Korea has not been the only battleground since the end of the Second World War. Men have fought and died in Malaya, in Greece, in the Philippines, in Algeria and Cuba and Cyprus, and almost continuously on the Indo-Chinese Peninsula. No nuclear weapons have been fired. No massive nuclear retaliation has been considered appropriate. This is another type of war, new in its intensity, ancient in its origin--war by guerrillas, subversives, insurgents, assassins, war by ambush instead of by combat; by infiltration, instead of aggression, seeking victory by eroding and exhausting the enemy instead of engaging him. It is a form of warfare uniquely adapted to what has been strangely called "wars of liberation," to undermine the efforts of new and poor countries to maintain the freedom that they have finally achieved. It preys on economic unrest and ethnic conflicts. It requires in those situations where we must counter it, and these are the kinds of challenges that will be before us in the next decade if freedom is to be saved, a whole new kind of strategy, a wholly different kind of force, and therefore a new and wholly different kind of military training.

John F. Kennedy, 35th President of the U.S.

Remarks at West Point to the Graduating Class of the U.S. Military Academy, June 06, 1962

Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

"The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists."

– Ernest Hemingway

"The writer is delegated to declare and to celebrate man’s proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit—for gallantry in defeat, for courage, compassion and love. In the endless war against weakness and despair, these are the bright rally flags of hope and of emulation. I hold that a writer who does not believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature."

– John Steinbeck

"If you would persuade, you must appeal to interest rather than intellect."

– Benjamin Franklin

1. NATO Prepares to Face Russia—and Problems of Its Own

2. The Dark-Horse Alliance Racing Forward to Take On China

3. Why China Is So Bad at Disinformation

4. AI hits trust hurdles with U.S. military

5. Foreign Policy Starts in Your Own Neighborhood

6. Will Putin Test NATO Article 5 in the Black Sea Region?

7. Another Historic Year for the PLA Navy

8. America is Losing Tomorrow’s War in the Indo-Pacific

9. Here’s how the US-led humanitarian aid pier off Gaza will work

10. A 98-year-old in Ukraine walked miles to safety from Russians, with slippers and a cane

11. Time Magazine Interview: How Far Trump Would Go

12. Here’s when the US Army will pick next long-range spy plane

13. Retired officer called to court-martial at Fort Belvoir on sexual assault charge previously declined

14. Marines create new monitor job to support dual-military couples

15. Will Hamas Say No?

16. Why Israel is so determined to launch an offensive in Rafah. And why so many oppose it

17. 'Send Me': Senior chief Shannon Kent and the hunt for ISIS

18. The Marine officer who saved 8,000 lives at the ‘Frozen Chosin’

19. Washington Is Missing the Point on Alternatives to the Belt and Road Initiative

20. China Humiliated Blinken But Blinken Kept Begging

1. NATO Prepares to Face Russia—and Problems of Its Own

Map and photos at the link.

NATO Prepares to Face Russia—and Problems of Its Own

Troops from member countries train for shoulder-to-shoulder fighting, while disputes over spending plague the alliance

By Daniel Michaels

https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/nato-russia-spending-membership-eab4a10a?st=w5t7xcsg3dh6jyg&utm

April 30, 2024 12:01 am ET

ADAZI MILITARY BASE, Latvia—NATO troops from 14 nations amassed last month in a wooded area here to take part in the alliance’s biggest military exercise since the Cold War. Once again, the focus was Russia.

The drill began in the early morning darkness with a warning: Enemy forces had crossed Latvia’s border with Russia and were closing on the capital. Communicating in various languages over different kinds of radios, the troops raced to push the mock invaders toward wetlands that would bog down their tanks.

“What’s most important is to demonstrate readiness to act quickly and deploy to defend Latvian and NATO borders,” said Latvian Army Col. Oskars Kudlis, who was commanding a brigade of heavy armored vehicles from a position in the forest. The response required troops from as far away as Canada and Albania to work out kinks in communications, absorb one another’s battlefield practices and coordinate disparate weapons systems.

Ever since Moscow seized the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in 2014, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has had its eye on Europe’s border with Russia. This year’s exercise, called Steadfast Defender 2024, aims to send a message to Moscow: The alliance stands ready to defend its members—especially those near Russia’s border, including Latvia.

After the Cold War, differences in language, communications systems and weaponry within NATO mattered little because its troops rarely fought shoulder-to-shoulder. Instead, many rotated through short-term deployments in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere, planned long in advance. Equipment needs were clear and each ally handled its own provisioning.

Now, preparing for coalition warfare is once again NATO’s priority, and troops have to know how to work together on the battlefield. “The integration of all the countries is a challenge,” said Canadian Army Lt. Col. Jonathan Cox, who helped lead Exercise Crystal Arrow, the Latvian portion of the NATO maneuvers, which include air, land and sea drills across the alliance.

Canadian Lt. Col. Jonathan Cox helped lead the Latvian portion of the NATO exercise. PHOTO: DANIEL MICHAELS/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

NATO, which marked its 75th anniversary on April 4, is getting stronger in some ways. Finland and Sweden have joined after decades of shunning membership. NATO’s European members are spending more on defense than they have since the Cold War. This year, for the first time in decades, the European members, on an aggregate basis, will meet their financial commitment to the alliance, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said recently.

But the alliance is plagued by other disputes. Leaders disagree on whether Ukraine and other aspiring members should be allowed to join. The contest to succeed Stoltenberg later this year has sparked acrimony between longtime members and newer ones from the former Eastern bloc.

And many NATO countries, including six of its 12 founding members, remain far from hitting the military budgeting levels they pledged to achieve a decade ago. That low spending has made them the target of attacks from Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, sparking doubts about the alliance’s future if he wins in November.

Throughout history, many military alliances—including those that defeated Napoleon and won World War II—involved allied armies operating separately under common command. NATO’s objective is to prepare allies to fight side-by-side.

This year’s exercises, the largest since 1988, are being staged over four months through May, at locations stretching from the Arctic Circle to the Black Sea. They involve roughly 90,000 troops, 1,100 combat vehicles, 80 aircraft and 50 naval vessels.

The operation in Latvia was one of several staged near Europe’s border with Russia. In 2016, after Moscow had seized the Crimean Peninsula and helped foment rebellion in Ukraine’s east, NATO members agreed to rotate troops constantly through its vulnerable eastern members, specifying which member nation would take the lead in defending each country.

The U.S. took the lead in Poland, Germany did so with Lithuania, the U.K. with Estonia and Canada with Latvia. After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, NATO beefed up its forces in those countries and added partnerships in Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria.

Border force

The defense of each NATO state along the alliance's eastern border is led by one member nation, with others supporting it.

Host countries

Other NATO members

FINLAND

NORWAY

Lead nation: United Kingdom

SWEDEN

Supporting nations: France, Iceland

ESTONIA

RUSSIA

Canada

LATVIA

Albania, Czech Republic, Iceland,

Italy, Montenegro, North Macedonia,

Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain

Germany

LITHUANIA

Belgium, Czech Republic, Luxembourg,

Netherlands, Norway, U.S.

Baltic Sea

BELARUS

U.S.

Croatia, Romania,

United Kingdom

POLAND

UKRAINE

GERMANY

CZECH REP.

Czech Republic

SLOVAKIA

MOL.

Germany, Slovenia

AUSTRIA

France

HUNGARY

Hungary

Belgium, Luxembourg,

North Macedonia,

Poland, Portugal, U.S.

ROMANIA

Croatia, Italy, Turkey, U.S.

CROATIA

ITALY

SERBIA

Black Sea

Italy

BULGARIA

Albania, Greece, Montenegro,

North Macedonia, Turkey, U.S.

TURKEY

GREECE

Source: NATO

The partnerships have interwoven allies more closely than at any time since the Cold War, when the U.S., Britain and France kept troops permanently stationed in West Germany.

The Latvian exercise, staged near the capital, Riga, was one of NATO’s most international this year. Eleven member nations that already had troops deployed in Latvia, including Canada, were joined by forces from the U.S., Iceland, and Latvia’s neighbor, Estonia.

Canadian forces stationed in Latvia constitute Ottawa’s largest current overseas troop deployment. For many of those Canadians, defending against Russia is personal because they previously were stationed at a base in western Ukraine, training local forces in the years before Russia’s 2022 invasion. Two years ago, Moscow hit that base with missiles, destroying the barracks where Canadians had lived.

Canadian Army Lt. Col. Dan Richel, deputy commander of the Latvian operation led by Col. Kudlis, was posted with his family from Quebec to Latvia last August to help expand Canada’s presence. Most of his colleagues in the local headquarters are Latvian. He has started to learn the language, though most routine business is conducted in English, he said.

Latvian Army Col. Oskars Kudlis commanded a brigade of heavy armored vehicles. PHOTO: DANIEL MICHAELS/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

NATO countries agreed in 2014 that by this year each would spend at least 2% of gross domestic product on defense.

Latvia, which was invaded by the Soviet Union in 1940 and didn’t win independence until 1991, will spend 2.4% of its GDP on defense this year, part of a plan to hit 3% in 2027. Canada allocates about 1.3% of its GDP to its military and has no plan to hit 2%.

NATO’s Stoltenberg and U.S. NATO Ambassador Julianne Smith chastised Canada this year for being among the only alliance countries not seeking to achieve the agreed target.If Canada fails to meet its commitments, “how does that reflect on the coherence of the alliance?” said retired Vice Admiral Mark Norman, a former head of Canada’s navy who recently visited NATO headquarters in Brussels. Canada would probably increase defense spending only under duress “because the threat perception is just not there,” Norman said of the prevailing opinion inside Canada.

One of the alliance’s most fundamental divisions is a disparity in how member countries view threats. NATO lists terrorism and Russia as its main threats. Many officials in Turkey and other member nations along the Mediterranean Sea are more worried about regional conflicts, illegal migration and terrorism than about Russia.

Almost one-third of Latvia’s population of about 1.9 million people is Russian, a legacy of Soviet times. Tensions are high inside the country and along its borders with Russia and Belarus, an authoritarian state under Moscow’s sway.

Troops from 14 nations took part in Crystal Arrow. PHOTO: SGT. ERIKS KUKUTIS/LATVIAN ARMY

NATO planners consider an outright Russian invasion of a neighboring member country unlikely in the near future, though recently some military officials in NATO countries said Moscow could be strong enough to attack in a few years. Over the shorter term, they worry that Moscow might spark conflict in nearby countries by agitating local Russians and using tensions as pretext to intercede, as the Kremlin did in eastern Ukraine a decade ago.

Latvia joined NATO in 2004, 13 years after it gained independence from the Soviet Union. Since then, the alliance’s requirements and standards have compelled Latvia’s armed forces to modernize. Western military vehicles have replaced old Soviet models.

During the Crystal Arrow exercise, a battalion led by Latvian Army Lieut. Col. Gaidis Landratovs operated alongside U.S. troops. They played forces invading from the fictional nation of Occacus, identified with red Xs on their equipment. NATO avoids using names of real adversaries in training.

Canadian Lt. Col. Cox, temporarily stationed in Latvia to oversee NATO’s international battle group there, was commander of the defending forces, which included troops from 11 nations. When the mock invasion began, his forces moved and took defensive positions, awaiting word on their attackers.

Soldiers speaking different languages struggled to communicate. English and French are NATO’s official languages, but fluency varies.

Another problem, said Cox, was “radios that sometimes work together and most of the time don’t. But there’s always comms problems, no matter what happens.”

Crystal Arrow involved Canadian LAV-6 armored vehicles, American, German and Polish tanks, and Latvia’s British-made CVR-T reconnaissance vehicles. PHOTO: SGT. ERIKS KUKUTIS/LATVIAN ARMY

Operations succeed because of simple plans and integration, he said. “Every country has their own way of doing it, but the intent and the effect was the same across the battle group,” he said.

Uniformity has long been a challenge for NATO. In Crystal Arrow, allies deployed Canadian LAV-6 armored vehicles, American, German and Polish tanks, and Latvia’s British-made CVR-T reconnaissance vehicles. Each requires different spare parts and maintenance.

Standardizing big gear is daunting because producing it is a lucrative business that few countries want to surrender. The U.S. has about three-dozen main military systems such as planes, ships and tanks. In Europe, where most countries protect their national arms producers and often compete for export orders, alliance members use 172 models, according to NATO’s most senior military official, Dutch Admiral Rob Bauer.

Smaller equipment can be problematic, too. Planners have struggled for years to ensure that secure field radios from various countries are compatible, a challenge deepened by the need for digital encryption and measures to counter electronic warfare.

After the Cold War, such technical differences mattered little because NATO troops from different countries rarely fought alongside one another. Now, they need to be able to share equipment and know that one army’s cannons can fire another’s shells.

Alliance planners have set equipment norms and worked to ensure that gear operates interchangeably. But even for one of NATO’s most basic standards, 155-millimeter artillery shells, members produce 14 different models, Bauer said. Some shells can’t go into other launchers, while some may fit but not link to targeting software.

Many of the nearly 200 different weapons systems provided to Ukraine have come from NATO nations. The hodgepodge has created a maintenance nightmare for Ukraine, which has had to scrounged to obtain spare parts for many.

U.S. Army Capt. Malcolm Edgar, who commands Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles in Lithuania, said finding ways around differences is one benefit of multicountry exercises like Crystal Arrow.

“We’re not just saying we can do this together,” but showing it’s possible, said Edgar. “It’s all about getting the sets and reps in.”

This year’s NATO exercises, including the one in Latvia, involve roughly 90,000 troops, 1,100 combat vehicles, 80 aircraft and 50 naval vessels. PHOTO: SGT. GATIS INDREVICS/LATVIAN ARMY

Write to Daniel Michaels at Dan.Michaels@wsj.com

2. The Dark-Horse Alliance Racing Forward to Take On China

Just as in 1905 and 1941, the Philippines holds a geostrategic advantage.

The Dark-Horse Alliance Racing Forward to Take On China

A U.S. charm offensive, a new leader in the Philippines and forceful Chinese actions have helped forge a new era of ties between Washington and Manila

https://www.wsj.com/world/asia/the-dark-horse-alliance-racing-forward-to-take-on-china-b4949625?mc_cid=aa35a41d76&mc_eid=70bf478f36&mod=Searchresults_pos13&page=1&utm

By Niharika MandhanaFollow

April 29, 2024 8:00 am ET

Four years ago, the U.S. and its oldest ally in Asia were close to breaking up.

The Philippines had declared it wanted to exit a cornerstone defense pact between the countries. Then-President Rodrigo Duterte favored a realignment toward Beijing.

Today, the alliance is at its strongest in decades. The striking turnaround is the result of a U.S. charm offensive, a new leader in Manila and forceful Chinese actions against the Philippines in the South China Sea.

Some 16,000 American and Filipino military personnel are training in annual exercises called Balikatan, which began on April 22 and will feature America’s Himars rocket launcher and Stinger antiaircraft missiles. The goal is to make sure they can smoothly operate side-by-side if they have to go to war together.

Earlier this month, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. made his second visit to the White House in less than a year. Days before that, navy ships and aircraft from the U.S., Japan, Australia and the Philippines held joint drills in the South China Sea—a strong show of force in support of Manila. Just weeks prior, on a trip to the Philippines, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken lauded what he called an extraordinary expansion in ties, echoing his counterpart Enrique Manalo, who said: “We’ve been on hyperdrive over the past year or so.”

The shift marks a win for the Biden administration’s strategy to counter China by shoring up America’s alliances.

“China continues to overplay its hand and drive Manila right into the arms of Washington,” said Zack Cooper, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute whose research focuses on U.S. strategy in Asia. Still, he said he is surprised by how quickly the relationship has accelerated in a short period.

Filipino President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., President Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida at the White House earlier this month. PHOTO: ANDREW HARNIK/GETTY IMAGES

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has visited the White House twice in the last year. PHOTO: JIM LO SCALZO/PRESS POOL

The U.S. gained access to four additional Philippine military bases last year, taking the total to nine. A number of them are at locations that would be significant if a conflict were to break out in the South China Sea or the Taiwan Strait, two major flashpoints in Asia. The bases aren’t U.S.-controlled, but they are sites the American military would seek to use during hostilities to disperse its forces, launch aircraft and missiles, and complicate Beijing’s calculations.

Washington is pouring tens of millions of dollars into upgrading runways and building warehouses, fuel storage and barracks at the sites, some of which are fairly basic. The Biden administration is seeking $128 million more for construction.

The sites represent efforts by the two sides to build out places where they can operate and exercise together, Adm. John Aquilino, head of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, said in remarks to reporters last week. “And then ultimately, if need be, and the mutual-defense treaty were to be activated, those are places where we would fight together,” he said.

Why China Is So Bad at Disinformation

China’s state-sponsored disinformation campaign has been running at a massive scale for seven years—but no one is looking at it.

Wired · by David Gilbert · April 29, 2024

The headlines sounded dire: “China Will Use AI to Disrupt Elections in the US, South Korea and India, Microsoft Warns.” Another claimed, “China Is Using AI to Sow Disinformation and Stoke Discord Across Asia and the US.”

They were based on a report published earlier this month by Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center which outlined how a Chinese disinformation campaign was now utilizing artificial technology to inflame divisions and disrupt elections in the US and around the world. The campaign, which has already targeted Taiwan’s elections, uses AI-generated audio and memes designed to grab user attention and boost engagement.

But what these headlines and Microsoft itself failed to adequately convey is that the Chinese-government-linked disinformation campaign, known as Spamouflage Dragon or Dragonbridge, has so far been virtually ineffective.

“I would describe China's disinformation campaigns as Russia 2014. As in, they're 10 years behind,” says Clint Watts, the general manager of Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center. “They're trying lots of different things but their sophistication is still very weak.”

Over the past 24 months, the campaign has switched from pushing predominately pro-China content to more aggressively targeting US politics. While these efforts have been large-scale and across dozens of platforms, they have largely failed to have any real world impact. Still, experts warn that it can take just a single post being amplified by an influential account to change all of that.

“Spamouflage is like throwing spaghetti at the wall, and they are throwing a lot of spaghetti,” says Jack Stubbs, chief information officer at Graphika, a social media analysis company that was among the first to identify the Spamouflage campaign. “The volume and scale of this thing is huge. They're putting out multiple videos and cartoons every day, amplified across different platforms at a global scale. The vast majority of it, for the time being, appears to be something that doesn't stick, but that doesn't mean it won't stick in the future.”

Since at least 2017, Spamouflage has been ceaselessly spewing out content designed to disrupt major global events, including topics as diverse as the Hong Kong pro-democracy protests, the US presidential elections, and Israel and Gaza. Part of a wider multibillion-dollar influence campaign by the Chinese government, the campaign has used millions of accounts on dozens of internet platforms ranging from X and YouTube to more fringe platforms like Gab, where the campaign has been trying to push pro-China content. It’s also been among the first to adopt cutting-edge techniques such as AI-generated profile pictures.

Even with all of these investments, experts say the campaign has largely failed due to a number of factors including issues of cultural context, China’s online partition from the outside world via the Great Firewall, a lack of joined-up thinking between state media and the disinformation campaign, and the use of tactics designed for China’s own heavily controlled online environment.

“That's been the story of Spamouflage since 2017: They're massive, they're everywhere, and nobody looks at them except for researchers,” says Elise Thomas, a senior open source analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue who has tracked the Spamouflage campaign for years.

“Most tweets receive either no engagement and very low numbers of views, or are only engaged with by other accounts which appear to be a part of the Spamouflage network,” Thomas wrote in a report for the Institute of Strategic Dialogue about the failed campaign in February.

Over the past five years, the researchers who have been tracking the campaign have watched as it attempted to change tactics, using video, automated voiceovers, and most recently the adoption of AI to create profile images and content designed to inflame existing divisions.

The adoption of AI technologies is also not necessarily an indicator that the campaign is becoming more sophisticated—just more efficient.

“The primary affordance of these Gen AI products is about efficiency and scaling,” says Stubbs. “It allows more of the same thing with fewer resources. It's cheaper and quicker, but we don't see it as a mark of sophistication. These products are actually incredibly easy to access. Anyone can do so with $5 on a credit card.”

The campaign has also taken place on virtually every social media platform, including Facebook, Reddit, TikTok, and YouTube. Over the years, major platforms have purged their systems of hundreds of thousands of accounts linked to the campaign, including last year when Meta took down what it called “the largest known cross-platform covert influence operation in the world.”

The US government has also sought to curb the effort. A year ago, the Department of Justice charged 34 officers of the Chinese Ministry of Public Security’s “912 Special Project Working Group” for their involvement in an influence campaign. While the DOJ did not explicitly link the arrests to Spamouflage, a source with knowledge of the event told WIRED that the campaign was “100 percent” Chinese state-sponsored. The source spoke on the condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak publicly about the information.

“A commercial actor would not be doing this,” says Thomas, who also believes the campaign is run by the Chinese government. “They are more innovative. They would have changed tactics, whereas it's not unusual for a government communications campaign to persist for a really long time despite being useless.”

For the past seven years, however, the content pushed by the Spamouflage campaign has lacked nuance and audience-specific content that successful nation-state disinformation campaigns from countries like Russia, Iran, and Turkey have included.

“They get the cultural context confused, which is why you'll see them make mistakes,” says Watts. “They're in the audience talking about things that don't make sense and the audience knows that, so they don't engage with the content. They leave Chinese characters sometimes in their posts.”

Part of this is the result of Chinese citizens being virtually blocked off from the outside world as a result of the Great Firewall, which allows the Chinese government to strictly control what its citizens see and share on the internet. This, experts say, makes it incredibly difficult for those running an influence operation to really grasp how to successfully manipulate audiences outside of China.

“They're having to adapt strategies that they might have used in closed and tightly controlled platforms like WeChat and Weibo, to operating on the open internet,” says Thomas. “So you can flood WeChat and Weibo with content if you want to if you are the Chinese government, whereas you can't really flood the open internet. It's kind of like trying to flood the sea.”

Stubbs agrees. “Their domestic information environment is not one that is real or authentic,” he says. “They are now being tasked with achieving influence and affecting operational strategic impact in a free and authentic information environment, which is just fundamentally a different place.”

Russian influence campaigns have also tended to coordinate across multiple layers of government spokespeople, state-run media, influencers, and bot accounts on social media. They all push the same message at the same time—something the Spamouflage operators don’t do. This was seen recently when the Russian disinformation apparatus was activated to sow division in the US around the Texas border crisis, boosting the extremist-led border convoy and calls for “civil war” on state media, influencer Telegram channels, and social media bots all at the same time.

“I think the biggest problem is [the Chinese campaign] doesn’t synchronize their efforts,” Watts said. “They’re just very linear on whatever their task is, whether it’s overt media or some sort of covert media. They’re doing it and they’re doing it at scale, but it’s not synchronized around their objectives because it’s a very top down effort.”

Some of the content produced by the campaign appeared to have a high number of likes and replies, but closer inspection revealed that those engagements came from other accounts in the Spamouflage network. “It was a network that was very insular, it was only engaging with itself,” says Thomas.

Watts does not believe China’s disinformation campaigns will have a material impact on the US election, but added that the situation “can change nearly instantaneously. If the right account stumbles onto [a post by a Chinese bot account] and gives it a voice, suddenly their volume will grow.”

This, Thomas says, has already happened.

A post, written on X by an account Thomas had been tracking that has since been suspended, referenced “MAGA 2024” in their bio. It shared a video from Russian state-run channel RT that alleged President Joe Biden and the CIA had sent a neo-Nazi to fight in Ukraine—a claim that has been debunked by investigative group Bellingcat. Like most Spamouflage posts, the video received little attention initially, but when it was shared by the account of school shooting conspiracist Alex Jones, who has more than 2.2 million followers on the platform, it quickly racked up hundreds of thousands of views.

“What is different about these MAGAflage accounts is that real people are looking at them, including Alex Jones. It’s the most bizarre tweet I’ve ever seen,” Thomas said.

Thomas says the account that was shared by Jones is different from typical Spamouflage accounts, because it was not spewing out automated content, but seeking to organically engage with other users in a way that made them appear to be a real person—reminiscent of what Russian accounts did in the lead-up to the 2016 election.

So far, Thomas says she has found just four of these accounts, which she has dubbed “MAGAflage,” but worries there may be a lot more operating under the radar that will be incredibly difficult to find without access to X’s backend.

“My concern is that they will start doing this, or potentially are already doing this, at a really significant scale,” Thomas said. “And if that is happening, then I think it will be very difficult to detect, particularly for external researchers. If they start doing it with new accounts that don't have those interesting connections to the Spamouflage network and if you then hypothetically lay on top of that, if they start using large language models to generate text with AI, I think we're in a lot of trouble.”

Stubbs says that Graphika has been tracking Spamouflage accounts that have been attempting to impersonate US voters since before the 2022 midterms, and hasn’t yet witnessed real success. And while he believes reporting on these efforts is important, he’s concerned that these high-profile campaigns could obscure the smaller ones.

"We are going to see increasing amounts of public discussion and reporting on campaigns like Spamouflage and Doppelganger from Russia, precisely because we already know about them,” says Stubbs. “Both those campaigns are examples of activity that is incredibly high scale, but also very easy to detect. [But] I am more concerned and more worried about the things we don't know."

Wired · by David Gilbert · April 29, 2024

4. AI hits trust hurdles with U.S. military

3 hours ago -Technology

AI hits trust hurdles with U.S. military

https://www.axios.com/2024/05/01/pentagon-military-ai-trust-issues?mc_cid=f418f00eab&mc_eid=70bf478f36

Ryan Heath
, author of

Axios AI+

Illustration: Annelise Capossela/Axios

Some branches of the U.S. military are hitting the brakes on generative AI, after decades of Department of Defense experiments with broader AI technology.

Why it matters: As businesses race to put generative AI in front of customers everywhere, military experts say its strengths and limitations need further testing and evaluation in order to deploy it responsibly.

Driving the news: In a new essay in Foreign Affairs, Jacquelyn Schneider, the Hoover Institution's director of wargaming and crisis simulation, and AI researcher Max Lamparth write that large language models could trigger nuclear war.

When they tested LLMs from OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta in situations like simulated war games, the pair found the AIs suggested escalation, arms races, conflict — and even use of nuclear weapons — over alternatives.
"It is practically impossible for an LLM to be taught solely on vetted high-quality data," Schneider and Lamparth write.

Zoom out: Older forms of machine learning-based AI are already deeply woven into the U.S. military, which uses it in everything from supply-chain analysis to interpreting satellite data.

But the emergence of generative AI has happened on a lightning time-scale that has confounded the Pentagon.

Catch up quick: "The risk-taking appetite in Washington is not very great. And the risk-taking appetite out here [in Silicon Valley] is unparalleled," former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice told Axios at a Hoover Institution media roundtable at Stanford University this week.

The Space Force paused use of generative AI in Sept. 2023.
In June, the Navy's chief information officer, Jane Overslaugh Rathbun, concluded that while "generative AI can be a force multiplier," commercial models have "inherent security vulnerabilities" and are "not recommended for operational use cases."

Between the lines: Military use of AI faces challenges ranging from getting AI models to understand military jargon to concerns raised by lawyers over the handling of data, experts told Axios.

Military and intelligence experts Axios spoke to said another big problem is that AI models can sift through vast quantities of data but they can't tell you how they arrived at any particular answer or suggestion. That makes it tough to base consequential decisions on their output.
Generative AI is not good at dealing with unexpected events, like "Hamas attacking in a way no one thought Hamas could attack," Amy Zegart, senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, said.

Zoom in: The military's approach to data ownership makes it hard for anyone in the Pentagon to make the case for generative AI, even the new DoD chief digital and AI officer, the experts said.

"The services own their own data, they own their own acquisition of technologies," Schneider said.
"You have a team of lawyers that sit on those decisions. So we make it extremely complicated to be able to share data, acquire data, and to put all that data together," for generative AI implementation, per Schneider.

State of play: Booz Allen on Tuesday released an open source version of its aiSSEMBLE platform, which aims to get government clients, including DoD, out of AI "pilot purgatory" and into quicker deployment of AI.

"There's a spectrum for use cases which DoD is evaluating through Task Force Lima," Ethan Wade, chief engineer and data scientist at Booz Allen Hamilton, told Axios in an email. "From back office admin support for efficiencies (low stakes, high impact) to use cases directly affecting the warfighter (high stakes, high impact, where security and ethical constraints are much higher)."

Yes, but: Many AI critics argue that generative AI is too unreliable for social media use, let alone military applications. A slower Pentagon march toward using the new technology, in this view, is only prudent.

What they're saying: Rice said that the military only adopts leading edge technology when wartime demands force experimentation, or when "you get a few officers who are just like dogs on a bone on it."

Schneider sees a contrast between "lots of experimenting" with AI at staff officer level but "no mechanism to take those lessons and then move it up or scale it," and says most senior officers are often "extremely naive" about the technologies.
Alexandr Wang, Scale AI's CEO, told Axios that DoD and military branches need to take a step-by-step approach to make sense of where to apply AI, and to adapt it to national interests.

5. Foreign Policy Starts in Your Own Neighborhood

We cannot neglect the western hemisphere. China certainly is not.

Foreign Policy Starts in Your Own Neighborhood

By Joseph A. Ledford

May 01, 2024

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2024/05/01/foreign_policy_starts_in_your_own_neighborhood_1028621.html?mc_cid=f418f00eab&mc_eid=70bf478f36

As Secretary of State George Shultz observed, “foreign policy starts in your own neighborhood.” For Shultz, and for the president whom he served, the United States could not successfully confront the Soviet Union without strengthening relationships, shoring up alliances, and addressing problems in the Western Hemisphere. Unfortunately, in recent years, the United States has not paid sufficient attention to its backyard, forgetting this key lesson of statecraft. The oversight is puzzling, given that the United States seeks to win a great-power competition with China. In an era of uncertainty, American policymakers should abide by Shultz’s diplomatic maxim.

Ronald Reagan faced a world in crisis upon walking into the Oval Office. Around the globe, interstate conflicts, civil wars, terrorism, and nuclear weapons were the crises du jour. The Cold War was bound for escalation. A resurgent Soviet Union built up a powerful military, bulldozed into Afghanistan, propelled revolutionary movements in the developing world, and resealed the Iron Curtain. In the Western Hemisphere, where the struggle for democracy persisted, revolution and counterrevolution plunged the region into a maelstrom of instability.

Reagan prioritized Latin America and the Caribbean in his foreign policy from the get-go. On January 28, 1981, Reagan hosted the Jamaican Prime Minister Edward Seaga as his first head of state guest at the White House. At his first presidential press conference the next day, he discussed having a proactive policy for the Caribbean. In the succeeding weeks, he focused his first four National Security Council meetings on crises besetting Central America and the Caribbean.

When Shultz became secretary of state in 1982, he set about executing the neighborhood policy in a similar fashion. Shultz dedicated his first two foreign trips to Canada and Mexico, where Reagan joined him to meet with President-elect Miguel de la Madrid. Several weeks afterward, Shultz and Reagan visited Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, and Honduras, during which they engaged in what Shultz termed “gardening”: the consistent practice of cultivating and maintaining relationships, especially by meeting leaders on their home turf. Their efforts were part and parcel of building trust, which Shultz rightly called “the coin of realm.”

By the end of Reagan’s presidency, the Western Hemisphere had undergone a remarkable transformation. Relying on Shultz’s skillful diplomacy, Reagan promoted political and economic freedom in the region, thereby curtailing Soviet influence and encouraging transitions to civilian rule in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay. Reagan also launched the Caribbean Basin Initiative and with Shultz laid the groundwork for the North American Free Trade Agreement. Reagan’s diplomatic, economic, and security initiatives, however, invited some controversy. The “democratic revolution” was not without bloodshed. Reagan’s steadfast support for an anti-communist insurgency in Nicaragua not only pressured the Sandinistas into democratic reforms, but it also embroiled his administration in the Iran-Contra affair.

Still, American policymakers can learn from Reagan and Shultz’s neighborhood policy. Perhaps not involved in a cold war, but rather a great-power rivalry over the international order, the United States now confronts an intensifying conflict with China and its authoritarian partners Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Although the ideological, technological, economic, and military dimensions differ from the superpower conflict of the Reagan era, the neighborhood element of Reagan’s Cold War strategy holds true for today. The United States can emerge victorious, and it must reorient hemispheric relations to do so.

Currently, the Western Hemisphere presents challenges for American policymakers. The despotic quartet of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea have increased their influence in the region, much to its detriment. Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela remain dedicated adversaries of the United States. Transnational criminal organizations run rampant, destabilizing governments, fomenting violence, and exacerbating the migration crisis that concerns the American public. Financial and environmental issues threaten many countries, too. Despite these dilemmas, however, favorable economic and political headwinds give the region reasons for an optimistic outlook, not one of an inexorable decline into another “Lost Decade.”

Effectively engaging the Western Hemisphere only requires common sense and volition on the part of American policymakers. Easier said than done, of course, but a comprehensive approach to the region is feasible. The United States indeed possesses the resources and tools to pursue security cooperation, economic development, and cultural and educational exchanges while supporting democracy and healthy political institutions.

Democratic and Republican members of Congress, for their part, acknowledge the problems and offer concrete solutions. The Senate has tackled hemispheric security. Senators James Risch (R-ID), Tim Kane (D-VA), and Marco Rubio (R-FL) introduced the Western Hemisphere Partnership Act, Caribbean Basin Security Initiative Authorization Act, and the Western Hemisphere Security Strategy Act, respectively. These bills have easily garnered bipartisan support. So, too, has the Americas Trade and Investment Act, which creates a process for integrating the hemisphere through “regional trade, investment, and people-to-people partnership.” Senators Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and Michael Bennet (D-CO) as well as Representatives Adriano Espalillat (D-NY) and Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL) are championing this forward-thinking legislation.

President Joe Biden has recognized the significance of hemispheric relations but offered half-measures. “No region impacts the United States more directly than the Western Hemisphere,” contends his National Security Strategy. Yet Europe and Asia fill his schedule. To be sure, his Secretary of State Antony Blinken has visited ten countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, beginning his foreign travels with a “virtual visit” to Canada and Mexico in February 2021. The United States also hosted the 2022 Summit of Americas in Los Angeles, which achieved mixed results, and Biden developed the Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity, an initiative aiming to spur integration that has yet to bear substantial binding agreements. In January 2023, Biden finally journeyed to Latin America, traveling to Mexico for the North American Leaders' Summit. In November 2024, he will attend the G20 summit hosted in Brazil, where the president has a prime opportunity to make great strides toward furthering hemispheric relations while in the area. The fate of the international order could depend on it.

Ensuring stability, stimulating development, and fostering friendly relations in the Western Hemisphere is fundamental to the national security, economy, and global standing of the United States. Alliances, partnerships, and friends are crucial for waging a great-power competition—but even more so when they reside in your neighborhood. Shultz’s wisdom serves as a reminder that the United States must greet the neighbors and tend the garden.

Joseph A. Ledford is a Hoover Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

6. Will Putin Test NATO Article 5 in the Black Sea Region?

Excerpt:

This is no longer the case. If Russia were to defeat Ukraine, the Black Sea would again become more of a “Russian lake” and European NATO will become progressively less defensible conventionally. As the BSR is the first battleground in the Russian drive to dominate Eurasia and, by extension – together with Communist China, theocratic Iran, the DPRK and others – the new international system, the United States must ensure the BSR remains under clear and definitive Western influence.

Will Putin Test NATO Article 5 in the Black Sea Region?

By Antonia Colibasanu & Matt Boyse

May 01, 2024

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2024/05/01/will_putin_test_nato_article_5_in_the_black_sea_region_1028623.html?mc_cid=f418f00eab&mc_eid=70bf478f36

Leaders on NATO’s eastern flank routinely warn that if Putin succeeds in Ukraine, “they are next.” While many think any such Russian action would be in the Baltics and Putin remains obsessed with Poland, Moscow has been more aggressive in the Black Sea region (BSR). NATO should expect more Russian probes along its eastern flank, including even a test of Article 5, but focus more on the Black Sea region.

Danish Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen warns that Russia could attack NATO in 3-5 years. Polish BBN chief Jacek Siewiera suggests three years, NATO Military Committee Chair Rob Bauer 3-7 years, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius 5-7 years, and UK Defence Secretary Grant Shapps within the next five years. Former Bulgarian Prime Minister Nikolai Denkov spoke of 3-10 years. Estonia’s foreign intelligence service has spoken of a military confrontation “within the next decade.” The German army has even exercised for an attack on the Suwalki Corridor as early as 2025.

These warnings do not specify what kind of attack might be expected or potential targets, but Moscow has been pursuing a pinprick policy against NATO for years. It has violated Romanian territory numerous times since February 2022, even if these cases cannot be proven to have been intentional. In July 2023, a cargo ship was damaged after Russia attacked the Ukrainian port of Reni on the Danube. Fragments of Iranian drones have been found on Romanian territory five times. With Moscow escalating its attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure and Danube ports so close to Romania, more such incidents cannot be excluded. In March 2023, Russian aircraft even forced down an American MQ-9 Reaper drone over the Black Sea.

Russia has also probed repeatedly elsewhere on NATO’s eastern flank. A cruise missile violated Polish airspace in December 2023 for about three minutes, another in March 2024 for 39 seconds. The remains of a KH-55 missile were found near Bydgoszcz, a city halfway across Poland, in April 2023. NATO fighters intercepted Russian aircraft more than 300 times in 2023, mostly in the Baltic but also in the Black Sea region, often with transponders turned off.

These incidents, which look very much like intentional probes by Russia, have several goals: to test NATO responses, to demonstrate that Moscow can violate NATO territory with impunity, to provoke a sense in NATO member states that tough responses could lead to war, and to raise doubt about comments by President Biden, NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg, and others that they “will defend every inch of NATO territory.”

NATO member states have generally interpreted these cases as stray events, “collateral damage,” or “mistakes,” even if the airspace violations are clearly intentional and have met with a NATO response. Affected countries have not pressed NATO to treat them as significant enough for Article 4 or 5 consultations. National governments have also played them down.

But these incidents are continuing, and if any were to become serious enough for an ally to take to the NATO North Atlantic Council (NAC) member states would face the question of whether to respond, and if so how. They also raise the prospect that it may be just a matter of time before Russia tries something more serious. Were allies not to support a resolute NATO response on the grounds that it is “small” or a “mistake,” or even that it might “risk WWIII,” Putin would have deeply undermined Article 5 and weakened the alliance.

Russia is determined to take Ukraine, including the entire northern littoral of the Black Sea, and believes time and momentum are on its side. It has lost so much global standing that Putin may see a test of NATO territory as an opportunity to reset the global strategic balance in one fell swoop. He gravely miscalculated in 2022, but would he roll the dice to strengthen Russia’s strategic position further, especially if NATO member states do not continue to support Ukraine and Russia continues to advance in the land domain? Would Moscow, flush with a sense of victory press onward? Maybe, maybe not, but the United States and NATO must be ready.

First, while this probing phenomenon is in evidence in various places along the Eastern flank, the United States should focus more on the southeast. The United States needs a robust, whole-of-government Black Sea strategy that accounts for the region's long-term strategic importance as well as the likelihood of regional conflict in the short run. Such a strategy should begin with an understanding of the maritime domain’s critical significance in the Eurasian balance of power. It should state explicitly that NATO allies should maintain strategic primacy in the BSR. The goal must be to box out Russia, be able to challenge the Kremlin in its naval near abroad, and bar it from the Levantine Basin. This will limit Russia's influence in Turkey, reduce Iran's access to southeastern Europe, and establish a security infrastructure to prevent Chinese economic and strategic infiltration.

Second, the United States should rely primarily on its NATO partners in the BSR to implement this strategy. The most important ally in this context is Romania, whose geographical position and regional posture are similar to that of West Germany during the Cold War, when it bordered the Iron Curtain separating NATO from the Warsaw Pact. The United States and its allies need a more robust presence in the BSR due to its significance in great power competition, European security, and global strategy.

The Black Sea's limited maritime space and air-land-naval linkages point to the need for a fleet of two to three dozen fast attack vessels armed with anti-ship missiles, supported by land-based strike elements, and supplemented with minelayers capable of disrupting Russian surface combatant deployments while putting Russian bases at risk. A network of sensors is also necessary to track Russian submarines as well as air, naval, and underwater drones, and helicopters with anti-submarine warfare capabilities. The Danube-Black Sea waterway allows for the basing of non-Black Sea state defense capabilities. With U.S. support, this posture will trigger a situation where NATO allies increase their presence on the new line of containment, thus assuming more responsibility for defending Europe.

Third, U.S. strategy needs to be grounded on the understanding that the BSR is both vulnerable and critical for both U.S. and European security in the long term. During the Cold War, Soviet naval forces expanded into the eastern Mediterranean, wielded power in North Africa, and pressed NATO's southern flank. However, NATO possessed a strong European fleet, including U.S. carriers and ally vessels, which could withstand active Soviet action against NATO's southern flank.

This is no longer the case. If Russia were to defeat Ukraine, the Black Sea would again become more of a “Russian lake” and European NATO will become progressively less defensible conventionally. As the BSR is the first battleground in the Russian drive to dominate Eurasia and, by extension – together with Communist China, theocratic Iran, the DPRK and others – the new international system, the United States must ensure the BSR remains under clear and definitive Western influence.

Antonia Colibasanu, Ph.D., is Senior Associate Expert at New Strategy Center, Bucharest.

Matt Boyse, is a Senior Fellow at Hudson Institute.

7. Another Historic Year for the PLA Navy

Excerpt:

The appointment of Admiral Dong to lead China’s Ministry of Defense means that Xi and the CCP have undeniably recognized the importance of maritime power to complete the Great Rejuvenation of China. The CCP has handed over the leadership of the PLA to a man who views the world through the lens of war at sea. Recall that, in December 2022 while still head of the navy, Dong held a conclave of senior PLAN officers. The gathering could be reduced to a single, critically important theme: “Make all necessary preparations to defeat the U.S. Navy in great power war at sea.”15 Admiral Dong’s appointment will affect the entire PLA in the next year and throughout the remainder of this so-called decade of concern.

Another Historic Year for the PLA Navy

By Captain James E. Fanell, U.S. Navy (Retired)

May 2024 Proceedings Vol. 150/5/1,455

usni.org · May 1, 2024

For the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the biggest surprise of 2023 was the end-of-year announcement that Admiral Dong Jun, chief of the PLA Navy (PLAN), had been appointed as the 14th Minister of Defense.1 News of Admiral Dong’s appointment was overshadowed in Western media by the mystery surrounding the removal of his predecessor, Army General Li Shangfu. But the first-ever appointment of a career PLAN officer as head of the PLA is a testament to the importance Chairman Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have placed on transforming China into a great naval power to achieve the so-called Great Rejuvenation of China. Toward that end, growth has continued in the number of ships, submarines, and naval aircraft and their operations at sea.

An Admiral at the Helm of the PLA

The significance of Admiral Dong’s appointment should not be underestimated, as it represents the culmination of 25 years of PLAN modernization and growth—from being a brown-water force to an institution whose top officer is now leading China’s entire military. The appointment is important for two principal reasons.

First, Admiral Dong is one of the PLA’s most experienced joint commanders, having deep expertise at the operational level of war in the Eastern and Southern Theater Commands that provides him with unique understanding and perspectives regarding China’s disputed sovereignty claims—cross-domain but fundamentally maritime issues.2

Second, and perhaps more important, Admiral Dong has the distinction of being the first Commander of the East China Sea Joint Operations Command Center (ECS JOCC), having served from July 2013 to November 2014 while he served as one of the deputy commanders of the East Sea Fleet. Established in 2013, the ECS JOCC was the PLA’s first joint operations command headquarters responsible for the operational coordination of the PLAN, PLA Air Force (PLAAF), and other forces—including the China Coast Guard and Strategic Rocket Forces—against Taiwan.3 Admiral Dong’s various appointments should be a reminder of the importance the CCP places on the PLAN and the PLA’s overall capability to take Taiwan by kinetic means should other efforts fail.

Growth Continues

While recent economic problems have slowed PLAN ship production over the past two years, Chinese reporting indicates the PLAN commissioned its eighth Type 055/Renhai-class cruiser, eight more Type 054A/Jiangkai II frigates, and one comprehensive submarine rescue ship.4 In addition, the PLAN launched one Type 075/Yushen-class amphibious assault ship, five cruisers and destroyers, two newer Type 054B frigates, and three nuclear-powered submarines. The total tonnage launched and commissioned in 2023 was about 170,000 tons, compared with 110,000 tons in 2022, although still somewhat lower than the 200,000-ton annual average prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

While China acknowledged this slight decrease, it claims to have achieved a “significant increase in quality,” particularly with the Type 054B frigates that began sea trials in January 2024.5 Despite producing fewer hulls and less tonnage, the PLAN remains the world’s leader in new commissionings by tonnage—as it has for at least five years. Expected U.S. shipbuilding growth in the coming years probably will not improve this worrying strategic trendline.

The Workhorse Shandong

While PLAN carrier strike groups (CSGs) today are not of the same caliber as the U.S. Navy’s, a mere 11 years after the first PLANAF fighter recovered on the deck of the Liaoning, China’s second aircraft carrier, the Shandong, was conducting “live-fire confrontation drills” in the South China Sea in January 2023.6 Operations included nighttime launch-and-recoveries as the carrier achieved the first of what would become an unprecedented number of at-sea periods for any PLAN carrier, rivaling days at sea by any U.S. carrier in the western Pacific for the year.

In April, the Shandong CSG—which included a Type 055 cruiser, a Type 052D destroyer, two Type 054A frigates, and two comprehensive replenishment ships (a Type 901 and a Type 903)—was back at sea passing through the Bashi Channel and into the waters east of Taiwan. There, it participated in exercise Joint Sword with the PLAAF, PLA Strategic Rocket Forces, and surface combatants that encircled the island of Taiwan from 8 to 10 April.7 Following Joint Sword, the Shandong moved to an area 350 nautical miles west of Guam, close to where the Liaoning had operated just four months prior.8

According to observations by Japan’s Ministry of Defense, during 18 days of operations in the western Pacific, the Shandong conducted 620 aircraft sorties (fixed-wing and helicopter), far exceeding the 320 sorties the Liaoning conducted over 15 days in December 2022.9

Then, in September, the Shandong CSG entered the western Pacific via the Bashi Channel at the same time as a large number of PLAN warships were observed passing through the Miyako Strait into the Philippine Sea. Overall, some 20 PLAN warships were detected, the most ever tracked around Taiwan in a single day.10

A little more than a month later, the Shandong CSG was back at sea in the western Pacific, where it conducted nine days of operations that included 570 aircraft sorties—an average of around 63 aircraft sorties a day. This is nearly twice the number carried out in April and three times the sortie rate recorded by the Liaoning in January.11

Not done, in December the Shandong CSG returned to its homeport in the South China Sea via the Taiwan Strait following a month-long operation in the Bohai Sea, where the Shandong had helped train pilots from the Liaoning while the latter was in port for maintenance.12 While not as rigorous as that of the U.S. Navy’s carrier force, this level of at-sea training is evidence of the PLAN’s rapid growth in capability.

The PLAN’s third carrier, the Fujian, completed mooring trials and began dead-load testing of her three electromagnetic catapults in November. She will likely begin sea trials in summer 2024. It seems clear that, while much of the world questions the efficacy of aircraft carriers because of the proliferation of anticarrier missile systems, the PLAN is doubling down on them.

Russia and Iran

Over the course of 2023, the PLAN continued its long-standing coordinated operations with the Russian Navy. In July, the two navies held joint exercises in the Sea of Japan. For the second year in a row, PLAN and Russian warships conducted a “show of force” when 11 warships transited eastward through the first island chain in August. Ties between Xi and Russia’s Vladimir Putin have grown, and these combined naval operations have expanded, even as the Russian invasion of Ukraine continues.13

In addition, the PLAN conducted two trilateral exercises with the Russian and other navies. The first occurred in February, when the PLAN’s 42nd Escort Task Force (ETF) participated in exercise “Mosi II” along with host South Africa’s Navy.14 Then in March, the PLAN’s 43rd ETF conducted the trilateral exercise “Security Belt” with the Russian and Iranian navies. These events are a stark reminder of the alternative international order Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran want to establish in the name of anything but maritime economic security.

Preparing for War at Sea

The appointment of Admiral Dong to lead China’s Ministry of Defense means that Xi and the CCP have undeniably recognized the importance of maritime power to complete the Great Rejuvenation of China. The CCP has handed over the leadership of the PLA to a man who views the world through the lens of war at sea. Recall that, in December 2022 while still head of the navy, Dong held a conclave of senior PLAN officers. The gathering could be reduced to a single, critically important theme: “Make all necessary preparations to defeat the U.S. Navy in great power war at sea.”15 Admiral Dong’s appointment will affect the entire PLA in the next year and throughout the remainder of this so-called decade of concern.

1. CDR Mike Dahm, USN (Ret.), “Who’s Hu, the New PLAN Commander,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 149, no. 12 (29 December 2023).

2. Andrew S. Erickson and CAPT Christopher Sharman, USN (Ret.), “Admiral Dong Jun Engages Friends and Foes: China’s First Naval Defense Minister Brings Joint Operational Experience,” China Maritime Studies Institute, 30 December 2023, 1.

3. Erickson and Sharman, “Admiral Dong Jun Engages Friends and Foes,” 2.

4. Tan Yusheng, “2023 Review of the Chinese Navy’s Equipment Development in 2023 [Original in Chinese],” Naval and Merchant Ships no. 2 (2024): 66–75.

5. Yusheng, “2023 Review of the Chinese Navy’s Equipment.”

6. “Highlights of Aircraft Carrier Shandong’s Live-Fire Drill in South China Sea,” PLA Daily, 16 January 2023.

7. Liu Xuanzun, “China’s Aircraft Carrier Shandong Holds Intensive Drills Comparable with Liaoning in West Pacific,” Global Times, 18 April 2023.

8. “Chinese Aircraft Carrier Nears U.S. Territory of Guam,” Radio Free Asia, 30 December 2022.

9. Liu Xuanzun, “China’s Shandong Aircraft Carrier Group Collaborates with Rocket Force, Land-Based Aviation Forces in 1st Far Sea Exercise,” Global Times, 7 May 2023.

10. Keoni Everington, “Chart Shows Chinese ‘Unprecedented’ Carrier Exercises around Taiwan,” Taiwan News, 18 September 2023.

11. Liu Xuanzun, “PLA’s Carrier Shandong Doubles Aircraft Sortie Rate Record in Latest Far Sea Drill,” Global Times, 7 November 2023.

12. Liu Xuanzun, “PLA’s Aircraft Carrier Shandong Transits Taiwan Straits after Operation in the North,” Global Times, 12 December 2023.

13. John Feng, “Map Shows Chinese Navy Ships Heading for Possible Russia Meet,” Newsweek, 19 March 2024.

14. Jay Gates, “Arrival of Chinese Navy Taskforce in Cape Town a Sign of Closer China/SA Ties,” Defence Web, 31 July 2023.

15. Ryan D. Martinson, “Winning High-End War at Sea: Insights into the PLA Navy’s New Strategic Concept,” Center for International Maritime Security, 18 May 2023.

usni.org · May 1, 2024

8. America is Losing Tomorrow’s War in the Indo-Pacific

We need strategic alignment of all our programs (Title 10, 22, and 50), authorities, permissions, and campaign plans to ensure they are coherently and effectively supporting the NDS and NSS.

America is Losing Tomorrow’s War in the Indo-Pacific

Washington's Foreign Military Financing program is wholly de-aligned with its stated Asia focus.

The National Interest · by Jonathan G. Wachtel · April 29, 2024

In 2011, the Obama administration declared a “strategic pivot” to Asia away from the Middle East. Nearly a decade later, in October 2022, the Biden White House published a National Security Strategy that stated, “No region will be of more significance to the world and everyday Americans than the Indo-Pacific.” In the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, the “sense of Congress” declared its goal to “strengthen United States defense alliances and partnerships in the Indo-Pacific region to further the comparative advantage of the United States in strategic competition with the People’s Republic of China.” Today, despite all of these grand declarations, 86 percent of the annual U.S. Foreign Military Financing (FMF) still goes overwhelmingly, as it has for decades, to nations in the Middle East.

Within that overwhelming portion of the pie, the top beneficiaries of this largesse include long-time security partners Israel, Egypt, and Jordan. Of the roughly $13.2 billion Congress placed in the FMF account in Fiscal Year 2024, Egypt’s security assistance is roughly $1.3 billion, and Israel’s share is a tremendous $6.8 billion.

The remaining thirty-four countries authorized to receive this grant assistance, including two U.S. mutual defense pact allies in the Indo-Pacific (the Philippines and Thailand), must split the leftovers among themselves even though they are in a more strategically important region according to the United States National Security Strategy. All told, under 2 percent of yearly FMF funding goes towards America’s priority theater—the Indo-Pacific. This disparity became even greater as Congress recently passed a supplemental foreign aid package designed primarily to provide security assistance to Ukraine and Israel. Meanwhile, a disproportionately low $2 billion was allocated for the Indo-Pacific region. The United States should continue to support Ukraine and Israel’s right to self-defense. Still, it also must allocate foreign military assistance more effectively and in line with the stated U.S. strategy.

The current U.S. National Security Strategy refers to Israel four times and does not mention Egypt. Meanwhile, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) draws twelve references. The current U.S. National Defense Strategy states that the Department of Defense’s top four priorities are: 1) defending the homeland; 2) deterring strategic attacks against the U.S. and our Allies; 3) “deterring aggression while being prepared to prevail in conflict when necessary—prioritizing the PRC challenge in the Indo-Pacific region, then the Russia challenge in Europe;” and 4) building a resilient joint force and defense ecosystem. The U.S. Secretary of the Air Force, Frank Kendall, recently stated that his top priorities “in order ... are China, China, China” and that “we are out of time.”

In March, Admiral John Aquilino, Commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, testified to the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee that “the PRC is the only country that has the capability, capacity, and intent to upend the international order.” China is the pacing challenge, an existential threat to the United States, and a revisionist power developing a fast-growing nuclear arsenal with little interest in arms control. The United States must urgently put more money into the Indo-Pacific theater to build a resilient, interoperable “joint force” with its allies and partners in that top strategic region.

In an era where budget resources are becoming increasingly scarce, adapting U.S. foreign military assistance policies to increase aid to the Indo-Pacific region will be challenging. According to the Congressional Research Service, “Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign assistance since World War II.” In that time, the United States has provided Israel with a total of $300.5 billion (adjusted for inflation). The United States has also renewed its third, ten-year Memorandum of Understanding with Israel through 2028, which, while not legally binding, pledges another $38 billion in military aid, including $33 billion in Foreign Military Financing.

To rise to the strategic challenges of an increasingly aggressive China, U.S. Foreign Military Financing must urgently focus more resources on supporting allies and partners in the First and Second Island Chains, where they are constantly contending with Chinese gray zone and military coercions. Notwithstanding the ongoing conflicts between Israel, Iran, and Hamas, as well as from Iranian-backed Houthis causing Red Sea disruptions, no conflict in the Middle East existentially threatens the United States itself. Iran today is a sub-nuclear power competing for regional, not global hegemony.

The United States and its regional allies maintain distinct military superiority in the Middle East, as demonstrated by the interception of the vast majority of Iran’s April 13 drone and missile strikes by Israeli and allied defenses. Israel remains “one of the most technologically sophisticated militaries in the world,” due in large part to Israel’s unique access to the top drawer of U.S. weaponry. In 2022, Israel ranked as the world’s fourth strongest military and the tenth most powerful country. Martin Indyk, former U.S. Ambassador to Israel, said, “The U.S.-Israel relationship would be much healthier without this dependence [on the United States]. Time for Israel at 75 to stand on its own two feet.”

Likewise, in Europe, NATO allies should continue accelerating spending to strengthen their defense readiness and fund more military assistance to Ukraine. Picking up more of their share of the burden for European security should help free up American resources to support allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific to address the existential strategic threat posed by the PRC.

The United States must continue to honor its obligations to NATO, Israel, and Egypt, consistent with the 1978 Camp David Accord commitments. However, the United States must adjust its Foreign Military Financing program to address current U.S. national security imperatives more effectively. A sizeable and readily apparent funding increase for the Indo-Pacific would send a strong political signal to the PRC that the United States is serious about its commitments and would also reassure U.S. allies across Asia.

Such a prioritization does not necessarily mean a zero-sum game—taking security assistance from the Middle East or Ukraine and reallocating it to allies in the Indo-Pacific—although that argument exists. Reprioritizing available resources across the U.S. budget to allocate more FMF dollars toward the Indo-Pacific is urgently required to achieve the U.S. Government’s National Security Strategy. It is time for Congress to make some tough calls by decisively increasing U.S. Foreign Military Financing to the region where the United States faces its most significant existential risk—the Indo-Pacific.

Lieutenant Commander Jonathan G. Wachtel is a U.S. Navy Foreign Area Officer and naval strategist currently assigned as the Navy’s Federal Executive Fellow at The Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy at Tufts University. The personal opinions expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the policy or estimates of the U.S. Navy, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

Image: Twinsterphoto / Shutterstock.com

The National Interest · by Jonathan G. Wachtel · April 29, 2024

9. Here’s how the US-led humanitarian aid pier off Gaza will work

Here’s how the US-led humanitarian aid pier off Gaza will work

militarytimes.com · by Lolita Baldor · April 30, 2024

The U.S. and allies are scrambling to pull together a complex system that will move tons of humanitarian aid into Gaza by sea. Nearly two months after President Joe Biden gave the order, U.S. Army and Navy troops are assembling a large floating platform several miles off the Gaza coast that will be the launching pad for deliveries.

But any eventual aid distribution — which could start as soon as early May — will rely on a complicated logistical and security plan with many moving parts and details that are not yet finalized.

The relief is desperately needed, with the U.N. saying people in Gaza are on the brink of famine. But there are still widespread security concerns. And some aid groups say that with so much more needed, the focus should instead be on pushing Israel to ease obstacles to the delivery of aid on land routes.

Setting up the system is expected to cost at least $320 million, the Pentagon said Monday. Here’s how it will work:

It all starts in Cyprus

Humanitarian aid bound for Gaza through the maritime route will be delivered by air or sea to Cyprus, an island at the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea.

Cyprus Foreign Minister Constantinos Kombos has said the aid will undergo security checks at Larnaca port. Using that one departure point will address Israel’s security concerns that all cargo be inspected to ensure that nothing is loaded on ships that Hamas could use against Israeli troops.

The screening will be strict and comprehensive, including the use of mobile X-ray machines, according to a Cyprus government official who spoke on condition of anonymity to publicly disclose details about the security operation. The process will involve Cypriot customs, Israeli teams, the U.S. and the United Nations Office for Project Services.

An American military official said the U.S. has set up a coordination cell in Cyprus to work with the government there, the U.S. Agency for International Development and other agencies and partners. The group will focus on coordinating the collection and inspection of the aid, said the official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss operation details.

Then to the floating platform

Once the pallets of aid are inspected, they will be loaded onto ships — mainly commercial vessels — and taken about 200 miles to the large floating pier being built by the U.S. military off the Gaza coast.

There, the pallets will be transferred onto trucks that in turn will be loaded onto two types of smaller Army boats — Logistic Support Vessels, or LSVs, and Landing Craft Utility boats, LCUs. The U.S. military official said the LSVs can hold 15 trucks each and the LCUs about five.

The Army boats will then shuttle the trucks from the pier to a floating causeway, which will be several miles away and anchored into the beach by Israeli Defense Forces.

Since Biden has made clear that no U.S. forces will step foot in Gaza, the troops doing the construction and driving and crewing the boats will be housed and fed on other ships offshore near the large floating pier.

The British Royal Navy support ship RFA Cardigan Bay will provide accommodations for hundreds of U.S. sailors and soldiers working to establish the pier. Another contracted ship will also be used for housing, but officials did not identify it.

The floating pier off the Gaza coast is part of the Army's Joint Logistics Over the Shore, or JLOTS, system which provides critical bridging and water access capabilities. (U.S. Army via AP)

Small boats to the causeway

The small Army boats will sail to the two-lane, 1,800-foot causeway.

The U.S. military official said an American Army engineering unit has teamed up with an Israeli engineering unit in recent weeks to practice the installation of the causeway, training on an Israeli beach just up the coast. The U.K. Hydrographic Office also has worked with the U.S. and the Israeli military to analyze the shoreline and prepare for the final installation.

U.S. vessels will push the floating causeway into place, shoving it into the shoreline, where the Israeli Defense Forces will be ready to secure it.

Trucks loaded with the pallets of aid will drive off the Army boats onto the causeway and down to a secure area on land where they will drop off the aid and immediately turn around and return to the boats. The trucks will repeat that loop over and over, and they will be confined to that limited route to maintain security.

They will be driven by personnel from another country, but U.S. officials have declined to say which one.

British troops may be tasked with delivering Gaza aid, BBC report says

The report comes after a U.S. military official said there'd be no American “boots on the ground” and another nation would deliver aid from offshore pier.

Distribution to aid agencies and civilians

Aid groups will collect the supplies for distribution on shore, at a port facility built by the Israelis just southwest of Gaza City. Officials say they expect about 90 truckloads of aid a day initially and that it will quickly grow to about 150 a day.

The U.N. is working with USAID to set up the logistics hub on the beach.

There will be three zones at the port: one controlled by the Israelis where aid from the pier will be dropped off, another where the aid will be transferred and a third where Palestinian drivers contracted by the U.N. will wait to pick up the aid before taking it to distribution points.

Aid agencies, however, say this maritime corridor isn’t enough to meet the needs in Gaza and must be just one part of a broader Israeli effort to improve sustainable, land-based deliveries of aid to avert famine.

The groups, the U.N., the U.S. and other governments have pointed to Israel’s aid restrictions and its failure to safeguard humanitarian workers as reasons for the reduction in food shipments through land crossings, although they credit Israel with making some improvements recently.

U.S. Gaza envoy David Satterfield said last week that only about 200 trucks a day were getting into Gaza, far short of the 500 that international aid organizations say are needed.

Security onshore and off

A key concern is security — both from militants and the Israeli military, which has been criticized for its killing of aid workers.

Sonali Korde, a USAID official, said key agreements for security and handling the aid deliveries are still being negotiated. Those include how Israeli forces will operate in Gaza to ensure that aid workers are not harmed.

Aid groups have been shaken by the Israeli airstrike that killed seven World Central Kitchen aid workers on April 1 as they traveled in clearly marked vehicles on a delivery mission authorized by Israel.

And there has already been one mortar attack at the site by militants, reflecting the ongoing threats from Hamas, which has said it would reject the presence of any non-Palestinians in Gaza.

U.S. and Israeli officials have declined to provide specifics on the security. But the U.S. military official said it will be far more robust when deliveries begin than it is now. And there will be daily assessments of the force protection needs there.

The IDF will handle security on the shore, and the U.S. military will provide its own security for the Army and Navy forces offshore.

Associated Press reporters Menelaos Hadjicostis in Nicosia, Cyprus, and Ellen Knickmeyer in Washington contributed.

10. A 98-year-old in Ukraine walked miles to safety from Russians, with slippers and a cane

May we all be so resilient.

A 98-year-old in Ukraine walked miles to safety from Russians, with slippers and a cane

AP · April 30, 2024

11. Time Magazine Interview: How Far Trump Would Go

This is not sent with partisan intent. He is a major candidate in the presidential election.

How Far Trump Would Go

TIME

Donald Trump thinks he’s identified a crucial mistake of his first term: He was too nice.

We’ve been talking for more than an hour on April 12 at his fever-dream palace in Palm Beach. Aides lurk around the perimeter of a gilded dining room overlooking the manicured lawn. When one nudges me to wrap up the interview, I bring up the many former Cabinet officials who refuse to endorse Trump this time. Some have publicly warned that he poses a danger to the Republic. Why should voters trust you, I ask, when some of the people who observed you most closely do not?

As always, Trump punches back, denigrating his former top advisers. But beneath the typical torrent of invective, there is a larger lesson he has taken away. “I let them quit because I have a heart. I don’t want to embarrass anybody,” Trump says. “I don’t think I’ll do that again. From now on, I’ll fire.”

Six months from the 2024 presidential election, Trump is better positioned to win the White House than at any point in either of his previous campaigns. He leads Joe Biden by slim margins in most polls, including in several of the seven swing states likely to determine the outcome. But I had not come to ask about the election, the disgrace that followed the last one, or how he has become the first former—and perhaps future—American President to face a criminal trial. I wanted to know what Trump would do if he wins a second term, to hear his vision for the nation, in his own words.

Photograph by Philip Montgomery for TIME

What emerged in two interviews with Trump, and conversations with more than a dozen of his closest advisers and confidants, were the outlines of an imperial presidency that would reshape America and its role in the world. To carry out a deportation operation designed to remove more than 11 million people from the country, Trump told me, he would be willing to build migrant detention camps and deploy the U.S. military, both at the border and inland. He would let red states monitor women’s pregnancies and prosecute those who violate abortion bans. He would, at his personal discretion, withhold funds appropriated by Congress, according to top advisers. He would be willing to fire a U.S. Attorney who doesn’t carry out his order to prosecute someone, breaking with a tradition of independent law enforcement that dates from America’s founding. He is weighing pardons for every one of his supporters accused of attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, more than 800 of whom have pleaded guilty or been convicted by a jury. He might not come to the aid of an attacked ally in Europe or Asia if he felt that country wasn’t paying enough for its own defense. He would gut the U.S. civil service, deploy the National Guard to American cities as he sees fit, close the White House pandemic-preparedness office, and staff his Administration with acolytes who back his false assertion that the 2020 election was stolen.

Trump remains the same guy, with the same goals and grievances. But in person, if anything, he appears more assertive and confident. “When I first got to Washington, I knew very few people,” he says. “I had to rely on people.” Now he is in charge. The arranged marriage with the timorous Republican Party stalwarts is over; the old guard is vanquished, and the people who remain are his people. Trump would enter a second term backed by a slew of policy shops staffed by loyalists who have drawn up detailed plans in service of his agenda, which would concentrate the powers of the state in the hands of a man whose appetite for power appears all but insatiable. “I don’t think it’s a big mystery what his agenda would be,” says his close adviser Kellyanne Conway. “But I think people will be surprised at the alacrity with which he will take action.”

The crowd at a Trump campaign rally in Schnecksville, Penn., on April 13.Victor J. Blue for TIME

The courts, the Constitution, and a Congress of unknown composition would all have a say in whether Trump’s objectives come to pass. The machinery of Washington has a range of defenses: leaks to a free press, whistle-blower protections, the oversight of inspectors general. The same deficiencies of temperament and judgment that hindered him in the past remain present. If he wins, Trump would be a lame duck—contrary to the suggestions of some supporters, he tells TIME he would not seek to overturn or ignore the Constitution’s prohibition on a third term. Public opinion would also be a powerful check. Amid a popular outcry, Trump was forced to scale back some of his most draconian first-term initiatives, including the policy of separating migrant families. As George Orwell wrote in 1945, the ability of governments to carry out their designs “depends on the general temper in the country.”

Every election is billed as a national turning point. This time that rings true. To supporters, the prospect of Trump 2.0, unconstrained and backed by a disciplined movement of true believers, offers revolutionary promise. To much of the rest of the nation and the world, it represents an alarming risk. A second Trump term could bring “the end of our democracy,” says presidential historian Douglas Brinkley, “and the birth of a new kind of authoritarian presidential order.”

Trump steps onto the patio at Mar-a-Lago near dusk. The well-heeled crowd eating Wagyu steaks and grilled branzino pauses to applaud as he takes his seat. On this gorgeous evening, the club is a MAGA mecca. Billionaire donor Steve Wynn is here. So is Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, who is dining with the former President after a joint press conference proposing legislation to prevent noncitizens from voting. Their voting in federal elections is already illegal, and extremely rare, but remains a Trumpian fixation that the embattled Speaker appeared happy to co-sign in exchange for the political cover that standing with Trump provides.

At the moment, though, Trump’s attention is elsewhere. With an index finger, he swipes through an iPad on the table to curate the restaurant’s soundtrack. The playlist veers from Sinead O’Connor to James Brown to The Phantom of the Opera. And there’s a uniquely Trump choice: a rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” sung by a choir of defendants imprisoned for attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, interspersed with a recording of Trump reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. This has become a staple of his rallies, converting the ultimate symbol of national unity into a weapon of factional devotion.

The spectacle picks up where his first term left off. The events of Jan. 6, during which a pro-Trump mob attacked the center of American democracy in an effort to subvert the peaceful transfer of power, was a profound stain on his legacy. Trump has sought to recast an insurrectionist riot as an act of patriotism. “I call them the J-6 patriots,” he says. When I ask whether he would consider pardoning every one of them, he says, “Yes, absolutely.” As Trump faces dozens of felony charges, including for election interference, conspiracy to defraud the United States, willful retention of national-security secrets, and falsifying business records to conceal hush-money payments, he has tried to turn legal peril into a badge of honor.

The Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol is a profound stain on Trump’s legacy, one that he has sought to recast as an act of patriotism.Victor J. Blue

In a second term, Trump’s influence on American democracy would extend far beyond pardoning powers. Allies are laying the groundwork to restructure the presidency in line with a doctrine called the unitary executive theory, which holds that many of the constraints imposed on the White House by legislators and the courts should be swept away in favor of a more powerful Commander in Chief.

Nowhere would that power be more momentous than at the Department of Justice. Since the nation’s earliest days, Presidents have generally kept a respectful distance from Senate-confirmed law-enforcement officials to avoid exploiting for personal ends their enormous ability to curtail Americans’ freedoms. But Trump, burned in his first term by multiple investigations directed by his own appointees, is ever more vocal about imposing his will directly on the department and its far-flung investigators and prosecutors.

In our Mar-a-Lago interview, Trump says he might fire U.S. Attorneys who refuse his orders to prosecute someone: “It would depend on the situation.” He’s told supporters he would seek retribution against his enemies in a second term. Would that include Fani Willis, the Atlanta-area district attorney who charged him with election interference, or Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan DA in the Stormy Daniels case, who Trump has previously said should be prosecuted? Trump demurs but offers no promises. “No, I don’t want to do that,” he says, before adding, “We’re gonna look at a lot of things. What they’ve done is a terrible thing.”

Trump has also vowed to appoint a “real special prosecutor” to go after Biden. “I wouldn’t want to hurt Biden,” he tells me. “I have too much respect for the office.” Seconds later, though, he suggests Biden’s fate may be tied to an upcoming Supreme Court ruling on whether Presidents can face criminal prosecution for acts committed in office. “If they said that a President doesn’t get immunity,” says Trump, “then Biden, I am sure, will be prosecuted for all of his crimes.” (Biden has not been charged with any, and a House Republican effort to impeach him has failed to unearth evidence of any crimes or misdemeanors, high or low.)

Such moves would be potentially catastrophic for the credibility of American law enforcement, scholars and former Justice Department leaders from both parties say. “If he ordered an improper prosecution, I would expect any respectable U.S. Attorney to say no,” says Michael McConnell, a former U.S. appellate judge appointed by President George W. Bush. “If the President fired the U.S. Attorney, it would be an enormous firestorm.” McConnell, now a Stanford law professor, says the dismissal could have a cascading effect similar to the Saturday Night Massacre, when President Richard Nixon ordered top DOJ officials to remove the special counsel investigating Watergate. Presidents have the constitutional right to fire U.S. Attorneys, and typically replace their predecessors’ appointees upon taking office. But discharging one specifically for refusing a President’s order would be all but unprecedented.

The U.S. border fence in Sunland Park, N.M..Victor J. Blue

Trump’s radical designs for presidential power would be felt throughout the country. A main focus is the southern border. Trump says he plans to sign orders to reinstall many of the same policies from his first term, such as the Remain in Mexico program, which requires that non-Mexican asylum seekers be sent south of the border until their court dates, and Title 42, which allows border officials to expel migrants without letting them apply for asylum. Advisers say he plans to cite record border crossings and fentanyl- and child-trafficking as justification for reimposing the emergency measures. He would direct federal funding to resume construction of the border wall, likely by allocating money from the military budget without congressional approval. The capstone of this program, advisers say, would be a massive deportation operation that would target millions of people. Trump made similar pledges in his first term, but says he plans to be more aggressive in a second. “People need to be deported,” says Tom Homan, a top Trump adviser and former acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “No one should be off the table.”

For an operation of that scale, Trump says he would rely mostly on the National Guard to round up and remove undocumented migrants throughout the country. “If they weren’t able to, then I’d use [other parts of] the military,” he says. When I ask if that means he would override the Posse Comitatus Act—an 1878 law that prohibits the use of military force on civilians—Trump seems unmoved by the weight of the statute. “Well, these aren’t civilians,” he says. “These are people that aren’t legally in our country.” He would also seek help from local police and says he would deny funding for jurisdictions that decline to adopt his policies. “There’s a possibility that some won’t want to participate,” Trump says, “and they won’t partake in the riches.”

As President, Trump nominated three Supreme Court Justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, and he claims credit for his role in ending a constitutional right to an abortion. At the same time, he has sought to defuse a potent campaign issue for the Democrats by saying he wouldn’t sign a federal ban. In our interview at Mar-a-Lago, he declines to commit to vetoing any additional federal restrictions if they came to his desk. More than 20 states now have full or partial abortion bans, and Trump says those policies should be left to the states to do what they want, including monitoring women’s pregnancies. “I think they might do that,” he says. When I ask whether he would be comfortable with states prosecuting women for having abortions beyond the point the laws permit, he says, “It’s irrelevant whether I’m comfortable or not. It’s totally irrelevant, because the states are going to make those decisions.” President Biden has said he would fight state anti-abortion measures in court and with regulation.

Trump’s allies don’t plan to be passive on abortion if he returns to power. The Heritage Foundation has called for enforcement of a 19th century statute that would outlaw the mailing of abortion pills. The Republican Study Committee (RSC), which includes more than 80% of the House GOP conference, included in its 2025 budget proposal the Life at Conception Act, which says the right to life extends to “the moment of fertilization.” I ask Trump if he would veto that bill if it came to his desk. “I don’t have to do anything about vetoes,” Trump says, “because we now have it back in the states.”

Presidents typically have a narrow window to pass major legislation. Trump’s team is eyeing two bills to kick off a second term: a border-security and immigration package, and an extension of his 2017 tax cuts. Many of the latter’s provisions expire early in 2025: the tax cuts on individual income brackets, 100% business expensing, the doubling of the estate-tax deduction. Trump is planning to intensify his protectionist agenda, telling me he’s considering a tariff of more than 10% on all imports, and perhaps even a 100% tariff on some Chinese goods. Trump says the tariffs will liberate the U.S. economy from being at the mercy of foreign manufacturing and spur an industrial renaissance in the U.S. When I point out that independent analysts estimate Trump’s first term tariffs on thousands of products, including steel and aluminum, solar panels, and washing machines, may have cost the U.S. $316 billion and more than 300,000 jobs, by one account, he dismisses these experts out of hand. His advisers argue that the average yearly inflation rate in his first term—under 2%—is evidence that his tariffs won’t raise prices.

Since leaving office, Trump has tried to engineer a caucus of the compliant, clearing primary fields in Senate and House races. His hope is that GOP majorities replete with MAGA diehards could rubber-stamp his legislative agenda and nominees. Representative Jim Banks of Indiana, a former RSC chairman and the GOP nominee for the state’s open Senate seat, recalls an August 2022 RSC planning meeting with Trump at his residence in Bedminster, N.J. As the group arrived, Banks recalls, news broke that Mar-a-Lago had been raided by the FBI. Banks was sure the meeting would be canceled. Moments later, Trump walked through the doors, defiant and pledging to run again. “I need allies there when I’m elected,” Banks recalls Trump saying. The difference in a second Trump term, Banks says now, “is he’s going to have the backup in Congress that he didn’t have before.”

Haley, Scavino, Wiles: AP (3); Bannon, Conway, Homan, LaCivita, Lighthizer, J. Miller, S. Miller, Trump, Vought: Getty Images (9)

Trump’s intention to remake America’s relations abroad may be just as consequential. Since its founding, the U.S. has sought to build and sustain alliances based on the shared values of political and economic freedom. Trump takes a much more transactional approach to international relations than his predecessors, expressing disdain for what he views as free-riding friends and appreciation for authoritarian leaders like President Xi Jinping of China, Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, or former President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil.

That’s one reason America’s traditional allies were horrified when Trump recently said at a campaign rally that Russia could “do whatever the hell they want” to a NATO country he believes doesn’t spend enough on collective defense. That wasn’t idle bluster, Trump tells me. “If you’re not going to pay, then you’re on your own,” he says. Trump has long said the alliance is ripping the U.S. off. Former NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg credited Trump’s first-term threat to pull out of the alliance with spurring other members to add more than $100 billion to their defense budgets.

But an insecure NATO is as likely to accrue to Russia’s benefit as it is to America’s. President Vladimir Putin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine looks to many in Europe and the U.S. like a test of his broader vision to reconstruct the Soviet empire. Under Biden and a bipartisan Congress, the U.S. has sent more than $100 billion to Ukraine to defend itself. It’s unlikely Trump would extend the same support to Kyiv. After Orban visited Mar-a-Lago in March, he said Trump “wouldn’t give a penny” to Ukraine. “I wouldn’t give unless Europe starts equalizing,” Trump hedges in our interview. “If Europe is not going to pay, why should we pay? They’re much more greatly affected. We have an ocean in between us. They don’t.” (E.U. nations have given more than $100 billion in aid to Ukraine as well.)

Trump has historically been reluctant to criticize or confront Putin. He sided with the Russian autocrat over his own intelligence community when it asserted that Russia interfered in the 2016 election. Even now, Trump uses Putin as a foil for his own political purposes. When I asked Trump why he has not called for the release of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who has been unjustly held on spurious charges in a Moscow prison for a year, Trump says, “I guess because I have so many other things I’m working on.” Gershkovich should be freed, he adds, but he doubts it will happen before the election. “The reporter should be released and he will be released,” Trump tells me. “I don’t know if he’s going to be released under Biden. I would get him released.”

America’s Asian allies, like its European ones, may be on their own under Trump. Taiwan’s Foreign Minister recently said aid to Ukraine was critical in deterring Xi from invading the island. Communist China’s leaders “have to understand that things like that can’t come easy,” Trump says, but he declines to say whether he would come to Taiwan’s defense.

Trump is less cryptic on current U.S. troop deployments in Asia. If South Korea doesn’t pay more to support U.S. troops there to deter Kim Jong Un’s increasingly belligerent regime to the north, Trump suggests the U.S. could withdraw its forces. “We have 40,000 troops that are in a precarious position,” he tells TIME. (The number is actually 28,500.) “Which doesn’t make any sense. Why would we defend somebody? And we’re talking about a very wealthy country.”

Transactional isolationism may be the main strain of Trump’s foreign policy, but there are limits. Trump says he would join Israel’s side in a confrontation with Iran. “If they attack Israel, yes, we would be there,” he tells me. He says he has come around to the now widespread belief in Israel that a Palestinian state existing side by side in peace is increasingly unlikely. “There was a time when I thought two-state could work,” he says. “Now I think two-state is going to be very, very tough.”

Yet even his support for Israel is not absolute. He’s criticized Israel’s handling of its war against Hamas, which has killed more than 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza, and has called for the nation to “get it over with.” When I ask whether he would consider withholding U.S. military aid to Israel to push it toward winding down the war, he doesn’t say yes, but he doesn’t rule it out, either. He is sharply critical of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, once a close ally. “I had a bad experience with Bibi,” Trump says. In his telling, a January 2020 U.S. operation to assassinate a top Iranian general was supposed to be a joint attack until Netanyahu backed out at the last moment. “That was something I never forgot,” he says. He blames Netanyahu for failing to prevent the Oct. 7 attack, when Hamas militants infiltrated southern Israel and killed nearly 1,200 people amid acts of brutality including burning entire families alive and raping women and girls. “It happened on his watch,” Trump says.

On the second day of Trump’s New York trial on April 17, I stand behind the packed counter of the Sanaa Convenience Store on 139th Street and Broadway, waiting for Trump to drop in for a postcourt campaign stop. He chose the bodega for its history. In 2022, one of the store’s clerks fatally stabbed a customer who attacked him. Bragg, the Manhattan DA, charged the clerk with second-degree murder. (The charges were later dropped amid public outrage over video footage that appeared to show the clerk acting in self-defense.) A baseball bat behind the counter alludes to lingering security concerns. When Trump arrives, he asks the store’s co-owner, Maad Ahmed, a Yemeni immigrant, about safety. “You should be allowed to have a gun,” Trump tells Ahmed. “If you had a gun, you’d never get robbed.”

On the campaign trail, Trump uses crime as a cudgel, painting urban America as a savage hell-scape even though violent crime has declined in recent years, with homicides sinking 6% in 2022 and 13% in 2023, according to the FBI. When I point this out, Trump tells me he thinks the data, which is collected by state and local police departments, is rigged. “It’s a lie,” he says. He has pledged to send the National Guard into cities struggling with crime in a second term—possibly without the request of governors—and plans to approve Justice Department grants only to cities that adopt his preferred policing methods like stop-and-frisk.

To critics, Trump’s preoccupation with crime is a racial dog whistle. In polls, large numbers of his supporters have expressed the view that antiwhite racism now represents a greater problem in the U.S. than the systemic racism that has long afflicted Black Americans. When I ask if he agrees, Trump does not dispute this position. “There is a definite antiwhite feeling in the country,” he tells TIME, “and that can’t be allowed either.” In a second term, advisers say, a Trump Administration would rescind Biden’s Executive Orders designed to boost diversity and racial equity.

A protester confronts members of the Minnesota National Guard after the murder of George Floyd.Victor J. Blue

Trump’s ability to campaign for the White House in the midst of an unprecedented criminal trial is the product of a more professional campaign operation that has avoided the infighting that plagued past versions. “He has a very disciplined team around him,” says Representative Elise Stefanik of New York. “That is an indicator of how disciplined and focused a second term will be.” That control now extends to the party writ large. In 2016, the GOP establishment, having failed to derail Trump’s campaign, surrounded him with staff who sought to temper him. Today the party’s permanent class have either devoted themselves to the gospel of MAGA or given up. Trump has cleaned house at the Republican National Committee, installing handpicked leaders—including his daughter-in-law—who have reportedly imposed loyalty tests on prospective job applicants, asking whether they believe the false assertion that the 2020 election was stolen. (The RNC has denied there is a litmus test.) Trump tells me he would have trouble hiring anyone who admits Biden won: “I wouldn’t feel good about it.”

Policy groups are creating a government-in-waiting full of true believers. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 has drawn up plans for legislation and Executive Orders as it trains prospective personnel for a second Trump term. The Center for Renewing America, led by Russell Vought, Trump’s former director of the Office of Management and Budget, is dedicated to disempowering the so-called administrative state, the collection of bureaucrats with the power to control everything from drug-safety determinations to the contents of school lunches. The America First Policy Institute is a research haven of pro-Trump right-wing populists. America First Legal, led by Trump’s immigration adviser Stephen Miller, is mounting court battles against the Biden Administration.

The goal of these groups is to put Trump’s vision into action on day one. “The President never had a policy process that was designed to give him what he actually wanted and campaigned on,” says Vought. “[We are] sorting through the legal authorities, the mechanics, and providing the momentum for a future Administration.” That includes a litany of boundary-pushing right-wing policies, including slashing Department of Justice funding and cutting climate and environmental regulations.

Trump’s campaign says he would be the final decision-maker on which policies suggested by these organizations would get implemented. But at the least, these advisers could form the front lines of a planned march against what Trump dubs the Deep State, marrying bureaucratic savvy to their leader’s anti-bureaucratic zeal. One weapon in Trump’s second-term “War on Washington” is a wonky one: restoring the power of impoundment, which allowed Presidents to withhold congressionally appropriated funds. Impoundment was a favorite maneuver of Nixon, who used his authority to freeze funding for subsidized housing and the Environmental Protection Agency. Trump and his allies plan to challenge a 1974 law that prohibits use of the measure, according to campaign policy advisers.

Another inside move is the enforcement of Schedule F, which allows the President to fire nonpolitical government officials and which Trump says he would embrace. “You have some people that are protected that shouldn’t be protected,” he says. A senior U.S. judge offers an example of how consequential such a move could be. Suppose there’s another pandemic, and President Trump wants to push the use of an untested drug, much as he did with hydroxychloroquine during COVID-19. Under Schedule F, if the drug’s medical reviewer at the Food and Drug Administration refuses to sign off on its use, Trump could fire them, and anyone else who doesn’t approve it. The Trump team says the President needs the power to hold bureaucrats accountable to voters. “The mere mention of Schedule F,” says Vought, “ensures that the bureaucracy moves in your direction.”

It can be hard at times to discern Trump’s true intentions. In his interviews with TIME, he often sidestepped questions or answered them in contradictory ways. There’s no telling how his ego and self-destructive behavior might hinder his objectives. And for all his norm-breaking, there are lines he says he won’t cross. When asked if he would comply with all orders upheld by the Supreme Court, Trump says he would.

But his policy preoccupations are clear and consistent. If Trump is able to carry out a fraction of his goals, the impact could prove as transformative as any presidency in more than a century. “He’s in full war mode,” says his former adviser and occasional confidant Stephen Bannon. Trump’s sense of the state of the country is “quite apocalyptic,” Bannon says. “That’s where Trump’s heart is. That’s where his obsession is.”

Trump speaks at his last rally ahead of his criminal trial in Schnecksville, Penn., on April 13.Victor J. Blue for TIME

These obsessions could once again push the nation to the brink of crisis. Trump does not dismiss the possibility of political violence around the election. “If we don’t win, you know, it depends,” he tells TIME. “It always depends on the fairness of the election.” When I ask what he meant when he baselessly claimed on Truth Social that a stolen election “allows for the termination of all rules, regulations and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” Trump responded by denying he had said it. He then complained about the “Biden-inspired” court case he faces in New York and suggested that the “fascists” in America’s government were its greatest threat. “I think the enemy from within, in many cases, is much more dangerous for our country than the outside enemies of China, Russia, and various others,” he tells me.

Toward the end of our conversation at Mar-a-Lago, I ask Trump to explain another troubling comment he made: that he wants to be dictator for a day. It came during a Fox News town hall with Sean Hannity, who gave Trump an opportunity to allay concerns that he would abuse power in office or seek retribution against political opponents. Trump said he would not be a dictator—“except for day one,” he added. “I want to close the border, and I want to drill, drill, drill.”

Trump says that the remark “was said in fun, in jest, sarcastically.” He compares it to an infamous moment from the 2016 campaign, when he encouraged the Russians to hack and leak Hillary Clinton’s emails. In Trump’s mind, the media sensationalized those remarks too. But the Russians weren’t joking: among many other efforts to influence the core exercise of American democracy that year, they hacked the Democratic National Committee’s servers and disseminated its emails through WikiLeaks.

Whether or not he was kidding about bringing a tyrannical end to our 248-year experiment in democracy, I ask him, Don’t you see why many Americans see such talk of dictatorship as contrary to our most cherished principles? Trump says no. Quite the opposite, he insists. “I think a lot of people like it.” —With reporting by Leslie Dickstein, Simmone Shah, and Julia Zorthian

TIME

12. Here’s when the US Army will pick next long-range spy plane

Here’s when the US Army will pick next long-range spy plane

Defense News · by Jen Judson · April 30, 2024

DENVER — The U.S. Army will choose who is to integrate its long-range, high-speed spy plane this summer, a major step in its effort to overhaul existing fixed-wing aircraft that perform intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions, according to service officials in charge of the program.

The service plans to retire roughly 70 aircraft — its entire ISR fleet — as it brings on the High Accuracy Detection and Exploitation System, or HADES, that will be able to rapidly deploy and provide deep-sensing capabilities.

For the first time, the Army is using a large-cabin business jet — the Bombardier Global 6500 — to serve as the airframe for the spy plane. The service awarded Bombardier a contract in December for one aircraft, with an option to buy two more over a three-year period.

Competitors expect the Army to choose the team that will integrate sensors onto the business jet around late June or early July. An L3Harris Technologies, MAG Aerospace and Leidos team is competing against Sierra Nevada Corp. All four companies are involved in ISR fixed-wing prototype efforts with the Army.

What are the Army’s choices?

The Army has spent more than five years assessing ISR fixed-wing prototypes using high-speed jets to inform the HADES program. It began with the deployment of Artemis — or Airborne Reconnaissance and Target Exploitation Multi-mission System — which has flown in the European theater near the Ukrainian border.

The Army in 2019 awarded a contract to HII, and the company subsequently awarded a contract to Leidos to build Artemis using a Bombardier Challenger 650 jet.

Then the service deployed Ares — or Airborne Reconnaissance and Electronic Warfare System — to the Pacific region in April 2022. The Army awarded a contract to Alion Science and Technology, which is now owned by HII. Alion awarded a subcontract to L3Harris in November 2020 to build and fly the aircraft. Ares is based on a Bombardier Global Express 6500 jet.

Combined, Artemis and Ares have flown more than 1,000 sorties, according to Andrew Evans, who leads the Army’s ISR Task Force. They fly roughly 10-hour missions and average 20 sorties a month, he added.

The Army is also preparing to take on four more prototypes that will inform the requirements for the HADES program. The service chose a pair of companies to deliver two jets each with spy technologies to advance long-range targeting plans.

MAG Aerospace and L3Harris will outfit a Global 6500 with ISR sensors for the Army’s radar-focused Athena-R effort.

And Sierra Nevada is providing its RAPCON-X, based on a converted Bombardier business jet, for the service’s singals intelligence-focused Athena-S project.

The president of L3Harris’ ISR division, Jason Lambert, told Defense News at the AAAA conference that the team won its contract in March 2023, began integration in September 2023 when it received the aircraft and held its first flight in February. Since then the aircraft has flown 40 performance handling and quality flights, as well as collected more than 600 data points with a 100% success rate, Lambert said.

“The pilots came back and said it flies just like a Global 6500, despite the fact that we [have] these different outer-mold line changes on it,” he noted. This includes adding a 29-foot-long pod to the bottom of the plane.

The service will receive the two aircraft in the third quarter of 2024 — one in July and another in September, Lambert said. For L3Harris’ HADES submission, the aircraft will be 90% common with Athena-R, he added.

The company expects the service to award a contract for the second HADES prototype about six months after the first. The contract for the third — a production-representative prototype — will follow with a longer time gap in between so the Army can collect data from deployments involving the first HADES prototypes.

Why now?

The Army recognized it would need new piloted, fixed-wing ISR assets to carry out its missions in complex environments — “something that flies much farther, much faster and much higher,” Andrew Evans, the Army’s ISR Task Force director, said.

Using 70 “very capable” Beechcraft King Air and De Havilland Canada Dash-8 aircraft, the Army, “has done some enormous and powerful work in support of the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan” Evans said during the Army Aviation Association of America’s annual conference this month. But the existing fleet won’t be able to fulfill long-range missions off the coast of China — which the U.S. government considers its top threat — “or really almost any other place in the world if you’re talking about extended geographic ranges with limited basing and access,” Evans added.

“So HADES provides our solution to that, but we have to do it affordably,” Evans noted.

Once the Army picks a team to integrate sensors onto the jet, the process will take 18 months before the aircraft can deploy for a user assessment, the Army estimated. That assessment moves the aircraft from a controlled test environment in the United States to operational environments “to really stress test your systems and figure out what’s working and what’s not,” Evans said.

The Army will deploy HADES for a limited period of time and then start building more aircraft as the early prototype remains deployed, he added.

The service plans to field 14 HADES aircraft by 2035, according to a slide Maj. Gen. Wally Rugen, the director of Army aviation, displayed during a speech at the AAAA conference.

While industry officials said they anticipate the Army will continue to award the same team subsequent contracts to build all of the HADES aircraft, Evans noted that “the guidance to our acquisition teammates was to ensure that we give ourselves as much flexibility as possible in the process.”

What has the service learned?

The Army’s strategy to overhaul its fixed-wing ISR fleet is a unique approach, Evans said, because the service asked industry to provide flight-ready prototypes, rather than select a team to build a system according to specifications. This was meant to help the Army quickly learn while it fills a capability gap.

Indeed, these prototypes are helping the service understand how sensors can keep up with a jet flying higher and at faster speeds, Dennis Teefy, the Army’s project manager for sensors and aerial intelligence within Program Executive Office Intelligence, Electronic Warfare and Sensors, said at the AAAA event.

The Army is currently working through how it refines processing, exploitation and dissemination of an enormous amount of data coming from the platform’s sensors, he added.

“How do we deal with all that volume of data? How do we transport that data across the comms network down to where it needs to go?” Teefy said, noting there are opportunities for industry to continue work on these areas and help the Army figure out how best to move data across the battlefield.

The prototypes already flying have also taught the Army a great deal about adapting sensor needs using a modular, open-system architecture, according to the service’s program manager for fixed-wing aircraft, Col. Joseph Minor.

“It’s different in every [environment] that we operate in, so to be able to change sensors quickly, to be able to adapt, especially on a globally deployable platform, much lower numbers is critical,” Minor said at the AAAA event. “When you are talking about a much smaller number of aircraft that are globally deployed, you’ve got to be able to make those changes on the fly.”

About Jen Judson

Jen Judson is an award-winning journalist covering land warfare for Defense News. She has also worked for Politico and Inside Defense. She holds a Master of Science degree in journalism from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Kenyon College.

13. Retired officer called to court-martial at Fort Belvoir on sexual assault charge previously declined

Excerpts:

The case is unusual not only because of Winograd’s retirement status — he retired in December 2022 — but also because the Army had already attempted to charge him in the case. An evidentiary hearing determined the charge should not move to court-martial, said Winograd’s attorney Nathan Freeburg, who previously served in the Army as an attorney.

...

That charge alleged that he “unlawfully touch[ed]” his son’s neck with his arm Dec. 21, 2018, according to the charge sheet. The son’s name is redacted from the charge sheet.

The assault charge against Winograd, a single father who deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan during his career, originally began in Prince William County as assault or battery of a family member, according to online court records. Winograd pleaded no contest, which means he accepted conviction without admitting guilt.

The charge of domestic violence was not added into the Uniform Code of Military Justice until 2019, so it is not available to use for this case.

Winograd’s son was 16 when the dispute between them occurred and they have since reconciled, Freeburg said. Now an adult, Winograd’s son serves in the Navy and wrote Messina to say he wants nothing to do with the proceedings.

Retired officer called to court-martial at Fort Belvoir on sexual assault charge previously declined

Stars and Stripes · by Rose L. Thayer · April 30, 2024

AUSTIN, Texas — A retired lieutenant colonel was arraigned in a Fort Belvoir, Va., courtroom this month on a charge that he sexually assaulted a major in 2022 — using a rarely employed authority of the military legal system to prosecute officers in retirement.

Lt. Col. Adam Winograd, 47, pleaded not guilty to the charge that he had sex with the major without her consent in Manassas, Va., on Feb. 24, 2022, according to the charge sheet and online court records. The woman’s name is redacted from the charge sheet.

The case is unusual not only because of Winograd’s retirement status — he retired in December 2022 — but also because the Army had already attempted to charge him in the case. An evidentiary hearing determined the charge should not move to court-martial, said Winograd’s attorney Nathan Freeburg, who previously served in the Army as an attorney.

Officials at Fort Belvoir declined to comment on why the charge was filed again a year later.

The Office of Special Trial Counsel, which was established in December to handle certain charges including sexual assault, said it is not involved in Winograd’s prosecution. The office has the authority to reach back to older cases but it did not do so in this instance.

Col. Joseph Messina, Fort Belvoir garrison commander, sent the charges to court-martial late last year after holding a second evidentiary hearing. A jury trial is scheduled to begin July 22, according to the Army’s online court docket. A hearing is scheduled for May 30.

During the first evidentiary hearing known as an Article 32, the presiding officer found no probable cause and the original convening authority, Col. David Bowling, decided not to move forward. An Article 32 is similar to a grand jury hearing in civilian court where it is determined whether there is enough evidence to return an indictment. Instead of a panel of jurors, one officer is presented with evidence and writes a recommendation to the convening authority.

The recommendation then went to the Army Inspector General, whose office reviewed the situation and determined that the convening authority acted appropriately, said Freeburg, who is still awaiting a copy of the full report.

The Army declined to make the report available to Stars and Stripes without submitting a Freedom of Information Act request. That request is still pending.

Winograd was also arraigned last month on an assault charge that was not part of the original case against him, according to court records.

That charge alleged that he “unlawfully touch[ed]” his son’s neck with his arm Dec. 21, 2018, according to the charge sheet. The son’s name is redacted from the charge sheet.

The assault charge against Winograd, a single father who deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan during his career, originally began in Prince William County as assault or battery of a family member, according to online court records. Winograd pleaded no contest, which means he accepted conviction without admitting guilt.

The charge of domestic violence was not added into the Uniform Code of Military Justice until 2019, so it is not available to use for this case.

Winograd’s son was 16 when the dispute between them occurred and they have since reconciled, Freeburg said. Now an adult, Winograd’s son serves in the Navy and wrote Messina to say he wants nothing to do with the proceedings.

“Nonetheless, they’ve moved ahead anyway,” Freeburg said.

The sexual assault charge was also first investigated by civilian authorities and declined prosecution, he said.

The military allows for the prosecution of retirees and does not require the person be returned to active duty. Winograd, who worked in the Chemical Corps and in Force Development since commissioning in 2002, will have the choice of wearing a military uniform or civilian suit to court.

The Army said it does not track how often retirees face court-martial, but Freeburg said he sees it about once every couple of years.

A retired major general faced court-martial in 2021 in which he pleaded guilty to charges of rape and incest. James J. Grazioplene was reduced in rank to second lieutenant.

A gavel rests on the judge’s bench in the courtroom of the 39th Air Base Wing legal office at Nov. 14, 2019, at Incirlik Air Base, Turkey. (Joshua Jospeh Magbanu/U.S. Air Force)

Stars and Stripes · by Rose L. Thayer · April 30, 2024

14. Marines create new monitor job to support dual-military couples

All the services should have done this long ago.

Marines create new monitor job to support dual-military couples

marinecorpstimes.com · by Hope Hodge Seck · May 1, 2024

If you get orders to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, but your spouse has orders to Hawaii, there’s good news: the Marines’ new dual-military monitor may be able to help.

The new post, expected to be operational before summer, will exist to make it easier for the more than 4,300 enlisted Marines married to another active-duty service member to meet career goals and manage permanent change of station moves in a mutually beneficial way, according to Maj. Christopher Dippel, deputy section chief for the Corps’ enlisted assignments branch. The move is part of a broader effort by the Marine Corps to be responsive to the needs of dual-military couples, signaling that they are not just an afterthought or on their own while navigating a complex and decentralized bureaucracy.

Marine leaders also hope the new role will support retention at a well-known pain point.

“PCS is a large driver for potential departure from the service,” he told a panel at the March quarterly meeting of the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services.

More could be done to help dual-military couples, DoD IG reports

Dual-military couples serving in different branches are less likely to get assignments near each other than same-service couples.

It’s a bigger deal for the Marine Corps than for the other services. Nearly 60% of married female Marines are in a dual-military marriage, compared to a Defense Department-wide average of 45.3%, according to Dippel’s presentation.

A 2021 survey of active-duty service members with a military spouse showed that 88% of Marines lived with their spouse while not deployed, the lowest of any service except for the Army at 86%, according to data from the Pentagon’s Office of Personnel Analytics. The Marine Corps also had the highest proportion of respondents, 14%, who said they lived in a separate home from their spouse, double the Defense Department average of 7%.

Policies and protocols related to co-locating military couples are “critical for personal and professional longevity,” Dippel’s presentation stated.

According to Manpower and Reserve Affairs spokeswoman Capt. Sarah Eason, the dual-military monitor is a staff sergeant who is now in training to execute the first-of-its-kind role.

Once officially on the job, the monitor will help dual-military Marine couples report their marriages to administrative centers, submit co-location requests and navigate separation waivers, Eason said. The monitor can also offer career options to couples looking to co-locate, advise on timelines and educate Marines on programs that can help them, she said.

Without a dedicated monitor, Marines in dual-military marriages have had to navigate the Corps’ decentralized system of 75 different assignment monitors and manage the liaising and communication around aligning two different career tracks, Dippel said. The new monitor role will take on much of the responsibility of managing communication, both across units within the Marine Corps, and, in the case of couples with a spouse in another military branch, across service lines as well.

“We envision that [such Marines] will have liaisons within our sister service’s monitor and detailer networks,” Dippel said. And with all the planners in communication, “we can target and find the right billet for both of those service members at the right time.”

This move to better meet the needs of dual-military couples is part of a larger shift within Manpower and Reserve Affairs, according to Dippel’s presentation.

A system modernization effort underway, he said, will reframe the way orders for dual-military couples are processed, making it more akin to the system in place for troops in the exceptional family member program. Under that program, serving military families with special-needs members, the orders process includes a review to ensure the post receiving the service member has access to the medical or educational services the family requires.

“We envision that building this into our next systems architecture will ensure that any time a set of orders for a dual active-service couple is written, that will automatically get sent directly to the dual active-service monitor,” Dippel said. “That gives that monitor the opportunity to ensure that policies are being met, and that the needs of both of those service members are being met with that set of PCS orders.”

This is not always easily done, particularly with more senior couples for whom the available billets for a new assignment might be limited. Dippel said the Corps will work with couples to meet co-location needs while also ensuring the needs of the service are met. He said one solution in more complex situations could be an exception to policy that allows for a tour shorter than the standard 36 months, for example, to keep the couple together as much as possible.

“The Marine Corps firmly does believe that geographic stability does encourage retention,’” he said.

Later in 2024, Dippel said, the Marine Corps plans to publicize the changes in a “strategic narrative” video messaging campaign so that both dual-military Marine couples and their leaders understand how the system is supposed to work.

Across the Defense Department, retention of military talent has increasingly been a focal point for the services, particularly in light of historic recruiting challenges. Efforts like the recent bipartisan Quality of Life panel and accompanying congressional hearing emphasized the connection between living conditions and military career satisfaction.

The Marine Corps is not the first to try to ease the way for dual-military couples: the Married Army Couples Program allows dual families to establish a recognized “joint domicile” to support co-location.

Air Force and Navy leaders have said they work to give dual military couples special basing consideration, although without a dedicated liaison for the purpose.

About Hope Hodge Seck

Hope Hodge Seck is an award-winning investigative and enterprise reporter covering the U.S. military and national defense. The former managing editor of Military.com, her work has also appeared in the Washington Post, Politico Magazine, USA Today and Popular Mechanics.

15. Will Hamas Say No?

And even if they say yes, will they honor an agreement?

Will Hamas Say No?

The New York Times · by Julian E. Barnes · May 1, 2024

Newsletter

The Morning

We explain why a cease-fire hasn’t happened.

In Rafah, Gaza.

May 1, 2024, 6:48 a.m. ET

Israel and Hamas have been talking for months about a deal to release the hostages held in Gaza and to halt the war there. Today, I’ll explain why they haven’t agreed on a renewed cease-fire — and what will determine whether they do.

At times, Israel has been a reluctant negotiator. It has been hesitant to withdraw its troops, free more Palestinian prisoners or allow Gazans to return to their homes — or what remains of them — in the north.

But American officials said that in recent weeks Israel had made several major concessions. Now Hamas seems like the reluctant party. It has not embraced the Israeli compromises, frustrating American attempts to stop, at least temporarily, the war in Gaza.

A holdout

The negotiations have real consequences: For weeks, Israel has said it is preparing to invade Rafah, where around one million Palestinian civilians and thousands of Hamas fighters have taken refuge. Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, pledged yesterday to strike Rafah with or without a hostage deal. Thousands more civilians could die.

But some involved in the discussions — Americans, Egyptians and Qataris have been mediating — worry that Hamas appears willing to sacrifice even more Palestinian civilians. Its officials believe that the deaths in Gaza erode support for Israel around the world.

Americans do not want Israel to strike Rafah with a major ground offensive, at least not without a better plan to protect civilians. A hostage agreement appears to be the best way to at least delay such an operation.

By The New York Times

In early April, William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director, who has been the lead hostage negotiator, laid out a new plan. It gave in to a key Hamas demand: Palestinians taking refuge in southern Gaza would be free to return to their homes in the north as part of an initial hostages-for-prisoners exchange.

Hamas said no. It told negotiators that it could not meet one of the conditions, because it did not still have 40 living hostages who were female, ill or elderly. And it was not willing to liberate captured soldiers to make up the difference, at least not without a promise from Israel to end the war.

After the Hamas rejection, negotiators scrambled to make a new plan. The U.S. also put pressure on Israel to make a deal. This week Israel conceded, telling negotiators it would accept fewer hostages — 33 — and release more Palestinians from its prisons for each hostage set free. Hamas has said it is considering the new Israeli offer.

American officials believe that Israel has conceded everything it can, raising doubts in Washington about whether Hamas really wants a deal. Hamas, of course, believes there is one more concession Israel could give: announce an end to the war.

A protest in Tel Aviv by relatives and supporters of hostages.

Elusive endgame

This is a familiar conundrum in the Middle East. Every Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiation has stumbled over what arbiters call “the final status.” And so, from the beginning, the American strategy has been to work for a temporary cease-fire — and then use that to bring home hostages, release Palestinian prisoners and expand humanitarian aid. The first hostage release in exchange for a temporary halt broke down. But American officials hope that another release might help cajole both sides toward a permanent cease-fire.

Some people briefed on the negotiations blame Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas military leader who helped mastermind the Oct. 7 attacks, for the impasse. He has monitored the talks from his hiding space deep in the tunnels below Gaza. Sinwar is protected, according to American and Israeli officials, by at least 15 hostages he is using as human shields. Those captives prevent Israel from assassinating him.

While American officials have long understood that Hamas does not intend to release the Israeli soldiers it holds without a promise of a more lasting cease-fire, Washington hoped Sinwar would see that he could help Gazans by doing what was necessary to halt the war — perhaps releasing the remaining women and older men.

Sending home those hostages, Americans hope, would help Israel see that it had achieved enough in its war. True, Hamas is not destroyed, but it is in no position to mount another attack like Oct. 7. Its ability to command forces is dramatically weakened.

But that all requires Hamas saying yes to a first phase. So far, the answer has been no.

For more

Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, is in Israel. He’s seeking to discourage Israeli leaders from starting a major ground offensive in Rafah.
The White House is also pressing Hamas to accept the cease-fire deal.

16. Why Israel is so determined to launch an offensive in Rafah. And why so many oppose it

Excerpts:

The question of attacking Rafah has heavy political repercussions for Netanyahu. His government could be threatened with collapse if he doesn’t go through with it. Some of his ultranationalist and conservative religious governing partners could pull out of the coalition, if he signs onto a cease-fire deal that prevents an assault.

Critics of Netanyahu say that he’s more concerned with keeping his government intact and staying in power than national interest, an accusation he denies.

One of his coalition members, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, said Tuesday that accepting a cease-fire deal and not carrying out a Rafah operation would amount to Israel “raising a white flag” and giving victory to Hamas.

On the other hand, Netanyahu risks increasing Israel’s international isolation — and alienating its top ally, the United States — if it does attack Rafah. His vocal refusals to be swayed by world pressure and his promises to launch the operation could be aimed at placating his political allies even as he considers a deal.

Or he could bet that international anger will remain largely rhetorical if he goes ahead with the attack. The Biden administration has used progressively tougher language to express concerns over Netanyahu’s conduct of the war, but it has also continued to provide weapons to Israel’s military and diplomatic support.

Why Israel is so determined to launch an offensive in Rafah. And why so many oppose it

AP · April 30, 2024

17. 'Send Me': Senior chief Shannon Kent and the hunt for ISIS

Another great American.

'Send Me': Senior chief Shannon Kent and the hunt for ISIS

This excerpt from the forthcoming “Send Me: The True Story of a Mother at War,” follows Navy chief Shannon Kent's hunt for a senior ISIS leader.

BY MARTY SKOVLUND JR. , JOE KENT | PUBLISHED APR 30, 2024 6:25 PM EDT

taskandpurpose.com · by Marty Skovlund Jr. · April 30, 2024

This is an excerpt from the forthcoming book “Send Me: The True Story of a Mother at War,” a biography of Navy Senior Chief Shannon Kent written by her husband Joe Kent, and Task & Purpose editor-in-chief Marty Skovlund, Jr. A specialist in cryptologic warfare and fluent in seven languages, Kent was the first woman to complete the Naval Special Warfare Direct Support Course and the first to operate with Naval Special Warfare units in direct combat. She was killed in a targeted bombing in Syria on Jan. 16, 2019. This excerpt has been condensed from its original version.

A black Hyundai Elantra, covered in dust and sporting a few dents, cruised down a two-lane highway in the Syrian desert against the backdrop of a beautiful sunrise. Red in the morning, sailors take warning, Kay thought, sitting in the backseat. They didn’t use real names on missions, but you still needed something easy to remember. “Kay” was easy enough.

The radio dial was stuck on Al-Madina FM, a manageable but annoying situation Kay and the other two operators dealt with on their ninety-minute morning drive. It was too early for nonstop Arabic music, but conversation died down about an hour ago, so it is what it is.

The mission was to meet a source at a small compound in the middle of nowhere. It was a potentially dangerous rendezvous. Air support would be nice, in case things went south, but you’re in the wrong line of work if you expect that kind of safety net.

This meeting wasn’t their first rodeo, and if anyone knew how to navigate it successfully, it was these three. They had a combined fifty years of military experience, almost all of it in special operations. They were all selected and trained for their ability to hunt humans off the grid, in ambiguous situations, with little to no support. They were entirely in their element.

Senior Chief Shannon Kent. Photo courtesy Joe Kent.

They weren’t wearing body armor or helmets—hell, they weren’t even wearing uniforms—unless you count the faded New York Yankees ball cap Kay always had on. No machine guns or rocket launchers, just a Glock in the waistband and one spare magazine.

Two of the three looked how most would picture a stereotypical operator on a low-visibility mission: tan skin, longish hair, and beards. Kay opted for a ponytail.

The driver was a native-born Iraqi who came to the United States after his parents fled Saddam Hussein–controlled Iraq during the 1990s and went by the call sign “Jake,” but only because “Jake from State Farm” was too long for a radio transmission during a firefight.

Scotty rode shotgun. An old frogman-turned-contractor, he wore a pair of Oakleys, a black Casio G-Shock watch wrapped around his tattoo-laden arm, and a well-worn Black House MMA T-shirt from Brazil. He was Kay’s lookout during meets.

Seventy thousand of the 1.3 million active-duty service members in the US military are assigned to the US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM). Among them are the operators—the one percent of the one percent.

But few realize these same operators are the friendly neighbors and Little League coaches back home, tasked with balancing home and work like any other busy American. Well, almost like any other American.

Shit, I forgot to check in with Joe to see how Colt’s doctor’s appointment went today, Kay thought. Long drives like this allowed these hardened operators to get lost in their thoughts about the world back home. War or not, the kids needed to be taken care of, and marriages must be maintained. It’s a delicate balancing act.

“We’re about ten minutes out,” Jake said, breaking the silence in the car. Kay sat up a little straighter and began mentally preparing for the looming prospect of violence that could occur if the source decided their loyalty to the coalition had a limit. Typically, it’s all chai and smiles and empty promises—but bloodshed was always possible.

“Let’s do a first pass to check out the compound,” Kay said. “I don’t want to roll in there until we’ve had a chance to get eyes on.”

“Sounds good,” Jake replied before spitting tobacco juice into an empty energy drink can he had wedged between his legs. One dirty secret of the war on terror: it was fueled by chewing tobacco and energy drinks. Or, in Kay’s case, Rothman cigarettes—but only because she couldn’t find her preferred Marlboro Smooths while deployed.

Shannon Kent deployed as part of an intelligence collection team. Photo courtesy Joe Kent.

After driving approximately one hundred meters past the compound, Jake performed a U-turn and headed back. He pulled over outside the gate, allowing Kay and Scotty to exit and walk into the compound’s courtyard. He kept the car running.

The two approached the main building, and a man—a sheikh— emerged, dressed in traditional Arabic clothing with an orange kaffiyeh wrapped around his head.

“MarHaban, as-salaam‘alaykum.” Kay delivered the standard Arabic greeting with a perfect accent for the region, immediately recognizing him as the source they were there to meet.

“Wa ‘alaykum salaam,” the man replied while placing his right hand on his chest. So far, so good, Chief Petty Officer Shannon Kent—“Kay”—thought. Scotty stood nearby, his eyes darting from the Sheikh to the young man with an AK-47, then back again.

Then, in perfect English, the Sheikh said, “I did not expect a woman.”

A mission waits on Shannon

Several miles away, thirty American commandos prepared for close combat in a large canvas tent—the “ready room”—filled with wooden cubbies that stored their tools of war. The operators had already double-checked the explosive charges they built for breaching gates and doors, carefully removed the safeties from their grenades, and performed function checks on everything from their heavy machine guns to sniper rifles to their medical gear. Their lives depended on it.

Outside their tent, specialized helicopters stood fueled on the tarmac. Everyone was waiting on the green light to board those helicopters and a chance to kill or capture Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. Al-Baghdadi was the most elusive and dangerous member of the militant extremist’s cadre, responsible for an organized campaign of terror that swept across the Middle East, resulting in tens of thousands dead, thousands enslaved, and providing inspiration for brutal terrorist attacks across the Western world.

To board the helicopters and launch the raid, they needed to know where Al-Bagdadi was. With someone like al-Baghdadi, every second counted. But the commandos were helpless until the information about his whereabouts came in, stuck on the airfield in a state of bored readiness.

Everything depended on Shannon.

Find, Fix, Finish

Shannon replied to the Sheikh in Syrian Slang, “America ba’tat ashaukhos el wassqeen fee, em-Shan yalt’ie bil ashkass el wassqeen fee hoon.” (“America sent the one they trust to meet the one they trust.”)

This mission wasn’t the first time she had to respond to men surprised by a female operator. Her confidence and knowledge of local languages and customs helped her through countless times over the previous fifteen years; her linguistic ability and guile were as much of a weapon as the Glock concealed beneath her shirt.

Shannon’s role as an operator was to find and fix terrorists like al-Baghdadi and his ilk in time and space. These are the first two steps in the Find, Fix, Finish, Exploit, Analyze, Disseminate (F3EAD) targeting methodology America’s special operators use to dismantle enemy networks.

The magnitude of her mission was not lost on her. The pressure from the shooters to “paint the X on this motherfucker” was a heavy weight, and the information she needed to obtain would send her brothers toward violence. She was their eyes and ears, right up to the point they encountered the enemy in person.

Joe and Shannon Kent. Photo courtesy Joe Kent.

A surprised smile spread across the Sheikh’s face as he studied the woman in front of him. She looked American—like a woman out of an action movie—dressed in dark gray prAna pants, a black Arc’teryx jacket, and a purple Syrian kaffiyeh around her neck, yet she spoke with a native Syrian accent. America had sent her and just two men. This is different, he thought.

“Tafadil.” The Sheikh welcomed her with an extended hand. They shook hands—Syrians are far from being strict Muslims who refuse to touch women they are not related to

The familiar sounds of a scampering toddler filled the courtyard of the Sheikh’s house. “Ali Abdullah, come here!” his mother called after him.

This guy is probably not going to risk killing us with his family here, she thought

The Sheikh motioned to a seat on the couch to the right of his desk.

Shannon turned her attention to the reason they just risked a drive through the Euphrates Valley no-man’s-land: the source. He was a key tribal Sheikh with a long history with ISIS, the Assad regime, the Kurds, and every other power broker in the region. He was the key to finding, fixing, and hopefully finishing al-Baghdadi.

Shannon did her homework on him for weeks before the meeting, poring over intelligence reports about the tribe and the Sheikh himself. She was not surprised to see the classified information on him was lacking compared to what he put out on social media. And to think, we used to have to steal this shit. Now everyone posts everything about their lives online, free for the taking, she thought.

“Thank you so much for meeting with me today and inviting me into your home,” Shannon said. “My colleagues and I were sent here to thank you for your efforts against Daesh on behalf of the US government.” Her initial assessment of the source started here, even if her opening line was seemingly benign.

She had referred to ISIS as Daesh, a derogatory word in Arabic for ISIS, which ISIS itself despises. The term takes ISIS’s Arabic name and turns it into an American-style acronym (al-Dawla al-Islamiya fi al-Iraq wa al-Sham). They hate this term because it literally translates to “bigotry” and is also a feminine verb. Casually throwing the word Daesh into a compliment was a surefire way to gauge his feelings about ISIS.

Without warning, the telltale report of an AK-47 burst ripped through the air, echoing through the room from outside the building. Shannon’s hand instinctively moved to her pistol; the Sheikh was visibly confused. Scotty had already moved out, leaving Shannon alone. She had seconds to consider what to do.

“Send Me: The True Story of a Mother at War” hits bookshelves on May 7, 2024.

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taskandpurpose.com · by Marty Skovlund Jr. · April 30, 2024

18. The Marine officer who saved 8,000 lives at the ‘Frozen Chosin’

Where do we find such people?

No mention of it in the article but I wonder if someone is pursuing an upgrade to a Medal of Honor. Based on this short article it would seem like the right thing to do.

The Marine officer who saved 8,000 lives at the ‘Frozen Chosin’

militarytimes.com · by Claire Barrett · April 30, 2024

Kurt Chew-Een Lee spearheaded preparations in December 1950 for 500 Marines to embark on a daring rescue mission. The first lieutenant’s undertaking came during the vicious Battle of Chosin Reservoir, as tens of thousands of Chinese troops streamed in from North Korea and threatened to cut off an American unit.

Traversing five miles across treacherous mountainous terrain, Marines battled against blizzard conditions that cut visibility to almost zero. Temperatures oftentimes plummeted to 30 below.

Despite bullet wounds and a broken arm suffered during a previous engagement, Lee, along with his unit, went on to relentlessly engage the enemy while under intense fire. By the end, their exploits would help preserve a crucial evacuation route for American troops fighting as United Nations forces. Approximately 8,000 men were saved from certain death or imprisonment at the hands of the Chinese.

Born on January 21, 1926, in San Francisco, the slight-of-build Lee — all of 5-feet-6 inches tall and roughly 130 pounds — is believed to be the first Asian-American officer in Marine Corps history. Still, Lee “brought outsized determination to the battlefield,” according to an account in the New York Times.

Kurt Chew-Een Lee. (USMC)

Lee, who enlisted in the Marines at the end of World War II, told the Los Angeles Times in 2010 that he identified most with the Corps due to its reputation of being first into battle.

“I wanted to dispel the notion about the Chinese being meek, bland and obsequious,” he said.

Lee was assigned during WWII as a Japanese language instructor in San Diego. Swallowing his disappointment at not being sent to the Pacific, he chose to remain in the Marine Corps after the war and commissioned as an officer in 1946.

As the U.S. entered into the Korean War in June 1950, Lee was placed in charge of a machine gun platoon that was tasked with advancing deep into North Korean territory.

Before the fighting began, many of Lee’s fellow Marines questioned whether he was capable of killing Chinese soldiers. Behind his back some even used racial epithets, calling him a “Chinese laundry man.”

For Lee, the questioning of his devotion to his nation was ludicrous.

“I would have … done whatever was necessary,” he told the Los Angeles Times. “To me, it didn’t matter whether those were Chinese, Korean, Mongolian, whatever — they were the enemy.”

Lee’s Chinese ancestry, however, came as a boon on the night of November 2, 1950. Conducting a solo reconnaissance mission amid heavy snowfall, he began to lob grenades and fire rounds at the enemy with the intent of exposing the location of Chinese soldiers who were firing upon his men.

Undetected, Lee crept up on the enemy outpost and utilized his working knowledge of Mandarin to confuse the enemy combatants, who hesitated briefly as Lee called out in their native tongue, “Don’t shoot, I’m Chinese.”

That pause allowed just enough time for Lee’s unit to reposition and drive back the Chinese. For this, Lee was awarded the Navy Cross, the second-highest honor a Marine can receive.

“Despite serious wounds sustained as he pushed forward, First Lieutenant Lee charged directly into the face of the enemy fire and, by his dauntless fighting spirit and resourcefulness, served to inspire other members of his platoon to heroic efforts in pressing a determined counterattack and driving the hostile forces from the sector,” his citation reads.

Less than a month later, while Lee was still recovering in a field hospital from a gunshot wound to the arm he sustained during the early November fighting, the Chinese launched its Second Phase Offensive — aimed at driving the United Nations out of North Korea. Tens of thousands of Chinese forces converged on the mountainous region near the Chosin Reservoir, overrunning the nearly 8,000 American troops stationed there.

Undeterred by his wounds, Lee “and a sergeant left the hospital against orders, commandeered an Army jeep and returned to the front” to link up with the 1st Marine Battalion, according to the New York Times. Lee’s arm was still in a sling.

Using only a compass to traverse the snowy mountain terrain, Lee and his 500 Marines managed to find and reinforce the surrounded Americans, repeatedly driving back Chinese soldiers, according to the Times, and ensuring “the vastly outnumbered Americans were able to retreat to the sea.”

Members of the 1st Marine Division during the Battle of Chosin Reservoir. (USMC)

The fighting was so fierce that roughly 90 percent of Lee’s rifle company was killed or wounded, but thanks to Lee’s indefatigable efforts, the evacuation route remained open.

“Certainly, I was never afraid,” Lee told the Washington Post in 2010. “Perhaps the Chinese are all fatalists. I never expected to survive the war. So I was adamant that my death be honorable, be spectacular.”

Lee survived the war, retiring from the Marines in 1968 after serving in Vietnam as an intelligence officer. In addition to the Navy Cross, Lee was awarded a Silver Star and two Purple Hearts.

The men he commanded never forgot their officer.

“I didn’t care what color he was,” Ronald Burbridge, a rifleman in his unit in Korea, said in an interview for a 2010 Smithsonian documentary.

“I have told him many times, thank God that we had him.”

About Claire Barrett

Claire Barrett is the Strategic Operations Editor for Sightline Media and a World War II researcher with an unparalleled affinity for Sir Winston Churchill and Michigan football.

19. Washington Is Missing the Point on Alternatives to the Belt and Road Initiative

One Belt One Road. (OBOR)

Excerpts:

These two corridors illustrate that Washington’s zero-sum interpretation of the BRI is flawed. This offers an opportunity for U.S. officials to recalibrate their approach toward the BRI. As U.S. firms and banks are already directly and indirectly invested in the BRI, a coherent engagement policy with Beijing’s initiative is likely to produce three net positives.

First, it provides an avenue for cooperation between the two powers. This is increasingly needed given the poor state of the bilateral relation.

Second, it presents Washington with an official mechanism for shaping the implementation of the BRI by having a seat at the table and by facilitating participant countries’ efforts to exercise their agency. This is feasible due to the fragmented nature of the BRI.

Third, it helps participant countries’ development strategies by making capital more accessible. This is important given that development is a key factor in promoting national and regional stability, something that benefits U.S. interests.

Washington Is Missing the Point on Alternatives to the Belt and Road Initiative

thediplomat.com

Any alternative corridor (like IMEC) is likely to leverage BRI hubs and completed projects – thus making them complementary rather than competing initiatives.

By Zenel Garcia and Alex Marino

April 30, 2024

Credit: Depositphotos

U.S. officials have been critical of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) since its announcement in 2013. Washington’s concern stems from a flawed zero-sum assumption that the BRI accords Beijing with geopolitical leverage at the United States’ expense. This concern has resulted in the mobilization of the “debt-trap” discourse, which, despite a lack of empirical evidence, President Joe Biden has regularly utilized when promoting alternative corridors to the BRI.

However, U.S. officials continue to overlook that any alternative corridor is likely to leverage BRI hubs and completed projects – thus making them complementary rather than competing initiatives. This is a view shared among countries that these alternative corridors will traverse. This dynamic is evident in corridors that Washington seeks to support, such as the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) and the Lobito Corridor.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced IMEC at the G-20 Leaders Summit in 2023. The meeting produced a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the European Union, France, Germany, Italy, India, and the United States. According to the MoU, IMEC consists of two corridors: an eastern corridor connecting India to the Arabian Gulf and a northern corridor connecting the Arabian Gulf to Europe. This initiative links India to the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel, and finally, to Europe.

However, its proposed routes illustrate its complementarity to existing BRI investment in the region. The key logistics hubs that IMEC aims to capitalize on are hubs where China has become a pivotal investor.

For example, COSCO Shipping, a Chinese state-owned enterprise (SOE), operates a terminal in the Khalifa Port in UAE, holds 67 percent of the shares in Piraeus Port in Greece, and holds another 60 percent of shares in Piraeus Europe Asia Rail Logistics, which moves goods out of the port to the rest of Europe and Asia. In fact, COSCO Shipping operates a shipping line connecting India’s own eastern ports to Europe.

Furthermore, several Chinese SOEs, such as the China State Construction Engineering Corporation and the China Railway Construction Corporation, played a key role in the construction of the UAE’s national Etihad Rail system, which connects its ports and cities to Saudi Arabia. This is a system that IMEC proponents hope to utilize for part of the northern corridor.

These far from exhaustive examples of the Chinese SOE footprint in the region indicate that any new economic corridor linking the Middle East and Europe is likely to benefit from existing BRI projects. This is something that host countries understand and are actively leveraging to promote local development and regional economic integration. In other words, while Washington may promote IMEC as a BRI alternative, it is unlikely that Middle Eastern countries view it this way, especially since several of them are formal members of the BRI.

These patterns are also evident in the Lobito Corridor in Africa.

The Biden administration and G-7 leaders designed the Lobito Corridor Project as part of wider plans to strengthen Western ties to Central Africa through mineral supply chains. The first Memorandum of Understanding was signed on the sidelines of the U.S.-Africa Leaders’ Summit in 2022 between the United States, Zambia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Officially a part of the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII), the goal of the Lobito Corridor Project is to connect mining sites in DRC and Zambia to the Atlantic Ocean port of Lobito in Angola. The DRC and Zambia collectively contain the world’s largest deposit of cobalt and are leading producers of copper, precisely the minerals needed to build the electric car batteries, heat pumps, and car chargers needed for countries to meet the renewable energy goals promised at the COP28 Summit in 2023.

The PGII’s proposed connectivity projects in Central Africa will essentially reopen what was once the central transportation hub in the region until fighting in the Angolan Civil War cut the Benguela Railroad in 1975. Reopening this corridor is of huge interest by the three countries involved, with the hope that improved interconnectivity will bring strong job growth to communities along the transportation network.

The Washington-backed Lobito Corridor Project is only viable due to China’s considerable investments in the region, including the BRI. U.S.-financed projects will send Zambian and Congolese ores to the Atlantic port of Lobito in Angola on the tracks of the Benguela Railroad, which re-opened in 2019 with the help of a $362 million loan from China.

Currently, Central Africa’s mines send most of their ores to the global economy through the Tazara Railroad, built by China in the 1970s to allow Copperbelt minerals to reach the Indian Ocean without traveling through white-minority governments in Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) and Mozambique (then a Portuguese colony). Proposed American and G-7 connectivity projects in the DRC, Angola, and Zambia will also benefit this eastern route, which China has recently announced will receive a modernization project funded by the China Development Bank. In fact, American and Chinese infrastructure projects in Central Africa are designed in a very complementary fashion, working together to send critical minerals to manufacturing centers along the shores of the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans.

These two corridors illustrate that Washington’s zero-sum interpretation of the BRI is flawed. This offers an opportunity for U.S. officials to recalibrate their approach toward the BRI. As U.S. firms and banks are already directly and indirectly invested in the BRI, a coherent engagement policy with Beijing’s initiative is likely to produce three net positives.

First, it provides an avenue for cooperation between the two powers. This is increasingly needed given the poor state of the bilateral relation.

Second, it presents Washington with an official mechanism for shaping the implementation of the BRI by having a seat at the table and by facilitating participant countries’ efforts to exercise their agency. This is feasible due to the fragmented nature of the BRI.

Third, it helps participant countries’ development strategies by making capital more accessible. This is important given that development is a key factor in promoting national and regional stability, something that benefits U.S. interests.

Authors

Guest Author

Alex Marino

Alex Marino is a post-doctoral fellow in Civil-Military Relations in the Department of National Security and Strategy at the U.S. Army War College. His research focuses on comparative civil-military relations and the role of technology in U.S.-Africa relations.

thediplomat.com

20. China Humiliated Blinken But Blinken Kept Begging

Excerpts:

America still suffers from an inability to appreciate the hostility and maliciousness of the Communist Party. Blinken left China talking about how it was in America's interest for China to prosper. China's regime, however, fueled with American investment and trade, has been waging "unrestricted warfare" against the United States for decades. Beijing's unrestricted warfare has included the killing tens of thousands of Americans each year with fentanyl, the equivalent of one plane crash every day and more American deaths than in the Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq wars combined.

Now, Xi thinks he has the upper hand. From the moment Blinken touched down in Shanghai to the moment he left, China's ruler went out of his way to humiliate the secretary of state. The secretary of state, however, exhibited inexhaustible patience for humiliation.

Unfortunately, acceptance of rough treatment has consequences, because the meekness leads the Chinese to think they can do what they want, making them even more arrogant and aggressive. Biden has yet to figure that out.

Xi met Blinken on Friday, but China's leader let the cameras record his disdain for his visitor. Seconds before the secretary of state walked half-way across the room to shake hands, Xi asked an aide, "When will he leave?"

"Not soon enough," Blinken should have replied.

The secretary of state should never have gone to China in the first place.

China Humiliated Blinken But Blinken Kept Begging

gatestoneinstitute.org · by Gordon G. Chang · April 30, 2024

The risk now is that the Biden administration will trade away its restrictions for meaningless promises from China's Communists. Pictured: China's President Xi Jinping greets US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Beijing on April 26, 2024. (Photo by Mark Schiefelbein/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

It is not clear whether a Chinese official was at the Beijing airport to bid farewell to Secretary of State Antony Blinken as he ended his three-day visit to China on Friday, but the send-off was in any event low-key and Chinese leader Xi Jinping slighted America's top diplomat at the end of his troubled stay.

Also, China, literally and figuratively, did not roll out the red carpet for his arrival in Shanghai on Wednesday. Only a low-level official was on hand to greet Blinken as he stepped off the plane.

"The Chinese government flouted international protocols at the airport on the secretary of state's arrival in Shanghai and departure from Beijing," Charles Burton of the Prague-based Sinopsis think tank told Gatestone. "It was petty."

"This was more than a slight," Burton, a former Canadian diplomat who served in Beijing, said. "Aside from a calculated insult to the dignity of the United States, the move indicates Xi Jinping is making clear that the accepted norms of diplomacy will not be respected by China anymore."

Blinken was in China to discuss the growing list of disagreements between Washington and Beijing. Not surprisingly, he did not accomplish anything there other than register America's complaints on matters such as Beijing's support for the Russian war effort in Ukraine and unfair treatment of U.S. companies. On every major issue, the U.S. and China take different sides, and the Chinese have clearly dug in. Blinken was reduced to begging.

As a result, America is resorting to the dialogue-is-progress narrative. "I think it's important to underscore the value—in fact, the necessity—of direct engagement, of sustained engagement, of speaking to each other, laying out our differences which are real, seeking to work through them, as also looking for ways to build cooperation where we can," Blinken said to Chen Jining, Communist Party secretary of Shanghai, ahead of his talks in the Chinese capital.

After the end of fruitless sessions in Beijing—Blinken met with, among others, President Xi Jinping and Foreign Minister Wang Yi—all the secretary of state could do is highlight new dialogue issues. "I'm pleased to announce that earlier today, we agreed to hold the first U.S.-PRC talks on artificial intelligence to be held in the coming weeks," he said at a press availability on April 26, as he wrapped up his trip to China. "We'll share our respective views on the risks and safety concerns around advanced AI and how best to manage them."

Blinken's comments repeated those of President Joe Biden after his November 15 meeting with Xi Jinping in Woodside, California. In substance, therefore, Blinken in Beijing continued talking about talking.

There is no question that AI is an important topic, especially when it comes to the control of nuclear weapons. Yet this does not mean the U.S. should seek an agreement with China on that topic.

"The latest shambolic display by the Biden administration comes in the form of Secretary of State Antony Blinken groveling before China's Ruler-for-Life Xi Jinping for a new set of protocols for governing the development of artificial intelligence between America and China, the two nations contributing the most to both the advancement of AI and its weaponization," Brandon Weichert, a national security analyst at The National Interest, told Gatestone. "Although creating such protocols may sound like a good idea, it seems like a bad idea for Washington to unilaterally agree to limit its own activities."

"Unilaterally"? Burton and Weichert point out that China never honors agreements, so any deal with Beijing is akin to a unilateral promise.

"China is deeply committed to the weaponization of AI and would be counting its lucky communist star if the Americans basically deterred themselves with such a protocol," Weichert, also author of Biohacked: China's Race to Control Life, added.

He suggests the United States spend its time getting the world to restrict tech trade with China "rather than pleading with Xi Jinping for mercy."

On the AI front, the Biden administration to its credit has been restricting sales of chips and chip-making equipment and has been coercing cooperation from others, most notably the Netherlands, the home of equipment-maker ASML.

Nonetheless, Biden needs to do more: China has been able to buy chips on the black market. For instance, Reuters reported this month that ten Chinese entities were able, despite U.S. rules, to acquire Nvidia's artificial intelligence chips through resellers.

The risk now is that the Biden administration will trade away its restrictions for meaningless promises from China's Communists.

Biden is willing to sign agreements with China's regime because he believes it is merely a "competitor," refusing to label it an adversary and certainly not using the term that the Chinese Communist Party reserves for America: enemy. He and his predecessors have not wanted to acknowledge that the Party, as it openly proclaims, seeks the destruction of the United States.

Enemy? In May 2019, People's Daily, the Party's self-described "mouthpiece" and therefore the most authoritative publication in China, carried a landmark piece declaring a "people's war" on America.

This phrase has special meaning. "A people's war is a total war, and its strategy and tactics require the overall mobilization of political, economic, cultural, diplomatic, military, and other power resources, the integrated use of multiple forms of struggle and combat methods," declared a column carried in April 2023 by PLA Daily, an official news website of the People's Liberation Army.

Therefore, Biden's measures, like those of presidents before him, have been inadequate.

America still suffers from an inability to appreciate the hostility and maliciousness of the Communist Party. Blinken left China talking about how it was in America's interest for China to prosper. China's regime, however, fueled with American investment and trade, has been waging "unrestricted warfare" against the United States for decades. Beijing's unrestricted warfare has included the killing tens of thousands of Americans each year with fentanyl, the equivalent of one plane crash every day and more American deaths than in the Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq wars combined.

Now, Xi thinks he has the upper hand. From the moment Blinken touched down in Shanghai to the moment he left, China's ruler went out of his way to humiliate the secretary of state. The secretary of state, however, exhibited inexhaustible patience for humiliation.

Unfortunately, acceptance of rough treatment has consequences, because the meekness leads the Chinese to think they can do what they want, making them even more arrogant and aggressive. Biden has yet to figure that out.

Xi met Blinken on Friday, but China's leader let the cameras record his disdain for his visitor. Seconds before the secretary of state walked half-way across the room to shake hands, Xi asked an aide, "When will he leave?"

"Not soon enough," Blinken should have replied.

The secretary of state should never have gone to China in the first place.

Gordon G. Chang is the author of The Coming Collapse of China and China Is Going to War, a Gatestone Institute distinguished senior fellow, and a member of its Advisory Board.

gatestoneinstitute.org · by Gordon G. Chang · April 30, 2024

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

If you do not read anything else in the 2017 National Security Strategy read this on page 14:

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

Access NSS HERE

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