Quotes of the Day:

"Irregular warfare is the oldest form of warfare, and it is a phenomenon that goes by many names, including tribal warfare, primitive warfare, ‘little wars,’ and low-intensity conflict. The term irregular warfare seems best to capture the wide variety of these ‘little wars.’"

– Robert Kaplan

An AI (MIcrosoft Copilot) overview of WIlliam Donovan's thinking on unconventional warfare, special operations, and guerrilla warfare:

Unconventional Warfare: Donovan emphasized the importance of psychological warfare in conjunction with conventional forces to prevent the carnage of trench warfare seen in World War I. He envisioned a unified approach to support conventional unit operations, creating a "new instrument of war."

Special Operations: He believed in a phased approach to operations against an enemy, starting with propaganda as the “arrow of initial penetration,” followed by special operations including sabotage and subversion, then commando raids, guerrilla actions, and behind-the-lines resistance movements.

Guerrilla Warfare: Donovan’s strategy for guerrilla warfare was part of a broader vision for special operations. He saw it as a critical phase following propaganda and special operations, aimed at disrupting and resisting enemy forces from behind their lines.

"People should not be overawed by the power of modern weapons. It is the value of human beings that in the end will decide victory."

– General Vo Nguyen Giap

1. How To Stop an Invasion (Spoiler: "resistance warfare")

2. Taiwan: Insurgents Needed

3. From ‘human wave’ to ‘salami slice’: Why China’s fearsome PLA may never fight

4. Woman was denied top-secret US security clearance for being a close relative of dictator

5. Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare- Book Review

6. China’s election disinformation operations

7. The battle over TikTok’s future, explained

8. America and the new ‘axis of evil’

9. Is Bougainville the next battleground between China and the U.S.?

10. Nobody Is Competing With the U.S. to Begin With

11. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, May 1, 2024

12. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, May 1, 2024

13. Houthis could sever global internet lines by targeting submarine cables says Yemeni expert

14. China Has Crossed Biden’s Red Line on Ukraine

15. ‘I Will Never Forget Any of It’: Brittney Griner Is Ready to Talk

16. How the CV-22 Osprey has Transformed Special Operations

17. An ‘East Asian NATO’ is forming

18. The Myth of the Asian Swing State

19. How the U.S. Can Win the New Cold War

20. American Aid Alone Won’t Save Ukraine

21. Arctic Defense: The US Needs Polar Special Operations Forces Aligned with the 5 SOF Truths

22. The War of a Thousand Nowruzis: The Challenge Facing the Afghanistan War Commission

23. Bringing a Method to the Strategy Madness

24. The Case for Averting War Between Israel and Hizballah

1. How To Stop an Invasion (Spoiler: "resistance warfare")

Brookings is a little late with this but at least they are addressing "resistance warfare."

The authors (rightly I think) argue that helping our friends, partners, and allies develop a resistance capability should be part of our National Defense Strategy.

Bob Jones calls this unconventional deterrence and resilience.

Excerpts:

But the United States needs to double down on a little known but very effective irregular approach: resistance warfare. America should do this with Ukraine, enabling them to ramp up resistance activities, as well as broaden these efforts to other friendly frontline partners and allies.

...

Ukraine is teaching the world a masterclass in resistance warfare, an asymmetric approach to self-defense. The Defense Department defines resistance as "a nation's organized, whole-of-society effort," both violent and non-violent, to "reestablish independence and autonomy within its sovereign territory that has been wholly or partially occupied by a foreign power."

...

In July 2021, the Ukrainian Parliament passed a national resistance law. It provided the legal framework of the dispersed resistance movements—led by Ukrainian special forces, reformed the country's territorial defense forces, and helped prepare regular citizens.

The National Resistance Center, created in February 2022, teaches nonviolent resistance and has established underground communication channels. The center leads hands-on workshops, online courses, and produces training manuals. More than 100,000 people have downloaded the manuals.

...

Ukrainians clearly have the will to fight and have admirably led their resistance, both military and civilian. While Ukrainian bravery and skill should take much of the credit, a little-known U.S. effort to help build Ukrainian resilience and resistance capabilities over the 2014-2022 period was also key. U.S. support—led by U.S. special operations forces—prioritized long-term relationships, the building and strengthening of defense institutions geared to support resistance warfare operations, and assisted Ukrainian-led preparations in other relevant areas, including information operations.

This small footprint support appears to have paid off. Richard Clarke, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, said in April 2022 that U.S. efforts "directly contributed to the success on the battlefield."

...

Invasions are back. Supporters of the rules-based international order must act like it and step up efforts to counter them.

How To Stop an Invasion

By Alexander Noyes and Elina Beketova

Fellow in the Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology at the Brookings Institution; Democracy Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA)

Newsweek · May 1, 2024

Invasions are unfortunately relevant again. The military aid package signed on April 24 is a much-needed lifeline for Ukraine's flagging fight against Russia. But the United States needs to double down on a little known but very effective irregular approach: resistance warfare. America should do this with Ukraine, enabling them to ramp up resistance activities, as well as broaden these efforts to other friendly frontline partners and allies.

Despite losing ground as of late in the overall war, Ukraine is teaching the world a masterclass in resistance warfare, an asymmetric approach to self-defense. The Defense Department defines resistance as "a nation's organized, whole-of-society effort," both violent and non-violent, to "reestablish independence and autonomy within its sovereign territory that has been wholly or partially occupied by a foreign power."

Using this approach, the badly underestimated Ukrainian forces and brave citizens repelled Russia's attempts to take Kyiv in the early days of Russia's full-scale invasion. Since then, the resistance has continued to defend, retake, and resist in occupied areas—currently about 18 percent of Ukraine.

Ukraine's harrowing but largely successful experience with resistance warfare offers three main lessons. First, domestic leadership and will to fight is key. Outside partners can assist, but not lead, resistance efforts. Second, a sound legal framework and advance planning are critical to success.

Third, outside support should be long-term and focus on cultivating deep relationships with local officials and helping partners build the institutional framework needed to responsibly oversee and sustain resistance warfare operations. These lessons align with past findings on what has shaped success or failure in resistance warfare over the past 70 years, dating all the way back to World War II.

In July 2021, the Ukrainian Parliament passed a national resistance law. It provided the legal framework of the dispersed resistance movements—led by Ukrainian special forces, reformed the country's territorial defense forces, and helped prepare regular citizens.

The National Resistance Center, created in February 2022, teaches nonviolent resistance and has established underground communication channels. The center leads hands-on workshops, online courses, and produces training manuals. More than 100,000 people have downloaded the manuals.

There is no typical Ukrainian partisan, according to Ostap, a representative of the center who spoke to Newsweek, giving only his first name for security reasons. "There are different people—some young, some older, even grandparents who share information. These individuals are eager to aid the Armed Forces," he said.

Ukrainian soldiers operate a 2S1 Gvozdika ("Carnation") self-propelled howitzer on April 27, 2024, in Kherson region, Ukraine. Ukrainian soldiers operate a 2S1 Gvozdika ("Carnation") self-propelled howitzer on April 27, 2024, in Kherson region, Ukraine. Kostiantyn Liberov/Libkos/Getty Images

A strike in Kherson Oblast in August 2023 occurred after Ukrainian civilians stole a flash drive with information about the location of Russian training. "We knew where and when there would be a crowd there and our forces struck. It was possible because people transmitted the information," said Ostap.

Ukrainians clearly have the will to fight and have admirably led their resistance, both military and civilian. While Ukrainian bravery and skill should take much of the credit, a little-known U.S. effort to help build Ukrainian resilience and resistance capabilities over the 2014-2022 period was also key. U.S. support—led by U.S. special operations forces—prioritized long-term relationships, the building and strengthening of defense institutions geared to support resistance warfare operations, and assisted Ukrainian-led preparations in other relevant areas, including information operations.

This small footprint support appears to have paid off. Richard Clarke, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, said in April 2022 that U.S. efforts "directly contributed to the success on the battlefield."

Russia's invasion of Ukraine is the starkest illustration of this troubling return to territorial aggression, but more may be on the way. On April 17, House Speaker Mike Johnson said that other Central and Eastern European countries could be Russia's next target, while the top U.S. general in the Asia-Pacific recently testified that China could be ready to invade Taiwan as early as 2027. Resistance warfare capabilities will be vital to meet these growing threats, and are especially needed in non-allied partners in dangerous neighborhoods, such as Moldova, Georgia, and Taiwan.

So what should be done? The United States needs to help prepare the democratic world to fight back. The U.S. and like-minded partners should urgently heed lessons from Ukraine and dramatically increase asymmetric support. While each partner has its own unique history and other limiting—or enabling—factors, Taiwan and Moldova would be good places to start.

America should encourage these partners to own the process of setting up legal and policy frameworks, support the organization of volunteer structures and auxiliary forces, and help partners acquire the right defense systems and tactics. Doing so would help them be protected from invasion with relatively modest but targeted investments and strengthen deterrence in these hotly-contested neighborhoods.

This support tool also helps avoid escalation, as resistance warfare preparations are clearly defensive in nature, not offensive. Russia and China would be forced to think long and hard before launching their next invasion. If they decide to invade anyway, this support will help impose significant costs.

Invasions are back. Supporters of the rules-based international order must act like it and step up efforts to counter them.

Alexander Noyes is a fellow in the Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology at the Brookings Institution and former senior advisor in the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Policy.

Elina Beketova is a Democracy Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), focusing on the occupied territories of Ukraine. She worked as a journalist in Crimea, editor, and TV anchor for news stations in Kharkiv and Kyiv.

The views expressed in this article are the writers' own.

Newsweek · May 1, 2024

2. Taiwan: Insurgents Needed

Thu, 05/02/2024 - 6:12am

Taiwan: Insurgents Needed

Dr. Lumpy Lumbaca

https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/taiwan-insurgents-needed

The shadow of Chinese military aggression looms large over Taiwan. While the island nation has invested in conventional military capabilities, the reality is that a conflict with China could be a classic David and Goliath scenario. To effectively deter an invasion and resist occupation, if necessary, Taiwan needs to move beyond its traditional military focus and embrace a multi-layered defense strategy that includes insurgency and resistance.[1]

An Irregular Warfare approach may raise eyebrows and concern. Some in Taiwan, the US, and the world perhaps, might worry that such preparation will be seen as provocative by the People's Republic of China (PRC), further escalating tensions.[2] However, this argument overlooks the deterrent effect a robust multi-layered defense can have. A well-prepared Taiwan, with the capability to inflict significant casualties on an invading force and make occupation a costly endeavor, is a far less attractive target.

There are competing schools of thought on the most effective way ahead for Taiwan.[3] Some within the US defense establishment and parts of Taiwan itself advocate for a "resilience" focus as the primary strategy.[4] This approach focuses on bolstering civil defense, economic self-sufficiency, and international support in support of conventional military preparation to deter and – if necessary - weather a potential invasion. While resilience has merit and is a necessary first step, it underestimates the deterrent value of a robust resistance capability and the potential to inflict significant damage on an invading force by way of organized insurgency.[5]

A multi-layered defense that embraces resistance would be a far more formidable shield. A well-trained and equipped paramilitary force,[6] distinct from the regular military and reserves,[7] but integrated into the overall defense strategy, can serve as a crucial first line of defense. These forces could be deployed alongside the regular military, performing tasks like delaying enemy advances, securing key infrastructure, and conducting counter-attacks.

But deterrence isn't just about frontal defense. A well-organized and trained civilian guerilla force can become a thorn in the side of any occupying power. Leveraging knowledge of the terrain and utilizing unconventional tactics like hit-and-run attacks, sabotage, and disruption of PLA supply lines, a civilian guerilla force can significantly raise the cost of occupation for the PLA, making a swift victory a distant dream.

While eliminating PLA occupation forces on the ground will be a top priority for Taiwan if deterrence fails, just as it is for Ukraine against their Russian invaders today, a multi-layered defense goes beyond the battlefield.[8] A clandestine network,[9] including an "underground" for covert communication and support, "auxiliary networks" that provide logistical support to the resistance, and a robust "shadow government" capable of maintaining a semblance of civilian order and leadership during occupation, is crucial for sustaining resistance efforts. Training and organizing these elements of the insurgent movement should ideally be done now, ahead of the invasion, to maximize training and education opportunities. 

This strategy also leverages Taiwan's existing cooperation with US Special Operations Forces (SOF) like the Green Berets.[10] Building upon these training programs, Taiwan could establish specialized units focused on space and cyber warfare. These units could disrupt Chinese communications, gather intelligence, and potentially target key infrastructure behind enemy lines, further complicating the PLA's operations. While the US Army’s SOF-Space-Cyber “triad”[11] is still in the nascent stages of development for actual joint force implementation, its applications for Taiwan will hopefully go beyond kinetic action and find creative applications for Unconventional Warfare[12] (UW) and Foreign Internal Defense[13] (FID).

Of course, implementing such a strategy faces challenges. Public support for some aspects, particularly the more proactive elements like a civilian guerilla force, may be limited.[14] Legal frameworks for paramilitary forces and civilian engagement may need to be established or revised.[15] Resource allocation and training for all these different elements will require careful planning and investment.

Despite these challenges, the benefits outweigh the costs. A multi-layered defense system that embraces resistance strengthens deterrence by showcasing Taiwan's unwavering commitment to self-defense, discouraging the PRC from initiating an invasion in the first place. Public support can be cultivated through effective communication campaigns that emphasize the importance of citizen involvement in national defense.

More important than any specific strategy or tactic discussed to this point, however, is the necessity to understand the human dimension of insurgency. Successful resistance embraces the motivations, fears, and desires that will drive people to action. In the context of Taiwan, a multi-layered defense strategy cannot succeed without a deep dive into the cognitive aspects of the conflict. This will require understanding the Taiwan people’s will to fight. Are they prepared to endure the hardships of Irregular Warfare and a protracted occupation? What are their fears and anxieties about a potential Chinese takeover? A second human element requires an analysis of the psychology of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). This is admittedly challenging and something that many around the world try to understand, but it must be considered carefully. What are the CCP’s true objectives regarding Taiwan? What happens to the Party’s calculus if insurgency follows occupation? What motivates them, and what might deter them from an invasion in the first place? Finally, the thinking of international community cannot be ignored. Of course, this is a complex matter, and nations and leaders will likely react differently and change positions as time elapses. How do we expect key partners and allies to react to a protracted insurgency? Will they offer military or economic support to Taiwan's resistance, or will they remain on the sidelines? By carefully considering these human factors, Taiwan, its allies, and the US can craft a comprehensive strategy that resonates with the people of Taiwan, discourages the CCP from aggression, and garners international backing in the face of a crisis.

Taiwan's current defense strategy is insufficient in the face of a growing threat. High-tech weapons sales and training focused primarily on the Taiwan military may prove insufficient in either deterrence or resistance. A multi-layered defense that includes insurgency offers a far more robust deterrent and increases the cost of a potential invasion for China. While politically sensitive, this approach is ultimately essential for safeguarding Taiwan's security and freedom. By taking these steps, Taiwan sends a clear message: an invasion may be swift, but occupation will be a bloody and protracted affair. This, in turn, strengthens deterrence and increases the likelihood of a peaceful resolution to the cross-strait tensions through diplomatic means. The future of Taiwan's security hinges on its ability to prepare for the worst, and a multi-layered defense strategy that includes insurgency offers the best chance to deter conflict and ensure a bright future for the island nation.

The views expressed here are those of the author alone and do not reflect the official policy or position of the United States Government or Department of Defense.

 [1] ­­ROC Annual Defense Report. 2023.  https://www.ustaiwandefense.com/tdnswp/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Taiwan-National-Defense-Report-2023.pdf

[2] Walsh, John. 2023. “Arming Taiwan an unacceptable provocation.” https://asiatimes.com/2023/07/arming-taiwan-an-unacceptable-provocation/; Cai, Vanessa. 2024 “Mainland China says it will watch Taiwanese military exercises closely for signs of ‘provocation.’” https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3256930/mainland-china-says-it-will-watch-taiwanese-military-exercises-closely-signs-provocation

[3] Swaine, Michael, and Shidore, Sarang. 2022. “A Restraint Recipe for America’s Asian Alliances and Security Partnerships.” https://quincyinst.org/research/a-restraint-recipe-for-americas-asian-alliances-and-security-partnerships/#executive-summary

[4] Dominguez, Gabriel. 2024. “Taiwan civil defense groups push for more resilience as China threat grows.” https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2024/01/12/asia-pacific/social-issues/taiwan-civil-defense-groups/

[5] Greer, Chris and Bassler, Chris. 2022. “Resist To Deter: Why Taiwan Needs To Focus On Irregular Warfare.”  https://mwi.westpoint.edu/resist-to-deter-why-taiwan-needs-to-focus-on-irregular-warfare/

[6] Minnick, Wendell. 2019. “Taiwanese Civilians Have an Answer to Chinese Threats: Paramilitary Groups.” https://nationalinterest.org/feature/taiwanese-civilians-have-answer-chinese-threats-paramilitary-groups-42952

[7] Wu, Huizhong. 2022. “Military reserves, civil defense worry Taiwan as China looms.” https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-taiwan-china-taipei-0ac81227d1fe37822b8a1d084119e248

[8] Braw, Elisabeth. 2024. “Taiwan and the art of societal resilience.” https://www.bushcenter.org/catalyst/broken-china/taiwan-and-the-art-of-societal-resilience

[9] Lumbaca, Lumpy. 2023. “Every Taiwan Citizen A Resistance Member: Preparing For A Chinese Occupation.” https://mwi.westpoint.edu/every-taiwan-citizen-a-resistance-member-preparing-for-a-chinese-occupation/

[10] Honrada, Gabriel. 2024. “US Green Berets deploying to Taiwan’s front-line.” https://asiatimes.com/2024/03/us-green-berets-deploying-to-taiwans-front-line/

[11] White, Dottie. 2024. “Top Army’s generals for cyber, space and special operations convene for Triad partnership.” https://www.dvidshub.net/news/463016/top-armys-generals-cyber-space-and-special-operations-convene-triad-partnership

[12] US Army Special Operations Command. 2016. “Unconventional Warfare Pocket Guide.” https://www.soc.mil/ARIS/books/pdf/Unconventional%20Warfare%20Pocket%20Guide_v1%200_Final_6%20April%202016.pdf

[13] Joint Chiefs of Staff. 2018, 2021. “Joint Publication 3-22: Foreign Internal Defense.” https://www.jcs.mil/Portals/36/Documents/Doctrine/pubs/jp3_22.pdf

[14] Fried, Caroline. 2024. “Political compromise key for Lai to build Taiwan's resilience.” https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/Political-compromise-key-for-Lai-to-build-Taiwan-s-resilience

[15] Shattuck, Thomas. 2023. “How Taipei Can Achieve Greater Civilian Buy-in for its Military Challenges.” https://globaltaiwan.org/2023/01/how-taipei-can-achieve-greater-civilian-buy-in-for-its-military-challenges/

About the Author(s)

J. “Lumpy” Lumbaca

Jeremiah “Lumpy” Lumbaca, PhD, is a retired US Army Green Beret officer and current Department of Defense professor of irregular warfare, counterterrorism, and special operations at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies (DKI APCSS). He can be found on X/Twitter @LumpyAsia.

3. From ‘human wave’ to ‘salami slice’: Why China’s fearsome PLA may never fight

Are we focusing on the wrong threat? Are we preparing for the big war while the PRC/CCP/PLA believes it can win through political warfare? Can we compete with the PRC in the political warfare domain? (Yes I called political warfare a domain).

But we need to be prepared for the full spectrum of conflict and competition with the PRC to include nuclear warfare, large scale combat operations, and irregular and political warfare.

Excerpts:

The bottom line: China’s military is modernizing and beefing up, but its future deployment and mission remain in question.

“Xi is adroit at the operational space below the threshold of war,” said Mr. Neill. “The South China Sea reclamation operations were a masterstroke, as was the Djibouti base, and building a wide-ranging, global military.”

Battle evasion as a strategy has deep roots in China’s military thinking. Classical Chinese war strategist Sun Tzu advised: “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”

“That’s how the Chinese fight: So-called political warfare, subversion, gray-zone warfare and the non-kinetic parts of ‘unrestricted warfare’ — think economic, financial, biological, chemical/drug warfare and the granddaddy of them all, proxy warfare,” said Mr. Newsham, author of “When China Attacks.” The ultimate aim: “Getting your enemy’s elites to do your bidding.”

“China’s tactics short of war are intended to soften up an enemy, so … kinetic warfare isn’t even necessary — or else it’s somewhat easier because the enemy has been ground down,” Mr. Newsham said.

From ‘human wave’ to ‘salami slice’: Why China’s fearsome PLA may never fight

Risk aversion, demographics and classical traditions argue against war, some say

washingtontimes.com · by Andrew Salmon

By - The Washington Times - Tuesday, April 30, 2024

As its reach and capabilities extend in all directions, China has emerged as a subject of deep concern for Washington and for democratic capitals across Asia, including Canberra, New Delhi, Manila, Taipei and Tokyo.

The People’s Liberation Army, or PLA, has benefited from 30 years of budget increases, upgrades in prestige and professionalism, and a string of new bases and outposts across the South China Sea. It also has plentiful support from the country’s assertive president, Xi Jinping.

All that has left the Pentagon and critics on Capitol Hill alarmed over the communist regime’s military ambitions in the not-too-distant future.

“All indications point to the PLA meeting President Xi Jinping’s directive to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027,” Adm. John C. Aquilino, head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, said in March.

In its 2023 National Intelligence Assessment, the U.S. intelligence community warned that China, “a near-peer competitor … is increasingly pushing to change global norms and potentially threatening its neighbors.”

While the U.S. has been involved in major conflicts in the Middle East and Afghanistan, the PLA has largely avoided direct warfare. It has adopted a military strategy of creeping advances, gray-zone operations and the swift de-escalation of conflicts that do flare up.

Cautious tactics, combined with apparent risk aversion in the Chinese Communist Party, economic reliance on global trade and worrying demographic trends, suggest the PLA may never offer battle.

From ‘human waves’ to ‘salami slicing’

Part of the case for a less-militant China is that it is not traditionally a warrior society.

“The phrase ‘Serving in the military is no good’ — something I learned early as a student — was very resonant from an early period in China,” Alexander Neill, a PLA watcher with Pacific Forum, said about his days studying Chinese. “It’s different to the warlike culture of Russia, with its Cossack tradition, and the West, where the military was respectable.”

Humiliated by imperialist incursions in the 19th and 20th centuries, China was dubbed “The Sick Man of Asia.” Only after Mao Zedong’s communist forces won the Chinese Civil War in 1949 did the PLA smash stereotypes that China could not fight.

In 1950, Chinese forces marched into Tibet. The PLA’s “human wave” tactics then shocked the world by ejecting U.S.-led forces from North Korea. The PLA won the Himalayan border terrain during a brief clash with India in 1962, tested an atomic weapon in 1964, and battled Soviet troops on the China-USSR border in 1969.

Beijing engaged in on-off artillery confrontations over Taiwan’s offshore islands from 1958 to 1979, stormed briefly into northern Vietnam in 1979, and won offshore territories from Vietnam in the Spratly Islands in 1988.

Embarrassing, heavy losses in the 1979 conflict with Vietnam triggered a military soul-searching for the regime. In the mid-1980s, China’s annual defense budgets took flight.

That escalation has slowed in recent years. Beijing’s defense spending has multiplied by a factor of 2.3 since 2013, but the PLA has not experienced double-digit percentage increases from a decade ago, according to Defense News.

The defense budget increase for 2024 was 7.2% over 2023, behind the country’s overall budget increase of 8.6%.

Still, the 2024 figure — 1.7 trillion yuan, or $236.1 billion — marks three decades of increases. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute calculated that real Chinese defense spending in 2022 was 27% higher than stated amounts. That falls far short of the Pentagon’s fiscal 2024 outlay of $883.7 billion, but the PLA’s capabilities are doubtlessly soaring.

Fielding the world’s largest active-duty military and its third-largest nuclear arsenal, the PLA operates “carrier killer” missiles, hypersonics and space assets. The PLA Navy commissioned its first carrier in 2012 and now deploys three, with a fourth under construction.

Despite all the buildup and unease it has caused the U.S. and its allies, China is not fighting anyone, anywhere.

Around disputed islands, reefs and fishing grounds in the South China, East China and Yellow seas, it is primarily Chinese coast guard units and “maritime militias” — centrally directed fishing fleets — that engage with water cannons and ship rammings.

In 2001, diplomats quickly resolved tensions over the death of a Chinese fighter pilot who collided with a subsequently captured U.S. spy aircraft. Lethal border fistfights between PLA and Indian troops in 2020, 2021 and 2022 did not escalate. Both sides held their fire.

Even a Chinese war to reclaim Taiwan may not be a burning threat. David Frederick, deputy director for China at the National Security Agency, suggested in March that an amphibious assault on the self-governing island may be beyond China’s capabilities.

This does not mean China’s military leaders are standing still. The PLA secured its first overseas naval base, on the Horn of Africa in Djibouti, in 2016 and secured access rights to the China-funded Ream base in Cambodia in 2023.

Weaponized PLA air-sea bases, many built up from artificial islands and reefs, dwarf anything China’s neighbors can boast, underwriting Beijing’s determination to dominate the South China Sea.

Around Taiwan, the PLA is extending its operational reach by continually testing Taipei’s air defenses, contesting the Taiwan Strait’s median line and previously agreed boundaries around offshore islands.

Persistent air patrols force Japanese and Taiwanese pilots to scramble endlessly, and U.S. pilots accuse Chinese pilots of repeated acts of recklessness. Weather balloons — possibly reconnaissance probes — have been widely released, including over Taiwan and the U.S.

Reinforced by cyberwarfare and cognitive tactics, this incremental strategy is dubbed “salami-slicing” by Western analysts.

Changing of the guard

Mao’s death in 1976 and the opening of U.S. relations in 1979 dramatically toned down China’s military adventurism.

“The beginning of reform and opening in 1978 under Deng Xiaoping meant an end of the driving force behind the party’s ID class struggle,” said Drew Thompson, a researcher at the Lee Kwan Yew School of Public Policy at Singapore’s National University.

Chinese leaders were seen as pragmatists focusing on the growing economy and trade, not on military adventures abroad.

Mr. Xi, who has been in power since 2013, is different. He is serving an unprecedented third five-year term as president and head of the Chinese Communist Party.

“He came to power with the perception that the party was at risk of dissolution,” said Mr. Thompson, a former Pentagon official. “It was admitting members for non-ideological reasons, gaining advantages for businesses. That’s the fundamental dynamic Xi changed.”

Mr. Xi purged party ranks, upgraded censorship and stoked nationalism with references to past humiliations in speeches, TV and film.

“Xi is very fixated on history to justify contemporary policy decisions,” Mr. Thompson said. “He is fixated on ensuring the continued rule of his dynasty — the party — and that requires asserting and defending interests at borders.”

Fond of addressing troops and wearing uniforms, Mr. Xi, who was never a soldier, professionalized the party’s armed wing, the PLA.

“China puts out some impressive-looking recruiting videos, and they’re all about warfighting — not self-improvement and inclusiveness,” said Grant Newsham, a retired U.S. Marine colonel. “I’ve seen a few, and even I find them motivating.”

Lack of combat experience, which the PLA acknowledges, may not be a handicap, said Mr. Newsham, recalling the successes of U.S. troops in Operation Desert Storm against Iraq’s inferior forces: “Good training will get you quite a ways.”

‘Winning without fighting’

PLA’s physical power has been balanced with operational prudence under Mr. Xi. One reason concerns political demographics.

“I think the PLA is risk-averse. Among other things, it is a military of one-child-policy children, and parents have weighed in quite vigorously that they don’t want to see the military expose their only children to risk,” said David Keegan, a China expert at John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

Given China’s exposure to the global economy, its reliance on exports, and the storm of sanctions likely to follow any assault on Taiwan, Mr. Xi is constrained.

“He is averse to chaos and acutely aware of risk,” said Mr. Thompson. “I don’t see with that mentality how he would see any benefit from a global conflict.”

The Biden administration says China has continued to trade with Russia’s defense industry but has drawn a line at providing weapons for its war in Ukraine. In February, China called for all nuclear-armed states to embrace a “no-first-use” policy. In April, it resumed direct military-to-military talks with U.S. commanders halted during a tense period in 2023.

Recent events suggest Mr. Xi and his aides have personnel problems in senior party and PLA ranks, including a shake-up of the top leadership of China’s growing nuclear forces.

“Xi has purged the Rocket Force, the crown jewel of the PLA,” said Mr. Neill. “And he has had to sack his defense minister.”

The bottom line: China’s military is modernizing and beefing up, but its future deployment and mission remain in question.

“Xi is adroit at the operational space below the threshold of war,” said Mr. Neill. “The South China Sea reclamation operations were a masterstroke, as was the Djibouti base, and building a wide-ranging, global military.”

Battle evasion as a strategy has deep roots in China’s military thinking. Classical Chinese war strategist Sun Tzu advised: “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”

“That’s how the Chinese fight: So-called political warfare, subversion, gray-zone warfare and the non-kinetic parts of ‘unrestricted warfare’ — think economic, financial, biological, chemical/drug warfare and the granddaddy of them all, proxy warfare,” said Mr. Newsham, author of “When China Attacks.” The ultimate aim: “Getting your enemy’s elites to do your bidding.”

“China’s tactics short of war are intended to soften up an enemy, so … kinetic warfare isn’t even necessary — or else it’s somewhat easier because the enemy has been ground down,” Mr. Newsham said.

• Andrew Salmon can be reached at asalmon@washingtontimes.com.

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washingtontimes.com · by Andrew Salmon

4. Woman was denied top-secret US security clearance for being a close relative of dictator

A very interesting story made very interesting by the possibility that this person is a relative of Kim Jong Un.

There is a lot to criticize about the security clearance process. It is time consuming, invasive, and frustrating for many. (despite having a security clearance for more than 3 decades, when I went through the process recently I had to go through three separate interviews due to the amount of foreign contacts I had).  

I think it is important to note that no American has a right to a security clearance. Yes this person is an American citizen of apparently upstanding character. Many naturalized American citizens receive security clearances. But the granting of a security clearance is a decision by the government based on a thorough process.

The foundation of the security clearance process is about assessing risk. Risk to the nation, risk to national security, risk to sensitive information. And possibly in this case, potential risk to the individual. That may seem odd or unusual; however, if this person is a relative of Kim Jong Un I am sure the north Korean security services are tracking her and her family. And even with a name change and actions to protect the family's identity and connection to Kim Jong un we should not assume that the security services cannot find out who she is. If she has held a security clearance (Secret level as noted in the article) from before 2015 then her information was likely compromised in the OPM hack by China. I am sure he CHinese would be happy to share her identity and personal information with Kim Jong Un's security services. So while this decision probably limits her employment prospects the adjudicators are probably have made a prudent risk assessment.

Woman was denied top-secret US security clearance for being a close relative of dictator | CNN Politics

CNN · by Haley Britzky · April 30, 2024

TommL/E+/Getty Images

CNN —

An unnamed woman was denied a top-secret security clearance this year due to being a “close” relative of an authoritarian dictator of an unnamed country, according to a publicly available document from the Defense Department’s Office of Hearings and Appeals.

The administrative judge in the case ultimately decided to deny the clearance in what appears to be an extraordinary case because the applicant is related to “an extremely bad and dangerous person, a dictator of a country that is hostile to the United States.”

More than 1.2 million people had top-secret security clearance as of October 2017, CNN previously reported.

The applicant, who is not named, is in her 30s and married to an American citizen born in the US, and has worked for defense contractors for several years, the document says. She and her family moved to the US in the 1990s when she was young and became US citizens; they are not in contact with any of their family still living in the country in question — referred to only as “Country X” in the document.

The judge said that Country X “supports international terrorism, and it conducts cyberattacks and espionage against the United States.”

“Applicant was born a citizen of Country X,” the record says. “A close family member (cousin, aunt, uncle, niece, or nephew) is the dictator of Country X. Applicant’s parents and their children, including Applicant, immigrated to the United States in the 1990s when she was young. They all became U.S. citizens.”

The family all changed their names upon getting to the US, though the applicant told the court her mother “still fears retaliation.”

The document say that the woman in question already has a secret security clearance and no concerns have been raised over her handling of sensitive information.

‘A model employee’

“This is a difficult case because Applicant is intelligent, honest, loyal to the United States, a model employee, and a current clearance holder with no evidence of any security problems,” the administrative judge on the case, Edward Loughran, wrote in the document. “She credibly testified that her connections to Country X and its dictator could not be used to coerce or intimidate her into revealing classified information.”

“There is nothing about her that makes her anything less than a perfect candidate for a security clearance except her family connections to a dictator, Loughran said.

Administrative decisions on security clearance eligibility are regularly posted publicly by the Defense Office of Hearings and Appeals.

Dr. Marek Posard, a military sociologist at the RAND Corporation, told CNN the information in the records suggested the person in question could be from North Korea.

“It sounds like this is Kim Jong Un’s cousin,” Posard said. “The thing is, they mention a dictator and state terrorism. Only four countries are on the state terrorism list — two are involved in cyber, and one is particularly retaliatory, which is the DPRK (North Korea).”

Currently, the four countries listed by the US as sponsors of state terrorism are Cuba, North Korea, Iran, and Syria.

The Washington post reported in 2016 that North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un’s aunt and her three children immigrated to the US in 1998. The judge who made the final decision said in the document that Country X “considers people who leave their country to be traitors, and the country has taken retaliatory actions against some of them.”

The application for clearance came to Loughran in October 2023, and the case was ultimately decided in January. The records are intentionally vague with details regarding the applicant and her family, as Loughran notes it is “impossible to be too specific about Applicant and her family without exposing her identity.”

Judge noted ‘undivided loyalty’ to US

Posard noted that the judge is “very careful not to trash the applicant” in the document. Indeed, Loughran emphasized repeatedly that there was no reason to question the applicant’s loyalties to the US — she expressed “her undivided loyalty and allegiance to the United States,” the records say. Loughran also notes that he has an “extremely favorable view of Applicant as a person.”

“Applicant submitted letters attesting to her excellent job performance and strong moral character. She is praised for her trustworthiness, professionalism, reliability, and discretion in the handling of national security information. She is recommended for a security clearance … She is a good person who happens to be related to an extremely bad and dangerous person, a dictator of a country that is hostile to the United States,” Loughran wrote.

Posard also noted that it’s not particularly surprising that the woman was previously granted secret clearance, saying circumstances may have changed in the intervening period including the geopolitical situation.

“One thing people forget is it’s not like you get the keys to the kingdom,” Posard said of a secret clearance, which is the second lowest level security clearance available. In October 2017, more than 2.8 million people had security clearances — more than 1.6 million of them had confidential or secret clearance, and nearly 1.2 million had access to top secret information.

Ultimately, Loughran declined her eligibility request for a top-secret clearance on the terms that her connection to the dictator “creates a potential conflict of interest and a heightened risk of foreign exploitation, inducement, manipulation, pressure, and coercion.”

Posard said the rejection likely has “nothing to do with this young woman,” but is due to the level of risk the US is willing to accept with giving her a clearance.

“It’s not just the risk to the individual, it’s also their distant social network … Sometimes when we think about the clearance process, it’s not that something is wrong with you as an individual, it’s that a risk could be created through your network that could be exploited in ways we don’t think about,” he said.

“It’s no fault of her own,” he added, “but if the DPRK wants to exploit that … that’s the kind of stuff we have to be thinking about ahead of time.”

CNN · by Haley Britzky · April 30, 2024

5. Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare- Book Review

An excellent book. I felt like I was part of the target audience.

Conclusion:

Rid should be commended for taking on a challenging, often politicized topic. However, Active Measures displays apparent weaknesses in terms of knowing who its audience is, or what message it is trying to convey. In spite of these weaknesses, however, Active Measures remains a worthy read for anyone interested in understanding the dangers of information warfare as a tool of propaganda and division.

Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare- Book Review

Thomas Rid, relies on a colorful array of primary sources in addressing the trajectory of information warfare - also referred to as “active measures” - throughout the book.

BY

ADAM ARTHUR

BY

ADAM ARTHUR

MAY 1, 2024

moderndiplomacy.eu · by Adam Arthur · May 1, 2024

Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare is a compelling history of the information warfare campaigns that have taken place between Russia and the United States from the pre-Cold War era to the 2010s. The author, Thomas Rid, relies on a colorful array of primary sources in addressing the trajectory of information warfare – also referred to as “active measures” – throughout the book. Principal to Rid’s thesis is the manner in which disinformation campaigns exploit the weaknesses of democracy. While free speech and a free press allow for dissent among private citizens who can speak truth to power, this freedom also creates an opening for bad actors. It is this opening that Rid seeks to address throughout this work.

Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare by Thomas Rid. 2020, Picador, New York City, New York, USA, 513 pp.

Early into the book, Rid discusses such disinformation campaigns as the Tanaka Memorial – a Russian-forged book known as Japan’s Mein Kampf, which allegedly predicted Japanese military aggression in the 1930s. Rid also addresses Russian efforts to inflate the threat of Neo-Nazi influence in post-World War II Germany. These disinformation campaigns are viewed by Rid as a precedent for more recent disinformation campaigns, such as a series of hacks associated with an organization called CyberCaliphate – a Russian front group posing as online Jihadists. In this, Rid gets at one of the most fundamental challenges in the study of information warfare – the problem of attribution.

One of the most important takeaways from Rid’s book has to do with how often well-meaning activist movements are co-opted by hostile foreign powers; this includes privacy activists, peace activists, and anti-nuclear activists. All of these, it should be noted, are historically popular causes in large part due to the fact that activists for these causes can rely on simple slogans and do not need to go to any great lengths to defend their moral and ethical positions.

Many of these movements, along with the press, have proven themselves exploitable by Russia and other foreign powers precisely because the popularity of these causes and their celebration by the news media. This popularity, in turn, has meant that – in the eyes of the public – any criticism of these causes ought to be treated with suspicion. Such criticism may even be viewed (usually but not always incorrectly) as a manifestation of establishmentarian, pro-state propaganda. That such movements are vulnerable to exploitation by external parties, however, should appear obvious. In addressing this problem, Rid draws attention to foreign disinformation campaigns that exploited such movements in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal and the Vietnam War. Most alarming is the large cast of famous names Rid discusses as targets or unwitting allies of disinformation campaigns. This is a list that includes such public intellectuals and luminaries as Carl Sagan and Norman Mailer.

The most provocative aspects of the book, of course, are those that deal with more recent events. Rid delivers a comprehensive summary of Russian interference in the 2016 United States Democratic primary, which involved the leak of e-mails expressing strong opinions about the outcome by DNC officials. These e-mail leaks simply expressed a political preference, but were misinterpreted by critics of the DNC as representing a conspiracy in Hillary Clinton’s favor. As such, this campaign of disinformation helped contribute to the pernicious myth – still believed by far too many American citizens – that Hillary Clinton and/or the DNC intentionally sabotaged the campaign of Clinton’s primary rival Bernie Sanders.

There are, of course, limitations to Thomas Rid’s insights. The scope of Rid’s research focuses narrowly on information warfare as a tool of geostrategic competition between the United States and Russia, with the current rivalry between the two states treated effectively as a continuation of the Cold War. Outside of this, Rid’s secondary discussions include divided Germany in the Cold War as a theatre of operations for the conflict between East and West, as well as pre-World War II Japan as a test ground for Russian operations. These latter areas, however, take up relatively little space compared to the former.

Rid also promises to delve into both American and Russian malign influence campaigns, but focuses principally on hostile activity by Russia. Aside from a passing mention of the WannaCry computer virus attributed to North Korea, Rid also does not thoroughly address disinformation campaigns leveled specifically against the United States within the past two decades by hostile actors other than Russia. Nor, for that matter, does Rid address disinformation operations that one state might use to influence policy within an allied country. These topics provide fertile ground for another project that builds on Rid’s work.

In general, Rid’s book is an insightful overview of disinformation campaigns from the early 20th century through the present. However, in focusing principally on Soviet “active measures” against the United States – with little focus on how the United States employed similar measures against the Soviet Union – the historical overview Rid presents remains somewhat one-sided.

Additionally, Rid has trouble deciding on his audience. Is he attempting to warn governments, journalists, activists, or the general public? It is certainly the case that die-hard believers in any political cause du jour may want to keep an eye out for involvement by malicious foreign powers – although many ideologically-driven activists do not, instead choosing to pooh-pooh any suggestion of malign foreign influence as state propaganda devised with the intent of diminishing their cause. Journalists can also benefit from Rid’s analysis in lending a critical eye to shocking – but potentially compromised – information concerning foreign events. Government entities, perhaps, do not need Rid’s analysis as much, already being equipped as they are both with offensive “active measures” programs and with numerous agencies and initiatives designed to counter them.

Rid should be commended for taking on a challenging, often politicized topic. However, Active Measures displays apparent weaknesses in terms of knowing who its audience is, or what message it is trying to convey. In spite of these weaknesses, however, Active Measures remains a worthy read for anyone interested in understanding the dangers of information warfare as a tool of propaganda and division.

moderndiplomacy.eu · by Adam Arthur · May 1, 2024

6. China’s election disinformation operations

Key points:

Interfering in our — or any country’s — election should be a bright red line that no country dares to cross.

The former Soviet Union and now Russia wrote the book — “Active Measures” — on political warfare and the use of covert political operations, to include the use of disinformation operations, to confuse and disrupt an adversary’s form of governance. Indeed, Russia tried to spread disinformation on social media during the 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns to polarize the electorate, create distrust and paralyze the electoral process. And in March, the U.S. intelligence community publicly assessed that Russia, China and Iran are capable of and willing to launch cyberattacks seeking to disrupt our presidential election come November.

These developments are concerning but not surprising. Bad actors will exploit any vulnerability to harm our — and others’ — form of democratic governance.

The global community had an opportunity over a decade ago to establish protocols for the peaceful use of cyberspace, a man-made domain of technological commerce and communications with over 5 billion users, traveling across a network owned by an array of businesses, with over 30,000 internet service providers that carry data around the world.

This unique cyber domain, affecting the global community, has no operative international protocols and enforcement procedures to hold countries accountable for when they or citizens in their country use the internet for criminal, terrorist or warfare purposes. The U.N. 18th Internet Governance Forum in Kyoto, Japan, last October concluded with a call for collective action to ensure that the immense volume of data generated by digital technology can be used for the common good, envisioning digital governance critical for economic, social and environmental development.

China’s election disinformation operations

Beijing has advanced Russia's active measures with cyberattacks

washingtontimes.com · by Joseph R. DeTrani

By - - Tuesday, April 30, 2024

OPINION:

A version of this story appeared in the daily Threat Status newsletter from The Washington Times. Click here to receive Threat Status delivered directly to your inbox each weekday.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s recent meetings in Beijing with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Foreign Minister Wang Yi permitted both countries to again recite their list of concerns affecting bilateral relations: Taiwan, the Indo-Pacific region, South China Sea, Ukraine and China’s support to Russia, intellectual property theft, fentanyl, military-to-military communications, semiconductors, a level playing field for U.S. companies in China, etc.

Seldom do we hear cyber and disinformation.

In an interview in Beijing on April 26 with CNN, and in answer to a question about Mr. Xi’s commitment to President Biden last year, Mr. Blinken said: “We have seen, generally speaking, evidence of attempts to influence and arguably interfere, and we want to make sure that’s cut off as quickly as possible. Any interference by China in our election is something that we’re looking very carefully at and is totally unacceptable to us, so I wanted to make sure that they heard that message again.”

Interfering in our — or any country’s — election should be a bright red line that no country dares to cross.

The former Soviet Union and now Russia wrote the book — “Active Measures” — on political warfare and the use of covert political operations, to include the use of disinformation operations, to confuse and disrupt an adversary’s form of governance. Indeed, Russia tried to spread disinformation on social media during the 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns to polarize the electorate, create distrust and paralyze the electoral process. And in March, the U.S. intelligence community publicly assessed that Russia, China and Iran are capable of and willing to launch cyberattacks seeking to disrupt our presidential election come November.

These developments are concerning but not surprising. Bad actors will exploit any vulnerability to harm our — and others’ — form of democratic governance.

The global community had an opportunity over a decade ago to establish protocols for the peaceful use of cyberspace, a man-made domain of technological commerce and communications with over 5 billion users, traveling across a network owned by an array of businesses, with over 30,000 internet service providers that carry data around the world.

This unique cyber domain, affecting the global community, has no operative international protocols and enforcement procedures to hold countries accountable for when they or citizens in their country use the internet for criminal, terrorist or warfare purposes. The U.N. 18th Internet Governance Forum in Kyoto, Japan, last October concluded with a call for collective action to ensure that the immense volume of data generated by digital technology can be used for the common good, envisioning digital governance critical for economic, social and environmental development.

On Jan. 1, Italy assumed the presidency of the Group of Seven (G7) — Italy, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States, with the European Union participating. The Leaders’ Summit, scheduled for June 13-15 in Apulia, will focus on protecting the rules-based international system, Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine, conflict in the Middle East, engagement with Africa, and particular attention to the Indo-Pacific region. Climate change and food scarcity will also be discussed.

Artificial intelligence will be a principal subject for discussion, given that this technology can generate great opportunities and enormous risks, affecting myriad geopolitical issues. Discussions will focus on developing governance mechanisms to ensure that AI remains human-centered and human-controlled.

It was the G7 summit in Hiroshima, Japan, last May that established the first international framework for a code of conduct aimed at promoting safe, secure and trustworthy AI systems. The goal was an inclusive global governance on AI for the common good of the world. Governments beyond the G7 will be encouraged to support this initiative, to enable people around the world to benefit from safe, secure and trustworthy AI.

Given Mr. Blinken’s recent visit to Beijing and the positive Biden-Xi summit last November, the G7 should solicit China for its support and willingness to participate in the Hiroshima AI Process. This would be a timely and well-received message from China to the U.S. and the global community.

• Joseph R. DeTrani served as special envoy for the Six-Party Talks with North Korea from 2003 to 2006 and as director of the National Counterproliferation Center. The views expressed here are the author’s and not those of any government agency or department.

Copyright © 2024 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.

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washingtontimes.com · by Joseph R. DeTrani

7. The battle over TikTok’s future, explained

I still think one simple regulation should be that no foreign country can participate in the US social media environment if they do not allow their own population to have free access to the same social media platforms.

Excerpts:

If there was no viable buyer or if China’s government refused to allow the sale, the divestiture order would effectively become a ban. In this scenario, TikTok would eventually be kicked off the US market, forcing the app’s 170 million American users to Google “how to download free VPN.” Overnight, cryptocurrency pump-and-dump schemes would lose their oomph. Real estate influencers would have to move back to their parents’ basements. Kids might have to learn to talk to each other. Chaos would no doubt ensue.

Somewhat more seriously, a ban would put a strain on an already tense US-China relationship. At the same time, given all the efforts to stabilize ties since Woodside, Beijing’s response would focus more on insulating the Chinese economy from further US tech containment efforts than on tit-for-tat retaliation against high-profile US tech companies. Not only because there’s little the Chinese can do on this front that they haven’t been doing for years, with most American social media platforms already banned from the Chinese market. But also because targeting any remaining potential targets, such as Apple or Tesla, risks dampening foreign investor sentiment at a time when China is struggling mightily to boost confidence in its economy.

At the end of the day, Xi doesn’t care much about “decadent” consumer apps such as TikTok. He’d rather worry about the commanding heights of tech and economic competition. The Chinese people writ large, however, would see a ban as yet another US attempt to constrain China’s rise.

The battle over TikTok’s future, explained

gzeromedia.com · by Ian Bremmer · May 1, 2024

May 01, 2024

TikTok logo on a phone surrounded by the American, Israeli, and Chinese flags.

Jess Frampton

Last Wednesday, as part of the sweeping foreign-aid package that included much-neededfunding for Ukraine’s defense, President Joe Biden signed into law a bill requiring that TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, sell the popular video-sharing app to an American buyer within a year or face a ban in the United States.

As Iwrote a little over a year ago, I think this is a close call but the right move. TikTok is ultimately beholden to the Chinese government, an authoritarian state-capitalist regime locked in an increasingly adversarial strategic competition with the US. As intelligence agencies have warned, the platform poses a national security vulnerability because Beijing can commandeer it to surveil and manipulate Americans. No remedies or assurances to the contrary can mitigate that risk short of a Chinese divestment or an outright ban.

Most importantly, the Chinese Communist Party already bans all US social media apps under the guise of national security. TikTok itself is banned in China, where ByteDance is only allowed to operate a heavily censored version for domestic users. In my ideal world, this would be an area for US-China competition rather than confrontation. Alas, the CCP isn’t taking down its so-called Great Firewall anytime soon, so I see the US divestment/ban order as a fair and reciprocal response that will protect not only US national security but also American social media companies from their most formidable competitor.

Why now?

TikTok has long drawn political condemnation from both sides of the aisle, especially in the fractious House, where hostility to China is the only reliable area of bipartisan agreement. And yet, over the past three years, the viral Chinese social media platform survived effort after effort to bring it to heel, including a forced divestiture order in 2020 under then-President Donald Trump, a near-pass RESTRICT Act, and a struck-down ban in Montana. Through it all, its reach has continued to grow unabated.

But TikTok’s luck has just about run out. And as strange as it may sound, it had little to do with a change in the US-China relationship and everything to do with … the Gaza war.

Since Oct. 7, many Americans’ TikTok feeds have become awash in anti-Israeli and, in a lot of cases, antisemitic content. This isn’t entirely surprising – after all, by virtue of their demographics (young, non-Western, Muslim), TikTok creators and users are far more likely to hold pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli, and antisemitic views than their Instagram or X counterparts. But beyond this organic bias, there’s also reasonably suggestive evidence that TikTok’s algorithm and moderation rules have artificially suppressed pro-Israeli content and amplified pro-Palestinian and antisemitic sentiment. This is consistent with otherstudies that show ByteDance shapes the feed’s content in accordance with the Chinese Communist Party’s policy goals.

After trying and failing to convince TikTok CEO Shou Chew to change course, a small but motivated group of wealthy and politically connected Jewish and Israeli Americans bootstrapped a PR and lobbying campaign that ultimately managed to achieve what years of anti-China efforts couldn’t.

Congress was already primed to do something/anything on antisemitism and show support for Israel; beating up on Beijing just was the cherry on top. House Speaker Mike Johnson figured he could use the TikTok divestment provision as a sweetener to get the foreign assistance package over the line with his members, knowing the prospect of finally passing Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan aid would be enough to overcome tepid Senate opposition to the TikTok bill. (Maybe he’s effective at his job, after all?) A ban would also meet no resistance from the White House given the Biden administration’s approach to tech and investment restrictions on China, especially in an election year. It was the perfect storm for TikTok.

What’s next?

Worry not: You can keep doomscrolling on TikTok at least through Inauguration Day. The law gives ByteDance until January 19, 2025, to sell the app and allows the president to grant a one-time 90-day extension into April. In the meantime, TikTok will likely challenge the legislation in court on First Amendment grounds, which – though unlikely to succeed – will extend the timeline and almost certainly push any decision into the next presidential administration.

Ironically, TikTok’s best hope lies with Trump retaking the White House in November. Ironically, I say, because Trump was the one who first tried to ban TikTok in 2020 through an executive order that was blocked by the courts … before flip-flopping earlier this year and becoming a vocal opponent of the policy on the back of a sizable campaign contribution by major Republican donor and TikTok investor Jeff Yass. It’s not a stretch to imagine that Trump would use the threat of a divestiture order/ban as a bargaining chip in negotiations with China on other issues closer to his heart and less damaging to his wallet, eventually agreeing not to enforce it in return for concessions in areas such as trade.

Should Biden win reelection and TikTok’s legal challenges fail, it will be up to the Chinese government to decide whether to allow ByteDance to divest. As of now, Beijing’s official position is that it will prohibit the export of TikTok’s AI-powered recommendation algorithm – the platform’s core asset – to a US buyer (without which the app is practically worthless). But the issue is still being quietly debated within the Chinese system, suggesting the only decision maker who really matters, President Xi Jinping, is yet to make a final call – and may not until and unless a sale is actually forced.

Of course, even if Beijing were to sign off on a spinoff, it takes two to tango. There’s only a handful of potential American buyers who could afford theprice tag of TikTok’s US business. Former US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin had reportedly made a bid to purchase the app with a group of investors back in March, but it remains to be seen whether he’d cough up the cash when the rubber meets the road. The most obvious candidates to snap up the company would be publicly traded tech giants that would come under immediate regulatory scrutiny over antitrust issues.

If there was no viable buyer or if China’s government refused to allow the sale, the divestiture order would effectively become a ban. In this scenario, TikTok would eventually be kicked off the US market, forcing the app’s 170 million American users to Google “how to download free VPN.” Overnight, cryptocurrency pump-and-dump schemes would lose their oomph. Real estate influencers would have to move back to their parents’ basements. Kids might have to learn to talk to each other. Chaos would no doubt ensue.

Somewhat more seriously, a ban would put a strain on an already tense US-China relationship. At the same time, given all theefforts to stabilize ties since Woodside, Beijing’s response would focus more on insulating the Chinese economy from further US tech containment efforts than on tit-for-tat retaliation against high-profile US tech companies. Not only because there’s little the Chinese can do on this front that they haven’t been doing for years, with most American social media platforms already banned from the Chinese market. But also because targeting any remaining potential targets, such as Apple or Tesla, risks dampening foreign investor sentiment at a time when China is struggling mightily to boost confidence in its economy.

At the end of the day, Xi doesn’t care much about “decadent” consumer apps such as TikTok. He’d rather worry about the commanding heights of tech and economic competition. The Chinese people writ large, however, would see a ban as yet another US attempt to constrain China’s rise.

us-china relationstiktok ban

gzeromedia.com · by Ian Bremmer · May 1, 2024

8. America and the new ‘axis of evil’

Excerpts:

The regimes in Pyongyang and Tehran are in closer cahoots than ever. North Korea is suspected of shipping drones and missiles to Iran, along with the technology for Iran to manufacture the weapons on its own, as Iran’s conflict with Israel boils over. Iraq, meanwhile, has existed under the heavy shadow of Iran since the demise of the Saddam regime in 2003. 

Bush has every right to say, “I told you so.” His words endure as flatly and boldly today as they were when uttered 22 years ago. Let us not, however, dwell on his prescience (and that of his aide, David Frum, to whom the phrase is attributed). What counts, as we recognize the collaboration between Iran and North Korea, is our will to stand up against each of these very different, geographically distant but closely bound dictatorships — and their much larger friends. 

Behind these two nasty actors, one under hardline communist hereditary rule in Northeast Asia, the other an “Islamic Republic” in the Middle East, are two far more powerful forces: Russia and Communist China. It is through them that missiles, drones and other weaponry linked to North Korea are able to slip into the hands of Iran’s “Islamic revolutionary guard,” which uses them to terrorize not only their own people but the entire region — notably Israel. 

America and the new ‘axis of evil’ 

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/4629258-thehill-com-opinion-international-4629258-axis-of-evil-iran-north-korea-china-russia-america/

BY DONALD KIRK, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 04/29/24 2:00 PM ET

The term “axis of evil” came up just once in George W. Bush’s 3,000-word State-of-the-Union address in 2002, but that was enough for the words of the former president to be known forever after as his “Axis of Evil” speech. 

Critics of our 43rd president — more outspoken than they had ever been of his father, George H. W. Bush, the 41st president — loved this reference, not for the truth in the phrase but for the ammunition it gave them, deriding his decision the next year to send troops into Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein. How ridiculous, they believed, to think Iran, Iraq and North Korea could all have been conspiring in an evil “axis.”  

While we no longer hear too many voices denouncing the phrase today, more than two decades later, it’s difficult to deny the hard truth in his words. Bush wound up his brief allusion to the evil they might create with the warning, “They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred.” 

Regrettably, his enduring words have come back to haunt us.   

The regimes in Pyongyang and Tehran are in closer cahoots than ever. North Korea is suspected of shipping drones and missiles to Iran, along with the technology for Iran to manufacture the weapons on its own, as Iran’s conflict with Israel boils over. Iraq, meanwhile, has existed under the heavy shadow of Iran since the demise of the Saddam regime in 2003. 

Bush has every right to say, “I told you so.” His words endure as flatly and boldly today as they were when uttered 22 years ago. Let us not, however, dwell on his prescience (and that of his aide, David Frum, to whom the phrase is attributed). What counts, as we recognize the collaboration between Iran and North Korea, is our will to stand up against each of these very different, geographically distant but closely bound dictatorships — and their much larger friends. 

Behind these two nasty actors, one under hardline communist hereditary rule in Northeast Asia, the other an “Islamic Republic” in the Middle East, are two far more powerful forces: Russia and Communist China. It is through them that missiles, drones and other weaponry linked to North Korea are able to slip into the hands of Iran’s “Islamic revolutionary guard,” which uses them to terrorize not only their own people but the entire region — notably Israel. 

To date, the Iranians have got to be severely disappointed by the utter failure of their barrage on Israel earlier this month. The lesson is that Israel, with a huge assist from its American ally as well as Jordan, showed Iran and its North Korean de facto ally how inept they were at doing much real damage. The only victim was a 7-year-old Arabic girl, living in a Palestinian village inside Israel, severely wounded and fighting for life. The Iranians must wonder why they failed so miserably. 

Now, however, is no time to breathe easy. The “axis of evil” that Bush described just five months after 9/11, the slaughter of nearly 3,000 innocent people by the Arab terrorists who flew hijacked airliners into New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001, now extends from Tehran via Moscow and Beijing to Pyongyang. 

In a sense, North Korea and Iran are proxies for Russia and China, weaponizing resources and forces for wars that suit the interests of Moscow and Beijing. These two giants like nothing better than to see Washington caught up in a war for Israel while political factions quarrel in Congress over funds for fighting the Russians in Ukraine and supporting Taiwan against the constant threat of mainland Chinese forces. That’s to say nothing, of course, of the need for building up America’s own extended armed forces, already stretched thin around the world. 

In the midst of all these dangers, we need to thank Bush for having perceived realistically the risks America faced 22 years ago. The danger, if anything, is far graver now than it was then, as the U.S. and its allies stand up against dictatorships that would destroy America’s friends and allies — and the freedom and democracy that is all so easily taken for granted. 

Donald Kirk has been a journalist for more than 60 years, focusing much of his career on conflict in Asia and the Middle East, including as a correspondent for the Washington Star and Chicago Tribune. He is currently a freelance correspondent covering North and South Korea, and is the author of several books about Asian affairs.    

9. Is Bougainville the next battleground between China and the U.S.?

Is Bougainville the next battleground between China and the U.S.?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/26/papua-new-guinea-bougainville-china-mining/

By Michael E. Miller

May 1, 2024 at 5:00 a.m. EDT

The Panguna mine in Bougainville was closed in 1988 with an estimated $100 billion in copper and gold shut inside. The Bougainville government hopes that reopening it — with either U.S. or Chinese help — will fund its independence from Papua New Guinea. (Torbjörn Wester)

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ARAWA, Papua New Guinea — On a warm morning in November, a barrel-chested and battle-scarred man arrived to Capitol Hill for a meeting he hoped would help save his struggling homeland.

Ishmael Toroama was introduced to two members of the U.S. House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party as the president of Bougainville, an autonomous region of Papua New Guinea in the South Pacific. But his previous occupation was evident in the arm that hung limply at his left side as he shook the lawmakers’ hands.

Twice he’d nearly died while leading the fight for Bougainville’s independence in the 1990s. Now he had come to Washington to try to finish the job.

The man in a pinstripe suit who introduced Toroama was no revolutionary, however. His name was John D. Kuhns, a Wall Street investment banker turned novelist and entrepreneur who had made Bougainville his last big bet.

Together, the two men had a story to tell: of a would-be nation in a strategic location starving for freedom, and of a long-shuttered mine still containing as much as $100 billion in copper and gold that could be used in the world’s energy transition — an energy transition where China, with its insatiable thirst for natural resources, is at the forefront.

Toroama had set a 2027 deadline for full independence from Papua New Guinea, after a 2019 referendum in which nearly 98 percent of the population voted in favor. But the result remains subject to ratification by the national parliament in Port Moresby, and talks between the two sides have broken down.

Bougainville could fund its freedom by reopening the Panguna mine and become a staunch U.S. ally, Toroama told Reps. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) and Neal Dunn (R-Fla.), according to Toroama and Kuhns’s account of the meeting. Committee staff confirmed the meeting happened.

Toroama said he told them he needed their help. He had come to Washington to play “the U.S. card,” he said. But some rivals were backed by Beijing, he warned, and even Toroama might have to turn to China if the United States wouldn’t assist.

Kuhns, who wants a piece of Panguna and said he paid for Toroama’s trip, was more explicit.

Alex David and Stanley Paul have set up a small gold mining operation in the defunct Panguna pit, one of scores of unlicensed mining sites. (Torbjörn Wester)

“Bougainville’s vulnerable status and valuable Panguna Mine have not escaped the attention of the Chinese Communist Party,” he wrote in a brief circulated beforehand. “China has already taken steps to control the Solomon Islands and is intent on doing the same across the South Pacific. Unless Ishmael Toroama and his supporters can resist, Bougainville could be next.”

It was an ominous warning, delivered to U.S. lawmakers already alarmed by Beijing.

As tensions between China and the United States escalate in the Asia Pacific, where both countries have recently struck security agreements, everyone from diplomats to dealmakers has learned that those tensions can be turned to their advantage.

Bougainville's president, Ishmael Toroama. (Michael Miller/The Washington Post)

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, visiting Port Moresby last month, dangled a free-trade agreement, telling Papua New Guinean Prime Minister James Marape that “China will be your most reliable partner.”

In the Solomon Islands, the outgoing prime minister has warned that Chinese largesse will end if “Western powers” get their way and his party is ousted. A new government is expected to be formed Thursday.

Earlier this year, the presidents of Palau and the Marshall Islands used warnings of mounting Chinese pressure to spur the United States to deliver billions in aid.

“China is a boogeyman in the Pacific,” said Gordon Peake, an expert on Bougainville at the United States Institute of Peace, a Washington think tank. “And China is using the U.S. as a boogeyman as well.”

In Bougainville, where foreigners’ get-rich schemes grow as thick as the jungle, some are suspicious of Kuhns. The American’s latest novel, his fourth, portrays himself as the only reliable outsider in Bougainville and Toroama as its only hope for independence, with time running out.

In reality, there have been disagreements between them, especially over the mine, and Kuhns readily blends fact and fiction. “I’m not interested in accuracy, per se,” he said of his novels. “I’m just trying to tell the story.”

The small island of Pokpok, on left, off the coast of the main island of Bougainville. Bougainville wants full independence from Papua New Guinea by 2027. (Torbjörn Wester)

Riches and ruins

Kuhns stood at the airstrip in Buka, Bougainville’s capital, wearing shorts and a T-shirt, ready to show a Washington Post reporter around the mine where he sees so much potential. A former football standout at Georgetown University, the 74-year-old still has a linebacker’s shoulders. The only hint of his Wall Street past was his Rolex.

He first landed here in 2015 during a professional low point. Decades building power companies had led him to Beijing, where he launched the China Hydroelectric Corporation in 2006. It was soon the biggest foreign-owned utility in the country. But then, in 2012, Kuhns says he was detained at the Beijing airport and forced out of the company. China’s Commerce Ministry did not respond to requests for comment.

John D. Kuhns stands near the Panguna mine in Bougainville. The U.S. business executive has a plan to reopen the mine and fund Bougainville's independence that could also earn him tens of millions of dollars. But he faces competition and political uncertainty. (Michael Miller/The Washington Post)

The incident — the subject of his first novel — made him distrust China, which he now calls America’s “long-term threat.” It also left Kuhns looking for one last big deal.

“One day a guy came into my office saying he represented a bunch of chiefs in Bougainville, and he had new gold licenses to talk to people about,” he recalled.

Kuhns found a place still partially in ruins. For 15 years, Bougainville had been one of the more prosperous parts of Papua New Guinea because of Panguna, then the world’s largest open-pit copper-and-gold mine, which generated almost half the country’s exports. But anger over revenue sharing and environmental damages led to violence that shut the mine in 1988 and sparked a civil war, called “the Crisis,” in which as many as 20,000 people died.

Nearly a quarter century after a peace agreement, Bougainville — slightly larger than Delaware and home to about 300,000 people — is now safe, but infrastructure remains woeful. The road from Buka to the biggest city, Arawa, is unpaved and often impassible.

Arawa is surrounded by mountains of suspected riches. It was here that Kuhns settled in 2016 and started a gold dealership. For protection, he turned to Toroama, who ran a security company.

The Panguna mine had generated almost half of Papua New Guinea's exports. But anger over revenue sharing and environmental damages led to violence that shuttered the mine in 1988 and sparked a civil war. (Torbjörn Wester)

Toroama was in his early 20s when the Crisis began, and he volunteered for the Bougainville Revolutionary Army, a secessionist group. After almost a decade of fighting, including almost losing his left arm to a grenade, Toroama was a key figure in peace negotiations. The 2001 agreement gave Bougainville some autonomy — including control over mining — and set the stage for the 2019 referendum.

Kuhns was so impressed with Toroama that he says he funded part of his 2020 campaign for Bougainville president. (Toroama says Kuhns paid him for security.) The two men became close during interviews for Kuhn’s novel, “They Call Me Ishmael,” about a U.S. business executive and an ex-guerrilla. After initially saying everything in the book was true, Kuhns admitted he altered some significant details, including how Toroama nearly lost his arm. “My version is better,” he said.

The big strain between them isn’t the past, however, but the future — of Panguna.

Theonila Matbob is a member of Bougainville's local legislature and a traditional landowner for the area downstream of Panguna. She and other villagers have sued Rio Tinto over environmental damage caused by the mine. (Michael Miller/The Washington Post)

Plans for Panguna

Panguna’s pull is palpable long before the mine is visible. Each day, dozens of people walk from Arawa up the mountain. At the crest, their destination is suddenly apparent: scores of unlicensed mining sites.

Panguna shut in 1988 when the BRA forced Bougainville Copper Ltd., a subsidiary of the British-Australian mining company Rio Tinto, to pull the plug. But small-scale alluvial mining had taken its place. Two men sat on the side of the road, using a pan to sift for flakes of gold. Up a hill, two children filled 22-pound rice bags with mineral-rich soil.

Panguna gaped in the distance. At its base was a pool of water, tinted a surreal blue by the copper. Nearby sat dozens of decaying buildings, including former BCL offices and living quarters that now house hundreds of poor Bougainvilleans.

As he stood on a hill, however, Kuhns told a Post reporter of the promise he saw. With a few years and several billion dollars of new equipment, Panguna could be reborn, just as a clean tech boom drives global demand for copper.

“There is a $100 billion of copper, gold and silver in that hole,” he said. “All you’ve got to do is mine it out.”

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Many have tried since the Crisis ended. None has come to fruition.

Kuhns has his own plan for Panguna. In late October, days before he and Toroama went to Washington, the two men signed a memorandum of understanding, seen by The Post, for Kuhns’s company, Lakeville Mines, to find a major international partner to restart Panguna. A new company would be formed involving the international partner, local landowners, the government and Lakeville. Kuhns could make tens of millions. “I’m not here to be a do-gooder,” he said. “But I do think I’m doing good.”

Justina Naviu and her daughter watch a woman pan for gold in the river downstream from the Panguna mine. (Michael Miller/The Washington Post)

Toroama didn’t announce the agreement in Washington, however. Instead, shortly after returning to Bougainville, he reissued a Panguna exploration license to BCL, which used to operate the mine. (Rio Tinto divested from BCL in 2016, giving its shares to the governments of Bougainville and Papua New Guinea.)

The decision was crushing for Kuhns. But instead of giving up, he is preparing for BCL to fail, not least because many locals blame it for the Crisis.

“We would have to be really stupid to welcome that monster back again,” said Maggie Boring, whose daughter and mother were killed in the early 1990s when her nephew brought home a grenade he’d found. She held BCL responsible.

Mel Togolo, BCL’s executive chairman, said it was “fanciful” for Boring to blame BCL for something that happened after the mine was shut. Most landowner groups had agreed to Toroama’s decision, he added, though he acknowledged some opposition remains. “We have to be realistic,” he said. “We are never going to get 100 percent support.”

 Children fish in the village of Tinputz, located in the northeast corner of Bougainville. (Torbjörn Wester)

‘We all eat from the same garden’

 When Kuhns and Toroama met recently at the president’s house, their handshake was tense. Talk quickly  turned to Panguna and BCL.

“Right now we have to cultivate this land,” Toroama said pointedly. “We all eat from the same garden and that’s the Panguna mine.”

The president’s decision was an embarrassment for Kuhns. But his bigger pitch to Washington remains the same: Support Toroama and his push for independence, or risk further “China creep.”

In August, Kuhns paid for two Bougainvilleans to travel to Port Moresby to meet Reps. Dunn and Aumua Amata Coleman Radewagen (R-American Samoa). Days later, Kuhns met Kurt Campbell, then the coordinator for Indo-Pacific Affairs on the National Security Council and now the deputy secretary of state, to discuss Bougainville’s situation. A State Department spokesperson confirmed the meeting.

Rusting machinery at the long-shuttered Panguna mine. Restarting the massive operation after 35 years of dormancy will cost at least $3 billion or $4 billion, experts say. (Michael Miller/The Washington Post)

One goal of Toroama’s trip was to show U.S. officials he’s a serious partner: He discussed basing U.S. Coast Guard cutters in Bougainville with the congressmen. Another aim was to find a moderator to kick-start negotiations with Papua New Guinea.

Toroama’s government is also putting pressure on Port Moresby by writing its own constitution. If talks go nowhere, Toroama refuses to rule out Bougainville simply declaring independence. That “nuclear option,” as Kuhns calls it, could open the door for Beijing to recognize Bougainville.

Peake and other experts consider that unlikely as it would risk conflict with Papua New Guinea, which both Beijing and Washington have courted.

The Papua New Guinean government did not respond to a request for comment.

A more likely avenue of Chinese influence would be a state-owned enterprise. Toroama says his government has spoken to Chinese companies about Panguna — including a meeting in Guangzhou in March, announced by a state-backed railway company — but he’d prefer other partners.

At least one rival in next year’s election has no such reservations. Sam Kauona, who ran in 2020 by promoting a Chinese plan for Bougainville, said he has new Chinese supporters. He said it was “normal” to give their projects “priority” if he is elected. Asked what his backers want in return for their investment, he replied: “Everything.”

Kauona also praised Manasseh Sogavare, the outgoing prime minister of the Solomon Islands, for his security agreement with Beijing and said he would be open to a similar deal.

The election of a candidate with ties to China could turn Kuhns’s warnings into reality and cripple his business plans. It would also upend his Bougainville trilogy, the second installment of which he’s writing.

“If Ishmael is elected again, the third book would be about the newest nation on earth,” Kuhns said. “But I’m not sure Ishmael will be reelected. Right now it’s very much open to debate. That would obviously change the whole thread of the story.”

Pei-Lin Wu in Taipei, Taiwan, contributed to this report.

10. Nobody Is Competing With the U.S. to Begin With

It is all those damn "security elites" that are causing problems (according to the Quincy Institute).

Chinese sovereignty over the SCS should not be recognized nor challenged?

What is "joint Sino-Filipino" sovereignty? (rhetorical question). Do we really think that is something acceptable to either the PRC/CCP or the Philippine nation? Is that a "reasonable compromise" for either?

Excerpts:

U.S. security elites are obsessed with the threat posed by China and Russia to U.S. global primacy. This is a serious strategic miscalculation. The United States’ global network of powerful allies and bases (of which China and Russia have hardly any), unrivaled blue-water Navy, and possession of the only truly global currency mean that no other country can challenge Washington on the world stage as a whole.

...

Chinese sovereignty over the South China Sea should not be recognized, but it should also not be challenged—just as the United States does not recognize but also does not challenge Indian sovereignty over most of Kashmir, for example. Washington could also demonstrate goodwill and a desire for a reasonable compromise over the dispute over these islands between China and the Philippines by proposing solutions such as joint Sino-Filipino sovereignty.

There is no cowardice or disgrace in conducting a limited and orderly withdrawal. Every great strategist has done this when necessary. On the contrary, having the moral courage to do this is precisely one of the qualities of true statesmanship—especially when the United States’ goal of maintaining its global primacy isn’t even at issue.

My criticism and snarky comments above aside, this excerpt is very important and we should consider it:

Since the end of the Cold War, too many U.S. strategists have forgotten a fundamental rule both of geopolitics and of war: that all real power is in the end local and relative. That is to say, it is the amount of force, money, or influence that a state is able and willing to bring to bear on a particular issue or place compared with the amount that rival states can bring to bear. So, what is true of the world as a whole may be totally untrue of eastern Ukraine or the South China Sea.

This truth is exemplified by the experience of the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nobody can seriously suggest that Iran, let alone Pakistan, is anything remotely resembling a serious rival of the United States on the world stage. In Iraq and Afghanistan respectively, however, Tehran and Islamabad proved more powerful.

This was for a whole set of local historical, cultural, and religious factors—but it was also quite simply because, unlike the Washington, they were, are, and always will be neighbors of those countries. As such, they had the proximity, the ability, the will, and the patience to exert more power and run more risks than the United States was ever willing and able to do.

Nobody Is Competing With the U.S. to Begin With

Conflicts with China and Russia are about local issues that Washington can’t win anyway.

By Anatol Lieven, the director of the Eurasia program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

Foreign Policy · by Anatol Lieven

• U.S. Foreign Policy
• United States

May 1, 2024, 9:45 AM

U.S. security elites are obsessed with the threat posed by China and Russia to U.S. global primacy. This is a serious strategic miscalculation. The United States’ global network of powerful allies and bases (of which China and Russia have hardly any), unrivaled blue-water Navy, and possession of the only truly global currency mean that no other country can challenge Washington on the world stage as a whole.

Nor indeed is there any real evidence that they wish to do so. It is not just that a non-nuclear attack on NATO is impossibly far beyond Russian capabilities; until its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia devoted great efforts to trying to woo Germany and France. Russia has no interest in provoking the United States into a maritime blockade that would devastate Russia’s energy exports, nor China in disrupting a global trading and financial system on which it depends for most of its trade. No U.S. ally or alliance system is under threat from a rival power as long as they and the United States restrict themselves to their own defense. Washington is in firm control of the great economic powerhouse of Western Europe and maritime East Asia, as well as its own hemisphere.

All other things being equal, U.S. global primacy is already secure for a very long time to come. The problem is that all other things are not equal.

Since the end of the Cold War, too many U.S. strategists have forgotten a fundamental rule both of geopolitics and of war: that all real power is in the end local and relative. That is to say, it is the amount of force, money, or influence that a state is able and willing to bring to bear on a particular issue or place compared with the amount that rival states can bring to bear. So, what is true of the world as a whole may be totally untrue of eastern Ukraine or the South China Sea.

This truth is exemplified by the experience of the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nobody can seriously suggest that Iran, let alone Pakistan, is anything remotely resembling a serious rival of the United States on the world stage. In Iraq and Afghanistan respectively, however, Tehran and Islamabad proved more powerful.

This was for a whole set of local historical, cultural, and religious factors—but it was also quite simply because, unlike the Washington, they were, are, and always will be neighbors of those countries. As such, they had the proximity, the ability, the will, and the patience to exert more power and run more risks than the United States was ever willing and able to do.

As U.S. President Barack Obama pointed out in 2016, this is also true of Ukraine. That country is a core interest for Russia in a way that it is not for the United States. Obama’s point about comparative commitment was reinforced rather neatly by the recent news that the Biden administration has urged Ukraine to halt its attacks on Russian oil refineries, critical to the financing of Russia’s war in Ukraine—the reason being that the administration fears that these attacks could drive U.S. gasoline prices higher and cost U.S. President Joe Biden reelection in November. Russia meanwhile has reconfigured its economy for war and expended the lives of tens of thousands of its soldiers in an effort to dominate Ukraine.

Yet the United States has found itself challenging Russia, China, and Iran on ground where they hold vast and growing advantages. Washington is replicating a classic military error: risking your main position by committing resources to the defense of ultimately undefendable outposts and, in the process, risking both exhaustion and so many local defeats in detail that in the end they bring about complete defeat.

The immediate issue is the war in Ukraine. By proposing NATO membership to a country that no U.S. administration ever intended to go to war to defend, Washington has exposed Ukraine to likely disaster and the United States and NATO to severe humiliation. U.S. high-tech weaponry has been important to the Ukrainian defense, but industries in the United States and European Union are failing very badly in providing Ukraine with sufficient quantities of basic ammunition. Western countries also, of course, cannot provide Ukraine with new soldiers to reinforce its severely depleted ranks—unless they go to war themselves and risk nuclear annihilation for places that until very recently nobody in the West considered vital. On the other hand, Russia’s ability to defeat Ukraine in the east of that country—at huge cost to Russia in casualties and equipment—by no means indicates either the ability or the desire to launch a direct attack on NATO.

The wise strategic course for the United States is therefore to seek a compromise peace—akin to the 1955 Austrian State Treaty, negotiated with the Soviet Union—whereby the great majority of Ukraine is independent but neutral and the issue of the Russian-occupied territories is deferred for future negotiation (the approach Washington has taken to Turkish-occupied Northern Cyprus for the past 40 years). Such a deal should be seen not as a U.S. defeat but a tactical withdrawal to prepared positions from an indefensible salient. This should be combined with European rearmament and moves to strengthen the defenses of existing NATO members that border Russia, including most especially the Baltic states.

China represents the greatest local risk and the most complicated local issue: the greatest risk because China can impose a local defeat that could ruin the United States as a superpower and the most complicated because China considers Taiwan part of its sovereign territory. And while the United States (unlike in the case of NATO allies) is not obliged by treaty to defend Taiwan, it does have a moral commitment to try to save Taiwan from being simply conquered by China.

(The United States has also assumed a commitment to try to prevent the whole of Ukraine from being simply conquered by Russia, but that should not imply a commitment either to accept Ukraine into NATO or to preserve all the territory of Ukraine within its Soviet borders.)

Taiwan also represents the starkest contrast between U.S. global naval strength and its growing weakness in China’s (and perhaps Iran’s) immediate neighborhood. On the world’s oceans, with three Chinese aircraft carriers to America’s 11 (plus two each belonging to Britain, Japan, and India), no significant global allies, and no major naval bases, Beijing cannot mount a serious challenge to the United States beyond its own littoral waters. Against these odds, there is simply no realistic chance of China being able to invade Australia, Guam, or Japan.

Within those waters, it is a totally different matter, and the lessons of Russia’s war in Ukraine are quite shattering for U.S. naval chances in a war with China over Taiwan. The Ukrainian navy is insignificant compared with the Russian Black Sea Fleet, and before the war, it was universally assumed that Russia would dominate the Black Sea without serious challenge. But through land-based missiles and swarms of airborne and seaborne drones, the Ukrainians have been able to largely wipe out the Russian fleet and drive it from its base in the Crimean port of Sevastopol. The Houthis in Yemen have been able to seriously disrupt trade through the Red Sea with only a very limited number of airborne drones.

Chinese industry can produce virtually limitless numbers of cheap drones—far too many for very expensive U.S. air defense missiles to be able to shoot down. (This may also be becoming true of Iranian drones in the Persian Gulf.) Ukraine’s Magura V5 drones cost only $273,000, have a range of around 500 miles, and can travel long distances on autopilot, only requiring a human operator as they approach their target. China is developing faster and more powerful ones, as well as unmanned submarines. If they disable enough U.S. escort vessels, U.S. aircraft carriers would be horribly vulnerable to Chinese missiles.

This does not mean that China could invade Taiwan successfully, because a Chinese amphibious force would itself be highly vulnerable to Taiwanese and U.S. drones. It does mean that China is likely in the future to have the ability to impose a blockade of Taiwan that Washington could not break without suffering catastrophic losses—losses that would in turn undermine the United States’ global position. There is also very little chance of the United States winning a war over the Chinese-occupied islands in the South China Sea.

On the other hand, should this happen, Washington could and would blockade virtually the whole of China’s maritime trade, including energy supplies from the Persian Gulf. There is no conceivable way that China’s navy could successfully access these supplies otherwise. China’s Belt and Road Initiative and energy deals with Russia and countries in Central Asia are intended to reduce this threat, but they would not do so completely or very soon.

In these circumstances, the United States has the strongest incentive to do everything in its power to keep the Taiwan and South China Sea issues quiet. Taiwan should not be surrendered, but China should be repeatedly and publicly assured of U.S. adherence to the “One China” policy. Every provocative U.S. statement or action that calls this into question should be strenuously avoided.

Chinese sovereignty over the South China Sea should not be recognized, but it should also not be challenged—just as the United States does not recognize but also does not challenge Indian sovereignty over most of Kashmir, for example. Washington could also demonstrate goodwill and a desire for a reasonable compromise over the dispute over these islands between China and the Philippines by proposing solutions such as joint Sino-Filipino sovereignty.

There is no cowardice or disgrace in conducting a limited and orderly withdrawal. Every great strategist has done this when necessary. On the contrary, having the moral courage to do this is precisely one of the qualities of true statesmanship—especially when the United States’ goal of maintaining its global primacy isn’t even at issue.

Foreign Policy · by Anatol Lieven

11. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, May 1, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-may-1-2024

Key Takeaways:

• The Russian military is reportedly redeploying elements of the 76th and 7th airborne (VDV) divisions from Zaporizhia Oblast in the direction of eastern Ukraine, likely to reinforce and intensify ongoing offensive operations.
• The Russian military may seek to redeploy elements of the 76th or 7th VDV division or both to eastern Ukraine to support Russia’s offensive operations in Donetsk Oblast and to capitalize on the current window of vulnerability before American military aid begins reaching the frontline at scale.
• Ukrainian forces struck an oil refinery in Ryazan Oblast for the second time in less than a month on the night of April 30 to May 1.
• Russian state-run news outlets appear to be amplifying anti-Western rhetoric from former Georgian Prime Minister and founder of the Georgian Dream party Bidzina Ivanishvili and are negatively portraying Georgians protesting against Georgia’s “foreign agents” bill, likely in an attempt to destabilize and divide Georgia.
• The United Nations (UN) and Western organizations continue to demonstrate how North Korea and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) are directly and indirectly helping Russia’s war effort.
• Russian insider sources speculated that the criminal investigation into Russian Deputy Defense Minister Timur Ivanov may also implicate another deputy defense minister, Rustam Tsalikov.
• Bloomberg reported that four sanctioned Russian oil tankers have changed their names and are sailing under new flags.
• Russian forces made confirmed advances near Chasiv Yar and Avdiivka and in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area.
• Russian authorities continue recruiting convicted criminals to fight in Ukraine.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MAY 1, 2024

May 1, 2024 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, May 1, 2024

Riley Bailey, Christina Harward, Nicole Wolkov, Grace Mappes, and George Barros

May 1, 2024, 7:15pm ET

Click here to see ISW’s interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.

Click here to see ISW’s 3D control of terrain topographic map of Ukraine. Use of a computer (not a mobile device) is strongly recommended for using this data-heavy tool.

Click here to access ISW’s archive of interactive time-lapse maps of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These maps complement the static control-of-terrain map that ISW produces daily by showing a dynamic frontline. ISW will update this time-lapse map archive monthly.

Note: The data cut-off for this product was 12:15pm ET on May 1. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the May 2 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.

The Russian military is reportedly redeploying elements of the 76th and 7th airborne (VDV) divisions from Zaporizhia Oblast in the direction of eastern Ukraine, likely to reinforce and intensify ongoing offensive operations. Select Russian and Ukrainian sources claimed that elements of the Russian 76th and 7th airborne (VDV) divisions that have been deployed to the Robotyne area in western Zaporizhia Oblast since the height of the Ukrainian summer 2023 counteroffensive are redeploying to new directions, but disagreed on the units redeploying and the areas to which these elements are redeploying.[1] Ukrainian military observer Kostyantyn Mashovets stated on May 1 that the Russian military command recently decided to redeploy at least a battalion of the 76th VDV Division from the Orikhiv direction (western Zaporizhia Oblast) to the general Luhansk Oblast frontline or the Kramatorsk direction (the Bakhmut direction).[2] A Russian milblogger, who has an avowed bias against VDV and “Dnepr” Grouping of Forces Commander Colonel General Mikhail Teplinsky, claimed on April 29 that the Russian military command decided to redeploy elements of the 76th and 7th VDV divisions from the “Dnepr” Grouping of Forces (deployed in east [left] bank Kherson Oblast and western Zaporizhia Oblast) to other unspecified directions.[3] The milblogger later claimed on May 1 that the Russian command decided to transfer elements of the 76th VDV division to relieve elements of the 104th VDV Division near the limited Ukrainian tactical bridgehead in Krynky, Kherson Oblast.[4] The milblogger has not yet offered any updates on the claimed redeployment of elements of the 7th VDV division. ISW has not yet observed confirmation that elements of the 76th and 7th VDV divisions have redeployed to other directions, though these Russian and Ukrainian reports are significant and any VDV redeployments from Zaporizhia Oblast towards eastern Ukraine warrant closer study in the coming days.

Russian forces notably redeployed elements of the 76th and 7th VDV divisions from the Lyman and Kherson directions to the Robotyne area in mid-summer 2023, and this successful redeployment reinforced Russia’s defense at a critical time to prevent Ukrainian forces from breaching the Russian defense in the area.[5] These redeployed elements of the 76th and 7th VDV divisions conducted counterattacks that demonstrated that the 76th and 7th VDV divisions were relatively more combat effective than other Russian forces at the time, and these Russian elements have likely reconstituted to some degree during low-intensity Russian offensive operations in the Robotyne area since fall 2023. Russian forces have seized most of Robotyne in recent weeks, and the Russian military command may have decided that the likely combat effective elements of the 76th and 7th VDV divisions would be more useful elsewhere.[6]

The Russian military may seek to redeploy elements of the 76th or 7th VDV division or both to eastern Ukraine to support Russia’s offensive operations in Donetsk Oblast and to capitalize on the current window of vulnerability before American military aid begins reaching the frontline at scale. Russian forces are currently attempting to exploit a tactical penetration northwest of Avdiivka to achieve a wider breach in the area and are intensifying offensive operations to seize the operationally significant town of Chasiv Yar.[7] The Russian military command may intend to introduce elements of the 76th and 7th VDV divisions as significant reinforcements to either of these efforts in pursuit of operationally significant gains before the arrival of US security assistance allows Ukrainian forces to slow Russian advances and stabilize the frontline.[8] Russian forces in the Avdiivka direction have currently established a relatively cohesive grouping of forces comprised mainly of elements of the Central Military District (CMD) and the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) 1st Army Corps (AC), though these forces are likely attritted from conducting intense offensive operations over the past several months, and elements of the 76th and 7th VDV could serve as an exploitation force to press on with attacks in the area.[9] Russian forces have established a less cohesive grouping of forces in the Bakhmut direction that is notably comprised of elements of several VDV divisions and brigades, and redeployments of elements of the 76th and 7th to this area could reinforce the ongoing offensive operation to seize Chasiv Yar.[10] The Russian military command could deploy elements of the 76th and 7th VDV divisions to the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line where Russian forces have resumed offensive operations along the entire line, but Russian forces appear to be attempting to consolidate this entire sector under the responsibility of the Moscow Military District (MMD), and redeployments of the 76th and 7th VDV divisions may not be as useful in this effort relative to more intensive operations currently underway in Donetsk Oblast.[11] Any redeployment of these elements would offer Russian forces the opportunity to intensify offensive operations and place Ukrainian forces under increasing pressure regardless of the location. ISW offers no assessment of which area is the most likely area where VDV forces may redeploy, if they redeploy at all. ISW will continue to monitor reports about the possible redeployment of elements of the 76th and 7th VDV divisions as it poses a significant risk to Ukraine’s ability to slow ongoing Russian offensive operations in eastern Ukraine in the coming weeks ahead of the arrival of US security assistance.

Ukrainian forces struck an oil refinery in Ryazan Oblast for the second time in less than a month on the night of April 30 to May 1. Ukrainian outlets Suspilne and RBK-Ukraine reported that sources in Ukraine’s Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) stated that the GUR conducted a drone strike on the Rosneft oil refinery in Ryazan City.[12] Ukrainian and Russian sources posted footage of a fire at the refinery.[13] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Russian forces shot down one drone over Ryazan Oblast.[14] Ryazan Oblast governor Pavel Malkov acknowledged that a drone struck Ryazan Oblast, however, but did not specify any damage.[15] Ukrainian forces first struck the Ryazan oil refinery on the night of March 12 to 13.[16] Ukrainian strikes within Russia are reportedly forcing Russian forces to take additional defensive measures.[17] Ukrainian military observer Kostyantyn Mashovets stated that Russian forces have begun to withdraw up to 43 operational-tactical and army aircraft from forward air bases, likely out of fear of Ukrainian drone and long-range high-precision strikes.[18] Mashovets stated that the total number of Russian aircraft deployed at frontline air bases has decreased from 303–305 aircraft to 280–283 aircraft.

Russian state-run news outlets appear to be amplifying anti-Western rhetoric from former Georgian Prime Minister and founder of the Georgian Dream party Bidzina Ivanishvili and are negatively portraying Georgians protesting against Georgia’s “foreign agents” bill, likely in an attempt to destabilize and divide Georgia. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s (RFE/RL) Georgian service Radio Tavisupleba reported on May 1 that Russian state-run news outlets Rossiya-1, NTV, and Channel One (Perviy Kanal) are amplifying anti-Western rhetoric from Ivanishvili’s April 29 speech.[19] ISW previously reported that Ivanishvili reiterated a series of standard anti-Western and pseudohistorical Kremlin narratives during his first public speech since announcing his return to Georgian public politics in December 2023.[20] Radio Tavisupleba reported that Russian state media framed the protestors as “aggressive” and “radicals” who attacked Georgian law enforcement while celebrating Ivanishvili‘s criticisms of the West.[21] Kremlin newswire TASS similarly seized on allegations of violence and “mass arrests” and claimed that protestors “provoked” Georgian security forces.[22] Russian state media’s focus on Ivanishvili’s statements and their negative portrayal of protestors is likely part of ongoing efforts to destabilize, divide, and weaken domestic Georgian politics. The Kremlin has routinely attempted to portray Ukraine’s and other post-Soviet countries’ politics as chaotic in an attempt to destabilize target states and make them more susceptible to Russian influence or outright attack.[23]

The United Nations (UN) and Western organizations continue to demonstrate how North Korea and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) are directly and indirectly helping Russia’s war effort. Reuters reported on April 29 that the UN North Korean sanctions monitoring panel issued a report to the UN Security Council (UNSC) confirming that Russian forces used a North Korean Hwasong-11 ballistic missile in a strike on Kharkiv City on January 2, 2024.[24] The panel reportedly noted that Russia’s use of North Korean missiles violated the 2006 UN arms embargo on North Korea. Russia vetoed an annual UNSC resolution extending the monitoring panel on March 28, and the panel’s mandate expired on April 30.[25] The Economist reported on April 29 that the PRC is providing Russia with semiconductors, navigation equipment, jet parts, ball bearings, computer numerical controlled tools, and other dual-use equipment supporting Russian arms production.[26] The Economist, citing data from the Center for Strategic International Studies (CSIS), reported that Russia often imports goods through a complex system of shell companies, many of which can be traced back to the PRC. The Economist noted that Russian imports of goods from the PRC appeared to surge following Russian President Vladimir Putin’s meeting with PRC President Xi Jinping in Moscow in March 2023. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated on May 1 that Russian imports of dual-use items from the PRC have helped Russia significantly increase its defense industrial production and that 70 percent of Russia’s machine tools and 90 percent of its microelectronics come from the PRC.[27] ISW previously reported about the recent uptick in public meetings between Russian, PRC, North Korean, Iranian, and Belarussian officials that underscores these countries’ deepening mutual partnership aimed at confronting the West.[28]

Russian insider sources speculated that the criminal investigation into Russian Deputy Defense Minister Timur Ivanov may also implicate another deputy defense minister, Rustam Tsalikov. A Russian insider source claimed on April 26 that the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) summoned Tsalikov for questioning, and later claimed on April 27 that the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) may force Tsalikov into retirement and that authorities may bring criminal charges against Tsalikov in relation to Ivanov’s bribery case, for which Ivanov was arrested on April 24.[29] The insider source claimed that Tsalikov is the third highest-ranking member of the Russian MoD only behind Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Army General Valery Gerasimov and that Tsalikov is a close ally of Shoigu like Ivanov. The UK MoD published a corroborating report on May 1 citing unspecified Russian sources.[30] ISW is unable to confirm the Russian claims, however. The Russian MoD has not commented on reports of an investigation involving Tsalikov and notably featured Tsalikov visiting a Russian drone production enterprise on its Telegram channel on April 30.[31]

Bloomberg reported that four sanctioned Russian oil tankers have changed their names and are sailing under new flags.[32] Bloomberg reported on April 30 that tankers from Sovcomflot, Russia’s state-owned oil tanker company, renamed four of its sanctioned vessels: the NS Columbus to the Kemerovo, the NS Bravo to the Belgorod, the NS Captain to the Kaliningrad, and the NS Creation to the Krasnoyarsk. Bloomberg reported that these ships are now flying Russian flags after previously sailing with Gabonese flags. The US Treasury Department sanctioned Sovcomflot and 14 of its vessels in February 2024, and Bloomberg reported that it is common for sanctioned vessels to change their names to distance themselves from international sanctions even though each ship has a permanent identification number that remains the same despite a name change. It is unclear why these ships changed their names and flags to highlight their connection with Russia, and this decision seems counterproductive if these vessels hope to distance themselves from international sanctions against Russia.

Key Takeaways:

• The Russian military is reportedly redeploying elements of the 76th and 7th airborne (VDV) divisions from Zaporizhia Oblast in the direction of eastern Ukraine, likely to reinforce and intensify ongoing offensive operations.
• The Russian military may seek to redeploy elements of the 76th or 7th VDV division or both to eastern Ukraine to support Russia’s offensive operations in Donetsk Oblast and to capitalize on the current window of vulnerability before American military aid begins reaching the frontline at scale.
• Ukrainian forces struck an oil refinery in Ryazan Oblast for the second time in less than a month on the night of April 30 to May 1.
• Russian state-run news outlets appear to be amplifying anti-Western rhetoric from former Georgian Prime Minister and founder of the Georgian Dream party Bidzina Ivanishvili and are negatively portraying Georgians protesting against Georgia’s “foreign agents” bill, likely in an attempt to destabilize and divide Georgia.
• The United Nations (UN) and Western organizations continue to demonstrate how North Korea and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) are directly and indirectly helping Russia’s war effort.
• Russian insider sources speculated that the criminal investigation into Russian Deputy Defense Minister Timur Ivanov may also implicate another deputy defense minister, Rustam Tsalikov.
• Bloomberg reported that four sanctioned Russian oil tankers have changed their names and are sailing under new flags.
• Russian forces made confirmed advances near Chasiv Yar and Avdiivka and in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area.
• Russian authorities continue recruiting convicted criminals to fight in Ukraine.

We do not report in detail on Russian war crimes because these activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We will continue to evaluate and report on the effects of these criminal activities on the Ukrainian military and the Ukrainian population and specifically on combat in Ukrainian urban areas. We utterly condemn Russian violations of the laws of armed conflict and the Geneva Conventions and crimes against humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.

• Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine (comprised of two subordinate main efforts)
• Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and encircle northern Donetsk Oblast
• Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast
• Russian Supporting Effort – Southern Axis
• Russian Air, Missile, and Drone Campaign
• Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
• Russian Technological Adaptations
• Activities in Russian-occupied areas
• Ukrainian Defense Industrial Base Efforts
• Russian Information Operations and Narratives
• Significant Activity in Belarus

Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Luhansk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and northern Donetsk Oblast)

Ukrainian military observer Kostyantyn Mashovets stated that the Russian Northern Grouping of Forces has deployed no fewer than 50,000 Russian personnel to its area of responsibility in Kursk, Bryansk, and Belgorod oblast border areas.[33] Mashovets stated that the Russian 44th Army Corps (AC) (Leningrad Military District [LMD]) has contributed up to 3,700 Russian personnel to the Northern Grouping of Forces and will deploy elements of the 44th Army Corps to Kursk Oblast, including elements of the likely reformed 128th Motorized Rifle Brigade, 30th Motorized Rifle Regiment (72nd Motorized Rifle Division), and 197th Separate Control Battalion.

Russian forces continued ground attacks along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line on May 1. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian assaults southeast of Kupyansk near Ivanivka, Kyslivka, and Kotlyarivka; northwest of Svatove near Berestove and Stelmakhivka; west of Svatove near Kopanky; and southwest of Svatove near Novoyehorivka, Hrekivka, Makiivka, and Nevske; west of Kreminna near Terny; and south of Kreminna near Bilohorivka and in the Serebryanske forest area.[34] Elements of the Russian 2nd Artillery Brigade (2nd Luhansk People’s Republic Army Corps [LNR AC]) are reportedly operating near Bilohorivka.[35]

Ukrainian forces recently struck a Russian military training ground about 80 kilometers behind the frontline in the rear of occupied Luhansk Oblast. Geolocated footage published on May 1 indicates that Ukrainian forces struck a Russian training ground southwest of Mozhnyakivka, likely with four ATACMS, and reportedly killed 116 Russian personnel.[36]

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Donetsk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)

Positional fighting continued in the Siversk direction (northeast of Bakhmut) on May 1, but there were no confirmed changes to the frontline. Fighting continued east of Siversk near Verkhnokamyanske, southeast of Siversk near Spirne, and south of Siversk near Rozdolivka.[37] Elements of the Russian “GORB” detachment (2nd Luhansk People‘s Republic [LNR] Army Corps [AC]) are reportedly operating near Spirne.[38]

Russian forces recently advanced east of Chasiv Yar and on Chasiv Yar’s eastern outskirts. Geolocated footage published on May 1 indicates that Russian forces recently advanced through forest areas immediately east of Chasiv Yar and further along the outskirts of the Kanal Microraion (easternmost Chasiv Yar).[39] Russian milbloggers claimed that elements of the Russian 200th Motorized Rifle Brigade (14th AC, Leningrad Military District [LMD]) advanced near Bohdanivka (northeast of Chasiv Yar) and that elements of the 98th Airborne (VDV) Division and 11th VDV Brigade reached the eastern edge of a section of the Siverskyi-Donets Donbas Canal south of Chasiv Yar.[40] Russian milbloggers claimed that there are reports that Ukrainian forces have begun to withdraw from Klishchiivka (southeast of Chasiv Yar), although one milblogger acknowledged that he had yet to confirm the reports with his own sources.[41] ISW has not observed confirmation of any of these Russian claims. Fighting continued northeast of Chasiv Yar near Bohdanivka; near the Kanal and Novyi microraions in eastern Chasiv Yar; southeast of Chasiv Yar near Klishchiivka and Andriivka; and south of Chasiv Yar near Shumy and Niu York.[42] Elements of the Russian 10th Spetsnaz Brigade (Main Military Intelligence Directorate [GRU]) are reportedly operating near Chasiv Yar.[43]

Russian forces recently advanced further northwest of Avdiivka and reportedly made additional gains on May 1. Geolocated footage published on May 1 indicates that Russian forces advanced southwest and west of Solovyove (northwest of Avdiivka), and Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces, including elements of the 55th Motorized Rifle Brigade (41st Combined Arms Army [CAA], Central Military District [CMD]), advanced further in the area towards Sokil (west of Solovyove and northwest of Avdiivka).[44] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces recently broke through Ukrainian defenses northeast of Ocheretyne (northwest of Avdiivka) and have been operating within southern Arkhanhelske (northeast of Ocheretyne and north of Avdiivka) for the past two days.[45] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces advanced in fields southwest and northwest of Ocheretyne, west of Novokalynove (north of Avdiivka), northwest of Keramik (north of Avdiivka), and east of Novooleksandrivka (northwest of Avdiivka and Ocheretyne).[46] Fighting also continued north of Avdiivka near Kalynove; northwest of Avdiivka near Prohres, Novopokrovske, and Berdychi; west of Avdiivka near Semenivka, Umanske, and Yasnobrodivka; and southwest of Avdiivka near Netaylove.[47] Elements of the Russian 9th Motorized Rifle Brigade (1st Donetsk People’s Republic [DNR] AC) are reportedly operating near Netaylove.[48]

Russian forces reportedly seized Paraskoviivka (southwest of Donetsk City) on May 1, although there were no confirmed Russian gains west or southwest of Donetsk City. Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces seized Paraskoviivka, although ISW has not observed visual confirmation of Russian forces operating within the settlement.[49] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces also advanced in fields southwest of Novomykhailivka (southwest of Donetsk City) and north of Volodymyrivka (southwest of Donetsk City).[50] Fighting continued west of Donetsk City near Krasnohorivka and Heorhiivka and southwest of Donetsk City near Novomykhailivka, Paraskoviivka, and Vodyane.[51] Elements of the Russian 103rd Motorized Rifle Regiment (150th Motorized Rifle Division, 8th CAA, Southern Military District [SMD]) are reportedly operating near Heorhiivka, and elements of the 238th Artillery Brigade (8th CAA, SMD) are reportedly operating near Krasnohorivka.[52]

Russian forces recently made a confirmed advance in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area amid continued fighting in the area on May 1. Geolocated footage published on May 1 indicates that Russian forces advanced in southern Urozhaine (south of Velyka Novosilka).[53] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces advanced near Urozhaine (south of Velyka Novosilka) along a front almost four kilometers wide and 800 meters deep and that Russian forces control southern Urozhaine.[54] A Russian source also claimed that Russian forces advanced up to 1.5 kilometers wide and 400 meters deep near Novodonetske (southeast of Velyka Novosilka), but ISW has not observed visual confirmation of this claim.[55] Fighting also continued near Staromayorske (south of Velyka Novosilka).[56] Elements of the Russian 11th Air Force and Air Defense Army (Russian Aerospace Forces and Eastern Military District [EMD]) are reportedly operating near Staromayorske, and elements of the 36th Motorized Rifle Brigade (29th CAA, EMD) are reportedly operating near Vuhledar.[57]

Russian Supporting Effort – Southern Axis (Russian objective: Maintain frontline positions and secure rear areas against Ukrainian strikes)

Positional engagements continued in western Zaporizhia Oblast on May 1, but there were no confirmed changes to the frontline in this area. Some Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces completely seized Robotyne after raising a Russian flag in the settlement, but other Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces retain positions in the settlement, that the footage of the Russian flag is not new, and that Russian forces withdrew from their positions in Robotyne after filming the footage.[58] A Russian milblogger claimed that eastern Robotyne is a contested “gray zone.”[59] Positional engagements continued near Robotyne, Bilohirya (northeast of Robotyne), and Mala Tokmachka (northeast of Robotyne).[60] Elements of the Russian 42nd Motorized Rifle Division (58th Combined Arms Army [CAA], Southern Military District [SMD]) are reportedly operating in the Zaporizhia direction, and elements of the 108th Airborne (VDV) Regiment (7th VDV Division) are reportedly operating west of Verbove.[61]

Positional engagements continued in east (left) bank Kherson Oblast near Krynky.[62] Elements of the Russian 810th Naval Infantry Brigade (Black Sea Fleet) are reportedly operating near Krynky.[63]

Russian Air, Missile, and Drone Campaign (Russian Objective: Target Ukrainian military and civilian infrastructure in the rear and on the frontline)

Russian forces conducted a limited missile strike targeting Odesa Oblast on the night of April 30 to May 1. Ukrainian officials reported that Russian forces struck Odesa City with three Iskander-M ballistic missiles and destroyed civilian infrastructure.[64] Geolocated footage published on May 1 indicates that Russian forces struck the peacetime headquarters of Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command in Odesa City, and multiple Russian sources, including the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Russian forces struck the headquarters.[65] It is unclear if Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command was currently operating out of the peacetime headquarters. Ukrainian Air Force Spokesperson Major Ilya Yevlash stated that Ukraine needs more Patriot air defense systems, which Ukrainian forces have previously successfully used to shoot down ballistic missiles including the Iskanders.[66]

Ukraine’s Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) reported that Russian forces have about 40 Zircon hypersonic missiles, 400 Onyx anti-ship missiles, 270 Kalibr cruise missiles, and 45 Kh-69 cruise missiles stockpiled as of the end of April 2024.[67] The GUR reported that Russia can produce 10 Zircon missiles, 10 Onyx missiles, 30 to 40 Kalibr missiles, and one to three Kh-69 missiles per month.

Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts (Russian objective: Expand combat power without conducting general mobilization)

Russian authorities continue recruiting convicted criminals to fight in Ukraine. Russian media reported on April 30 that Trans-Baikal Krai Head Alexander Osipov approved the release of Dmitry Vedernikov, head of the “Metsenatovskie” Trans-Baikal organized criminal group, from prison to fight with the Russian military in Ukraine.[68] Vedernikov was serving a 24-year sentence in a maximum-security penal colony, and Russian sources reported that Vedernikov left the penal colony for Ukraine sometime in 2024. The sources reported that Vedernikov first appealed in October 2023 to go to the front but that Russian authorities refused the request. Vedernikov claimed that two other members of the “Metsenatovskie” criminal group have left prison to fight in Ukraine.[69]

Russian authorities continue international military recruitment efforts to staff its units in Ukraine. The Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) published a list on May 1 of many Nepalese citizens serving in the Russian 1099th Motorized Rifle Regiment.[70] The GUR reported that this regiment is currently serving in Luhansk Oblast and that many of these soldiers have deserted after the unit suffered extreme losses during infantry-led “meat” assaults, brutality from Russian field commanders, and extrajudicial executions for refusing to comply with orders.

Russian Technological Adaptations (Russian objective: Introduce technological innovations to optimize systems for use in Ukraine)

The Kremlin continues to celebrate the role of the Russian defense industrial base (DIB) in sustaining Russia’s war effort. Russian President Vladimir Putin awarded multiple Russians with the “Hero in Labor” award and five DIB enterprises with the “Success in Labor” award, including Sevmash (shipbuilding enterprise) General Director Mikhail Budnichenko and “Raduga” State Engineering Bureau (missile and related technologies company) Chief Designer Eltugan Syzdykov.[71] Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu stated during a meeting at the Russian Joint Group of Forces Headquarters on May 1 that the Russian DIB needs to further increase its production to meet the needs of the Russian military.[72]

A Russian milblogger who has previously fought in occupied Ukraine claimed on May 1 that the increased prevalence of Russian “turtle” tanks – tanks jerry-rigged with metal plating covering most sides – on the battlefield indicates that the Russian DIB has failed to develop full-fledged defenses for Russian armor against drone strikes.[73] The milblogger claimed that the Lesochka and Volnoreza electronic warfare (EW) systems that Russian forces currently receive are not effective against Ukrainian drones, but that the more effective Troika and Ogonyok systems are too expensive for the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) to distribute among Russian forces at scale.[74]

Ukrainian Defense Industrial Efforts (Ukrainian objective: Develop its defense industrial base to become more self-sufficient in cooperation with US, European, and international partners)

ISW is not publishing coverage of Ukrainian defense industrial efforts today.

Activities in Russian-occupied areas (Russian objective: Consolidate administrative control of annexed areas; forcibly integrate Ukrainian citizens into Russian sociocultural, economic, military, and governance systems)

ISW is not publishing coverage of Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine today.

Russian Information Operations and Narratives

The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) continues to hyper-fixate on Russia’s ability to destroy Western-made weapons, likely to posture Russian military equipment as superior to Western designs and bolster domestic support for the war. The Russian MoD formally opened a display of about 30 captured Western-made Ukrainian military vehicles in Victory Park in Moscow on May 1 and encouraged Russian citizens to visit the exhibition.[75] Russia has previously given military and monetary awards to Russian soldiers who destroyed Western armored vehicles.[76]

A prominent Kremlin-affiliated Russian milblogger continued to frame ongoing Baltic and joint Central European-Ukrainian logistics projects against the backdrop of ongoing NATO Steadfast Defender 2024 exercises as escalatory against Russia. The milblogger baselessly claimed that such transportation projects are evidence that NATO is preparing for a conflict with Russia.[77] Russian officials and Kremlin mouthpieces have routinely and deliberately misrepresented NATO Steadfast Defender 2024 exercises as a threat against Russia despite the exercises’ defensive response to real Russian aggression against Ukraine and overt Russian threats against NATO states.[78]

Kremlin newswire TASS reported that the “Society of Russian-speaking Residents of Finland” is preparing documents to challenge the Finnish government’s decision to close its border with Russia, likely as part of ongoing hybrid operations against Finland.[79] The Society of Russian-speaking Residents of Finland claimed that the Finnish Supreme Administrative court refused to consider the society's first case so the society filed an appeal and announced that it will file a case with the European Council of Human Rights, likely at the end of May 2024, if the Finnish court rejects the case.[80] The Finnish government closed Finland’s border with Russia after Russia manufactured migrant crises on the Russian-Finnish border in November 2023 as part of a hybrid operation aimed to generate internal conflict within Finland and NATO.[81]

Significant activity in Belarus (Russian efforts to increase its military presence in Belarus and further integrate Belarus into Russian-favorable frameworks and Wagner Group activity in Belarus)

The Belarusian Ministry of Defense (MoD) reported on May 1 that Major General Alexander Bas is leading a Belarusian delegation participating in the “Security Belt 2024” command and staff exercise in Tehran, Iran.[82]

Note: ISW does not receive any classified material from any source, uses only publicly available information, and draws extensively on Russian, Ukrainian, and Western reporting and social media as well as commercially available satellite imagery and other geospatial data as the basis for these reports. References to all sources used are provided in the endnotes of each update.

12. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, May 1, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-may-1-2024

Key Takeaways:

• Iran: Iranian military leaders emphasized that they could hit Israel with a drone and missile attack much greater than what they launched on April 13. Iranian leaders are likely studying their April 13 attack to learn lessons and understand how to more effectively penetrate US and partner air defenses.
• Gaza Strip: Hamas is considering an Egyptian-proposed ceasefire deal and has requested clarification on some of its contents. Egyptian officials expect a Hamas response to the deal in the coming days. Hamas has not changed its maximalist demands since December 2023.
• West Bank: Jordan accused Israeli settlers of attacking a humanitarian aid convoy traveling through the West Bank to the Gaza Strip. The IDF afterward imposed a “closed military zone” where the attack occurred.
• Yemen: The United States conducted a preemptive strike targeting a Houthi uncrewed surface vessel in Yemen. The United States determined that the vessel posed an imminent threat to US forces and nearby commercial traffic.

IRAN UPDATE, MAY 1, 2024

May 1, 2024 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Iran Update, May 1, 2024

Amin Soltani, Andie Parry, Annika Ganzeveld, Kathryn Tyson, Kelly Campa, and Nicholas Carl

Information Cutoff: 2:00pm ET

The Iran Update provides insights into Iranian and Iranian-sponsored activities abroad that undermine regional stability and threaten US forces and interests. It also covers events and trends that affect the stability and decision-making of the Iranian regime. The Critical Threats Project (CTP) at the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) provides these updates regularly based on regional events. Click here to see CTP and ISW’s interactive map of Israeli ground operations. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.

CTP-ISW defines the “Axis of Resistance” as the unconventional alliance that Iran has cultivated in the Middle East since the Islamic Republic came to power in 1979. This transnational coalition is comprised of state, semi-state, and non-state actors that cooperate with one another to secure their collective interests. Tehran considers itself to be both part of the alliance and its leader. Iran furnishes these groups with varying levels of financial, military, and political support in exchange for some degree of influence or control over their actions. Some are traditional proxies that are highly responsive to Iranian direction, while others are partners over which Iran exerts more limited influence. Members of the Axis of Resistance are united by their grand strategic objectives, which include eroding and eventually expelling American influence from the Middle East, destroying the Israeli state, or both. Pursuing these objectives and supporting the Axis of Resistance to those ends have become cornerstones of Iranian regional strategy.

We do not report in detail on war crimes because these activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We utterly condemn violations of the laws of armed conflict and the Geneva Conventions and crimes against humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.

Several Iranian military leaders boasted on May 1 that they could strike Israel with a drone and missile attack much larger than what they launched on April 13 and thus inflict greater damage on Israel.[1] IRGC Commander Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami suggested that Iran could have launched two or three additional waves of drones and missiles against Israel and that each successive wave would have reduced the efficacy of US and partner air defenses.[2] IRGC Aerospace Force Commander Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajji Zadeh similarly asserted that his service used “only 20 percent of [its] strength” in the April 13 drone and missile attack.[3] CTP-ISW has previously assessed that Iran modeled its April 13 attack on recent Russian attacks in Ukraine and that Iran designed its strike package to defeat Israeli air defenses, even though the United States and its partners intercepted around 99 percent of the projectiles. Iranian leaders are almost certainly studying the April 13 attack to learn lessons and understand how to defeat US and partner air defenses in the future.[4]

Several senior Iranian military officers, including Salami, separately framed the April 13 drone and missile attack as successful in that it demonstrated Iranian willingness to now attack Israel directly.[5] These statements echo similar remarks from Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on April 22, during which he praised senior military commanders for their role in the attack and said that “the willpower of the Iranian nation and armed forces” matters more than how many munitions Iran launched or how many munitions hit their target.[6] These statements are also consistent with Salami and other regime officials saying in recent weeks that Iran has adopted a new policy of targeting Israel directly in retaliation for Israeli attacks on Iranian interests.[7]

Hamas asked international mediators to clarify the terms of two sections of the new Egyptian-proposed ceasefire proposal, according to an Egyptian official speaking to Israeli media.[8] Hamas requested assurances that the second stage of the deal would facilitate the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip and requested clarification on the unconditional return of displaced Gazans to the northern Gaza Strip.[9] Egyptian sources speaking to a United Kingdom-based, Qatari-owned outlet said that an Israeli delegation arrived in Cairo on April 30 to discuss Hamas’ concerns and amendments to the deal.[10] The Egyptian officials expect that Hamas will deliver its final response to the deal "at the end of the week."[11]

Key Takeaways:

• Iran: Iranian military leaders emphasized that they could hit Israel with a drone and missile attack much greater than what they launched on April 13. Iranian leaders are likely studying their April 13 attack to learn lessons and understand how to more effectively penetrate US and partner air defenses.
• Gaza Strip: Hamas is considering an Egyptian-proposed ceasefire deal and has requested clarification on some of its contents. Egyptian officials expect a Hamas response to the deal in the coming days. Hamas has not changed its maximalist demands since December 2023.
• West Bank: Jordan accused Israeli settlers of attacking a humanitarian aid convoy traveling through the West Bank to the Gaza Strip. The IDF afterward imposed a “closed military zone” where the attack occurred.
• Yemen: The United States conducted a preemptive strike targeting a Houthi uncrewed surface vessel in Yemen. The United States determined that the vessel posed an imminent threat to US forces and nearby commercial traffic.

Gaza Strip

Axis of Resistance objectives:

• Erode the will of the Israeli political establishment and public to sustain clearing operations in the Gaza Strip
• Reestablish Hamas as the governing authority in the Gaza Strip

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Air Force struck several Palestinian fighters in the central Gaza Strip on May 1. The IDF 99th Division directed a strike on a Hamas fighter who had fired rockets targeting Israeli forces along the Netzarim corridor.[12] The IDF Air Force also stuck two Palestinian fighters approaching Israeli forces in the central Gaza Strip.[13]

Local Palestinian sources reported that the IDF targeted several areas of the central and southern Gaza Strip on May 1. Local sources reported that Israeli forces fired artillery and small arms in Bureij, eastern Rafah, and Nuseirat.[14]

Palestinian militias targeted Israeli forces with mortar and rocket fire at least six times along the Netzarim corridor on May 1.[15] Palestinian militias have claimed almost daily indirect fire attacks targeting Israeli forces near the Netzarim corridor since April 18.[16]

The IDF is reportedly expanding the declared humanitarian zones in the southern and central Gaza Strip to house displaced Gazans currently sheltering in Rafah.[17] The IDF is expected to declare a new “safer“ humanitarian zone just south of the Netzarim corridor in the central Gaza Strip, according to an Israeli Army Radio correspondent.[18] The new zone is expected to extend south from Wadi Gaza to the western outskirts of Bureij and Nuseirat.[19] The zone is adjacent to the Netzarim corridor that the IDF fully controls.[20] The IDF previously announced an expansion to the al Mawasi humanitarian zone on April 28.[21] The al Mawasi expansion extends from the formerly declared humanitarian zone eastward to the Salah ad Din road and northward into Deir al Balah. Netanyahu confirmed on April 30 that the IDF had begun the humanitarian evacuation of Rafah.[22] The Israel Army Radio correspondent said that about 150,000 Gazans have already evacuated from Rafah—presumably since the IDF withdrew from the southern Gaza Strip on April 7.[23]

An Israeli Army Radio correspondent noted that the new humanitarian zone in the central Gaza Strip would be a declared combat-free zone like the al Mawai zone. The zone is also near a humanitarian aid distribution area on the coast of the central Gaza Strip that the IDF began constructing in April 2024 to service the US-constructed pier off the coast.[24]The proposed humanitarian zone sits atop uncleared areas of the Gaza Strip and near intact Hamas battalions in the central camps area, however.[25]

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on May 1 that Israel will move forward with a clearing operation into Rafah if “Hamas continues to condition a hostage deal on ending the war,” according to US and Israeli government sources speaking to Axios.[26] Israeli officials said that Netanyahu reiterated that Israel will not commit to ending the war in the Gaza Strip. Israel has not agreed to the Egyptian-proposed ceasefire, despite being involved in its formulation.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said that the IDF “is prepared to carry out any operational mission in the Rafah area” after a meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.[27] Gallant’s comment comes a day after several Israeli political and military officials suggested that an Israeli clearing operation into Rafah could begin within the next few days.[28]

Chinese Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Deng Li met with senior Hamas officials in Beijing on April 28.[29] Hamas said that the officials discussed efforts to reach a ceasefire, increase humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, and Chinaese efforts to “unite the Palestinian ranks,” referring to Chinese-hosted reconciliation talks between Hamas and Fatah on April 26.[30] Hamas said that Deng expressed “readiness to provide everything necessary” to facilitate Palestinian unity and support Palestine in international forums. CTP-ISW previously assessed that the success of China’s talks to facilitate Hamas’ inclusion in the Palestinian Authority would result in a Hamas-influenced government in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.[31]

The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT)—a department within the Israeli Defense Ministry—opened the Erez border crossing into the northern Gaza Strip on May 1.[32] The IDF said that 30 humanitarian aid trucks from Jordan transited through the Erez crossing “after a careful security check.”[33] The opening of the crossing is meant to accelerate the delivery of humanitarian aid to the northern Gaza Strip. The Israeli war cabinet reportedly ordered the opening of the crossing on April 5, but IDF engineering forces had to first rebuild roads and other infrastructure in the area before opening the crossing.[34] The Erez crossing had been closed since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.[35]

Hamas launched four rockets from the Gaza Strip at a town in southern Israel on May 1.[36] The IDF said the rockets landed in open areas and caused no damage.[37]

Recorded reports of attacks; CTP-ISW cannot independently verify impact.

West Bank

Axis of Resistance objectives:

• Establish the West Bank as a viable front against Israel

Israeli forces have engaged Palestinian fighters in at least one location in the West Bank since CTP-ISW's last information cutoff on April 30. A Palestinian fighter tried to detonate an improvised explosive device (IED) targeting Israeli forces in Azzun, west of Nablus, on May 1.[38] Israeli forces later destroyed the IED.[39]

Israeli forces detained nine wanted individuals across the West Bank on May 1.[40]

The Jordanian Foreign Affairs Ministry released a statement claiming that Israeli settlers blocked and attacked Jordanian aid trucks crossing into the West Bank on May 1.[41] The convoys were delivering humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip.[42] The IDF imposed a "closed military zone” around the Allenby Bridge Crossing, where the incident occurred, after the settlers blocked and attacked the trucks.[43] The Jordanian Foreign Affairs Ministry stated that the settlers inflicted ”material damage” to the aid trucks but did not provide further details.[44] The Jordanian Foreign Affairs Ministry stated that the aid convoys continued their journey to the Gaza Strip after the incident.[45] Israeli media reported that Israeli protesters continued to block the passage to Jordanian trucks after the IDF closed the area.[46]

This map is not an exhaustive depiction of clashes and demonstrations in the West Bank.

Southern Lebanon and Golan Heights

Axis of Resistance objectives:

• Deter Israel from conducting a ground operation into Lebanon
• Prepare for an expanded and protracted conflict with Israel in the near term
• Expel the United States from Syria

Lebanese Hezbollah has conducted at least six attacks from southern Lebanon into northern Israel since CTP-ISW's last data cutoff on April 30.[47]

IDF Chief of Staff Gen. Herzi Halevi visited the Israel-Lebanon border on May 1.[48] Halevi met with several commanders, including IDF Northern Command Commander Maj. Gen. Uri Gordin.[49] Halevi said that the IDF is conducting ”offensive defense” in northern Israel and that the IDF is “preparing an attack“ in the region, without specifying further.[50]

Recorded reports of attacks; CTP-ISW cannot independently verify impact.

Iran and Axis of Resistance

An Iraqi Sadrist politician, Bahaa al Araji, claimed in an interview on May 1 that Iranian-backed Iraqi militias may resume their attacks on US forces on May 4 or 5.[51] It is unclear, however, whether Araji was speculating or referencing private information that he has. IRGC Quds Force Commander Brig. Gen. Esmail Ghaani ordered the militias, including Kataib Hezbollah and Harakat Hezbollah al Nujaba, to suspend attacks targeting US forces in February 2024 after a one-way drone attack killed three US personnel in northeastern Jordan.[52] Kataib Hezbollah and Harakat Hezbollah al Nujaba “fiercely resisted” Ghaani’s order to stop attacks but ultimately complied.[53] Iranian-backed Iraqi militias have indicated in recent weeks a desire to resume regular attacks after Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammad Shia al Sudani traveled to Washington, DC. The militias presumably wanted Sudani to agree to a concrete timeline for the removal of US forces from Iraq. CTP-ISW has assessed that militia leadership has been divided on whether to resume attacks since Sudani’s visit.[54]

US Central Command (CENTCOM) reported that it conducted a preemptive strike targeting an uncrewed surface vessel (USV) in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen on April 30.[55] CENTCOM determined that the USV presented an imminent threat to US coalition forces and commercial vessels in the region.

Iranian officials and state media denied a recent BBC report detailing how Iranian security forces molested and killed a 16-year-old girl in September 2022.[56] The BCC report, citing a “highly confidential” IRGC document, detailed how three members of Ansar-e Hezbollah—a semi-official, vigilante group—abducted, sexually assaulted, and killed Nika Shakarami for participating in the Mahsa Amini protests in September 2022.[57] Iranian Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi and IRGC-affiliated media described the report as “fake” and “ridiculous” on May 1.[58] The Tehran Prosecutor’s Office separately filed criminal charges against unspecified activists and journalists who recirculated the report for “publishing false and insulting propaganda against the regime.”[59]

Iran faces worsening economic conditions that risk driving large-scale, anti-regime unrest. The Iranian rial has continued to devalue, hitting a record low of 705,000 rial to the dollar on April 14.[60] Retirees protested in several cities on May 1 to complain about the deteriorating conditions.[61] Anti-regime outlets reported that citizens said that they cannot afford basic necessities, such as electricity, gas, and water.[62] Poor economic performance and regime mismanagement has long driven widespread unrest in Iran, such as the countrywide gasoline protests in late 2019.[63] This domestic unrest often adopts explicitly revolutionary tones focused on overthrowing the Islamic Republic. Iran’s worsening economic conditions are compounded by growing frustration with the renewed regime crackdown on mandatory veiling. The Iranian Law Enforcement Command (LEC) resumed enforcing the mandatory hijab law on April 13 after reducing its enforcement during and after the 2022-2023 Mahsa Amini protests.[64] Iranians protested the arrest of an unveiled woman at a metro station in Tehran on April 23, marking one of the first hijab-related protests in Iran since the renewed crackdown on April 13.[65]

13. Houthis could sever global internet lines by targeting submarine cables says Yemeni expert

Houthis could sever global internet lines by targeting submarine cables says Yemeni expert

Tensions rise in the Red Sea as Houthis escalate military operations and hint at potential cyberwarfare by targeting submarine cables, potentially disrupting global internet connectivity.

https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/yemeni-expert-warns-houthis-could-sever-global-internet-lines-by-targeting-submarine-cables-799501

By ANWAR MUNEER/THE MEDIA LINEMAY 2, 2024 05:20Updated: MAY 2, 2024 07:32

Jerusalem Post

Houthi control over areas with submarine communication cables raises fears of potential cyber warfare that could disrupt global internet connectivity amid escalating military operations in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab Strait, posing significant threats to international trade and security in these waters.

For more stories from The Media Line go to themedialine.org

Fahmi Mohammad, a technical specialist at the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology in Sana’a, spoke to The Media Line about the extent of the Houthis’ technical capabilities to carry out such an attack and the extent to which the group’s leaders can exert political pressure through this card to achieve their goals.

“The Ansar Allah group (the Houthis) controls the majority of the locations through which these cables pass,” he explained, noting that the fiber optic cables are located at the bottom of the sea and hundreds of meters below the earth’s surface. “Accessing [them] requires advanced capabilities that allow access to the depths of the sea and handling the cables.”

Despite doubts about the Houthis’ possession of these capabilities, Mohammed does not rule out that the Houthis do have submarines and advanced weapons capable of carrying out such attacks “especially after Ansar Allah group announced It has many boats and submarines that are technically capable of reaching these cables.”

Fahmy added that the Houthis, through the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology and the telecommunications and internet companies under its control, employ a group of engineers, some of whom work directly with the Chinese company Huawei.

Armed Houthi followers ride on the back of a pick-up truck during a parade in solidarity with the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and to show support to Houthi strikes on ships in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, in Sanaa, Yemen January 29, 2024. (credit: KHALED ABDULLAH/REUTERS)“They [the Yemeni engineers] have sufficient technical capacity to participate in any military operation targeting submarine cables if Ansar Allah wanted that,” Mohammed confirmed.

On February 24, HGC Global Communications Limited announced that access to the Internet in the East African country of Djibouti had become more difficult, according to the Associated Press. The press linked the outage incident to events in the Red Sea at the time. Additionally, the company said it was forced to intervene to divert and repair Internet traffic after four out of 15 submarine cables in the Red Sea were cut.

Cables in the Red Sea

Sixteen submarine cables pass through the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandab Strait, linking the continents of Asia and Europe and transporting 17% to 30% of global Internet traffic, serving more than two billion people.

Speaking to The Media Line on condition of anonymity, Ali Al-Samman, a committee leader within Yemen’s Public Telecommunications Corporation, discussed the situation, noting he was not authorized to speak publicly.

"The submarine internet cables that pass through the Bab al-Mandab Strait are under our control,” he confirmed. “Any option proposed by the leadership of Ansar Allah group will be implemented to achieve its [the Houthis] goals, and it will not be reversed until the demands of Ansar Allah group, which is to end the siege on the Gaza Strip, is achieved."

The same source added that the Houthis have the military and technological capabilities to control these cables fully. He said, "The Houthi’s political leadership took upon itself the duty of supporting the Palestinian cause and worked to do so through military operations.”

“Yemen’s location, which intersects with the interests of the world, will preserve these interests unless they go against supporting the Palestinian cause,” Al-Samman explained.

National Security and Strategy expert Omar Al-Raddad stressed to The Media Line that targeting submarine cables is an option for the Houthis if the American-British strikes continue and achieve their goals.

"There are several factors that contribute to taking this option, including support from Iran, which may use this option to exert pressure during its discussions with the West, meaning, with support of Iranian technologies, there is an increased chance of such an attack occurring," Al-Raddad added.

The Houthis control internet services in Yemen, including areas under the control of the internationally recognized government (IRG), and implement their policies in this sector according to their best interests. This includes blocking news websites and cutting internet services in some areas.

Journalist Saddam Al-Huraibi spoke to The Media Line about this pressure card, stressing that the Houthis have used the internet and communications since their control of Sana’a. He added: “ I do not rule out that the Houthis will threaten or actually carry out military operations to target submarine cables in the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandab Strait.”

Al-Huraibi confirmed that despite the televised statements by the Houthi’s leader, during which he spoke about continued military escalation and no intention to target submarine cables, leaders within the Houthi group hinted via social media platforms at the possibility of using this card within their military operations in the Red Sea.

Pro-Houthi journalist Maher Al-Khaled confirmed this during an interview with The Media Line, saying, “Communication cables pass under lands which Yemen has sovereignty, and any option to use them is on the table if the United States, Israel, and their allies continue their military operations.”

Since mid-November 2023, the Houthis have been targeting commercial ships heading towards Israel’s ports as part of operations that led to the detention of one ship, the sinking of another, and the exposure of many vessels to significant danger and even damage. In response to these operations, forces from the United States and Britain launched a series of attacks on Houthi targets. To respond to that, the Houthis declared that they would use all the available means for them to stand with the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Jerusalem Post

14. China Has Crossed Biden’s Red Line on Ukraine

China Has Crossed Biden’s Red Line on Ukraine

The president warned Xi not to provide ‘material support’ to Russia. Will there be consequences?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-has-crossed-bidens-red-line-russia-ukraine-war-732cdcf3?mod=Searchresults_pos8&page=1

By Matt Pottinger

April 30, 2024 4:55 pm ET

Antony Blinken meets with Xi Jinping in Beijing, April 26. PHOTO: MARK SCHIEFELBEIN/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

President Biden warned China two years ago not to provide “material support” for Russia’s war in Ukraine. On Friday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken conceded that Xi Jinping ignored that warning. China, Mr. Blinken said, was “overwhelmingly the No. 1 supplier” of Russia’s military industrial base, with the “material effect” of having fundamentally changed the course of the war. Whatever Mr. Biden chooses to do next will be momentous for global security and stability.

Mr. Biden can either enforce his red line through sanctions or other means, or he can signal a collapse of American resolve by applying merely symbolic penalties. Beijing and its strategic partners in Moscow, Tehran, Pyongyang and Caracas would surely interpret half-hearted enforcement as a green light to deepen their campaign of global chaos. Mr. Xi sees a historic opportunity here to undermine the West.

This is a moment akin to President Obama’s 2013 red-line failure in Syria. When dictator Bashar al-Assad defied Mr. Obama’s warning not to use chemical weapons on his people, the president abstained from military action, and the consequences were dire. Six months later Moscow launched its 2014 invasion of Crimea—the beginning of the now-decadelong Ukraine War. A failure to act decisively against China now would open a path for Russian victory in Ukraine.

Mr. Biden drew his red line on March 18, 2022, three weeks after Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. “I made no threats,” Mr. Biden said after a video call with Mr. Xi that day. But Mr. Biden said he made sure the Chinese president understood he would “be putting himself in significant jeopardy” and risking China’s economic ties with the U.S. and Europe if he materially supported Russia’s war.

Mr. Biden’s cabinet reinforced his ultimatum with specific warnings. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo warned that the administration could “essentially shut” China’s biggest chip maker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., in response to its chips being used by the Russian military. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen threatened financial sanctions. She followed up with a pledge late last year “to take decisive, and surgical, action against financial institutions that facilitate the supply of Russia’s war machine.”

Trade data suggest Beijing was careful to avoid overtly crossing the red line in 2022. But in 2023, when the Biden administration applied only token sanctions on Iranian entities that provided thousands of kamikaze drones to the Russians—drones that have saturated Ukrainian air defenses and caused widespread carnage—the Chinese probably decided that Mr. Biden’s bluster was a bluff. In March 2023, Mr. Xi visited the Kremlin in a bold show of solidarity with Mr. Putin. It turned out to be a watershed in Moscow’s war, effectively turning the conflict into a Chinese proxy war with the West.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies found that Chinese support for Russia’s military manufacturing skyrocketed beginning in early 2023. Mr. Blinken specifically mentioned to his Chinese counterparts “machine tools, microelectronics, nitrocellulose—which is critical to making munitions and rocket propellants—and other dual-use items that Moscow is using to ramp up its defense industrial base.” News reports over the past year also point to China’s provision of military vehicles, drones, bulletproof vests, gunpowder and satellite imagery.

Fracturing the West through proxy wars in Europe and the Middle East fits neatly within Mr. Xi’s exhortation to his bureaucracy to seek opportunity in international turmoil. “The most important characteristic of the world is, in a word, ‘chaos,’ and this trend appears likely to continue,” Mr. Xi told a seminar of Chinese Communist Party leaders in January 2021. “The times and trends are on our side.” As Mr. Xi departed a Kremlin meeting in March 2023, he went further, effectively declaring himself and Mr. Putin agents of chaos. “Right now there are changes, the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years,” he said. “And we are the ones driving these changes together.”

As the Biden team contemplates the potential costs of imposing sanctions on major Chinese banks and other systemically important companies, it must also weigh the costs of failing to do so. China’s leaders are vulnerable to meaningful sanctions. In late 2017, the Trump administration quietly but firmly threatened to impose sanctions on China’s main energy producer after Beijing resisted U.S. requests to restrict oil exports to North Korea. China knew the threat was credible and quickly agreed to co-sponsor an unprecedented United Nations Security Council resolution capping exports.

Today, that credibility is looking threadbare. Beijing’s official statements after the Blinken visit made no mention of the American complaint, and a Chinese Foreign Ministry official said flatly: “The Ukraine issue is not an issue between China and the United States. The U.S. side should not turn it into one.”

Worse, there are signs Beijing and its axis of chaos, which includes Russia, Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela, is planning the next phase of violent disruption. Beijing welcomed a delegation from Hamas on the same day Mr. Blinken left China—a fact Chinese officials kept from the American delegation. More ominously, Mr. Xi dispatched one of his most trusted aides, former spy agency chief and current Politburo member Chen Wenqing, to Moscow for a nine-day visit. The purpose of the trip was to tighten intelligence and security cooperation and pave the way for Mr. Putin’s visit to Beijing next month.

In a telling essay this month in the Chinese Communist Party’s top ideological and policy journal, Chen Yixin—the current head of China’s premier spy agency—promoted the idea of waging “struggle” far beyond China’s borders. Mr. Chen’s essay in the magazine Qiushi included a line that may as well serve as the informal slogan of the axis of chaos: “Seek advantages and avoid disadvantages in chaos.”

Mr. Pottinger served as deputy national security adviser, 2019-21. He chairs the China program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and is author of “The Boiling Moat: Urgent Steps to Defend Taiwan,” forthcoming in July.

15. ‘I Will Never Forget Any of It’: Brittney Griner Is Ready to Talk

Compare the two systems of US and Russia:

Excerpts:

In the morning, she writes, she was taken to an examination room, where a man who said he was a doctor stood with seven armed guards. She was told to remove her clothes, which she did. He gestured for her to remove her boxers too. Fear coursed through her, but she complied, standing without covering herself or cowering. They began photographing her from every angle — a final display of total power and control over her body.

Afterward, she was driven to a plane and boarded, though she had no idea where it was going. She was too wired to sleep and too scared to eat, afraid of being poisoned. The plane finally landed, in Abu Dhabi. As she disembarked, she was greeted by Roger Carstens, the special presidential envoy for hostage affairs in the State Department. He handed her a pin that read “We Are BG.” Griner exhaled, allowing relief to sink in for the first time. As she walked onto the tarmac, a man walked toward her. She recognized him as Viktor Bout, the notorious Russian arms dealer for whom she had been traded. As they passed each other, he reached for a handshake, and she instinctively complied. He offered congratulations. His hands were soft compared with her roughened ones; later she heard that he spent his time in prison painting pictures of cats. She boarded the plane Bout had come from.

‘I Will Never Forget Any of It’: Brittney Griner Is Ready to Talk

The New York Times · by J Wortham · May 2, 2024

Credit...Mickalene Thomas for The New York Times

In an interview, the basketball star reveals her humiliation — and friendships — in Russian prison, and her path to recovery.

Credit...Mickalene Thomas for The New York Times

By

J Wortham is a staff writer for the magazine. They interviewed the basketball star over a weekend in Phoenix, Ariz.

• May 2, 2024

On the March afternoon when I met Brittney Griner in Phoenix, the wildflowers were in peak efflorescence, California poppies and violet cones of lupine exploding everywhere. Griner was in bloom too. She was practicing with some local ballers brought in by her W.N.B.A. team, the Mercury, to prepare its players for the start of the season in May. On the court, Griner was loose, confident, trading jokes with the other players between runs. She snatched a pass out of the air, drove it hard in the paint and pulled up to shoot, the ball kissing the net as it sailed through. Everyone, including Nate Tibbetts, the Mercury’s newly hired head coach, who dropped by to watch, erupted in cheers. Griner nodded to herself in quiet satisfaction, keeping her head down as she jogged back to run the play again.

Listen to this article, read by January LaVoy

Less than two years ago, Griner was starting her nine-year sentence in a penal colony in Russia, sewing uniforms for the Russian military and subsisting on spoiled food. She lived for glimpses of the sky, which she could see only through weathered rebar when the guards took prisoners outside. She had never been further from the sport that made her a household name. She could barely get through multiple rounds of horse, her lung capacity shot from smoking so many cigarettes. She rarely got to hear from her wife, Cherelle, or her family and friends, and she had no idea when — or if — she would be coming home.

When, after 10 months in Russia, she was finally released, she jumped back into playing, thinking the routine and familiarity would ground her back in herself and her life. But the transition was rocky. All last season, she was plagued by injuries and insecurities. The confidence of being one of the W.N.B.A.’s most powerful “bigs” had evaporated. It got so bad that she took a midseason leave. “I don’t feel like I really got my body back until right now,” she told me in Phoenix. “When I look back at the videos, it’s cringe. The season, any pictures from last year — I don’t want to see it or look at it.” She had a lot of self-doubt and didn’t think she could do it. “Maybe I should stop. Maybe I’ll never be the same player that I was before. Maybe this was the big rift in my career, where it’s like, I’m never going to get to that top.”

The next day, Griner loped into a conference room above the court, wearing team-branded workout clothes and an elegant chain, dimples prominent in her wide grin. Her teeth were perfect — her first big purchase after going pro. She was gracious and kind, offering to retrieve drinks from the team fridge, making sure everyone around her was comfortable, taking her seat last. “I actually feel like my old self,” she told me. “I’m moving like my old self. But still, in the back of my head, there’s a nagging ‘What if?’ You know, what if it doesn’t go the way you want it to?”

Brittney Griner standing courtside before her first game back with the Phoenix Mercury in May 2023.

On May 7, Griner will publish her memoir “Coming Home,” written with Michelle Burford, documenting her harrowing ordeal in Russia and her return home. The book is brutal, rendering in excruciating detail the conditions of her imprisonment and the fear and desperation that consumed her daily. Griner has always relied on writing for her sanity, starting in middle school, when she endured bullying for her height and androgynous appearance, and this memoir reveals someone deeply familiar with her interiority — she’s vulnerable and raw but has also had enough therapy to use humor to process tragedy. In Russia, she journaled in the margins of her Bible and a Sudoku book, but the details are also seared in her mind. “I will never forget any of it,” she told me, enunciating each word to make her point.

As we talked, Griner did her best to arrange her 6-foot-9 frame into a low-slung leather chair. She initiated our conversation by asking what hair products I used: Her curls, she confided, have been in recovery, too. When images of Griner were broadcast around the world with her long locs shorn, it seemed like an indication of the cruelty she was enduring. But Griner told me that cutting her hair was actually a rare moment of agency during her imprisonment. Her locs were always damp. There was no hair dryer, and her hair never fully dried after a shower. All the women were forced outside to exercise, she recalled, despite freezing temperatures and snow. The prison was barely heated, and she worried she would catch pneumonia. She decided to cut her locs off. “The cut was horrible,” she told me with a laugh, “but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.” There was a makeshift salon in prison, and she found tenderness in the hairdresser’s care. “Minus the bars on the window,” she said, “I was like, I kind of felt like I was in an actual shop right now. At least I can get away in here, a little bit.”

“I thought I was going to be there for the long haul,” Griner says. “At least like three or four years, maybe.”Credit...Mickalene Thomas for The New York Times

It might have been the only time during those 10 months that she felt somewhat free. Griner writes in her book that in elementary school, she saw white Bengal tigers on a school trip to the Houston aquarium. She watched them, wondering what they were thinking. In her own captivity, she had a sense. Anytime she was transported anywhere in Russia, she writes, she was put in a steel cage so small that she had to sit sideways, her knees cramped against her chest, her head brushing the top. Once, at a court appearance, a guard locked her wrists together and then chained the lock to her own wrist. Griner felt like a dog on a leash. The humiliating treatment felt deliberate, spectacle as punishment: She was a prize or a pawn, paraded as an example of Russian power.

Griner’s voice, a languid baritone, remained steady as she told me about the horrors in prison: watching fellow inmates being treated roughly and denied medication; hearing of a young woman who died of cancer; being forced to undress and be photographed nude by doctors. She told me that she prefers when people ask her to talk about what happened rather than avoiding it out of politeness. “People walking on eggshells?” she said. “That doesn’t help me.” But as she spoke about her experiences, her eyes locked on mine and they lost some of their natural impish glint. She wrapped her arms protectively around her rib cage and chest. “The waves have gotten better,” she told me, describing the fluctuations of her emotional state. Athletes are used to dissociating from pain to play. Joints without cartilage, tweaked backs, aching ankles — Griner has had them all, and is well accustomed to pushing through. But this is an experience that will linger in her bones.

On the morning of Feb. 15, 2022, Griner didn’t want to leave her warm bed, where she was cuddling with her wife, Cherelle Griner, at their home in Phoenix. But she had to make her plane to Russia. She’d been playing for a team there for nearly a decade to supplement her W.N.B.A. salary. As one of the highest-profile players in the league, she recently signed a contract for a little over $150,000 for the 2024 season; in Russia, though, she could net more than $1 million. Playing there wasn’t entirely about the money. A kid from Texas, she relished the opportunity to live and travel abroad. And she was treated to the real superstar experience: elite parties, fancy dinners, chartered planes. It was a taste of the life enjoyed by her higher-paid peers in the N.B.A. But working year-round was taking a toll on her body. She thought that this season in Russia might be her last.

Her wife usually packed her bags, loading them with American staples like candy, Sweet Baby Ray’s barbecue sauce, pancake mix and Creole seasoning. This time, Cherelle organized only the big roller bags, leaving Griner responsible for her carry-ons. When Griner finally got up, she didn’t clear them out and repack them. Instead, she hurriedly shoved in her essentials, a Nintendo Switch, a few pairs of underwear and sweatpants and her laptop. She nearly missed her plane.

Griner playing with her Russian team in 2017 during the W.N.B.A. off-season.Credit...Pavel Lisitsyn/Sputnik, via Associated Press

When she arrived in Moscow, she stopped in customs before her transfer flight to Yekaterinburg, a smaller city where her Russian team was based. She loaded her carry-ons onto the conveyor belt at the security checkpoint and prepared to walk through the metal detector. She noticed agents pulling people out of line — all foreigners. “They were singling out anybody that didn’t look Russian,” she said. “I just felt like they were searching for something.”

At first, when they flagged her bags, Griner wasn’t too concerned. This was her eighth season in Russia; she paid taxes there and was familiar with the country and its laws. The customs agent asked her to search her own items, which she found unusual. As soon as she felt the cannabis-oil cartridge stowed in a zippered inner pocket in her backpack, her stomach sank. Medical marijuana had been prescribed by a physician in Arizona to treat her chronic pain, but it was illegal in Russia. “I was like: Oh, [expletive]. Oh, this is about to be bad,” she told me, and continued to detail the events of the day. Another cartridge was found in a roller bag. She panicked, calling and texting Cherelle and her family. No one answered. It was the middle of the night in the United States, and they were all asleep.

Griner was told to wait while the agent took the cartridges for testing, along with her passport. Other officials arrived and demanded that she sign a document in Russian. Nyet, she replied, pushing it away. She used Google Translate to look up another word: advocat, meaning “lawyer.” They pressured her to sign until she buckled, writing her name. The agents took her outside and loaded her into an unofficial-looking sedan and drove her to a redbrick building. The officials later came back with terrifying news: They had tested her cartridges and said they found 0.7 grams of cannabis oil total in two vape pens. Griner was charged with illegal drug possession and smuggling a “significant amount” of narcotics into the country, punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a fine of a million rubles, which was then about $15,000.

By now, Cherelle and Griner’s agent, Lindsay Colas, were awake. Griner had been able to send a location pin through WhatsApp of where she was being held, and Colas frantically arranged for a Russian lawyer, Alex Boykov, to meet her. When Boykov arrived, investigators continued interrogating Griner. They wanted to know why she was in Russia, why she was bringing “drugs” in, whom they were for. Afterward, she was handcuffed and squeezed into another tiny civilian car. For hours, she sat hunched over in pain as she was driven all over Moscow — a sightseeing tour from hell. The car finally stopped at a local detention center.

Griner was led to a cell and given some bedding for a discolored mattress. Her phone had been taken, but she had been allowed to keep a small bag of personal items, which she packed with some clothes and her Sudoku book. The room stank: A feces-stained hole in the ground served as the toilet. The prison guards brought her a milky porridge with a piece of oily fish that sickened her. She had no way to clean herself — no towels, soap, toothpaste, shampoo or deodorant. She ripped T-shirts into several pieces: for her teeth, for her body, for toilet paper. The bed was too small for her frame, and her calves dangled over the edge. Her old sports injuries flared up as she lay there, writhing in agony. The next morning, prison guards snickered outside her cell. She caught some English mixed with the Russian: “American,” and then, “basketball.” They flipped open the peephole and peered at her. “I’ve never been so dirty in my life,” she said. The degradation would push her to contemplate suicide. “I felt horrible.”

At her arrest hearing on Feb. 19, she was put in a small cage and watched facial expressions for clues about the proceedings. Boykov translated: She was denied bail and house arrest and told she would be detained for at least 30 days. Later, Griner got even worse news: On Feb. 24, Russia invaded Ukraine. President Vladimir V. Putin warned the United States not to get involved in Russian affairs. The stakes of her arrest were already high, but the war ratcheted them up; Griner understood that she was now caught in the middle of a standoff between global rivals.

Soon, Griner was moved to a women’s detention center about two hours outside Moscow. Her head spun. “Going from being free, you know, having freedom of movement, to have absolutely nothing, not even the necessities. … ” Her face turned stony as she sat in the memory. “That quick change to being in a box, not knowing what’s coming next, what’s going to happen tomorrow, or the middle of the night when you hear a door open and footsteps coming to your door, and you’re like, Is this the moment?”

She lay awake at night, anxious thoughts looping through her head, as she did when she was a child. She thought about Cherelle and her family. She agonized over bringing shame to the Griner name, over feeding into caustic stereotypes of Black people as drug abusers. There were real threats to deal with as well: She was subjected to a psychiatric evaluation. In Russia, homosexuality is often called a mental illness, and Griner worried that she could be institutionalized. She was asked about her “sick thoughts” and “drug problem” and pressed to admit that she was guilty.

As Griner’s imprisonment stretched on, however, her world expanded in unexpected ways. She writes that she became particularly close to her bunkmate Alena, a former volleyball player who had been an exchange student in London and was fluent in English. They were together 24 hours a day. Alena translated everything, telling Griner what the guards were whispering, helping her order water and food from the commissary and barter with other incarcerated women, warning her that herpes and H.I.V. were rampant in the prison and that she should avoid medical exams if she could. At one point, she helped when Griner got a severe eye infection and urgently needed care. (Griner heard that the person who treated her was a veterinarian.) They would watch a 90-minute trashy Turkish soap opera that replaced Griner’s beloved “Grey’s Anatomy,” with Alena translating each twist.

The days were stultifying, the nights sleepless. “My life became a blur of sweeping and dusting, cleaning and praying, hoping I could somehow get home,” she writes. “I hurt because I knew I’d handed the world a weapon.”

Griner during her trial in Russia in July 2022.

To relieve her stress, Griner picked up the habit of smoking cigarettes, up to a pack a day. At one point, her Russian team donated a basketball so she could shoot on a hoop in the prison yard, but she kept getting winded. She lost muscle mass and gained weight from commissary staples — packaged noodles, muffins, salami, condensed milk — that felt safer to eat than the fish porridge. She felt depressed, and even sit-ups in her cell felt beyond her capacity.

Griner surprised herself by taking solace in the Bible. In the past, she associated religion with pain and intolerance. But Cherelle was a preacher’s daughter, and in her letters, which were often delayed, she encouraged Griner to lean into her faith. Griner requested a Bible, and the warden approved. She studied it every morning after cell search and showers and sneaked in a few more passages after lights out. A favorite was Psalms 56:3-4: “When I am afraid, I put my trust in you. In God, whose word I praise — in God I trust and am not afraid. What can mere mortals do to me?” Freedom held the luxury of resisting faith, but prison required embracing it.

Griner spent her childhood in the Bellewood section of Houston. She was close to her older sister and her two older half siblings from her father’s previous marriage. In her 2014 memoir, “In My Skin,” Griner describes a comfortable but constrained childhood. By middle school, she towered over her classmates and felt like an outcast. Kids called her “freak.” They antagonized her for her height, her undeveloped chest, her deepening voice. Once, a popular girl walked up to Griner and groped her. She turned to her friends and declared that Griner “must be a boy.” The constant harassment weighed on her, and she became anxious and depressed. Instead of talking about her emotions, she mouthed off to teachers. There were a few knock-down, drag-out fights with other girls. Griner obsessed over being “normal” and drew grim pictures and fantasized about suicide. She was wishing away so much of what would make her successful later in life — her size and strength.

Her father, who worked in law enforcement, governed the household with a severity rooted in paranoia. She was to come straight home after school, her play limited to the yard. There were no sleepovers. But his vigilance helped Griner sharpen her own. She also inherited his stubbornness — refusing to bend to his tough punishments and judgments of her. Their best moments together were in the yard or the garage, cutting grass or fixing the family cars. Griner worked shirtless, like her father.

She writes that she once heard him sneer that a woman was a “dyke.” Her mother was gentle and accepting. Griner wanted to be loved by them both for her full self. She tried to send subtle signals to her father, like leaving her boxers in the laundry. At school, she sagged her Girbaud jeans and wore oversize T-shirts. She used the family computer to look up the words “gay” and “lesbian” and immediately knew she was reading about herself. It was a relief: There were blueprints, communities, outlets beyond her immediate world.

Griner was growing so fast that her parents had her tested to make sure nothing was wrong. No illness; just luck. The logic of her body made perfect sense when she finally stepped on the basketball court in ninth grade. Her gifts were undeniable. Her wingspan, at 7 feet 3½ inches, is longer than LeBron James’s. When she was in high school, a video of her dunking went viral. Watching her, the way she lifts the ball over the rim and into the net as gently as if she were returning a lost child to a parent, brings to mind the way the filmmaker and artist Arthur Jafa describes Black ingenuity in the sport: “We didn’t invent basketball, but we created it.”

She was recruited to play at Baylor University, a Baptist school in Waco, Texas, not far from where she grew up, and became the team’s star player. She and her coach, Kim Mulkey, had a tense relationship. Griner says she felt singled out by Mulkey for various reasons, including being gay. (Mulkey has denied treating gay players differently.) But it didn’t diminish her love of the game. She polished her footwork, learned to shoot with precision and efficiency and likened the energy on the court to “turning the volume way up on a good song.”

In 2013, she arrived at the W.N.B.A. draft in a gleaming white custom-made three-piece suit. She looked poised and confident. When the Mercury selected her with the No.1 draft pick, even though she knew it was coming, a shy grin touched her lips. A few days later, she gave an interview to Sports Illustrated and answered a probing question about her sexual identity by saying, “I’ve always been open about who I am.” The following year, Griner became the first openly gay athlete to be endorsed by Nike. Her boldness set a new standard, helping to normalize queerness in American sports, especially for women.

Prison in Russia reopened old wounds, memories of her adolescent body as an object of fascination and prurient speculation. Guards heckled her, made lewd jokes, asked about her genitalia. Once, she recounted, while returning from the shower with a towel draped around her neck, a guard stopped her and looked her up and down. The guard used her baton to push the towel out of the way and stared at Griner’s chest. Griner was furious but unable to do anything about it.

Griner thought constantly about her family — her wife’s well-being, her parents’ growing frailty. She struggled to write to her father, fearing his disappointment. When she finally did, she said she would “never let you down like this again.” Weeks later, she received his unequivocal reply. “I love you and always will, no matter where you are,” he wrote. “Nothing and nobody can change that.” His affirmation was simple. It allowed her to release some of the debilitating shame and gather herself for what she would have to endure.

The world got its first glimpse of the imprisoned Griner on July 1, 2022, nearly five months after her arrest, when she arrived in court in Moscow for the start of her trial. In photos and videos, she looked stunned, eyes unnaturally wide. Griner had always understood that she was well known in Russia — some guards had even asked her for photographs and autographs — but she didn’t grasp the scale of her case until that moment. There were nearly 100 journalists present, shouting questions and snapping photographs; it reminded her of the media circus around the N.B.A. Finals.

Griner came dressed in a Jimi Hendrix T-shirt in symbolic protest; Hendrix was arrested on a drug charge in 1969 in Toronto and found not guilty. She also held photographs of her wife and Mercury teammates against the bars of her cage. She wanted to try to shape the narrative, to remind the people in Russia and back home that her story went beyond a single mistake.

Griner’s family and legal team still hadn’t spoken with President Biden directly. And they were devastated after a scheduled call between Cherelle and Brittney was bungled by the State Department and never went through. “The roots of Black skepticism go back generations,” Griner writes, “in a country that hasn’t always had our backs; it was too busy breaking them.” Griner, in consultation with her wife and lawyers, decided to plead guilty. It seemed unwise to call the Russian government liars; they were betting that an American humbling herself before Putin would get her home faster. She also wrote a letter to Biden to be sent on July 4, begging him not to forget about her. “Please do all you can to bring us home,” she said. “I still have so much good to do with my freedom that you can help restore.”

In early July, Cherelle was interviewed by Gayle King to raise awareness, noting that Griner’s team had yet to meet with the Biden administration. The president reached out to tell Cherelle that talks about a prisoner swap were underway and to caution that pressuring him in public “would play into Russia’s hands.” He replied to Griner’s letter, saying that “getting you home is top of mind for all of us.” Griner’s team revved up its online efforts, rallying the Rev. Al Sharpton and her teammates and other players to call for a lenient verdict.

Cherelle and Colas, her agent, crafted a hashtag that became the rallying cry to keep Griner’s story relevant over the months. They initially considered “LoveBG” but ultimately went with “WeAreBG.” The choice shortened the distance between Griner and those who had ever worried about their safety at home or abroad. Colas told me that the intention was to remind people of Griner’s universality, despite the unusual circumstances. “Britney stepping into her power and sharing about herself has always given people permission to be themselves and be loud about it.”

Brittney GrinerCredit...Mickalene Thomas for The New York Times

During the 2022 W.N.B.A. All-Star Game, the players wore Griner’s jersey number in solidarity during the second half. N.B.A. players like LeBron James and Stephen Curry publicly questioned what seemed like the U.S. government’s inaction on the case. But her most devoted and persistent advocates were Black women, many of them arguing online that the government’s response felt muted, a continuation of the culture of neglect that fails to adequately protect them and gender-nonconforming people. Kerry Washington and Roxane Gay campaigned for her in the American media. Thousands sent Griner messages of support in prison. In the acknowledgments of her book, Griner thanks Black women in the press for keeping her name alive throughout her detainment.

“Russia understands the way American public opinion matters to the presidency,” Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon, a scholar at the University of Pennsylvania who studies the intersection of Blackness and the Eastern Bloc, told me, “and they played with it.” The tactic worked: Griner’s case incited rancor and debate between those who argued that the American government wasn’t doing enough and those who cast Griner as a criminal and argued that other American detainees in Russia, like Paul Whelan, a former Marine accused of spying, should be a higher priority.

On Aug. 4, Griner returned to court for sentencing. Her defense team detailed the mishandling of her case: She had no lawyer during initial questioning and was pressured to sign documents she didn’t understand, and the amount of cannabis was exaggerated, among other things. Griner was given the chance to read a statement, which she insisted on writing herself. “My parents taught me two important things,” she read, hands shaking. “One, to take ownership for your responsibilities. And two, to work hard for everything that you have. That’s why I pled guilty to my charges. I understand the charges that are against me, … but I had no intent to break any Russian law. I want the court to understand that it was an honest mistake that I made while rushing and in stress.” She apologized to her American and Russian teammates, her family, her friends.

The judge was unmoved. Griner was sentenced to nine years in a penal colony. Her release date would be Oct. 20, 2031. She froze, unable to digest the information. Her Russian lawyers surreptitiously called Cherelle on FaceTime and held the phone up through the bars of Griner’s cage, and they wept together. A nearby guard saw but did not intervene. He seemed as shocked as they were.

In early November 2022, Griner was loaded onto a train with other female inmates. After seven or eight days of traveling in cages in the dark, they finally stopped and were met by guards with automatic weapons and barking German shepherds. Griner had been taken to a repurposed Soviet-era gulag in Mordovia, 200 miles outside Moscow. Inmates referred to the region as “the ass of Russia,” and Griner would soon understand why. For several days, no one in her family or on her legal team knew where she was.

She was given a uniform of thick green corduroy that was too short to cover her body and a head wrap similar to a hijab. She moved into a room crammed with bunks for 20 women, and the bathroom was shared by 50. She was put to work for 12-, sometimes 15-hour shifts, cutting big pieces of fabric for Russian military uniforms with rusty, dangerous spinning blades. Separated from Alena, her lifeline, and the smaller jail setting that had become familiar, she was desolate. She decided to adopt a new survival strategy: letting go of hope. “I thought I was going to be there for the long haul,” she told me. “I’m tired of waiting for the day. It’s easier to just accept the situation I’m in. I’m an inmate.”

Sometimes she would volunteer to shovel the snow and ice around the prison — the manual labor reminded her of her training. “It made me feel like I was lifting weights, because snow is super heavy,” she said. The exercise distracted her, kept her busy. In this remote prison, she had even less contact with the outside world. There were few visits from her lawyer. Almost no one spoke English, and she began to lose some fluency. There were small kindnesses: Welders made her a bigger bed, and another woman sewed her mittens and a prison uniform that fit and kept her somewhat warmer in the uninsulated cell. Ann, the head cook, spoke English and recruited her to help with kitchen duties. When the electricity went out for a few days, Griner carried hunks of cow from the freezer to the fields where they cooked meals, warming up by the fires. She celebrated Thanksgiving alone with a smoked turkey leg and rice with soy sauce that she bought from the commissary.

At home, Cherelle spoke about Griner every chance she got: on “The View” and at awards ceremonies. Her case was still a lightning rod: Dennis Rodman (publicly) and Donald Trump (privately) each said he would fly to Russia to get her.

In late November, after about a month in Mordovia, Griner was pulled from work to take a call from the U.S. Embassy. She was told that discussions for a prisoner swap were underway and that she should keep quiet about it. Griner was elated, but cautious. For a week she heard nothing. Once again, she was summoned to the warden’s office and told that the trade was imminent. She began preparing, donating her possessions — shampoo, food, clothes — and giving Ann the money she made working for five weeks, less than $100. The other incarcerated women brought photos of their kids for her to sign, which she did. Then, she waited.

On Dec. 2, she was loaded into a cage inside a van with four guards. They rode in the dark, without a translator, for eight hours. They stopped at another prison and started the process of booking her. Alarmed, she realized that it was a men’s facility. She felt a rising panic: Had she been tricked? Would she be forced to serve the remainder of her sentence here? She soothed herself by watching the World Cup, Portugal versus Switzerland. Around lights out, a guard slipped a note through her door. It held the words she’d been waiting months to hear: “You leave tonight.” She stayed up all night, praying that it was real.

In the morning, she writes, she was taken to an examination room, where a man who said he was a doctor stood with seven armed guards. She was told to remove her clothes, which she did. He gestured for her to remove her boxers too. Fear coursed through her, but she complied, standing without covering herself or cowering. They began photographing her from every angle — a final display of total power and control over her body.

Afterward, she was driven to a plane and boarded, though she had no idea where it was going. She was too wired to sleep and too scared to eat, afraid of being poisoned. The plane finally landed, in Abu Dhabi. As she disembarked, she was greeted by Roger Carstens, the special presidential envoy for hostage affairs in the State Department. He handed her a pin that read “We Are BG.” Griner exhaled, allowing relief to sink in for the first time. As she walked onto the tarmac, a man walked toward her. She recognized him as Viktor Bout, the notorious Russian arms dealer for whom she had been traded. As they passed each other, he reached for a handshake, and she instinctively complied. He offered congratulations. His hands were soft compared with her roughened ones; later she heard that he spent his time in prison painting pictures of cats. She boarded the plane Bout had come from.

When Griner arrived in San Antonio, Cherelle was waiting on the tarmac, surrounded by supporters waving American flags. Griner leaped down the airplane stairs and ran toward her. They embraced, in tears. They were ushered to a private lounge where they could get reacquainted. They sat as close as they could get, kissing, tracing each other’s features.

At first, being home was a nonstop adrenaline high. Griner reunited with her parents, her siblings and their children. She ate well, indulging in barbecue and snacks, luxuriating in hot showers and cuddling with Cherelle and bingeing movies. But as time went on, Griner struggled to adjust. During the trial, her home address was leaked, and she and Cherelle had to move into a safe house. She did a deep dive on social media of the coverage of her case and saw the vitriol directed at her. There were people who called her ugly slurs and said she should have been left to rot overseas. “We’re getting all this hate about how unpatriotic I am,” she told me. “That I’m un-American and shouldn’t be alive right now.”

In prison, Griner had a singular focus: freedom. Now she felt adrift, confused. Basketball had always been her compass, so she decided to start playing as soon as she could. The very first week she was back, she and Cherelle played one on one. She tired easily — chain-smoking in prison had shredded her lungs. Griner decided to see if she could still dunk. She could, though her back ached for days after. She started working out again, hard, though her go-to exercises like planks and curls with 50-pound dumbbells were nearly impossible. But the routines felt like home. She mapped out a 100-day conditioning plan to get ready for the upcoming W.N.B.A. season. Still, she felt overweight, and her lifelong struggles with body image resurfaced. There were days when she wouldn’t eat. “It was trying, big time,” she said. She wondered if she should quit, if this was the end of her career.

Griner at the Phoenix Mercury’s practice facility in April.Credit...Mickalene Thomas for The New York Times

As the 2023 season began, she continued to feel disoriented. Each arena stop meant a reunion with players she hadn’t seen since she was detained, and during each game, video commemorations of her release were played. She appreciated the acknowledgment of what she had been through, but as time wore on, the reminders were triggering: It was hard to keep her head in the game. The Mercury lost 31 of 40 games. As the season wound down, without her usual plan to go overseas, she began to have symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. “People say it’s OK to not be OK,” she told me. “But what the hell does that mean? Just cry when I want to cry? Or be angry when I want to be angry? Or does that mean talking about it? Like, I had to figure that out.”

This season, Griner is grateful to return to the game she loves. And the timing couldn’t be better. Women’s basketball has garnered renewed attention, fueled in part by the exhilarating performances of Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese in the March Madness tournament, followed by an electric W.N.B.A. draft. Griner’s detainment has also galvanized the women’s league and drawn national attention to a question it has long needed to address: pay-equity issues that push players abroad in the off-season. There’s a chance to invest in the future of the league more broadly. “We can build the type of stable league that could be financially worth it for players to stay home throughout the year,” Sue Bird, a former player for the Seattle Storm who is heavily involved in shaping the league, told me. “It could be a whole new world in the W.N.B.A.”

In 2025, the W.N.B.A. will have the opportunity to renegotiate player contracts. It’s a chance to advocate new pay structures, maternity support, a bigger percentage of revenue generated by licensing games to networks and streaming platforms and more security. “I’ve always talked about that, but I’m seeing it more now,” Griner told me. Last year at Dallas Fort Worth Airport, Griner was accosted by a conservative media personality who pushed a microphone in her face and shouted that she “hates America.” Unlike their peers in the N.B.A., W.N.B.A. teams still fly commercial during most of the regular season, exposing them to altercations like the one Griner experienced.

Before her imprisonment, she and Cherelle liked to spend lazy Sundays in bed, watching television and laughing. But being in a single room with a bed reminds her too much of prison. So does being cold. She has nightmares that she has to go back to Russia to file some errant paperwork and becomes trapped all over again. Between seasons, she and Cherelle used to venture down to Mexico for a few romantic days of relaxation. Now she’s afraid that she could be a valuable target for another hostage situation. “If I go to the wrong country,” she said, “they could literally just grab me.” (She will travel to Paris to play basketball in the Olympics this summer, but that feels wrapped in enough American security protocols to be safe.) Therapy has taught her that there is no “before” anymore. Her brain is different, and so is her life. One of the biggest signs that she’s recovering, she says, is that her words are back. When she first got home, she felt and sounded like a child feeling for language. “I felt like I went backward,” she told me.

Since her return to Phoenix, Griner says that making space for private time and getting out into nature have become coping mechanisms. “It feels like time slows down.”Credit...Mickalene Thomas for The New York Times

During our meetings, Griner was raw and unguarded, willing to go as deep as the conversation required. But it hasn’t been easy or comfortable navigating her emotions in the public sphere: Because of her size, people often don’t always see her fragility. “There’s no room for tears as women,” she said. “If we have a moment, it’s like, Oh, she’s weak, being bitchy or irrational. We don’t get to process; we have to be on 24/7.” It’s clear that she continues to struggle with the feeling that her freedom is conditional, not something she inherently deserves. “I’m on borrowed time,” she told me. She plans to continue campaigning for other American detainees, including Paul Whelan and the journalist Evan Gershkovich.

Before we parted ways, Griner told me that going into nature — she loves off-roading in the dusty red mountains — has been one of her coping mechanisms. Before her ordeal in Russia, she didn’t need time away from people, to ground herself. But now, sometimes it’s the only thing that helps. “That’s a big thing for me — getting away from the screens and the cameras,” she said. “It feels like time slows down when I’m in nature.” She’s learning about the value of carving out a private identity. Not every part of her existence has to be an example or a cause. She and Cherelle are expecting their first child, and that will also reshape the way Griner engages with the public. Before I left Phoenix, I took her advice. I drove deep into the mountains, winding upward until the clouds thinned and the air grew clearer, sharper. I thought of Griner up there alone, without cell reception, a reprieve from the demands of her life. The dry desert mountains were covered in an astonishing amount of grass. They looked like green waves. It was a reminder that life grows in even the most arid conditions.

Read by January LaVoy

Narration produced by Anna Diamond and Krish Seenivasan

Engineered by David Mason

Styling by Marquise Miller and Aaron Christmon.

Mickalene Thomas is an artist known for her paintings of African American women that combine historical, political and pop-culture references. Her solo show “All About Love” starts its tour at the Broad in Los Angeles in May.

A version of this article appears in print on , Page 24 of the Sunday Magazine with the headline: Brittney Griner’s journey out of Russian captivity, and back to herself.

22

The New York Times · by J Wortham · May 2, 2024

16. How the CV-22 Osprey has Transformed Special Operations

How the CV-22 Osprey has Transformed Special Operations

.

By Robert Meyersohn

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2024/05/02/how_the_cv-22_osprey_has_transformed_special_operations_1028869.html?mc_cid=14becd5578&mc_eid=70bf478f36

U.S. Air Force

MEDITERRANEAN SEA (Feb. 26, 2023) Ohio-class guided-missile submarine USS Florida (SSGN 728) and a CV-22 Osprey, assigned to 7th Special Operations Squadron, 352nd Special Operations Wing, participate in a special operations forces interoperability exercise, Feb. 26, 2023. These operations demonstrate U.S. European Command’s ability to rapidly deploy Special Operations Forces throughout the theater at a time and place of our choosing, and the U.S. commitment to train with Allies and partners to deploy and fight as multinational forces and SOF to meet today’s challenges. (U.S. Air Force photo by Tech Sgt. Westin Warburton)

I’ll never forget the conversation I had with my commander at dinner one night in 2007 at Balad Air Base, Iraq. He asked me what I wanted to do next after the retirement of my current special operations helicopter. During that dinner, he and a good friend of mine filled my mind with ideas on the CV-22 Osprey mission. This event kick-started dreams of how this game-changing platform would shape the future of special operations vertical lift. 

Today, after 15 years and over 2,000 hours of flying the Osprey aircraft and simulator, certification as an Evaluator Pilot and Flight Lead, and Commander of an overseas CV-22 squadron, I can say without hesitation the CV-22 Osprey made many of those dreams a reality.

Team Osprey recently celebrated the 35^th anniversary of the V-22’s first flight. That historic take-off, hover and landing was only the beginning of what would become the development of advanced capabilities that would forever change the way the world looked at aviation and how the United States Department of Defense would solve some of the most difficult problems and impossible missions. 

Over those thirty years, I’d like to highlight three specific aspects of the CV-22 and the Osprey Community that have come into reality.

The Osprey Community

First, the dedication, creativity and professionalism of the CV-22 community has been critical to establishing an outstanding track record of superior performance executing special operations missions at the highest levels – across the joint force. 

An innovative and game-changing aircraft like the CV-22 in the hands of less dedicated teams would never solve the problems of emerging threats or take advantage of potential opportunities. 

For fifteen years, I’ve watched creative, humble, professional, and credible aircrew and maintainers develop solutions that never existed before. These bottom-up driven solutions provided strategic leadership with novel ways to deter, delay and defeat our enemies, while enhancing force survivability. 

Our community helped develop and solve problems when airdrop infiltrating special operations forces and equipment behind enemy lines and outside the distance of valid emergency response. 

By combining heavy fixed-wing airdrop of equipment and a precision infiltration of personnel with CV-22s flying at similar airspeeds, special operations units now had an immediate exfil response should an injury arise, or mission-abort criteria emerge, post airdrop. This is but one of many tactics CV-22 crews developed, rehearsed, and executed.

The Osprey Reduces Risk

Second, the Osprey is first and foremost a risk-reduction platform. Naturally, V-22 advocates focus on speed and range comparisons as the aircraft’s primary value proposition. I certainly made those arguments early on in my flying career. However, as a commander, I learned that the exponential value of the CV-22 was reducing risk. 

Militaries win campaigns through sustainment and logistics. As distance increases, logistics and sustainment requirements grow exponentially. In Iraq, Afghanistan, large swaths of Africa, and the Indo-Pacific regions, the use of V-22s has reduced minimum-force requirements, minimized force exposure time in contested areas, and increased logistic and supply line kill-chain stand-off distance. 

With advanced defensive systems capable of countering Infrared and Radar Surface to Air Missile threats, the Osprey further reduces risk and ensures mission success.

Impossible Missions Made Possible

Third, over these past fifteen years, I have witnessed exquisitely trained and courageous CV-22 professionals combine aircraft capability and risk mitigation to execute missions no other aircraft could accomplish. 

In 2010, a helicopter carrying 32 special operators crashed high in the Hindu Kush mountains of Afghanistan. With deteriorating weather conditions, extreme terrain and distance separating both a ground and rotary-wing recovery force, and troops in contact with the enemy, two CV-22 crews launched on an 800 nautical mile round-trip flight to rescue all 32 personnel.

In 2013, three CV-22s and a team of SEALs launched on an embassy evacuation rescue mission in Sudan. During the final approach, all three aircraft were engaged, taking nearly 200 rounds in a coordinated ground attack. With wounded personnel and aircraft leaking fuel, the three aircraft evacuated the area and flew an astounding thousand-mile journey back to safety. Thanks to exceptional airmanship and a highly survivable aircraft, all personnel survived disaster and those aircraft returned to combat flight status. 

During a single period of darkness in 2020, four CV-22s and crews flew more than 2,000 miles over unforgiving African desert to execute the longest hostage rescue in Department of Defense history. 

These are just three of dozens of missions where the lives of Americans and our Allies were saved.

Tiltrotor is a game-changing capability that provides unparalleled strategic advantages in the air, land, and maritime domains. I look forward to seeing exceptional crews back in the air flying this incredible aircraft. 

We, the special operations aircrew and maintainers that fly and fix this amazing aircraft, are sincerely grateful to the thousands of hard working and innovative American engineers, designers and men and women on the assembly line who given this nation the competitive advantage provided by the Osprey!

When the CV-22 and the crews that fly and maintain it are put to the test and given a task that no other aircraft can accomplish, time and time again the result is a success.

Lt Col Robert Meyersohn (U.S. Air Force) is a 20-year special operations pilot with 15 years of experience as a Flight Lead and Evaluator in the CV-22 Osprey pilot and a former Osprey squadron commander. The above article represents his views and not the official views of the United States Air Force

17. An ‘East Asian NATO’ is forming

Back in the day we proposed NEATO. (Northeast Asia Treaty Organization). But it had no legs. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_Asia_Treaty_Organization#:)

 From that most authoritative source, Wikipedia: NEATO: "United States Secretary of State John Foster Dulles considered the possibility of forming such an alliance in the 1950s to balance against communist power and influence in Northeast Asia. ... In lieu of the Northeast Asia Treaty Organization, the United States resorted to the San Francisco System, focusing on separate bilateral alliances with the countries of Northeast Asia."

But conditions are much different in 2024 than they were in the 1950s. 

Excerpts from the article below:

The next administration would do well to propose a full-fledged Pacific Security Alliance, with Asian members carrying full economic and personnel burden-sharing. The future Asian security organization should be supported by U.S. global-reach aerial transportation and intelligence capabilities, naval operational prowess and space-based reconnaissance capabilities. But unlike NATO members, which for decades relied on America’s security muscle, there should be no security free-loading.

The U.S. needs help tackling China’s territorial ambitions through a strategy of collective deterrence, especially with conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza and the Red Sea stretching American defense capabilities thin. Missing this historic opportunity would be a huge mistake.

An ‘East Asian NATO’ is forming

https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/4636136-an-east-asian-nato-is-forming/

BY ARIEL COHEN & WESLEY ALEXANDER HILL, OPINION CONTRIBUTORS - 05/01/24 3:00 PM ET

Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg

Ferdinand Marcos Jr., Philippines’ president, US President Joe Biden, and Fumio Kishida, Japan’s prime minister, arrive for a trilateral meeting at the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Thursday, April 11, 2024.

Last month, Washington hosted one of the most significant shifts in the world’s security architecture since the collapse of the Soviet Union. On April 11, an unprecedented trilateral summit brought together U.S. allies Japan and the Philippines, potentially setting the stage for a spectacular shift in Asia’s Sino-American balance of power.

Before this summit, East Asian security was primarily upheld through a series of bilateral agreements between the United States and its partners. America has defense treaties with the Philippines, Japan and South Korea that do not include all other actors. This “hub and spokes” alliance system is now undergoing an upgrade. In its place, a “webbed” system of collective security is emerging, valuing intra-regional security cooperation in addition to bilateral contacts between the U.S. and its allies.

In short, we may be witnessing the dawn of a nascent “East Asian NATO.”

This shift is not limited in scope or confined to Japan and the Philippines, and it goes well beyond the summit held in Washington. After years of slowly thawing ties with America, Vietnam upgraded the relationship late last year, ushering in a new, more security-focused partnership. While not as groundbreaking as the agreements now taking shape between the U.S. and its other partners, this move is another marker of shifting attitudes and a growing interest in containing China. For years, Vietnam refrained from elevating ties for fear of sparking blowback from Beijing, its primary trading partner, and Russia, a key arms provider. The fact that Vietnam changed tack indicates that concerns about China’s actions in the South China Sea are sufficiently widespread to override past sentiments.

Further evidence is visible in the growing ties between Japan and South Korea. Despite historical animosity that once poisoned any agreements involving the two nations, Tokyo and Seoul are today in a broad geopolitical alignment. Their relationship hit new milestones last year, as South Korea, the U.S. and Japan for the first time held an Indo-Pacific Dialogue to discuss China’s forward-leaning strategy in the South China Sea. Several initiatives emerged, including trilateral aerial cooperation, real-time data sharing on missile launches and revived maritime collaboration, setting the stage for further military integration.

None of this should come as a surprise, as Seoul has also been the victim of Chinese truculence over recent few years. Most notably, a Chinese jet entered South Korea’s Air Defense Identification Zone without warning last year. Bold moves like these have done little to quell fears that China acts as it pleases. For South Korea, this attitude may represent an existential threat, as more than 90 percent of its trade moves through the South China Sea. If a conflict were to break out between China and its neighbors, the effects on the South Korean economy would be cataclysmic.

Beijing has denounced this strategic evolution, yet China’s claims of victimhood are likely to fall on deaf ears, as Beijing has encroached upon its neighbors’ territory. Even rulings by impartial tribunals, such as the Permanent Court of Arbitration, have failed to deter Beijing, signaling to others that this behavior is the new norm. The use of escalating tactics, such as the deployment of water cannons by the Chinese coast guard against Philippine vessels, has deepened fears and pushed countries like Japan and the Philippines to embrace previously taboo policies.

Even Japanese pacifism is waning. Japan is increasingly diluting the reach and extent of Article 9 of its constitution, which states that “the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.” Recent decisions include hikes to Tokyo’s defense spending, with plans to reach 2 percent of GDP, and the loosening of defense export restrictions.

More surprising still is the Philippines’ embrace of Japan as a potential security partner, as historical enmity between these two often seemed like an insurmountable obstacle on the road to greater cooperation. As is often the case, all that was needed was a common foe.

Given the stakes and China’s unceasing aggression, it is no surprise that attitudes are changing. Now it is up to the U.S. to build on these gains. This year’s presidential election will likely have an outsized impact on what happens next. Still, some troubling trends will likely persist whoever occupies the White House.

Free trade orthodoxy, for instance, is unlikely to make a triumphant return, no matter who wins in November. Even if proposed trans-Pacific trade deals don’t include China, any attempts to forge a free trade zone are unlikely to gain traction. Bipartisan willingness to scuttle foreign investments or buyouts of American companies by allies like Japan is misplaced. Japan does not pose a security threat, and Japanese carmakers have been in the U.S. for decades without incident.

Still more misguided is America’s unwillingness to follow through on legislative changes that might supercharge its alliance, building on diplomatic efforts in East Asia. One notable example is shipbuilding, as federal law prohibits the full use of Japan’s and South Korea’s shipbuilding capabilities for a much-needed U.S. naval buildup. This status quo, too, is unlikely to change regardless of the election outcome.

The next administration would do well to propose a full-fledged Pacific Security Alliance, with Asian members carrying full economic and personnel burden-sharing. The future Asian security organization should be supported by U.S. global-reach aerial transportation and intelligence capabilities, naval operational prowess and space-based reconnaissance capabilities. But unlike NATO members, which for decades relied on America’s security muscle, there should be no security free-loading.

The U.S. needs help tackling China’s territorial ambitions through a strategy of collective deterrence, especially with conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza and the Red Sea stretching American defense capabilities thin. Missing this historic opportunity would be a huge mistake.

Ariel Cohen is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center and a member of the Council of Foreign Relations. Wesley Alexander Hill the lead analyst and international program manager for the Energy, Growth, and Security Program at the International Tax and Investment Center.

18. The Myth of the Asian Swing State

Excerpts:

In part thanks to China’s own challenges navigating Asia’s diverse political landscape, the United States has plenty of opportunities to complement or out-compete Beijing’s efforts. Doing so successfully, however, will require case-by-case approaches. The Indo-Pacific Strategy provides a valuable framework by which to coordinate U.S. government outreach to Asia and build cooperation among key Asian allies. But it can also be a lightning rod that pushes swing states away from the United States.

In 2018, for instance, Nepali leaders were not pleased when Mike Pompeo stated that U.S. policy toward Nepal fell under the aegis of the IPS. That assertion triggered an enduring suspicion that any future U.S. initiatives toward the country would be intended principally to draw it into an anti-China coalition. Washington’s overwhelming focus on great-power competition has left diplomats working in Asian countries torn between trying to meet the IPS’s mandate and reassuring local leaders that the strategy is not all about China. Policymakers need to face—and creatively manage—the potential trade-offs between consolidating its core partners’ support and appealing to swing states.

American strategy in Asia is best served by focusing on adapting to specific local contexts. Washington should resist the urge to search for stable pro-America factions with which to partner and pro-China ones to denounce or oppose. While such factions sometimes exist, more often these alignments are fluid and shifting. U.S. policymakers must become more comfortable with ambiguity, focusing on what the United States and its partners can best offer in a particular setting, regardless of China’s influence.

Washington will be most effective when it approaches Asia’s swing states as they are: complicated and autonomous countries, not pieces on a chessboard maneuvered by Beijing and Washington. Most Asian countries have many needs. Even if they choose to engage with China in one arena, the United States and its partners can advance their strategic goals in others.

The Myth of the Asian Swing State

Great-Power Competition No Longer Dominates the Region’s Politics

By Paul Staniland

May 2, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by Paul Staniland · May 2, 2024

The competition over Asia’s so-called swing states is heating up. China’s growing economic and political reach has impelled Australia, India, Japan, and the United States to try to gain influence in the countries not yet tightly aligned with either bloc. U.S. President Joe Biden has repeatedly characterized Asia as a battleground between autocracy and democracy. Observers who worry about such a contest point to recent pro-China turns in the Solomon Islands, which in 2019 severed its diplomatic relationship with Taiwan and then signed a security pact with China, and the Maldives, which in 2023 elected a president who criticized his predecessor’s ties to India and vowed to draw closer to China.

Numerous leaders and analysts, including Matt Pottinger and Mike Gallagher writing in Foreign Affairs, now frame the U.S.-Chinese competition as a new cold war. Yet it is important that the United States and its partners not overemphasize the analogy to the original Cold War or misunderstand the challenges China poses in the competition over Asia’s swing states. There is immense political pressure from Washington to view the whole region through the prism of the United States’ competition with China. But this does not speak to the political interests of many Asian countries—and an approach based on this framing risks undermining America’s strategic and economic appeals to them.

Chinese influence presents a real challenge in this competition, but it is crucial to be clear about its nature. Asia today is radically different from Asia during the Cold War, an era when many of the region’s newly independent states were wracked by violent and destabilizing coups, insurgencies, and wars that made them exceptionally vulnerable to outside influence.

Although China is undoubtedly more influential than it was three decades ago, the bulk of Asia’s states are not at risk of falling under China’s sway. Asian countries now boast complex and autonomous domestic politics that do not align neatly with either Chinese or U.S. priorities. At times, these countries are indeed gripped by internal debates about whether to align with China or the U.S. and its partners. But just as often, that debate is secondary or even irrelevant compared with these countries’ more pressing internal challenges and foreign policy goals.

Asian countries’ politics and interests also do not map seamlessly onto the Biden administration's autocracy-versus-democracy framing. Neither the Marxist-Leninist party-state model nor liberal democracy is clearly on the march in the region. Indeed, many regional states believe they can successfully balance ties with both sides as they forge their own forms of domestic politics.

China’s growing influence in swing states requires a thoughtful, sustained response from the United States and its partners in Asia. But the struggle for influence is not playing out uniformly across the region. The Biden administration has shown some sensitivity to the region’s contemporary realities, reassuring Indo-Pacific states in May 2023 that they can have “breathing space” to engage with China. Policymakers should take care to continue to resist the temptation to flatten Asia’s complex political landscape. An effective U.S. strategy in Asia requires understanding crucial differences among countries, taking them seriously, and carefully adapting policy initiatives to very specific local contexts.

DEAD METAPHOR

There are important limits to what a Cold War analogy illuminates about Asia’s present. Most Asian countries today are vastly more stable than they were during the Cold War; as a result, they are far less susceptible to becoming flash points for proxy conflict. Data compiled by the Peace Research Institute Oslo and Uppsala Conflict Data Program show that conflict-related deaths in Asia declined dramatically after the Cold War ended. Asian countries’ domestic political foundations are sturdier and more resistant to outside influence.

In part because of this greater stability, Asian states’ domestic politics now often have little to do with the grand themes undergirding the major powers’ rivalries. The issues at the heart of the U.S.-Chinese competition, for instance—such as 5G and the Taiwan Strait—do not overlap with the core political cleavages within many of Asia’s swing states. Neither the American nor the Chinese political model is especially attractive, or even relevant, to many other Asian states. The Biden administration’s vision of Asia as a contest between autocracy and democracy is not a framing that captures the region’s domestic politics well. Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Thailand, for example, are unlikely to become either rigidly institutionalized Marxist-Leninist party-states or liberal democracies. Adopting the Chinese political model would be politically disastrous for most elites in Asia’s swing states, requiring ruthless centralization and ending the most profitable forms of electoral competition and patronage.

At the same time, democracies in the region are not rushing to embrace the liberal values heralded by Biden’s version of the United States’ Indo-Pacific Strategy, which the administration unveiled in early 2022. That strategy called for emphasizing the promotion of “democratic institutions, a free press, and a vibrant civil society” in the U.S. approach to Asia, but these values are not always the ones that either leaders or citizens in key Asian swing states prioritize. India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines are electoral democracies, but their domestic preferences are often at odds with liberalism: the separation of church and state, the equal application of the rule of law, and strong free speech protections are not necessarily these political systems’ highest priorities. Singapore’s ruling party boasts close links to the United States and is concerned about China’s influence in Asia. But it is in no hurry to dismantle its tight controls over politics and society.

MIXED FEELINGS

Asia’s combination of political stability, reduced ideological polarization, and varying domestic contexts means that great-power competition is refracted through the lens of incredibly complicated internal political competitions. A striking example can be found in Nepal, where both China and India are vying for influence. When anti-Indian sentiment surged there between 2015 and 2021, China worked to maintain a unified Nepali Communist Party. Those efforts raised alarms that China intended to reshape Nepali politics in an enduringly pro-China direction. (“Is Nepal Under China’s Thumb?” a Foreign Policy essay wondered in 2022.)

But Nepal’s politics did not permanently polarize along clear pro-Chinese and pro-Indian lines. Instead, coalitional maneuvering, personal rivalries, and debates over federalism, secularism, and the allocation of resources took primacy. Beijing was unable to stop the unified Communist Party from collapsing into factions driven by preexisting rivalries. India has also found it difficult to reliably sway political outcomes in Nepal, and in recent years, it has chosen to restrain its efforts to influence the country’s politics. Coalition governments have come and gone, leaders have found ways to work with both China and India, and great-power competition remains an uneven and sporadic driver of political mobilization.

Nepal is far from unique. In Indonesia’s February election, U.S.-Chinese competition did not prominently figure into politicians’ campaigns. In Pakistan over the past year, the country’s influential military, which is increasingly in conflict with Afghanistan’s government and faced with the expansion of the Pakistani Taliban insurgency along the Afghan border, has made overtures to the United States instead of steadfastly aligning with fellow autocrats in Beijing.

Great-power competition does not always drive China’s interactions with other Asian states.

Economics may be the biggest arena in which Asian swing states reject pressure to firmly choose sides in a U.S.-Chinese competition. Asian states are heavily focused on economic growth, and they will seize opportunities to take advantage of the U.S.-Chinese competition—for instance by working with the United States to relocate supply chains out of China into their own markets. But such efforts can run alongside working with China on other economic issues. Many Asian states have a “yes, and” approach to building a diversified set of political and economic relationships. As the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace analyst Evan Feigenbaum argued in 2020, in the economic realm, “efforts by Beijing and Washington to define a zero-sum future for the region have thus far failed.”

Great-power competition does not always drive even China’s and India’s interactions with other Asian states. These two major powers are often at odds, but local, pressing challenges can also push them toward policy alignment. In Myanmar, for example, China and India have pursued similar goals rather than seek advantages against each other. To protect joint infrastructure projects and maintain stable borders, both countries initially sought to maintain good terms with Myanmar’s junta on the assumption that it would defeat the fragmented insurgency it faced.

Yet over the last year, as that insurgency expanded and the military faltered, both China and India began reaching out to the insurgents. China encouraged a major rebel offensive against pro-junta militias engaging in human trafficking and online scams that hurt Chinese citizens. India has also cooperated with anti-junta armed groups along its borders with Myanmar, hoping to prevent the resurgence of an anti-India insurgency in the country’s northeast and to build stable ties with emerging power brokers. Neither aim relates to a grand struggle for power in Asia, and Myanmar has not become a proxy conflict.

COMPLEXITY THEORY

Over the last decade, a number of Asian countries—especially those that have land and maritime disputes with China—have been pursuing greater alignment with the United States. This trend is likely to continue, and Washington should encourage it. The question, however, is how the United States and its partners can build and maintain strong ties with states that are less directly threatened by China.

The good news is that Asian countries’ stability and autonomy limit China’s ability to turn them into proxy states. When observers point with concern to the growing Chinese influence throughout Asia, they often emphasize the Maldives and the Solomon Islands. These countries are geographically strategic, and China’s influence over them is worth sustained scrutiny. But the United States and its partners should not overreact to these Chinese advances by assuming they are harbingers of a much broader regional shift. These are tiny states compared with Malaysia and Nepal, much less behemoths such as Bangladesh and Indonesia.

Moreover, China itself offers a cautionary tale of the risks a country incurs by not carefully adapting its foreign policy to other countries’ local politics. In recent years, Beijing has tried to lump various projects and relationships into the top-down aegis of its Belt and Road Initiative, an approach that has sometimes led to backlash and tension. In Myanmar, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, in particular, the influx of Chinese resources has not led to the kind of enduring political influence and power that many feared.

Washington must resist the urge to search for stable pro-America factions within Asian countries.

In part thanks to China’s own challenges navigating Asia’s diverse political landscape, the United States has plenty of opportunities to complement or out-compete Beijing’s efforts. Doing so successfully, however, will require case-by-case approaches. The Indo-Pacific Strategy provides a valuable framework by which to coordinate U.S. government outreach to Asia and build cooperation among key Asian allies. But it can also be a lightning rod that pushes swing states away from the United States.

In 2018, for instance, Nepali leaders were not pleased when Mike Pompeo stated that U.S. policy toward Nepal fell under the aegis of the IPS. That assertion triggered an enduring suspicion that any future U.S. initiatives toward the country would be intended principally to draw it into an anti-China coalition. Washington’s overwhelming focus on great-power competition has left diplomats working in Asian countries torn between trying to meet the IPS’s mandate and reassuring local leaders that the strategy is not all about China. Policymakers need to face—and creatively manage—the potential trade-offs between consolidating its core partners’ support and appealing to swing states.

American strategy in Asia is best served by focusing on adapting to specific local contexts. Washington should resist the urge to search for stable pro-America factions with which to partner and pro-China ones to denounce or oppose. While such factions sometimes exist, more often these alignments are fluid and shifting. U.S. policymakers must become more comfortable with ambiguity, focusing on what the United States and its partners can best offer in a particular setting, regardless of China’s influence.

Washington will be most effective when it approaches Asia’s swing states as they are: complicated and autonomous countries, not pieces on a chessboard maneuvered by Beijing and Washington. Most Asian countries have many needs. Even if they choose to engage with China in one arena, the United States and its partners can advance their strategic goals in others.

• PAUL STANILAND is Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago.

Foreign Affairs · by Paul Staniland · May 2, 2024

19. How the U.S. Can Win the New Cold War

"Unidirectional entanglement"

Excerpts:

The U.S. must also pursue a strategy of unidirectional entanglement. That means bringing China tighter into its orbit by increasing its dependence on U.S. supply chains while doing the opposite with theirs. Meanwhile, beating China requires Washington to reframe its engagement with other lesser adversaries like Russia, North Korea, and Iran and to view our work with allies, and partners like India and Vietnam, through that same lens.

There would be a substantial reduction in tension and a much smaller risk of outright war if China was ultimately convinced that it is better off working within the current U.S.-led international order. But Washington mustn’t count on that happening.

Over 2,000 years ago, amid the Third Punic War, Cato the Elder used to finish his speeches before the Roman Senate with his rallying cry, “Carthage must be destroyed.” Today, the U.S. rallying cry—the central organizing principle of American foreign, trade, defense, and industrial policy this century—must be Sinae deterrendae sunt. China must be deterred.

How the U.S. Can Win the New Cold War

IDEAS

BY DMITRI ALPEROVITCHMAY 1, 2024 6:00 AM EDT

Dmitri Alperovitch, is a national security expert and an author of a new book, World on the Brink: How America Can Beat China in the Race for the Twenty-First Century.

TIME

Both President Joe Biden and Xi Jinping strongly reject the current U.S.-China competition as a new Cold War. As recently as September, Biden said that he doesn’t “want to contain China” and that “we’re all better off if China does well.” Xi, in turn, proclaimed that “China doesn’t want a cold war or a hot war with anyone,” following a meeting between the two in San Francisco in November. Yet these pronouncements aren’t all that sincere.

Today there are striking and troubling similarities between our current moment and the original Cold War between the U.S. and Soviet Union that defined the second half of the 20th century. Once again, the world is witnessing two major powers engaged in a global competition for supremacy, trying to lock in an economic, technological, diplomatic, and military advantage anywhere and everywhere an opportunity presents itself. Virtually every region of the planet is a battlefield for this confrontation: from the scramble to secure mining rights for critical minerals and advantageous trade deals in Africa and Latin America, to the establishment of economic and military partnerships across Asia, to backing opposite warring sides in Europe and the Middle East.

And just as in the 20th century, the last two decades have witnessed a dangerous conventional and nuclear arms race, with China engaging in rapid build up and modernization of their nuclear, naval, air, ground, and rocket forces. In an unmistakable nod to the Space Race of the 1960s, this contest is also playing out beyond Earth, with both countries racing to once again place a human on the moon and later Mars in the coming decade. Finally, the coldness of the Cold War was defined most of all on a daily basis by the secret espionage war. And, indeed, today once again America is confronted with an espionage threat against its government and industry on a scale hereto not seen.

The current era is not identical to the prior Cold War. That is most clear in the deep economic interdependence between China and the U.S. But, when looking at the facts, it’s impossible to call it anything but Cold War II.

In Cold War II, both China and the U.S. believe that the two countries are here to stay. There are some in America who believe that the CCP may eventually collapse, but few are counting on that outcome or can do anything to make it happen. Their current goals are not destruction of each other’s systems but a competition for influence around the world, especially the Indo-Pacific. Neither believes that this struggle is existential like it was in Cold War I. Rather, it is a fight over who controls the economic levers and has more influence in global institutions of the 21st century.

Like the prior Cold War, there are considerable risks of a hot conflict breaking out. That is especially the case over Taiwan. China is already closing in on attaining the capability to conquer Taiwan by force—the U.S. intelligence community has determined that Xi had issued a deadline to his military to be ready for this war by 2027. Biden, on the other hand, has publicly stated on at least four separate occasions that he would order American troops to defend Taiwan against an invasion. The world faces an abyss if this were to happen.

Every passing month makes clear that confronting the reality of China’s threat to the U.S.-led global order requires a deep, hard strategic look. That’s something, unfortunately, that the U.S. hasn’t done well since the end of Cold War I, when the county properly aligned its politics and military and economic strengths decade after decade to counter the Soviet threat. Just as it was in Cold War I, time is on America’s side in Cold War II. But it must be used wisely.

In practical terms, that means strengthening America’s critical advantages and the Western alliance while deterring a calamitous war with China. This requires staying ahead in the military domain as well as semiconductors and other key technologies. On top of that, the U.S. must invest in talent-based immigration that will help offset China’s numerical advantages. Left to their own devices, China’s systemic challenges—from a slumping economy to a shrinking population—will make its bid to become the world’s most powerful nation much less realizable.

The U.S. must also pursue a strategy of unidirectional entanglement. That means bringing China tighter into its orbit by increasing its dependence on U.S. supply chains while doing the opposite with theirs. Meanwhile, beating China requires Washington to reframe its engagement with other lesser adversaries like Russia, North Korea, and Iran and to view our work with allies, and partners like India and Vietnam, through that same lens.

There would be a substantial reduction in tension and a much smaller risk of outright war if China was ultimately convinced that it is better off working within the current U.S.-led international order. But Washington mustn’t count on that happening.

Over 2,000 years ago, amid the Third Punic War, Cato the Elder used to finish his speeches before the Roman Senate with his rallying cry, “Carthage must be destroyed.” Today, the U.S. rallying cry—the central organizing principle of American foreign, trade, defense, and industrial policy this century—must be Sinae deterrendae sunt. China must be deterred.

TIME

20. American Aid Alone Won’t Save Ukraine

Excerpts:

Given the extent to which it is currently outgunned, Ukraine doesn’t yet have the ability to set forth favorable negotiating terms to end the war. A cease-fire would likely see Russia reconstitute its military power, while Ukraine would not be able to maintain its own forces at their current size. Moreover, Kyiv would likely receive waning support for reconstruction if renewed Russian hostilities were anticipated in the near future. Rebuilding Ukraine will depend critically on investment from the private sector, and the threat of a new conflict will make any such financing risky. To ensure that Ukraine can negotiate in the confidence that it can secure a lasting peace, Kyiv’s international partners will have to offer security guarantees that it trusts. Because Ukraine cannot propose those guarantees, it will be up to its international partners to make the first move.

Ultimately, any successful end to the war will depend on NATO’s ability to convincingly deter Russia. That posture requires the alliance not only to field sufficient forces to counter a threat from Russia but also to establish sufficient production capacity among its members to sustain a steady flow of munitions in the event of another war. Establishing this supply will be necessary regardless of how the war ends. In the short term, expanded production of munitions will be essential to Ukraine’s ability to degrade the Russian military. If Ukraine manages to protract the conflict and the war is terminated in its favor, its partners will need munitions to bolster the credibility of their security guarantees. If, on the other hand, Russia achieves its objectives, then these munitions will be needed to underwrite the future security of NATO.

The U.S. military aid package was passed just in time to stave off a Ukrainian collapse. But to truly shift the direction of the war, it will need to be accompanied by a far more comprehensive strategy to successfully end it. And that must come from Washington, its NATO allies, and Kyiv itself.

American Aid Alone Won’t Save Ukraine

To Survive, Kyiv Must Build New Brigades—and Force Moscow to Negotiate

By Jack Watling

May 2, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by Jack Watling · May 2, 2024

After months of delay, Congress’s passage of a nearly $61 billion U.S. aid bill to Ukraine has provided a vital lifeline to Kyiv. But the aid package alone will not solve Ukraine’s larger problems in its war with Russia. Ukrainian forces are defending frontlines that span some 600 miles of the south and east of the country, and prolonged inaction in Washington has left them severely stretched. The influx of U.S. weapons and ammunition should significantly raise the cost to Russia of its impending summer offensive. The aid also offers Ukrainian forces enough materiel to support more systematic military planning for the summer and fall.

Yet ending the war on terms favorable to Ukraine will require far more than a new pipeline of equipment. More than two years since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, its objective in the war remains unchanged: the Kremlin seeks to subjugate Kyiv. Inconstant support and political delays among Ukraine’s international partners have left that outcome all too plausible. If Ukraine is to prevent Russian victory in the longer term, it will need a comprehensive strategy. This means training, equipping, and mobilizing new forces. It means convincing the Kremlin that continuing the war will become increasingly risky to Russia over time. And it means establishing a position of sufficient strength to be able to set forth, on Ukraine’s own terms, the parameters of a lasting peace.

None of these tasks will be straightforward, and none can happen overnight. Nor can Ukraine and its international partners afford to fritter away months formulating a way forward. The United States and its NATO allies will need to make explicit long-term commitments; compelling Russia to negotiate will be especially difficult. But the alternatives are far worse. In the absence of such an overall strategy, the duration of the conflict may be extended, but its trajectory will not.

GRIMACING AT GLIDE BOMBS

Since the fall of 2023, Ukraine’s battlefield situation has steadily worsened. Largely because of ammunition shortages, Ukrainian forces have had to cede territory to Russian forces, often after sustaining significant casualties. Russia has amassed approximately 470,000 troops in Ukraine and seems intent upon using them to try to complete the conquest of Donbas over the remainder of 2024. Russian forces have been focusing their attacks on key eastern towns that, once taken, will allow them to threaten Ukraine’s main logistics hubs in and around Donetsk.

Talk of a new Russian offensive may conjure up images of tank units assaulting Ukrainian lines, breaking through, and then trying to exploit those gains deep into Ukrainian-held territory in order to cut off Ukrainian units. But Russia’s forces are not currently able to carry out these kinds of operations, nor do they intend to. After more than two years of war, Russia’s army has suffered heavy losses among its officer core, and its ability to plan and synchronize large-scale attacks is limited. Russian attacks mainly consist of successive assaults at platoon and company scale, resulting in slow advances with heavy losses.

Ukrainian soldiers manning an artillery position near Chasiv Yar, Ukraine, April 2024

Thomas Peter / Reuters

Still, Russia currently enjoys a more than ten-to-one advantage over Ukraine in available artillery. With the passage of the new U.S. aid package, that advantage will likely shrink to three to one in some regions,which will increase the rate of Russian casualties. But Russia has several ways of pulling Ukrainian forces into fights that are also costly to Ukraine.For example, Russian forces have been using converted glide bombs to devastating effect. These are Soviet-designed FAB500s—large, half-ton bombs—that have been outfitted with wings and guidance kits and that are lobbed by Russian aircraft from behind the Russian lines. With an approximately 40-mile range, they can easily strike Ukrainian towns, collapsing buildings and driving out local populations.

As a result, Ukrainian forces have often been forced to expend significant resources defending costly single positions, simply to shield civilian settlements from coming into Russian glide bomb range. Take Chasiv Yar, a small town on a key ridge line in the eastern Donetsk region. If it falls, Russian forces will gain a commanding position from which to bombard towns in Donbas and key Ukrainian supply routes. Thus, Ukrainian forces are desperately trying to hold on to it, even as the tactical situation becomes less favorable. The challenge has been amplified by Ukraine’s overstretched air defenses, a situation that now permits Russian planes to come close to the frontlines, increasing the accuracy of their bombing. Unfortunately, the more Ukraine needs its surface-to-air missile systems to protect its cities, the greater it puts at risk its ground forces at the front.

Ukraine will lose ground to Russia this summer. The question is how much.

The solution to this challenge would usually be what military strategists call an “active defense,” using small-scale counterattacks to disrupt the attacker from consolidating its advances. If, say, Russian forces seized a key position in Chasiv Yar, the Ukrainians could use counterattacks to isolate the position so that the Russians were unable to dig in and keep moving forward. But Ukraine has few reserves and has lost many of the tactical vehicles needed to exploit Russian vulnerabilities soon after they take positions. Lacking the reserves to counterattack, Ukraine must settle for maximizing Russia’s losses for each position it takes, thereby slowing down its rate of advance.

Under these conditions, even the passage of the U.S. aid bill can only do so much to change the battlefield calculus. The long delay in Washington means that it will take time to repair much of the damage to Ukrainian capabilities. Ukraine will lose ground to Russia this summer. The question is how much, and how high a price Ukrainian forces can make the Russians pay for their gains.

FRESH BLOOD, NOT MORE BLOOD

Other than the immediate provision of ammunition, the greatest effect of the new U.S. aid package is the certainty it offers. After months in which the timing and amount of U.S. support was in doubt, Ukraine will now have enough clarity about military resources for the next six months to allow for broader strategic planning.

Paramount is the need to generate new forces. To do so, Ukraine will need to mobilize more people, improve its training pipeline to maintain a qualitative advantage over Russian units, and adequately equip those new troops. Until now this has been impossible. Lacking equipment and weapons, and unable to predict if and when more might arrive, Ukraine’s military leadership was forced to prioritize all materiel for troops already at the front. The size of the U.S. aid package—and the further support of European partners—means that Ukraine’s military leadership can now implement a deliberate plan to train and equip more troops. Contrary to widespread assumptions, Ukraine does not lack people to mobilize. (According to one recent analysis, there could be several million additional Ukrainians who are able to serve.) What it has lacked is an effective recruitment and training system to bring available people into the force and equipment to provision them. These problems can and must be resolved.

Ukrainian commanders must form new brigades rather than simply bringing their existing formations back up to strength. The army currently lacks enough brigades to rotate them as a whole off the frontline. Instead, individual brigades have been rotating exhausted battalions just off the line of contact for brief respites—a strategy that provides rest but does not allow for collective training of the brigade, since brigade staff and enabling equipment remain at the front. Thus, it is crucial for Ukraine to build and train additional brigades now, so that it can mount an active defense in the fall. Over time, these new units will greatly enhance its ability to counterattack.

A member of a Ukrainian artillery brigade in Donetsk region, Ukraine, April 2024

Serhii Nuzhnenko / Radio Free Europe / Reuters

The military must therefore pursue mobilization in three stages. First, it must immediately raise battlefield replacements for the existing force. But then it must regenerate reserves to allow existing units to rotate and, after that, build new units able to conduct offensive action. The first is the easiest to solve. Equipment is the limiting factor for the second. For the third, the most limiting factor is officer training. This can be addressed, but it must be done imminently if Ukraine is to generate the needed forces by fall.

Russia will likely be most dangerous in the final months of 2024. By that point, having weathered months of Russian offensive operations, Ukrainian forces will be stretched thin, their air defenses depleted. Russia will likely have enough troops to rotate its units to allow for successive offensives in the fall.

But Russian capabilities are not unlimited. Moscow has made some industrial and military choices that are likely to restrict its offensive potential over the course of 2025. For one, it has decided not to expand production of artillery barrels, with the result that fewer new guns will be available next year. Based on the current loss rate, Russian stockpiles of armored vehicles will also likely be depleted by the second half of 2025. This means that Russian forces will be entirely dependent upon newly produced equipment rather than refurbished equipment from existing stock, severely constraining their ability to replenish weapons systems lost in battle. At the same time, beginning in late 2024, European armaments production will begin to climb steadily as investments made last year and in the first months of this year begin to bear fruit. By 2025, then, supply problems should be less acute for Ukraine and more acute for Russia—if Ukraine can hold on until then.

With this longer-term perspective in view, the challenge facing Ukraine and its allies becomes clear. The top priorities must be to ensure not only that Russia’s summer offensive culminates at a high cost to Moscow but also that newly raised Ukrainian troops are in place to blunt further offensives in the autumn—and, ideally, to establish a stable frontline by early 2025. It is only from such a position that Ukraine can regain the initiative. Achieving that objective will depend to a significant degree on how rapidly Ukraine can mobilize and equip its forces. The one commodity it desperately lacks is time.

BRINGING MOSCOW TO THE TABLE

Even if Ukraine is able to blunt Russian gains by rapidly training, equipping, and deploying new forces, these steps will not in themselves produce a pathway to ending the conflict. Ultimately this is because Kyiv’s international partners have built their case for support on the simpler objective of preserving Ukraine in the fight rather than on compelling Russia to negotiate on favorable terms.

The United States and its European allies need to recognize that helping Ukraine negate Russian attacks is not the same as putting Ukraine in a strong negotiating position. The Kremlin is keen for negotiations based on the war’s current dynamics: it believes that once talks are underway, Ukraine’s Western backers will agree to nearly anything, seeing any settlement that can be reached as successful, even if it fails to protect Ukraine in the long term. And Russia’s demand would remain what it has been throughout: a surrender in all but name. For Moscow to truly negotiate, it must be confronted with a situation in which extending the conflict further will present an unacceptable threat to itself. It is only then that Ukraine will be able to extract meaningful concessions.

Sanctions are only one of the tools for damaging Russia’s financial liquidity.

Russia already faces several pressure points. First, Russia’s battlefield losses of critical systems—such as air defenses—matter, because they form the bulwark of Russia’s conventional deterrence of NATO. Equipping Ukraine to be able to damage or destroy prestige Russian assets is strongly in NATO’s interest. Second, Russia will be unable to fund the war indefinitely. Western sanctions are only one of the tools for damaging the regime’s financial liquidity, and are less effective than other options. Damage to Russia’s oil infrastructure is likely to have a much greater impact. Although there are good reasons for the West to avoid directly aiding such attacks, that does not mean that Ukraine shouldn’t undertake them.

Third, although the Russian public largely supports the war, there are deep frustrations with the Russian government that can be exploited. So far, Western governments have not aggressively pursued information operations against the Russian government, partly because they are perceived as escalatory and partly because they are not expected to have immediate effect. By contrast, Russia has been conducting active information operations across Europe with the intent of destabilizing the West.

This asymmetry needs to be remedied. Western concerns that information warfare could provoke escalation are unconvincing: the Kremlin is as determined as the White House to avoid a direct confrontation over Ukraine. Moreover, the Kremlin has long assumed that the West has pursued extensive information operations against it since 2011, even though this is not the case. Any potential escalation risk of such operations is therefore already baked in. Moreover, most of the Kremlin’s routes to escalation do not actually involve countering such activities. Given this situation, there is much more that the West can do. Over the longer term, more and better information operations could heighten Moscow’s awareness of the domestic risks that its costly war has stirred up.

THE FIREPOWER FIX

Given the extent to which it is currently outgunned, Ukraine doesn’t yet have the ability to set forth favorable negotiating terms to end the war. A cease-fire would likely see Russia reconstitute its military power, while Ukraine would not be able to maintain its own forces at their current size. Moreover, Kyiv would likely receive waning support for reconstruction if renewed Russian hostilities were anticipated in the near future. Rebuilding Ukraine will depend critically on investment from the private sector, and the threat of a new conflict will make any such financing risky. To ensure that Ukraine can negotiate in the confidence that it can secure a lasting peace, Kyiv’s international partners will have to offer security guarantees that it trusts. Because Ukraine cannot propose those guarantees, it will be up to its international partners to make the first move.

Ultimately, any successful end to the war will depend on NATO’s ability to convincingly deter Russia. That posture requires the alliance not only to field sufficient forces to counter a threat from Russia but also to establish sufficient production capacity among its members to sustain a steady flow of munitions in the event of another war. Establishing this supply will be necessary regardless of how the war ends. In the short term, expanded production of munitions will be essential to Ukraine’s ability to degrade the Russian military. If Ukraine manages to protract the conflict and the war is terminated in its favor, its partners will need munitions to bolster the credibility of their security guarantees. If, on the other hand, Russia achieves its objectives, then these munitions will be needed to underwrite the future security of NATO.

The U.S. military aid package was passed just in time to stave off a Ukrainian collapse. But to truly shift the direction of the war, it will need to be accompanied by a far more comprehensive strategy to successfully end it. And that must come from Washington, its NATO allies, and Kyiv itself.

• JACK WATLING is Senior Research Fellow for Land Warfare at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based think tank.

Foreign Affairs · by Jack Watling · May 2, 2024

21. Arctic Defense: The US Needs Polar Special Operations Forces Aligned with the 5 SOF Truths

1st Polar SOF Truth. It is cold up there.

2d Polar SOF. Truth: It is really cold up there.

3d Polar SOF Truth: It is really effing cold up there.

and on and on....you get the picture 

(note attempt at humor)

​Polar SOF.

But seriously:

Excerpts:

POLAR SOF is the “economy of force” needed by the Combatant Commanders to cover key terrain in a major regional conflict, one that will require maximum combat power in its primary effort. It releases other conventional forces to be committed elsewhere and ensures there is a force that can successfully operate in the Arctic – a task requiring specialized training for both the environment and the mission. These capabilities make it well suited to counter gray zone tactics and serve as a potent deterrent.

Today, funding, manpower, and other resources for SOF are under close scrutiny and run a very real risk of being funneled away into the conventional forces. SOF leadership should aggressively campaign not to reduce SOF but rather demonstrate the need to preserve and expand these types of units to operate in the Polar domain. As the Arctic becomes increasingly accessible and contested, the establishment of POLAR SOF ensures the US remains prepared to secure its interests and maintain stability, thereby actualizing Mitchell’s vision of Alaska’s central role in global strategy.

Arctic Defense: The US Needs Polar Special Operations Forces Aligned with the 5 SOF Truths - Irregular Warfare Initiative

irregularwarfare.org · by Charles Faint, Richard Liebl · May 2, 2024

In 1935, General (Retired) William “Billy” Mitchell testified before a secret hearing of the House Military Affairs Committee. During that closed-door testimony, General Mitchell stated, “I believe that in the future, whoever holds Alaska will hold the world. I think it is the most important strategic place in the world.”

Today, Mitchell’s assessment of Alaska is increasingly correct. Melting ice is opening up access to polar regions, bringing new opportunities and challenges. Sea lanes are becoming more viable for shipping, with ice free summers projected as soon as 2030. The Bering Strait is quickly becoming a vital waterway as it connects the Atlantic and Pacific via the Arctic. The region also has significant oil, gas, and precious metal deposits, and America’s strategic competitors are actively pursuing these opportunities. The US must respond to its Arctic challenges with a polar-capable Special Operations Force (POLAR SOF) – a uniquely trained, equipped, and dedicated force committed to operations solely in the polar environment.

Russia and China are making substantial investments in the region. Russia maintains 27 operational military bases above the Arctic (the US maintains one), and its ice-capable fleet is the largest in the world, with 61 icebreakers and ice-hardened ships. In 2016 and 2017, China sailed its first icebreaker through the Northwest Passage and attempted to purchase an abandoned naval base in Greenland. In 2018, China declared itself a “near-Arctic State” in its first published Arctic policy and proposed a “Polar Silk Road” to develop shipping through the region. These states also question maritime and seabed boundaries. In 2023, the UN handed Russia a legal win on most, but not all, of its claimed seabed. Russia responded that the decision would “not be the last word in the discussion about Arctic seabed rights.”

While the US military services are slowly orienting towards the Arctic, this is unlikely to be sufficient to secure America’s northern flank. In the event of a major regional war, conventional forces are likely to be diverted away from the Arctic, exposing this flank to Russia and China, making it vulnerable to conventional and gray zone warfare. The severity of the arctic environment necessitates a dedicated force and training. The “Five SOF Truths” are foundational for POLAR SOF and help illuminate the way ahead for developing this capability.

The Five SOF Truths of Future Polar Warfare

SOF Truth #1: Humans Are More Important Than Hardware.

POLAR SOF needs humans to deal with the complexity of arctic environments. The US Army identifies five environments in its arctic strategy – arctic (all-season), subarctic, extreme cold weather (ECW), high altitude, and mountainous. It’s nearly impossible for any unit to maintain proficiency in all of these environments without constant immersion and focus. POLAR SOF must be dedicated exclusively to this environment, treating it much like a military domain. The Arctic is characterized by extreme temperatures, vast areas, limited mobility, long periods of darkness and daylight, serious storms, and seasonally changing terrain.

Still, hardware is necessary to enable the human. POLAR SOF requires capabilities and equipment that provide it with the resources needed to make it credible, flexible, and resilient. For example, new Polar strike vehicles that are airmobile, survivable, and lethal would provide POLAR SOF with the mobility and kinetic capability needed to shape operations in support of the Joint Force and frustrate our adversaries. Equipment must also be designed to operate in extreme temperatures where fuels and lubricants gel, materials weaken, and batteries do not work.

The human side of POLAR SOF should also include unconventional warfare operations. The number of indigenous people is estimated to be approximately 10 percent of the total population living in Arctic areas, with over 40 different ethnic groups living in the Arctic. Just as the US worked with the Eskimo Scouts in World War II to monitor Alaska’s enormous coastline, POLAR SOF must work by, with, and through these talented people to thwart Chinese and Russian advances.

SOF Truth #2: Quality Is Better Than Quantity.

In World War II, Major David Stirling formed the British Special Air Service (SAS) Long-Range Desert Group using a small team of men to make quick raids against the German Luftwaffe. Using the vast desert as cover, Stirling’s group generated the loss of hundreds of German aircraft and countless supplies. Similarly, POLAR SOF must focus on overcoming many of the same challenges as Stirling – vast areas, harsh climate and terrain, and limited mobility – with the same daring, innovation, and adaptability.

POLAR SOF should capitalize on the developments of the U.S. Marine Corps’ operational concepts, employment doctrine, and developments in long-range, precision strike missiles. The use of small Marine teams, operating independently in remote locations, armed with precision fire capabilities, is a key component to the Marine Corps’ plans for Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABO) in the islands of the Pacific. Similarly, POLAR SOF should develop doctrine and capabilities that enable it to effectively operate small teams in remote polar regions, providing low-signature operations with equally formidable control and area denial capabilities.

In a major regional conflict however, particularly in Asia, the Marine Corps is likely to be fully engaged, operating at capacity. Consequently, POLAR SOF will be essential for managing operations in the Polar domain. Drawing on the principles of the US Marines’ EABO, POLAR SOF must adopt a similar approach. This involves leveraging long-range, precision strike capabilities and using fluid, remote-basing concepts to deny our adversaries unfettered maneuver in the polar domain.

and interrupting current adversary operations while complicating future plans. POLAR SOF can conduct Special Reconnaissance (SR), offensive cyber operations, and presence patrols to demonstrate resolve, provide “trip wires,” and disrupt adversary operations. Should the need arise, POLAR SOF can assume a kinetic role as “hunter-killers.” In much the same way that indigenous tribes in the region hunt larger prey, POLAR SOF can pursue adversaries in remote and critical contested areas. POLAR SOF can provide persistent and agile access denial forces, capable of standoff Direct-Action (DA), making them the apex predators in the Polar Domain.

Forward deploying via fixed or rotary wing aircraft, operating in small teams with unique mobility equipment and armed with drones, stand-off missiles, and drone swarm munitions, POLAR SOF can become a challenger in areas thought by our adversaries to be incontestable. In other words, then, what would distinguish POLAR SOF would be their specialized training and equipment tailored for operating in the vast and harsh Polar Domain. This capability, essential for such extreme conditions, cannot merely be surged from standing SOF forces during a crisis. It requires a dedicated investment in doctrine, training, basing, and equipment, underscored by a singularity of purpose.

SOF Truth #3: Special Operations Forces Cannot Be Mass Produced.

SOF is already a niche capability, and polar operations are an exceedingly small slice of what is already a very small SOF pie. The US military is potentially falling behind in the training, equipping, and forward posturing of SOF units that can successfully operate in polar conditions. While some units, such as the 10th Special Forces Group, have polar-skilled units, much of the rest of the SOF formation lacks such equipment, training, and experience.

SOF units identified to serve as POLAR SOF would undergo rigorous Arctic warfare training at both US and allied training facilities. Designated POLAR SOF units within the Army, Navy, Airforce, and Marine Special Operations will provide the POLAR SOF capabilities needed by the Theater Special Operations Commands (TSOC). These Service component POLAR SOF units would need to be robust and should include a Special Forces Group (reactivation of the 11th Special Forces Group, based in Alaska); a Naval Special Warfare Group (reactivation of 3rd NSWG based in Washington); an Airforce Special Operations Wing (reactivation of the 333rd SOW in Alaska) and a Marine Raider Battalion (reactivation of the 4th Raider Battalion based in Japan.)

These units would be specifically trained and equipped for operations exclusively in the polar domain. POLAR SOF would include both active and reserve components and would routinely forward deploy to bases in Alaska and to allied countries to maintain and improve their capabilities.

Additionally, US POLAR SOF cannot operate unilaterally, the sheer vastness of the Polar domain predicates collaboration with similarly capable allied SOF. US POLAR SOF should form the nucleus of a multinational task force, combining the capabilities and resources of our allies into a formidable operational Combined Joint POLAR SOF component. Special Operations Command North (SOCNORTH) and its collaboration with the Canadian Special Operations Command (CANSOFCOM) would serve as the logical nexus for such a multinational task force.

SOF Truth #4: Competent Special Operations Forces Cannot Be Created After Emergencies Occur.

Creating competent POLAR SOF will require extensive lead time, and trying to create them after the need arises is likely to end in failure. The new paradigm of POLAR SOF is not a major departure from traditional roles and missions associated with SOF. Rather, it is an investment in new capabilities that envision highly mobile, versatile POLAR SOF units that operate across vast expanses, akin to the Long-Range Desert Group of SAS lore. Working in concert with the Joint Force, the mere presence of POLAR SOF forces our opponents to reevaluate their actions, complicating their strategic calculus. At a minimum, POLAR SOF can provide a show of force that will challenge our adversaries’ progress in areas they perceive to be ungoverned. But this capability must be created now, as a crisis with Russia or China in the Arctic is on the horizon.

SOF Truth #5: Most Special Operations Require Non-SOF Assistance.

POLAR SOF should use expertise inherent in non-SOF organizations to enhance its mission capabilities. It could capitalize on the unique talents of the Alaska National Guard, including recruiting native peoples. POLAR SOF must study our adversaries who have a long history of training specialized military formations from regions with unique climate challenges. Russian Arctic Motorized Infantry units, for example, recently conducted exercises using pack animals to augment mobility with the help of local native herders.

Because of the tyranny of distance, POLAR SOF will require support bases in Alaska with smaller, resilient staging bases in remote locations above the Arctic Circle. These forward bases will provide POLAR SOF with the operational support, staging facilities, and forward stockpiles of special weapons and munitions needed for rapid deployment.

Additionally, basing access in allied countries will prove critically important. By capitalizing on existing arrangements, POLAR SOF should negotiate support in NATO countries such as Great Britain, Norway, Finland, Iceland, Canada and non-NATO allies such as Japan, Chile, and Argentina.

Opportunity Costs of Inaction

The idea of POLAR SOF will have skeptics. Many analysts agree that a full-blown conflict in the Polar domain is still only a remote possibility, and indeed, the qualities of the Polar domain that have kept humans away throughout history, such as the cold and extreme conditions, still exist. However, skepticism is common for new ideas, particularly when the obvious need for such ideas is still ahead. Strategically, the US must anticipate the changing future and make appropriate investments today.

We already have trend lines that tell us what’s likely in the future. First, Russia and China are increasingly asserting territorial aspirations in the Polar regions and expanding gray zone tactics. Contests in this region have been driven by the reality of climate change and melting ice, which is increasing access to trade routes and resource deposits. It will become a contentious region in the future, where geopolitical rivalries will continue to play out.

Second, the US military is underinvesting in polar capabilities, though it is making some progress. Improvements to the U.S. Navy’s Second Fleet, such as developing the means to operate more visibly in the Arctic; the renovation and use of facilities in Keflavik, Iceland, and long-delayed plans for the construction of new icebreakers to replace the aging vessels still in operation by the U.S. Coast Guard are positive developments. The reactivation of the Army’s 11th Airborne Division in 2022 and its commitment to the Army’s “Regaining Arctic Dominance” strategy is also a much-needed advancement, providing a vital forward-deployed force projection capability. Missing from the Army’s strategy, however, is the role of Special Operations and irregular warfare capabilities, which are mentioned sparingly and mostly within the training context.

Third, the Indo-Pacific region is on a trajectory of increased geopolitical tensions, making a regional conflict more likely in the future. A multipolar world with increased Chinese aggression is rattling the region. If the US joined a regional conflict, it would likely consume all conventional force capabilities, leaving the Joint Force commander with few options to address threats from the polar domain. This could have dire consequences. Without POLAR SOF to counter both asymmetric and conventional military threats, our critical defense infrastructure, like early warning radars and vital lines of communication, will be vulnerable to our adversaries.

Final Thoughts

POLAR SOF is the “economy of force” needed by the Combatant Commanders to cover key terrain in a major regional conflict, one that will require maximum combat power in its primary effort. It releases other conventional forces to be committed elsewhere and ensures there is a force that can successfully operate in the Arctic – a task requiring specialized training for both the environment and the mission. These capabilities make it well suited to counter gray zone tactics and serve as a potent deterrent.

Today, funding, manpower, and other resources for SOF are under close scrutiny and run a very real risk of being funneled away into the conventional forces. SOF leadership should aggressively campaign not to reduce SOF but rather demonstrate the need to preserve and expand these types of units to operate in the Polar domain. As the Arctic becomes increasingly accessible and contested, the establishment of POLAR SOF ensures the US remains prepared to secure its interests and maintain stability, thereby actualizing Mitchell’s vision of Alaska’s central role in global strategy.

Lieutenant Colonel (Retired) Richard Liebl is a retired US Army Special Forces officer who commanded in the 3rd Special Forces Group before becoming a Foreign Area Officer and Military Attaché. After retiring from the Army, He joined the Defense Intelligence Agency as an Intelligence Officer and later served at the Joint Military Attaché School. He is a graduate of the Northern Warfare Training Center at Fort Greely, Alaska.

Lieutenant Colonel (Retired) Charles Faint is a retired US Army Military Intelligence officer currently serving as the Chair for the Study of Special Operations at the Modern War Institute at West Point. He previously served in units including the 5th Special Forces Group, the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, and the Joint Special Operations Command. He is also the owner of The Havok Journal and the Executive Director of The Second Mission Foundation.

Main image: U.S. Navy SEALs conduct High Altitude Low Opening (HALO) airborne operations in support of exercise Arctic Edge 2022 in Deadhorse, Alaska, on March 10, 2022. (Photo by Staff Sgt. Alexzandria Gomez, US Special Operations Command North)

Views expressed in this article solely reflect those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Irregular Warfare Initiative, Princeton University’s Empirical Studies of Conflict Project, the Modern War Institute at West Point, or the United States Government.

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22. The War of a Thousand Nowruzis: The Challenge Facing the Afghanistan War Commission

Excertp:

Three years after serving in Nowruzi, I sat down to lunch with the two commanders who operated in the town after Able Company. The next company, after several months in the town, left a small garrison while the rest of the company joined a large operation to clear parts of Kandahar. Meetings within the town collapsed as internal squabbles took hold. Ishaqzai, again threatened by rivals in the village, fled. The second commander closed the base Returning to Afghanistan in 2016, I looked at overhead imagery: a tan-tinged gravel outline was all that remained of Combat Outpost Durkin. Five years later, villages all over Afghanistan—villages like Nowruzi—fell back under the control of the Taliban. Understanding the path to this outcome depends on the Afghanistan War Commission.

The War of a Thousand Nowruzis: The Challenge Facing the Afghanistan War Commission - Modern War Institute

mwi.westpoint.edu · by Aaron W. Miller · May 2, 2024

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Lost among the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, forgotten by the very human desire to move past recent traumas, the Afghanistan War Commission nears one year in its efforts to make sense of the twenty-year US experience in Afghanistan. Established by the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act, this commission has the potential to be one of the most consequential examinations of US foreign policy since the Vietnam War and, at a minimum, will serve as a foundational record for future scholars, practitioners, and governmental leaders.

The scale of the task in front of the commission is tremendous. There is also the risk that the passage of time necessary for dispassionate analysis has not occurred. A key consideration then is what questions to ask, where, and to whom.

The tendency in any discussion involving war is to talk of violence. In this case, for example, stories of hard fighting in the Tora Bora mountains, the deaths of eight American soldiers at Combat Outpost Keating, and the shock of the Afghan governmental collapse in the face of the Taliban’s lightning military offensive will draw justified attention. But a focus on violence and calamity hides the underlying local Afghan political dynamics that drove or enabled these events. For the United States, a participant in a war characterized by family, factional, and (sometimes) tribal politics—and no discernable national-level politics—it was those members of the US government, often the US military, operating in Afghanistan’s many districts and towns that provide a crucial lens into this world.

My own story as one of these Americans takes place in an unremarkable village called Nowruzi. But the challenges faced by Able Company—my infantry company of one hundred men—there in 2010 are recognizable to anyone who was charged with implementing policy in Afghanistan: a fragmented political landscape with no cohesive ally. There was, at times, a recognizable antagonist, but the terms like Taliban or al-Qaeda were often convenient shorthand—an overgeneralization that masked the many groups fighting the Afghan government.

The term Afghan government is also misleading. While there were the trappings of state, from a presidential palace to a Ministry of Defense, what Afghanistan lacked was a coalition of groups capable of forming the political core of a state. To a certain extent, this fact is unsurprising as decades of war preceding the American intervention atomized Afghan society. The implications of this missing political core, however, are underappreciated if they are even recognized.

Why this core never developed and how the Taliban slowly built the coalitions necessary to survive and pick up the pieces of an Afghan bureaucratic state in 2021 are just some of the questions the commission must ask. And insight—maybe even answers—to these questions reside with those Americans, and some Afghans too, who were embedded in the local politics that defined the US experience in Afghanistan. Searching for those insights is the commission’s mandate.

Nowruzi

Forty minutes west of Kandahar City, the asphalt of Highway One—the ring road that runs along an ancient circular route connecting Afghanistan’s major cities and is visible on British and French maps from the 1840s—cuts abruptly north across the flood plain of the Arghandab River before bending west again toward Maiwand, the site of a crushing British defeat at the hands of Afghan forces on July 27, 1880. Below this bend, on the southern banks of the Arghandab amid the dust and brittle clay of the Zhari district, is the village of Nowruzi. It lies just south of a small canal and a fertile band of agricultural land—often dangerous because of buried explosives—known to US forces in 2010 as the green zone.

These forces were part of a new strategy championed by the Obama administration “to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda . . . and to prevent their return.” While it was on its face a focused effort to eradicate terrorism (the casus belli for the 2002 invasion of Afghanistan), policymakers inside the Obama administration understood that preventing the return of terrorist organizations required the establishment of an Afghan government stable enough to control the territory within its borders. This strategy, which drew on the experience of the US surge in Iraq in 2007, sent American soldiers into previously unoccupied areas of Afghanistan to clear out the enemy, hold critical terrain, build government and military institutions, and transfer them to a new Afghan government capable of denying terrorists a safe haven. The movement of Able Company into Nowruzi was part of this expansion.

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I first met the local warlord at a memorial service for three American soldiers killed in a suicide bombing the day after I arrived in Kandahar in February of 2010. All three were members of Able Company, which I would assume command of a few weeks later. After the service, the warlord promised to continue with me the good relationship he had established with the commander I was replacing. I reciprocated his sentiments; our interests did after all often overlap. Able Company’s mission was to control a band of territory north of the Arghandab River that overlapped with the warlord’s turf, an area that did not include the village of Norwuzi.

The warlord’s black hair fell around him like Jim Morrison’s, a style requiring him frequently to flick henna-colored bangs out of his eyes. When he was drunk, he would show us parts of his scarred body, telling the story behind each gunshot or shrapnel wound. His proudest possession was his short-barreled AK-47, a weapon he had taken, as a young man, from a dead Russian paratrooper.

His power derived not from his time fighting the Soviets, his personal charisma, or his tribal affiliation, but from his gravel pit. From building schools to laying roads, every development project required gravel, and the warlord was rewarded handsomely for each truckload. Protecting this pit also gave the warlord justification for some of his heavier weaponry, including mortars and 12.7-millimeter machine guns. Importantly, with the money he earned from gravel, he purchased slots for his soldiers at coalition training sites where they would become Afghan Uniformed Police, complete with forest-green Toyota Hilux pickups and bed-mounted machine guns.

It was the warlord who later introduced me to Gul, a Nowruzi elder and a proponent of building an American base in the town. My first interaction with Gul was at one of the warlord’s homes on the north side of the Arghandab River, with the town Nowruzi visible across the river through the early morning mist. Under vine-covered trellises and caged songbirds, I listened as Gul tallied the ways in which he could combat the Taliban in Nowruzi. He also promised the support of residents in the village.

In early March, Able Company was tasked by our higher headquarters with incorporating Nowruzi into our area of operations by establishing a base there to block purported Taliban movement toward Kandahar. We were given no other guidance. After a few days of planning, we set out for the village. As we moved down Highway One, an explosion destroyed one vehicle in the lead platoon. The clipped staccato of a medical evacuation request came over the radio. The rest of the company, spread out in a long column, arrived soon after the attack. The noise of our vehicles masked the sound of a second explosion: a sergeant, in charge of three men, had knelt down on an explosive device while placing a newly arrived private behind a tree for cover. The explosion took off both the sergeant’s legs around mid-thigh and knocked him into a murky canal. After evacuating our casualties, the company again moved toward Nowruzi.

Our arrival in the village from the east was uncontested. Part of the company secured the site of our future base, a house reportedly once occupied—and now abandoned—by insurgents. A second group cleared the main road to the western edge of the town where a squad, crossing a footbridge into the green zone of the Arghandab River, triggered the day’s third explosion. As platoons continued to clear the dusty roads and the alleyways created by the high mud walls of family homes called qalats, I met up with Gul, who now carried an AK-47. He asked for guns to arm a police force.

A platoon in the eastern part of the village called for me on the radio: a local man was demanding to know our intentions. As I reiterated the message we were passing out to all the locals—we would have a village meeting near the base that evening to address any questions—he interrupted me. His side of the village refused to mingle with the western side. We agreed to hold two separate meetings.

It was a group of children who later explained the falling out between the two sides of the village. In the early 2000s unknown foreigners appeared and dug wells—we later determined that this was the town’s first and only encounter with coalition forces before our arrival. Eastern Nowruzi, populated by close-knit Kochi nomads, used the wells with little issue. But in the western part of the village, families near wells sought to control access to the water. All of the newly dug wells quickly ran dry. A United States Agency for International Aid (USAID) representative later told us that the wells were drilled without consideration for the depth of the local water table. East blamed west.

On the afternoon of our first day, the company prepared for our meetings—we called them shuras. Outside the walls of our new base, located between the eastern and western parts of the village, several soldiers erected a weather-beaten circus tent with chipped yellow poles for the night’s shuras. Laying out several cases of water and talking quietly with the warlord, we waited for our meeting with the eastern villagers. Soldiers manning machine guns first reported the flow of Afghan men moving toward the base from the eastern half of the village. Filtering into the tent, groups started to sort themselves, with a band of men rising from their seats and moving depending on the stature of whoever entered the tent.

The ensuing conversation was not friendly. During one particularly heated exchange, the warlord, seated at the base of a center pole, broke in to explain that US forces had entered the town to rid the area of Taliban and help the villagers. “We want to be left alone,” they replied—American troops were known to attract violence. I told them we would leave them alone as long as no attacks came from their side of the village. They agreed to this stipulation and filtered out. After the contentious meeting with the eastern villagers, the one with the western contingent proved anticlimactic. Only a handful of men showed up, all to harangue us.

During our first month in Nowruzi, I pulled a page from my previous experiences in Iraq and sent platoons door-to-door, photographing and documenting houses; interviewing and identifying all men; and ascertaining familial and tribal affiliations. But more important than the demographics of the local Afghans were the stories the platoon leaders and I heard over bitter green chai and boiled candy.

The western half of Nowruzi fractured along familial and tribal lines, with two additional groups, those affiliated with the Taliban and landowners living in Kandahar City, influencing every local decision. We identified approximately seven tribal groups and multiple families inside the western village, but found that local tensions centered on three families in the Sayed tribe and their issues with members of a rival family from the Popalzai tribe, a tribe whose membership included Afghan President Hamid Karzai but conferred no additional benefits—tribes in this area of Kandahar were often little more than designations, with much smaller familial groupings serving as the tightest form of social connection.

While the Popalzai family members traced the feud to competing factions during the Soviet occupation, one platoon leader’s best determination was that it was personal in nature: one Popalzai elder, Khan, simply disliked the head of one of the local Sayed families, Ishaqzai. A month of talking to villagers throughout Nowruzi clarified the story. Ishaqzai, a mujahideen commander during the 1980s, was well respected in the village. Khan, a cautious patriarch of the richest faction in Nowruzi, had sat on the sidelines during the Soviet occupation. He felt threatened by Ishaqzai’s popularity and his family had turned the village against Ishaqzai, who moved to Kandahar City as a result.

This situation replicated itself across multiple stories within the village: locals dressed up personal grudges and vendettas as historical conflicts. More troublesome was that some, like Gul, tried manipulating US forces to advance personal agendas. Our arrival in Nowruzi disrupted a tenuous balance between tribal and familial factions, especially in the western half of the village.

Three weeks into our operation, a platoon radioed, asking me to come and talk to a village elder. I walked to a house with adobe walls and sat down. “Why are you talking with Gul?” the elder asked. As the story unfolded, and was later corroborated by other members of the village, Gul’s Tariki tribe was identified as both the most populous and the weakest group within the village. Locals viewed him with disdain, as a man grubbing for power.

Unknown to Able Company at the outset of our mission, Gul had deliberately positioned himself as the voice of US forces within the village. He threatened local leaders who did not support him with American reprisals. His requests for guns and money at every meeting were an effort to solidify a position of power in the village, though his earlier promises of local support and his own desire to fight the Taliban proved hollow, a ploy to entice us into the village. At the time, I was unsure how to proceed and was still trying to understand the dynamics in Nowruzi. I simply ignored him.

As time went on, Gul sensed his growing distance from Able Company. He started to lash out, directly challenging me during shuras. His relationship with the warlord also deteriorated, ending in a standoff in which the warlord’s men disarmed him.

There was also growing tension between the warlord and me, which came to a head when I confronted him with allegations that he was trying to extort money from our local school-building project. In retrospect, I believe that part of the warlord’s frustration stemmed from his desire to expand his control into Nowruzi. Secure in his position of power, he made amends and aligned himself more closely with Able Company. Gul, however, lacking prospects and worried about local retribution, fled the village.

As platoons became more familiar with the families and personalities in Nowruzi, they convinced elders to either attend or send representatives to our almost daily shuras. Gul’s departure helped the tenor of the shuras overall, but western village elders continued to bicker. Most villagers tilled the fields around Nowruzi as sharecroppers, and they were also unwilling to make decisions without the approval of landlords who lived in Kandahar.

We gained the support of the landlords, or at least their acquiescence to local decision-making, by threatening to split up farmland among the different groups within the village, thus invoking ghosts of Soviet land reform and threatening their source of income. One landlord did visit from Kandahar: Ishaqzai, who had been driven away because of the feud with the Popalzai family. Although he was initially reluctant to associate with the company, we came to rely on his insight as we were drawn deeper into the complexities of Nowruzi. Critically, Ishaqzai’s exile removed him from years of local squabbles. His absence and time as a mujahideen commander created a tentative trust between him and a majority of western village families. It was a trust that strengthened in the poppy fields outside the village.

During the circus tent meeting on our first night in Nowruzi, I forbade the cultivation of poppy, a known source of revenue for the Taliban and of corruption within the Afghan government. But the continuing presence of the poppy’s distinctive white petals, edged in ragged pink, showed that my proclamation was ignored. I talked of burning the poppy and asked Ishaqzai to meet me in the fields to discuss our options. At around seven one morning, we crossed a narrow wood and wattle footbridge into one of the larger poppy fields. Grabbing the wooden blade from one field hand, Ishaqzai talked while demonstrating how laborers quickly scored each poppy head with three or four vertical cuts, allowing the purple sap to ooze.

The price for working the fields was steep. Villagers owed the majority of their harvest to their landlords after each season. A bad harvest did not change the rent they had to pay. This determined the selection of crops. Poppy, a hardy plant with easily storable resin and a ready market, was both reliable and lucrative. We told the farmers we wouldn’t burn the crop, but that this would the last harvest we would leave untouched. That evening, workers returned to the fields. Using the flat of their blade, they scraped the dried sap into plastic wrap, forming bricks of it for storage and sale.

Ishaqzai managed to persuade the fractious villagers to abandon poppy cultivation, which made Able Company confident of his ability to represent them. Several weeks later we brought a USAID-sponsored agricultural program to Nowruzi; later still we watched farmers plant wheat and other staples.

A little over six weeks had passed since our entrance into Nowruzi, and much of normal life in the village resumed. Conical gray loudspeakers at the top of desiccated pieces of rough-hewn lumber again called men to prayer. Children in the western village started interacting with patrols while women in flowing burkas returned to the dusty streets. The company received news that Sergeant Sean M. Durkin, the team leader who knelt beside his private on the first day, had died of his injuries at Walter Reed on April 9, 2010. The company named our new home Combat Outpost Durkin.

It was around this time that the enemy decided to attack. Not a single shot was fired by American forces during the ensuing violence. Instead, at the western edge of the village, vehicles started hitting buried explosives. We layered razor wire and rerouted the dusty road leading out of the town’s western edge so we could observe its full stretch from our guard positions. The enemy snuck a hook into the wire and tried to pull it apart with a tractor. We put small teams in place in the hope of killing our unseen adversaries. One team, reacting to a small explosive hurled at them, caught only a glimpse of young men running away.

Ultimately, it was the villagers who enabled us to stanch the violence by reporting the location of newly buried bombs. An army bomb disposal unit, visiting daily, removed them. The warlord convinced the district police chief to bring around eighty policemen to clear the agricultural band along the Arghandab River of enemy fighters. We wrapped every tenth Afghan in fluorescent orange and purple “capes” called VS-17 panels to make sure our helicopters could see friendly forces among the trees of the green zone. It was our last major effort in the town before our redeployment in late June 2010.

What Happened?

In 2015 US forces ended combat operations in Afghanistan. A new NATO headquarters, Resolute Support, concentrated on advising and assisting the Afghan military. But the unstable nature of Afghan politics remained unchanged. My experience in Nowruzi was with one unit, in one brief period of a twenty-year war. But the personality clashes and shifting alliances in that village are replicated across the country’s villages and cities. It was this perspective that was missing from policy debates on the war in Afghanistan. The problem was not violence, but the fragmented political landscape that caused the violence. And it is this landscape that allowed the final collapse of Kabul.

A focus on military activities misses the underlying truth: though highly fragmented in their own right, the Taliban built the local agreements necessary to incorporate an increasing number of local polities within their span of control. The Afghan government did not do this. This fact was readily acknowledged by America commanders who served during the last two decades of war.

In 2012, I interviewed over twenty American company and battalion commanders—those commanders deeply embedded in the local politics of Afghanistan—and all told variations of the story above. A few commanders focused on the fighting, not because they were at odds with counterinsurgency practices, but because simply existing in their corners of Afghanistan required it. Some commanders talked of local leaders struggling to build their communities. Many commanders talked of getting drawn into messy local disputes, often unwittingly—US fighting in the infamous Korengal Valley grew out of the local leaders drawing US forces into disputes over the timber trade. To varying degrees, these commanders tried to build alliances with local factions. All commanders noted the absence of a viable Afghan government partner.

And it is these observations that must drive the Afghanistan War Commission’s inquiry. More specifically, the commission must understand that local politics, not the preferences of a great power, determined the future of Afghanistan.

Moving forward, the commission should consider four things. First, it must avoid getting caught up in descriptions of the violence that permeated all aspects of the conflict. That war is the continuation of politics by other means is a cliché, but examining the political aspects of war, rather than its battles and campaigns, is a rare occurrence. Chris Kolenda’s work is an important corrective in this regard but does not grapple with the domestic politics of Afghanistan.

Second, the commission must embrace uncertainty. The efficacy of modern counterinsurgency approaches is still an open question. The “hearts and minds” logic found in the 2006 US counterinsurgency manual, studies of counterinsurgency success, and John Nagl’s paradigm-setting work are seeing increasing pushback. Authors like Jacqueline L. Hazelton, Douglas Porch, Karl Hack, and Gregor Mathias argue that modern counterinsurgency practices rest on an incomplete reading of the empirical record. While it is very likely that there are grains of truth in what is typically presented as a binary distinction between good and bad counterinsurgency practices, the commission cannot assume the United States cracked the code on counterinsurgency.

Third, the commission must avoid conflating inputs with outputs. The military often talks about measures of performance and measures of effectiveness. A measure of performance assesses how well a particular activity is implemented (did we accomplish the task we set out to accomplish?). A measure of effectiveness is an identifiable piece of information that, if observed over time, indicates that our actions are having a desired effect (did the task we set for ourselves lead to an outcome we wanted?). There is a propensity, when dealing with complicated policy endeavors, to measure inputs and treat the measurement as progress. The challenge facing the commission’s members is recognizing this proclivity and focusing their efforts on trying to determine how US actions in Afghanistan did or did not achieve outcomes of concern. If, as I argue above, the core issue at play is Afghan domestic politics, then the commission will break new analytical ground by trying to understand how American actions did or did not influence the local politics around them.

Finally, while the three considerations above can help shape the commission’s line of questioning, it must ask the right questions of the right people. Here the commission should look to those members of the US government who were enmeshed in domestic politics of Afghanistan.

Postscript

Three years after serving in Nowruzi, I sat down to lunch with the two commanders who operated in the town after Able Company. The next company, after several months in the town, left a small garrison while the rest of the company joined a large operation to clear parts of Kandahar. Meetings within the town collapsed as internal squabbles took hold. Ishaqzai, again threatened by rivals in the village, fled. The second commander closed the base Returning to Afghanistan in 2016, I looked at overhead imagery: a tan-tinged gravel outline was all that remained of Combat Outpost Durkin. Five years later, villages all over Afghanistan—villages like Nowruzi—fell back under the control of the Taliban. Understanding the path to this outcome depends on the Afghanistan War Commission.

Lieutenant Colonel Aaron W. Miller is a strategist within the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy (Strategy) Office, served as an infantry officer in Iraq and (both) Afghan surges, and recently completed his PhD examining US military behavior at Princeton.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.

Image credit: Staff Sgt. Dayton Mitchell, US Air Force

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mwi.westpoint.edu · by Aaron W. Miller · May 2, 2024

23. Bringing a Method to the Strategy Madness

Please go to the link to view the graphics. https://warontherocks.com/2024/05/bringing-a-method-to-the-strategy-madness/

Excerpts:

What is the payoff of using this framework? I make two claims. First, this approach helps us better understand how people create and implement strategy. Current and past strategies are more explicable looking through the lens provided here. Using the “theories of strategy” framework, we can categorize types of strategy (e.g., de-coupling as a proximate cause strategy) and better understand their strengths and weaknesses (e.g., the tradeoffs between leverage and directness). Strategy flaws are also more explicable (e.g., misunderstanding causal effects). Second, this approach can improve strategy-making and strategy analysis. While I believe many strategists intuitively follow a method similar to what this article describes, they do so implicitly and therefore do not gain the full benefits that could come from understanding what they are doing and being intentional about it.

Bringing a Method to the Strategy Madness - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Jeffrey Meiser · May 2, 2024

Almost 10 years ago I penned a strategy article inspiring ad hominem attacks, the suggestion by former colleagues that I had written something akin to The Anarchist Cookbook, and otherwise causing “profound disappointment” and “alarm” in the defense community. My target at the time was the now classic formula for strategy as the sum of ends, ways, and means. I argued this tended to transform strategic thinking into a means-based (resource-based) planning exercise. My answer to this problem was to define strategy as a “theory of success,” in the hopes of drawing strategists’ attention to the job of causing success rather than allocating resources. This phrasing was not exactly unique, though it was certainly different from how most were defining strategy at the time. While I think we are better off now with more strategists conceptualizing strategy as theory, I have also been told the phrasing “theory of success” has become another meaningless buzzword in defense planning circles.

What would it take to really get serious about fundamentally rethinking strategy? We need a method and I offer one here. It is a simple framework useful for creating, analyzing, and assessing strategy. Its three parts are a theory of the challenge, a theory of success, and a theory of failure.

This framework is a “challenge-based” approach. It starts by seeing strategy as inherently about addressing challenges or solving problems. While others approach strategy by thinking about interests or goals first, I find this to mostly be a futile exercise. Goals or interests unconnected to real-world challenges are usually vague, impractical, and highly subjective. Strategy documents like the National Security Strategy released by every U.S. presidential administration go into detail about national interests and describe “grandiose ambitions and laundry lists of priorities,” but the list of interests and goals are routinely disconnected from the actual strategy.

Why does theory feature so heavily in my framework? The main value of using theory as the defining heuristic of strategy is its practical effects. Yes, it is true, theory is eminently practical. Theory, defined as a “causal explanation,” fits well with what we expect from strategy, telling us how to cause a preferred outcome. Rebecca Lissner insightfully draws attention to this with her question: “Of what effects is grand strategy the cause?” Drawing on philosophy of science and social science methods scholarship, we have many techniques for developing and testing theories. This means we have some ability, albeit highly imperfect, for assessment, accountability, and improvement in strategies, even before they are implemented. For example, we can assess the internal and external validity of a strategy to at least partially assess the likelihood of success. Critics may see this as an effort to make strategy more science and less art, but science is a highly creative enterprise — was Isaac Newton simply a number cruncher? — and I have yet to encounter a serious examination or defense of what strategy as art would look like. Until there is a better way to think practically and effectively about strategy, the following framework should be considered as a useful way to think about it.

Below I illustrate my concepts and claims with examples. Many of you will disagree with my interpretations. This is healthy and appropriate. To me the point is not that any method generates correct interpretations, but instead that it forces people to reveal their biases, assumptions, and errors, brings them out to the light, and forces them to defend their positions explicitly. The examples show how the method can be applied and allow readers to decide for themselves whether my approach inspires better ways of thinking.

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Theory of the Challenge

The first step in creating or analyzing strategy is defining a theory of the challenge. For the strategist, the point of defining the challenge is to examine the situation to determine where effort should be focused. Others call this step the “diagnosis” or “problem framing.” The importance of this step, as noted in the U.S. Marine Corps design and planning process, is that the definition of the challenge “points directly to possible solutions.”

There are a variety of ways to define the challenge. This framework suggests articulating the challenge as a theory or “causal explanation” with the challenge situated at the center of a process that starts with the causes of the challenge and ends with its negative effects (Figure 1). In defining these elements of the challenge, there are likely to be root causes and proximate causes, as well as multiple negative effects. The purpose of situating the challenge in the middle of the causal process illustrated in Figure 1 is to demonstrate the possibility of creating a strategy response on either side of the challenge (or both). On the left side, strategies of interdiction can eliminate or lessen the magnitude of the challenge. On the right side, strategies of mitigation can influence the negative effects of the challenge.

Figure 1.

There are several reasons for conceptualizing the problem in this form. First, conceptualizing a challenge as a causal process gives the strategist a clear method for focusing attention on potential points of intervention. The basic logic is that a challenge exists because of other phenomena that cause it and therefore interrupting that causal process can eliminate, limit, or transform the challenge. Visualizing the challenge as an arrow diagram is also a method, or part of a method, of determining how to intervene in a challenge.

Mapping out the challenge creates analytical leverage by making it easier to identify potential intervention points. For example, intervention can be made at the point of root causes, proximate causes, the challenge itself, and the effects. Effort can also be oriented on breaking the links between the various factors. Identifying potential intervention points is the beginning of formulating strategy. Second, by enabling a visual representation, this approach makes it easier to understand the theory of causation. When using words, there are many ways to suggest at causation without fully committing oneself. Diagraming the argument gives no place to hide. As Stephen Van Evera argues in his classic work on political science methods, “A ‘theory’ that cannot be arrow-diagramed is not a theory.”

Theory of Success

A theory of the challenge is not a strategy and is not part of a strategy. It is the basis for creating strategy. A strategy is a theory of success or a theory of response to the challenge. A strategy ought to explain what actions will be taken to achieve what goals and why we should think that causal relationship is accurate. This conceptualization allows for theory testing, which can identify bad assumptions and, most importantly, bring more scrutiny to claims of causal effect. Strategy is about causing preferred effects — most deficiencies in strategy result from a poor understanding (usually an overestimation) of the causal effects of actions.

A strategy or theory of success should be conceptualized as an intervention in the causal process of the challenge (see Figure 2).

Figure 2.

A strategy is meant to affect the challenge in an advantageous manner thereby causing improved conditions. There are a variety of ways to do this, all of which involve directing effort toward some part of the causal process identified by the theory of the challenge, including focusing effort on root causes, proximate causes, the challenge itself, and the negative effects of the challenge. For example, a counter-terrorism strategy directed toward root causes will attempt to eliminate or diminish the root causes of terrorism. Looking back to the early years of the Global War on Terrorism, there was much discussion of root causes, including economic and political dysfunction in the Middle East. Some effort was directed toward affecting those root causes, and the desire to eliminate or lessen the influence of those root causes in part inspired the invasion of Iraq. As this example suggests, identifying and affecting root causes is difficult (and sometimes misguided) because they tend to be deep structural factors that are difficult to manipulate. However, since they are deeply rooted, having any sort of positive effect on root causes would, in theory at least, have a considerable effect on the challenge. The immense effort expended by the United States on regime change in Iraq is a cautionary tale about the difficulty of affecting root causes. A more positive example of a root cause approach to strategy might be the Marshall Plan implemented after World War II. The United States was worried about the spread of communism in Western Europe and saw the root cause as basic quality-of-life issues like hunger, disease, and poverty. The economic aid through the Marshall Plan was meant to affect these root causes. Arguably, the Marshall Plan caused a cascade of positive effects that would have been unachievable by narrower, short-term initiatives.

Another type of intervention focuses on proximate causes, which are likely to be less deeply entrenched and therefore more malleable than root causes. However, affecting a proximate cause is also likely to have a weaker effect on the challenge. In the language of social science, the proximate cause is an intervening variable linking the root causes to the challenge. If we take the rise of China as an example, a proximate cause of China’s rise is its entry into the World Trade Organization and institutionalization of most favored nation status in the global trade regime. China’s ability to gain access to technology and intellectual property to fuel industrialization was likely a significant proximate cause of its current level of economic power. An intervention on this proximate cause would suggest an approach similar to the “de-coupling” or “de-risking” efforts currently being implemented. This example illustrates both the possible virtues of addressing proximate rather than root causes, and suggests the usefulness of this approach to help better understand the variety of possible policy interventions.

A third type of intervention is on the challenge itself. Often this takes the form of directly affecting the nature of the challenge. On the positive side, the effects of a direct strategy could be more predictable because there is no need to consider how to cause some positive cascade of effects along some hypothesized process. On the negative side, there is less promise of magnifying the causal effect of your efforts, making it more difficult to craft a strategy that creates leverage or power. For example, social distancing policy responses to COVID-19 acted directly on the challenge, which was the spread of the illness through close contact. Studies suggest social distancing did work in slowing the spread of COVID-19, but of course this also severely disrupted the economy, education, and quality of life. Vaccines offered more leverage by addressing the proximate cause of virus production in infected humans.

Fourth, strategists can target effort at the negative effects of the challenge. These are mitigation strategies targeted at limiting the magnitude, duration, and scope of the negative effects. If the challenge of the Global War on Terrorism was the emergence of the Salafi-jihadi movement, one of its negative effects could be seen as the operationalization of Salafi-jihadism in the form of groups acting on the ideology. One way to mitigate that negative effect is to apply effort to limiting the magnitude, duration, and scope of groups like al-Qaeda. Arguably, the United States finally settled on this type of strategy during the Obama administration with its focus on targeted killing through drone strikes. Israel’s “mowing the grass” approach could also be seen as a type of mitigation strategy, while also possibly revealing the limitations.

A final approach is to apply effort to interrupt the causal process generating the challenge and/or its negative effects. In the early phases of the Global War on Terrorism, various scholars and government officials began to see the challenge as something akin to a “global insurgency” whereby local and regional Salafi-jihadi groups could globalize to draw on support (funding, manpower, etc.) from around the world. David Kilcullen’s “disaggregation” strategy sought to break the connection between the groups and their international base of support by applying effort to regional groups that acted as nodes allowing for the globalization of conflict. This could be seen as a strategy based on disrupting the causal connection between a proximate cause of the challenge and the challenge itself. If root causes generate grievances in Muslim populations, and those populations can be used to empower Salafi-jihadi groups, and the process that links the aggrieved Muslims to the terrorist groups is the intervention of regional Salafi-jihadi groups, then “de-linking” is a strategy meant to interrupt the causal process.

Theory of Failure

As many strategists know, analyzing and understanding risk is integral to the strategy process. While some see risk as the result of a misalignment of goals and resources, often articulated as an ends-means mismatch, I see things differently. The real source of risk is almost always a misunderstanding of causal effects, which is characteristic of a flawed theory of success. Strategists think action X will cause result Y and they are wrong. Sometimes there are insufficient resources to fully implement action X, but that is not always the case. Instead of focusing on resources, it is much better to think thoroughly about causal effects. The risk analysis problem for the strategist is how to know ahead of time the type and magnitude of causal effects that will be created by the proposed actions. The level of uncertainty over causal effects creates risk. The best method for understanding risk is to derive theories of failure.

The point of thinking in terms of a theory of failure is to consider ahead of time what the points of failure may be in a strategy so that during the implementation phase you can understand your failure — why and how you failed — and respond accordingly. Often theories of failure will involve thinking through what might happen if your hypothesized causal effect is less than you think (see Figure 3). Other theories of failure will explore unintended negative consequences and think through whether action X might cause A or B instead of Y. It is never possible to think through all possibilities, and surprise is a constant, but there is no good substitute for thinking through what might go wrong and how to respond. In essence, this is a structured approach for performing a “pre-mortem.”

Figure 3.

To give a concrete example, the Biden administration developed a theory of success for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan. A key part of the strategy was the hypothesis that a rapid withdrawal of U.S. forces would minimize U.S. casualties and have no immediate effect on the stability of Afghanistan. What were the potential theories of failure and would they have helped? One theory of failure is that rapid withdrawal of U.S. forces would cause instability and rapid collapse of Afghan forces. If the Biden administration had considered this theory of failure, they could have considered ahead of time whether they would consider taking alternative actions like slowing the withdrawal, investing in more support for the Afghan security forces, or going even faster on the withdrawal and evacuation. Second, they might have realized their theory of failure was at least as likely as their theory of success. This might have caused them to rethink their whole approach to the withdrawal and reconsider their timeline and investments. This example, and others above, demonstrate the reality that strategy requires tradeoffs. Intervening in complex challenges will consistently result in unintended consequences and strategists are better off when they have a structured, thoughtful method for thinking through these consequences ahead of time.

What is the payoff of using this framework? I make two claims. First, this approach helps us better understand how people create and implement strategy. Current and past strategies are more explicable looking through the lens provided here. Using the “theories of strategy” framework, we can categorize types of strategy (e.g., de-coupling as a proximate cause strategy) and better understand their strengths and weaknesses (e.g., the tradeoffs between leverage and directness). Strategy flaws are also more explicable (e.g., misunderstanding causal effects). Second, this approach can improve strategy-making and strategy analysis. While I believe many strategists intuitively follow a method similar to what this article describes, they do so implicitly and therefore do not gain the full benefits that could come from understanding what they are doing and being intentional about it.

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Jeffrey W. Meiser, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science and Global Affairs at the University of Portland. He previously worked for the U.S. Department of Defense as an associate professor and director of the South and Central Asia Program at the College of International Security Affairs, at the National Defense University in Washington, DC. He is on X at @jwmeiser. The author thanks Amos Fox, Bill Curtis, and Frank Hoffman for helpful comments and support.

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Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Jeffrey Meiser · May 2, 2024

24. The Case for Averting War Between Israel and Hizballah

Excerpt:

British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli famously argued that “We make our own fortunes and call them fate.” If Israel and Lebanon decide to settle the political disputes between them in a peaceful manner, with a little help from their American (and other Western and Middle Eastern) counterparts, then another bloody and devastating chapter in their mutual relations might be averted and stability could return to their shared border, to the benefit of both states and their peoples, and of the region as a whole.

The Case for Averting War Between Israel and Hizballah - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Oren Barak · May 2, 2024

According to a well-known Jewish proverb, “It is not the mouse that is the thief, but the hole.” In other words, some of the problems we face (mice entering our home) are perhaps more a result of our own actions or lack thereof (plugging the holes in its walls), than of the malign intentions of others. What does this tell us about the security challenges Israel faces from Hizballah, the Lebanese militant group and Iranian proxy? It suggests that the best way to deal with threats such as those posed by this violent non-state actor (the “mouse”) might not be to try to eliminate it by force but, rather, to prevent it from exploiting the ambiguous situation in the Israeli-Lebanese border (the “hole”) to its advantage and to Israel’s detriment.

Israel’s political and military leaders — with a little help from their American counterparts — should not launch a massive military operation against Lebanon in order to eliminate Hizballah, or try to establish new “rules of the game” with it, but instead put their best efforts into reaching a political settlement with the Lebanese state regarding the border between the two states that, in time, might prevent Hizballah, and possibly other violent non-state actors active there, from attacking Israel from Lebanon’s territory.

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Against a Major Operation

There are several reasons why a massive Israeli military operation designed to eliminate Hizballah might be counterproductive. Some of these reasons have to do with the past experience of foreign actors, including Israel, which has previously tried to dominate Lebanon. Others flow from the difficulties that states encounter when confronting violent non-state actors such as Hizballah.

First, foreign powers never succeeded in occupying Lebanon. Indeed, the common denominator between France, the United States, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, Syria, and Israel is that all of these actors tried to establish a political and military foothold in Lebanon, but all have failed.

Second, Israel’s own experience in Lebanon shows that the military operations that it launched there did not bring stability. The best example is Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in June 1982: Israeli troops entered Lebanon, captured large swaths of its territory, and imposed a siege on its capital, Beirut. Israel tried to hold on to a “security zone” that it created in the Israeli-Lebanese border area, and even established a militia called the South Lebanon Army that fought alongside it. But in 2000, Israel had to withdraw from Lebanon, abandoning its clients. The same is true of other Israeli military operations in Lebanon during the 1990s, and also the war between Israel and Hizballah in 2006 (the Second Lebanon War) that Israel launched after a Hizballah attack against its territory.

Third, Israel will not be able to eliminate Hizballah. It is not only a guerrilla or “terrorist organization” as it is referred to many states, including the United States, but is also a political party and a social movement that enjoys considerable support in Lebanon — especially in the Shi’ite community, which is the largest in the country. Hizballah also commands huge stockpiles of rockets and missiles, making any attempt to defeat it a dangerous adventure. But over and beyond, all Hizballah needs to do in a military confrontation with Israel is to survive.

Fourth, “rules of the game” between states and violent non-state actors, such as those that exist between Israel and Hizballah (and between Israel and Hamas, until the latter attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023), mainly serve the non-state actor. This is because the non-state actor exploits these “rules” to limit the state’s use of superior military power against it. In the case of Israel and Hizballah, it was the non-state actor, Hizballah, that managed to force its rival, Israel, to exercise limits on its military power, enabling Hizballah to build itself as a political and military actor at Israel’s expense. This is in contrast to the “rules of the game” established between states, such as the “Red Line” between Israel and Syria in Lebanon. In 1976, Israel agreed that Syrian troops would enter Lebanon and suppress the Palestinian armed factions there, but Israeli leaders feared that the Syrian army might advance towards the Israeli-Lebanese border. Consequently, an arrangement was reached with American and Jordanian mediation that imposed restrictions on the Syrian operation, to prevent a clash with Israel but also to preclude a potential Soviet-American confrontation.

Fifth, the “rules of the game” between states and violent non-state actors — including attempts to bribe them — are unstable because these actors may break these “rules” when their existence is at stake. Violent non-state actors are not states and have no sovereignty, legitimacy, or clearly defined boundaries like states do. Therefore, survival is a primary goal for these actors, but they have no guarantee that they will survive in a world dominated by states. Therefore, when non-state actors face an existential threat, they may decide to attack the state to escape their predicament. For example, in 2006, when Hizballah faced an internal and external campaign to dismantle its weapons, it launched a military operation against Israel that led to the Second Lebanon War. Similarly, on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas feared that a U.S.-brokered regional deal would be reached at its expense, it decided to thwart it by attacking Israel, and to some extent succeeded.

Sixth, states are far better in dealing with other states than with violent non-state actors. This is because other states have political and security institutions that state leaders can work with, as well as clear and defined borders. In contrast, violent non-state actors lack both. On a more general level, too, international stability goes hand-in-hand with the establishment of political settlements between states.

Seventh, the weakness of the state on the other side of the border and the ambiguity of the border itself do not contribute to a state’s security, but rather the opposite. This is because a “weak state” enables violent non-state actors to claim that they “defend” the state because it cannot protect itself, and an ambiguous border gives these actors grounds to engage in “resistance” to the “occupation” of its territory. This enables violent non-actors to survive in their own state and in a world of states. For example, the “security zone” that Israel established in Lebanon on the grounds that Lebanon is weak not only accorded legitimacy to Hizballah’s “resistance” but also provided the latter with an opportunity to improve its military capabilities. In fact, from the end of the 1982 war to Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000, Hizballah built itself as a guerrilla organization with considerable military skills, and the situation in southern Lebanon played to its favor and to Israel’s detriment. The ambiguity of the Israeli-Lebanese border also served Hizballah well.

Eighth, in Israeli relations with its Arab neighbors, diplomatic settlements between sovereign states have been more stable than arrangements between states and violent non-state actors. In the case of Lebanon, Israeli-Lebanese relations were stable in the period from 1949 to 1967, when the Israel-Lebanon Mixed Armistice Commission, which was established following the Armistice Agreement between the two states in 1949 — and which included representatives from both sides and a United Nations observer — achieved stability on both sides of the border. In 1967, after Israel’s victory in the Israeli-Arab War, Israel tried to annul the Armistice Agreement with Lebanon, although the latter did not fight against Israel. Later, Israeli leaders such as Moshe Dayan admitted that this was a mistake. But elsewhere, too, Israel has had stable peace agreements with its neighboring states: with Egypt since 1979 and with Jordan since 1994, as well as with other Arab states. The same cannot be said about Israel’s agreements with non-state actors.

Ninth, Israel is not the only foreign actor that has interests in Lebanon. Other actors are the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Syria. The United Nations has also been involved in Lebanon, and U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701 in 2006 emphasized “the importance of the extension of the control of the Government of Lebanon over all Lebanese territory … for it to exercise its full sovereignty, so that there will be no weapons without the consent of the Government of Lebanon and no authority other than that of the Government of Lebanon.” Since all these actors have interests in Lebanon, they will not allow Israel to operate there freely. It is important to note that the United States has a large Lebanese diaspora, including in swing states that are critical in any presidential election. Therefore, the United States will not abandon Lebanon and will not allow Israel to act there as it pleases, especially during an election year.

Finally, students of international relations acknowledge that the power and sovereignty of states are not absolute but they are mutually constitutive. What follows is that Israel should work to strengthen Lebanon as a state despite its weakness. Today, Lebanon is unstable and weak. But before the civil war of 1975 to 1990, Lebanon was relatively stable, and this was in Israel’s interest since it had someone to work with on the other side of the border. If Israel decides to see Lebanon — and not Hizballah — as its partner for a political settlement, then this may help strengthen Lebanon. Also, more “state-based” behavior towards Lebanon may decrease the motivation of at least some Lebanese to fight Israel, especially since there are no major disputes between the two countries. In such a situation, moreover, it might be more difficult for Hizballah to appeal to the Lebanese, and the “resistance” will be less legitimate. Indeed, even today, many Lebanese oppose Hizballah and its confrontation with Israel — which, in their eyes, embroils Lebanon in conflicts that are not its own. By adopting a “state-based” approach towards Lebanon, Israel can strengthen this trend.

Toward a Diplomatic Settlement

How can a diplomatic settlement between Israel and Lebanon be reached? What might it look like? First of all, Israeli political and military leaders should adopt a “state-based” approach towards Lebanon by clearly distinguishing between the Lebanese state and Hizballah. For example, Israeli leaders should make it clear that every political and military action that they take in and vis-à-vis Lebanon is not intended to hurt Lebanon as a state but, rather, to strengthen it and its sovereignty. What follows is that Israel should avoid attacking Lebanon’s state institutions, including its security forces, focusing only on Hizballah. In recent years, Hizballah — which has the Lebanese Armed Forces — has acquired significant military capabilities, and some argue that members of Lebanon’s security forces, including some military personnel, have close ties to the Shiite party-militia. However, the Lebanese Armed Forces are not an instrument of Hizballah, nor are they one and the same, and some members of Lebanon’s security agencies — the armed forces included — have little sympathy for Hizballah. Keeping the Lebanese military out of the conflict may drive these two actors further apart. Lebanon’s civilian infrastructure, too, should not be attacked since this is liable to alienate the population and push it toward Hizballah.

Second, Israel should work in earnest to remove all existing border disputes with Lebanon so that this would be recognized as an international border, thereby strengthening both states’ sovereignty and depriving Hizballah of this “card.” In 2022, an agreement was reached through U.S. mediation on the maritime border between the two states — this political settlement, which is in the interest of both states, can serve as a precedent for a comprehensive agreement on the land border. In January 2024, Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati expressed his state’s “readiness to conduct negotiations to achieve a long-term stabilization process in southern Lebanon, with a commitment to respect international decisions,” including Resolution 1701, and even envisioned “the revitalization of the armistice agreement [of 1949], its application and the restoration of the situation in the south to what it was before 1967.” As explained above, achieving both goals is also in Israel’s interest.

British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli famously argued that “We make our own fortunes and call them fate.” If Israel and Lebanon decide to settle the political disputes between them in a peaceful manner, with a little help from their American (and other Western and Middle Eastern) counterparts, then another bloody and devastating chapter in their mutual relations might be averted and stability could return to their shared border, to the benefit of both states and their peoples, and of the region as a whole.

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Oren Barak is the Maurice B. Hexter Chair in International Relations – Middle East Studies and professor of political science at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research areas include conflict and peace, civil-security relations, and popular culture. He is the author of The Lebanese Army: A National Institution in a Divided Society, Israel’s Security Networks: A Theoretical and Comparative Perspective, and State Expansion and Conflict: In and Between Israel/Palestine and Lebanon.

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Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Oren Barak · May 2, 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