrastructure at home—turn off the lights, shut down transportation—and contest our ability to move people and equipment by air and sea with the effect of keeping the United States out of a fight in the Pacific in the first place. This is a similar, but more sophisticated, effort than ongoing Russian cyberattacks on U.S. and European critical infrastructure aimed at disrupting aid to Ukraine.

Russia’s extensive reconstitution and mass mobilization following its 2022 invasion, combined with its willingness to accept massive losses and escalate rapidly, make it a less predictable but still highly capable force—and one that is unlikely to rest if it achieves its objectives in Ukraine.

China and Russia are investing around the world, through the Belt and Road Initiative and proxy security public-private partnerships like the now-defunct Wagner Group, to curry favor and to expand their footprint in locations with military and economic strategic significance. The lack of U.S. military, diplomatic, and investment presence is ceding the field.

More significant still in strategic terms is China and Russia’s stated “no limits” partnership, joined by North Korea and Iran as inaugural junior members. Theirs is the most significant bloc of anti-Western states since the Axis powers in World War II, freely sharing munitions and industrial equipment, trading in sanctioned goods, and providing one another with diplomatic cover for their misdeeds.

The coordination among this group of authoritarian states means that a conflict that erupts with any of them anywhere could quickly become a multi-theater or global war. The “one theater-plus” force construct from the past two administrations, designed to fight a great power in one region and deter aggression elsewhere, falls far short.

The miasma of aggression from Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and militant groups across the Middle East, fueled by old hatreds amplified by Israel’s military operations in Gaza, indicates that the United States will have to remain engaged and postured across the Middle East despite policymakers’—and the public’s—desire to turn the page.

Other concerns continue to simmer but could boil over. Terrorism remains alive and well; Islamic State affiliates have carried out major attacks in Iran and Russia this year, plus dozens more across the Middle East, Africa, and Europe. An older threat—that of nuclear conflict—seems increasingly possible. Russian President Vladimir Putin is threatening to use theater nuclear weapons, and China is vastly increasing its nuclear stockpile. North Korea remains bellicose, and Iran has crept dangerously close to a nuclear breakout capability. The relatively stable nuclear balance of the Cold War, governed by mutual assured destruction, is teetering on instability.

Finally, the ever-increasing pace of technological change creates new challenges and opportunities to whoever can harness it most effectively. Yet it is far from clear that the U.S. government can adopt technology produced outside its labs at the speed required. All of these dynamics point to the desperate need for the next president to embark on a new approach to national security from the past two administrations.

Two tanks flying U.S. flags are perched atop amphibious platforms in a river. Soldiers operate the tanks and stand on the deck of the platform.

U.S. Army M1 Abrams tanks are carried on amphibious rigs of a German-British battalion while crossing the Vistula River during a NATO military exercise near Gniew, Poland, on March 5. Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Members of the military in combat gear holding guns walk across the sand of a beach. Water and hills can be seen in the distance.

U.S. troops take part in a joint military exercise with Philippine soldiers in Laoag, Philippines, on May 6. Ezra Acayan/Getty Images

We strongly believe that the United States should continue to play a leading role around the world to safeguard its national interests, preserve a global economic system that works in its favor, and stand up to growing authoritarianism.

The commission proposes five changes that can be implemented through the national security and defense strategies of the next president and by Congress through legislation and appropriations: building a balanced, coordinated effort across all elements of national power; placing commercial innovation at the heart of military modernization; posturing a force to match the threat; investing smarter and investing more; and forging a national consensus on security and service.

The United States used to have an “all of nation” approach to national security. The State Department, not the Pentagon, developed the containment strategy that won the Cold War and promoted democracy behind the Iron Curtain. U.S. manufacturing supplied the world. U.S. economic aid and investment built partnerships, exported American values, and checked Soviet influence. The public understood the threat and shouldered the burdens.

Today, our national security challenges all look like nails, and the Defense Department is by far the largest hammer in our toolkit. Through neglect and underinvestment, most of the U.S. government has drifted away from national security. Ask anyone at Defense what priority No. 1 is, and they will tell you it is strategic competition with China. Ask the same question at State, and, if you’re lucky, you’ll hear one of the 19 objectives listed in the Joint Strategic Plan—only one of which involves diplomacy for great-power competition. The departments of the Treasury, Commerce, Homeland Security, Education, and others have made important contributions to an “all elements of national power” approach, along with domestic priorities, but lack the focus, resources, and authorities needed to secure the United States.

Our approach should emphasize planning and practicing with allies as well as strengthening them—diplomatically, industrially, and militarily. The United States can’t deter and defeat the China-Russia-North Korea-Iran partnership alone; the closer we engage and more we strengthen our allies, the better off we will be.

Second, on innovation, the Pentagon was built around a model of funding military-relevant research and development and plowing the results into procurement of weapon systems. In 1960, U.S. defense spending accounted for 36 percent of global R&D. By 2019, that had fallen to 3.1 percent. Today, the private sector outpaces the Defense Department in 11 of the 14 technology areas the Pentagon has labeled as critical for success.

The department’s business model hasn’t kept up. Efforts to change—the Defense Innovation Unit; the Replicator Initiative, tasked with providing thousands of autonomous systems in 18-24 months; and the creation of the Office of Strategic Capital to use loans and loan guarantees for defense investment—are laudable and much needed. But they remain the exception, not the rule.

Ukraine can update drone warfare against Russian electronic warfare on the scale of weeks by closely integrating the military alongside domestic small businesses on drone design and manufacture. The U.S. defense system runs on a five-year budget designed to prevent moving funds and with mountains of red tape that discourage new market entrants. Change is based on incremental updates to existing programs, even when they are ill-suited to future needs. The United States needs a revolution in innovation adoption—and a revolution in the risk-averse, exquisite legacy systems culture and business model at the Pentagon and in Congress.

Our third recommendation is the need to align posture to meet the threat. With two active conflicts in Europe and the Middle East and a third contingency in Asia to deter, a “one theater-plus” construct is insufficient. Even if we focused all effort on China, as some pundits and members of Congress suggest, we would still need a force that could compete with China’s presence across the global south, defend the U.S. homeland, and fight to win in space and cyberspace.

The commission proposes a multi-theater force construct. This doesn’t mean we need triplicate capabilities from all of the military services for each region. It does mean that, in greater conjunction with our allies, we need to maintain a baseline presence in the East Pacific, at the heart of NATO, and in the Middle East capable of projecting power and deterring aggression with forces that can be surged when needed. It also includes a residual presence—military and otherwise—in Africa, the Americas, and the Arctic. We also propose maturing operational concepts that apply technological advantage and draw on space, cyber, and information warfare, alongside traditional forces, to overcome our numerical deficits vis-à-vis our great-power competitors.

A multi-theater force will require manning, equipping, maintaining, and resupply beyond what the U.S. and allied industrial bases can currently provide. Congress recognized the need to rehabilitate the defense industrial base in the April 2024 supplemental, and the Defense Department has scrambled mightily to ramp up U.S. production and coordinate international efforts to supply Ukraine—but far more will need to be done to fight a protracted campaign in one front, let alone multiple.

Fourth: Amid all this, we must be smarter in how we spend our national security dollars. A huge step toward more effective spending would be ending the annual self-inflicted wounds imposed through congressional “continuing resolutions” that freeze existing spending in place of passing a new budget. Another would be to rethink the unhelpful division of appropriation accounts that pit “defense” and “nondefense” spending against each other, as if the defense budget were the sum total needed for security—ignoring the role of diplomacy, sanctions, protecting critical infrastructure, educating a defense industrial workforce, and shoring up supply chains and access to critical minerals.

But confronting the most severe threats since the Cold War will also require spending more, proportionally comparable to the amount we spent between the end of World War II and the fall of the Berlin Wall.

At the low point of defense spending during the Cold War in 1979, the United States spent 4.9 percent of GDP on defense. Today, we are at 3 percent and falling (in real terms). Additional investment is needed—and not through printing more money. Increased spending on national security accounts should be paired with increased revenue measures (personal and corporate taxes) and reforms to entitlement spending rather than adding to the national debt.

Congress will never take the steps to spend what is needed or raise taxes or trim entitlements without the support of an informed American public. Our fifth recommendation is that citizens need to understand the magnitude and complexity of the threats and that the normalcy of their lives is tied up in the United States and its allies preserving the international system they have built over decades.

Recent polling shows that only about 1 percent of Americans think that national security is the biggest problem facing the nation. Compounding the situation is that public trust in the military dropped from 70 percent in 2018 to 48 percent in 2022, while the importance that people place in patriotism has shrunk by half since 1998. This is not a populace ready to shoulder the burden of providing for the common defense.

Indeed, the Army, Navy, and Air Force have struggled of late to recruit the number of Americans required to maintain an already reduced force size. We must ask ourselves whether an all-volunteer force—which completely depends on the American public’s willingness to serve—will be able to handle the threats we face.

Neither major candidate for president is talking much about threats to U.S. national security—that conflict could come to the United States or that we might lose a war with China if one broke out. Important debates over support to Ukraine, the conduct of Israel’s war of self-defense against Hamas and other Iranian proxies, or the advent of artificial intelligence rarely feature explanations of why these things matter to the United States and its ability to secure our interests. It is a failure of leadership across both parties on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue that the public doesn’t understand why U.S. global leadership is needed or that the next war could be affect us at home.

Achieving a national consensus will take time and must start from the top. The next president should speak openly and directly about the threats and propose bold responses. Congress should debate needed legislative reforms and how to pay for the national security system we need. Students should learn about the world and opportunities where they can make a difference—whether in the military, other public service, in industry, or elsewhere. Businesses should consider how their ingenuity can promote national security—just as companies shifted production to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. When presented with the facts, the American people will do what is needed. Waiting for the next Pearl Harbor or 9/11 to start the conversation will be too late.

None of this will be easy, but the next president and right-minded members of Congress have the opportunity to chart a new course.

Foreign Policy · by Jane Harman, Eric S. Edelman

2. ‘New era’ of war beginning, Israel says, as more Hezbollah devices explode across Lebanon

The more we learn about these operations pagers and ICOMs/"walkie-talkies." This shows incredible penetration of the enemy by Israeli intelligence. This operation will go down in history and will rival the Trojan Horse.Perhaps this is the technological equivalent of the trojan horse.

‘New era’ of war beginning, Israel says, as more Hezbollah devices explode across Lebanon

https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/18/middleeast/lebanon-explosions-intl/index.html

By Rob Picheta, Tamara Qiblawi, Christian Edwards and Mick Krever, CNN

 5 minute read 

Updated 1:51 AM EDT, Thu September 19, 2024

An ambulance drives through a southern suburb of Beirut after explosions were heard. Bilal Hussein/AP

CNN — 

Israel said a “new era” of war was beginning Wednesday, tacitly acknowledging its role in shock twin attacks targeting Hezbollah that have pushed the Middle East back to the brink of wider conflict.

Almost exactly 24 hours after explosions targeting the pagers of Hezbollah members killed multiple people, including children, and injured more than 2,800, Lebanon was rocked by more deadly blasts as walkie-talkies detonated in Beirut and the south of the country.

At least 20 people were killed and more than 450 injured in Wednesday’s explosions, Lebanon’s health ministry said.

After declining to comment on Tuesday’s blasts, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant appeared to reference the attacks during a visit Wednesday to the Ramat-David Air Force base in northern Israel.

video

Related video

‘This will end up with a regional war,’ warns Lebanese Foreign Minister

“We are at the beginning of a new era in this war and we need to adapt ourselves,” Gallant said. He praised the “excellent achievements” of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), together with the country’s security agency, the Shin Bet, and its intelligence agency Mossad.

CNN previously reported that Tuesday’s operation was a joint effort between the IDF and Mossad, but Gallant’s comment is the first time an Israeli official has apparently acknowledged Israel’s role in the twin attacks.

An Israeli source familiar with national security later told CNN Israel launched the pager attack in a “use it or lose it” moment when it believed Hezbollah discovered the capability.

The pager explosions came hours after Israel on Monday voted to add another war objective to its conflict with Iran-backed Hamas and Hezbollah: ensuring the safe return of residents from communities along its border with Lebanon to their homes.

After nearly a year of tit-for-tat exchanges between Hezbollah and Israel, tens of thousands of people have been displaced in southern Lebanon and northern Israel. While the return of Israeli residents has long been understood to be a political necessity for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, this is the first time it has been made an official war goal.

On Wednesday, Netanyahu reiterated his pledge to “bring back the residents of the north safely to their homes.”

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A source familiar with the matter told CNN the IDF is moving the elite 98th Division from Gaza to northern Israel. “The center of gravity is moving north,” Gallant said. “The meaning is that we are diverting forces, resources, energy towards the north.”

Smoke rises from a mobile shop in Sidon, south of Beirut, on Wednesday. Hassan Hankir/Reuters

Fresh wave of strikes

Dozens of ambulance crews from the Lebanese Red Cross were working to rescue and evacuate the injured after walkie-talkies exploded across the country Wednesday.

A witness who was at a Hezbollah funeral in Beirut’s southern suburbs on Wednesday described the chaos as walkie-talkies appeared to explode at around 5 p.m. local time (10 a.m. ET).

The witness, who cannot be named for security reasons, told CNN they heard a loud bang followed by screaming. They said the man whose wireless device exploded was covered in blood and his hands had been blown off.

Photos meanwhile showed walkie-talkies that were ripped apart in the explosions.

The Lebanese Civil Defense said it was working to put out fires in 60 homes and shops that started after the walkie-talkies exploded, including one in a lithium battery store.

Lebanon’s communications ministry said the walkie-talkies were a discontinued model made by Japanese firm ICOM. The IC-V82 devices were not supplied by a recognized agent, were not officially licensed and had not been vetted by the security services, the ministry said.

ICOM said in a statement Wednesday it was investigating the reports and that the model linked to the explosions was discontinued a decade ago. ICOM added it could not determine whether they were counterfeit or shipped by the company, though its website says all such IC-V82 devices in circulation are counterfeit.

Two damaged devices after Wednesday's explosions. Obtained by CNN

Hezbollah on Tuesday vowed to respond to the Israeli pager attacks that killed at least 12 people and injured thousands across Lebanon. At least two children were killed in those blasts, Lebanese Health Minister Firass Abiad said.

United Nations Human Rights Chief Volker Türk said the pager attacks were a violation of international humanitarian law, which prohibits the use of booby traps – objects that civilians are likely to be attracted to or are associated with normal civilian daily use – and called for an “independent, thorough and transparent investigation.”

Speculation has mounted over how low-tech wireless communication devices could have been exploited, as well as the origins of those devices and a mysterious supply chain stretching from Taiwan to Hungary. The New York Times reported Tuesday that Israel hid explosives inside a batch of pagers ordered from Taiwanese manufacturer Gold Apollo and destined for Hezbollah. A switch was embedded to detonate them remotely, it added.

But Gold Apollo denied making the pagers bearing its brand name, and pointed to a Budapest-registered distributor as the manufacturer. Hungarian authorities denied Gold Apollo’s suggestion, saying that BAC Consulting “is a trading intermediary” with no manufacturing sites in the country.

Fears of escalation

The twin attacks in Lebanon risk further escalating tensions in the region already heightened over Israel’s war against Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has urged parties to avert any further escalation. The UN chief said the “logic” of making all the devices explode was that of a “pre-emptive strike before a major military operation.”

Lebanon’s Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib told CNN he fears the consecutive attacks signal a move to an “introduction to war.”

“It’s a scary moment and we are afraid (of) coming to war, because we don’t want a war,” said the foreign minister, calling on the UN Security Council and the United States to help re-establish peace along the Lebanon-Israel border.

CNN intelligence and security analyst Bob Baer also suggested Israel’s disruption of Hezbollah’s communications network could pave the way for an imminent military offensive in Lebanon.

“The fact that Israel got into their supply network is unprecedented,” Baer said, highlighting the disruption of Hezbollah’s use of walkie-talkies as particularly damaging because the group relies on them to call in fire coordinates, move ammunition and communicate in real time.

This leaves Hezbollah vulnerable if Israel moves forward with its military plans.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

CNN’s Dana Karni, Tamar Michaelis and Manveena Suri contributed reporting.

3. Here's what we know about the pager and walkie-talkie explosions in Lebanon

Israel will turn Hezbollah into a Luddite organization. Of course when they move away from electronic communications that will be more challenging for intelligence collection.

Here's what we know about the pager and walkie-talkie explosions in Lebanon

https://www.cnn.com/world/live-news/lebanon-explosions-hezbollah-israel-09-19-24-intl-hnk/index.html

From CNN's Jessie Yeung

Lebanese army soldiers stand guard as an ambulance arrives following a reported device explosion during a funeral service for people killed the day prior by exploding pagers, in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon, on September 18. 

Lebanon is reeling after facing deadly back-to-back attacks targeting Hezbollah members – with pagers simultaneously exploding across the country on Tuesday, then walkie-talkies detonating in a similar fashion on Wednesday.

At least 32 people, including children, were killed.

Israel’s defense minister said a “new era” of war was beginning, tacitly acknowledging its role in the shock attacks. “The center of gravity is moving north,” Yoav Gallant said, referencing the Lebanon border.

How were the attacks carried out, where did the devices come from, and will this plunge the Middle East into a wider conflict?

Here’s what we know:

How did it happen? Hezbollah bought the pagers that exploded in recent months, a Lebanese security source told CNN. The New York Times reported that Israel planted explosives next to the battery in each pager, as well as a switch for remote detonation, citing US and other officials.

When CNN tried to trace the pagers’ origin, it found a supply chain that stretched from Asia to Europe.

Why now? Israel may have believed Hezbollah had discovered the pagers’ capability – making it a “use it or lose it” moment, said an Israeli source familiar with national security.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may also have wanted to shore up domestic support. Officials and residents from the northern region have become increasingly vocal about the need to return to their homes after being evacuated due to cross-border attacks.

On Tuesday, Israel made it a war objective to return Israel’s northern residents to their homes near the border.

Here’s how Hezbollah, Iran and others reacted.

• Hezbollah: The militant group has vowed retribution, warning that Israel will “definitely receive a fair punishment for this sinful assault, both in ways that are expected and unexpected.”
• Iran: Iran has said it will respond after its ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, was wounded in the attacks.
• “Violation of international humanitarian law”: The UN rights chief condemned the attacks and urged an “independent, thorough and transparent investigation.”

4. Israel’s Strategic Win

Conclusion:

No one knows where all this may lead. There may be a very large war, or, as after the Shukr and Haniyeh assassinations, Hezbollah and Iran may resort to ineffectual or symbolic responses. Some will no doubt think that this is another reckless Israeli act, or deplore violence as being ineffective, but they are wrong. All indications are that this was a considered act—and extensive yet focused violence, whether we like it or not, can yield results. By this act, among others, the balance of fear has shifted—however much and for however long—in the Middle East. For Israel, a country dwelling in a very hard neighborhood, that is a good thing.

Israel’s Strategic Win

A spectacular attack on Hezbollah is the latest development in the ongoing war between Iranian proxies and the Jewish state.

By Eliot A. Cohen

The Atlantic · by Eliot A. Cohen · September 18, 2024

From a purely technical view, the rippling blasts of thousands of exploding pagers in the hands of Hezbollah represented an extraordinary piece of sabotage—one of the most remarkable in the history of the dark arts. For Israel—if that’s who was behind the attacks—to have so penetrated the Iranian and Hezbollah supply chain, on such a large scale, and with such violent effect is simply astonishing.

The question, as always, is, to what strategic effect? How will this act of violence, however spectacular, shape the ongoing war between Israel, Hezbollah, and Iran? It might very well lead to the cataclysmic battle that many have warned against, as Hezbollah rains down tens of thousands of rockets on Israeli cities, while Israeli armored divisions plunge into Lebanon, causing hundreds of thousands, or even millions, to flee northwards. The ensuing destruction and the civilian death toll might be immense.

Or it might not.

It has long been clear that neither Hezbollah nor Iran are currently spoiling for such an apocalyptic fight—after all, they could have chosen to have it at any time in the last few years. If Hezbollah is battered the way Hamas has been, Iran stands to lose its most effective ally against Israel and by extension the United States. And to seek open war, Hezbollah would have to be willing to sacrifice the population of Lebanese Shi’a from which it has emerged as well as its own cadres of fighters. Both Iran and Hezbollah have to know that Israel now believes itself to be fighting an existential fight, with a different set of rules.

Within Israel, it is striking that so many, including on the dovish end of the spectrum, believe that a large war of this kind with Hezbollah is not only inevitable but necessary. Many Israelis view the status quo, with tens of thousands of Israeli civilians displaced from the border zone, that zone itself depopulated, and a constant, lethal rain of missiles from the north as unacceptable. So it is. The war along Israel’s northern border, or at least the phase of war that Hezbollah initiated after October 7, had nothing to do with immediate Israeli behavior, but everything to do with claiming credit for participating, belatedly, in the campaign launched on that day from Gaza. It is part of a strategy, conceived in Tehran but executed from Beirut, of grinding down Israeli morale and the will to fight, with a view to the extirpation of the Jewish state.

If a much larger war comes now, that is a risk that Israel’s leaders have decided to take, and they will not encounter a great deal of opposition from their population across the spectrum if they fight it without restraint.

In many other ways, however, this is a strategic win for Israel. Set aside the thousands of Hezbollah operatives disabled or killed by these explosions and consider the psychological effect. Hezbollah members will now be unlikely to trust any form of electronics: car keys, cell phones, computers, television sets. Myth and legend, no doubt reinforced by an information-warfare campaign, will magnify Israel’s success in getting inside black boxes no matter how big or how small. An army skittish about any kind of electronics is one that is paralyzed—an individual leader, like Hamas’s Yahya Sinwar, can communicate without a phone, but an entire organization cannot.

Iran, already reeling from the assassination of the political head of Hamas in a Revolutionary Guard Corps guest house on the day of the inauguration of the new president, now has much to wonder about as well. How, they must ask themselves, did the Israelis penetrate the supply chain? How did they get access to the pagers? How did they know that this batch was going to Hezbollah? How did they manage to foil whatever security precautions had been taken?

From a failure so large, witch hunts will follow—no doubt fed, again, by a solid information-warfare campaign. Organizations looking for spies and saboteurs, particularly after such a disaster, are unlikely to be forgiving or measured, and so a spiral of accusations, torture, and executions will likely ensue. War is an affair of the mind as much as anything else. By showing its extraordinary reach, Israel will breed internal fear and suspicion that can be more paralyzing than fear of an enemy.

The Middle East is witnessing a war of coalitions. Israel’s silent partners here include Arab states such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Jordan. For them, this coup is a confirmation that Israel can be a capable partner. The German word bündnisfähig captures a quality of being worthy to be an ally; in this case, the cloak of mystery and surprise, playing to Israel’s existing reputation for successful skullduggery, makes Israel bündnisfähig indeed.

For an Israel that has suffered a grueling year-long war, punctuated by the deaths of soldiers and, even more poignantly, the murder of hostages shortly before they could be liberated, this will be a tremendous morale boost. That, too, is an important benefit of this operation, and one not to be underestimated.

There is something of a message here for the United States and other countries, as well. The Israelis have learned the hard way to ask for forgiveness rather than permission, to act on their own when necessary. Ironically, a reputation of that kind increases the leverage of an ally with its superpower patron, giving it greater incentive to take the smaller partner’s concerns into account.

Finally, there is a large community which is and must remain in the shadows, that is cheering the Israelis on. In 1984, Hezbollah kidnapped William Francis Buckley, the CIA station chief in Beirut. For 15 months they tortured him, before handing him over to a Palestinian group for execution. A tape of his shattered body and mind found its way to Washington. The CIA has never forgotten that. Other intelligence agencies around the world who work against Hezbollah and against Iran have not either. As professionals, they approve of daring and well-executed attacks against that organization, and the resulting good will is not to be despised either.

No one knows where all this may lead. There may be a very large war, or, as after the Shukr and Haniyeh assassinations, Hezbollah and Iran may resort to ineffectual or symbolic responses. Some will no doubt think that this is another reckless Israeli act, or deplore violence as being ineffective, but they are wrong. All indications are that this was a considered act—and extensive yet focused violence, whether we like it or not, can yield results. By this act, among others, the balance of fear has shifted—however much and for however long—in the Middle East. For Israel, a country dwelling in a very hard neighborhood, that is a good thing.

The Atlantic · by Eliot A. Cohen · September 18, 2024

5. Secret single-stage deal could see all hostages released, Sinwar exiled from Gaza

Secret single-stage deal could see all hostages released, Sinwar exiled from Gaza

A secret alternative plan for a hostage deal is emerging, proposing a single step that combines all stages and involves Gaza disarmament.

By ANNA BARSKYSEPTEMBER 19, 2024 11:15

Jerusalem Post

Despite the hostage and ceasefire deal seemingly grinding to a halt due to disagreements between the parties, which the mediators seemingly cannot resolve, a secret alternative plan was being developed that could see all the hostages released and Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in exile, Israel media reported on Thursday morning.

According to sources, US officials believe that a phased deal "doesn't work" and are considering different options. The leading alternative plan suggests combining all the stages into one single step. In Israel and the US, there’s a growing belief that skipping the intermediate stage is necessary because the current negotiations are not succeeding.

The new suggested proposal is for a single, comprehensive deal where all hostages, whether alive or dead, are returned to Israel at once, terrorists are released from Israeli prisons, and the mediators commit to disarming Gaza and moving Hamas leaders to a third country.

In exchange, Israel would agree to withdraw from Gaza, with the mediators setting up a multinational force to oversee the agreement’s implementation, including disarming Gaza (e.g., destroying Hamas’s rocket stockpiles and tunnels).

Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and key terrorists would have the option to leave Gaza for a third country, and many of the terrorists released from Israeli prisons would be sent to third countries and not allowed to return to the Gaza Strip or West Bank.

Screenshot from Hamas Telegram which reads ''Military pressure =death and failure. Hostage deal = freedom and life (credit: Hamas Telegram, screenshot)Sources involved in the alternative plan say that "the current conflict over the Philadelphi Corridor is centered on what will happen during the interim period between stages of the deal. If you look at the framework proposed by President Biden, it suggests a timeframe of only a few weeks. In later stages, Israel is supposed to leave all of the Gaza Strip, even though there’s doubt that the parties will carry out stages B and C of the original plan."

Single-stage deal

According to those discussing the alternative, another reason for a single-stage deal is the growing divide among hostage families in Israel. Relatives of soldiers and young men argue that the current plan means a death sentence for hostages not released in the first stage. Supporters of the single-stage deal believe it would get more public support and unite the hostage families.

For monitoring the multinational force overseeing the arrangement and the Gaza Strip disarmament, several options are being considered, including a force made up of American troops and Sunni Arab states or hiring a private company to secure critical areas.

If the comprehensive deal isn’t implemented within a set timeframe, it would be seen as a breach, and Israel would have the right to return to Gaza. The alternative plan, which exiles Sinwar instead of being targeted and eliminated, matches reports in Arab media.

A senior Egyptian official who spoke with Americans said Sinwar insists on ensuring his safety, meaning Israel would commit not to target him after the deal. Sinwar has sent clear messages, expecting them to reach top Israeli officials.

Jerusalem Post

6. How Israel Built a Modern-Day Trojan Horse: Exploding Pagers

The New York Times gets it. A modern day Trojan Horse. This seems to have been a very sophisticated operation. Certainly unprecedented. 

I wonder if the Chinese are thinking - we should add this to our Unrestricted Warfare campaigns. Especially since China controls so many supply chains. 

But think about the potential for economic disruption when we all begin to suspect threats from all our technology, Next we will have coffee makers and microwaves blowing up in our homes. Our cars will be hijacked. Planes will be taken down. So many potential threats.

We will all become luddites and return to the 18th or 19th centuries. (extreme hyperbole I know).

How Israel Built a Modern-Day Trojan Horse: Exploding Pagers

The New York Times · by Hwaida Saad · September 18, 2024

The Israeli government did not tamper with the Hezbollah phones that exploded, defense and intelligence officials say. It manufactured them as part of an elaborate ruse.

Listen to this article · 7:58 min Learn more

Hezbollah supporters on Wednesday mourning the deaths of four comrades killed in the explosions.Credit...Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times

Sept. 18, 2024, 7:17 p.m. ET

The pagers began beeping just after 3:30 in the afternoon in Lebanon on Tuesday, alerting Hezbollah operatives to a message from their leadership in a chorus of chimes, melodies, and buzzes.

But it wasn’t the militants’ leaders. The pages had been sent by Hezbollah’s archenemy, and within seconds the alerts were followed by the sounds of explosions and cries of pain and panic in streets, shops and homes across Lebanon.

Powered by just a few ounces of an explosive compound concealed within the devices, the blasts sent grown men flying off motorcycles and slamming into walls, according to witnesses and video footage. People out shopping fell to the ground, writhing in agony, smoke snaking from their pockets.

Mohammed Awada, 52, and his son were driving by one man whose pager exploded, he said. “My son went crazy and started to scream when he saw the man’s hand flying away from him,” he said.

By the end of the day, at least a dozen people were dead and more than 2,700 were wounded, many of them maimed. And the following day, 20 more people were killed and hundreds wounded when walkie-talkies in Lebanon also began mysteriously exploding. Some of the dead and wounded were Hezbollah members, but others were not; four of the dead were children.

Israel has neither confirmed nor denied any role in the explosions, but 12 current and former defense and intelligence officials who were briefed on the attack say the Israelis were behind it, describing the operation as complex and long in the making. They spoke to The New York Times on the condition of anonymity, given the sensitivity of the subject.

A man holding a walkie-talkie after removing the battery at a funeral on Lebanon on Wednesday.

The booby-trapped pagers and walkie-talkies were the latest salvo in the decades-long conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, which is based across the border in Lebanon. The tensions escalated after the war began in the Gaza Strip.

Iranian-backed groups like Hezbollah have long been vulnerable to Israeli attacks using sophisticated technologies. In 2020, for example, Israel assassinated Iran’s top nuclear scientist using an A.I.-assisted robot controlled remotely via satellite. Israel has also used hacking to stymie Iranian nuclear development.

In Lebanon, as Israel picked off senior Hezbollah commandos with targeted assassinations, their leader came to a conclusion: If Israel was going high-tech, Hezbollah would go low. It was clear, a distressed Hezbollah chief, Hassan Nasrallah, said, that Israel was using cellphone networks to pinpoint the locations of his operatives.

“You ask me where is the agent,” Mr. Nasrallah told his followers in a publicly televised address in February. “I tell you that the phone in your hands, in your wife’s hands, and in your children’s hands is the agent.”

Then he issued a plea.

“Bury it,” Mr. Nasrallah said. “Put it in an iron box and lock it.”

He had been pushing for years for Hezbollah to invest instead in pagers, which for all their limited capabilities could receive data without giving away a user’s location or other compromising information, according to American intelligence assessments.

Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah. delivering a televised speech to supporters.Credit...Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times

Israeli intelligence officials saw an opportunity.

Even before Mr. Nasrallah decided to expand pager usage, Israel had put into motion a plan to establish a shell company that would pose as an international pager producer.

By all appearances, B.A.C. Consulting was a Hungary-based company that was under contract to produce the devices on behalf of a Taiwanese company, Gold Apollo. In fact, it was part of an Israeli front, according to three intelligence officers briefed on the operation. They said at least two other shell companies were created as well to mask the real identities of the people creating the pagers: Israeli intelligence officers.

B.A.C. did take on ordinary clients, for which it produced a range of ordinary pagers. But the only client that really mattered was Hezbollah, and its pagers were far from ordinary. Produced separately, they contained batteries laced with the explosive PETN, according to the three intelligence officers.

The pagers began shipping to Lebanon in the summer of 2022 in small numbers, but production was quickly ramped up after Mr. Nasrallah denounced cellphones.

Some of Mr. Nasrallah’s fears were spurred by reports from allies that Israel had acquired new means to hack into phones, activating microphones and cameras remotely to spy on their owners. According to three intelligence officials, Israel had invested millions in developing the technology, and word spread among Hezbollah and its allies that no cellphone communication — even encrypted messaging apps — was safe anymore.

The head office of the BAC Consulting in Budapest. Israel was behind the establishment of the company.

Not only did Mr. Nasrallah ban cellphones from meetings of Hezbollah operatives, he ordered that the details of Hezbollah movements and plans never be communicated over cellphones, said three intelligence officials. Hezbollah officers, he ordered, had to carry pagers at all times, and in the event of war, pagers would be used to tell fighters where to go.

Over the summer, shipments of the pagers to Lebanon increased, with thousands arriving in the country and distributed among Hezbollah officers and their allies, according to two American intelligence officials.

To Hezbollah, they were a defensive measure, but in Israel, intelligence officers referred to the pagers as “buttons” that could be pushed when the time seemed ripe.

That moment, it appears, came this week.

Speaking to his security cabinet on Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would do whatever was necessary to enable more than 70,000 Israelis driven away by the fighting with Hezbollah to return home, according to reports in Israeli news outlets. Those residents, he said, could not return without “a fundamental change in the security situation in the north,” according to a statement from the prime minister’s office.

On Tuesday, the order was given to activate the pagers.

To set off the explosions, according to three intelligence and defense officials, Israel triggered the pagers to beep and sent a message to them in Arabic that appeared as though it had come from Hezbollah’s senior leadership.

Seconds later, Lebanon was in chaos.

With so many people wounded, ambulances crawled through the streets, and hospitals were soon overwhelmed. Hezbollah said at least eight of its fighters were killed, but noncombatants were also drawn into the fray.

On Sept. 18, 2024, Relatives and friends of Fatima Jaafar Mahmoud Abdullah mourn her after she was killed by a pager explosion the previous day.Credit...Diego Ibarra Sanchez for The New York Times

In southern Lebanon, in the village of Saraain, one young girl, Fatima Abdullah, had just come home from her first day of fourth grade when she heard her father’s pager begin to beep, her aunt said. She picked up the device to bring it to him and was holding it when it exploded, killing her. Fatima was 9.

On Wednesday, as thousands gathered in Beirut’s southern suburbs to attend an outdoor funeral for two people killed in the blasts, chaos erupted anew: There was another explosion.

Amid the acrid smoke, panicked mourners stampeded for the streets, seeking shelter in the lobbies of nearby buildings. Many were afraid that their phone, or the phone of a person standing next to them in the crowd, was about to explode.

“Turn off your phone!” some shouted. “Take out the battery!” Soon a voice on a loudspeaker at the funeral urged everyone to do this.

For the Lebanese, the second wave of explosions was confirmation of the lesson from the day before: They now live in a world in which the most common of communication devices can be transformed into instruments of death.

One woman, Um Ibrahim, stopped a reporter in the middle of the confusion and begged to use a cellphone to call her children. Her hands shaking, she dialed a number and then screamed a directive:

“Turn off your phones now!”

Liam Stack and Euan Ward contributed reporting.

Sheera Frenkel is a reporter based in the San Francisco Bay Area, covering the ways technology impacts everyday lives with a focus on social media companies, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, Telegram and WhatsApp. More about Sheera Frenkel

Ronen Bergman is a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, based in Tel Aviv. His latest book is “Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations,” published by Random House. More about Ronen Bergman

See more on: Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah

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The New York Times · by Hwaida Saad · September 18, 2024

7. How a Covert Attack Against Hezbollah Unfolded Across Lebanon’s Streets and Malls

Incredible planning, sophistication, and boldness.

How a Covert Attack Against Hezbollah Unfolded Across Lebanon’s Streets and Malls

Pagers and walkie-talkies detonated as members of the militant group ate lunch, attended funerals and went about daily life

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/pager-explosions-lebanon-how-20cd5ffa?mod=hp_lead_pos1

By Adam Chamseddine, Stephen KalinFollow and Omar Abdel-BaquiFollow

Sept. 18, 2024 6:15 pm ET

BEIRUT—At 3:25 p.m. Tuesday, two members of the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah were eating lunch at a shopping mall in the Lebanese capital when the pager that one of the men was carrying exploded, leaving him severely injured and bleeding from the arms and eyes.

Across town at 3:34 p.m., another blast tore through a Hezbollah office. A pager used for internal communications received a text message consisting of a series of numbers, then beeped for five seconds before detonating, throwing a man from his chair and destroying his desk, a witness said.

Within minutes, hundreds of pagers issued to Hezbollah officials in Beirut and around the country exploded, killing 12 people and injuring more than 2,800, Lebanese authorities said. Emergency rooms were flooded with blast victims. Hezbollah’s leaders blamed Israel and pledged to retaliate.

Then, on Wednesday, it happened again. This time walkie-talkies and other electronics used by the Shiite militant group began blowing up, sending a second wave of casualties into crowded hospitals and further undermining the Shiite militants’ ability to communicate.

What We Know About the Hezbollah Pager Attack

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What We Know About the Hezbollah Pager Attack

Play video: What We Know About the Hezbollah Pager Attack

Pagers carried by thousands of Hezbollah operatives exploded across Lebanon around the same time on Tuesday. WSJ’s Sune Engel Rasmussen explains what we know about the attack. Photo: Mohamed Azakir/Reuters

By the end of the day, 20 more people were dead and 450 more injured. The attacks also exposed the identities of thousands of Hezbollah operatives, many of whom worked covertly—a coup for Israeli intelligence and a likely surprise for some Hezbollah members’ relatives and neighbors.

The blasts appeared to have been one of Israel’s most ambitious covert operations, aimed at disrupting a foe that has amassed a formidable arsenal and that, since the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, has regularly exchanged fire with Israeli forces across the country’s northern border.

On Wednesday, the country’s defense minister said Israel was starting a new phase of the war in the north. Its top general said, “We have many capabilities that we haven’t yet activated.”

Hezbollah, a U.S.-designated terrorist group, struggled to come to grips with the likelihood that Israeli spies had managed to covertly insert explosives into a batch of pagers and into a set of batteries that were used to power the portable radios—and then to detonate them remotely.

One explosion at around 5 p.m. on Wednesday happened at a funeral in Beirut’s southern suburbs for Hezbollah members killed by Tuesday’s pager blasts. It sent a plume of black smoke skyward near a stage erected for speeches. 

Hezbollah supporters during a funeral procession in a suburb of Beirut on Wednesday. Photo: Manu Brabo for WSJ

Within moments, news spread that another round of explosive attacks was under way, and some mourners panicked and fled.

A Hezbollah member who took an injured colleague for medical attention on Tuesday said he thought the man’s pager explosion was an isolated event, and said he was shocked when he arrived at the hospital.

“The entrance was swamped with people, and a fellow member told me the hospital was at capacity,” he said. “It was only then that I understood this was a large-scale attack,” he said.

Details emerging from investigations into the massive attacks pointed to a highly complex plan carried out by Israel, in which explosives were planted in thousands of devices distributed to Hezbollah members.

This still from a video shows a walkie-talkie that exploded inside a house in Lebanon on Wednesday. Photo: Associated Press

But it also drew condemnation from some international observers and health officials as an imprecise and widespread attack that put civilians at risk for little clear military purpose.

Explosions happened on streets and in markets. At least two children were among the dead. A Lebanese army officer said a radio exploded Wednesday in a car parked at the American University of Beirut Medical Center, or AUBMC, across the street from the emergency-room entrance.

Dr. Firass Abiad, the Lebanese health minister, told The Wall Street Journal that many of the pagers blew up in the faces of people who grabbed them after they received a message. And it happened everywhere.

“Some of the injuries were because people were on their bikes, or some people were in their cars,” he said. “Some people were with their families. That’s why their children were affected.” 

An image grab taken from a video posted on social media Tuesday appears to show an explosion and a man falling to the floor at a vegetable market in Beirut. Photo: AFP/Getty Images

He said it was difficult for him to determine how many of the dead and wounded were Hezbollah members and how many were civilians. Many of those who were injured were working in regular jobs when the pagers exploded, he said.

“Whoever planned this didn’t know where those pagers were going to end up,” he said. “There is a lot of indiscriminate nature in this attack.”

Israel’s government has come under increasing pressure from voters to push Hezbollah back from the Israeli border. Since Hezbollah began firing into Israel after Oct. 7, tens of thousands of Israelis have fled their homes in the north and have lived as displaced persons in other parts of the country.

An injured man undergoing an operation at a hospital in Beirut on Wednesday. Photo: mohamed azakir/Reuters

Israeli leaders have vowed to make it safe for them to return home and have engaged in near-daily exchanges of fire with militants in Lebanon. Israeli strikes have killed hundreds of Hezbollah operatives and prompted tens of thousands of people to flee southern Lebanon.

Israel’s military hasn’t commented directly on the effects of this week’s attacks. 

Bassem Badran waited outside AUBMC’s emergency room, where one of his friends was in critical condition and two others were being treated for lesser wounds. 

The friend with the worst injuries had been shopping in a supermarket when his pager exploded, blowing off his hand.

The attacks brought Lebanon to a standstill, a significant distinction for a country that has suffered for decades from assassinations, large bombings and Israeli airstrikes, including a 15-year civil war, the 1982 Israeli invasion and repeated wars since then between Israel and Hezbollah.

Lebanese soldiers and firefighters outside a shop after what was believed to be a walkie-talkie exploded inside it, in the southern port city of Sidon, Lebanon, on Wednesday. Photo: Mohammad Zaatari/Associated Press

Lebanon’s health minister said that more than 2,000 wounded people had arrived at hospitals within the first half-hour after the pager attack and that by midday Wednesday, hospitals had performed some 500 operations including on people’s faces, eyes and hands.

Ghassan Abu Sitta, a plastic surgeon at AUBMC, said: “Basically you have thousands of young men with almost identical injuries leading to permanent disabilities. These injuries are affecting the hands and one or both eyes.”

It took some time for the scale of the attack to dawn on people. Much of the country first learned what was happening online, where videos spilled out showing pagers erupting and then ghastly scenes from hospitals of mangled hands, missing eyes and bloodied torsos.

In the initial moments after the blasts began, some people said they panicked and unplugged their routers and even television sets, fearing that the attack could be more widespread. 

A Lebanese soldier at an emergency-room entrance in Beirut on Tuesday. Photo: Manu Brabo for WSJ

Ambulances wailed through Beirut’s crowded streets, and hundreds of people gathered outside emergency rooms at hospitals across the city. At AUBMC, ambulances pulled up every few minutes to unload victims.

Dr. Georges Ghanem, crisis unit director at the Lebanese American University Medical Center, said more than 40 patients were with complex injuries, including some missing eyes and limbs. 

Because eyes require advanced surgery, supplies and specialists were strained, and operations had to be delayed hours. 

“The limited doctors, equipment and space in comparison to all the casualties happening at the same time across the country made the response very difficult,” Ghanem said. “Now we are working on securing prosthetics for those who lost their limbs.”

Jared Malsin contributed to this article.

Write to Stephen Kalin at stephen.kalin@wsj.com and Omar Abdel-Baqui at omar.abdel-baqui@wsj.com

Copyright ©2024 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Appeared in the September 19, 2024, print edition as 'Complex Planning Preceded Two Attacks on Militants'.

8. Small Business: Instruments and Casualties of the Censorship – Industrial Complex

This has not made the mainstream media. So far it is only being reported in Racket News by Matt Taibbi https://www.racket.news/p/house-committee-rips-state-department?utm

Note the findings regarding the GEC and NED.

The 66 page report can be downloaded at the link below.

Perhaps this will be viewed with a partisan lens (see Section III below). However, facts are facts. And the first paragraph of this excerpt should be accepted by all of us. The second paragraph highlights our challenge in today's information environment and gets to the heart of the issue.

The purpose of the First Amendment’s Free Speech Clause is to foster “an uninhibited marketplace of ideas,” testing the “truth” of various ideas in the competition of the market.12 The Federal government cannot support organizations that interfere with domestic press operations based on whether they are considered trustworthy or whether they adhere to certain viewpoints. Government abridgement of viewpoint-based speech and the press is impermissible regardless of which political party it offends.

The internet age has seen the rise of independent media outlets, the vast majority of which are small businesses. They must be free to compete online without government interference. At a time when legacy media is losing trust and audiences by parroting partisan narratives, ironically whether or not that narrative is factually correct, it is more important than ever that independent media outlets be allowed to compete in the free marketplace of ideas. However, as award records and awardee operations show, the scales are tipped in favor of outlets which express certain partisan narratives rather than holding the government accountable.

12 Red Lion Broadcasting Co., v. F.C.C., 89 S. Ct. 1794, 1806 (1969).

Small Business: Instruments and Casualties of the Censorship – Industrial Complex

The House Committee on Small Business Interim Staff Report 2024

https://smallbusiness.house.gov/uploadedfiles/house_committee_on_small_business_-_cic_report_september_2024.pdf

I. Executive Summary

The House Committee on Small Business (Committee or HCSB) is charged with investigating all “problems of all types of small business” under House Rule X. As part of this responsibility, the Committee is investigating the Federal funding and promotion of small entities who purposely interfere with the ability of small domestic businesses to compete online because of their lawful speech, as well as tech start-ups and other small businesses with products used to surveil and ultimately suppress lawful speech. Over the course of the Committee’s 14-month investigation, the Committee found:

Finding 1: The Federal government has fueled a censorship ecosystem impacting not only individuals’ First Amendment rights, but the ability of certain small businesses to compete online.

Finding 2: The Federal government has funded, developed, and promoted entities that aim to demonetize news and information outlets because of their lawful speech, impacting domestic businesses’ operations, reputation, customer reach, and revenue.

Finding 3: The Global Engagement Center (GEC), an interagency body housed within the U.S. Department of State (State), circumvented its strict international mandate by funding, developing, then promoting tech start-ups and other small businesses in the disinformation detection space to private sector entities with domestic censorship capabilities.

Finding 4: The National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a private non-profit funded almost entirely by Congressional appropriations, violated its international restrictions by collaborating with fact-checking entities in assessing domestic press businesses’ admission to a credibility organization.

Throughout this investigation, the Committee obtained nonpublic GEC and NED award information for direct and indirect grant recipients. State repeatedly slow rolled Congressional document requests, disregarded prioritized information, and provided incomplete and inadequate productions. This led the Committee to issue a subpoena on June 13, 2024. Despite the fact the Committee subpoenaed documents which it had been requesting for more than 14 months, State said it would take approximately 21 months from the date of the subpoena to produce these documents in full—around March 2026. In the absence of compliance with the subpoena, the Committee now remits this interim report on its present findings until such a time where the subpoenaed information is provided.

III. Committee Investigation

The Committee opened this investigation following receipt of constituent complaints about partisan ‘fact-checking’ organizations interfering with their ability to compete online. This was concurrent with investigative reporting that uncovered the GEC awarding these companies taxpayer dollars.13 Given the domestic small business impacts, the flurry of reporting on Federal funds and resources being improperly used to target American speech, and the GEC’s strictly international mandate, the Committee sent an initial request for award records to the GEC on June 7, 2023. Subsequent requests for additional documentation were made over the course of one year, during which the Committee gave significant leeway in time and scope to State. Despite these accommodations, only two heavily redacted lists of awardees were produced, with none of the requested award application, risk assessment, or contract information.

This fractional production, in addition to State’s significant delays, responsive failures, inattention to detail, and failure to perform simple due diligence to resolve issues, led the Committee to subpoena State for the information on June 13, 2024. Despite the subpoena, to date, the vast majority of requested documents have not been produced. State has informed Committee staff that the subpoena will take an inexcusably long time to fulfill - approximately 21 months. State has had 14 months to comply with Committee requests and should have been working on fulfillment prior to the issuance of the subpoena. Further, State and the GEC are subject to several overlapping investigations which would have caused them to already compile relevant information. The aforementioned failures are all indicative of a wider problem experienced by other committees- that the Biden- Harris Administration does not properly adhere to Congressional oversight.

Thanks to extensive work across this space, the Committee was able to learn from the findings of other committees and investigative journalists when stonewalled by the Biden-Harris Administration. Over the course of this investigation, the Committee reviewed the following: Federal award applications, contracts, and progress reports; Federal agency communications, meeting notes, and reports; Office of the Inspector General (OIG) reports; Congressional committee reports, hearings, and Statements for the Record; Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) productions; private company reports, press releases, and tax documents; news articles, independent investigative reports, interviews, court filings and rulings, and statutes. The approximate total pages reviewed is 6,185. The interviews and hearings total approximately 40 hours.

9. Air Force Ospreys Set to Again Deploy Abroad After Deadly Crash, But Concerns Linger on Mechanical Issues

Air Force Ospreys Set to Again Deploy Abroad After Deadly Crash, But Concerns Linger on Mechanical Issues

military.com · by Thomas Novelly · September 18, 2024

Air Force Special Operations Command said Wednesday that it's just a matter of weeks before the service's Osprey aircraft will again be deployed to combatant commanders across the globe following a grounding and safety checks triggered by a deadly crash last year.

Lt. Gen. Michael Conley, the head of the command, told reporters at an Air and Space Force Association conference outside of Washington, D.C., that he's confident in the aircraft and that more than half of the fleet is already cleared to fly and ready to deploy. He said the entire fleet should be flying by early next year.

The news comes less than a year after a deadly November CV-22 Osprey crash in Japan that claimed the lives of eight airmen. The incident led to groundings across the three services that fly the tiltrotor aircraft and raised new concerns over mechanical issues with components in the Osprey's gearbox.

"As of right now, we're about 60% of the fleet that's returned to flying. We've got about the same number of aircrew that are returned fully," Conley said. "So, we will, along with our two overseas wings that have CV-22s that are almost back to full mission readiness, we will deploy out here in the coming weeks back to support other geographic commanders."

Conley said that any restrictions on the aircraft imposed by the Osprey V-22 Joint Program Office will not deter how combatant commanders can utilize them. Naval Air Systems Command, or NAVAIR, which runs the Joint Program Office, has restricted the Ospreys from flying more than 30 minutes from a suitable landing spot, Military.com has previously reported.

He added that, every 10 days or so, the service is completing safety checks and clearing roughly three Ospreys for flight. Conley anticipates the entire 51 CV-22s in the fleet will be returned to service by late 2024 or early 2025.

The decision to start providing CV-22s to combatant commanders comes as families have lost airmen and Marines in recent years due to fatal Osprey crashes. Many are still grappling with grief and trying to make sense of the tragedies.

A family member of an airman who died in the Nov. 29 crash in Japan told Military.com that they were skeptical of the Air Force deploying Ospreys again and said the loved ones of aircrews should be prepared for the worst.

"Our hearts go out to the families of the next unlucky Osprey crew," the family member said. "Words cannot do the experience justice, but know that the Osprey families are here for you."

The Nov. 29 Air Force Special Operations Command crash of the CV-22 with the call sign Gundam 22 claimed the lives of Maj. Jeffrey Hoernemann; Maj. Eric Spendlove; Maj. Luke Unrath; Capt. Terrell Brayman; Tech. Sgt. Zachary Lavoy; Staff Sgt. Jake Turnage; Senior Airman Brian Johnson; and Staff Sgt. Jake Galliher.

Military.com reported -- after obtaining internal safety documents examining the Nov. 29 crash -- that a mechanical issue that caused the incident had been identified as far back as 2013 and a warning was sent to the Pentagon, but the concerns went unresolved. The cause of the Japan crash was determined to be the fracturing of a high-speed planetary pinion gear in the aircraft's prop rotor gearbox.

Despite the earlier concerns brought up in the crash report, Conley told reporters that he did not believe there were any concerns from a manufacturing standpoint with Bell-Boeing, the joint venture between the two companies that makes the aircraft.

Additionally, Vice Adm. Carl Chebi, who heads NAVAIR, told Congress in June that he did not expect the fleet to be fully operational until mid-2025. But Conley said his Ospreys will be ready to go sooner than that.

"So, there's certainly nothing foolproof, but we've learned a lot during the investigation and both Bell and NAVAIR, in their own relations, have learned a lot, and we're taking what we've learned to try to prevent this from happening again," Conley said.

Prior Air Force policy says that after three "chip burn" lights -- an indicator that the gears are shedding metal -- Osprey crews should "land as soon as practical," which is the first and least serious of three landing conditions. But the policy also gives pilots the opportunity to press on.

The Gundam 22 crew did press on after the chip burn lights and did not violate their training. Following the crash, AFSOC changed its policies, and crews are now advised to land as soon as practical after a single chip burn and "as soon as possible" following a second chip burn.

Amber Sax, the wife of Capt. John Sax, a pilot who died on a Marine Corps Osprey when it crashed into the southern California desert on June 8, 2022, told Military.com she still doesn't believe there are enough public-facing solutions to the mechanical problems that have plagued the aircraft.

"The fear many surviving family members continue to have is that the failures that caused the loss of their loved one have not been fully addressed and corrected. We each have a list of friends, some we consider family, who continue to fly in the Osprey," Sax said. "The thought of 20 or more, given the number of lives an Osprey can carry, haunts many of us daily. We need to know it's been fixed and it won't happen again."

Conley reiterated his confidence in the steps AFSOC had taken to address the issues and said, in regard to the Gundam 22 crash, that "the data suggests it's very rare."

"To be blunt about it, I would not put the men and women of AFSOC back in the plane if I wasn't confident that it could do what we needed to do," Conley added.

-- Konstantin Toropin contributed to this report.

military.com · by Thomas Novelly · September 18, 2024

10. AFSOC still wants 75 light attack aircraft despite Congress’ doubts

This is the struggle for SOCOM in many areas.  

Excerpt:

Said GAO: “We found that SOCOM was limited in its ability to justify the acquisition of the Armed Overwatch aircraft for three reasons. First, because SOCOM decided on the size of the fleet before conducting required analyses. Second, SOCOM did not assess how changes in the aircraft’s capabilities could affect the number needed for operations. And third, that SOCOM has not reevaluated its needs despite changes to operational missions.”

AFSOC still wants 75 light attack aircraft despite Congress’ doubts

“The world's changed a little bit,” the top Air Force special operator says.

By Patrick Tucker

Science & Technology Editor, Defense One

September 18, 2024 08:47 PM ET

defenseone.com · by Patrick Tucker

The Air Force’s special operators trimmed the number of light attack planes they’re asking for after Congress looked askance. But they still need them, the commander of Air Force Special Operations Command said Wednesday.

“Our requirement still remains 75” OA-1K aircraft to fight extremist groups or other low-tech adversaries, AFSOC commander Lt. Gen. Michael E. Conley told reporters at the AIr-Space-Cyber conference outside Washington. “It is possible that we don't buy those 75 in the same timeframe that we wanted to, but that's still our requirement.”

In 2020, AFSOC launched its quest for a small propeller-driven attack plane for close air support and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions. Dubbed Armed Overwatch, the program aimed to buy 75 planes by 2029 for just $2 billion (a ceiling of $3 billion,) a fraction of the cost of larger aircraft. AFSOC eventually chose the OA-1K, a crop-duster made by Air Tractor and given sensors and a gun by L3Harris.

But the program has since drawn fire from lawmakers who wonder about the planes’ utility.

“Congress has expressed concerns about the Armed Overwatch program. It has delayed the reprogramming of funds for the aircraft and required the Department of Defense to provide information about its plans,” GAO said in a report this month.

In March, AFSOC cut the number it was acquiring from 75 to 62. But AFSOC still hasn’t justified why it needs 75 light attack aircraft, planes that would be relatively useless in a fight with an adversary like China, with advanced air defenses and fighter jets.

Said GAO: “We found that SOCOM was limited in its ability to justify the acquisition of the Armed Overwatch aircraft for three reasons. First, because SOCOM decided on the size of the fleet before conducting required analyses. Second, SOCOM did not assess how changes in the aircraft’s capabilities could affect the number needed for operations. And third, that SOCOM has not reevaluated its needs despite changes to operational missions.”

On Wednesday, Conley said, “I think from when OA-1k was conceptualized and decided on until now, the world's changed a little bit…I think it still provides a cost effective close air support platform, which is one of the missions that it was designed for.”

AFSOC is still digesting the GAO report but “Our requirement still remains 75,” based on a Capability Development Document AFSOC has created, he said.

Conley said that while the Defense Department remains highly focused on buying weapons to deter China, the world is more chaotic today than many experts thought it would be a few years ago. He said continued turmoil and ongoing operations in the Middle East show that low-tech extremist groups continue to be a threat, despite the Pentagon’s hopes of moving focus to the Pacific.

“I tell my team every day, the Pacific is incredibly important to us for all the reasons…China, China, China. We get it. But we've also got the rest of the world,” he said. “I don't think we're done in CENTCOM. As a nation, I don’t think we’re done in CENTCOM.”.

Conley cautioned against drawing conclusions about the utility of low-tech attack aircraft based on present-day capabilities. Such assumptions overlook the sort of rapid adaptation that might make such aircraft more useful against a wider variety of missions.

“You know, we're a command that took an AC-130 or a C-47 and put guns on the side, or the command that put jets on a C-130 to try to get it out of the stadium in Iran. That's our DNA. And I think once we get the aircraft and we start flying our crew members and our maintainers will figure out novel ways that will be relevant in the future fight as well as the current one.”

defenseone.com · by Patrick Tucker

11. US special ops cuts armed overwatch buy, still needs to justify need

If it is hard to quantify the required effects and show justification, imagine how hard it is to show the effects of psychological operations (and other SOF disciplines). and justify its force structure.

US special ops cuts armed overwatch buy, still needs to justify need

Defense News · by Todd South · September 18, 2024

U.S. Special Operations Command cut its desired purchase of 75 armed overwatch aircraft to 62 following a recommendation last year from a government watchdog to slow down the program’s acquisition.

Now, in a recent update to its recommendation, the Government Accountability Office noted that while the number of requested aircraft had been reduced, U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command, or AFSOC, officials still hadn’t justified why they need that many aircraft.

The armed overwatch program aims to field fixed-wing aircraft for AFSOC to deploy to austere locations, Defense News previously reported. The current aircraft at the program’s center is the AT-802U Sky Warden, a single-engine, two-person platform made by L3Harris Technologies and Air Tractor.

The command expected to spend $2.2 billion to buy the originally requested 75 aircraft, which replaces the U-28 Draco.

SOCOM had purchased 16 Sky Wardens as of last year, with plans to purchase another dozen this year, Defense News reported.

The most recent update, published Sept. 5, notes SOCOM has plans to divest two of its intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, or ISR, platforms. However, those platforms were used to support armed overwatch.

The watchdog “found that SOCOM has not taken steps to plan for, or add, critical ISR capabilities provided by soon-to-be divested aircraft,” according to the GAO report.

SOCOM also failed to address risks associated with losing those capabilities if the new armed overwatch aircraft didn’t have them as part of the platform’s fielding, the report found.

The armed overwatch program’s austere mission means that developers must provide an aircraft with minimal logistics and support needs.

The aircraft itself must be able to give ground troops close air support, precision strike and ISR capabilities, according to the report. It’s primarily expected to be used in such roles in counterterrorism and irregular warfare missions, according to program information.

The GAO report stated SOCOM “concurred” or “partially concurred” with its six major recommendations.

Those recommendations included reevaluating the number of aircraft needed; limiting procurement to the minimum needed for testing until the fleet size is determined; assessing risks to missions if the ISR capabilities are not added; identify challenges to operate and deploy the aircraft; and assess whether the program remains an affordable priority; and update concepts for the types of operations the aircraft might conduct.

Fiscal 2026 is marked in the GAO report as a key year for deadlines such as completing the operational test and evaluation, making a full rate production decision and reaching initial operational capability.

The U.S. Air Force began a capability assessment in 2017 to evaluate potential light attack aerial platforms for use with coalition partners. At the time, then-Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson told Congress that the purpose was to free up more advanced and costly assets for other tasks.

Wilson cited an example of F-22 fighter jets being used to strike a drug laboratory in Afghanistan — a mission that could have been accomplished with a less sophisticated platform at a lower cost.

After a series of experiments, the program transferred to SOCOM. In 2021, the command filed its request for 75 aircraft, according to a Congressional Research Services report.

The per-hour operating cost of an aircraft like the Sky Warden is about 2% to 4% of that of advanced fighters, the report noted.

About Todd South

Todd South has written about crime, courts, government and the military for multiple publications since 2004 and was named a 2014 Pulitzer finalist for a co-written project on witness intimidation. Todd is a Marine veteran of the Iraq War.

12. Pentagon Worries Israel Is Close to Launching Ground War in Lebanon

An alternative analysis might assess this action was taken to prevent war by disrupting Hezollah's command and control network and make it question what other areas Israeli intelligence has penetrated especially if this action was taken based on an Israeli assessment that Hezbollah may have intended to launch its own attack. Was Israel taking pre-emptive action? Some assessments have speculated that Israel took the action because this operation was about to be compromised so it became a use it or lose it situation.

Again, was this a preemptive strike on a couple of levels?

Pentagon Worries Israel Is Close to Launching Ground War in Lebanon

Wave of exploding electronic devices used by Hezbollah members could be a prelude to a wider attack

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/pentagon-worries-israel-is-close-to-launching-ground-war-in-lebanon-33683bf4?mod=latest_headlines

By Alexander Ward

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, Nancy A. Youssef

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 and Lara Seligman

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Updated Sept. 19, 2024 12:06 am ET

A strike in the southern Lebanese village of Odaisseh near the border with Israel on Wednesday. Photo: Rabih Daher/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

A wave of deadly explosions of pagers and other electronic devices carried by militants in Lebanon has sharply heightened Pentagon concern about a potential ground war erupting in southern Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah.

Even before the hundreds of widely dispersed detonations Tuesday and Wednesday, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told other senior Pentagon officials in a Monday meeting that he feared Israel could soon launch an offensive, after months of back-and-forth rocket and air attacks with Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed militia group that controls much of southern Lebanon.

U.S. alarm about a possible invasion has intensified since the brazen attacks in Lebanon. “I am very concerned about this spiraling out of control,” a senior defense official said, echoing comments since Tuesday by other Pentagon aides.

Israel’s military moved a division of commando and paratrooper soldiers to the north in recent days from the southern part of the country, after it had operated for months in Gaza, according to a person familiar with the matter. The division consists of thousands of soldiers.

Since the Gaza war broke out last October, the Biden administration has worried about a full-scale conflict on Israel’s northern frontier that could draw in the U.S. and even Iran.

Hezbollah militants Wednesday at a funeral for people who died after electronic pagers exploded earlier this week. Photo: Anwar Amro/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

U.S. officials stressed that they haven’t yet seen any indicators such as calling up reserves to indicate an imminent invasion. Even once a decision is made, it could take weeks before Israeli forces are in position to launch a major offensive. But Israel could order a smaller operation more quickly, without other major military moves, U.S. defense officials said.

Israeli officials said Wednesday that they were beginning a new stage in their clash with Hezbollah, unless the militant group pulls back its forces from southern Lebanon and halts cross-border rocket and mortar attacks, which have forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of Israelis from the north.

“We are at the start of a new phase in the war—we are allocating resources and forces to the northern arena and our mission is clear: ensuring the safe return of Israel’s northern communities to their homes,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant posted Wednesday on X. “To do so, the security situation must be changed.”

John Kirby, U.S. National Security Council spokesman, told reporters Wednesday that there was still a way to end the crisis through diplomacy, not war. “Nothing is inevitable,” he said of a potential conflict.

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, right, with White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. The U.S. had no involvement with attacks against Hezbollah using exploding pagers and walkie-talkies, the White House said Wednesday. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Hezbollah promised to retaliate against Israel for the covert attacks on its communications. Israeli officials have made no public comments about the explosions. The attacks Wednesday killed 20 people and injured more than 450, after Tuesday’s attacks killed 12 and injured more than 2,800 people, said Lebanon’s government, which blamed Israel.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, at a news conference in Cairo Wednesday, said it was “imperative that all parties refrain from any actions that could escalate the conflict.”

Hezbollah has fired hundreds of rockets at northern Israel, mostly at military targets, and most have been intercepted by Israel’s defense systems. Hezbollah has targeted residential areas as well. Hezbollah said it would halt attacks when Israel ceases its assault on Hamas in Gaza.

Both sides have hesitated to escalate the conflict, fearing consequences that would likely be devastating.

The sharpening tensions between Israel and Hezbollah came less than a month after the two adversaries pulled back from a looming clash following Israel’s killing of a senior Hezbollah leader in Beirut and the assassination of a leader of the militant group Hamas in Tehran.

What We Know About the Hezbollah Pager Attack

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What We Know About the Hezbollah Pager Attack

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Pagers carried by thousands of Hezbollah operatives exploded across Lebanon around the same time on Tuesday. WSJ’s Sune Engel Rasmussen explains what we know about the attack. Photo: Mohamed Azakir/Reuters

Hezbollah launched hundreds of rockets and drones at Israel on Aug. 25 as around 100 Israeli warplanes struck targets in Lebanon, a move Israel said was intended to pre-empt a Hezbollah attack. The exchange appeared to result in few casualties and limited damage. Afterward, Hezbollah said its retaliatory operation had concluded. 

It still has a formidable arsenal of weaponry that includes 150,000 missiles that can reach any city in Israel, as well as 30,000 full-time fighters, many of whom are battle-hardened from a decade of fighting in Syria’s civil war. Naim Qassem, Hezbollah’s deputy leader, said Saturday in Beirut that a full-scale war with Israel would result in “large losses on both sides.”

Gallant told U.S. special envoy Amos Hochstein Monday in Tel Aviv that “the only way left to return the residents of the North to their homes is via military action,” according to a statement from the minister’s office. 

The Israeli defense minister, who has clashed repeatedly with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on war strategy, had just the day before delivered the same message to Austin over the phone. Austin’s response was to urge Israel to “give diplomatic negotiations time to succeed,” according to Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder.

A U.S. defense official said the secretary’s impression was that Israel was considering new military options for Lebanon.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in Tel Aviv last year. U.S. officials have urged them to give diplomacy a chance to succeed in Israel’s conflict at its northern border. Photo: Press Pool/Reuters

“You would do this as shaping one before doing something else,” a former defense official said, referring to the timing of the detonations of pagers, walkie-talkies and other electronic devices.

Hochstein met Monday with Netanyahu and implored him not to authorize a war against the Lebanese group, a senior administration official said. Israel hasn’t given up entirely on U.S.-brokered attempts to get Hezbollah to pull its forces back to the Litani River in Lebanon, 18 miles from the Israel-Lebanon border, but an Israeli official said, “It can’t go on forever.”

Shortly before the pagers detonated across Lebanon Tuesday, Gallant again called Austin to warn him about an imminent operation without divulging details, U.S. officials said. The U.S. had no involvement in Tuesday or Wednesday’s attacks, the White House said.

“The region is headed for chaos,” a Middle East official said Wednesday.

The U.S. has an aircraft carrier in the region, the USS Abraham Lincoln, and positioned an amphibious assault ship carrying Marines and helicopters in Greece, along with other ships and a missile-carrying submarine, the USS Georgia. In addition, the U.S. has sent a squadron of F-22 jet fighters and expanded its air defenses around the region to protect ground forces based there.

Lebanese soldiers watch as colleagues prepare to detonate a walkie-talkie found at American University Hospital in Beirut on Wednesday. Photo: Hassan Ammar/Associated Press

The Biden administration has warned Americans for months to leave Lebanon because of the risks of intensified fighting. A State Department warning in late July urged Americans not to travel to Lebanon and for those living in the country’s south to depart by any means available.

The U.S. has formulated plans to evacuate Americans and other noncombatants from Lebanon. One contingency involves evacuating roughly 50,000 U.S. citizens, residents and their families to Cyprus, defense officials said. In 2022, the State Department estimated that 86,000 Americans lived in the Middle Eastern country.

The plan calls for civilian ships to carry evacuees roughly 160 nautical miles across the Mediterranean from Lebanon to Cyprus.

Theodoros Gotsis, a spokesman for Cyprus’s Foreign Ministry, said in an interview that Washington would have to officially request the use of an evacuation facility on the island. Meanwhile, he said, “coordination continues for contingencies and for all possibilities.”

Write to Alexander Ward at alex.ward@wsj.com, Nancy A. Youssef at nancy.youssef@wsj.com and Lara Seligman at lara.seligman@wsj.com

13. Putin Is Under Pressure to Call Up More Troops for War of Attrition

Putin Is Under Pressure to Call Up More Troops for War of Attrition

The Russian leader earlier this year rebuffed Defense Ministry officials who had tried to convince him they needed more soldiers

https://www.wsj.com/world/russia/putin-troops-pressure-russia-ukraine-war-5f242a1c?mod=latest_headlines

By Thomas GroveFollow

Updated Sept. 19, 2024 6:02 am ET

Months before President Vladimir Putin’s inauguration in May, he met with Defense Ministry officials who pushed for a fresh round of mobilization to recruit more troops to offset Russia’s losses on the front line in Ukraine, said a person briefed on the exchange.

Putin dismissed the idea, saying he wanted to use only those who were voluntarily signing military contracts, the person said.

The exchange highlighted a thorny dilemma facing Putin. While he has resisted a troop mobilization that could come at a political cost, Western estimates suggest Russia is now losing more men on the battlefield than it can recruit to replace them.

Now, Ukraine’s continuing incursion into Russia is further straining Russia’s manpower, underscoring chronic problems and leading the country’s military leaders to press for mobilization again, according to three people familiar with the discussions. More than a month into the first invasion of Russian territory since World War II, Moscow has yet to mount a major counteroffensive to push Ukrainian troops back across the border.

“Forces are currently not sufficient to achieve the original war aims, knock Ukraine out of the war, to undermine its military potential or protect border regions of the Russian territory,” said the person briefed on the exchange with Putin. “More and more people are saying mobilization is inevitable.”

The Russian Defense Ministry didn’t respond to a request for comment. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the recruitment of contract soldiers and volunteers is happening at a rapid pace. “This satisfies the needs of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation,” Peskov said in an email.

Soldiers in Moscow reported for service two years ago after Russia’s first post-invasion mobilization. Photo: Sefa Karacan/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Protests followed Russia’s troop mobilization in 2022. Photo: Alexander Nemenov /AFP/Getty Images

In Russia, troop mobilizations can include everything from calling up reservists to drafting people of military age into service. Russia’s first post-invasion mobilization in the fall of 2022 sought to add 300,000 to the ranks of the Russian military, by calling up reservists and former soldiers. That effort, which also drafted men with little or no military service, sparked protests and prompted some regions to close borders to keep men from fleeing.

The pressure to do another mobilization comes as the casualties in the war in Ukraine have reached roughly one million, The Wall Street Journal has reported. To be sure, Russia has a manpower advantage over Ukraine, which has a population less than one-quarter of the size of its giant neighbor.

Still, a shortage of manpower has been a longstanding problem for Russia, where paramilitary Wagner forces recruited inmates to serve at the front earlier in the war. Russia’s problems are becoming more acute. With Moscow’s troops heavily engaged in capturing the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk, Russia has turned to young and inexperienced conscripts and pulled troops from other parts of the front line in Ukraine to defend Russian territory.

“Russia didn’t take the bait in sending crucial front-line soldiers to Kursk, but given their constraints, they’ve been forced to take troops from Kherson and Zaporizhzhia where they’re less needed,” said Rob Lee, senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, a U.S. foreign-policy think tank.

A mobile military-service recruitment center was set up outside a railroad station in Russia. Photo: Anatoly Maltsev/Shutterstock

Troops that have been sent to the Kursk region include units from the 810th Naval Infantry Brigade based in Crimea, the 155th Naval Infantry Brigade and the 56th Airborne Regiment, which had been fighting in Zaporizhzhia, said a report from the Institute for the Study of War, a think tank based in Washington, D.C.

Kursk Gov. Aleksei Smirnov said late last month that new detachments would be formed specifically to counter the Ukrainians. The Institute for the Study of War said the reshuffling of troops “avoided declaring general mobilization or another round of partial mobilization, both of which would be incredibly unpopular among Russian society.”

Until now, Russia has managed to maintain troop levels by recruiting volunteers. In mid-July, the Defense Ministry said it had recruited around 190,000 men since the start of the year, and Russian and Western estimates show Moscow is recruiting about 1,000 men every day from across the country.

But Russia has gained ground in eastern Ukraine by throwing successive waves of soldiers at Ukrainian lines. That is leading to a high number of fatalities, with U.K. Defense Minister John Healey telling Parliament this month that the U.K. estimated Russia was losing 1,100 soldiers a day.

In July, Putin tried to boost troop numbers by doubling a one-time payment for new recruits to 400,000 rubles, or roughly $4,300, a huge sum in many parts of Russia. Some 8% of the Russian budget is now dedicated to paying for military personnel, Western officials say.

New recruitment stations have been set up around Moscow recently, including in the city’s sprawling metro system, where volunteers sit at folding tables, handing out pamphlets to passersby.

Conscripts ready to depart for service with the Russian Army in May. Photo: Erik Romanenko/Zuma Press

Russia’s flagging troop strength became painfully obvious during Russia’s offensive earlier this year on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city. Russian forces gained ground but the offensive, which was launched in May and continued over the summer, suffered high casualties and was halted by the Ukrainians.

“The tempo of our progress has slowed,” veteran military correspondent Yuri Kotenok wrote in a post on his Telegram Channel in late July. “For those who don’t understand, there is PHYSICALLY NO ONE to carry out attacks.”

Kotenok said part of the logic of driving forward at all costs was the desire by commanders to be in the best position possible on the battlefield if talks start later this year.

At the meeting with Putin earlier this year, Defense Ministry officials said the president should use his inauguration, and attendant boost in political support, to make the case for a mobilization.

Putin declined to do so, with memories of the unrest that followed the 2022 mobilization still fresh. Protests gripped some of Russia’s biggest cities, recruitment offices were attacked, and border crossings were choked with men fleeing.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has resisted another troop mobilization that could come at a political cost. Photo: Alexander Kazakov/Reuters

Russian leaders also fear that a mobilization could upset a delicate balance that they have tried to strike in the public’s perception of the war. Russian media and state propaganda has sought to portray the war as a heroic but distant conflict. They want Russians to feel they can continue to enjoy a normal life, along with rising incomes and greater redistribution of wealth as a result of the war.

“While the balance between the demands of the front and the supply of manpower is a delicate one, for now Moscow is handling the situation the best it can,” said Ruslan Pukhov, director of Moscow-based think tank the Center for the Analysis of Strategies and Technologies. “What they choose to do in the future is all about priorities.”

A new mobilization would bring the war home to more Russians, something Putin would have to justify with sharper rhetoric. Tying more Russians to the outcome of the conflict in Ukraine could have dangerous political implications for Putin. 

“People want to continue their lives, which for them are peaceful. It’s dangerous for the Kremlin to carry out another partial or full mobilization,” said Andrei Kolesnikov, an independent Russia analyst, based in Moscow.

Data from Levada Center, Russia’s only remaining independent pollster, showed 46% of the population feared a new mobilization wave could be possible because of the war, 12 percentage points higher than in February of this year, the last time the question was asked. But since the Kursk invasion, support for the continuation of the war is back up to 41% after dropping slightly in favor of peace negotiations in recent months.

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Ukraine’s unprecedented invasion of Russia was a gamble for Kyiv. But as Moscow intensifies its push on the strategic eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk, strategies on both sides are starting to emerge. Photo: Louisa Naks

David Luhnow and Max Colchester contributed to this article.

Write to Thomas Grove at thomas.grove@wsj.com

Appeared in the September 19, 2024, print edition as 'Putin Is Pushed to Call Up More Troops'.

14. Suspected Trump Gunman Touted Potential ‘Taiwan Foreign Legion’

Excerpts:

In a self-published book, social-media posts and interviews, Routh described Taiwan as a vulnerable democracy that deserves stronger support from the U.S.—and especially military aid against China, which claims the self-governed island as its territory.

“We should encircle Taiwan with military ships and support with military might,” he wrote in the book, published in early 2023. “If we wait, such as we have done in Ukraine, it will be a 10 minute war and we will all be standing around like fools yet again. We may as well put Taiwan on a silver platter for China.”

In a February email to a person he mentioned in his book, Routh said he had spent a month in Taiwan.

Routh also railed over perceived policy blunders by U.S. leaders, including the 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and Trump’s 2018 exit from the multilateral nuclear accord with Iran.

Suspected Trump Gunman Touted Potential ‘Taiwan Foreign Legion’

Ryan Routh proposed a force of thousands to defend the island against China

https://www.wsj.com/world/asia/suspected-trump-gunman-touted-potential-taiwan-foreign-legion-242ed1a0?mod=Searchresults_pos3&page=1

By Chun Han Wong

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Updated Sept. 18, 2024 12:49 pm ET

Ryan Wesley Routh in Kyiv’s Independence Square in 2022, putting up flags of the countries helping Ukraine. Photo: sergei supinsky/AFP/Getty Images

Ryan Wesley Routh, the man arrested in Florida in connection with an apparent attempt to shoot Donald Trump, counted among his international projects a proposed “foreign legion” to help defend Taiwan against a potential assault from China.

The Taiwan plan echoed Routh’s self-professed efforts to support the defense of Ukraine, in what he described in his LinkedIn profile as a mission to dedicate himself to “any monumental worthy cause to bring about real change in our world.”

There is no indication that Routh’s Taiwan ambitions ever materialized.

Routh, 58 years old, faces firearms charges following his arrest on Sunday, when a Secret Service agent spotted a rifle poking through a Florida golf course fence and opened fire, ultimately leading to the suspect’s capture.

In a self-published book, social-media posts and interviews, Routh described Taiwan as a vulnerable democracy that deserves stronger support from the U.S.—and especially military aid against China, which claims the self-governed island as its territory.

“We should encircle Taiwan with military ships and support with military might,” he wrote in the book, published in early 2023. “If we wait, such as we have done in Ukraine, it will be a 10 minute war and we will all be standing around like fools yet again. We may as well put Taiwan on a silver platter for China.”

In a February email to a person he mentioned in his book, Routh said he had spent a month in Taiwan.

Routh also railed over perceived policy blunders by U.S. leaders, including the 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and Trump’s 2018 exit from the multilateral nuclear accord with Iran.

He showed support for Taiwan during the early months of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, when he traveled to Kyiv in hopes of contributing to the Ukrainian war effort. 

Routh included a flag of the Republic of China—as Taiwan is formally known—in a display on Kyiv’s Independence Square, where he placed flags of countries with citizens who had volunteered to fight for Ukraine, according to his book and an interview he gave to Taiwan’s Central News Agency that was published in June 2022. 

Routh speaking during a rally in Kyiv in 2022. Photo: Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

He told the agency that he had traveled to Ukraine with hopes of joining the fight as a combatant but wasn’t able to do so because of his age. He began helping Ukraine’s foreign legion recruit fighters and met at least five Taiwanese volunteers, he said.

If China were displeased with his flag display, “I can order another 1,000, they can’t touch my flags,” he told CNA.

Russia’s February 2022 invasion had made Ukraine a magnet for Americans and others who sought a cause they deemed worth fighting for.

Routh, meanwhile, also directed his attention to another democracy thousands of miles away, where fears of a possible conflict were rising in tandem with tensions between the U.S. and China.

Among the solutions Routh put forth was the idea that the U.S. could help avert a war in Taiwan by donating American territory to China.

“If China is having a shortage of land perhaps we at the United States can donate the same land mass of Taiwan from our land in Alaska,” he wrote in his book. “Perhaps we can give China part of Montana if Alaska is not acceptable; I would be agreeable to that.”

At the same time, Routh urged more military support for Taiwan, saying that it shouldn’t count on the U.S.—the island’s biggest foreign arms supplier—to intervene on its behalf in a war against China.

Deliveries on many Taiwanese orders for defense equipment signed under both the Trump and Biden administrations have been stalled by bureaucratic delays and capacity limits at American defense manufacturers, which have strained to meet the demands of U.S. support for Ukraine and for Israel in its war with Hamas in Gaza.

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Ryan Wesley Routh, the 58-year-old suspect, criticized Trump and threatened to kill Vladimir Putin. A nurse who encountered Routh in Ukraine told the WSJ she reported his behavior to U.S. authorities. Photo: Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images

Routh appears to have created a website to promote his idea for a “Taiwan Foreign Legion,” which he said would include soldiers from Afghanistan, Syria and Yemen who would fight as mercenaries, alongside international volunteers.

The website featured an application form for prospective fighters, with questions on whether an applicant was willing to “be a human shield for Taiwan” and able to “help us in a war against China.” It also asked whether applicants were able to run a festival, launch a social-media campaign, sit in a trench for months and accept having a bad commander.

The website included a list of purported supporters, several of whom said they had never discussed Taiwan with Routh when contacted by The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday. “I’ve never met him. Heard of him even, until now,” said one, who is listed on the website as a foreign fighter in Ukraine. “I don’t give a f— about Taiwan, American politics or this crackpot weirdo,” he said.

Another supposed supporter, an academic researcher who was working on a project about foreign fighters in Ukraine, had interviewed Routh on one occasion but said they had never discussed Taiwan. The researcher said it was not hard to imagine Routh glomming onto a new cause. “To him it was all about good versus evil so it wouldn’t be hard to push him in one direction or another,” he said.

In addition to his Taiwan scheme, Routh said in the February email that he was “willing to travel to North Korea” and “be a prisoner if needed until we can sit down with leaders of North Korea and show them that we are good people.”

Routh published an open letter, dated January, to Taiwan’s then-president-elect, Lai Ching-te, in which he claimed to be able to provide Taiwan with “thousands of Afghan soldiers that are NATO trained and that will fight for 100 to 200 dollars a month,” as well as fighters from Syria and Yemen.

He didn’t provide any evidence to show he had access to soldiers and volunteers.

Routh made similar assertions on his X account. In a June 2023 post, Routh said he was traveling to Taiwan with the goal of offering 50,000 Afghan soldiers. “They are economical and refugees. I need help pushing Taiwan and Tsai Ing-wen to take them,” he wrote, referring to the island’s president at the time.

He repeated his claim two months later in another X post, saying he wanted to “give Taiwan thousands of Nato trained Afghan soldiers” and start a Taiwan foreign legion of global volunteers to “protect the shores of Taiwan.”

Routh discussed Taiwan at length in his 2023 book, “Ukraine’s Unwinnable War: The Fatal Flaw of Democracy, World Abandonment and the Global Citizen—Taiwan, Afghanistan, North Korea and the end of Humanity.”

“Will we let Taiwan sit unguarded and turn it over to China without a care, and wonder after the fact how it happened?” Routh wrote.

Joel Schectman contributed to this article.

Write to Chun Han Wong at chunhan.wong@wsj.com

Copyright ©2024 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Appeared in the September 19, 2024, print edition as 'Suspected Gunman Touted A ‘Taiwan Foreign Legion’'.

15. With exploding pagers, deterrence gets personal

We have deterrence. Nuclear deterrence. Conventional deterrence. Integrated deterrence. Unconventional deterrence. Now we have "personal deterrence. (note my sarcasm). Perhaps we could now call this "asymmetric deterrence." (Because we need more deterrence - if a little deterrence is good, a lot is better). (still more sarcasm - because we use deterrence to describe everything)

With exploding pagers, deterrence gets personal - Strategic Analysis Australia

There's now a stark asymmetry between Israel & its enemies: their attacks on Israel can be blunted, but they are personally vulnerable & at risk of death wherever they are whenever Israel decides to strike.

strategicanalysis.org · by Michael Shoebridge · September 18, 2024

3000 pagers exploded simultaneously across Lebanon, injuring hundreds of Hezbollah leaders and others carrying their pagers, and paralysing the terrorist organisation’s command system. This happened because Israel has to re-establish its power to deter its enemies and it looks like it wants to do so without a wider, costly air and ground war involving Lebanon and perhaps Iran.

When, like Israel, you are a nation that is 35km wide surrounded by enemies who not only have publicly stated goals of eradicating you from the planet but act on them with violence, strong words are great but actions speak louder.

Israel is fighting Hamas in Gaza, the Iranian Republican Guards Corps and Iranian proxies in Syria and Iraq, Hezbollah on the Lebanese border, and Houthi rebels launching Iranian-supplied weapons from Yemen.

The Israeli Defence Force is more capable than any of these adversaries, even a collection of them acting together, but a wide ground war would be costly for everyone, including Israel.

At the same time, Israel has to deter Iran and Hezbollah from launching mass missile, drone and rocket attacks against the Israeli population. This is to re-establish physical security in Israel which will allow tens of thousands of Israeli citizens to return to homes, villages and towns they had to leave after 7 October last year.

So, what alternative strategy can Israel pursue other than expanding the ground war in Gaza to Lebanon?

The Israeli approach that has emerged over the last few months is clearer now with the pager attack against Hezbollah’s senior command structure. It’s about showing Israel’s enemies that the senior people directing foot soldiers and suicide fighters are the ones whose lives are at risk, wherever and whenever Israel wishes to target them. This is instead of confronting force with force directly in a major ground war like the one Israel fought in Lebanon against Hezbollah in 2006.

Hezbollah, Hamas and even Iranian leaders who make decisions about using force against Israel now have to consider that every time they do so, they are putting their own lives at considerable risk, and potentially the lives of those around them. They take extraordinary precautions with their personal security like staying off internet connected devices, having personal security details and not disclosing their locations or movements. But within this bubble they have been used to living in relative security while sending others off to fight and die. That’s different now.

The new ‘personal deterrence’ strategy that’s unfolded has been complemented by Israel’s highly effective missile and air defence system. Israel demonstrated its effectiveness responding (enabled by the US and other partners) to Iran launching around 300 rockets, drones and missiles against Israeli population centres and military facilities in April. Instead of mass casualties and damage, one Israeli girl was injured by shrapnel from this attack.

Meanwhile, days later, Israel fired a single missile to destroy an air defence radar system protecting an Iranian facility near Isfahan. The facility is probably a part of Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

The message here is stark: you can fire mass barrages at Israel and we will defeat them. We can penetrate your entire defensive system and destroy sensitive targets deep in Iran at will. You can’t stop us.

That blunts the power of Iran’s and Hezbollah’s decades long effort to build arsenals of rockets, drones and missiles to use against Israel. These arsenals were meant to give Israel’s enemies an unanswerable asymmetric advantage.

But, despite its success, this is a defensive measure that imposes no costs on the aggressor. That’s why the ‘personal deterrence’ element is critical and why Israel has used several different paths for threatening the security of its enemies’ leadership.

Hezbollah’s senior military commander Mohammed Deif was killed by an Israeli airstrike in July. Then Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed by unknown actors when his room in a secure Iranian Republican Guard Corps guesthouse exploded in the middle of Tehran.

Now, some 3,000 personal pager devices used by what looks like most of Hezbollah’s senior commanders have exploded almost simultaneously across Lebanon, badly injuring scores of its leadership and perhaps killing some of those carrying or using the pagers at the time. As with the Haniyeh death, Israel has not claimed responsibility and will not.

The deterrent effect of this collected set of strikes is powerful. There is now an absolute and stark asymmetry between Israel and its enemies: their attacks on Israel can be blunted and defeated, but they are personally vulnerable and at risk of death wherever they are should Israel decide to strike them. Israel’s enemies cannot be protected by their intense security measures or by the thousands of fighters they command.

How Israel is finding and killing them is unclear, but Israel has also used multiple different means successfully. These all almost certainly involve penetrating and compromising the personnel and networks running Hezbollah, Hamas and even Iran’s most sensitive activities – like personal protection of leaders and clandestine procurement. That’s disorientating and disturbing for everyone in these organisations and regimes. It will be unleashing paranoia, distrust and uncertainty.

There’s obvious risk to Israel here from its enemies also seeking new ways to strike Israeli leadership – and very Israeli success is also an opportunity for their adversaries to learn and adapt. But the capability of the Israeli military and security and intelligence services is hard to copy or recreate, because it’s driven by an existential imperative and builds on decades of tradecraft. It’s also enabled by Israel’s technological and digital advantages over its enemies.

If this new strategy coupled with Israel’s effective air and missile defences works, Israel will have re-established the deterrent power in the region it lost on 7 October last year. That would create a security foundation for an uneasy but peaceful balance with Hezbollah and the Iranian leadership. Because Hamas relies on Iranian support and needs Hezbollah to widen the conflict, it would also put pressure on Hamas to agree to release the remaining hostages and begin a ceasefire.

Even if this works, wider political security and agreements will need to wait for a new Israeli government not led by Benjamin Netanyahu or extremists like his national security minister Itmar Ben-Gvir. That new government in Israel could use this recreated balance of deterrence to negotiate political settlements that go well beyond ceasefires.

strategicanalysis.org · by Michael Shoebridge · September 18, 2024

16. Talk of US Iraq withdrawal is disconnected from ISIS threat

Something not getting very much attention because it is drowned out by the noise of so much other news.

Talk of US Iraq withdrawal is disconnected from ISIS threat

Defense News · by Cameron McMillan and Bradley Bowman · September 17, 2024

The bulk of U.S. forces will depart Iraq over the next two years, leaving only a residual force in the semiautonomous region of Kurdistan to provide security to Iraqi Kurds and sustain U.S. forces in Syria, according to Iraqi officials cited in a Sept. 12 report in the Washington Post.

That follows, and at least partially contradicts, previous reporting from Reuters, and Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder could not provide clarity Thursday when asked.

A premature U.S. departure from Iraq that ignores the advice of military leaders and conditions on the ground risks repeating the mistakes of past withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan and catalyzing an ISIS resurgence.

Under the U.S.-Iraqi Higher Military Commission, the United States and Iraq have agreed to discuss a transition to a “new phase of the bilateral security relationship,” though it remains unclear what that relationship would look like and how the U.S. force presence in Iraq would be impacted.

While the details of the future U.S. military posture in Iraq remain murky, the consequences of a premature withdrawal are clear.

General Kurilla, the commander of U.S. Central Command, warned Congress in March that a withdrawal of the U.S.-led coalition “would all but guarantee ISIS’ return if it occurred before Iraqi Security Forces were ready to stand on their own.”

Similar warnings were issued in 2011 before a U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq that catalyzed a series of events that led to the establishment of the ISIS caliphate and forced American forces to return in 2014.

Kurilla, in his testimony, also reiterated that the U.S. force presence in Syria would be significantly impacted without a military presence in Iraq. In July, CENTCOM announced that ISIS was attempting to reconstitute and was on track to double its number of attacks in Iraq and Syria.

While the ISIS caliphate is defeated, ISIS the terrorist organization is not. Two recent raids by U.S. forces demonstrate the persistent threat of ISIS and the continued operational role of U.S. forces in the country.

On Aug. 29, U.S. and Iraqi forces conducted a partnered raid in western Iraq to disrupt and degrade ISIS’ ability to plan and conduct attacks “throughout the region and beyond,” according to a Central Command statement.

Fourteen ISIS fighters were killed, including ISIS senior leaders overseeing operations in in the region, and seven U.S. service members were injured.

Just days later, on Sept. 1, U.S. forces partnered with Syrian Democratic Forces to capture an ISIS leader who was helping ISIS fighters escape detention in Syria.

Meanwhile, Iranian proxies have attacked U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria over 170 times since October, placing pressure on the Iraqi government to secure a U.S. withdrawal while putting American troops in further danger and detracting from their intended defeat-ISIS mission. A leading grand strategic goal of the Islamic Republic of Iran is to evict U.S. military forces from Iraq and Syria.

Some officials within the Iraqi government have pushed for the departure of the U.S.-led coalition, but the Iraqi Foreign Ministry delayed a formal announcement in August.

On Sept. 12, though, the Iraqi Defense Minister said that Iraq and the United States had reached an agreement to withdraw the majority of U.S. and coalition troops in two unspecified stages beginning this year and concluding in 2026 as part of a transition to a “sustainable security partnership.”

But a withdrawal of U.S. forces from non-Kurdish parts of Iraq could make Americans in Baghdad more vulnerable and cause concern among many Sunnis, creating fertile ground for ISIS radicalization, recruitment and resurgence.

A more complete American withdrawal that also included the departure of U.S. forces from Kurdistan would likely be a disaster, exacerbating Sunni concerns and making it much more difficult logistically for the Pentagon to support U.S. troops in Syria.

The warnings of military leaders and recent operations demonstrate the danger of an ISIS resurgence and the continued importance of U.S. forces in preventing such an outcome. But they are also a reminder that American service members continue to put themselves in harm’s way in Iraq and Syria waging a war that some Americans seem to have forgotten.

If the United States intends to keep U.S. troops in harm’s way to protect vital interests, Washington must ensure that our fellow citizens in uniform have the means to defend themselves and the permission to strike back with overwhelming force when they are attacked.

The United States must also ensure that its forces are operating with reliable partners and under a coherent strategy rather than conducting sporadic raids and airstrikes while its forces are subjected to regular attacks by Iranian terror proxies, including some militias that are part of the Iraqi security architecture.

The future U.S. military posture in Iraq remains uncertain. But if past is prologue, we can be confident that a U.S. military withdrawal that ignores conditions on the ground will not end well.

Cameron McMillan is a research analyst at FDD’s Center on Military and Political Power, where Bradley Bowman is the senior director.

17. Lessons from Red Sea and Ukraine's Black Sea fight help prep Navy for possible conflict with China

Jointness since1986 and the Defense Reorganization Act/Goldwater Nichols.

Is the second paragraph of the highlighted excerpt below an accurate statement?

But we do need to take advantage of these conflicts and learn their valuable lessons. I know the national security professionals (scholars and practitioners) are studying the hell out of them. Can we learn from them? Will we? And can we afford to pay for the lessons learned with new capabilities and operational concepts and tactics, techniques, and procedures? (Or can we afford not to?)

Excerpts:

Navy leaders also understand the financial restraints they will likely face from Congress — limits that rivals such as China do not have. China outpaces the U.S. in the number of ships and is expected to do so into the future.

Navy officials said that while they would like a bigger naval force, they need to offset that by working more effectively with the Army, Air Force, Space Force and Marines, which is something the U.S. has historically done very well.

A challenge will be eliminating the maintenance overruns that often prevent ships from being able to deploy on time. Getting ships in and out of depots on time, Franchetti said, is critical to having a combat-ready Navy.

“These are the things that we know that we need to be able to do to have the force that’s going to be more ready every single day,” she said.

Lessons from Red Sea and Ukraine's Black Sea fight help prep Navy for possible conflict with China

AP · September 18, 2024

Lessons from Red Sea and Ukraine’s Black Sea fight help prep Navy for possible conflict with China

1 of 4 |FILE - The Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer USS Laboon sails in the Red Sea, June 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Navy is taking lessons from its combat in the Red Sea over the past year and what Ukraine has done to hold off the Russians in the Black Sea to help U.S. military leaders prepare the service for a potential future conflict with China.

From drones and unmanned surface vessels to the more advanced operation of ship-board guns, the Navy is expanding its combat skills and broadening training. It is also working to overcome recruiting struggles so it can have the sailors it needs to fight the next war.

Adm. Lisa Franchetti, chief of naval operations, is laying out a series of goals, including several that will be highly challenging to meet, in a new navigation plan she described in an interview with The Associated Press. The objective is to be ready to face what the Pentagon calls its key national security challenge — China.

“I’m very focused on 2027. It’s the year that that President Xi (Jinping) told his forces to be ready to invade Taiwan,” Franchetti said. “We need to be more ready.”

The new plan, set to be released Wednesday, includes what she considers seven priority goals, ranging from removing delays in ship depot maintenance to improving Navy infrastructure, recruiting and the use of drones and autonomous systems.

One significant challenge is to have 80% of the force be ready enough at any given time to deploy for combat if needed — something she acknowledged is a “stretch goal.” The key, she said, is to get to a level of combat readiness where “if the nation calls us, we can push the ‘go’ button and we can surge our forces to be able to meet the call.”

The announcement of the goals comes as U.S. leaders are treading a fine line, pledging a commitment to the defense of Taiwan while also working to keep communication open with Beijing to deter greater conflict.

Taiwan, a self-governing island democracy that split from communist China in 1949, has rejected Beijing’s demands that it accept unification. China says it will do so by force if necessary. The United States is obligated under domestic law to help defend Taiwan and give it weapons and technology to deter invasion.

An important element in any Asia-Pacific conflict will be the need to control the seas. Franchetti said the U.S. can learn from how the Ukrainians have used drones, airstrikes and long-range unmanned vessels to limit Russian ship activity in the western Black Sea and keep access open to critical ports.

“If you look at the Ukrainian success in really keeping the Russian Black Sea fleet pushed all the way over into the east, that’s all about sea denial and that’s very important,” Franchetti said. She added that Ukraine has been innovating on the battlefield by using existing systems, such as drones, in different ways.

The Navy’s monthslong battle with the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen has provided other lessons.

“I think probably no one is learning more than the Navy, because really, this is the first time we’ve been in a weapons engagement zone for this sustained period,” she said.

She said sailors are watching their attacks and analyzing the data as ships respond.

Earlier this year, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier was stationed in the Red Sea to respond to help Israel and to defend commercial and military ships from Houthi attacks. The carrier returned home after an eight-month-plus deployment that the Navy said was the most intense running sea battle since World War II.

F/A-18 fighter jets routinely launched off the carrier’s deck to take out Houthi weapons, and Navy destroyers persistently fired rounds of missiles and used on-board guns to shoot down incoming strikes and drones.

On board the USS Mason destroyer, which was stationed with the Eisenhower, Franchetti in August met and promoted one of the destroyer’s fire control sailors who worked on its large, fully automatic artillery gun. Unlike missiles, many of the drones launched by the Houthis were more complicated and challenging to target and shoot down, and he was able to adjust the gun to better defeat them.

“He could see how it was performing against the Houthi threat,” Franchetti said, “and he came up with a different way to use the gun to make it more effective in these engagements.”

She did not identify the sailor and declined to provide details on the exact changes he recommended. But it resulted in new formal military tactics and procedures that were distributed to all other ships.

Another key effort will be to improve Navy development of unmanned and autonomous systems and weapons and integrate them into training and combat. As the military brings on new technologies, including unmanned surface vessels, the Navy needs to ensure it has trained sailors who can use and repair them.

The new navigation plan notes that the Navy is now working on concepts and requirements for larger robotic systems and the artificial intelligence applications they could use to understand and control the battlespace.

Navy leaders also understand the financial restraints they will likely face from Congress — limits that rivals such as China do not have. China outpaces the U.S. in the number of ships and is expected to do so into the future.

Navy officials said that while they would like a bigger naval force, they need to offset that by working more effectively with the Army, Air Force, Space Force and Marines, which is something the U.S. has historically done very well.

A challenge will be eliminating the maintenance overruns that often prevent ships from being able to deploy on time. Getting ships in and out of depots on time, Franchetti said, is critical to having a combat-ready Navy.

“These are the things that we know that we need to be able to do to have the force that’s going to be more ready every single day,” she said.

AP · September 18, 2024

18. China's Ambiguous Meddling in Myanmar's Complex Conflicts

Can such resentment be exploited? Can someone besides us (with our limited bandwidth) exploit this? We cannot compete in strategic competition everywhere. Or should we (or must we) be able to?

Excerpts:

China is facing resentment from all sides in Myanmar, and it has significant economic interests it needs to balance against political maneuvering of the warring parties. According to the latest report of the authoritative Myanmar think tank the Institute for Strategy and Policy (ISP), the 3BA and Kachin insurgents control six of ten border trade gates with China, plus 10 Chinese projects in Northern Myanmar including the Tagaung Taung nickel mine, suspended in 2022 but still worth US$800 million. Further south, the AA, which has seized most of Rakhine State, has partial control of the territory in which nine major Chinese development projects are based. It is too early to tell if the insurgents can wrest full control of Kyaukphyu port and Special Economic Zone (SEZ), but they do have control over significant stretches of the strategic oil and natural gas pipelines.

But dealings between China and anti-SAC armed groups are not alliances nor spheres of influence for China, more a network of ‘frenemies’ who have mutual mistrust infused with enmity, but are forced to balance multi-level relationships that are under constant renegotiation. Or as one Myanmar scholar suggested, it's a form of “one country two systems” that China is juggling: the SAC central state and the constellation of EAO territorial spaces. Think of these embryonic insurgent zones as ‘protectorates’ and ‘confederations’ with partial fealty to China, stretching from Shan and Kachin States down to Rakhine State. Beijing can crack the whip, but it can’t do it too aggressively. China’s mediation is about mitigation, not resolution.

China's Ambiguous Meddling in Myanmar's Complex Conflicts

Confused policy in constant collision between short- and long-term goals

https://www.asiasentinel.com/p/china-meddling-myanmar-complex-conflicts?utm

Sep 19, 2024

By: David Scott Mathieson

Wang delivers mixed message

China’s role in Myanmar, given the regime’s bloody and brutal campaign to quell a rebellion against its February 2021 coup against a democratically elected government, is the region’s most pivotal, as a significant arms supplier and the great power neighbor with major economic and strategic interests. Yet Beijing’s Myanmar policy is in no way clear cut, rational or measurable, let alone predictable.

It is not accurate to claim China has ‘changed sides’ from the rebel Three Brotherhood Alliance (3BA to the junta’s State Administration Council. These complex relations are too deeply opaque for a simplistic formula. There is what China officially states and then what it does on the ground, often in contradiction, and these are almost always confounding to outsiders, confusing for Myanmar actors, and in constant collision between long-term strategic interests and short-term dynamics.

Nearly a year ago, China appeared to give significant support for Operation 1027, a stunning military operation spearheaded by the 3BA, which is made up of the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), the Ta-ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), and the Arakan Army (AA). That the operation also targeted scam centers along the border, which China had called for, made this ‘support’ transactional, not ideological. Following more than two months of intensive fighting and significant territorial losses for the Myanmar military, Chinese officials called Myanmar officials and representatives of the 3BA to Yunnan and brokered a peace deal called the ‘Hiageng Agreement’ in January. Fighting may have reduced, but it didn’t fully subside, and the military’s State Administration Council forces breached the agreement on an almost daily basis.

Yet when Operation 1027 resumed in Phase 2 in late June this year, China appeared far more lukewarm on the resistance forces’ military success than was perceived at the end of 2023 to 3BA operations against key towns in Shan State bordering Mandalay Region. After sustained fighting the MNDAA took over the major city of Lashio and the Northeast Regional Military Command (RMC), an unprecedented battlefield success in the conflict. Days after the MNDAA entered Lashio, the Chinese embassy urged all its citizens to leave the city.

That ambivalence was evident in the recent high-level visit of Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi on August 14, who appeared to signal acceptance for the regime’s purported transition plan of holding elections and transferring power in the near future to a ‘civilian’ government, while appearing to partly admonish SAC head Senior General Min Aung Hlaing.

“China firmly supports Myanmar…committing itself to domestic peace and stability and economic development, and advancing the new Five-Point Road Map within the constitutional framework to realize political reconciliation and resume the process of democratic transition at an early date,” the official Chinese communique claimed. “China opposes chaos and conflicts in Myanmar, interference in Myanmar's internal affairs by outside forces, and any words and deeds that attempt to drive a wedge between China and Myanmar and smear China.”

Outrage was sparked by a statement issued by the Riuli City National Security Committee on August 29 (Riuli is the Chinese city on the border with Myanmar’s Muse town). On the final day of military exercises in Yunnan, the city authorities warned the TNLA to “(e)nd all military activities harmful to Chinese border stability and to the lives and properties of Chinese citizens. Otherwise, China will take more deterrent and disciplinary measures. And you will be entirely responsible for the consequences.” Anti-Chinese sentiment soared, compounded by the Chinese embassy in Yangon posting a statement that claimed it was not involved in Myanmar’s internal affairs.

Sinophobia in Myanmar is multilayered. Resentment towards Chinese support for the Myanmar military is long-standing and deep, especially since the coup, and its continued supply of military equipment. Defense Minister Admiral Tin Aung San’s recent trip to Beijing was clearly welcomed at the Beijing Xiangshan Forum, roughly the equivalent of the Munich Security Conference, and

included viewing Chinese defense contractors to view “modern aviation technology, pilotless crafts, electronic military operations, and air defense technologies.” China has reportedly sold drones to the SAC and to the 3BA.

China has cut off electricity, water, and communications to the MNDAA-held city of Laukkai, and has restricted trade in items such as medicine to all of Northern Shan State, which undermines claims of full Chinese support for Phase 2 of 1027, and is generating anti-Chinese sentiment in these conflict zones. Adding to the confusion, the MNDAA issued a statement on September 4 in Chinese announcing a ceasefire and calling on “China to play a constructive role in mediating…in order to end the chaos” and claiming to have no alliance with the opposition National Unity Government (NUG).

There is also alarm over the ethnic-Chinese MNDAA taking control of Lashio and imposing draconian measures to maintain order. Pro-Myanmar military groups using Telegram channels but also in a series of demonstrations in Yangon and Naypyidaw in mid-August have mobilized against the 3BA over what they argue are Chinese-backed armed groups taking Myanmar territory.

China is facing resentment from all sides in Myanmar, and it has significant economic interests it needs to balance against political maneuvering of the warring parties. According to the latest report of the authoritative Myanmar think tank the Institute for Strategy and Policy (ISP), the 3BA and Kachin insurgents control six of ten border trade gates with China, plus 10 Chinese projects in Northern Myanmar including the Tagaung Taung nickel mine, suspended in 2022 but still worth US$800 million. Further south, the AA, which has seized most of Rakhine State, has partial control of the territory in which nine major Chinese development projects are based. It is too early to tell if the insurgents can wrest full control of Kyaukphyu port and Special Economic Zone (SEZ), but they do have control over significant stretches of the strategic oil and natural gas pipelines.

But dealings between China and anti-SAC armed groups are not alliances nor spheres of influence for China, more a network of ‘frenemies’ who have mutual mistrust infused with enmity, but are forced to balance multi-level relationships that are under constant renegotiation. Or as one Myanmar scholar suggested, it's a form of “one country two systems” that China is juggling: the SAC central state and the constellation of EAO territorial spaces. Think of these embryonic insurgent zones as ‘protectorates’ and ‘confederations’ with partial fealty to China, stretching from Shan and Kachin States down to Rakhine State. Beijing can crack the whip, but it can’t do it too aggressively. China’s mediation is about mitigation, not resolution.

David Scott Mathieson is an independent analyst working on conflict and human rights issues in Myanmar

19. Exclusive: Ammunition from India enters Ukraine, raising Russian ire

I was not expecting to read this.

Exclusive: Ammunition from India enters Ukraine, raising Russian ire

https://www.reuters.com/world/ammunition-india-enters-ukraine-raising-russian-ire-2024-09-19/

By Krishn Kaushik

September 19, 20246:14 AM EDTUpdated 2 hours ago

Indian Army soldiers participate in a mock drill exercise during the Army Day parade in New Delhi, India, January 15, 2016. REUTERS/Anindito Mukherjee/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab

SummaryCompanies

• European customers have been transferring Indian munitions to UkraineKyiv has dire shortage of artillery shells as it fights RussiaDelhi and Moscow have warm relationship built on defence cooperationDespite Russian protests, India sees arms exports as commercial opportunity

NEW DELHI, Sept 19 (Reuters) - Artillery shells sold by Indian arms makers have been diverted by European customers to Ukraine and New Delhi has not intervened to stop the trade despite protests from Moscow, according to eleven Indian and European government and defence industry officials, as well as a Reuters analysis of commercially available customs data.

The transfer of munitions to support Ukraine's defence against Russia has occurred for more than a year, according to the sources and the customs data. Indian arms export regulations limit the use of weaponry to the declared purchaser, who risks future sales being terminated if unauthorised transfers occur.

The Kremlin has raised the issue on at least two occasions, including during a July meeting between Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his Indian counterpart, three Indian officials said.

Details of the ammunition transfers are reported by Reuters for the first time.

The foreign and defence ministries of Russia and India did not respond to questions. In January, Indian foreign ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal told a news conference that India had not sent or sold artillery shells to Ukraine.

Two Indian government and two defence industry sources told Reuters that Delhi produced only a very small amount of the ammunition being used by Ukraine, with one official estimating that it was under 1% of the total arms imported by Kyiv since the war. The news agency couldn't determine if the munitions were resold or donated to Kyiv by the European customers.

Among the European countries sending Indian munitions to Ukraine are Italy and the Czech Republic, which is leading an initiative to supply Kyiv with artillery shells from outside the European Union, according to a Spanish and a senior Indian official, as well as a former top executive at Yantra India, a state-owned company whose munitions are being used by Ukraine.

The Indian official said that Delhi was monitoring the situation. But, along with a defence industry executive with direct knowledge of the transfers, he said India had not taken any action to throttle the supply to Europe. Like most of the 20 people interviewed by Reuters, they spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.

The Ukrainian, Italian, Spanish and Czech defence ministries did not respond to requests for comment.

Delhi and Washington, Ukraine's main security backer, have recently strengthened defence and diplomatic cooperation against the backdrop of a rising China, which both regard as their main rival.

India also has warm ties with Russia, its primary arms supplier for decades, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi has refused to join the Western-led sanctions regime against Moscow.

But Delhi, long the world's largest weapons importer, also sees the lengthy war in Europe as an opportunity to develop its nascent arms export sector, according to six Indian sources familiar with official thinking.

Ukraine, which is battling to contain a Russian offensive toward the eastern logistics hub of Pokrovsk, has a dire shortage of artillery ammunition.

The White House declined to comment and the U.S. State Department referred questions on Delhi's arms exports to the Indian government.

India exported just over $3 billion of arms between 2018 and 2023, according to data compiled by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute think-tank.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said at an Aug. 30 conference that defence exports surpassed $2.5 billion in the last fiscal year and that Delhi wanted to increase that to about $6 billion by 2029.

Commercially available customs records show that in the two years before the February 2022 invasion, three major Indian ammunition makers - Yantra, Munitions India and Kalyani Strategic Systems - exported just $2.8 million in munitions components to Italy and the Czech Republic, as well as Spain and Slovenia, where defence contractors have invested heavily in supply chains for Ukraine.

Between February 2022 and July 2024, the figure had increased to $135.25 million, the data show, including completed munitions, which India began exporting to the four nations.

Arzan Tarapore, an India defence expert at Stanford University, said that Delhi's push to expand its arms exports was a major factor in the transfer of its arms to Ukraine.

"Probably in the sudden recent expansion, some instances of end-user violations have occurred."

DISCREET DELIVERIES

Unlisted Italian defence contractor Meccanica per l'Elettronica e Servomeccanismi (MES) was among the companies sending Indian-made shells to Ukraine, said the former top Yantra official.

MES is Yantra's biggest foreign client. The executive said the Rome-based company buys empty shells from India and fills them with explosives.

Several Western firms had explosive filling capabilities but lack the manufacturing capacity to mass produce artillery shells, the executive said.

Yantra said in its 2022-23 annual report that it had agreed a deal with an unnamed Italian client to set up a manufacturing line for L15A1 shells, which the former Yantra executive identified as MES.

MES and Yantra India did not respond to emails seeking comment.

Customs data indicate that Yantra shipped $35 million worth of empty 155mm L15A1 shells to MES between February 2022 and July 2024.

Customs records also show that in February 2024, U.K.-based arms company Dince Hill - whose board includes a top MES executive - exported $6.7 million in ammunition from Italy to Ukraine.

Among the exports were 155mm L15A1 shells, which the customs declaration said were manufactured by MES for Ukraine's Defence Ministry and supplied for "promoting the defense capability and mobilization readiness of Ukraine."

Dince Hill did not respond to an email seeking comment. Its new owner, Rome-based Effequattro Consulting, could not be reached.

In another instance, Spain's Transport Minister Oscar Puente shared on social media, opens new tab in May an end user agreement signed by a Czech defence official that authorised the transfer of 120mm and 125mm ammunition shells from Munitions India to arms dealer Czech Defence Systems.

Pro-Palestinian activists had alleged that the Borkum, a vessel carrying Indian-made arms which had stopped in a Spanish port, was carrying the weapons to Israel.

Spanish newspaper El Mundo reported in May the final destination was actually Ukraine. A Spanish official and another source familiar with the matter confirmed to Reuters that Kyiv was the end user. Munitions India and CDS did not respond to questions.

Customs records dated March 27 show Munitions India had shipped 10,000 rounds of 120mm and 125mm mortar shells, worth more than $9 million, from Chennai to CDS.

FRIENDLY FIRE

Russia, which supplies more than 60% of Delhi's arms imports, is a valued partner for India. In July, Modi chose Moscow for his first bilateral international trip since being elected to a third term.

At another meeting that month in Kazakhstan between top Indian diplomat Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and Lavrov, the Russian minister pressed his counterpart about Indian munitions being used by Ukrainians and complained that some were made by state-owned Indian companies, according to an Indian official with direct knowledge of the encounter.

The official did not share Jaishankar's response.

Walter Ladwig, a South Asia security expert at King's College London, said the diversion of a relatively small amount of ammunition was geopolitically useful for Delhi.

"It allows India to show partners in the West that it is not 'on Russia's side' in the Russia-Ukraine conflict," he said, adding that Moscow held little leverage over Delhi's decisions.

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 Krishn Kaushik in New Delhi; Additional reporting by Allison Martell in Toronto, Stephen Grey and Guy Faulconbridge in London, Gerry Doyle in Singapore, Belen Carreño in Madrid, Jonathan Landay in Washington, Jan Lopatka in Prague, Crispian Balmer in Rome, Rachel More in Berlin; Editing by Katerina Ang

20. Soldiers Set to Get New Deployment Bonus as High Operations Tempos Strain the Army

​It might be better to flip this scale. I recommend considering  the mid grade NCOs E-5 to E-7 to get the highest rates, followed by the enlisted, and then officers (company grade officers first then the field grades) and warrant officers. We need to protect and incentivize our NCO corps and junior officers if we are concerned with retention due to the impacts of deployments.

This is also important because it appears to recognize every overseas training deployment as an operation contributing to a theater campaign plan to achieve strategic effects. We do not conduct overseas training simply for training's sake. All our deployments contribute (or should contribute) to strategic competition and (integrated ) deterrence. If I were still on active duty I would include in the orders to my unit how the deployment contributes to the theater campaign plan and integrated deterrence so that all troops know the importance of their contributions. No longer does the adage apply: "ours is not to reason why, but to do or die." Our troops are motivated by knowing their contributions and we should respect them by informing them how they are in fact tangibly contributing to the defense of our nation and its interests.

Soldiers Set to Get New Deployment Bonus as High Operations Tempos Strain the Army

military.com · by Steve Beynon · September 19, 2024

Soldiers will receive an extra monthly bonus -- ranging from $210 to $450 per month, depending on rank -- for time away from home exceeding 30 days starting in October, according to a draft Army memo reviewed by Military.com. The new benefit includes Army Guardsmen and reservists.

The move would put additional money in overworked soldiers' pockets as Army units are away from home more now than during much of the peak of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A smaller Army is taking on a much more demanding tempo of missions, with formations bolstering NATO's front lines in Europe and frontline units expanding their footprint in the Pacific to counter China's expansionist goals, all while juggling combat missions in the Middle East and Africa.

The constant pace of deployments and time away from home has put significant strain on the force, an issue senior leadership has been highlighting since at least 2020. But deployments abroad have become only more frequent, particularly amid renewed focus on Europe after Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

The deployments are also accompanied by extensive training in the field, which keeps soldiers away from home even longer.

"Our op tempo now is pretty much as high as it's been during the Global War on Terrorism," Army Secretary Christine Wormuth told Military.com in an interview last year.

The strain has also affected the mental health of the force, Army planners have warned. Suicide in the service has risen steadily in recent years.

A misconception is that those mental health crises are related to combat trauma, when the bulk of suicides, especially in recent years as the post-9/11 wars wound down, are among soldiers who have never seen combat.

Some of that has been attributed to financial stress and rocky romantic relationships, issues that become inflamed when soldiers are often away from home.

However, the new bonus pay will cease if soldiers are hospitalized, according to the draft policy. It's unclear whether the pay will cease only if the soldier is flown home to be cared for, or if that termination of extra pay includes when a soldier is being treated in a hospital abroad.

It's also unclear where the Army funding is coming from, as no recent congressional moves have authorized new money to cover it.

The Army did not respond to a request for comment when asked whether this new deployment pay stacks on top of existing bonuses including hazardous duty or imminent fire pay, which are typically served for soldiers in combat zones.

The Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment when asked whether similar new deployment bonuses were being integrated in the other services.

Here is the new bonus pay that the Army is set to implement for deployed troops per month:

E-1 to E-4: $210

E-5: $240

E-6: $300

E-7: $360

E-8: $420

E-9: $450

WO-1: $240

WO-2: $300

WO-3: $360

WO-4: $420

WO-5: $450

O-1: $240

O-2: $300

O-3: $360

O-4: $420

O-5 to O-6: $450

military.com · by Steve Beynon · September 19, 2024

21. Iranian hackers sent stolen Trump campaign information to Biden campaign

An excellent information warfare operation designed to increase the divide in the US electorate. Of course the republicans will accuse the democrats of receiving support from Iran which may be exactly the effect Iran intended by this operation. It is not so much that they support the democrats than they just want to foment chaos and distrust in the US. The Trump campaign is falling for the Iranian information warfare campaign hook.line, and sinker.

If I were advising the Trump campaign I would reprise this statement from 2017 NSS and say that we can add all of the Dark Quad to Russia. This would be an opportunity to seize the moral high ground in the information domain. But instead it appears that the campaign is doing exactly what the Iranians intended.

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

Access NSS HERE

Iranian hackers sent stolen Trump campaign information to Biden campaign | CNN Politics

CNN · by Hannah Rabinowitz, Evan Perez · September 18, 2024

Former President and current Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks at Alro Steel on August 29, 2024, in Potterville, Michigan.

Bill Pugliano/Getty Images

CNN —

Iranian hackers sent unsolicited information they stole from Donald Trump’s presidential campaign to people who were affiliated with Joe Biden’s campaign over the summer, federal law enforcement officials said Wednesday.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said in a joint statement that in late June and early July, Iranian malicious cyber actors “sent unsolicited emails to individuals then associated with President Biden’s campaign that contained an excerpt taken from stolen, non-public material from former President Trump’s campaign as text in the emails.”

There is no indication that Biden’s staff ever replied, the statement says.

A spokesperson for Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign said that “a few individuals were targeted on their personal emails.”

“We have cooperated with the appropriate law enforcement authorities since we were made aware that individuals associated with the then-Biden campaign were among the intended victims of this foreign influence operation,” said Morgan Finkelstein, national security spokesperson for the Harris campaign.

“We’re not aware of any material being sent directly to the campaign; a few individuals were targeted on their personal emails with what looked like a spam or phishing attempt. We condemn in the strongest terms any effort by foreign actors to interfere in U.S. elections including this unwelcome and unacceptable malicious activity.”

The Trump campaign said in a statement that Harris and Biden “must come clean on whether they used the hacked material,” claiming it’s “further proof the Iranians are actively interfering in the election” to help the Democratic ticket.

CNN previously reported that Iranian government-backed hackers stole internal Trump campaign documents and shared them with news organizations. The law enforcement statement Wednesday said that the hackers’ efforts to send information to US media outlets have continued.

The hack is one of several efforts by the Iranian government attempting to “stoke discord and undermine confidence in our electoral process,” the statement said. Law enforcement officials have previously said that those efforts also included an unsuccessful attempt to hack the Biden-Harris campaign.

Beginning on July 22, Politico reported, it had received emails that contained internal communications from a senior Trump campaign official and a research dossier the campaign had put together on Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance.

The New York Times and The Washington Post later reported that they, too, had been sent a similar cache, including a 271-page document on Vance dated February 23 and labeled “privileged & confidential,” that the outlets said was based on publicly available information.

The Iranian hackers did breach the email account of longtime Trump ally Roger Stone to target campaign staff in June, CNN has reported. US officials believe the hackers work for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Investigators believe the suspected Iranian hackers breached Stone’s account and then used that email account to try to break into the account of a senior Trump campaign official as part of a persistent effort to access campaign networks.

This story has been updated with additional details.

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins contributed to this report.

CNN · by Hannah Rabinowitz, Evan Perez · September 18, 2024

22. Can the West Revive Multilateralism?

How can the West abandon a zero sum mindset when the fact is that authoritarian leaders are executing zero sum strategies?

Excerpts:

Moreover, Western countries need to abandon their zero-sum depiction of rule-breaking autocracies versus rule-abiding democracies that is clearly at odds with many countries’ experiences, as the survey shows.

Although the survey data highlights a grueling challenge when it comes to the West resetting its relationship with the global south, there is some hope. In particular, the data contradicts the impression that people in the global south have given up on the international rules-based order—something that Chinese and Russian propaganda seeks to amplify.

When asked whether they believe that international rules and principles represent the values and needs of “most countries in the world” or only those of Western states, in all the countries surveyed, absolute majorities said that international rules and principles represent the values and needs of most countries in the world, from 88 percent in Pakistan to 63 percent in Indonesia. According to the data, those surveyed did not subscribe to Russia’s and China’s narrative that international rules and principles are merely a Western illusion, as suggested by each country’s talk of the so-called rules-based order and so-called universal values.

It appears that reviving multilateralism does not have to start with reviving faith in the value of international rules and principles. Instead, at the U.N. Summit of the Future, Western states can try to regain their credibility by demonstrating their serious commitment to implementing the international rules and principles they rhetorically embrace.

Can the West Revive Multilateralism?

A new survey reveals that support for international cooperation among global south countries is dismally low.

By Sophie Eisentraut, head of research and publications at the Munich Security Conference.

Foreign Policy · by Sophie Eisentraut

September 18, 2024, 10:14 AM

​

As world leaders descend on New York for the United Nations Summit of the Future this week, rules-based multilateralism is in a dismal state. Amid the international community’s failure to conclude a global pandemic treaty and the U.N. Security Council’s paralysis in the face of both Russia’s war in Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas conflict, it’s hard to recall the last success of multilateral cooperation.

Among governments, accusations of double standards and broken promises, from delivering COVID-19 vaccines to providing meaningful debt relief, are mounting. Against this backdrop, the summit looks like a desperate attempt to rebuild confidence—particularly among countries in the global south as they navigate a multilateral system that even the U.N. secretary-general describes as caught in “colossal global dysfunction.”

A survey conducted this July, on behalf of the Munich Security Conference, reached out to over 9,000 people across nine populous global south countries—Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and Turkey—about their societies’ views on multilateralism and the global rules-based order. The results revealed that support for investments in multilateral cooperation is very low.

When asked whether their countries should prioritize bilateral relations with other countries rather than invest in multilateral initiatives and international organizations, absolute majorities in each surveyed country agreed—from 76 percent in Pakistan to 51 percent in both Saudi Arabia and Brazil.

There are many reasons for widespread doubt when it comes to the merits of international cooperation. International institutions such as the U.N. Security Council are regularly paralyzed due to growing tensions among great powers such as the United States, Russia, and China. Meanwhile, international financial institutions like the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund seem unable to adapt to the pace of newly arising challenges and needs of non-Western countries.

Yet a climate of distrust by countries in the global south when it comes to Western powers adhering to international rules and principles has only added to the multilateral malaise.

Nothing has epitomized this concern like Washington and other Western capitals’ inconsistent responses to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. For many governments, the way that the United States and Europe responded to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and to Israel’s military campaign in Gaza after Hamas’s attack on Israel has reinforced the impression that the West tends to only criticize violations of international law and norms committed by geopolitical adversaries—and that they value some lives more than others.

With fresh memories of perceived vaccine apartheid and a two-year delay in developed countries meeting their promised international climate finance target, global south countries have raised serious doubts about the West’s commitment to mutually beneficial cooperation and to an international order that is binding and fair for all.

When asked in our survey to compare the United States, China, Russia, and European countries’ commitment to international rules and principles, people in many countries said that Washington is the most frequent violator of international rules. For example, the share of people who said that China frequently violates international rules only exceeded the share who said the same for the United States in two countries: Brazil and India.

In some countries—namely Indonesia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey—the United States scored even worse than Russia on the same metric. Moreover, in the same four countries, people said that European states violated international rules more frequently than Beijing. For example, in Saudi Arabia, 19 percent of respondents said European countries frequently violate international rules and principles, while only 8 percent said the same for China. Although by a tiny margin, among respondents in Saudi Arabia, even Russia scored better than European countries; 18 percent of respondents said Moscow frequently violates international rules.

The revival of rules-based multilateralism—the overarching goal of the Summit of the Future—thus hinges on Western countries’ ability to address the perceptions of double standards. In that regard, efforts to uphold humanitarian law and human rights everywhere should be made a top priority. The strongest catalyst of cynicism about international rules, as responses to Israel’s war in Gaza reveal, is the perception that many Western states act inconsistently when it comes to the protection of civilians, especially in conflict zones, and their basic human rights.

Moreover, Western countries need to abandon their zero-sum depiction of rule-breaking autocracies versus rule-abiding democracies that is clearly at odds with many countries’ experiences, as the survey shows.

Although the survey data highlights a grueling challenge when it comes to the West resetting its relationship with the global south, there is some hope. In particular, the data contradicts the impression that people in the global south have given up on the international rules-based order—something that Chinese and Russian propaganda seeks to amplify.

When asked whether they believe that international rules and principles represent the values and needs of “most countries in the world” or only those of Western states, in all the countries surveyed, absolute majorities said that international rules and principles represent the values and needs of most countries in the world, from 88 percent in Pakistan to 63 percent in Indonesia. According to the data, those surveyed did not subscribe to Russia’s and China’s narrative that international rules and principles are merely a Western illusion, as suggested by each country’s talk of the so-called rules-based order and so-called universal values.

It appears that reviving multilateralism does not have to start with reviving faith in the value of international rules and principles. Instead, at the U.N. Summit of the Future, Western states can try to regain their credibility by demonstrating their serious commitment to implementing the international rules and principles they rhetorically embrace.

Foreign Policy · by Sophie Eisentraut

23. Strengthen the Army with debate

Hear, hear.

Strengthen the Army with debate

hardingproject.com · by Adam Scher

Cadet John Buchanan debating in 1958. Thanks to Execution Hollow for the photo!

Gen. Wesley Clark, Gen. David Petreaus, Brig. Gen. Dan Kaufman and Brig. Gen. Mike Meese are all alumni of one program—West Point’s debate team. The Army Debate Team also has less prominent alumni, like me and my debate partner, Capt. (ret.) Elliott Press, and Harding Project co-founder Capt. Theo Lipsky.

In 1947, Colonel George Lincoln, head of the Department of Social Sciences at the United States Military Academy at West Point organized and hosted the first National Debate Tournament. The modern version of intercollegiate debate remained at USMA for 20 years, before the tournament began to rotate through different schools. The Army Debate Team still resides within the Department of Social Sciences and continues to win tournaments across the nation. I competed on the Army Debate Team from 2000 to 2004 and coached the Army Debate Team from 2013 to 2016. The lessons I learned through debate continue to serve me today.

Based on my experience I learned debating, I see the opportunity within our Army’s centers of excellence to strengthen the profession by growing and developing junior leaders through the vehicle of debate.

The Value of Debate

Debate supports strengthening the profession in two ways: at the individual leader level and at the institutional decision-making level. Increasingly, junior leaders are required to be excellent communicators—thinking, speaking, and writing coherently, cogently, and effectively. Our platoon leaders must write orders and deliver presentations, and also talk to their soldiers about everything from tactical missions to ethics.

Fortunately, debate hones all the skills necessary for excellence in communication. Debate requires preparedness through research, critical thinking, and focus on narrow questions that have no easy answers. Debate also requires presentation: public speaking in a manner that is concise, well-organized, and compelling. Lastly, debate requires agility, thinking on your feet to creatively solve problems that you identify by actively listening to your opponent’s arguments.

Debaters must respond to every counterargument or they may lose the debate. The debate environment allows for disagreement that is not disloyalty and adversarial dialogue without personal animosity between participants. The art of civil discourse is foundational to effective leadership. In debate, everyone must be included, heard, and accounted for, but not everyone agrees. Debaters learn the art of persuasion, though persuasiveness is only one element of success. The victor is chosen by a judge who will either be compelled by one side or repelled by the other.

In debate, everyone must be included, heard, and accounted for, but not everyone agrees.

For institutional leaders, debate helps decision-makers receive varied perspectives that are well-researched and thought through with less investment than required by the publication of papers and articles.

The forum of debate protects debaters from social pressures or fear of reprisal. The sides in a debate are assigned, rather than chosen. Debate is not about personal advocacy or an individual belief in a particular position. Instead, it is about taking the assigned position and making it strong, so the debater has no risk of losing credibility in the eyes of the decision-maker. Debate is also traditionally organized into tournaments, meaning debaters rotate through affirmative and negative positions. No participant can be characterized as consistently or personally contrarian, reactionary, or rigid. Every participant must eventually deliver argument from every angle, which improves the strength of the argument and, in turn, leads to better decisions.

Debate for Army Decision-Making

There are many forms, styles, or types of debate that can be tailored to the needs of the organization or individual. For the Army’s purposes, extemporaneous or other kinds of debate that prevent debaters from knowing or researching the specific topic beforehand are less beneficial than structured debates like Lincoln-Douglas, Parliamentary, or Policy.

For the Army’s purposes, no single debate format needs to be explicitly adopted. What is important is that the rules, structure, and format of the debate are known to the participants, the audience, and the judge early enough in the process to provide the debaters time enough to research, rehearse, and clash during the performance of the debate.

Debates are governed by a resolution. The resolution is a declarative statement, not a fact, not true or false, instead a hypothesis or a call for action that can have reasonable evidence both in support and opposition. This means the Affirmative team debates in favor of the Resolution and must present an idea or plan that does something to make the Resolution functionally true, while the Negative team debates to either discredit the action of the Affirmative team, defend the status quo, and/or negate the action called for in the Resolution. The Negative team is said to have every scenario not presented by the Affirmative team, while the Affirmative holds the advantage of speaking first and last because they are limited to the topic of the Resolution and have the burden of advocating for change against the status quo.

Example – RESOLVED: The Army should require sew-on rank for physical fitness uniforms.

The Affirmative team must research current uniform policy and could present the specific wording of the new policy in their first constructive. Those on the affirmative would benefit from studying the example of other country’s armed forces who have similar policies. The Affirmative could describe the challenges and confusion for soldiers wearing PTs that have no visible rank and how having identifiable rank during PT hours might lead to improved physical fitness test scores.

The Negative team must be prepared to explain why PTs without rank is good for the Army. The Negative could also use their first constructive to not only discredit the Affirmative course of action, but also to write their own version of a sew-on rank policy that is different from what the Affirmative proposed in their first speech. The Negative might also try to find disadvantages to the new policy, perhaps the cost to the individual of sewing on rank or the limited supply of fabric that could better be used for some other purpose.

An entire debate with 2 debaters on each side takes no longer than 52 minutes, structured as followed:

1ST Affirmative Constructive – 5min

Cross-Examination – 2min

1ST Negative Constructive – 5min

Cross-Examination – 2min

2nd Affirmative Constructive – 5min

Cross-Examination – 2min

2nd Negative Constructive – 5min

Cross-Examination – 2min

1st Negative Rebuttal – 3min

1st Affirmative Rebuttal – 3min

2nd Negative Rebuttal – 3min

2nd Affirmative Rebuttal – 3min

Each team is allotted 6 minutes of preparatory time to be taken in random increments at any time during the debate.

Within 8 minutes, the judge could render a decision and provide feedback to the teams and the audience, all within one hour from start to finish.

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Conclusion

Debate strengthens the profession. It has been successful with West Point cadets for over 75 years and the benefits of debate competition have been known to the Army since General MacArthur first deemed debate an intramural sport. Debate is more accessible than branch journal publication, requires only a small amount of time to implement, and would improve the cadence and quality of senior leader decision-making across all branches.

A guest post by

Adam Scher

Adam taught in the Department of Social Sciences at West Point and coached the Army Policy Debate Team from 2013-2016.

hardingproject.com · by Adam Scher

24. Boxing with Shadows: Drawbacks in US Counterstrategies Against the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Russian Wagner Group

An excellent analogy for irregular warfare: "Boxing with shadows.: I may have to adopt this (with credit these authors).

Excerpts:

Conclusion

While geographically and operationally distinct, these groups’ activities showcase a broader trend of exploitation by actors operating under the threshold of conventional international scrutiny.

The key to enhancing these efforts and confronting these challenges lies in the integration of strategies across all levels of government and the international community. A concerted push toward improved inter-agency coordination, coupled with a global commitment to transparency, accountability, and the enforcement of international norms, can significantly diminish the operational space for these organizations. It requires an enhanced understanding of the geopolitical landscape, improved coordination among national and international actors, and a steadfast commitment to upholding the rule of law. As these criminal entities adapt and evolve, so too must the strategies employed to counteract their influence.

The international response to such challenges requires a multifaceted approach. Increased awareness and reporting are critical in illuminating these shadowy operations and their impacts on regional stability. A concerted international effort to enhance governance structures and close legal and operational gaps will be essential in mitigating the influence of such groups. While the Wagner Group and the IRGC represent just two facets of a global issue, their activities offer critical lessons on the complexities of modern geopolitical conflicts. Addressing these challenges necessitates a robust international policy framework that prioritizes long-term stability and governance—such as strengthening regional formal and informal security institutions and promoting sustainable economic development to counteract these groups’ fundraising streams and recruitment incentives—over short-term security arrangements, like military interventions or temporary security agreements. By understanding and addressing the underlying economic and political conditions in which these groups thrive, the international community can better safeguard vulnerable regions from becoming pawns in broader strategic games and conflicts.

Boxing with Shadows: Drawbacks in US Counterstrategies Against the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Russian Wagner Group - Irregular Warfare Initiative

irregularwarfare.org · by Dalton T. Fuss, Nakissa P. Jahanbani · September 19, 2024

This article is part of Project Proxies and Partners, which explores the promises and pitfalls of security cooperation in war, at peace, and in between. We invite you to contribute to the discussion, explore the difficult questions, and help influence the future of proxies and partners. Please contact us if you would like to propose an article, podcast, or event.

This article is the second in a Proxies and Partners series looking at successes and failures of US strategies against IRGC and Wagner. Please find the first installment here.

In this second installment of our analysis, we shift our focus from the seized opportunities and tactical victories achieved against groups like the Wagner Group (and its Africa Corps) and the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to a more critical examination of where U.S. strategies have faltered.

Though distinct in their origins and operations, the Wagner Group and the IRGC share a commonality in their ability to maneuver within the gray zones of international law and conflict. These entities exploit legal ambiguities and operational gaps, which enables them to operate subversively and effectively against conventional Western approaches and strengths. In this analysis, we aim to understand the complexities and challenges that have hindered more robust US countermeasures, offering a comprehensive review of the lessons that might be drawn from these experiences.

Boxing with Shadows: Drawbacks in US Counterstrategies Against the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Russian Wagner Group – Insider: Short of War

Our exploration begins with a discussion of the less visible arenas of conflict where both the Wagner Group and its Africa Corps and the IRGC have operated with a concerning degree of freedom. These areas, often overlooked or underestimated by international observers, have allowed such groups to entrench themselves and expand their influence below the radar of traditional surveillance and countermeasures. We will assess the implications of this permissibility and the strategic blunders that have allowed it to persist. Furthermore, we will critique the US government’s efforts to synchronize its national assets to effectively counter these threats. Despite considerable resources and a broad array of tactics at its disposal, the US has faced challenges in integrating its military, intelligence, and diplomatic tools in a cohesive strategy against such agile and unconventional foes. This section will highlight specific instances where this lack of integration resulted in missed opportunities to curb the malign activities of the Wagner Group and the IRGC.

By unpacking these aspects, this article aims not only to shed light on where the US response could have been tightened but also to foster a deeper understanding of the strategic recalibrations needed to effectively confront non-state actors, proxy groups, and the states supporting them. Both the Wagner Group and IRGC are building a sophisticated web of influence and connectivity, aimed at extending their geopolitical reach through military, economic, and political channels.

As these entities continue to adapt and evolve, so must the strategies employed against them. If the U.S. fails to confront these entities more effectively, it risks ceding critical regions to adversaries who exploit instability, undermine U.S. allies, and threaten global security. The repercussions could include increased regional conflicts, stronger anti-Western alliances, and diminished U.S. influence in strategically important areas such as the Middle East, Africa, and Eastern Europe.

This reflective inquiry seeks to contribute to that ongoing evolution, proposing pathways for more effective engagement and containment of such groups in the future. This article is vital reading for policy, military, and intelligence analysts and decision-makers who are tasked with protecting U.S. interests abroad. The lessons drawn from assessing the U.S.’s missed opportunities in effectively countering Iran’s IRGC and Russia’s Wagner Group offer insights that can be applied to emerging threats from similar state-affiliated entities. Failure to learn from previous missteps and act decisively now could leave the U.S. vulnerable to an ever-expanding sphere of adversarial influence, particularly problematic in an environment of strategic competition.

Missed Opportunity #1: Flourishing in Obscurity

Wagner Group and Wagner-affiliated shell organizations have traditionally functioned in areas that have poor governance, receive little international investment, and grapple with internal security issues. This criminal syndicate offers security-related assistance to these nations in exchange for valuable natural resources such as gold, diamonds, petroleum products, and lumber. Moreover, the lack of extensive media coverage and reporting on regions where the Wagner Group is active creates a shroud of obscurity, allowing it to carry out its operations with minimal international scrutiny.

The IRGC’s expansive organizational infrastructure has under its umbrella legitimate and illegitimate organizations, which permit it maneuverability in various sectors. These include universities, construction agencies, financial institutions, and transportation companies. The IRGCs’ armed forces—its Navy, Army, and Air Force—are on par or more advanced in training and capabilities than Iran’s Artesh, or military armed forces. It also has the Quds Force, its expeditionary force focused on extraterritorial operations. The IRGC conducts operations and provides military support to diplomatically-isolated countries like it did for Syria’s Bashar al-Assad during the Syrian Civil War. Through its illegitimate organizations, the IRGC is also involved in criminal activities. For example, the US Drug Enforcement Administration accused both the IRGC’s Quds Force and Hezbollah of smuggling drugs and weapons in North Africa in an operation dubbed Project Cassandra. The Quds Force has also been tied to drug smuggling plots in Turkey, Azerbaijan, Italy, and Venezuela.

The Wagner Group and IRGC’s operations thrive in the shadows, largely due to the lack of comprehensive media coverage and reporting on these regions. Journalists and media organizations often focus on more prominent global issues, and these lesser-known areas tend to slip under the radar. This lack of attention provides a convenient cloak of obscurity for both organizations to exploit, enabling them to conduct their activities discreetly and with minimal accountability. Exploiting weak governance and limited international focus, the two groups secure deals that benefit their interests at the cost of these vulnerable nations. Addressing this issue requires increased international awareness, vigilance, and efforts to expose and curb such exploitative activities.

There is a need to raise awareness about notable aspects of Iran and Russia, among other adversaries’ asymmetric controlled release of information. For instance, the continued reporting of the number of Iranian-backed attacks on US installations in Iraq and Syria is an important transparency endeavor. While such attacks have occurred for years, the intensity has increased since the October 7 Hamas attack and subsequent Israeli counterterrorism campaign into the Gaza Strip. Relatedly, the United States should continue declassification efforts to shine a light on adversaries’ activities, such as the push from the Defense Intelligence Agency to declassify and exhibit the Iranian drones found in Ukraine and Iraq.

Missed Opportunity #2: Poor Harmonization of National Assets

The United States faces challenges in coordinating its instruments of national power. Different government agencies and departments may operate with distinct agendas and limited communication, sometimes resulting in poor synchronization across a spectrum of domains and disciplines. In foreign policy, there are instances where diplomatic initiatives and military actions may not align perfectly, causing some mixed signals and confusion among allies and adversaries. On the domestic front, the legislative process may, at times, appear disjointed, impacting the effective implementation of comprehensive solutions to pressing issues. While the US has made significant strides in enhancing collaboration across departments and agencies over the past 20 years, there is still more work to be done. One area of possible improvement is a whole-of-government acceptance of a common vocabulary to describe a problem and achieve unity of effort in resolving it, similar to the Department of Defense’s memo from August 2023. This document provides an overview of the Department’s Irregular Warfare Implementation Guidance, and it introduces concepts that will facilitate a more holistic approach to both deterring adversaries’ gray zone activities and combatting terrorism.

Russia’s “new generation warfare” strategy, also referred to as “non-contact warfare” or “sixth generation warfare,” is an example of using soft power (from across the whole of government) to achieve national objectives. Russia’s strategic blunder in Ukraine and seemingly continuous tactical catastrophes will severely impede or, more likely, fully disallow another conventional war. The magnitude of casualties and the cost of refitting the ground forces have made that goal prohibitively expensive—financially and politically—for many years. This will force Russia to rely on irregular capabilities, operate in areas where its rivals are not contesting, and exploit institutional limitations placed upon democratic institutions. Even if the Russian military reconstitutes its operational capabilities more quickly than Western experts have predicted, the losses to its professional officer corps will likely limit the army’s ability to project power in the short term. Its material reconstitution cannot replace the decades of expertise that were lost or the reputational damage to the Russian military sustained by the failures to sustain combat operations.

Iran implements a strategy called “smart power,” or a hybrid of hard and soft power, to further its influence, as put forward in Iranian political doctrine. Tehran backs an “Axis of Resistance,” including state and non-state actors, violent or otherwise, in the Palestinian Territories, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon, among others, to secure its interests. Iran, like China, also engages in soft power activities to exert influence in the region, including establishing religious and cultural institutions in places like Lebanon and Syria, as well as key economic and political partnerships in places like Iraq.

The United States employs a diverse set of terms like “hybrid warfare,” “gray zone activities,” and “irregular warfare” without establishing a unified framework to harness the tools of statecraft. The US is gradually making progress in this area. Still, its adversaries and competitors—such as Russia, Iran, and even China—have functional, seemingly systematized approaches for combining both subtle (soft) and forceful (hard) influences, drawing on resources from both government and private sectors. While the US navigates a linguistic maze of terminologies that address specific nuances of warfare, its adversaries employ more streamlined, cohesive approaches. These governments leverage the resources and authorities from public and private sectors, forging partnerships beyond traditional bureaucratic boundaries. This integrated framework allows them to align diverse capabilities and expertise toward a common goal. The emphasis on a shared vision and coordinated action reflects a strategic mindset that extends beyond military capabilities, recognizing the significance of economic, technological, and diplomatic dimensions in achieving strategic objectives.

The United States also has efforts to integrate national power instruments, however, they are not as comprehensive as the aforementioned adversaries’ hybrid strategies. Two such frameworks are the DIME (Diplomacy, Information, Military, Economic) and MIDFIELD (Military, Information, Diplomacy, Finance, Intelligence, Economic, Law/Enforcement, Development) approaches, utilized by various agencies, notably the joint military forces and diplomatic efforts.

More robustly, interagency Joint Task Forces (JTFs) integrate members of the Department of Defense with personnel from the Department of Treasury, Department of Transportation, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and various entities from across the intelligence community to collaborate and leverage their collective authorities to counter threats. However, these efforts are focused mostly on security threats, such as Joint Terrorism Task Forces throughout the United States. Most importantly, efforts like JTFs do not have soft power elements integrated, like adversaries’ hybrid initiatives.

Conclusion

While geographically and operationally distinct, these groups’ activities showcase a broader trend of exploitation by actors operating under the threshold of conventional international scrutiny.

The key to enhancing these efforts and confronting these challenges lies in the integration of strategies across all levels of government and the international community. A concerted push toward improved inter-agency coordination, coupled with a global commitment to transparency, accountability, and the enforcement of international norms, can significantly diminish the operational space for these organizations. It requires an enhanced understanding of the geopolitical landscape, improved coordination among national and international actors, and a steadfast commitment to upholding the rule of law. As these criminal entities adapt and evolve, so too must the strategies employed to counteract their influence.

The international response to such challenges requires a multifaceted approach. Increased awareness and reporting are critical in illuminating these shadowy operations and their impacts on regional stability. A concerted international effort to enhance governance structures and close legal and operational gaps will be essential in mitigating the influence of such groups. While the Wagner Group and the IRGC represent just two facets of a global issue, their activities offer critical lessons on the complexities of modern geopolitical conflicts. Addressing these challenges necessitates a robust international policy framework that prioritizes long-term stability and governance—such as strengthening regional formal and informal security institutions and promoting sustainable economic development to counteract these groups’ fundraising streams and recruitment incentives—over short-term security arrangements, like military interventions or temporary security agreements. By understanding and addressing the underlying economic and political conditions in which these groups thrive, the international community can better safeguard vulnerable regions from becoming pawns in broader strategic games and conflicts.

Dalton T. Fuss is a US Army special forces officer. He received a Master of Arts in International Relations from Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies and an undergraduate degree from Texas A&M University. He focuses on the intersection of irregular warfare and technology.

Nakissa P. Jahanbani, PhD is a senior analyst at the Afghanistan War Commission. She is also an Adjunct Lecturer at the Pennsylvania State University. She received a PhD in Political Science from the University at Albany and an undergraduate degree from American University. She specializes in political violence with a focus on Iran and Iranian-backed groups.

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

Main Image: Silhouette of Person Shadow Boxing June 14, 2021 (Photo by Ron Lach at Pexels)

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25. A Two-State Solution That Can Work

Excerpts:

Creating an Israeli-Palestinian confederation will obviously be difficult. In fact, to some, a scenario in which a Palestinian state is built from the rubble of Gaza and the fragmented West Bank and then engages in close cooperation with Israel may seem almost unimaginable. The enmity between the parties, the extreme power asymmetry, and their blatant disregard for international law present formidable obstacles to peace. But these barriers obstruct any solution, and a confederation is more feasible than an approach built on separation and domination. Critically, it is also designed to establish a sustainable peace, rather than a system of perpetual conflict management.

Still, to overcome the barriers, Israelis and Palestinians will need external assistance. There may even need to be an international transitional administration with authority over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, facilitating the transfer of power from the Israeli army to Palestinian governmental institutions. In the short run, such an administration will be essential to bringing security, public order, and humanitarian relief to both areas. In the medium term, it will focus on ending the Israeli occupation, helping build a viable Palestinian state, and establishing the confederation’s joint institutions. The administration will also work at reducing socioeconomic disparities between Palestinians and Israeli Jews. This administration should be mandated by the Security Council, work in cooperation with both Israeli and Palestinian governments, and have clear sunset provisions.

For now, talk about such an administration may seem premature. The world’s attention understandably remains focused on achieving a ceasefire that can end the killing and destruction in Gaza, bring hostages and prisoners home, and reduce the chance of a bigger, regional war. But to succeed at all these aims, the states involved must be guided by a vision of the future that is clear, credible, and fair. They must recognize that two peoples, each more than seven million strong, will continue to live together in their common homeland. A confederation built on the values of equal partnership and freedom of movement is exactly such a vision, and it provides a compelling alternative to the dangerous aspirations of extreme nationalists. It should serve as a compass that helps officials chart a path through the difficult decisions that lie ahead.

A Two-State Solution That Can Work

The Case for an Israeli-Palestinian Confederation

By Omar M. Dajani and Limor Yehuda

September 19, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by Collective Equality: Democracy and Human Rights in Ethno-national Conflicts · September 19, 2024

In July, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss the war in Gaza and the future of the Middle East. Afterward, Harris stressed her commitment to a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians—in her words, “the only path that ensures Israel remains a secure Jewish and democratic state, and one that ensures Palestinians can finally realize the freedom, security, and prosperity that they rightly deserve.” She is hardly alone in this sentiment. Across the world, leaders continue to pledge support for a two-state solution, arguing that it provides direction and momentum to efforts to end the war and eventually rebuild Gaza. In a long-awaited ceasefire resolution, passed in June, the UN Security Council again committed itself to “the vision of the two-State solution where two democratic States, Israel and Palestine, live side by side in peace within secure and recognized borders.”

For anyone paying attention to what is happening on the ground, however, these statements feel detached from reality. Netanyahu and his far-right coalition partners have pledged not to allow the creation of a Palestinian state. Even Netanyahu’s leading opponents are wary of the idea, aware of polls that show Israelis are overwhelmingly opposed. Israel does not want to give up control over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and it is not willing to relocate hundreds of thousands of settlers or erect a physical border dividing Jerusalem. Perhaps that is why, in private conversations, almost no one we talk to—not other analysts, diplomats, or policymakers—actually believes that the long-imagined two-state solution is attainable. As Harris herself acknowledged after her meeting in July, “Right now, it is hard to conceive of that prospect.”

The infeasibility of the familiar two-state plan has prompted some intellectuals to instead push for a one-state solution. Under these proposals, Palestinians and Israeli Jews would be equal citizens in a state governed by a single, democratically elected government. Such a solution may be a worthy long-term goal, but for now, it remains aspirational. Neither Israeli Jews nor Palestinians are willing to sacrifice their right to national self-determination. Both have good reasons to be so reluctant. There is no common Israeli-Palestinian identity, and although one could develop, it would take generations.

If neither the familiar two-state solution nor a one-state solution will work, then the prospects for peace between the two peoples may seem impossibly grim. But there is an alternative: an Israeli-Palestinian confederation, built on the principles of equality and partnership. In it, Israelis and Palestinians would each get their own, distinct states. They would have clear borders and the right to pass their own laws. But, following a transitional period, the border would be open, and both peoples would ultimately have the right to live across all the land between Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea, which both see as their historic homeland. Joint Israeli-Palestinian bodies would govern issues that transcend each state’s boundaries, such as energy and external security. There would be joint judicial institutions to safeguard everyone’s freedoms.

In doing all this, a confederation would resolve thorny questions arising from the incongruence between citizenship, nationhood, and statehood as well as between demography, nationality, and sovereignty. It would guarantee both Israelis and Palestinians equality, individually and collectively. And it would help both groups cooperate on an equitable basis after decades of occupation and conflict.

DEATH AND DIVISION

Since the 1990s, the partition of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea into two states has been associated with the paradigm of “separation” (or hafrada, in Hebrew). It posits that Israel can only be Jewish and democratic if it separates physically from the millions of Palestinians over whom it rules in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In his successful 1999 election campaign, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak told his country he would pursue “peace through separation.” One of his mantras was “We're here; they’re there.”

This paradigm shaped the contours of the peace deal ultimately sought by Israel. Under the terms of proposals put forth by Barak and a successor, Ehud Olmert, Israel’s largest West Bank settlement blocks would be annexed, and all the settlers living outside them would be evacuated. A physical border would be erected inside Jerusalem, dividing the city along ethnic lines. Palestinian refugees largely would be denied return to their places of origin inside Israel.

But the two sides could not agree about how to make this concept into a reality. During peace talks presided over by three U.S. administrations, Israelis and Palestinians argued about which of the settlements—all of which were built in contravention of international law—would stay and which would go. They disagreed about how exactly the city of Jerusalem would be divided.

Today, the paradigm is all but dead. The settler population in the West Bank and East Jerusalem exceeds 700,000, double the number it was in the year 2000. More than 115,000 of those settlers reside outside the blocks Israel previously claimed for annexation. The far right, meanwhile, enjoys unprecedented influence in government. As a result, the political, economic, and security costs of forcibly evacuating settlers have become prohibitive.

Confederations have long been used to address ethnic tensions.

The problems facing a separation-based two-state solution are not just practical. They are also ethical. The reality is that this paradigm was built on questionable premises. It reinforces a conception of ethnically homogeneous nation-states that harkens back to, and threatens to reprise, the catastrophic population transfers of the twentieth century. It marginalizes Palestinian refugee rights and would erect hard borders that sever Palestinians and Jews from places that figure centrally in their history and memory. Finally, it offers a limited institutional framework for managing the unavoidable interdependence of Israelis and Palestinians, who—whether separated or not—must both live in a piece of territory only slightly larger than the state of Vermont. As a result of that intimate geography, they face risks that can cross any borders. There is a reason that medical experts have warned that polio from Gaza’s devastated water system could spread to Israel’s.

Despite these flaws, analysts often argue that physical separation between Palestinians and Israeli Jews is necessary for the sake of the latter’s security. They suggest it can help prevent terrorist attacks and reduce interethnic tensions. But this argument is belied by experience. Inside Israel, where Jews live alongside some two million Palestinian citizens of Israel, interethnic violence has been rare. In contrast, the forced isolation of the Gaza Strip from Israel and the West Bank not only failed to prevent recurrent wars and cross-border attacks, but also contributed to them. Even if there could be barriers fully segregating Israeli Jews from their Palestinian neighbors in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, Israel’s major population centers would remain vulnerable to attack. Everyone is simply too close together.

For most advocates of separation, the answer to this dilemma has been to maintain Israel’s overriding control over the entire territory. This position was detailed in March by Yair Lapid—a centrist Israeli politician—who called for a two-state solution “that consists of a power advantage in our favor, that creates two political entities that are not equal in power, or in value. One is a demilitarized Palestinian state, that is small and dependent on us, and [the other is] a strong Israel that has regained its self-confidence.” But this is no two-state solution at all. Instead, it would leave Palestinians’ lives and livelihoods in the hands of Israeli institutions that have consistently shown flagrant disregard for them. It is a vision of perpetual domination and conflict: the opposite of mutual self-determination and peaceful coexistence.

SHARING SPACE

If separation cannot work, and if a one-state solution is unattainable for the foreseeable future, it may seem as if there is simply no good option. According to recent polls, that is the view taken by a large proportion of Israelis and Palestinians. But an increasing array of observers, us included, believe that a two-state confederation offers a workable middle ground. It would offer both peoples national self-determination while also providing a just framework for managing their attachments to, and interdependence in, their common homeland.

An Israeli-Palestinian confederation would hardly be the first such arrangement. Confederations have existed for centuries: the term refers to an association or union in which two or more sovereign states agree to cede some of their sovereign powers to joint institutions for the purpose of achieving shared goals, such as mutual security or economic integration. The member states in a confederation usually possess independent international personalities. But confederations also often facilitate the free movement of persons and goods within them.

Confederations, like other power-sharing arrangements, have long been used to address ethnic tensions in shared spaces. Sometimes, they have played a transitory role. The State Union of Serbia and Montenegro, for example, facilitated a peaceful transition to Montenegro’s independence in a region otherwise plagued by ethnic war. Switzerland was once a confederation between German-, French-, and Italian-speaking cantons. But in its 1848 constitution, it transformed into a more tightly knit federation.

Yet confederations do not need to be temporary. The European Union, for example, is a confederation that has proved quite durable. It was founded to ensure that Europe would not be the source of a third world war, and it has been wildly successful at that mission. It even earned the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012. The bloc has been successful in other ways, as well. It has produced economic and scientific cooperation, enabled freedom of movement, and promoted human rights, democracy, and the rule of law. Outside states have clamored to be let in, and only one member has left. And although the EU has established a common trade policy, environmental rules, and many other kinds of regulations, every country in the bloc remains sovereign, with its own laws, distinct international personality, and particular national identity.

Israelis and Palestinians would enjoy freedom of residence across their common homeland.

An Israeli-Palestinian confederation, like the European Union, would be comprised of distinct states. Palestine would be established alongside Israel with a recognized international border between them. Each would be sovereign, possessing a separate constitutional order, membership in international organizations, and independent authority over a broad array of spheres, such as education, foreign affairs, law enforcement, social welfare, and taxation. In these respects, a confederation is, at its core, a two-state solution.

But this framework would differ from the familiar two-state solution in important respects. There would, for example, be a regulated but open border between the two states. Over a transitional period, citizens of both would acquire the right to move throughout the entire country, subject to reciprocal and coordinated security measures. Ultimately, Israelis and Palestinians would also enjoy freedom of residence across their common homeland (though residency rights would be phased in gradually and with careful attention to political and economic stability). That means Israeli citizens, including West Bank settlers, could reside in Palestine provided they adhere to its laws, while Palestinian citizens, including refugees, could reside in Israel on the same basis. Palestinian citizens of Israel would retain their Israeli citizenship and residency rights.

As in the European Union, voting rights for national elections would be based on citizenship, whereas those for local elections would be based on residence. Accordingly, a returning Palestinian refugee who opts to live in Jaffa would vote for the Palestinian National Assembly, not the Knesset, but would be able to vote for the Yafo-Tel Aviv city council. Conversely, an Israeli residing in a (former) settlement such as Ariel would vote in the Knesset, not the Palestinian National Assembly, but could participate in choosing representatives in an integrated Ariel municipal government.

This border regime addresses several issues that have stymied peace agreements in the past. It offers a solution to settlements that neither necessitates the forcible mass evacuation of Israeli settlers nor undermines Palestinian sovereignty. It provides Palestinian refugees with the opportunity to return to live in their places of origin while ensuring Israel remains the national home for the Jewish people. And it avoids the construction of a physical barrier dividing Jerusalem, allowing the capital of both states to be an open city managed either by a single, shared municipality or by two coordinated municipal governments elected by residents of both sides of the city. In addition, because this framework does not require Israelis or Palestinians to surrender their attachment to any part of the country, it lowers the stakes of determining where the border between the two states will be.

EQUAL PARTNERS

A confederation would differ from the familiar two-state solution in another important way. It would provide Israelis and Palestinians with an institutional framework strong and flexible enough to manage the common challenges they face. In past peace talks, both sides understood that the tiny space they share would require cooperation between a separate Israel and Palestine. And in some spheres—such as agriculture, banking, criminal justice, development planning, education, foreign affairs, taxation, and tourism—such cooperation would likely have sufficed. But a confederation would make it easier for the states to jointly address more difficult topics.

For example, Israel and Palestine could set up shared institutions to address matters that implicate infrastructure or resources, such as civil aviation, customs, energy, environmental protection, immigration, public health, and transportation. Each state would have authority over its own internal security, but confederal institutions would facilitate close cooperation and intelligence sharing between each side’s policing entities. External security, on the other hand, might be managed through joint institutions linked to a regional security framework.

To ensure that disputes between the two states are resolved peacefully and that human rights are protected across the joint homeland, the confederation will need a set of shared judicial institutions (as a complement to national courts). These courts and other confederal bodies will likely require third-party participation at the outset, in order to build mutual confidence and avoid stalemates. They will all need to be built upon the principle of collective equality: the idea that both parties are equal and that neither dominates the other. This principle is essential following the experience of the Oslo Accords, which helped establish joint committees for cooperation in areas such as security, water management, and telecommunications that were often experienced as coercive by Palestinians.

Structuring confederal arrangements around collective equality does not mean the parties must come to negotiations with identical capacities. In many spheres, such as economic capacity, social welfare, health care, and defense, there will be gaping asymmetries between Israelis and Palestinians that may require each state to assume different roles or receive different benefits for some time. What is required, however, is a normative commitment to individual and collective equality and a framework that ensures this commitment is translated into reality.

COME TOGETHER

Creating an Israeli-Palestinian confederation will obviously be difficult. In fact, to some, a scenario in which a Palestinian state is built from the rubble of Gaza and the fragmented West Bank and then engages in close cooperation with Israel may seem almost unimaginable. The enmity between the parties, the extreme power asymmetry, and their blatant disregard for international law present formidable obstacles to peace. But these barriers obstruct any solution, and a confederation is more feasible than an approach built on separation and domination. Critically, it is also designed to establish a sustainable peace, rather than a system of perpetual conflict management.

Still, to overcome the barriers, Israelis and Palestinians will need external assistance. There may even need to be an international transitional administration with authority over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, facilitating the transfer of power from the Israeli army to Palestinian governmental institutions. In the short run, such an administration will be essential to bringing security, public order, and humanitarian relief to both areas. In the medium term, it will focus on ending the Israeli occupation, helping build a viable Palestinian state, and establishing the confederation’s joint institutions. The administration will also work at reducing socioeconomic disparities between Palestinians and Israeli Jews. This administration should be mandated by the Security Council, work in cooperation with both Israeli and Palestinian governments, and have clear sunset provisions.

For now, talk about such an administration may seem premature. The world’s attention understandably remains focused on achieving a ceasefire that can end the killing and destruction in Gaza, bring hostages and prisoners home, and reduce the chance of a bigger, regional war. But to succeed at all these aims, the states involved must be guided by a vision of the future that is clear, credible, and fair. They must recognize that two peoples, each more than seven million strong, will continue to live together in their common homeland. A confederation built on the values of equal partnership and freedom of movement is exactly such a vision, and it provides a compelling alternative to the dangerous aspirations of extreme nationalists. It should serve as a compass that helps officials chart a path through the difficult decisions that lie ahead.

• OMAR M. DAJANI is the Carol Olson Professor of International Law at McGeorge School of Law, University of the Pacific. From 1999 to 2001, he served as legal adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team in peace talks with Israel from 1999 to 2001.
• LIMOR YEHUDA is a Senior Research Fellow and leader of the Partnership-Based Israeli-Palestinian Peace project at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, a Lecturer at the Hebrew University Faculty of Law, and the author of Collective Equality: Democracy and Human Rights in Ethno-National Conflicts.
• They are co-chairs of the joint board of A Land for All, an Israeli-Palestinian movement that advocates a confederal vision of “two states, one homeland.”

Foreign Affairs · by Collective Equality: Democracy and Human Rights in Ethno-national Conflicts · September 19, 2024

26. Is Ukraine’s Offensive Working? Perhaps

Excerpts:

What might Ukraine do next? First, it could expand information operations by broadcasting more aggressively into Russian-controlled areas, highlighting Russian military failures and Ukraine’s humanitarian efforts in occupied regions. This could sow further discord among the Russian population, especially as economic hardships from the war increase.

Second, Ukraine could leverage its control over certain territories to facilitate defections from Russian forces. The surrender of hundreds of Russian troops indicates a level of disillusionment that Ukraine could exploit through promises of safety and humane treatment. Encouraging desertions and defections could accelerate the weakening of Russian military morale.

Finally, Ukraine’s ability to continue precision strikes deep within Russian territory while simultaneously defending the areas they have captured will be crucial.

Keeping the pressure on Russian supply lines, key military infrastructure, and command centers will stretch Russian forces even thinner, making it more difficult for the Kremlin to mount successful counteroffensives in the coming months. The longer Ukraine can hold Kursk, the greater the political and military risk for Moscow.

Is Ukraine’s Offensive Working? Perhaps

Ukraine’s invasion of Russia’s Kursk region is now six-weeks old. Despite early criticism, there are signs it might be working.

cepa.org · by Doug Livermore · September 18, 2024

It’s very difficult to understand the progress of a military operation, even if you’re there. If you’re somewhere else, it’s even tougher, given that both sides highlight success and downplay failure. When, for example, was the outcome and significance of the Battle of the Bulge understood? It took a while.

So it’s early to declare Kursk a success or failure, or even a draw. Even so, there are signs emerging from reliable analytical sources that Ukraine’s operation is having at least some effect on its most important aim — to siphon Russian forces from Eastern Ukraine to Kursk and so weaken its successful offensive in Donbas.

Estimates suggest there is a substantial movement of forces into Kursk Oblast. The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) cites Ukrainian estimates that troop numbers rose to around 40,000 from about 11,000 at the start of the incursion. The Ukrainians say another 20,000 are on the way.

ISW stated that Ukraine has “forced the Russian military command to redeploy elements from Ukraine to Kursk Oblast and commit newly generated forces from within Russia to the area instead of the frontline in Ukraine.”

It’s unclear how many of those additional men would otherwise have been deployed near Russia’s target towns of Pokrovsk, Chasiv Yar, and other settlements, but there is evidence that at least some have been diverted. Elements of the 15th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade, for example, which has been fighting near Pokrovsk, have been identified in Kursk.

Russia has committed significant forces to retake towns seized by Ukraine in Kursk, including deploying naval infantry and elite airborne units. These efforts have faced stiff resistance from Ukraine’s highly mobile special operations forces, who have played a critical role in repelling Russian advances and launching counterattacks.

Reports indicate that Ukraine continues to occupy over 100 settlements and hold significant ground, while Russian forces have struggled to mount a coordinated response, slowed by the long distances involved and competing demands across the 600-mile front line in Ukraine. It has recaptured some ground, but not much.

Ukraine’s approach in Kursk has been characterized by ambushes, precision strikes, and small-unit tactics, leveraging their familiarity with asymmetric warfare. This style of warfare has allowed Ukraine to disrupt Russian supply routes, especially by targeting infrastructure such as bridges and roads in the Kursk region.

Ukrainian forces have also seized opportunities to weaken Russian defenses through drone strikes and long-range missile attacks. The destruction of several bridges over the Seym River has further complicated Russian efforts to organize a cohesive defense. Ukrainian special operators also destroyed one of Russia’s largest stockpiles of artillery and missiles in a cataclysmic explosion on September 17 estimated at upward of 1.8 kilotons — causing a blast wave felt nearly 200 miles away and registering around three on the Richter scale.

Despite some Russian territorial gains in Eastern Ukraine, particularly in Donetsk, its progress has slowed in recent days, and it would be extraordinary if it were otherwise.

While Russia now offers huge sign-up bonuses for recruits, it is struggling to maintain its forces at its current strength and faces a deeply embarrassing occupation of its territory by a neighbor. Putin may not want to fall into the Ukrainian trap, but he may have no choice. Even 60,000 troops probably won’t be enough to evict the Ukrainian army.

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Ukrainian special operations forces are critical to the operation in Kursk. These elite units, trained in unconventional warfare, have excelled at quick strikes, gathering intelligence, and destabilizing Russian lines.

Their successes in ambushing Russian columns, destroying supply convoys, and obliterating munition and oil depots have contributed to Ukraine's ability to hold territory despite Russian attempts at recapturing key locations. In addition, Ukrainian intelligence has been vital in identifying high-value Russian targets, leading to precision strikes that further sap the morale of Russian troops

The operations serve a dual purpose: not only do they directly affect the battlefield by eroding Russian military strength, but they also act as psychological warfare. The knowledge that Russian forces are unable to secure their own territory has contributed to growing discontent. As many as 150,000 Russian civilians have fled the region, leaving behind a vacuum that Ukraine has started to fill by establishing administrative control over several towns. These actions signal Ukraine's intention to maintain a long-term presence in Kursk.

The Kremlin finds itself in a difficult position. State-controlled media has struggled to craft a cohesive narrative about the incursion, often downplaying the severity of the situation. However, the ongoing fighting — and Ukraine’s ability to hold ground — has damaged Putin’s image domestically. The symbolic and strategic importance of Kursk to Russia, given its proximity to Ukraine and its role as a logistical hub, adds to the pressure on Moscow to reverse Ukraine’s gains.

What might Ukraine do next? First, it could expand information operations by broadcasting more aggressively into Russian-controlled areas, highlighting Russian military failures and Ukraine’s humanitarian efforts in occupied regions. This could sow further discord among the Russian population, especially as economic hardships from the war increase.

Second, Ukraine could leverage its control over certain territories to facilitate defections from Russian forces. The surrender of hundreds of Russian troops indicates a level of disillusionment that Ukraine could exploit through promises of safety and humane treatment. Encouraging desertions and defections could accelerate the weakening of Russian military morale.

Finally, Ukraine’s ability to continue precision strikes deep within Russian territory while simultaneously defending the areas they have captured will be crucial.

Keeping the pressure on Russian supply lines, key military infrastructure, and command centers will stretch Russian forces even thinner, making it more difficult for the Kremlin to mount successful counteroffensives in the coming months. The longer Ukraine can hold Kursk, the greater the political and military risk for Moscow.

Doug Livermore is the Senior Vice President for Solution Engineering at the CenCore Group and the Deputy Commander for Special Operations Detachment – Joint Special Operations Command in the North Carolina Army National Guard. In addition to his role as the Director of Engagements for the Irregular Warfare Initiative, he is the National Director of External Communications for the Special Forces Association, National Vice President for the Special Operations Association of America, Director of Development of the Corioli Institute, and serves as Chair of the Advisory Committee for No One Left Behind.

Disclaimer: The views expressed are the author’s and do not represent official US Government, Department of Defense, or Department of the Army positions.

Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the position or views of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis.

Europe's Edge

CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America.

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cepa.org · by Doug Livermore · September 18, 2024

27. The inhumanity of the CCP’s war on free speech

The inhumanity of the CCP’s war on free speech

Exiled Hongkongers who have criticised the regime may never see their home or their loved ones again.

Chloe Lo

18th September 2024

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For most people, if a family member or loved one is unwell, you try to be there for them. Unfortunately, for many Hong Kongers around the world, this is now an impossibility.

Earlier this year, Hong Kong passed a new piece of legislation entitled Article 23. This law gives the authorities even more sweeping powers to restrict free speech than the already draconian 2020 National Security Law. Both laws were imposed on Hong Kong by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in conjunction with the regional government.

The 2020 National Security Law was put in place to criminalise any activity the government views as ‘sedition’, ‘subversion’ or ‘terrorism’. Article 23 goes further still in clamping down on civil liberties and criminalising dissent. It promises harsher sentences for dissenters, and allows trials to take place behind closed doors. Many pro-democracy activists now face an even greater risk of being arrested and accused of ‘colluding with foreign forces’ or ‘inciting hatred’.

It means that Hongkongers who have called out the wrongdoing of the CCP and fled abroad are now at risk of arrest, trial and imprisonment if they ever set foot in Hong Kong again. Those threatened by this new legislation include courageous human-rights campaigners like Nathan Law, Finn Lau, Anna Kwok, Frances Hui, Simon Cheng and Joey Siu.

As a journalist critical of the CCP and now living in the UK, I am also affected by this new law. On Thursday morning, I received a message from one of the most important people in my life. He has been diagnosed with cancer and is currently waiting for the results from doctors to see if the cancer has spread. But because of the CCP’s legislative clampdown on dissent, I would be at risk of arrest should I return to see him.

The CCP’s war on fundamental freedoms has already claimed many victims. Publisher and journalist Jimmy Lai, law professor Benny Tai, human-rights lawyer Chow Hang-tung, politician Gwyneth Ho and many others have already been imprisoned after falling foul of the CCP. As have many activists challenging the Uyghur genocide, the incursions in Taiwan or the repression in Tibet.

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Many activists now living abroad after challenging the CCP are tirelessly risking their futures to try to get the world’s governments to understand the threat it poses to democracy. Yet from Canada to Germany, these governments are only too willing to turn a blind eye and kowtow to Beijing – a tribute to China’s power and influence as the second-biggest economy in the world.

How much more evidence does the UK and the world need to realise that the CCP is a threat to democracy? Its infiltration and penetration into the UK alone is enormous, from alleged spies in parliament to cyberattacks on MPs. Then there’s the fact that a huge amount of surveillance technology in the UK is made by a controversial Chinese surveillance company.

It seems that the reach of the authoritarian CCP now extends around the world. I know of many other Hong Kongers who desperately need to go back home to visit their parents and loved ones. Yet to do so, they are forced to stay silent. But since there is no turning back for me, I feel obliged to speak up for those who cannot speak. It is the right thing to do.

Chloe Lo is a Hong Konger and former Bloomberg reporter who covered prominent court proceedings tied to the Hong Kong unrest and the National Security Law. Follow her on X: @ChloecLoNews

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​28. Japan walkie-talkie maker Icom says it no longer makes radio reportedly used in Lebanon blasts

Japan walkie-talkie maker Icom says it no longer makes radio reportedly used in Lebanon blasts

The blasts came a day after the simultaneous explosion of hundreds of paging devices used by Hezbollah.

19 Sep 2024 10:41AM

(Updated: 19 Sep 2024 12:37PM)

channelnewsasia.com

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Japan walkie-talkie maker Icom says it no longer makes radio reportedly used in Lebanon blasts

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The blasts came a day after the simultaneous explosion of hundreds of paging devices used by Hezbollah.

This screengrab shows a walkie-talkie that exploded inside a house, in Baalbek, east Lebanon, Sep 18, 2024. (Image: AP)

19 Sep 2024 10:41AM (Updated: 19 Sep 2024 12:37PM)

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TOKYO: Japanese firm Icom said on Thursday (Sep 19) that it had stopped producing the model of radios reportedly used in recent blasts in Lebanon around 10 years ago.

"The IC-V82 is a handheld radio that was produced and exported, including to the Middle East, from 2004 to October 2014. It was discontinued about 10 years ago, and since then, it has not been shipped from our company," Icom said in a statement.

"The production of the batteries needed to operate the main unit has also been discontinued, and a hologram seal to distinguish counterfeit products was not attached, so it is not possible to confirm whether the product shipped from our company," it said.

It added that products for overseas markets are sold exclusively through its authorised distributors, and that its export programme is based on Japanese security trade control regulations.

"All of our radios are manufactured at our production subsidiary, Wakayama Icom Inc, in Wakayama Prefecture, under a strict management system... so no parts other than those specified by our company are used in a product.

"In addition, all of our radios are manufactured at the same factory, and we do not manufacture them overseas," the statement said.

In the second wave of device explosions in as many days, 20 people died and more than 450 were wounded on Wednesday in Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon, officials said.

A source close to Hezbollah said walkie-talkies used by its members blew up in its Beirut stronghold, with state media reporting similar blasts in south and east Lebanon.

They came a day after the simultaneous explosion of hundreds of paging devices used by Hezbollah killed 12 people, including two children, and wounded up to 2,800 others across Lebanon, in an unprecedented attack blamed on Israel.

There was no comment from Israel. The White House warned all sides against "an escalation of any kind".

Source: Agencies/zl/nh

channelnewsasia.com

29. US FBI strikes second Chinese hacking group, director says

US FBI strikes second Chinese hacking group, director says

18 Sep 2024 10:24PM

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US FBI strikes second Chinese hacking group, director says

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Figurines with computers and smartphones are seen in front of the word "hacker" in this illustration taken, on Feb 19, 2024. (Photo: REUTERS/Dado Ruvic)

18 Sep 2024 10:24PM

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WASHINGTON: US law enforcement has disrupted a second major Chinese hacking group nicknamed "Flax Typhoon", FBI Director Christopher Wray said on Wednesday (Sep 18), wresting thousands of compromised devices from its grasp.

Speaking at a cybersecurity conference in Washington, Wray said Flax Typhoon was being run by a Chinese company called the Integrity Technology Group that posed as an IT firm but also "collected intelligence and performed reconnaissance for Chinese government security agencies".

A previously known hacking group dubbed "Volt Typhoon" has been the subject of increasing concern by Western officials since it was first identified last year as cyber sabotage group focused on establishing a foothold in critical US infrastructure.

US officials have said it is a China-backed group, while Beijing has said it is a ransomware gang.

Representatives for China's embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the latest Federal Bureau of Investigation statement.

Source: Reuters/ec

channelnewsasia.com

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