Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

"Retirement may be looked upon either as a prolonged holiday or as a rejection, a being thrown on to the scrap-heap."

– Simone de Beauvoir

"Never stay up on the barren heights of cleverness, but come down into the green valleys of silliness."

– Ludwig Wittgenstein

"No right is more sacred to a nation, to a people, than the right to freely determine its social, economic, political and cultural future, without external interference. The fullest expression of this right occurs when a nation freely governs itself We call the exercise of this right Self-Determination. The practice of this right is Self-Government."

– Joe DeLaCruz

1. Andor: An Irregular Warfare Story

2. U.S. Says Historic Israel-Saudi Normalization Deal Within Reach but Israel Might Balk

3. Ukraine Pays the Price for U.S. Dithering Over Military Aid

4. ‘What’s the Problem?’ Zelensky Challenges West Over Hesitations.

5. Opinion Six experts weigh in on the ICC’s warrants on Israeli and Hamas leaders

6. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, May 21, 2024

7. Faceless people, fire and ghosts: US Army releases ‘weirdest recruitment ad’ for psychological operations

8. Philippines seeks Asia logistics hub status, banking on US ties

9. As Taiwan’s New President Takes Office, Can China Seize Taiwan Without Firing a Single Shot?

10. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, May 21, 2024

11. To Lam takes office as Vietnam’s president

12. Foreign Purchase of U.S. Ammo Maker Sparks National-Security Battle

13. US and China should cooperate on reducing Asian nuclear threats, scholars say

14. Gaza aid pier mission involving US troops is off to a chaotic start

15. China Possesses American MIM-104 Patriot Missile Defense System? Claims Surface

16. Ireland, Spain, Norway announce recognition of Palestinian state

17. Revised Lift Fan Aircraft Concept Emerges From Special Ops X-Plane Program

18. Army chief of staff: We don’t need a drone branch

19. Inside the USS Carney’s harrowing and unprecedented deployment

20. The Case for a Prospective U.S. Cyber Force

21. Ukraine Needs More Than Crisis Management

22. The End of Nordic Neutrality

1. Andor: An Irregular Warfare Story

I thought the title meant "And/Or" as in irregular "and/or" conventional warfare.

But on a more serious note, we need to use fiction and even pop culture more often to explain irregular warfare concepts. I wonder if the writers of Andor knew they were employing these concepts? Had they read irregular/unconventional warfare doctrine or was this by chance? Or is unconventional warfare doctrine merely common sense and based on historical actions in the real world. I can say for sure that unconventional warfare is a synthesis of of the history or revolution, resistance, and insurgency,

Excerpt:

Ultimately, the brilliance of Andor lies in its ability to translate the realities of insurgency and irregular warfare into a compelling narrative set in a galaxy far, far away. It embraces the moral complexities, the internal struggles, and the immense human cost of resistance. By grounding its story in these real-world themes, Andor transcends the genre of space opera fantasy and offers a thought-provoking exploration of the fight for self-determination against overwhelming odds. While entertaining and a Hollywood production, Andor nevertheless captures the real-world elements of modern insurgency and irregular warfare.

The visually aesthetic PDF version can be downloaded here: https://irregularwarfarecenter.org/wp-content/uploads/P18_Andor_An_Irregular_Warfare_Story.pdf

May 21, 2024

Andor: An Irregular Warfare Story

Dr. Lumpy Lumbaca

“I’d rather die trying to take them down than die giving them what they want.”

Cassian Andor

Download a PDF of this publication by clicking the icon.

The Disney+ series Andor—about Cassian Andor, a rebel fighting against the Galactic Empire—takes a dramatic detour from the usual Star Wars fare of lightsaber duels and epic spaceship battles. Instead, the show plunges viewers into the gritty underbelly of rebellion, exploring the birth of a resistance movement against the suffocating grip of the Empire. The show transcends mere space fantasy, offering a nuanced and captivating portrayal of the principles of irregular warfare and insurgency.

Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, and Jedi knights are nowhere to be found in this series. The departure is immediately apparent. The show establishes the Empire not through grandiose displays of military might, but through the quotidian repression of unaccountable proxy forces patrolling downtrodden mining worlds and industrial centers. Their oppressive presence is felt in the arbitrary curfews they enforce and the brutal crackdowns on dissent they enact. These constant reminders of the Empire’s overwhelming power serve as stark counterpoints to the fledgling rebellion slowly taking root in response.

The show portrays a realistic depiction of a calculated system of authoritarian economic exploitation. Planets like Ferrix, where Andor was raised, are reduced to mere resource extraction sites for the Empire, leaving the local population impoverished and desperate. These economic injustices fuel resentment and provide fertile ground for resistance. Social control is another facet of the Empire’s oppressive machinery. Attempts to manufacture consent are portrayed through propaganda depicting the Empire as a benevolent force. Dissenters are swiftly silenced, either through violence or disappearing into Imperial prisons. This oppressive milieu becomes a crucible that forges Cassian Andor’s transformation from a cynical petty thief into a committed rebel.

The show charts Andor’s journey, highlighting the pivotal moments that chip away at his apathy and ignite his defiance. It provides a brutal baptism by fire for Cassian and his compatriots, highlighting their lack of resources and training compared to their well-equipped Imperial adversaries. However, Cassian’s encounter with Luthen Rael, an early leader of the anti-Imperial resistance, marks a turning point. Luthen, an experienced, covert rebel leader, exposes Cassian to a wider network of resistance fighters, and provides much-needed guidance, propelling him towards a more effective insurgency.

Andor embraces the realities of irregular warfare. Facing an overwhelming enemy, the rebels are forced to adopt asymmetric tactics. Hit-and-run attacks, sabotage, clandestine communication, and intelligence gathering become their primary weapons. Theft of Imperial equipment, and the disruption of economic supply lines, become crucial strategies for striking back at the Empire. The show also emphasizes the importance of exploiting local knowledge of terrain. Secluded hideouts provide the rebels with secure operational bases and opportunities to evade Imperial patrols. Lack of local collaborators to help navigate unfamiliar terrain, a liability for the technologically-superior counterinsurgent forces of the Empire, becomes an advantage for these nimble rebel forces.

Resistance tradecraft is highlighted throughout the show. Characters utilize sophisticated communications techniques such as electronic encryption, dead drops, and secure rendezvous points. Cut-outs, or middlemen, play a significant role, with operatives relying on these intermediaries to maintain operational security and distance themselves from direct contact with potential informants or allies. These elements showcase the meticulous planning and execution required for successful clandestine operations within a hostile environment. Cassian Andor, for example, is introduced to Luthen Rael through Bix Caleen, a seemingly innocuous mechanic who relays insurgent messages disguised as routine conversation and logistics requests. Recruitment itself occurs subtly. Cassian’s own path to rebellion is gradual, influenced by witnessing Imperial brutality and nudged by Luthen’s veiled encouragement. The show emphasizes the importance of trust and discretion, showcasing how a network of seemingly ordinary people become vital links in the chain of resistance.

Furthermore, Andor depicts the real-world components necessary for a successful resistance movement. According to the U.S. Army Special Operation Command’s Unconventional Warfare Pocket Guide, the “underground” in resistance involves the cellular organization that has the ability to conduct operations in areas that are inhospitable to guerrilla activity, such as urban areas under tight control of the local security forces. The “auxiliary” refers to that portion of the population that provides active clandestine support to the guerrilla force or the underground. The “guerilla force” involves a group of irregular, predominantly indigenous, personnel organized along military lines to conduct operations in enemy-held, hostile, or denied territory. Finally, the “shadow government” consists of administrative elements and activities performed by an irregular organization that aims to displace the functional governance of an existing regime such as the Empire.

We find all of these elements depicted in Andor. Senator Mon Mothma, a secret supporter of the rebellion, navigates a dangerous balancing act in the show. She risks public exposure and Imperial persecution by discreetly funneling funds to the nascent insurgency, all while maintaining a facade of loyalty to the oppressive Empire. This double life puts her personal safety and political career on the line in her fight for a cause she believes in. At the end of the first season, we witness Mon make the tremendous personal sacrifice to betroth her only daughter to raise funds for the resistance. Meanwhile, Vel Sartha, an heiress to a fortune and cousin to Senator Mon Mothma, deploys to far-away planets to conduct guerilla operations. In line with Unconventional Warfare doctrine, several actors must serve more than one functional role in the resistance. Mon Mothma is a prime example. She initially serves in an auxiliary role, but at the same time slowly emerges as a key leader of the forming shadow government.

Despite small victories that may be won on the way, the path to an ultimately successful rebellion is fraught with immense challenges. Andor exposes internal fractures and differences within the resistance movement. Luthen Rael embodies a ruthless approach, prioritizing efficiency over morality. Cassian, on the other hand, grapples with the moral complexities of rebellion and the potential for collateral damage. These contrasting perspectives highlight the difficulties of forging an insurgency’s unified front, especially in the face of limited resources and constant threats from within. The lack of sophisticated weaponry and formal training forces the rebels to rely on ingenuity and improvisation. The constant paranoia surrounding potential informants and double agents, like Imperial officers Lonni Jung and Lieutenant Gorn, adds another layer of realistic complexity, demonstrating the precariousness of resistance and the need for constant vigilance.

The human cost of rebellion is another aspect that Andor doesn’t shy away from. The torture of Bix Caleen and the death of Maarva Andor, Cassian’s adoptive mother, serve as stark reminders of the personal sacrifices that rebellion can demand. The loss of his mother emboldens Cassian’s resolve to fight the Empire, but illustrates the human cost entailed in long-duration struggle. The rebels are forced to make difficult choices, facing tradeoffs between self-preservation and doing what they believe is right. This moral ambiguity adds depth and realism to the narrative, reminding viewers that even in the fight against tyranny, there are no easy answers.

Ultimately, the brilliance of Andor lies in its ability to translate the realities of insurgency and irregular warfare into a compelling narrative set in a galaxy far, far away. It embraces the moral complexities, the internal struggles, and the immense human cost of resistance. By grounding its story in these real-world themes, Andor transcends the genre of space opera fantasy and offers a thought-provoking exploration of the fight for self-determination against overwhelming odds. While entertaining and a Hollywood production, Andor nevertheless captures the real-world elements of modern insurgency and irregular warfare.

In conclusion, there are perhaps no words from the show more evocative of the spirit of resistance than those shared in the manifesto of the young insurgent, Karis Nemik:

“There will be times when the struggle seems impossible. I know this already. Alone, unsure, dwarfed by the scale of the enemy. Remember this. Freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously and without instruction. Random acts of insurrection are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy. There are whole armies, battalions that have no idea that they’ve already enlisted in the cause. Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward. And then remember this. The Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear. Remember that. And know this, the day will come when all these skirmishes and battles, these moments of defiance will have flooded the banks of the Empire’s authority and then there will be one too many. One single thing will break the siege. Remember this. Try.”

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

2. U.S. Says Historic Israel-Saudi Normalization Deal Within Reach but Israel Might Balk

What if Hamas attacked to prevent this agreement as some have speculated?

U.S. Says Historic Israel-Saudi Normalization Deal Within Reach but Israel Might Balk

Netanyahu has rebuffed new push for Palestinian state and halt to attack on Rafah that Riyadh says must come before recognition

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/u-s-says-historic-israel-saudi-normalization-deal-within-reach-but-israel-might-balk-89d16780?mod=latest_headlines

By Gordon Lubold

and Michael R. Gordon

Updated May 21, 2024 6:35 pm ET

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is fighting for his political survival. PHOTO: RONEN ZVULUN/REUTERS

WASHINGTON—Biden administration officials said Tuesday that a U.S.-brokered deal to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia was within reach, but that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government might balk at the historic agreement rather than accept Riyadh’s demands for a new commitment to a Palestinian state and a halt to the Gaza war.

“The Saudis have been clear that [normalization] would require calm in Gaza and it would require a credible pathway to a Palestinian state,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Tuesday. “It may well be that in this moment Israel isn’t able or willing to proceed down that pathway.”

For months, the administration has hoped Netanyahu would grab at the long-sought prize of normalization with Riyadh as part of a sweeping agreement aimed at halting the Gaza war and transforming the region’s long-static divisions.

But Netanyahu, under pressure from right-wing members of his governing coalition and fighting for his political survival, has yet to sign on to elements of the deal that are key to getting Saudi agreement.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that Saudi Arabia would require ‘calm in Gaza’ and a commitment to a Palestinian state as part of an agreement with Israel. PHOTO: ANNABELLE GORDON/ZUMA PRESS

Blinken’s sobering forecast came after a visit to the region over the weekend by Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, who held talks in Riyadh with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman before traveling to Israel, where he briefed Netanyahu on the White House Middle East blueprint.

Israel is in the early stages of an attack on the southern Gaza city of Rafah, the last Hamas stronghold that Netanyahu and other Israel officials are insisting must be taken, even if it means refusing or delaying a deal that U.S. and Saudi officials say is all but completed, except for Israel’s portion.

“Israel will achieve its war objectives of destroying Hamas’s military capabilities, freeing our hostages and ensuring that Gaza doesn’t pose a threat to Israel,” a senior Israeli official said Tuesday in response to Blinken’s testimony. “Achieving those objectives will further facilitate peace in the Middle East.”

To encourage Saudi Arabia to recognize Israel, U.S. officials have offered Riyadh a more formal defense relationship with Washington, assistance in acquiring civil nuclear power and a renewed push for a Palestinian state.

After Sullivan’s talks with Prince Mohammed in the eastern Saudi city of Dammam, the kingdom said they had discussed “the semi-final version of the draft strategic agreements” between Washington and Riyadh.

“Nobody here is going to say this is just right around the corner,” said a senior administration official of the normalization talks. “It does have the possibility to play into an endgame scenario in Gaza as you look ahead.”

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman met with Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser, over the weekend. PHOTO: EVELYN HOCKSTEIN/REUTERS

Sealing a landmark Saudi-Israeli rapprochement could reshuffle Middle Eastern politics, solidify an Israeli-Arab coalition against Iran and would be a diplomatic coup for President Biden as he faces a tough re-election campaign.

Brokering a deal to establish diplomatic relations between two of the region’s most powerful countries would expand the Abraham Accords that former President Donald Trump sealed when he was in office. The accords led to the normalization of relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco.

But persuading Netanyahu to embrace a new push for a Palestinian state has proved difficult in the aftermath of the deadly Hamas attacks on southern Israel in October, which intensified opposition to the idea among right-wing members of his government and much of the Israeli public.

Benny Gantz, a member of Israel’s war cabinet, sharply criticized Netanyahu’s handling of the war in Gaza and threatened to quit the government in June if the prime minister doesn’t articulate a plan for ending the war and securing the enclave of more than two million Palestinians.

If Netanyahu continues to balk, Biden administration officials have said, Washington might make so far undisclosed details of the diplomatic package public to make clear the choice Israel faces—and increase the pressure on the Israeli prime minister.

Biden administration officials have said that they don’t plan to complete and implement the agreements with Saudi Arabia unless Israel agrees to the components of the larger deal.

Carrie Keller-Lynn contributed to this article

Write to Gordon Lubold at gordon.lubold@wsj.com and Michael R. Gordon at michael.gordon@wsj.com

3. Ukraine Pays the Price for U.S. Dithering Over Military Aid

Excerpts:

The Biden administration bears a share of the responsibility for recent reverses. Delays in authorizing the delivery of advanced weapons systems have limited Ukraine’s capacity to defend itself. The White House has prohibited Ukraine from using high-precision weapons against targets inside Russia. As the Ukrainian military could see Russian forces building up on the northern border in recent weeks, it could do little to stop them.

Still, the bulk of the responsibility for these losses belongs to congressional Republicans who delayed the latest aid package as they fought among themselves. Members of the House Freedom Caucus warned wavering colleagues that a vote in favor of aid would expose them to punishment at the polls. Yet when members who voted yes went home, the much-feared wrath of their constituents failed to materialize. As Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, a Republican who represents a swing district in the Philadelphia suburbs, put it, “when you explain it, people get it.” Republicans from redder districts and states have made similar comments.

There’s no excuse for a repetition of this sorry episode, no matter who wins the presidential election. The outcome of Ukraine’s war will determine whether other countries believe it is advantageous, or even safe, to be America’s friend.

Ukraine Pays the Price for U.S. Dithering Over Military Aid

Delays and conditions on military aid have allowed a perilous Russian advance.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraine-pays-the-price-for-u-s-dithering-over-military-aid-4f59ce12?mod=latest_headlines

By William A. Galston

May 21, 2024 11:38 am ET

Heavily damaged buildings in Vovchansk, Ukraine, May 20. PHOTO: LIBKOS/GETTY IMAGES

While Congress finally did the right thing by passing its recent foreign-aid package, the unconscionable delay in doing so had serious consequences. Months of waiting for additional military aid has weakened Ukrainian troops’ ability to defend a front line stretching 600 miles—and its cities behind that line. The stall in aid left Ukrainians short of ammunition, outgunned by as much as 10 to 1 on some parts of the front by the time the new aid was finally approved.

The delay has also made it harder for Ukraine to build fortifications as sturdy as those Russia has built. To do so, Ukraine would have needed to move excavators and other equipment into areas where Russia would have quickly spotted and targeted them for destruction. Air-defense shortages have left Ukraine less equipped to repel Russian ground-launched missiles. Ukraine’s defenses are no match for air-launched glide bombs, which Russia has in abundance. Ukrainian commanders say that until the long-delayed F-16 fighter jets arrive later this year, there’s little they can do to mitigate this threat.

Five attacks since March have destroyed 20% of Ukraine’s electrical generating capacity, Maksym Timchenko, CEO of DTEK, a private-energy supplier, told reporters last week. Unlike previous attacks, which focused on the power grid, the latest ones have targeted power plants, which take longer to repair at much greater cost. If allies don’t ship the equipment and supplies necessary for repairs soon, there’s little chance that Ukraine can regain full energy capacity before winter. Electricity shortages will also hamper the economy and inflict further hardship on the civilian population.

Russia has been making steady gains throughout the spring in the east and has opened a new northern front that threatens Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city. While Kharkiv isn’t in danger of being overrun immediately, some surrounding towns have fallen, and others are under assault. The Russian advance could bring Kharkiv within range of several Russian missile systems within a week, threatening civilians with daily attacks that will lower morale.

In response to the Russian advancement, Ukraine has been forced to move troops from the eastern to the northern front, reducing its ability to resist Russia in the Donetsk region and elsewhere. In a recent interview with the New York Times from Kharkiv, Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, head of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, said that “all of our forces are either here or in Chasiv Yar,” a town that serves as a strategic stronghold in the Donetsk region. “I’ve used everything we have,” he said. “Every hour this situation moves toward critical.”

In the coming months, U.S. aid will help Kyiv bolster its defenses and stabilize the war, but it’s unlikely to reverse Ukraine’s losses. Since April, Russia has seized almost 300 square miles of Ukrainian territory, more than Ukraine gained in its lackluster 2023 counteroffensive.

Not all these losses can be attributed to U.S. aid being delayed. With a population less than a third Russia’s, Ukraine is at a manpower disadvantage. Russia now has about 510,000 troops, which Ukraine won’t be able to match. Even so, Volodymyr Zelensky’s government could boost recruitment by expanding the draft beyond the modest changes made in April, which it has been reluctant to do for economic and political reasons. Ukraine’s ability to hold its own rests on superior technology and training, which only the U.S. and other allies can supply.

The Biden administration bears a share of the responsibility for recent reverses. Delays in authorizing the delivery of advanced weapons systems have limited Ukraine’s capacity to defend itself. The White House has prohibited Ukraine from using high-precision weapons against targets inside Russia. As the Ukrainian military could see Russian forces building up on the northern border in recent weeks, it could do little to stop them.

Still, the bulk of the responsibility for these losses belongs to congressional Republicans who delayed the latest aid package as they fought among themselves. Members of the House Freedom Caucus warned wavering colleagues that a vote in favor of aid would expose them to punishment at the polls. Yet when members who voted yes went home, the much-feared wrath of their constituents failed to materialize. As Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, a Republican who represents a swing district in the Philadelphia suburbs, put it, “when you explain it, people get it.” Republicans from redder districts and states have made similar comments.

There’s no excuse for a repetition of this sorry episode, no matter who wins the presidential election. The outcome of Ukraine’s war will determine whether other countries believe it is advantageous, or even safe, to be America’s friend.

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Speaking at the 2024 AFA Warfare Symposium, Gen. James Hecker described what the U.S. has learned from unmanned aerial vehicles—or UAVs—in Ukraine, and how they will change warfare. Images: AFP/Getty Images/U.S. Air Force via AP Composite: Mark Kelly

Appeared in the May 22, 2024, print edition as 'Ukraine Pays the Price for U.S. Dithering'.

4. ‘What’s the Problem?’ Zelensky Challenges West Over Hesitations.

He has every right to call us out. We should be ashamed.

Here is the link to the entire transcript of his NY Times interview: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/21/world/europe/zelensky-interview-times-transcript.html

‘What’s the Problem?’ Zelensky Challenges West Over Hesitations.

“Shoot down what’s in the sky over Ukraine,” he said in a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times. “And give us the weapons to use against Russian forces on the borders.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/21/world/europe/ukraine-zelensky-interview.html

By Andrew E. KramerPhotographs by Daniel Berehulak

Reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine

May 21, 2024Updated 4:19 p.m. ET

With his army struggling to fend off fierce Russian advances all across the front, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine urged the United States and Europe to do more to defend his nation, dismissing fears of nuclear escalation and proposing that NATO planes shoot down Russian missiles in Ukrainian airspace.

Mr. Zelensky said he had also appealed to senior U.S. officials to allow Ukraine to fire American missiles and other weaponry at military targets inside Russia — a tactic the United States continues to oppose. The inability to do so, he insisted, gave Russia a “huge advantage” in cross-border warfare that it is exploiting with assaults in Ukraine’s northeast.

Video

Zelensky Presses for Approval to Fire American Weapons at Targets in Russia1:56

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said that he needed “weapons and permission” to better defend his country.CreditCredit...Daniel Bateman and Phil Caller for The New York Times

His comments, made in an interview on Monday with The New York Times in central Kyiv, were among his most full-throated appeals yet to the United States and its NATO allies for more help. Over 50 minutes at the ornate House With Chimeras in the presidential offices, he spoke with a mix of frustration and bewilderment at the West’s reluctance to take bolder steps to ensure that Ukraine prevails.

Mr. Zelensky has long lobbied the West, for more weapons in particular. But his pleas this week come at a critical time for Ukraine’s war effort, with its army in retreat and a new package of American arms yet to arrive in sufficient quantities. Not since the early days of the war has Ukraine faced as grave a military challenge, analysts say.

It’s also a pivotal time in Ukrainian politics. Mr. Zelensky spoke on the last day of his five-year presidential term. Elections scheduled for March were suspended because of the war, and he will remain president under martial law powers, with his tenure potentially stretching as long as the war.

In the wide-ranging interview, Mr. Zelensky, 46, discussed the wrenching sadness of visiting mass graves and consoling the families of dead soldiers, but also his own personal journey, and the “recharge” he gets from the little time he has to spend with his children. He said he would like to read more but falls asleep too quickly at night to get far.

Read a transcript of The New York Times’s interview with Volodymyr Zelensky.

He was most animated as he ticked off a checklist of actions he believed his allies should take to support Ukraine. He argued that NATO should shoot down Russian missiles in flight over Ukraine — without planes crossing into Ukrainian airspace — saying that would be a purely defensive tactic and pose no risk of direct combat with Russian forces.

“So my question is, what’s the problem? Why can’t we shoot them down? Is it defense? Yes. Is it an attack on Russia? No. Are you shooting down Russian planes and killing Russian pilots? No. So what’s the issue with involving NATO countries in the war? There is no such issue.”

“Shoot down what’s in the sky over Ukraine,” he added. “And give us the weapons to use against Russian forces on the borders.”

Video

NATO’s Reluctance to Shoot Down Russian Missiles Frustrates Zelensky1:47

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine urged NATO allies to play an active role in the war, saying it was a matter of defense.CreditCredit...Daniel Bateman and Phil Caller for The New York Times

That kind of direct NATO involvement, which analysts say could provoke Russia to retaliate, has been resisted in Western capitals. But Mr. Zelensky drew a comparison to how the United States and Britain helped Israel shoot down a barrage of drones and missiles from Iran last month.

“This is what we saw in Israel,” Mr. Zelensky said. “Not even on such a large scale.” The White House response to the comparison then was, “Different conflicts, different airspace, different threat picture.”

Mr. Zelensky also urged the alliance to come through with more F-16 fighter jets as well as Patriot air defense systems.

“Can we get seven?” he said, saying Ukraine needed more Patriot systems but would settle for that number to protect regions key to the nation’s economy and energy sector. He suggested a decision might be reached when NATO leaders gathered for a summit in Washington in July.

“Do you think it is too much for the NATO anniversary summit in Washington?” he asked. “For a country that is fighting for freedom and democracy around the world today?”

Asked about potential cease-fire negotiations, he called for diplomacy that avoids direct talks with Russia but rallies nations behind Ukraine’s positions for an eventual peace settlement. It would begin with plans to secure Ukrainian food exports to developing nations, prisoner exchanges, measures to secure a Russian-occupied nuclear power station in Ukraine’s south and returning Ukrainian children whom he said were abducted and taken to Russia.

He said he hoped dozens of nations would get behind such an initiative when they gathered at a “peace summit” in mid-June in Switzerland. And he pressed again for a plan for Ukraine to join NATO.

He also welcomed recent suggestions by some allies that NATO send troops to train or support Ukrainian forces in Ukraine, though he added, “I don’t see it, except in words.”

More immediately, he said the ability to use Western-provided weapons to strike at military targets inside Russia was essential for Ukraine’s success.

Only by using these weapons to destroy logistical hubs in Russia and Russian planes in Russian territory, he said, could Ukraine effectively defend itself from the recent assault in the northeast which threatens Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city.

“How do we respond when they strike our cities?” he said, noting that Ukraine could see Russian forces massing across the border before they attacked but was powerless to strike them.

“They proceed calmly,” he added, “understanding that our partners do not give us permission” to use their weapons to retaliate.

The West’s primary reason for hesitating — fear of nuclear escalation — was overblown, Mr. Zelensky said, because President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia would refrain from using nuclear weapons out of a sense of self-preservation.

“He may be irrational, but he loves his own life,” Mr. Zelensky said.

Video

Zelensky Says ‘Escalation Has Already Occurred’ in Ukraine War1:44

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine suggested that Western allies were hesitant to take bolder steps to aid his country in part because they wanted to maintain trade and diplomatic ties with Russia.CreditCredit...Daniel Bateman and Phil Caller for The New York Times

He also suggested that there was another reason for the West’s hesitation: Some countries were seeking to retain trade and diplomatic ties with Russia. “Everyone keeps the door slightly ajar,” he said.

It’s been a tumultuous run for Mr. Zelensky. He was elected in 2019 on a platform of negotiating peace with Russia, which his critics said was naïve. He also pledged to crack down on corruption and promised to serve only one five-year term.

A television personality before becoming president, Mr. Zelensky alternates between diplomacy to drum up support for Ukraine and exhortations to his soldiers and civilians in the face of deteriorating military prospects. He said he has little time to see his son and daughter, 11 and 19, but called spending time with them his “happiest moments.”

“For example, I ask my son what’s happening,” he said. “He says they’re starting to learn Spanish. I’m interested in that. I don’t know Spanish, but honestly, I’m only interested in the time I can spend with him, no matter what he’s doing.”

“These are the moments that recharge you, give you energy. These are the happiest moments. That’s when I can relax.”

Image

“These are the moments that recharge you, give you energy.” said Mr. Zelensky of spending time with his son.

He said he also recharges by working out in the mornings, and tries at night to read. “I’ll be honest, any kind of fiction, I read at night, two, three, four, 10 pages max, and then I fall asleep,” he said.

He reflected for a moment when asked what he would do after the war, and appeared to contemplate the prospect that Russia would prevail. “After the war, after the victory, these are different things,” he said. “It could be different. I think my plans depend on that.

“So, I would like to believe that there will be a victory for Ukraine. Not an easy one, very difficult. It is absolutely clear that it will be very difficult. And I would just like to have a bit of time with my family and with my dogs.”

Mr. Zelensky passed a critical point in his presidency early in the war with the failure of Russia’s attempted decapitating attack on the Ukrainian leadership in Kyiv, which he has said included a plan to capture or assassinate him.

Now, nearly 17 months later, it’s unclear how or when his presidency will end. Ukraine’s martial law, which is periodically renewed with votes in Parliament, rules out holding presidential elections. Though his party, Servant of the People, holds a majority of seats, party discipline has reportedly unraveled in recent months, and Mr. Zelensky has struggled to push through bills.

After the shock of the initial invasion, 90 percent of Ukrainians said they trusted Mr. Zelensky; that figure had fallen to 60 percent by February, according to polling by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology.

Competitive national elections have been a success of Ukraine’s politics since independence in 1991, fulfilling the promise of a democratic transition that fell flat in Russia, Belarus and some countries in Central Asia and the Caucasus.

International experts on elections have supported Ukraine’s decision to suspend voting during the war, given that millions of Ukrainians would be unable to vote in areas under occupation, as refugees in Europe or while serving as soldiers at the front.

Asked to assess the health of Ukraine’s democracy, he said, “Ukraine doesn’t need to prove anything about democracy to anyone.”

“Because Ukraine and its people are proving it through their war,” he went on. “Without words, without unnecessary rhetoric, without just rhetorical messages floating in the air. They prove it with their lives.”

Bill Brink and Philip P. Pan contributed reporting from Kyiv.

Andrew E. Kramer is the Kyiv bureau chief for The Times, who has been covering the war in Ukraine since 2014. More about Andrew E. Kramer

Daniel Berehulak is a staff photographer for The Times based in Mexico City. More about Daniel Berehulak

See more on: Russia-Ukraine War, Vladimir Putin

5. Opinion Six experts weigh in on the ICC’s warrants on Israeli and Hamas leaders

Opinion Six experts weigh in on the ICC’s warrants on Israeli and Hamas leaders

A momentous decision has sent shockwaves around the world. Was it the right one?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/05/21/icc-arrest-warrant-israel-hamas-debate/

By Washington Post staff

May 21, 2024 at 1:29 p.m. EDT

Karim Khan, chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, in Bogotá, Colombia, on April 25. (Luis Acosta/AFP/Getty Images)

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On Monday, Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, announced that he was seeking arrest warrants for both Israeli and Hamas senior officials on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Post Opinions asked six experts for their view of the decision.

Avi Mayer: The ICC has united Israel in opposition

In the immediate aftermath of the pogrom perpetrated by Hamas on Oct. 7, Israelis of all backgrounds and beliefs came together in a demonstration of unity seldom seen in this country. The impassioned debates of the preceding months seemed to vanish overnight as the country rallied behind efforts to support the victims of the carnage and the families of the hostages — and to ensure that Hamas can never again carry out a comparable massacre.

As the war against Hamas dragged on, however, deep disagreements arose about its direction, postwar planning and the price that ought to be paid to free the hostages still held by Hamas. The street protests of last summer have returned in force, and fissures have developed in Israel’s war cabinet, threatening the government’s stability and the country’s internal cohesion.

That is, until Monday.

International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan’s announcement that he will seek arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant alongside Hamas leaders Yehiya Sinwar, Ismail Haniyeh and Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri (better known as Mohammed Deif) has produced a groundswell of anger and indignation that has united the country once again.

Netanyahu’s political foes and potential challengers have rallied to his defense, and 106 of the Knesset’s 120 members — including most of the opposition — have signed a statement slamming Khan’s apparent comparison of Israel’s leaders to the mass murderers of Hamas as “scandalous … an indelible historic crime and a clear expression of antisemitism.”

To Israelis, the suggestion of moral equivalence between their democratically elected government — no matter how much they might detest it — and a terrorist group that openly and actively seeks their destruction is repulsive and contemptible. The notion that any comparison could possibly be drawn between the Jewish state, endeavoring to defend itself in the wake of the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, and the perpetrators of that very massacre — who have promised to repeat it “time and again” until that state is annihilated — is horrifying.

The world might have moved on from Oct. 7, but Israelis have not. A nation that just this week buried the mutilated bodies of four of its people brutally murdered that terrible day will not soon countenance attempts to deny it the right of self-defense. Any effort to tie Israel’s hands while comparing it to the cruel and implacable foe against which it is defending itself will be met with wall-to-wall resistance and steely determination.

Avi Mayer is a former editor in chief of the Jerusalem Post.

Kenneth Roth: Biden’s response harms U.S. interests

The Biden administration’s reasons for condemning the International Criminal Court’s move against Israel and Hamas are confounding. It appears to be grasping for a way to defend senior Israeli officials for their starvation strategy in Gaza — a strategy that senior U.S. officials themselves have repeatedly decried.

President Biden called chief prosecutor Karim Khan’s request for arrest warrants for senior Israeli officials “outrageous,” noting that “there is no equivalence — none — between Israel and Hamas.” But Khan did not say there was equivalence; he simply charged both sides for their separate crimes. The dual charges help underscore that war crimes by one side never justify war crimes by the other.

Biden also said the United States “will always stand with Israel against threats to its security.” But the issue is how Israel defends itself. No defense justifies war crimes.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken claimed without elaborating that “the ICC has no jurisdiction.” He could be referring to the old U.S. argument that the court cannot charge nationals of governments that have not joined it, even if they commit crimes on the territory of a government that has. Israel has not joined the ICC, though the Palestinian territories have. But Biden abandoned that argument when he called the ICC’s use of territorial jurisdiction to prosecute Russian President Vladimir Putin “justified.”

Or, Blinken might be alluding to the view that Palestine should not have been allowed to join the court. But the ICC judges have already rejected that argument, based on the U.N. General Assembly’s recognition of Palestine as a “non-member observer state.” Palestine has used that status to ratify a host of human rights treaties, which should be welcomed.

Blinken notes that the ICC, under the principle of complementarity, is supposed to defer to good-faith national prosecutorial efforts. But the Israeli government has never pursued war crimes charges against senior officials. Khan said he would reconsider his charges should that change.

Finally, Blinken says the ICC’s request “could jeopardize” efforts to reach a cease-fire. But, historically, war-crime charges have often facilitated peace by marginalizing hard-liners. They led, for example, to the Dayton peace accord for the Bosnia conflict. Khan is right to discount this contention.

Biden should reconsider this reflexive, if flimsy, defense of the Israeli government. It does enormous damage to his administration’s efforts to portray itself as a principled supporter of the rule of law.

Kenneth Roth was executive director of Human Rights Watch from 1993 to 2022.

John R. Bolton: The ICC is illegitimate

As I first wrote in 1998, the International Criminal Court is fundamentally illegitimate. It’s illegitimacy is why America unsigned the court’s founding Rome Statute in 2002, and has kept its distance since.

Now, reawakening from a protracted irrelevance, the ICC has intervened in an ongoing conflict in which a vibrant democracy is defending itself from barbarians, seeking arrest warrants for both Hamas terrorists and for key Israeli officials on highly contentious charges.

The ICC’s existence rests on the fantasy that a court drifting somewhere in the international ether, untethered to any constitutional structure, unchecked by distinct legislative or executive authorities, and utterly unable to enforce its decisions, will somehow impose order on an anarchic world.

But the hard reality is that the ICC is at best meaningless, and at worst dangerous. For Americans, a purported court supervising its own prosecutors merges executive and judicial functions, which our forefathers rejected as dangerous to liberty. Certainly, the ICC’s Assembly of States Parties doesn’t supervise the court. And the absence of jury trials is obviously unacceptable.

ICC acolytes argue that “complementarity” protects sovereign nations against ICC overreach, by supposedly deferring to the state’s courts to prosecute any war crimes. But complementarity is merely an academic pretense that this prosecutor has revealed to be no protection at all: If the ICC can so easily second-guess the decisions of a democratic, rule-of-law state, then the ICC, not Israel, has controlling sovereignty.

What’s more, intervening while the war rages starkly reveals the prosecutor’s irresponsibility. Amid intense combat, with escalatory risks readily apparent, the indictment might well prolong the war. How wars end is a matter of power and politics; the pretensions of unaccountable “judges” at The Hague play no role.

Israel should receive full U.S. backing. Jerusalem and Washington should not cooperate in any way with the ICC, which would simply provide it a patina of legitimacy. In 2018, I laid out a road map for sanctions against the ICC if it pursued the United States or its allies, which Congress is now considering. If this is to be war with the ICC, let it begin here. The ICC has finally and irreversibly begun digging its own grave.

John R. Bolton served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 2005 to 2006 and U.S. national security adviser from 2018 to 2019.

James A. Goldston: Biden must uphold international law

As someone who has served within the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, and whose organization has worked closely with the ICC, I welcome Monday’s announcement by the prosecutor.

The court has faced many tests in its first quarter-century. But this is the most important.

It is critical that the panel of judges now reviewing the prosecutor’s request for warrants do so independently, free from any threat or intimidation. And if they ultimately decide to issue one or more warrants, the United States and its allies must support the court, notwithstanding past U.S. objections to its jurisdiction over nationals of nonmember countries. Anything less would be a betrayal of the “international rules-based order” that Washington has proudly defended since Nuremberg.

Just last year, following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Biden administration and members of Congress applauded the ICC’s issuance of an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for war crimes. Late in 2022, Congress passed legislation allowing ICC officials to conduct “investigative activities” in the United States “related” to Ukraine, even though Russia — like Israel and the U.S. — isn’t a state party to the court.

But in recent weeks, the White House made clear its opposition to ICC action, and 12 Republican senators went so far as to threaten to “target” the ICC prosecutor and his staff with “severe sanctions” and travel bans.

What’s the difference? The law has not changed. Nor has the imperative of holding to account those most responsible for grave crimes.

If warrants are issued, many topics will merit discussion: their impact on precarious peace negotiations, the unlikelihood that they will be executed anytime soon, and the opportunity for Israel to demonstrate that, contrary to past practice, its domestic judiciary is capable of — and willing to — hold senior leaders to account.

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But what the world should not tolerate is impunity for war crimes. At a time of rising global concern about double standards, the United States will pay a price for appearing to pick and choose where the law should apply.

James A. Goldston is the executive director of the Open Society Justice Initiative.

Noura Erakat: The ICC warrants are not about justice

The International Criminal Court is incapable of delivering justice. And while its request for arrest warrants bears out this cynical argument, it did set a significant precedent.

Significant flaws are built into the form and content of the ICC. For example, the court’s emphasis on individual criminal culpability, in contrast with the International Court of Justice, comes at the expense of scrutinizing state crimes and ideologies. The ICC also ignores the historical context, including significant power relations, for the sake of procedural due process. The Rome Statute, which established the court, does not consider colonialism to be a core crime, so the worst crimes committed by former colonial powers — here, Israel’s forced displacement and repression of Palestinians over decades — are beyond judicial reach.

So it is not surprising that the court requested warrants for three Hamas leaders but only two Israeli ones, and that it charged Hamas leaders with eight crimes and Israeli leaders with only seven. The court charges Hamas with sexual violence and mistreatment of hostages while remaining silent on sexual violence and other forms of torture inflicted on Palestinians in Israeli captivity.

All the charges are limited to acts committed on and since Oct. 7, even though the ICC initiated its investigation in 2021. Palestinian human rights organizations have been petitioning the court for the past nine years, documenting crimes committed during the Gaza March of Return in 2018 and 2019, Israeli military offensives in 2014 and 2021, and Israel’s 17-year siege, as well as the crime of settlement expansion in the West Bank. Despite all this, the court does not charge any Israelis with genocide or apartheid.

The warrants for Hamas leaders were predictable and expected. Not only did the political organization submit itself to the ICC’s jurisdiction, but Western governments are already punishing Hamas with economic sanctions and diplomatic marginalization. Israel, on the other hand, has long benefited from a global legal exception, thanks in large part to the United States’ defense at the U.N. Security Council.

The request for arrest warrants finally breaks the taboo on charging Israel and challenging the paradigm that has collapsed Jewish safety with Israeli state crimes. Although the warrants, on their own, will not bring justice, they have cracked the wall that has shielded Israel from accountability and obscured the crisis of the Palestinian right to life and dignity.

Noura Erakat is an associate professor at Rutgers University and the author of “Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine.”

José Ramos-Horta: When is the cost of friendship too high?

On Dec. 7, 1975, my country, Timor-Leste, was invaded by our much larger neighbor, Indonesia. A few days earlier, I had traveled to New York to plead our cause at the United Nations. On Dec. 22, the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution deploring the invasion and demanding the Indonesian forces withdraw. Nothing happened. We had no court to turn to for recourse. Over the next 24 years, one-third of our population would lose their lives. But throughout, we resisted hatred and never demonized the other side. Our fighters never harmed civilians, women or children. Peace came about when Indonesia opened up for democracy and accepted Timor-Leste’s independence.

The International Criminal Court did not exist when we needed it. But it might hold hope for those Israelis and Palestinians whose lives have been considered expendable.

I have long been a friend of Israel. After Timor-Leste achieved independence in 2002, one of the early acts of our new government was to recognize Israel. I am also a friend of the Palestinians. I have traveled to both Israel and the West Bank on official visits. I knew my fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shimon Peres and, of course, closely followed the work of Nobel Peace Prize laureates Menachem Begin, Anwar Sadat and Yitzhak Rabin, two of whom gave their lives working for a just resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Abraham Accords, between Israel and several Arab states, were a “peace deal” between parties that had not been at war — a transaction for the financial benefit of the countries involved and a supposed resolution of an extremely complex issue by a diplomat whose background was in real estate deals. The Palestinians would simply be discarded, their humanity monetized. This shady deal was shattered by the violence of Hamas on Oct. 7, followed by the obliteration of Gaza by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Friends become accomplices when they stay silent in the face of crimes — such as the slaughter of teenagers at a music festival, the killing of U.N. and World Central Kitchen workers, and the bombing of areas where civilians are sheltering. Many Western democracies have discredited themselves by making excuses for what are war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Neither side of this conflict deserves what its leaders have wrought. Peace is never an impossibility. Friends of Israelis and Palestinians must encourage them to rise up from hatred and wars and share the Holy Land.

José Ramos-Horta is the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize laureate and is serving his second term as President of Timor-Leste.

6. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, May 21, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-may-21-2024

Key Takeaways:

Iran: The Iranian Assembly of Experts elected its leadership board on May 21, marking a new era for the body responsible for selecting the next supreme leader. This election is particularly important given the supreme leader’s age (84) and the recent death of the Iranian president. The assembly formally chooses the supreme leader and informally influences supreme leader succession.
Gaza Strip: The US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said that the IDF’s failure to hold territory after clearing it is allowing Hamas to return to previously cleared areas.
Humanitarian Aid: The United States said that no humanitarian aid from the US-constructed temporary pier in the central Gaza Strip has reached the broader Palestinian population.
West Bank: The IDF intentionally detonated a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device on May 20 in Tubas.
Southern Lebanon and Golan Heights: The IDF intercepted a “suspicious aerial target” over Syria before it entered Israeli territory.

IRAN UPDATE, MAY 21, 2024

May 21, 2024 - ISW Press

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Iran Update, May 21, 2024

Annika Ganzeveld, Ashka Jhaveri, Kelly Campa, Johanna Moore, Alexandra Braverman, and Brian Carter

Information Cutoff: 2:00 pm 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. Click here to subscribe to the Iran Update.

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 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.

The Iranian Assembly of Experts elected its leadership board on May 21, marking a new era for the body responsible for selecting the next supreme leader.[1] The Assembly of Experts is an Iranian regime entity constitutionally responsible for monitoring the supreme leader and selecting his successor. Assembly of Experts leadership board members serve two-year terms. This is the first time since 2016 that the Assembly of Experts has not been led by influential cleric Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati.

This Assembly of Experts leadership board election is particularly significant given Khamenei’s old age and Raisi’s recent death. Khamenei is 84 years old and will be 92 by the time of the next Assembly of Experts election in 2032.[2] The 88 representatives elected to the Assembly of Experts in March 2024 will at least formally choose Khamenei’s successor if he dies or otherwise leaves his post before then.[3] Other powerbrokers within the regime—such as the IRGC—will undoubtably informally influence supreme leader succession as well. It is also possible, but not certain, that one of the newly chosen Assembly of Experts leaders could succeed Khamenei as supreme leader. All of the chairmen and secretaries hold the rank of Ayatollah—a prerequisite to become supreme leader—and all of them, besides Kermani, are in their 60s.

The Assembly of Experts elected the following individuals to leadership positions:

Chairman: Ayatollah Mohammad Ali Movahedi Kermani.[4] Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei appointed Kermani as an interim Tehran Friday prayer leader in December 2012.[5] Kermani also served as Khamenei’s representative to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) for 14 years between February 1992 and January 2006.[6] Kermani previously served as the second deputy chairman of the Assembly of Experts until February 2023.[7] 55 out of 83 Assembly of Experts members voted for Kermani to become chairman.[8] Kermani is 93 years old.[9]
First Deputy Chairman: Ayatollah Hashem Hosseini Bushehri.[10] Bushehri is the Qom Friday prayer leader and the head of the Society of Seminary Teachers of Qom.[11] The Assembly of Experts elected Bushehri to replace Kermani as the second deputy chairman in February 2023.[12] Bushehri’s tenure as second deputy chairman overlapped with former President Ebrahim Raisi’s tenure as first deputy chairman.[13] Bushehri is 68 years old.
Second Deputy Chairman: Ayatollah Ali Reza Arafi.[14] Khamenei appointed Arafi as the director of all seminaries across Iran in 2016.[15] Khamenei later appointed Arafi as a member of the Guardian Council—a 12-member regime body responsible for supervising elections, vetting candidates, and approving legislation—in 2019.[16] Arafi has not previously held a leadership position in the Assembly of Experts. Arafi is 68 years old.
Secretary: Ayatollah Mohsen Araki.[17] Khamenei appointed Araki as a member of the Expediency Discernment Council in 2022.[18] He has served as a member of the Assembly of Experts since 1998.[19] The Assembly of Experts elected Araki as a cultural manager in February 2023.[20] Araki replaced Guardian Council member and Tehran interim Friday prayer leader Ahmad Khatami as one of the Assembly of Experts secretaries.[21] Araki is 68 years old.
Secretary: Ayatollah Abbas Kaabi.[22] Kaabi is continuing his role as a Secretary of the Assembly of Experts.[23] Kaabi is 62 years old

Two anonymous sources told Reuters on May 21 that the Assembly of Experts removed former President Ebrahim Raisi from the list of potential supreme leader successors in November 2023 due to his declining popularity.[24] There is reportedly a three-member committee in the Assembly of Experts that is responsible for preparing a list of potential candidates to succeed Khamenei.[25] Raisi was reportedly a member of this committee, so it is unclear how the Assembly of Experts could have removed his name from the list.[26] One of the sources told Reuters that clerics who supported Raisi lobbied “intensively” to have his name added back to the list.[27] CTP-ISW cannot independently verify these claims. It is notable that the sources told Reuters Raisi was no longer in the running to become supreme leader at a time when it is convenient for the Iranian regime to assure its people and those within the regime that Raisi’s death did not disrupt the supreme leader succession process.

Key Takeaways:

Iran: The Iranian Assembly of Experts elected its leadership board on May 21, marking a new era for the body responsible for selecting the next supreme leader. This election is particularly important given the supreme leader’s age (84) and the recent death of the Iranian president. The assembly formally chooses the supreme leader and informally influences supreme leader succession.
Gaza Strip: The US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said that the IDF’s failure to hold territory after clearing it is allowing Hamas to return to previously cleared areas.
Humanitarian Aid: The United States said that no humanitarian aid from the US-constructed temporary pier in the central Gaza Strip has reached the broader Palestinian population.
West Bank: The IDF intentionally detonated a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device on May 20 in Tubas.
Southern Lebanon and Golan Heights: The IDF intercepted a “suspicious aerial target” over Syria before it entered Israeli territory.

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

Israeli forces continued clearing operations in Jabalia on May 21. Three IDF brigades are operating in Jabalia.[28] The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) 7th Armored Brigade directed an airstrike targeting a Palestinian cell that fired at Israeli forces. Israeli forces found hand grenades, explosives, and other weapons while raiding Palestinian militia infrastructure.[29] Palestinian fighters engaged Israeli forces in Jabalia refugee camp and east of the city using mortars, small arms, and improvised explosive devices (IED).[30]

The IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi visited Israeli forces in Jabalia on May 21.[31] Halevi met with commanders whose units recovered the bodies of four Israeli hostages in Jabalia refugee camp.[32] Halevi said that the IDF seeks to kill as many Palestinian militia commanders and fighters as possible, destroy military infrastructure, and return dead and living hostages to Israel.

The IDF 99th Division continued operations along the Netzarim corridor in southern Gaza City on May 21.[33] The IDF 679th Reservist Armored Brigade (attached to the 99th Division) directed an airstrike targeting Palestinian fighters in the area.[34] The brigade began an operation on May 20 to destroy militia infrastructure, such as tunnels, in Gaza City's Sabra neighborhood.[35] The 99th Division was previously operating in Zaytoun neighborhood, south of Sabra.[36]

US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Charles Brown Jr. said on May 20 that Israel’s strategy in the northern Gaza Strip is making “achieving lasting stability more difficult.”[37] Brown said that Israel has not been holding territory after conducting clearing operations, which allows Hamas to return to those areas. Israeli officials, including the IDF chief of staff, have criticized Israels current operational concept because it lacks a clear post-war plan’.[38] CTP-ISW has previously observed that Hamas has exploited Israeli withdrawals from the northern Gaza Strip to begin reconstituting there.[39]

The IDF engaged Palestinian fighters in eastern Rafah on May 21. The IDF Givati Brigade detained three Palestinian fighters who emerged from a tunnel in the area.[40] The IDF also confirmed that the Nahal Brigade is operating in Rafah. The Nahal Brigade captured a tunnel shaft where Palestinian militias had stored RPGs, grenades, and other explosive devices.[41] The IDF currently has five brigades operating in Rafah.[42] A Palestinian journalist reported on May 21 that Israeli forces have not made any advances into urban areas of Rafah but are advancing along the Philadelphi Corridor.[43] Two Palestinian militias mortared Israeli forces operating in eastern Rafah.[44]

The Washington Post reported on May 20 that Israel is planning a limited attack targeting Hamas in Rafah.[45] Unspecified officials said that US officials believe that the plan will result in fewer civilian casualties. The IDF was previously planning on sending two divisions into Rafah to destroy Hamas’ four remaining battalions there.

US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan presented a proposal for ending the war to senior Israeli officials during his visit to Israel on May 19.[46] An Israeli journalist cited unspecified officials who said that the proposal includes a path to normalization with Saudi Arabia, an expanded regional security architecture to counter Iran that includes regional countries and the United States, funds to invest in the Gaza Strip, a deal for the release of hostages, and the promotion of a political agreement with Lebanese Hezbollah on Israel’s northern border.[47] Israel would be required to end the war, declare plans to pursue a political solution for Palestine, and agree on a mechanism for managing the Gaza Strip that does not involve Hamas or a military government.[48] The sources said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not say “no” to the proposal, but the two sides did not agree on unspecified details.[49] The US proposal states that Hamas cannot govern the Gaza Strip but fails to explain how the United States or Israel could ensure that outcome. Hamas has already attempted to reassert its governing authority during the war, especially in the northern Gaza Strip.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on May 21 that Israel will need to decide if it will agree to end the war in the Gaza Strip and take part in a “credible pathway to a Palestinian state” to normalize relations with Saudi Arabia.[50] Saudi Arabia has conditioned normalization with Israel on a path to Palestinian statehood.[51] Blinken said that bilateral agreements between the United States and Saudi Arabia would be worked out “relatively quick given all the work that’s been done.”

The United States said that no humanitarian aid from the US-constructed temporary pier in the central Gaza Strip has reached the broader Palestinian population.[52] US Pentagon spokesperson Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said on May 21 that the pier has facilitated the delivery of 569 metric tons of humanitarian aid. The United States, United Kingdom, United Arab Emierates, European Union and other unspecified US partners have donated the aid. Ryder said that unspecified people or agencies still need to distribute the aid, which has so far only been delivered to the shore. Palestinians intercepted trucks delivering aid from the pier over the weekend which led the UN to suspend delivery operations.[53] Ryder said that the United States and the UN are working to establish ”alternative routes” for the safe delivery of the aid. US officials previously hoped that the pier would process about 90 trucks of aid per day, later raising the number to 150.[54]

Palestinian militias conducted one indirect fire attack from the Gaza Strip into Israel on May 21.[55] The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Palestinian Islamic Jihad conducted a combined rocket attack targeting Ashkelon.[56]

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

The IDF launched an operation in Jenin on May 21 targeting Hamas and PIJ personnel and Palestinian militia infrastructure in Jenin.[57] Israeli forces engaged Palestinian fighters in at least six locations in Jenin during the operation.[58] PIJ and the al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades targeted Israeli forces with small arms fire and improvised explosive devices (IED).[59] Palestinian media claimed that Palestinian fighters detonated at least 14 IEDs targeting Israeli forces in Jenin.[60] The IDF later deployed reinforcements to Jenin to support the IDF units already there engaging Palestinian militias.[61] The IDF reported that it is investigating claims that seven civilians were killed during fighting between Israeli forces and Palestinian fighters.[62]

Israeli forces destroyed a home in Jenin that belonged to a Palestinian fighter who had conducted two shooting attacks, one of which killed Israeli economist Meir Tamari.[63] The IDF killed the Palestinian fighter in an airstrike in March 2024.

Israeli forces have engaged Palestinian fighters in at least 10 locations in the West Bank including Jenin since CTP-ISW's data cut off on May 20.[64] Unidentified Palestinian fighters shot at an unspecified vehicle near the Bekaot settlement in the Jordan Valley.[65] No casualties were reported from the attack. The IDF established checkpoints in the Jordan Valley following the incident.

The IDF intentionally detonated a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device on May 20 in Tubas.[66] This is the second VBIED that the IDF has discovered in Tubas since the Israel-Hamas war began in October 2023.[67] It is unclear how sophisticated this VBIED was. An Israeli military correspondent reported that Palestinian militias have started using larger and higher quality explosives to target Israeli forces ”in recent months.”[68] Jordan has thwarted numerous attempts in recent months by Iran and its partners to smuggle weapons—including Claymore mines, C4, Semtex, Kalashnikovs, and 107mm Katyusha rockets—into the West Bank and Jordan.[69]

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 9 attacks into northern Israel since CTP-ISW's last data cutoff on May 20.[70]

The IDF killed Lebanese Hezbollah commander Qassem Saqlawi in a drone strike in Tyre, southern Lebanon on May 20.[71] The IDF stated that Saqlawi commanded rocket and missile units in Hezbollah’s Coastal Sector and had conducted numerous rocket and anti-tank guided missile attacks targeting Israel. Hezbollah mourned Saqlawi’s death on May 20.[72]

The IDF intercepted a “suspicious aerial target” over Syria before it entered Israeli territory on May 20.[73] The Islamic Resistance of Iraq—an umbrella group of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias—launched a drone attack targeting an IDF military base in the Golan Heights on May 20.[74] A southern Syrian journalist reported that the IDF shot down drones over the Yarmouk Basin, Daraa, towards the Golan Heights.[75]

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

Iran and Axis of Resistance

The Iranian government announced new details about the upcoming June 28 presidential election to replace recently deceased President Ebrahim Raisi. Raisi’s term would have ended in August 2025.[76] The newly elected president will serve a full four-year presidential term rather than the remainder of Raisi’s term, however. Iranian Election Headquarters Spokesperson Mohsen Eslami announced the timeline for the June 28 presidential election on May 21.[77] Eslami stated that presidential candidates can register between May 30 and June 3. The Guardian Council will then review the presidential candidates between June 4 and June 10. The Interior Ministry will announce the list of presidential candidates on June 11. The approved presidential candidates will campaign from June 12 to June 26. Campaigning will end on June 27 and the election will be held on June 28. The second round of elections will be held on July 5, if required. A runoff election is required if a presidential candidate does not win an absolute majority of votes in the first round, according to the Iranian constitution.[78] Eslami stated that officials are preparing for citizens to be able to vote electronically in Tehran and other major cities.[79]

United Kingdom-based Iranian opposition media reported on May 21 that various Iranian politicians are lobbying the Office of the Supreme Leader to prevent hardliner Saeed Jalali from entering the upcoming presidential election.[80] Key officials including Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Expediency Council member Ali Larijani, and political advisor to the Supreme Leader Ali Shamkhani are lobbying against Jalali’s candidacy. Jalali is one of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s representatives to the Supreme National Security Council. He is also an Expediency Council member. Jalali is likely to run for election. He previously ran for president in 2021 but withdrew in favor of Ebrahim Raisi.[81]

Houthi military spokesperson Brig. Gen. Yahya Sarea claimed that the Houthis shot down a US MQ-9 Reaper drone over a Houthi-controlled area of al Bayda Governorate, Yemen, on May 21.[82] Sarea claimed the Houthis used a “locally made” surface-to-air missile to shoot down the drone. Sarea previously claimed that the Houthis shot down a US MQ-9 Reaper drone over a Houthi-controlled area of Ma’rib Governorate, Yemen, on May 16.[83] CENTCOM has not acknowledged either incident. CTP-ISW cannot verify that the Houthis shot down either MQ-9.

The Islamic Resistance of Iraq —an umbrella group of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias—launched two drones on May 20 targeting an unspecified “vital target” in Eilat.[84] Israeli fighter jets and an IDF Navy missile boat intercepted two aerial targets approaching Israeli territory from the east on May 20.[85] Locals in Eilat said that they saw the IDF intercept at least one drone off the coast of Eilat.[86] The IDF reported that the drones did not enter Israeli territory.

7. Faceless people, fire and ghosts: US Army releases ‘weirdest recruitment ad’ for psychological operations

Fox News is a little late reporting on this and its reporting is really a rehash of previous reports. And there is nothing weird about this video. If it does not appeal to you then you are not made of the right stuff for PSYOP.

Faceless people, fire and ghosts: US Army releases ‘weirdest recruitment ad’ for psychological operations

'Don't do what’s already been done, think outside the box'

By Alba Cuebas-Fantauzzi Fox News

Published May 21, 2024 5:00am EDT

foxnews.com · by Alba Cuebas-Fantauzzi Fox News

The man behind the U.S. Army’s 4th Psychological Operations Group "unsettling" new recruitment video wanted to create something where the right people to join PSYOPs became "obsessed" with the message on screen, he tells Fox News Digital.

The video, "Ghosts in the Machine 2," dropped earlier this May, and has garnered varied reactions, from one user commenting, "This is seriously f'd up" to another writing, "This was the weirdest recruitment ad I’ve ever seen. I’m in." Loaded with eerie music, historical speeches and cryptic visuals, it was designed to lure recruits into psychological operations.

An Army Major, who is part of the 8th Psychological Operations Group, was the mastermind behind the recruiting tactic.

"The Army is going through this massive recruiting crisis … The thing that I noticed with all of our PSYOP recruiting products is that people are paying attention to the wrong thing … How do I create something where people are not distracted by what they're seeing on screen, but they're obsessed with the message instead," he said in an interview with Fox News Digital.

MARINE REFLECTS ON AI'S 'INCREDIBLE CHANGE' FOR MILITARY AS HE LOOKS TO FUTURE WITH NEW NOVEL

The U.S. Army’s 4th Psychological Operations Group has released a new ‘strange’ and ‘unsettling’ recruitment video.

According to The Military Times, the U.S. armed forces are nearing the smallest total of service members across all branches prior to WWII in 1940. "Ghosts in the Machine," the first video of the recruiting series that was released in 2022, was viewed 1.7 million times, offering special operations recruiting a unique solution it continues to expand upon with this year's video.

"From a tactical level, the PSYOP mission is extremely hard to show and tell … I think what he does with ‘Ghost in the Machine’ is it tells you what psychological operations is, and shows you it, without telling you in words. You watch the video and you’re like, OK, this is how I’ll influence and change behavior," Commander of the Special Forces Recruiting Battalion, Lt. Col. Steve Crowe, told the Associated Press.

According to the AP, recruiters were brought to the Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina, on a recent trip to speak to cadets. Executive officer of the Special Forces recruiting battalion, Army Maj. Jim Maicke, told the AP, "We had a very limited amount of time to engage about 450 cadets, and the PSYOP officer chose to give a brief introduction and then immediately turn[ed] on the ‘Ghost in the Machine’ video. He ended with, ‘If anyone has any questions about this, I’m right over here,’ and business was booming."

US MILITARY FORCES TO ESTABLISH 9 SITES ON PHILIPPINE BASES TO COUNTER CHINA THREATS

4th Psychological Operations Group (Airborne) (Instagram: @4thpsyopgroup (U.S. Army photo))

"Ghosts in the Machine 2" starts with the crackle and smoke of fire plays in the background with a quote from John Steinbeck’s "The Moon is Down" just before a voiceover of JFK’s Berlin Wall speech begins as a caption fades in, reading, "the most powerful weapon in the hand of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed."

The video’s creator, who asked to remain anonymous due to operational security standards, told Fox News Digital, "When Steinbeck says ‘I'm a little man and this is a little town, but there must be something that can burst into flame,’ he's talking about, you know, this fictional town that he needs to resist these invaders. But in this case, it's, ‘Hey, man, maybe there's something in me that could be better.’"

Reactions to the video have commented on its unnerving nature.

The AP called it "unsettling, with haunting images of faceless people" while Stars and Stripes described the recruitment ad as ‘strange, a little chilling’ and ‘ominous.’

"Only the mentally damaged could watch this and be inspired to enlist," one user wrote.

"As a kid who graduated with degrees in Psychology and Communications a year before 9/11 into a rough job market, if I had seen an ad like this back then…" another commenter added.

CHINA COULD 'OVERWHELM' US MILITARY BASES AS BIDEN SHOWS 'ALARMING LACK OF URGENCY': HOUSE COMMITTEE CHAIR

4th Psychological Operations Group (Airborne) (Instagram: @4thpsyopgroup (U.S. Army photo))

Despite mixed sentiments about the recruiting tactic, the composer of the series said the majority of candidates at the PSYOP qualification course two years ago cited his video as a motivator behind their decision to join psychological operations.

"The level of thought and detail that goes into these operations overseas is astounding. Which is why we need thoughtful, creative, smart people that know how to put themselves in the head of somebody else who doesn't speak your language, who doesn't live where you live … and then understanding how to communicate to them effectively, right? All those things are what people look for," the PSYOPS officer told Fox News Digital.

"The thing we teach our students is like, ‘Hey, don't do what’s already been done, think outside the box.’ Divergent thinking, right? That's another quality that we really value. The best snipers are fantastic divergent thinkers, right? They think about things in a different way, that's what we're looking for," the Army Major told Fox News Digital.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

foxnews.com · by Alba Cuebas-Fantauzzi Fox News

8. Philippines seeks Asia logistics hub status, banking on US ties

It is in a geostrategic location.

Philippines seeks Asia logistics hub status, banking on US ties

PUBLISHED : 21 MAY 2024 AT 14:37 WRITER: BLOOMBERG

Bangkok Post · by Bangkok Post Public Company Limited

A worker pulls a cart carrying sacks of onions at a public market in Manila on Jan 28, 2023. (Photo: Reuters)

The Philippines is setting its sights on becoming the next manufacturing and logistics hub in Asia, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr said, as Manila capitalises on its growing ties with Washington.

Under Marcos’s administration, the Southeast Asian nation has increased defence and economic engagements with Washington. The United States last month pledged to help accelerate investments in transport infrastructure, clean energy and semiconductor supply chains in the Philippines through the Luzon Economic Corridor.

“These initiatives will enhance freight transport services, mobility and access to key economic zones, ensuring business continuity and positioning the Philippines as a regional hub for agribusiness and logistics in the Asia Pacific,” Marcos said at the 6th Indo-Pacific Business Forum in Manila on Tuesday.

Marcos said the country’s infrastructure programme that includes 185 priority projects worth 9.5 trillion pesos (US$163 billion) would help the nation become the next logistics centre in Asia.

This aspiration puts the Philippines in competition with neighbours that have deepened their push in these areas like Vietnam and Indonesia. Southeast Asian countries, with its pool of skilled and affordable talent, are racing to get a slice of the billions of dollars of investment that may spread out in the region as part of de-risking efforts by the US and its allies away from China.

While the Philippines, one of the fastest-growing economies in the region, has opened up more sectors to foreign investors, including renewable energy, it has lagged neighbours in attracting overseas funds to build more factories. Net inflows of foreign direct investments to the country dropped 7% to $8.9 billion last year from 2022.

The business forum is part of Washington’s efforts to tighten economic relations with the Philippines, as the allies bolster defence ties amid growing tensions with Beijing over the disputed South China Sea. It comes after last month’s first-ever trilateral summit between the US, Philippines and Japan at the White House where the long-time allies pledged to grow investment partnerships after rekindling security ties.

“We believe fundamentally that the prosperity of everyday Americans is inextricably linked to the Indo-Pacific,” US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Daniel Kritenbrink said in the same forum.

Marcos said the Philippines is seeking greater participation in global value chains and increased foreign direct investments to sustain economic growth. “An economically strong Philippines will be a valuable ally in the region,” he added.

Bangkok Post · by Bangkok Post Public Company Limited

9. As Taiwan’s New President Takes Office, Can China Seize Taiwan Without Firing a Single Shot?

And the question is can Taiwan prevent such a seizure without firing a shot? Can we help them to do so? Or is Taiwan too vulnerable to threats from within?

The first step in preventing such a takeover is to recognize the PRC strategy at play here. Then Taiwan must understand the strategy. Then it must expose it to the Taiwan people as well as the international community. Then it must attack the PRC strategy with a superior political warfare strategy.

Excerpts:

Given Taiwan’s current conditions, its future is not entirely bleak. First, President Lai’s constitutional powers allow him to counteract the legislature’s actions, such as refusing to promulgate laws or, under certain conditions, dissolving the legislature. Second, Taiwan’s civil society, with its long-established organizational capabilities, has rapidly mobilized significant gatherings to pressure the legislature.

However, China is also evolving. How enticing is the idea of taking Taiwan without firing a single shot? How can Taiwan successfully unite to resist external threats? This is the challenge facing Taiwanese society and a critical responsibility for Lai to address and manage carefully.

As Taiwan’s New President Takes Office, Can China Seize Taiwan Without Firing a Single Shot?

thediplomat.com

A controversial bill in the Legislative Yuan sparks fears of a hostile takeover from within, inspiring mass protests.

By Chiang Min-yen

May 22, 2024

The main entrance of the Legislative Yuan in Taipei, Taiwan.

Credit: Wikimedia Commons/ 宙龍

Could China seize Taiwan? This critical issue affects geopolitical stability and raises international concerns about China’s authoritarian expansion. China’s military actions toward Taiwan are a constant topic of debate. During Taiwan’s presidential elections, China responds with intense military threats. When then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August 2022, China escalated tensions with military exercises, using missiles and aircraft to push Taiwan to the brink of conflict.

Beyond military means, China may seek to annex Taiwan under the guise of “peace.” This approach would save costs and spare China the stigma of overt military aggression. However, “peaceful annexation” would sacrifice Taiwan’s democracy and political autonomy. This is the approach Beijing has adopted in Hong Kong: Dissent is crushed, and civil society is dismantled under Xi Jinping’s authoritarian rule. No deviation from the central government’s narrative is tolerated.

On May 17, as President Tsai Ing-wen’s second and final term neared its end, the international community widely praised her for maintaining meaningful peace in the Taiwan Strait despite numerous crises. However, China’s regime may have already been planning its next offensive against Taiwan.

The opposition Kuomintang (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), which together hold a majority in the Legislative Yuan, forcibly passed a bill expanding legislative power, leading to intense physical clashes with minority ruling party members. This may seem like another routine spectacle in Taiwan’s legislature, and most international media have interpreted it as such. Yet, when viewed in the broader context of China’s long-term strategy to undermine Taiwan’s democracy, the situation appears grim.

The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) has explored scenarios where China forces Taiwan into submission without using military force. One scenario mirrors current conditions: The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) holds executive power but loses its legislative majority. AEI posited that the legislature could pass a law creating a “national peace commission” to lead negotiations with China for a peace agreement. Despite the DPP president’s belief that this harms Taiwan’s sovereignty, the majority of legislators, under Chinese pressure, would follow legal procedures to oust the premier and successfully impeach the president. Ultimately, driven by the legislature, a cross-strait peace agreement would be signed, resulting in China’s peaceful annexation of Taiwan.

The AEI scenario might not account for all conditions and factors, but it highlights a critical point: China could potentially leverage the legislature to undermine the DPP’s administration and bring Taiwan under its control without military aggression.

The KMT currently holds the most legislative seats although short of a majority on its own. Notably, a sizable KMT delegation quickly traveled to China after taking office. Now, less than six months into their term, they are pushing through an expansion of legislative power. This aggressive move has provoked over 10,000 Taiwanese citizens and groups to gather outside the legislature in protest.

Expanding legislative power could indeed enhance control over the new Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te and his administration, especially given the significant flaws in the forcefully passed bill. For instance, the KMT and TPP have enacted a law on “contempt of the legislature.” If an administrative official is found by legislators to be withholding information during a legislative inquiry, five or more legislators can directly impose fines on the official, with the ability to do so repeatedly. Even sensitive national defense and foreign affairs information must receive approval from the legislative chair to remain confidential.

The controversy also extends to the poor quality of the legislative process. On the final voting day, the KMT and TPP revealed their jointly drafted bill, making previous versions mere distractions. The TPP caucus leader even arrogantly told the media that the actual content of the bill was “top secret.” This maneuver mirrors China’s “legal blitzkrieg” strategy used four years ago to impose the Hong Kong National Security Law by directly inserting it into Hong Kong’s Basic Law. Before its implementation, no external sources knew the law’s content. By keeping the bill’s details hidden, the public and civil society were unable to react, review, or oppose it in time. This legislative blitzkrieg not only slows down civil society’s response but also underscores its authoritarian, anti-democratic nature.

Given Taiwan’s current conditions, its future is not entirely bleak. First, President Lai’s constitutional powers allow him to counteract the legislature’s actions, such as refusing to promulgate laws or, under certain conditions, dissolving the legislature. Second, Taiwan’s civil society, with its long-established organizational capabilities, has rapidly mobilized significant gatherings to pressure the legislature.

However, China is also evolving. How enticing is the idea of taking Taiwan without firing a single shot? How can Taiwan successfully unite to resist external threats? This is the challenge facing Taiwanese society and a critical responsibility for Lai to address and manage carefully.

Authors

Guest Author

Chiang Min-yen

Chiang Min-yen is a current non-resident fellow at the Taiwan Economic Democracy Union, one of the organizers of the recent civic assemblies in Taiwan.

thediplomat.com

10. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, May 21, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-may-21-2024

Note the reference to reflexive control:

Reflexive control can be defined as “(...) a means of conveying to a partner or an opponent specially prepared

information to incline him to voluntarily make the predetermined decision desired by the initiator of the action”

(Thomas, 2004). For a comprehensive analysis of the Russian and Chinese achievements in this area, see

Tatham, 2013

Tim Thomas writing in 2004: Reflexive control is defined as a means of conveying to a partner or an opponent specially prepared information to incline him to voluntarily make the predetermined decision desired by the initiator of the action. Even though the theory was developed long ago in Russia, it is still undergoing further refinement. Recent proof of this is the development in February 2001, of a new Russian journal known as Reflexive Processes and Control. https://www.rit.edu/~w-cmmc/literature/Thomas_2004.pdf

When we examine Russian actions (or Chinese or Iranian or north Korean or AQ or ISIS) we should consider the concept of reflective control and ask ourselves some questions to ensure we do not fall victim to it?

1. How do they want us (the target of reflexive control) to act?

2. How do they expect us to act?

3. What is the objective they are trying to achieve?

4. How do we react to counter their objectives? (counter their objectives and not simply try to counter their tactics and actions)

5. How do we act to seize the initiative? (i.e., move from defense to offense, from reaction to action)

Key Takeaways:

The Kremlin continues to time its nuclear saber-rattling to coincide with major policy discussions in the West as part of a Kremlin reflexive control campaign to influence Western decision-makers.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky indicated that the limited Russian offensive in northern Ukraine is achieving its goal of drawing attention away from intense Russian offensive operations in eastern Ukraine.
The Russian military command reportedly initially planned that Russian forces would quickly make significant advances in northern Kharkiv Oblast, but the limited force grouping deployed to the area suggests that the Russian military command likely changed these plans in the lead up to offensive operations in Kharkiv Oblast.
Russian authorities recently arrested the former commander of the 58th Combined Arms Army (CAA), Major General Ivan Popov, on fraud charges.
The Kremlin is likely using the pattern of recent arrests of high-ranking officials on corruption charges in the Russian MoD to conceal the real reasons for Popov's punishment almost 10 months after his conflict with the Russian military command and subsequent dismissal from his command position.
Satellite imagery indicates that Ukrainian forces likely damaged the Russian Black Sea Fleet's (BSF) Tsyklon small missile ship in occupied Sevastopol, Crimea on May 19.
Russian forces recently made confirmed advances near Vovchansk, Kreminna, Chasiv Yar, and Donetsk City.
A Russian milblogger claimed that frequent Ukrainian drone strikes against Russian vehicles that lack electronic warfare (EW) systems along the frontline have created an "urgent" shortage of off-road vehicles.
Russian authorities continue to illegally and forcibly deport Ukrainian citizens, including children, to Russia and to forcibly remove Ukrainian citizens deeper into occupied Ukraine.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MAY 21, 2024

May 21, 2024 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, May 21, 2024

Christina Harward, Grace Mappes, Nicole Wolkov, Kateryna Stepanenko, and Frederick W. Kagan

May 21, 2024, 9:15pm 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 2:30pm ET on May 21. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the May 22 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.

The Kremlin continues to time its nuclear saber-rattling to coincide with major policy discussions in the West as part of a Kremlin reflexive control campaign to influence Western decision-makers. The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed on May 21 that missile elements of the Southern Military District (SMD) began the first stage of non-strategic (tactical) nuclear weapons exercises.[1] The Russian MoD claimed that Russian Aerospace Forces will also exercise with Iskander ballistic missiles and Kinzhal aeroballistic missiles. The Russian MoD announced the preparations for these exercises on May 6.[2] A prominent Kremlin-awarded milblogger explicitly tied Russian tactical nuclear weapons exercises to Kremlin efforts to influence Western decision-making — particularly targeting the recent discussions about the restrictions on Ukraine's use of Western-provided weapons to strike military targets in Russia — echoing ISW's assessment that Russia's tactical nuclear weapons tests are part of a Kremlin reflexive control campaign that often uses nuclear saber-rattling to influence Western decision-makers to engage in self-deterrence.[3] Reflexive control is a key element of Russia’s hybrid warfare toolkit — it is a tactic that relies on shaping an adversary with targeted rhetoric and information operations in such a way that the adversary voluntarily takes actions that are advantageous to Russia.[4] Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky reiterated to the New York Times (NYT) on May 20 that Russia currently enjoys a sanctuary in Russian territory from which Russian forces can conduct missile and glide bomb strikes against Ukraine and launch offensive operations with forces amassed in the international border area, as is the case with the ongoing limited Russian offensive in northern Kharkiv Oblast.[5] ISW continues to assess that US and Western policies limiting Ukraine's ability to strike military targets in Russia are severely compromising Ukraine's ability to defend itself against current Russian offensive operations in northern Kharkiv Oblast or any area along the international border where Russian forces may choose to conduct offensive operations in the future.[6]

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky indicated that the limited Russian offensive in northern Ukraine is achieving its goal of drawing attention away from intense Russian offensive operations in eastern Ukraine. Zelensky stated in an interview with Reuters published on May 20 that the situation in northern Kharkiv Oblast is now stable but that “no one” is paying attention to the wave of Russian offensive operations in Donbas in the Chasiv Yar (Bakhmut), Pokrovsk (Avdiivka), and Kurakhove (west of Donetsk City) directions.[7] Zelensky stated that the situation in northern Kharkiv Oblast has been stable for about a week, which is consistent with the slowing pace of Russian advances in the Lyptsi (north of Kharkiv City) and Vovchansk directions following the initial few days of relatively rapid tactical advances.[8] Russian forces recently intensified their efforts to seize the operationally-significant town of Chasiv Yar west of Bakhmut as the tempo of operations in northern Kharkiv Oblast decreased, highlighting how the northern Kharkiv Oblast effort aims to draw and fix Ukrainian forces and create opportunities for Russian forces elsewhere in the theater.[9] As ISW has consistently reported, Russian forces' most immediate prospect for operationally-significant gains remains the Chasiv Yar direction, as seizing Chasiv Yar would enable Russian forces to set conditions to attack part of a "fortress belt" of cities forming the backbone of Ukraine's Donetsk Oblast defenses, and Russian forces likely seek to exploit unfavorable situations for Ukrainian forces defending near Chasiv Yar and Avdiivka before US military assistance arrives at the frontlines at scale.[10] The Ukrainian General Staff has reported for the past week that Russian forces maintain a higher tempo of offensive operations in the Avdiivka direction even as the situation in northern Kharkiv Oblast has stabilized.[11]

The Russian military command reportedly initially planned that Russian forces would quickly make significant advances in northern Kharkiv Oblast, but the limited force grouping deployed to the area suggests that the Russian military command likely changed these plans in the lead up to offensive operations in Kharkiv Oblast. The Economist reported on May 20 that it viewed Russian military plans from an unspecified date about a planned Russian offensive in the Kharkiv City and Vovchansk directions.[12] The Russian plans reportedly called for Russian forces to advance to Borshchova (about 20 kilometers northeast of Kharkiv City and about 16 kilometers from the international border) within 72 hours in order to place Russian forces within tube artillery range of Kharkiv City. The Russian plans also reportedly called for Russian forces to advance to Pechenihy (south of Vovchansk and about 50 kilometers from the international border) in an unspecified time frame. The Russian offensive was reportedly initially planned to begin May 15 to 16, and the Economist stated that it is unknown why Russian forces pushed forward their offensive operations in northern Kharkiv Oblast to May 10 instead. ISW assesses that Russian forces have advanced a maximum of about 10 kilometers deep in the Kharkiv City direction and a maximum of about seven kilometers deep in the Vovchansk direction since May 10. Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) Deputy Chief Major General Vadym Skibitskyi reported on May 2 that Russian forces had concentrated about 35,000 personnel in the international border area and planned to concentrate a total of 50,000 to 70,000 personnel.[13] Russian forces reportedly launched offensive operations in northern Kharkiv Oblast when the Northern Grouping of Forces was understrength and have only committed a limited amount of combat power to the area thus far.[14]

The Russian military command very likely did not expect these limited and understrength forces to be able to reach these objectives, and a Ukrainian reserve officer observed that Russian forces have focused on ”creeping advances” rather than swift drives to an operational depth since their military failures in 2022.[15] The Economist did not specify when the Russian military command created these reported plans, and it is possible that the Russian military command created the plans before it became clear that the Northern Grouping of Forces would not be staffed at its desired end strength or that an earlier or more limited attack was desired. The Russian military command may have also decided to start offensive operations with an understrength grouping to take advantage of Ukrainian manpower and materiel shortages before the arrival of Western aid at scale to the frontline.

Russian authorities recently arrested the former commander of the 58th Combined Arms Army (CAA), Major General Ivan Popov, on fraud charges. Popov was largely responsible for Russian defenses against the Ukrainian Summer 2023 counteroffensive in western Zaporizhia Oblast.[16] The 235th Garrison Military Court reported that authorities arrested Popov on May 17 for large-scale fraud and will hold Popov in detention for two months.[17] Popov's lawyer stated that authorities investigated the case for eight months before arresting Popov.[18] A prominent Russian milblogger, who alleged that they knew about Popov's arrest before it was officially announced, claimed that authorities charged Popov with fraud worth 100 million rubles (about $1.1 million) after Popov was involved in the sale of 2,000 tons of metal products intended for the construction of fortifications in the 58th CAA's area of responsibility in the Zaporizhia direction.[19] The milblogger claimed that an unspecified entrepreneur from Krasnodar Krai and an unspecified high-ranking Southern Military District commander are also defendants in the case. A Russian insider source claimed that the Russian military command summoned Popov to Moscow from Syria at an unspecified date and threateningly urged him to resign but Popov refused.[20] A Kremlin-awarded milblogger claimed that when they tried to clarify information last year about Popov's removal, unspecified sources did not mention any corruption charges but only discussed Popov's "military mistakes."[21] Select Russian milbloggers responded to the news of Popov's arrest by praising Popov as a competent and respected military commander and expressing hope that authorities would forgive him and allow him to return to military service.[22] Chief of the Russian General Staff Army General Valery Gerasimov fired Popov in July 2023 after Popov voiced his concerns over the need for troop rotations in western Zaporizhia Oblast amid the Ukrainian Summer 2023 counteroffensive.[23] Popov claimed in leaked audio that former Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu dismissed him for expressing persistent grievances about problems in western Zaporizhia Oblast.[24]

The Kremlin is likely using the pattern of recent arrests of high-ranking officials on corruption charges in the Russian MoD to conceal the real reasons for Popov's punishment almost 10 months after his conflict with the Russian military command and subsequent dismissal from his command position. Russian authorities likely did not want to publicly punish Popov in July 2023 out of fear of a rush of public support for the competent commander. The Kremlin also likely did not want to draw attention to issues in the Russian military command in the aftermath of the June 2023 Wagner Group's rebellion.[25] Popov's arrest comes after multiple recent high-profile arrests of MoD officials reportedly close to Shoigu on corruption charges.[26] The Kremlin likely hopes that arresting Popov in the middle of this alleged wide-scale anti-corruption campaign will minimize attention to Popov's previous insubordination. Popov's arrest, however, sends a clear signal to Russian military commanders that insubordinate senior officers will face serious punishments eventually and that Russian President Vladimir Putin values loyalty over competence.

Satellite imagery indicates that Ukrainian forces likely damaged the Russian Black Sea Fleet's (BSF) Tsyklon small missile ship in occupied Sevastopol, Crimea on May 19. Satellite imagery dated May 20 shows a damaged building, a rescue ship, and a floating crane near the port where the Tsyklon was docked on May 17.[27] Ukrainian and Russian sources reported on May 20 that Ukrainian forces struck the Russian Tsyklon Karakhut-class (project 22800) small missile ship in Sevastopol Bay with three US-provided ATACMS missiles on May 19.[28] Ukraine's Southern Operational Command and Navy Spokesperson Captain Third Rank Dmytro Pletenchuk stated on May 21 that that there are no more Russian Karakurt-class ships in the Black Sea following the Ukrainian strike against the Tsyklon on May 19.[29] Pletenchuk stated that the Tsyklon was the "last missile carrier" in occupied Crimea and that Russian forces have likely moved all remaining BSF missile carriers to basing in Novorossiysk.[30] Pletenchuk stated that the Tsyklon had only been in service for a year and had not yet launched a cruise missile strike. Pletenchuk stated that Russia planned to deploy five Karakurt-class ships in the Black Sea, but that Ukrainian forces previously destroyed the Askold in November 2023, that Russian forces moved the Amur and Tucha from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea, and that the fifth unnamed ship is still under construction in Taganrog, Krasnodar Krai.[31]

Key Takeaways:

The Kremlin continues to time its nuclear saber-rattling to coincide with major policy discussions in the West as part of a Kremlin reflexive control campaign to influence Western decision-makers.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky indicated that the limited Russian offensive in northern Ukraine is achieving its goal of drawing attention away from intense Russian offensive operations in eastern Ukraine.
The Russian military command reportedly initially planned that Russian forces would quickly make significant advances in northern Kharkiv Oblast, but the limited force grouping deployed to the area suggests that the Russian military command likely changed these plans in the lead up to offensive operations in Kharkiv Oblast.
Russian authorities recently arrested the former commander of the 58th Combined Arms Army (CAA), Major General Ivan Popov, on fraud charges.
The Kremlin is likely using the pattern of recent arrests of high-ranking officials on corruption charges in the Russian MoD to conceal the real reasons for Popov's punishment almost 10 months after his conflict with the Russian military command and subsequent dismissal from his command position.
Satellite imagery indicates that Ukrainian forces likely damaged the Russian Black Sea Fleet's (BSF) Tsyklon small missile ship in occupied Sevastopol, Crimea on May 19.
Russian forces recently made confirmed advances near Vovchansk, Kreminna, Chasiv Yar, and Donetsk City.
A Russian milblogger claimed that frequent Ukrainian drone strikes against Russian vehicles that lack electronic warfare (EW) systems along the frontline have created an "urgent" shortage of off-road vehicles.
Russian authorities continue to illegally and forcibly deport Ukrainian citizens, including children, to Russia and to forcibly remove Ukrainian citizens deeper into occupied 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 three subordinate main efforts)
Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Push Ukrainian forces back from the international border with Belgorod Oblast and approach to within tube artillery range of Kharkiv City
Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and encircle northern Donetsk Oblast
Russian Subordinate Main Effort #3 – 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 – Kharkiv Oblast (Russian objective: Push Ukrainian forces back from the international border with Belgorod Oblast and approach to within tube artillery range of Kharkiv City)

Russian forces did not make any confirmed advances north of Kharkiv City near Lyptsi amid continued fighting on May 21. A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces advanced between 300 and 450 meters in the Lyptsi direction, but ISW has not observed visual confirmation of this claim.[32] The Ukrainian General Staff reported on the evening of May 21 that Russian forces have significantly increased operations in the Kharkiv direction, after the number of Russian attacks decreased on May 20.[33]

Russian forces recently made a confirmed advance southwest of Vovchansk amid continued fighting in and around the settlement on May 21. Geolocated footage published on May 18 shows that Russian forces have advanced further into Starytsya (southwest of Vovchansk).[34] Some Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces advanced 100 to 350 meters within Vovchansk and marginally crossed the Vovcha River into southwestern Vovchansk towards a police station and oil extraction plant, but one milblogger claimed that Russian forces have only reached, not crossed, a destroyed bridge on Haharina Street.[35] ISW continues to assess that Russian forces maintain a limited position on the southern (left) bank of the Vovcha River and has not observed visual confirmation of Russian armored vehicles or a significant number of infantry operating on the south bank.[36] Another Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces are attacking Prylipka (southwest of Vovchansk on the southern [left] bank of the Siverskyi Donets River), but ISW has not observed confirmation of Russian forces crossing this river.[37] The Russian MoD claimed that Russian forces repelled Ukrainian counterattacks in Vovchansk and near Starytsya.[38]

A Ukrainian servicemember operating in northern Kharkiv Oblast reported that Russian forces have deployed "African mercenaries" on the axis.[39] The servicemember reported that Russian forces are conducting infantry-led "meat assaults" with the "mercenaries" before regular Russian forces attack. It is unclear what the Ukrainian serviceman meant by "African mercenaries." A Russian milblogger, who had previously amplified insider information about the Wagner Group, claimed on May 13 that former Wagner Group elements are fighting in Kharkiv Oblast, but the milblogger did not specify under which formations these elements are subordinated.[40] Ukrainian military observer Kostyantyn Mashovets reported on May 20 that elements of the Russian MoD's Africa Corps are operating near Lyptsi.[41] The Ukrainian Crimean-based "Atesh" partisan group recently reported, citing sources allegedly in the Russian 44th Army Corps (Leningrad Military District [LMD]), that elements of the Africa Corps, "mercenaries" who have fought in African countries, and people implied to be from African countries are fighting in northern Kharkiv Oblast.[42] The Ukrainian Resistance Center previously reported that Russia is recruiting from African countries.[43] While these reports are cumulatively unclear, it is possible that some combination of citizens from African countries, elements of the Africa Corps, and former Wagner Group elements are currently fighting with Russian forces in northern Kharkiv Oblast.

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Luhansk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and northern Donetsk Oblast)

Russian forces recently made a confirmed advance along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line amid continued Russian offensive operations in the area on May 21. Geolocated footage published on May 21 indicates that Russian forces advanced southeast of Makiivka (northwest of Kreminna).[44] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces advanced one kilometer near Makiivka.[45] A Russian source claimed that Russian forces secured positions 1.18 kilometers along a forested area east of Stelmakhivka (northwest of Svatove).[46] Russian forces continued offensive operations northeast of Kupyansk near Synkivka; northwest of Svatove near Ivanivka, Berestove, and Stelmakhivka; west of Kreminna near Dibrova and Terny; and south of Kreminna near Hryhorivka and Bilohorivka.[47]

Russian milbloggers continued to criticize the Russian MoD for its May 20 claim that Russian forces seized Bilohorivka (south of Kreminna). Several Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces have not seized Bilohorivka.[48] A prominent Kremlin-awarded milblogger complained that the Russian military command is pursuing "political" objectives that have no effect on the battlefield.[49] Another Russian milblogger, who has previously served as a Storm-Z instructor, claimed that the Russian MoD is lying and quoted recently appointed Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov's statement that "you can make mistakes, but you cannot lie."[50]

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces struck and damaged a fuel warehouse in occupied Dovzhansk, Luhansk Oblast with ATACMS missiles and drones on May 20.[51]

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #3 – Donetsk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)

Russian sources claimed that Russian forces made marginal advances south of Siversk (northeast of Bakhmut), but ISW has not observed visual evidence confirming these claims. Russian milbloggers claimed that unspecified elements of the Russian Airborne (VDV) Forces continued to attack in the Siversk direction and advanced north of Vesele (south of Siversk) but observed that Ukrainian drone usage is complicating Russian advances in the area.[52] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces attacked south of Siversk near Rozdolivka and southeast of Siversk near Vyimka.[53] A Russian milblogger, who previously served as a Storm-Z instructor, claimed that Russian forces are stubbornly concentrating on assaulting on the Bilohorivka (south of Kreminna)-Spirne (east of Siversk) lines despite such efforts failing to accomplish any results and resulting in significant Russian manpower and equipment losses.[54] Elements of the Russian “GORB” detachment (2nd Luhansk People's Republic Army Corps [LNR AC]) and “Kanada” group of the ”Akhmat” Spetsnaz are reportedly fighting near Spirne.[55]

Russian forces recently advanced in southern and central Klishchiivka (southeast of Chasiv Yar) and continued offensive operations in the Chasiv Yar direction. Russian milbloggers amplified a video on May 21 purportedly showing a Russian tank driving through Klishchiivka to deliver assault groups of the 6th Motorized Rifle Division (3rd AC) to the southern outskirts of the settlement before returning to its unspecified positions north of the settlement.[56] Russian milbloggers amplified another video on May 21 reportedly showing Russian forces operating in central Klishchiivka.[57] ISW geolocated both videos, confirming that Russian forces advanced in southern and central Klishchiivka. Russian sources claimed that this footage confirmed that Russian forces have entirely seized Klishchiivka and pushed Ukrainian forces out of the settlement but are not actively occupying the settlement because Ukrainian forces control the commanding height in the area.[58] ISW had not observed visual evidence indicating that Russian forces seized northern and western Klishchiivka, however. Some Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces only advanced 600 meters along the central road in Klishchiivka, and that fighting for the settlement was still ongoing as of May 21.[59] Russian sources also claimed that Russian forces expanded their positions in the Stupky-Holubovski 2 nature reserve area (southeast of Chasiv Yar).[60] Russian forces reportedly continued to attack Chasiv Yar and the Kanal Microraion (easternmost Chasiv Yar); and southeast of Chasiv Yar near Ivanivske, Klishchiivka, and Andriivka.[61] Ukrainian Khortytsia Group of Forces Spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Nazar Voloshyn stated that Ukrainian forces control Chasiv Yar and that there are no Russian forces in the settlement.[62] Elements of the Russian "Pyatnashka” International Volunteer Brigade, the 58th Spetsnaz Battalion (1st Donetsk People's Republic [DNR] AC), and the 98th VDV Division are reportedly operating near Chasiv Yar.[63] Elements of the Russian 83rd Separate Guards VDV Brigade are reportedly fighting on the Andriivka-Kurdyumivka (southeast of Chasiv Yar), and foreign mercenaries from the Russian “Africa Corps” are reportedly operating in the Bakhmut direction.[64]

Russian sources claimed that Russian forces seized Netaylove (west of Avdiivka) and continued offensive operations near Avdiivka on May 21. Russian sources claimed that elements of the Russian 9th Motorized Rifle Brigade (1st DNR Army Corps) and other unspecified units forced Ukrainian forces to withdraw from Netaylove.[65] Russian milbloggers also claimed that Russian forces advanced 450 meters deep in Netaylove and are clearing the western part of the settlement after seizing the remaining houses in the area.[66] ISW recently observed geolocated footage published on May 18, which showed that Russian forces advanced in western Netaylove.[67] The Ukrainian General Staff observed on May 20 that Russian offensive activities were intense near Netaylove.[68] Fighting continued northwest of Avdiivka near Kalynove, Novooleksandrivka, Sokil, Prohres, Yevhenivka, Ocheretyne, Solovyove, and Novoselivka Persha; west of Avdiivka near Umanske, Sieverne, Netaylove, and Yasnobrodivka; and southwest of Avdiivka near Nevelske and Sieverne.[69] Elements of the Russian 15th Motorized Rifle Brigade (2nd Guards Combined Arms Army [CAA], Central Military District [CMD]) are reportedly operating near Ocheretyne.[70]

Russian forces recently marginally advanced southwest of Donetsk City. Geolocated footage published on May 21 shows that Russian forces advanced southwest of Novomykhailivka and in eastern Paraskoviivka (both southwest of Donetsk City).[71] Russian sources also claimed that Russian forces advanced 400 meters in southwestern Krasnohorivka (west of Donetsk City).[72] Russian forces reportedly attacked west of Donetsk City near Heorhiivka and Krasnohorivka, and southwest of Donetsk City near Pobieda and in Paraskoviivka.[73] Elements of the Russian 33rd Motorized Rifle Regiment (20th Guards Motorized Rifle Division, 8th CAA, Southern Military District [SMD]) are reportedly operating in Paraskoviivka; and elements of the Russian 238th Artillery Brigade (8th CAA), “GRACHI” Spetsnaz, and 5th Division (unknown parent formation) are reportedly operating near Krasnohorivka.[74] Elements of the Russian 87th Separate Rifle Regiment (formerly the 119th regiment, 1st DNR AC) are reportedly operating in the Donetsk direction; and elements of the Russian 14th Guards Special Purpose Brigade (subordinate to the General Staff’s Main Intelligence Directorate [GRU]) are reportedly operating near Vuhledar.[75]

Positional battles continued on May 21 near Staromayorske (south of Velyka Novosilka) in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area.[76]

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 21, but there were no confirmed changes to the frontline in the area. Ukraine's Southern Operational Command and Navy Spokesperson Captain Third Rank Dmytro Pletenchuk stated that Russian forces have not seized Robotyne.[77] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces advanced up to 3.5 kilometers wide and one kilometer deep southeast of Robotyne, although ISW has not observed visual evidence of this claim.[78] Positional engagements continued near Robotyne and Verbove (east of Robotyne).[79]

Positional engagements continued in the east (left) bank of Kherson Oblast on May 21, but there were no confirmed changes to the frontline in the area. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian attacks near Krynky in the east bank of Kherson Oblast.[80] A prominent Kremlin-affiliated Russian milblogger denied recent Russian claims that Russian forces seized Krynky and claimed that Ukrainian forces maintain positions in the settlement. The milblogger claimed that both Russian and Ukrainian forces have conditional control over the islands in the Dnipro River Delta.[81] A Russian milblogger claimed that unspecified Russian Airborne (VDV) elements are operating in difficult conditions on the islands in the Dnipro River Delta.[82] ISW recently observed reports that elements of the Russian 76th VDV Division redeployed from western Zaporizhia Oblast to the Krynky.[83]

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

Russian forces conducted drone strikes against Ukraine on the night of May 20 to 21 and a missile strike against Ukraine during the day on May 21. Ukrainian Air Force Commander Lieutenant General Mykola Oleshchuk reported that Russian forces launched 29 Shahed-136/131 drones from Primorsko-Akhtarsk, Krasnodar Krai, Kursk Oblast, and occupied Cape Chauda, Crimea and that Ukrainian forces shot 28 Shaheds down over Odesa, Mykolaiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Cherkasy, Kherson, and Kirovohrad oblasts on the night of May 20 to 21.[84] Kharkiv Oblast Military Administration Head Oleh Synehubov stated that falling Shahed debris damaged four civilian objects in Kharkiv City, and Kharkiv City Mayor Ihor Terekhov reported that there was an explosion at a transportation infrastructure facility in the city.[85] The Sumy Oblast Military Administration reported that Russian forces conducted a strike against production infrastructure in Konotop with an unspecified missile.[86]

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stated in an interview with Reuters published on May 20 that Russian forces are using 300 aircraft in Ukrainian territory and reiterated that Ukrainian forces need about 120 to 130 F-16s or other advanced fighter aircraft to achieve air parity with Russia.[87]

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

A Russian milblogger claimed that frequent Ukrainian drone strikes against Russian vehicles that lack electronic warfare (EW) systems along the frontline have created an "urgent" shortage of off-road vehicles.[88] The milblogger claimed on May 21 that increasing Ukrainian drone strikes against Russian vehicles along the frontline has increased the Russian military's need for off-road vehicles to transport ammunition to positions along the frontline and evacuate wounded personnel. The milblogger also claimed that Russian forces need motorcycles and all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) to use in assault operations in areas with significant Ukrainian drone usage. The milblogger claimed that employees of the military representative office, a department of the Russian MoD that regulates military-technical support for Russian troops, try to expropriate and sell vehicles. The Russian milblogger called on the Russian MoD and government to provide more vehicles and motorcycles to the Russian military and send confiscated civilian vehicles to Russian forces for use in Ukraine. ISW has recently observed efforts in at least one Russian federal subject to send confiscated vehicles to the Russian military for use in Ukraine.[89]

The Russian MoD launched the Project 22870 rescue and tugboat Mikhail Chekhov on May 21 at the Zvezdochka Shipyard in Astrakhan Oblast on May 21.[90] The Astrakhan Oblast Governor's Press Service announced that the Mikhail Chekhov is the seventh ship of this series.[91] Ukrainian forces conducted a missile strike against the Project 22870 Vasily Bekh in June 2022.[92]

A source close to the Russian MoD told Russian investigative outlet Dossier Center that newly-appointed Russian Defense Minister Andrey Belousov previously supervised the activities of deceased Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin.[93] The source noted that Belousov had close relations with Prigozhin, and Prigozhin’s personal calendar obtained by Dossier Center further confirmed previous meetings between Prigozhin and Belousov. Dossier Center revealed that Belousov received a document in 2018 analyzing Russia’s prospects for expanding private military companies (PMCs) and emphasizing the importance of PMCs against the backdrop of Russia’s confrontation with the United States and the United Kingdom and growing “gray areas” in international conflicts. The document reportedly stated that the Russian PMCs should form under “full state control and in accordance with the main objectives of ensuring security,” and labeled Wagner as a PMC managed by the Russian MoD.

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

Nothing significant to report.

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)

Russian authorities continue to illegally and forcibly deport Ukrainian citizens, including children, to Russia and to forcibly remove Ukrainian citizens deeper into occupied Ukraine. Russian Zaporizhia Oblast occupation governor Yevgeny Balitsky claimed on May 18 that there are plans to remove more than 1,000 Ukrainian children from occupied Zaporizhia, Kherson, Donetsk, and Luhansk oblasts to a children's camp in occupied Berdyansk in 2024.[94] Balitsky also claimed that Russian authorities will remove and deport more than 6,700 Ukrainian children from occupied Zaporizhia Oblast to health centers in occupied Crimea, the Chuvash Republic, and the North Ossetia-Alania Republic in 2024.[95] Kremlin-appointed Russian Commissioner on Children's Rights Maria Lvova-Belova claimed on May 20 that Russian authorities organized a "vacation" for 12 Ukrainian children and their families from occupied Novoluhanske, Donetsk Oblast to Krasnodar Krai where they met with Russian servicemembers and veterans.[96] Lvova-Belova also claimed on May 21 that Russian authorities deported 32 Ukrainian families from occupied Ukraine to Moscow Oblast to attend a youth festival.[97] Russian opposition outlet Verstka reported on May 21 that Russian authorities plan to install drone protection systems at the Artek children's camp in occupied Crimea, which frequently houses Ukrainian children whom Russian authorities have illegally removed from other occupied Ukrainian territories under the guise of recreational vacations.[98] Ukrainian Commissioner for Human Rights Dmytro Lubinets stated on May 21 that 52,673 Ukrainian citizens, including 3,676 children, have been missing since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.[99]

Russian federal subjects continue to establish patronage networks with Russian occupation authorities. Russian Kherson Oblast occupation head Vladimir Saldo claimed that Kherson Oblast occupation officials met with the head of the Permanent Mission of Krasnodar Krai to the Russian Government Andrei Volf on May 20 and discussed attracting small and medium businesses to occupied Kherson Oblast and the provision of humanitarian aid to occupied Kherson Oblast.[100] Saldo also claimed on May 21 that schools in occupied Kherson Oblast and the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic continue educational exchanges as part of "sister city" programs.[101]

Russian exiled opposition outlet Novaya Gazeta Europe reported on May 20 that Russian authorities have nationalized 13,300 houses and apartments in occupied Ukraine.[102] Novaya Gazeta reported that Russian authorities have nationalized half of these homes since the start of 2024. Russian authorities reportedly claim to only seize housing from those that do not intend to return to Ukraine, but Novaya Gazeta stated that 77.5 percent of the seized homes are in areas that Russian forces recently occupied.

Russian Information Operations and Narratives

Russian Security Council Deputy Chairperson Dmitry Medvedev attempted to cast the upcoming peace summit in Switzerland as illegitimate and threatened countries that participate.[103] Medvedev claimed that Russia will "remember" which countries participate and that this will "definitely" influence these countries' bilateral relations with Russia in the future. Medvedev made these claims on his English-language X (formerly Twitter) account, suggesting that his threats were specifically aimed at international audiences. Kremlin officials will likely intensify their information operations targeting the Swiss peace conference in the lead up the event on June 15-16, 2024.

A prominent Kremlin-awarded milblogger continued to promote known Kremlin narratives targeting Moldova on May 21.[104]

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)

Russia and Belarus continue Union State integration measures. Belarusian Deputy Prime Minister Pyotr Parkhomchik and Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov discussed on May 20 creating a unified industrial policy within the Union State framework as well as closer cooperation in machine tool, shipbuilding, and aircraft manufacturing – all of which could support Russia's war effort.[105] Union State Parliamentary Assembly Commission for economic policy member Viktor Nikolaikin stated on May 21 stated that Russia and Belarus are also developing a unified property law within the Union State.[106]

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.

11. To Lam takes office as Vietnam’s president

Communist Vietnam.

To Lam takes office as Vietnam’s president

The new president vows to continue strengthening the Communist Party’s rule and legitimacy.

https://www.rfa.org/english/news/vietnam/tolam-vietnam-president-05222024031719.html

By RFA Staff

2024.05.22

To Lam takes his oath as Vietnam's President during the National Assembly's summer session in Hanoi on May 22, 2024.

Dang Anh/ AFP

Police general To Lam was sworn in on Wednesday by Vietnam’s parliament as the new state president.

At the same session, lawmakers voted to relieve Lam, 66, of the post of minister of public security, which he had held since 2016. Lam has replaced Vo Van Thuong, who was forced to step down after just one year in office.

As minister of public security, Lam played a leading role in a sweeping anti-corruption campaign, seen by critics as a political tool for factions in the Communist Party to eliminate competitors. His promotion as president means he is no longer in charge of the powerful ministry, and so may have lose some influence over it.

In his acceptance speech, Lam vowed to prioritize Vietnam’s independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity, as well as national interests, in his work.

The new president emphasized that, together with other leaders, he would “continue to strengthen the party’s capabilities, its ruling power and combat prowess.”

Lam, in his televised, seven-minute speech, also mentioned Vietnam’s “bamboo diplomacy”, which he said he was committed to following.

This approach in foreign policy has allowed Vietnam to establish comprehensive strategic partnerships with some of the world’s major powers including the United States, Japan, China and Russia.

On Monday, Tran Thanh Man took office as the new National Assembly chairman amid an unprecedented reshuffle of the ruling party’s leadership.

The appointments of Lam and Man have restored the Communist Party’s top quartet, known in Vietnam as “the four pillars”, namely the general secretary of the Communist Party, the prime minister, the president and the National Assembly chairman.

This quartet had earlier been halved after the resignations of President Vo Van Thuong and National Assembly Chairman Vuong Dinh Hue in March and May, respectively.

Chinese President Xi Jinping congratulated Lam on becoming president, China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency reported, the first foreign leader to do so.

Candidates for the top job

The position of general secretary is the highest in the party hierarchy. The incumbent party chief, Nguyen Phu Trong, 80, is expected to step down at the 14th national party congress in January 2026, or even earlier.

Lam and the prime minister, Pham Minh Chinh, are the only two eligible candidates to succeed him after a number of possible contenders lost their jobs during an anti-corruption campaign dubbed the “blazing furnace.”

Lam joined the public security service in 1974 and rose through the ranks to become a general in 2019. He was deputy minister for six years before becoming minister in April 2016.

During his career, Lam’s main focus was security in connection with internal politics and counter-intelligence.

The general was accused of involvement in the kidnapping of Trinh Xuan Thanh, a fugitive oil executive and former provincial official, in Berlin in 2017 and Thanh’s return to Hanoi through Slovakia. The Hanoi government denied kidnapping but the case led to a temporary rift in diplomatic relations between Germany and Vietnam.

In 2021, Lam was involved in another controversy after he was caught on video eating a piece of gold-plated steak at a luxury restaurant in London. A video clip of the general being fed by celebrity chef Salt Bae went viral, causing a public outcry at home.

Edited by Taejun Kang.

12. Foreign Purchase of U.S. Ammo Maker Sparks National-Security Battle

Excerpts:

Even just a few years ago, the idea of a company in a NATO country buying a U.S. business focused on the civilian market would likely not have raised eyebrows. The dispute over the current deal reflects heightened fears of foreign influence and coincides with a global shortage of gunpowder. It also comes as the U.S. government appears to be increasingly disposed to disrupting foreign acquisitions that it determines could threaten national security.

The struggle over the company dates back to 2022, when an investor group led by Texas-based MNC Capital Partners and a Vista board member, Mark Gottfredson, made a series of bids to buy Vista’s firearms business, offering as much as $1.8 billion.

In October last year, Vista announced that it had accepted CSG’s $1.91 billion bid; in December, the two companies filed a notice with Cfius, which they renewed in March.

Gottfredson resigned from the Vista board in January to make an offer for the entire company, according to MNC. The investor group led by MNC subsequently offered $3 billion for all of Vista—the company’s firearms divisions as well as its outdoors business, including the binocular and scope maker Bushnell and the motocross brand Fox Racing.

“It needs to be held in American hands,” Gottfredson said.

Foreign Purchase of U.S. Ammo Maker Sparks National-Security Battle

Opponents of deal stress need for American ownership amid gunpowder shortage and concern over China-Russia influence

https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/foreign-purchase-of-u-s-ammo-maker-sparks-national-security-battle-db31490d?mod=latest_headlines

By Brett Forrest

Updated May 22, 2024 12:31 am ET

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: SILAS STEIN/PICTURE ALLIANCE/GETTY IMAGES

The potential sale of an American ammunition maker to a Czech arms company is drawing scrutiny from some lawmakers, highlighting concern about foreign ownership in a key industry in the midst of global arms shortages sparked by the continuing wars in Ukraine and Gaza.

Minnesota-based Vista Outdoor announced in October that it had agreed to a $1.91 billion sale of its firearms business—which includes ammunition brands such as Remington—to the Czechoslovak Group, or CSG, based in Prague, a major supplier of munitions and military equipment to Ukraine.

Opponents of the deal, including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Sen. J.D. Vance (R., Ohio), an ally of former President Donald Trump, have alleged CSG links to China and Russia and urged the Treasury Department to block the sale through the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., or Cfius, which is reviewing the purchase.

They have said that the CSG deal would give the foreign company a grip on domestic small-arms ammunition supply. Vista is entertaining a rival bid from a Texas investment group.

Michal Strnad of CSG says its purchase of Vista would deepen ties between the U.S. and a NATO ally. PHOTO: JAN LOPATKA/REUTERS

A CSG purchase of Vista could have an impact on “reliable access to an affordable supply of primers and ammunition,” Sen. John Kennedy (R., La.) wrote in a letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.

CSG Chief Executive Michal Strnad said the deal would “deepen the strategic industrial relations” between the U.S. and the Czech Republic, a North Atlantic Treaty Organization ally.

Even just a few years ago, the idea of a company in a NATO country buying a U.S. business focused on the civilian market would likely not have raised eyebrows. The dispute over the current deal reflects heightened fears of foreign influence and coincides with a global shortage of gunpowder. It also comes as the U.S. government appears to be increasingly disposed to disrupting foreign acquisitions that it determines could threaten national security.

The struggle over the company dates back to 2022, when an investor group led by Texas-based MNC Capital Partners and a Vista board member, Mark Gottfredson, made a series of bids to buy Vista’s firearms business, offering as much as $1.8 billion.

In October last year, Vista announced that it had accepted CSG’s $1.91 billion bid; in December, the two companies filed a notice with Cfius, which they renewed in March.

Gottfredson resigned from the Vista board in January to make an offer for the entire company, according to MNC. The investor group led by MNC subsequently offered $3 billion for all of Vista—the company’s firearms divisions as well as its outdoors business, including the binocular and scope maker Bushnell and the motocross brand Fox Racing.

“It needs to be held in American hands,” Gottfredson said.

Vista pushed its annual shareholder meeting from May to June, allowing for additional time to consider MNC’s bid. Shareholders are also expected to vote on the CSG deal then.

Vista’s leadership expects the CSG transaction to receive Cfius approval soon, a company executive said.

CSG has became a major supplier of military equipment to Ukraine. PHOTO: MICHAELA NAGYIDAIOVA/BLOOMBERG NEWS

“We remain confident in our ability to receive Cfius clearance, which is the final regulatory approval required for the closing of the transaction,” Vista said in a recent statement.

If the Cfius review were to recommend blocking the sale, it would effectively end CSG’s bid.

A Treasury Department spokeswoman declined to comment on the review but said that Cfius was “committed to taking all necessary actions within its authority to safeguard U.S. national security.”

CSG grew from the mass of decommissioned and surplus military goods and hardware that sloshed around Eastern Europe in the 1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact. A Czech national, Jaroslav Strnad, refurbished armored vehicles and sold them to armies abroad.

A dozen years ago, Strnad expanded into munitions production and scooped up defense companies and factories outside the Czech Republic. CSG revenue swelled by shifting to clients in NATO countries.

In 2018, Strnad stepped aside as CSG owner and chief executive in favor of his son, Michal, then in his 20s.

The company has expanded significantly under the younger Strnad. After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, CSG became a major supplier of arms and equipment to Kyiv, shipping artillery rounds and systems, tanks and rocket launchers.

The increased cash and valuation have funded CSG acquisitions, including the purchase of a 70% stake in Fiocchi Munizioni, an Italian small-arms company that has production facilities in Arkansas and Missouri.

Sen. J.D. Vance (R., Ohio) has alleged that CSG has ties to Russia’s leadership. PHOTO: VICTOR J. BLUE/BLOOMBERG NEWS

Cfius approved that transaction, although the process was drawn out over seven months, associated with the upheaval of the Ukraine war.

“We are not a national-security risk,” said David Stepan, CSG’s investment director for international projects. “We are already doing business in the United States.”

Foreign ownership of American firearms companies isn’t novel. The Swiss gun maker SIG Sauer runs a plant in New Hampshire, while Austria’s Glock and Brazil’s Taurus have Georgia production facilities. The historic American firearms company Colt, an early producer of the AR-15 rifle, is itself owned by a Czech company.

Scrutiny of CSG’s history and intentions has intensified, however, as the availability of gunpowder globally has dwindled.

In a January letter to Yellen, Vance alleged that CSG had ties to Russia’s leadership. “We cannot afford for America’s supply of weapons to fall into the wrong hands,” he wrote.

Responding in April to Vance in an open letter, Michal Strnad emphasized CSG’s past work with American defense contractors including General Dynamics; NATO secret clearances held by several CSG subsidiaries; and CSG’s role in the supply of weapons to Ukraine.

Strnad said “any speculation about CSG’s connection” to the regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin “should be considered nonsense.”

A CSG spokesman said that the company had never dealt with the Russian military and that it closed its civilian, industrial truck business in Russia following Moscow’s 2022 invasion.

In his letter to Yellen, Kennedy, the Republican senator from Louisiana, also raised concerns about the company’s dealings with China.

In 2018, Eldis, a CSG subsidiary, signed a deal to provide 13 radar systems to a Chinese civilian air traffic agency, and to maintain them. A CSG spokesman said that it expects the contract to conclude this year and that the company has no other business in China.

The Biden administration appears to be taking a closer look at foreign investments. The White House announced recently that it was forcing a Chinese crypto-mining company to divest itself of land it owned near a U.S. nuclear missile base in Wyoming.

The obvious threat in a case such as CSG “would be that if the company were subjected to foreign ownership, they might not then at some point be willing to make available to the U.S. government stuff that it needed,” said William Reinsch of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who served as the president of the National Foreign Trade Council.

While Vista has a significant number of nonmilitary clients, those criticizing the potential Czech purchase have said the national-security threat is real.

The National Sheriffs’ Association and the National Association of Police Organizations have opposed the CSG purchase, concerned that a foreign company would hold a significant portion of the U.S. small-arms ammunition market.

Established in the 1970s, Cfius has assumed a greater profile as U.S. concern has grown over the prospect that hostile foreign powers will use private-sector acquisitions to spy, threaten infrastructure and thwart U.S. defense capabilities.

After a Cfius review in 2012, President Barack Obama blocked a Chinese entity’s purchase of wind-farm projects near a U.S. Navy weapons training facility. The company won an appeal but agreed to sell its stake to a U.S.-approved buyer. In 2019, Cfius forced the Chinese company Kunlun to sell Grindr, the LGBTQ dating app, which it had recently purchased.

A significant Cfius case, the proposed $14.1 billion takeover of U.S. Steel by Japan’s Nippon Steel, has become a presidential campaign issue, with President Biden publicly opposing it even as Cfius continues its review.

Write to Brett Forrest at brett.forrest@wsj.com

13. US and China should cooperate on reducing Asian nuclear threats, scholars say

Excerpts:

He said that under Trump, Washington had become increasingly “tough, ideological and provocative on Taiwan”.

Jia cited a recent Foreign Affairs article by Matt Pottinger, Trump’s deputy national security adviser, which he criticised as “dangerous” in calling to undermine China’s regime and political system.

Pottinger co-wrote the article last month with Mike Gallagher, a China hawk who just stepped down as the chair of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party and retired from the House of Representatives. It fiercely criticised the Biden administration’s China policy and called for “a total victory” over China’s alleged “malevolent strategy” in an unfolding new cold war.

Such a strategy would “turn the relationship into a power struggle for survival and that’s very dangerous”, Jia said.

“If Trump is back in office, more likely than not, his policy [towards China] would be tougher and more irrational and the [US-China] relationship is likely to enter a new period of rapid deterioration,” he said.

US and China should cooperate on reducing Asian nuclear threats, scholars say

North Korea and Russia have exploited the US-China schism to take actions that undermined the global order, Jia Qingguo of Peking University says at HKU
If Donald Trump is re-elected US president, Michael O’Hanlon of Brookings says, he must be told ‘there’s really no benefit in playing around with the one-China policy’

Shi Jiangtao

+ FOLLOWPublished: 3:00pm, 21 May 2024

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3263477/us-and-china-should-cooperate-reducing-asian-nuclear-threats-scholars-say

Beijing and Washington should set aside political differences and work together to reduce risks of nuclear proliferation in northeast Asia, Chinese and American scholars said this week.

At Hong Kong University on Monday, Jia Qingguo, a US specialist at Peking University, said that nations such as North Korea and Russia had exploited the US-China schism to take actions that undermined the global order.

“The deteriorating relations between China and the US have left the existing world order more difficult to be sustained, because there are a lot of countries that have grievances and want to challenge the world order,” he said, at a seminar hosted by HKU’s Centre on Contemporary China and the World.

“It’s a great pity that these two countries cannot cooperate and only focus on areas of tensions.”

Because of the intensifying US-China rivalry, “some countries have seen opportunities to do things that normally they were not able to do”, he said, citing North Korea’s accelerating nuclear and missile programmes and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“The deteriorating relations between China and the US have left the existing world order more difficult to be sustained,” Jia Qingguo says. Photo: Peking University

Noting reports that several US allies voiced desire to join the US-led Aukus security pact with Australia and Britain, Jia said that recent polls showed more South Koreans and Japanese had become supportive of deploying or even developing nuclear weapons amid regional security challenges.

Beijing has denounced Aukus – an alliance first unveiled in 2021 that is equipping Australia with nuclear-powered submarines – as a move to contain China, and a violation of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

“The US and China should talk to each other and make clear the limits about what they can do. And they should cooperate more to ensure nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction would not proliferate. This is in our common interests and the stake is very high. We should talk and work together,” said Jia, the former dean of Peking University’s school of international studies.

“But I’m worried that this [Aukus deal] has created a disincentive that would keep China from cooperating with the US.”

He criticised US President Joe Biden’s recent moves to sharply raise tariffs on an array of Chinese imports, including electric vehicles, batteries and solar cells, calling them “an excuse for protectionism”.

“It doesn’t make sense,” he said.

Such tough restrictions would undermine US business interests and “force China to develop its own alternative technology”.

If China was successful, the US dominance in hi-tech sectors would disappear, which he said was “not in the best interests of the US”.

Michael O’Hanlon, foreign policy research director at the Brookings Institution think tank, said the US should “collaborate with China better” on North Korea.

From left, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, US President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak deliver remarks on the Aukus partnership at Naval Base Point Loma in San Diego, California, on March 13, 2023. Photo: Reuters

He said that, aside from forging a three-way alliance with Japan and South Korea to strengthen deterrence, the Biden administration had largely followed former president Barack Obama’s policy of “benign neglect” on North Korea’s repeated provocative missile tests.

O’Hanlon described the Aukus deal as “a signal to China” demonstrating the “united front” by the US and its regional allies worried about Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait.

O’Hanlon expressed concerns about the impact a possible re-election of former president Donald Trump might have on the deeply troubled US-China ties.

If Trump returned to the White House, O’Hanlon said, he must be reminded that “there’s really no benefit in playing around with the one-China policy” on Taiwan.

Beijing’s relations with Washington first plunged into a crisis when Trump, shortly after he was elected in 2016, took a congratulatory call from then-Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen.

Trump was apparently not aware of how complex and disruptive the Taiwan issue could be to US-China ties, O’Hanlon said.

“I don’t think Donald Trump really wanted to have such a big crisis with China” that could potentially lead to a war with a nuclear superpower, he said.

“I hope that he will realise that whatever else he’s going to do with the economic relationship, let’s try to keep the security relationship and Taiwan out of that relationship.”

Jia said he was pessimistic about the prospect of bilateral ties if Trump won the November election, an apparent rematch against Biden.

“When Trump first came into office, he brought in a lot of uncertainties. In China, we hoped he would be pragmatic and he was supposed to be some kind of businessman. But it turned out he is a very different kind of businessman,” he said.

Former US president Donald Trump, shown at his election-interference trial at Manhattan Criminal Court on Monday, may still be re-elected in November. Photo: Getty Images via AFP

He said that under Trump, Washington had become increasingly “tough, ideological and provocative on Taiwan”.

Jia cited a recent Foreign Affairs article by Matt Pottinger, Trump’s deputy national security adviser, which he criticised as “dangerous” in calling to undermine China’s regime and political system.

Pottinger co-wrote the article last month with Mike Gallagher, a China hawk who just stepped down as the chair of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party and retired from the House of Representatives. It fiercely criticised the Biden administration’s China policy and called for “a total victory” over China’s alleged “malevolent strategy” in an unfolding new cold war.

Such a strategy would “turn the relationship into a power struggle for survival and that’s very dangerous”, Jia said.

“If Trump is back in office, more likely than not, his policy [towards China] would be tougher and more irrational and the [US-China] relationship is likely to enter a new period of rapid deterioration,” he said.

CONVERSATIONS (17)

+ FOLLOW

Shi Jiangtao

A former diplomat, Shi Jiangtao has worked as a China reporter at the Post for more than a decade. He's interested in political, social and environmental development in China.

14. Gaza aid pier mission involving US troops is off to a chaotic start

Like every military operation. Has there ever been a "perfect" military mission where everything goes according to plan?

Gaza aid pier mission involving US troops is off to a chaotic start

militarytimes.com · by Geoff Ziezulewicz · May 21, 2024

Editor’s note: This story was updated May 21 8:26 p.m. E.T. to include further comment from Pentagon and U.N. officials.

An effort involving the U.S. military to surge much-needed humanitarian aid to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip is off to a chaotic start, with aid trucks being overrun and at least one person feared dead over the weekend, prompting a pause in aid distribution.

U.S. soldiers and sailors built a floating pier off Gaza and stabbed it into a Gaza beach on Friday with the help of Israeli forces.

Military’s novel floating pier arrives in Gaza amid security concerns

The Gaza aid pier is made possible by an oft-neglected but vital military capability known as Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore, or JLOTS.

The plan, announced by President Biden in his State of the Union address and using a capability known as Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore, or JLOTS, has been touted as another way to get food to Gazans caught between the Israeli military and the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which attacked Israel on Oct. 7.

It involves no U.S. troops on the ground in Gaza, as the U.S. military’s efforts have involved building the massive floating platform and pier that was installed last week.

But aid trucks stopped trundling off the military’s floating pier on Saturday, and only resumed moving out into Gaza on Tuesday, according to Pentagon officials. The U.N. said it was not aware of any deliveries on Tuesday, however.

Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said Tuesday that the issues have arisen once the aid was loaded onto nongovernmental organization trucks, departed the marshaling area and headed toward distribution warehouses in Gaza.

Over the weekend, some of those trucks were overtaken by Palestinians, according to U.N. officials.

Only five of the 16 aid trucks that left the secured area on Saturday arrived at the intended warehouse with their cargo intact, U.N. World Food Program spokesperson Steve Taravella told The Associated Press. He said the other 11 trucks were waylaid by what became a crowd of people and arrived without their cargo.

Authorities have offered few firm details of what transpired Saturday. Hamas has said the group will resist any foreign presence associated with the project, but it remains unclear whether the group was involved in the weekend’s aid disruption.

However, Associated Press video shows Israeli armored vehicles on a beach road, then aid trucks moving down the road.

Civilians watching from the roadside gradually start to clamber on top of the aid trucks, throwing aid down to people below. Numbers of people then appear to overrun the aid trucks and their goods.

At one point, members of the crowd are shown carting a motionless man with a chest wound through the crowd. A local morgue later confirmed to the AP the man had been killed by a rifle shot. At another point, shots crackled, and some of the people in the crowd are shown apparently ducking behind aid boxes for cover.

It was not clear who fired the shots.

Asked about the shooting, the Israeli army told the AP, using the acronym for the Israel Defense Forces: “The IDF is currently focused on eliminating the threat from the terrorist organization Hamas.”

Ryder said that as of Tuesday 569 metric tons of aid has been delivered to the secured area at the Gaza port. Some of it remains there, however, because distribution agencies are working to find alternative routes to warehouses in Gaza.

Asked if any aid from the pier had yet reached Gaza residents in need, Ryder said, “I do not believe so.” He said aid had resumed moving Tuesday from the secured area into Gaza, after what had been a two-day halt following Saturday’s disruption. He gave no immediate details.

After the chaotic launch, WFP officials said Tuesday that the pier project may fail unless Israel starts providing the conditions that humanitarian groups need to operate safely.

Ryder acknowledged the challenges involved in the effort and said that alternate routes were being examined.

He also noted that Israeli forces ashore and at sea, as well as Navy destroyers, are patrolling to ensure the safety of the U.S. troops involved in the JLOTS effort.

“This is a combat zone, and this is a complex operation,” he said Tuesday. “And so we’ve been very clear from the beginning that we’re going to take a crawl-walk-run approach.”

About Geoff Ziezulewicz

Geoff is the editor of Navy Times, but he still loves writing stories. He covered Iraq and Afghanistan extensively and was a reporter at the Chicago Tribune. He welcomes any and all kinds of tips at geoffz@militarytimes.com.

15. China Possesses American MIM-104 Patriot Missile Defense System? Claims Surface

A sensational report. I have not seen any other reporting on this. Photos at the link: https://defencesecurityasia.com/en/china-possesses-american-mim-104-patriot-missile-defense-system-unbelievable-claims-surface/?utm

This Is from a Malaysian website: Defense Security Asia.

Excerpts:

The emergence of the viral photo showing the Patriot system on a trailer in China has sparked intense speculation, with many suggesting that Beijing has managed to acquire this tightly guarded U.S. weapon system.

Much of this speculation suggests that the Patriot system in China, as depicted in the viral image, was obtained from Ukraine.

However, to date, there are no reports confirming that Russian forces have captured any Patriot systems, as previous reports only indicated that Moscow had succeeded in destroying them.

...

Another theory regarding the “Patriot” image in China suggests that Beijing acquired the air defense system from Taiwan, which is also a user of the system.

China Possesses American MIM-104 Patriot Missile Defense System? Claims Surface

The image has shocked many because the " MIM-104 Patriot" air defense system is a highly guarded asset of the United States, accessible only to certain nations, particularly those closely allied with Washington. Clearly, China is not among the countries authorized to possess the Patriot system.

defencesecurityasia.com · May 17, 2024

(DEFENCE SECURITY ASIA) — Recently, a photo that shows an American-made “MIM-104 Patriot” missile defense system being transported on a trailer in China went viral on social media.

The image has caused widespread surprise as this air defense system is a highly guarded asset of the United States, usually available only to nations closely allied with Washington.

And certainly not to China, which is not authorized to possess the Patriot system developed by U.S. defense contractor RTX (formerly known as Raytheon).

Currently, the Patriot missile system is being used by the Ukrainian military to counter Russian air strikes, thanks to contributions from the United States and its European allies.

One of the Patriot batteries is known to be deployed in Ukraine to defend the capital city, Kyiv, from Russian cruise and tactical missile attacks.

MIM-104 Patriot

There is a high demand from U.S. allies for the Patriot systems, largely due to fears of air attacks similar to those experienced by Ukraine.

Russia claims it has successfully destroyed several Patriot launcher units, especially those defending Kyiv.

The emergence of the viral photo showing the Patriot system on a trailer in China has sparked intense speculation, with many suggesting that Beijing has managed to acquire this tightly guarded U.S. weapon system.

Much of this speculation suggests that the Patriot system in China, as depicted in the viral image, was obtained from Ukraine.

However, to date, there are no reports confirming that Russian forces have captured any Patriot systems, as previous reports only indicated that Moscow had succeeded in destroying them.

“Patriot”

Previously, Russia claimed to have destroyed at least two Patriot launcher systems operated by the Ukrainian military.

Another theory regarding the “Patriot” image in China suggests that Beijing acquired the air defense system from Taiwan, which is also a user of the system.

Besides theories that the system was obtained from Ukraine or Taiwan, there is also speculation that the viral image actually shows a high-quality mock-up or “VISMOD” (Visual Modification), used by the Chinese military for training purposes.

Observers claim it is most likely a VISMOD or mock-up, after noting several major differences between the actual Patriot air defense system and the one in the viral image.

The Chinese military is known to use high-quality VISMODs in its training exercises.

Moreover, China is alleged to have built replicas of key Taiwanese government buildings and warships, including American aircraft carriers, for training purposes to improve the accuracy of its guided missile attacks. — DSA

defencesecurityasia.com · May 17, 2024

16. Ireland, Spain, Norway announce recognition of Palestinian state

Ireland, Spain, Norway announce recognition of Palestinian state

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ireland-recognise-palestinian-state-2024-05-22/?utm

By Reuters

May 22, 20245:58 AM EDTUpdated 35 min ago

Item 1 of 2 People attend a protest in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Dublin, Ireland, November 18, 2023. REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne

[1/2]People attend a protest in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Dublin, Ireland, November 18, 2023. REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab

Summary

Ireland, Spain, Norway to recognise Palestinian state on May 28Israel recalls ambassadors from the three countriesSpain's Sanchez says step is to accelerate peace effortsNorway's PM says two states the only political solution

DUBLIN/OSLO/MADRID, May 22 (Reuters) - Ireland, Spain and Norway announced on Wednesday that they would recognise a Palestinian state on May 28, saying they hoped other Western countries would follow suit, prompting Israel to recall its ambassadors.

Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said the move was aimed at accelerating efforts to secure a ceasefire in Israel's war with Hamas in Gaza.

"We hope that our recognition and our reasons contribute to other western countries to follow this path because the more we are, the more strength we will have to impose a ceasefire, to achieve the release of the hostages held by Hamas, to relaunch the political process that can lead to a peace agreement," he said in a speech to the country's lower house.

Israel launched its war in Gaza in retaliation for an Oct. 7 assault by Hamas that killed 1,200 people and took more than 250 hostages, by Israeli tallies. Israel's operations in the enclave have killed more than 35,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza's health ministry.

Spain and its allies have spent months lobbying European nations, including France, Portugal, Belgium and Slovenia, to garner support for the recognition of a Palestinian state.

"Today, Ireland, Norway, and Spain are announcing that we recognise the state of Palestine," Irish Taoiseach Simon Harris said at a press conference in Dublin.

"Each of us will now undertake whatever national steps are necessary to give effect to that decision."

He added that Ireland was unequivocal in fully recognising Israel and its right to exist "securely and in peace with its neighbours", and he called for all hostages in Gaza to be immediately returned.

In Oslo, Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store, said the only alternative for a political solution between Israelis and Palestinians is "two states living side by side in peace and security."

AMBASSADORS RECALLED

In response to the announcements, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz ordered the immediate return of the Israeli ambassadors to the three countries for consultations and warned of further "severe consequences".

"I am sending a clear message today: Israel will not be complacent against those who undermine its sovereignty and endanger its security," he said.

Israel's foreign ministry said it would also reprimand the Irish, Spanish and Norwegian ambassadors and show them a video of female hostages being held in captivity by Hamas.

Israel argues the only way to achieve Palestinian statehood is through negotiations and that bypassing this process would give Hamas and other militant groups an incentive to use violence.

Around 144 out of 193 member-states of the United Nations have already taken the step, including most of the global south, Russia, China and India, but only a handful of 27 EU members have so far done so, Sweden being the first in 2014. The United Kingdom and Australia have indicated in recent months that they could soon follow suit.

Palestinians seek statehood in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as their capital.

Israel's staunchest ally, the United States, last month vetoed an attempt at United Nations recognition for a Palestinian state, arguing that a two-state solution can only come from direct negotiations between the parties.

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

Reporting by Conor Humphries, Inti Landauro, Nerijus Adomaitis, Gwladys Fouche and Emma Pinedo, editing by Sarah Young, Aislinn Laing and Sharon Singleton

17. Revised Lift Fan Aircraft Concept Emerges From Special Ops X-Plane Program

Fascinating photos at the link. https://www.twz.com/news-features/revised-lift-fan-aircraft-concept-emerges-from-special-ops-x-plane-program?mc_cid=518114c852&mc_eid=70bf478f36

Humans are more important than hardware. This hardware is pilotless and thus is no risk to a human and then it can be employed to support a lot of humans on the ground. Humans are more important than hardware does not mean do not invest in advanced technology.

OF course as a transport aircraft, are we considering transporting troops without a pilot? Or is this merely going to transport supplies to the troops? I am leery of getting into a limitless aircraft. I will still take my chances with pilot error over a computer error.

Revised Lift Fan Aircraft Concept Emerges From Special Ops X-Plane Program

The pilotless fan-in-wing design concept could evolve into a new fast-flying, runway independent special operations transport aircraft.

JOSEPH TREVITHICK

PUBLISHED MAY 21, 2024 7:53 PM EDT

twz.com · by Joseph Trevithick · May 21, 2024

Aurora Flight Sciences recently unveiled a revised fan-in-wing vertical take-off-and-landing capable aircraft design it is developing U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). A key goal behind Aurora's new demonstrator concept, which is uncrewed and otherwise scaled back from the design it first presented last year, is to provide a realistic pathway to actually flight test the capabilities this platform might offer.

Aurora, a subsidiary of Boeing, has been developing this design under DARPA's Speed and Runway Independent Technologies (SPRINT). The company was one of four chosen to take part in SPRINT's initial concept refinement Phase 1A, the others being Bell, Northrop Grumman, and Piasecki Aircraft. In April, Aurora advanced to Phase 1B, which will involve a preliminary design review. Whether any of the other companies involved in Phase 1A have moved forward is unclear.

A rendering of Aurora Flight Sciences revised SPRINT design concept. Aurora Flight Sciences

DARPA says that SPRINT's main focus is to demonstrate a "transformational combination of aircraft speed and runway independence" that includes "the ability to cruise at speeds from 400 to 450 knots at relevant altitudes and hover in austere environments from unprepared surfaces." The program is directly tied to U.S. Special Operations Command's (SOCOM) High-Speed Vertical Takeoff and Landing (HSVTOL) project.

"Aurora’s [new] concept is designed to meet or exceed the challenging program objectives that DARPA set for the program. For example, the blended wing body platform is capable of 450 knot cruise speed, and the embedded lift fans with integrated covers allow a smooth transition from vertical to horizontal flight," according to a press release the company put out yesterday. "The design also leverages existing engine solutions, shortening development risk and timelines. In addition to VTOL, the aircraft is capable of short take-off and vertical landing (STOVL), super short take-off and landing (SSTOL), and conventional take-off and landing."

The press release also highlighted the new concept's "three lift fans, a more refined, composite exterior; and an uncrewed cockpit." The design Aurora showed last year had four fans and a traditional crewed cockpit area with two air intakes right behind it on top of the fuselage.

A rendering of Aurora's initial SPRINT concept. Aurora Flight Sciences

On the revised design, the three lift fans are positioned in a triangular arrangement, with one in the nose end and two on either side of the main blended wing body section. There are also two large angular air intakes under the nose instead of on top of the fuselage, along with what looks to be a central exhaust situated at the rear between the aircraft's v-tail.

An animated rendering Aurora has released, seen below, shows a flat panel sliding over the top of the front lift fan and split circular covers folding down over the ones in the wing areas for level flight operation. There also looks to be doors that close flush to the fuselage underneath. The are two additional auxiliary doors on top of the central fuselage, which may divert air away from the main propulsion system while the design is in its vertical takeoff and landing mode.

Aurora Flight Sciences

It has already been pointed out that there are some very broad similarities between Aurora's fan-in-wing configuration and that of the 1960s-era Ryan Vertifan design, which you can read more about here. This comparison underscores that fan-in-wing design concepts, as well as ones that utilize lift fans in other locations within an aircraft, are hardly new.

The two Ryan XV-5A Vertifan prototypes. The aircraft have the covers for the lift fans in their noses open, but the ones over the lift fans in their wings closed. Ryan Aeronautical via the SDASM Archives

An XV-5A Vertifan in its vertical takeoff and landing mode. Note the split circular covers in the open position above the wing-mounted lift fans akin to what is seen in Aurora's new SPRINT renders. Ryan Aeronautical via the SDASM Archives

The new Aurora SPRINT concept also has some very general similarities to other designs with only a pair of wing-mounted lift fans that have been presented in the past. This includes Lockheed Martin's uncrewed Vertical Takeoff and Landing (VTOL) Advanced Reconnaissance Insertion Organic Unmanned System, or VARIOUS, from the 2000s timeframe.

A rendering of Lockheed Martin's VARIOUS VTOL drone concept. Lockheed Martin

The projected size of Aurora's current SPRINT design concept and how much payload of any kind it might be able to carry if it progresses to a flyable state is unclear.

"The FIW [fan-in-wing] technology could be scaled to four or more lift fans to meet future aircraft requirements, and it could unlock opportunities for a future family of systems," Aurora's press release yesterday noted. "Similarly, while an uncrewed demonstrator offers benefits in testing and risk reduction, the FIW technology would be fully transferrable to traditional aircraft with crews."

However, "the team's [current] approach seeks to set the program on the path to successful flight."

Whether that comes to pass remains to be seen. DARPA X-plane programs do not always meet their goal of producing a flyable demonstrator. Aurora knows this from its time developing the XV-24 LightningStrike for the agency in the 2010s. This was another VTOL concept that featured rows of electric fans in two sets of articulating wings, all powered by a central gas turbine. Despite successful subscale flight testing and plans to fly a full-scale XV-24, DARPA canceled the program in 2018 citing, in part, a lack of a service partner elsewhere in the U.S. military.

That being said, with SPRINT, DARPA has very clear interest from SOCOM and, by extension, Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC). A high-speed, runway-independent transport aircraft could provide valuable added operational flexibility and reduced vulnerability, especially in a potential future high-end conflict like one in the Pacific against China, and especially for special operations units. When Aurora unveiled its initial design, The War Zone noted how it evoked a host of other concepts the U.S. military has explored since the 1980s, especially for special operations support missions, as you can read about more in this exhaustive two-part feature.

The kinds of capabilities that SPRINT, or another design derived from the technology being developed under the program, could easily be desirable for applications beyond the U.S. special operations community. The entire U.S. military is increasingly concerned about the vulnerability of large established bases, particularly in the context of a major fight in the Pacific region.

The U.S. Marine Corps is retooling its entire force structure to be better able to conduct expeditionary and distributed operations with a particular emphasis on rapidly establishing forward bases in remote and austere areas. The Marines are also the only service in the U.S. military to operate the B variant of the stealthy F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which is short takeoff and vertical landing capable thanks to a huge lift fan in the forward fuselage and an articulating rear exhaust nozzle.

With all this in mind, there has been steadily growing interest across the services in new and more capable runway-independent aircraft concepts, crewed and uncrewed, as well as associated tactics, techniques, and procedures, to support a wide variety of missions in recent years.

Altogether it will be very interesting to see how Aurora's fan-in-wing concept for SPRINT continues to evolve ahead of any potential future flight testing.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

twz.com · by Joseph Trevithick · May 21, 2024

18. Army chief of staff: We don’t need a drone branch

Would the Army become too "specialized?" Or "over specialized?" Ever since establishing Aviation and Special Forces as separate branches we have had a growth in "specialization" of branches. Perhaps before we propose a new branch someone should conduct some research and determine how effective new branches are. Seems like an excellent research project for some military graduate students.

Army chief of staff: We don’t need a drone branch

Members of a House Armed Services subcommittee are proposing that the Army establish a Drone Corps.

defensescoop.com · by Jon Harper · May 21, 2024

Boosting the Army’s drone and counter-drone capability and capacity is a priority for the service’s top officer. However, he told lawmakers that he’s opposed to creating a separate drone branch to accomplish that goal.

Members of a House Armed Services subcommittee are proposing that the Army establish a Drone Corps, and it included a provision in its mark for the fiscal 2025 defense policy bill that would mandate its creation.

“For us, this is a capability that’s going to be, I think, resident in every formation at every echelon. So … we see this as integrated into our formation, not some separate piece. And I think we need that kind of flexibility. We’re actually doing that right now with our formations … We selected three units to kind of work this out and start to transform in contact and doing this. But I don’t think it would be helpful to have a separate drone branch,” Gen. Randy George said Tuesday during a Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Defense hearing.

George isn’t the only senior Army leader to throw cold water on the idea of a Drone Corps. Last week, Undersecretary Gabe Camarillo also suggested it would be counterproductive.

The service is rebalancing its aviation portfolio and pursuing next-generation drones. That includes a so-called Launched Effects family of systems and future tactical unmanned aircraft systems.

UAS, counter-drone weapons and electronic warfare tools are also key elements of George’s “transforming in contact” concept.

The Army is looking across the industrial base at technologies that are out there, with an eye toward having flexibility with platforms, payloads and other components.

“There’s a lot of great small companies out there that are really moving quickly with unmanned systems. And what we’re trying to do is build a modular open system architecture where we can put different systems and sensors on them. And I think that we will be able to adapt to that rate of change … if we take that model,” George said.

Drones have been featured prominently in the Ukraine-Russia war and in conflicts in the Middle East in recent years, including one-way attack drones. The U.S. military is pursuing new tools to defeat those types of weapons.

When it comes to force structure growth, counter-UAS batteries are a top need for the Army, George noted.

Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth said officials have been reassessing the total minimum requirements for munitions such as the Coyote interceptor.

“I think there’s a general recognition that, given what we’re seeing in Ukraine, that we need to increase our stockpiles of munitions and counter-UAS capabilities. So, we are working on that right now. I think Gen. George and I both believe that we need to invest more in counter-UAS capabilities, which is why you see some of that on his unfunded priority list,” Wormuth told lawmakers at Tuesday’s hearing.

The service is trying to push additional capabilities into the field to protect U.S. troops.

“We are basically taking everything that we have available and putting it in the Middle East … We actually have soldiers that are on the systems, the developers and the testers that are all right there. And we have our directed energy that’s over [there]. We just directed that high-power microwave system that we’re doing is going to go over there immediately because I think we have to spin this a whole bunch faster,” George said.

He made a pitch for lawmakers to give the Army more flexibility with funding, noting that threats and technologies evolve quickly and continuing resolutions have hampered the service’s ability to adapt quickly.

“I think flexible funding — and I know sometimes that can be a bad word — but within counter-UAS, UAS and EW portfolios would really help us. The battlefield is changing very, very rapidly, and I’m talking days and weeks — sometimes you’re lucky to get, you know, things changing in a month. But as it changes, we need to be able to, you know, go back to — we have the best industry in the world — to go back and say, ‘Hey, we need to change this, we need to up the quantity,’” George told lawmakers.

“I think we have to be more flexible in our funding approach so that when we have something that’s research is working well and we know we need to procure more of those systems … that we wouldn’t have to wait,” he added. “We could come over and notify the committee and then, you know, do a certain wait period and then go ahead and do that. And we would love to work with you on that. But I think we have to turn the wheel a lot faster on counter-UAS.”

Written by Jon Harper

Jon Harper is Managing Editor of DefenseScoop, the Scoop News Group’s online publication focused on the Pentagon and its pursuit of new capabilities. He leads an award-winning team of journalists in providing breaking news and in-depth analysis on military technology and the ways in which it is shaping how the Defense Department operates and modernizes. You can also follow him on X (the social media platform formerly known as Twitter) @Jon_Harper_

defensescoop.com · by Jon Harper · May 21, 2024

19. Inside the USS Carney’s harrowing and unprecedented deployment

We do not often get to read about what naval deployments are really like. I think it is hard for non-naval personnel to understand the challenge of these threats. BZ to these sailors.

Excerpts:

When the Houthis fired anti-ship ballistic missiles, Robertson’s sailors had just a handful of breaths in which to decide if and how they would counter the attacks.

“From start to finish, it’s anywhere from nine to 20 seconds,” Robertson told reporters on Monday, a day after the Carney returned home to Mayport. “So very fast, very dynamic. And our systems are doing exactly what we’ve designed them to do.”

Countering these threats so swiftly required full confidence in the ship’s tactical action officers, the watch team, and all the systems aboard the vessel, Robertson added.

“We have learned some significant capabilities when it comes to speed,” Robertson said. “So an [anti-ship ballistic missile] is just way faster than anything else. And we have certain capabilities to be able to detect stuff like that…These are certainly very dangerous areas. And every, every interaction is completely different from one another.”

Inside the USS Carney’s harrowing and unprecedented deployment

navytimes.com · by Diana Correll · May 21, 2024

When they left Naval Station Mayport, Florida, on Sept. 27, Cmdr. Jeremy Robertson and the sailors he commanded aboard the destroyer Carney had no idea what was in store for them.

But to hear Robertson tell it, they were ready to face the unknown, and Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen would soon put them to the test.

Carney and its crew would spend the coming months shooting down an at-times relentless salvo of Iran-backed Houthi missiles and drones from Yemen, fired at all types of vessels transiting the claustrophobic confines of the Red Sea.

When the Houthis fired anti-ship ballistic missiles, Robertson’s sailors had just a handful of breaths in which to decide if and how they would counter the attacks.

“From start to finish, it’s anywhere from nine to 20 seconds,” Robertson told reporters on Monday, a day after the Carney returned home to Mayport. “So very fast, very dynamic. And our systems are doing exactly what we’ve designed them to do.”

Countering these threats so swiftly required full confidence in the ship’s tactical action officers, the watch team, and all the systems aboard the vessel, Robertson added.

“We have learned some significant capabilities when it comes to speed,” Robertson said. “So an [anti-ship ballistic missile] is just way faster than anything else. And we have certain capabilities to be able to detect stuff like that…These are certainly very dangerous areas. And every, every interaction is completely different from one another.”

The destroyer originally joined the Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group this fall in the European theater for a scheduled deployment, but headed to the U.S. 5th Fleet area of operations in the Middle East on Oct. 18 amid concerns about a larger conflict emerging in the region at the onset of the Israel-Hamas war.

The very next day, the vessel became the first confirmed U.S. warship to intercept a series of Houthi missiles and drones in the Red Sea on Oct. 19, an hours-long melee that would set Carney’s course for months to come.

“None of us could have prepared for this,” Robertson said. “None of us could have known what was going to happen…We never had anyone that shied away from the moment.”

All the Houthi-US Navy incidents in the Middle East (that we know of)

A non-exhaustive, running list of Houthi attacks in the Middle East and the U.S. strikes back at them.

The Carney was joined by several other Navy destroyer that continue to strike down these Houthi threats on military and commercial vessels in the region since then.

On top of intercepting Houthi missiles and drones, Carney also helped stop Iran’s missile and drone attack against Israel on April 14.

“The team was there, they were in the moment and it was amazing to see how quickly they transitioned into a battle mindset,” Robertson said. “Their responsibility and actions and follow up came very instinctual. We were doing all of our pre-planned responses, we were doing everything we could to make sure that we didn’t make a mistake.”

No two days looked alike, Robertson said, adding that he wouldn’t alter the ship’s training at all to prepare for operations in the Middle East — except for possibly adding an additional exercise here or there for contingencies like the rescue and assistance missions that Carney took on to help commercial vessels stricken by Houthi attacks.

“It really validates the training and the preparedness that we have,” Robertson said.

Back on land Monday, Robertson expressed pride in his crew’s “relentless pursuit of excellence,” and said Carney’s sailors will never forget their ship’s historic deployment.

“The crew was there for each other and they got through it together, built resiliency together,” Robertson said. “Their cohesion and connectedness is one of the major factors into why they made such an effective warfighting team.”

All told, the Carney conducted 51 engagements in the span of six months, according to Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti. Franchetti, who greeted the ship during a quick stop in Norfolk, Va., this month, recognized 14 sailors for their accomplishments at sea.

Additionally, the entire crew has also received recognition for its actions in the Red Sea in January when the Navy awarded the crew Combat Action Ribbons for an engagement in December where the Carney shot down 14 Houthi air drones.

Upon arrival in Mayport on Sunday, Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro presented the Navy Unit Commendation to the ship. The unit award, the second highest after the Presidential Unit Citation, is distributed to Navy and Marine Corps units that demonstrated “outstanding heroism” in action against enemy forces.

“Carney was deployed forward, deterring our adversaries, protecting our national interests, defending the rules-based international order, and promoting peace,” Del Toro said, according to a Navy news release. “I, and all Americans, am immensely proud of these Carney Sailors. They represent the best of the Department of the Navy and indeed our nation.”

20. The Case for a Prospective U.S. Cyber Force

Conclusion:

The establishment of a U.S. Cyber Force is not a foregone conclusion. However, given the broad consensus that the current model for cyber force generation is not optimized to meet current and future strategic challenges, a significant change from the status quo is necessary. Looking ahead, Congress has an opportunity in the next National Defense Authorization Act to direct an independent evaluation or assessment that articulates a clear path forward for cyber force generation. Such an assessment will need to address the full range of necessary decisions about and changes to the full complement of doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership and education, personnel, facilities, and policy. Improving cyber force generation is essential now, before the United States finds itself in a potential crisis or contingency with a near-peer rival.

The Case for a Prospective U.S. Cyber Force - War on the Rocks

ERICA LONERGAN, TODD ARNOLD, AND NICK STARCK

warontherocks.com · by Erica Lonergan · May 22, 2024

Imagine a scenario in which a junior Army captain is taking command of an airborne infantry company. This officer has never been to airborne or ranger school or completed an infantry field problem. But the officer has conducted countless offensive cyber operations, maneuvering through hostile networks to close with and destroy a digital adversary — and the Army has determined that kind of experience is the best preparation to lead an infantry company.

Now imagine a different scenario. Google has just announced new minimum qualifications to be considered for an entry-level software engineer role. In addition to specific educational and technical skills, applicants will be expected to demonstrate that they can throw a ten-pound medicine ball backward over their heads a certain number of meters as part of a physical fitness test.

These hypotheticals likely sound ridiculous to anyone who has served in an Army infantry battalion or a technical role at a technology company. When it comes to the U.S. military, none of the services would accept, let alone celebrate, a leader who lacks the foundational domain expertise to lead critical operational formations at the heart of each service’s mission. And yet, as military personnel have expressed in recent testimonials, this approach to selection and assignment of personnel is commonplace across the cyber formations within the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps.

There is one clear solution to address the military’s current approach to generating forces for cyberspace operations: creating a new branch of the armed forces for cyberspace.

Become a Member

Why Is a New Service Needed Now?

Since U.S. Cyber Command’s 2010 establishment, its authorities, resources, and operations have significantly matured. In recent Congressional testimony on the military’s cyber posture, Gen. Timothy Haugh noted how the command is “[making] the most of the authorities, resources, and support that USCYBERCOM has received since its elevation to a unified combatant command in 2018,” including “[optimizing] our force and operations to contest adversaries working to gain strategic advantage in and through cyberspace below the level of armed conflict.” This includes 22 “hunt forward” operations conducted by the Cyber National Mission Force in 2023, full-spectrum cyber operations in support of Ukraine’s defense, and continuing efforts to defend the upcoming 2024 elections.

However, while there has been significant progress in how the military employs its cyber forces, its ability to generate forces for operations in and through cyberspace — effectively recruiting, training, and retaining personnel for key cyber work roles and missions — remains a persistent problem.

That the military suffers from cyber force generation challenges is not a controversial proposition. Many practitioners, experts, and policymakers are acutely aware of the current limitations. A 2022 Government Accountability Office report found a variety of issues with the services’ approach to cyber force generation. Similarly, a recent monograph uncovers systemic readiness challenges across all services, including recruitment and retention shortfalls, inconsistent skill development and training, promotion process pitfalls, and the degradation of units’ full operational capability.

Senior military leaders also recognize this problem. Regarding the military’s future organization for cyberspace, Gen. (ret.) Paul Nakasone shared last year that “all options are on the table except the status quo.” U.S. Cyber Command leaders recently announced a “CYBERCOM 2.0” effort — a complete review of the organization, including force generation models. At the congressional level, Rep. Mike Gallagher noted at a recent hearing that for the past decade, Congress has “tried to address force design and readiness through 24 different pieces of legislation. And yet … workforce issues remain as challenging as they have the past ten years.” Developing an effective approach to cyber force generation is an acute challenge for the United States in the face of adversaries that are continuing to evolve.

Scoping the Problem

The current approach to cyber force generation within the Department of Defense relies on every service to recruit, train, and retain cyber forces. Each service is free to apply its individual selection criteria, informed by its core mission competencies, toward selecting cyber personnel and defining cyber work roles. Each service then develops and conducts distinct training and educational programs. Finally, each designs and implements promotion and retention programs for their cyber personnel. As a result, there is not a consistent, effective, or reliable approach to force generation across the services.

Moreover, force generation for cyberspace presents a unique challenge for military organizations. Having the right tools, capabilities, organization, and authorities is important for effective cyber operations. However, the single most critical factor is highly skilled and technically competent personnel, especially leaders. Yet such personnel are difficult for the military to recruit (especially when taking into account restrictive physical fitness, grooming, and other standards), expensive to train, and harder to retain.

Because no single organization is primarily responsible for organizing, training, and equipping for cyberspace operations, force generation for cyberspace is every service’s responsibility and no one’s priority. Cyber force generation is a secondary consideration at best for the services, whose primary concern is, rightly, force generation in their primary domains. Therefore, each service simply adapts its existing personnel management systems to address cyberspace, with varying success.

There is a vibrant debate about how to address these problems. One camp argues for an incremental approach: slow and steady changes to improve U.S. Cyber Command’s authorities, capabilities, and resources, while retaining the distributed (or disjointed) force generation model. Others call for a more fundamental revision of the military’s approach to cyber force generation, echoing calls by leaders, such as Col. (ret.) Greg Conti and Adm. (ret.) James Stavridis to establish an independent military service for cyberspace. Both groups tacitly agree that the authorities of a military service are needed for cyber force generation — they just disagree about who should hold those authorities.

This debate tends to evaluate the military’s performance thus far against where it started. By this measure, there have been remarkable improvements. However, our analysis begins from first principles. We articulate what an ideal cyber force generation model within the Department of Defense must accomplish to meet America’s stated national security requirements. We then make the case for establishing a new, independent branch of the armed forces: a U.S. Cyber Force.

Fundamentals of Force Generation

Since the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act, the U.S. government has defined distinct roles and responsibilities for the military services and combatant commands. Department of Defense policy stipulates the military services are responsible for providing the forces for military operations to “organize, train, equip, and provide land, naval, air, space, and cyberspace forces.” The services are also responsible for developing concepts, doctrine, and tactics, techniques, and procedures, determining force requirements, and assessing readiness.

In contrast, the combatant commanders “[exercise] authority, direction, and control over the commands and forces assigned to that command.” The combatant commands employ forces and carry out missions under their purview. One exception is U.S. Special Operations Command, which has “service-like” authorities to “organize, train, equip, and provide Special Operations Forces, doctrine, procedures, and equipment” for specific missions that pertain to special operations.

These distinctions matter because there are specific responsibilities, especially with respect to recruiting, training, educating, assessing, and promoting military personnel, that only a military service is able to accomplish. Even the exception proves the rule. While U.S. Special Operations Command is uniquely endowed with greater control, it still relies on the military services to select, train, and present forces for employment. Unlike in the cyber domain, each of the military services is uniquely situated to generate forces for the distinct characteristics of special operations within each warfighting domain needed by the command.

The Case for a Cyber Service

The military’s current structure is premised on the idea that the environments in which military personnel engage in warfighting are defined by unique logics and requirements. The services’ primary responsibility is to prepare the forces needed to compete and win in the land, air, sea, and space domains. With the decision to establish the Space Forcein 2019, each of the warfighting domains — with the exception of the cyberspace domain — is matched to a military service responsible for generating forces with the appropriate expertise for military missions within their respective domains.

Two critical factors drove the decision to construct a new military service for the space domain: first, the recognition that space was essential for modern warfighting and, second, that space possessed unique requirements for force generation that could not be met under the existing structure. The same factors hold for cyberspace, which is alreadya critical part of modern competition and conflict and has seen consistent force generation challenges.

Over the past 14 years, the services have demonstrated that they are unable to generate sufficient forces, leaving the department with “a recognized shortage of skilled cyber personnel that could potentially impact operational readiness across the Department and put national security at risk.” Given this record, it is unrealistic to expect services with competing priorities to become not merely adequate, but to generate overmatch in the cyber domain. Only an independent and dedicated service, a U.S. Cyber Force, can address the core of force generation considerations in cyberspace: the focused recruitment, training, and retention of skilled, qualified personnel for cyber operations.

While domain-specific warfighting competency is essential for all military personnel, the quality of personnel consistently has a more substantial and direct impact on cyberspace operations. As General Nakasone noted in a 2019 interview, the most effective cyber personnel “are often exponentially better than their peers —10 or 20 times better.” As a result, effective cyber force generation requires identifying the right personnel, with a focus on quality over quantity, for recruitment. This includes the ability to define the necessary skills and quantity of personnel to meet the cyber mission. From this baseline, the cyber force generator must identify personnel with technical skill and proficiency who are comfortable with taking the initiative and experimenting and are “passionate about technology and [enjoy] creatively overcoming or circumventing limitations.”

Next, the generating force must train and educate personnel and provide them with adequate career progression opportunities. This requires establishing viable career paths for cyber personnel with opportunities for personal growth, progression of knowledge, skills, and abilities, and positions of increased responsibility across all cohorts. Professional cyber education should mirror the mission requirements, career progression, and personnel growth of the force, offer opportunities for personnel to expand their knowledge and expertise within the cyber domain, and foster both a technical and a leadership perspective as cyber personnel advance in rank and responsibility. Currently, professional education is generally aligned to the preponderance of each services’ specific needs rather than to cyber personnel requirements. For example, the Army’s professional education for junior officers is designed for tactical echelons, while cyber personnel at those ranks are typically engaged at joint and national echelons.

Finally, cyber force generation must sustain its workforce. For one, continuous adversary engagement creates an imperative for a cyber force structure optimized to be deployed mostly in place, similar to the U.S. Space Force (however, like U.S. Space Force, some elements are forward-deployed, such as “hunt forward” teams or cyber operators deployed with special operations forces). The strain of constant engagement affects the morale and mentalhealth of the force, causing burnout and poor personnel retention. The retention challenges are further exacerbated by competition with the private sector for the in-demand skills of cyber personnel. Therefore, the generating force must have a coherent and consistent strategy to sustain its workforce through tailored support programs, readiness cycles, and retention strategies that include additional incentive and bonus pays.

Organizations around the world and in the private sector that value a talented cyber workforce are implementing targeted talent management policies. These actions are within the ability and authority of the services to implement. Why have the services restricted their use and not taken these steps?

In practice, each of these decisions would require an exception to every service’s standard personnel practices and systems. Therefore, developing a dedicated service designed for cyber force generation is more feasible than relying on every service to voluntarily develop, implement, and sustain numerous exceptions, especially when the services’ priorities remain force generation for their core domain of responsibility. The only way to achieve the consistency and scalability necessary to adequately organize, train, and equip an operational cyber force is by creating a central, unified organization to manage all facets of force generation.

Limitations of Continuing the Current Approach

Proponents of the current approach argue that continuing to make incremental improvements will resolve the present cyber force generation shortfalls. The basic logic is that seeing positive results will take time and that the United States is “held somewhat hostage to the path that we are on right now.” Many reference the provision of incrementally more “service-like” authorities to U.S. Cyber Command as an indication of continued improvement, mirroring the calls for U.S. Cyber Command to adopt the U.S. Special Operations Command model.

This view misses the two central points. First, U.S. Cyber Command’s increased service-like responsibilities are due to the services’ lack of improvement. Second, the service-like authorities will not address many of the personnel issues at the heart of the existing force generation challenges. For example, enhanced budgetary control, like the additional authorities granted to U.S. Special Operations Command, provides U.S. Cyber Command with greater control over acquisitions and training. Codified in law in 2022, these additional authorities have only gone into effect in the past several months, so they have not yet been fully tested. Yet even when fully implemented, these authorities will only enable U.S. Cyber Command to improve the training for the personnel already presented by the services. This additional authority does not enable the command to address services’ decisions that negatively impact cyber force readiness. For example, it would not constrain the services’ consistent rotation of cyber personnel out of cyber units, leaving U.S. Cyber Command to “execute cyber operations with a constantly rotating bench.” Similarly, it would not stop the Army from shifting its manning and training priorities toward electronic warfare at the expense of cyber readiness.

Advocates for the current approach also argue that a cyber service would be duplicative. This is a counterintuitive argument considering that the current system relies on five services all generating forces to different interpretations of a joint mission standard by different means and, in some instances, competing against each other for the same individuals.

Another U.S. Cyber Force counterpoint is that the services will continue to need some cyber forces, especially relating to defensive cyberspace operations. This is related to the concern some have expressed about the implications for the technical integration of cyber into domain-specific equipment or the broader consequences for multi-domain operations. These concerns would benefit from further analysis to delineate responsibility for defensive cyberspace operations versus network operations. This concern is also addressed through a historical strength of the Department of Defense: the ability to conduct joint operations.

Next Steps

The establishment of a U.S. Cyber Force is not a foregone conclusion. However, given the broad consensus that the current model for cyber force generation is not optimized to meet current and future strategic challenges, a significant change from the status quo is necessary. Looking ahead, Congress has an opportunity in the next National Defense Authorization Act to direct an independent evaluation or assessment that articulates a clear path forward for cyber force generation. Such an assessment will need to address the full range of necessary decisions about and changes to the full complement of doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership and education, personnel, facilities, and policy. Improving cyber force generation is essential now, before the United States finds itself in a potential crisis or contingency with a near-peer rival.

Become a Member

Erica D. Lonergan is an Assistant Professor in the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, and previously served as a Senior Director on the U.S. Cyberspace Solarium Commission. She is the co-author, with Shawn W. Lonergan, of Escalation Dynamics in Cyberspace (Oxford University Press, 2023).

Todd Arnold is a U.S. Army officer who currently serves as an Academy Professor in the Army Cyber Institute at West Point and an associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. As a former Army cyber officer, he was a key contributor to the establishment of the Army’s cyber branch.

Nick Starck is a U.S. Army cyber officer currently serving as a research scientist at the Army Cyber Institute and an instructor at the US Military Academy. His research focuses on data privacy and information operations.

The views expressed by the authors are personal and do not reflect the policy or position of any U.S. government organization or entity with which they may be affiliated.

Image: Van Ha

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Erica Lonergan · May 22, 2024

21. Ukraine Needs More Than Crisis Management

Excerpt:

It could be a long time—years, maybe even decades—before Ukraine has a realistic shot at regaining all of the territory Russia occupies, whether by military means or through diplomacy. But Putin is not immortal, his regime is not eternal, and his war has created internal pressures that could manifest in destabilizing ways. For centuries, the Russian state has undergone cycles of external expansion and chaotic retrenchment. The last time Moscow was on its back foot, in 1991, Ukrainians played their hand brilliantly and won their independence. When the window opens again, Ukraine should be ready to use it for maximum advantage.

In the meantime, Ukraine needs strong Western security commitments. Ukrainians must have the confidence that they will have their partners’ support no matter what course the war takes—even if they decide one day that pursuing a cease-fire is in their interest. And the Russian leadership must understand that its leverage over Kyiv will continue to shrink as Ukraine’s capabilities grow, backed by an unshakeable Western commitment to the country’s long-term security. Whether one believes the war will end on the battlefield or at the negotiating table, a strategy to build Ukraine’s defense and deterrence capacity while signaling the West’s staying power is the best way to create a durable peace in Europe.

Ukraine Needs More Than Crisis Management

Its Security Depends on Long-Term Commitments From the West

By Eric Ciaramella

May 22, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by Eric Ciaramella · May 22, 2024

The U.S. Congress’s approval last month of a $61 billion aid package for Ukraine came not a minute too soon. Ammunition shortages resulting from Washington’s months-long dysfunction have eroded Ukrainian frontline positions and left cities and critical infrastructure exposed to missile and drone barrages. Top military and intelligence officials in Kyiv have advised Ukrainians to brace for territorial setbacks in the coming months. Already, the Russian military has stepped up pressure on Kharkiv, forcing thousands of Ukrainians to flee out of fear that Russian forces could soon reoccupy their towns.

The infusion of U.S. aid should help Ukraine stabilize the front and protect its skies. But the Ukrainian army also urgently needs more soldiers. Indecision in Kyiv over a new mobilization drive has left combat units severely undermanned, their losses exacerbated by a failure to build defensive fortifications last year and by Russia’s widening firepower advantage. Military experts believe that the Ukrainian army needs to triple its intake of recruits to sustain defensive operations at current levels of fighting. Kyiv is trying to fix its manpower shortage and has asked its NATO partners to help train new recruits inside Ukraine. This would be a faster and more effective way to prepare Ukrainian soldiers for battle. Most countries, including the United States, have refused to deploy trainers on Ukrainian soil out of concern for their safety, but Kyiv’s dire battlefield position might be prompting some of them to reconsider.

Critical as they are, additional U.S. weapons and Ukrainian personnel will only serve as a bandage to stop the bleeding. A deeper problem remains: the lack of a coherent strategy to confront the long-term threat that Russia poses to Ukraine—and to European security. For more than two years, Kyiv and its partners have operated in crisis-management mode, planning in increments of months rather than years.

But this short-term approach is no longer fit for purpose—nor is it sustainable. By now, it should be clear that there is no shortcut to ending this war, be it on the battlefield or through political and economic pressure on Moscow. Ukraine, with the help of the United States and others, will thus need a strategic vision that revolves around enhancing its defense capabilities and rebuilding deterrence over the long term. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s announcement in Kyiv on May 14 that the United States plans to sign a ten-year bilateral security agreement with Ukraine is a step in the right direction. Alongside similar agreements Kyiv has signed with several other partners, it would signal to Russia that even though Ukraine is unlikely to join NATO any time soon, the United States and Europe have its back.

But even more can be done to develop a coherent long-term security strategy for Ukraine. Deterring Russian aggression will require three elements: denial, punishment, and credibility. To deny Russia’s ability to win on the battlefield, Ukraine must build up its armed forces and defense industry so that it can field and sustain capabilities that both degrade Russia’s military capacity and make a future Russian invasion unlikely to succeed. To signal the threat of punishment, Western militaries must devise contingency plans to impose meaningful costs on Russia if it attacks Ukraine again after a hypothetical cease-fire agreement is reached. And to make these plans credible in Moscow’s eyes, Western nations must commit, ideally in legally binding form, to resourcing them. That’s where Ukraine’s security agreements with the United States and other NATO allies, if implemented and resourced properly, will be critical.

Achieving a durable peace will be impossible without a clear vision for Ukraine’s long-term security. The Kremlin must understand that its goal of subjugating Kyiv is not achievable—not now, and not ever. Only then might the Russian leadership come to the table for meaningful talks—and accept Ukraine’s independence in the long run.

DON’T STOP THINKING ABOUT TOMORROW

In the summer of 2022, Ukraine and the United States began to scope out a long-term plan to equip the Ukrainian armed forces with a credible defense and deterrence capability. The dramatic opening phase of the war had just ended. Russia’s blitzkrieg had failed, and Ukraine successfully defended its independence. Kyiv’s partners began pulling advanced weaponry from their stockpiles to aid in what was shaping up to be a grinding battle for the east of the country. In short order, Ukraine learned to operate and maintain dozens of different types of foreign equipment.

The Biden administration realized early on that this emergency approach had its shortcomings. The threat from Russia was unlikely to fade, and Kyiv had to begin planning for a long war. U.S. military planners ran thousands of simulations of the war’s trajectory and developed models for Ukraine’s “future force,” as the concept became known. The goals of this exercise were twofold: to manage costs by standardizing equipment, and to make decisions about the capabilities Ukraine would need over the long haul even while it was still fighting.

Unfortunately, this planning took a back seat as the war entered a new phase. In the fall of 2022, Ukraine notched victories in Kherson and around Kharkiv. Those triumphs shifted the focus from building the future force to training and equipping Ukrainian troops for a large-scale offensive in 2023. But despite extensive preparation, Ukrainian forces were unable to penetrate Russia’s well-fortified frontlines.

By now, it should be clear that there is no shortcut to ending this war.

Since 2022, Russia has marshaled its economy for wartime production and has found ways to shield itself from Western sanctions. Artillery shells from North Korea, attack drones from Iran, and technical components from China have aided Russia’s military reconstitution and battlefield performance. As a result, since early 2024, Russia has made slow but steady gains along the frontlines, particularly around Donetsk, where its wins have come at a high cost.

Now that Kyiv is set to receive U.S. aid that will help it minimize further losses this year, the conversation must shift back to the long term. Building Ukraine’s future force will require systematic military planning, prioritization of objectives, and predictable Western support over an extended period. It will also require tough conversations about war aims, tradeoffs, and timing, all of which have implications for the cost and sustainability of the force.

IN DEFENSE OF DEFENSE

Ukraine’s rearmament should be tied to a clear military strategy. Should Kyiv be able to generate a force capable of complex combined-arms offensive operations, with the objective of liberating territory occupied by Russia? Or should the goals be more modest: defending the frontline as it now stands, protecting major population centers, degrading Russian combat capabilities, and deterring a future full-scale attack?

The first model is attractive because it energizes Ukrainians, most of whom still want to retake occupied territory and free their fellow citizens from Russian rule. It also allows Western leaders to present a clear theory of victory to their constituents. But it may not be realistic, at least not for the next several years. Ukraine’s military has shown agility and competence in many areas but will require much more field training, staff development, and equipment to be able to conduct synchronized operations at and above the brigade level. This scale of training, a prerequisite for a successful push against deep defensive lines, will be next to impossible to conduct while all of Ukraine’s combat power is committed to fighting in the east. Moreover, a larger, heavier offensive force will be costlier to build and sustain over time.

A force built to defend and deter, on the other hand, would be more affordable. Ukraine cannot directly match all of Russia’s capabilities, but it need not do so to impose costs effectively. With the right suite of tailored capabilities, it can mitigate or, where possible, counterbalance Russia’s advantages in most domains. For example, Russia has a clear advantage in airpower. Ukraine must be equipped to protect its skies with layered and integrated ground-based air defenses and a nimble fourth-generation air force. At the same time, it should be able to threaten key military and economic targets inside Russia. Western nations should provide capital investments and technical expertise for Ukraine’s nascent long-range strike drone program, which has scored remarkable hits on military installations deep inside Russia.

A strategy to build up Ukraine’s long-range strike arsenal would serve three purposes. First, it would enable Kyiv to systematically target Russia’s force regeneration and weapons production facilities, degrading Moscow’s ability to wage war. Second, it would contribute to deterring future Russian aggression by raising the costs that Moscow would suffer if it attacked again. And third, it would have the potential to compel Moscow to scale back its air and missile attacks on Ukrainian civilian populations and critical infrastructure.

Ukraine’s Black Sea campaign is an example of the type of deterrence that is possible. Kyiv’s employment of long-range fires, armed drones, and undersea capabilities against Russia’s naval assets in and around Crimea forced Russia’s Black Sea Fleet back from Ukraine’s coast and allowed for the reopening of the economically vital port of Odesa. Russia might make a similar calculation in its air campaign if it judges that Ukraine has enough firepower to hurt it in a symmetrical manner.

MESSAGE FOR MOSCOW

Ukraine argues that only NATO membership offers the kind of ironclad security guarantees that will end the war and deter another Russian invasion. But the alliance is not ready to offer an invitation—and probably will not be until after an extended period of peace. Still, the United States and its allies must ensure that Ukraine will be able to defend itself during this interim period. To do so, they should codify commitments to finance, train, and equip Ukraine’s future force and credibly signal that they will surge weapons—and potentially even employ their own assets—if Russia attacks Ukraine again.

Last July, the G-7 powers and Ukraine declared their intent to forge a latticework of bilateral security commitments designed to lock in Western support for the long haul. Two dozen other nations have since joined the declaration, and nine nations have signed ten-year security agreements with Ukraine. The United States is now negotiating its own. These agreements, although nonbinding, are good news for Kyiv. They show a degree of political commitment to Ukraine’s security that dwarfs previous Western assurances, including those in the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 that led to the removal of Ukraine’s Soviet-inherited nuclear arsenal.

There are four key ways that Kyiv and its partners can turn these agreements into a coherent long-term security arrangement. The NATO summit in Washington this July offers an opportunity to advance the conversation on all four fronts. First, Ukraine and the signatories of the agreements should develop a shared concept of Ukraine’s future force. Some of this work has already begun in the multinational working groups, known as “capability coalitions,” that have been tasked to look at Ukraine’s military requirements in several areas, from armor and air defense to maritime security and airpower. Kyiv and its partners should consider appointing a council of senior envoys to oversee this effort, culminating in a report by the end of 2024 that offers a detailed procurement and training plan for Ukraine’s military over the next decade.

Second, Ukraine’s partners should announce a dedicated fund for the future force that is cabined off from current operations. Most allies have announced their funding for 2024, with vague commitments for future years. But without predictable multiyear financing, fulfilling Ukraine’s acute battlefield needs will always take priority over future investments.

Ukraine’s rearmament should be tied to a clear military strategy.

Putting a price tag on the future force will not be easy. A starting point would be the defense budget of Poland, a country with a population and threat environment similar to Ukraine’s. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg’s proposal for a $100 billion, five-year fund for Ukraine is on the scale of what is needed for the future force. Some of this funding should be reserved for incentivizing Ukrainian and Western firms to pursue joint ventures, for localizing production and training inside Ukraine, and for hardening Ukraine’s defense industrial base against physical attacks. These steps would lessen Kyiv’s reliance on foreign support over time.

Third, it is not too early for Ukraine’s partners to start discussing what they would do in case the country is attacked again—after a hypothetical cease-fire, armistice, or settlement. So far, they have committed to consulting with Kyiv and providing “swift and sustained” support. For these statements to be a credible signal to Moscow, they must be backed up by actions. The allies could agree, for example, to create a “Ukraine war reserve stock” of weapons and ammunition on NATO territory that would be surged to Ukraine in such a scenario. They also could launch a study of how NATO’s own defense and deterrence posture could be adjusted to complicate Moscow’s calculus in a hypothetical attack on Ukraine.

More assertive options, such as deploying troops to Ukraine in noncombat roles or providing air defense coverage over parts of Ukraine near NATO territory, will be a tough sell while the war is ongoing. But they should be on the table if there is a cease-fire. Developing robust plans for the West to enforce a cease-fire is a plausible way to signal to Moscow that it cannot expect to attack Ukraine again without suffering even more severe consequences. It also would go a long way toward helping Ukrainians feel confident that opting for a cease-fire at some point would not leave them defenseless while Russia rearms.

Finally, the United States should lead its allies in codifying these long-term commitments in a way that is credible and will weather electoral cycles. The U.S. Congress’s bipartisan vote on Ukraine aid shows how this can be done: the margins in favor in both the Senate and House were well above what would be needed to approve a treaty or a regular statute. As the Biden administration continues its negotiations with Kyiv on a bilateral agreement, it should begin a serious dialogue with leaders in Congress about the U.S. strategy to defeat Russia’s aggression and how it should be resourced in the coming years. Far from serving as a blank check to Ukraine, a legislatively ratified policy that is based on a bipartisan, interbranch consensus would ensure predictability, sustainability, proper oversight, and greater leverage to demand that allies share responsibility for supporting Ukraine.

THE WAITING GAME

There is no silver bullet to end Russia’s war against Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin is committed to his dual goals of imposing his will on Kyiv and rewriting the rules of European security. He believes that time is on his side and feels little pressure to compromise, even with new U.S. aid flowing into Ukraine. In these circumstances, constructing a diplomatic pathway to reach a settlement is putting the cart before the horse.

It could be a long time—years, maybe even decades—before Ukraine has a realistic shot at regaining all of the territory Russia occupies, whether by military means or through diplomacy. But Putin is not immortal, his regime is not eternal, and his war has created internal pressures that could manifest in destabilizing ways. For centuries, the Russian state has undergone cycles of external expansion and chaotic retrenchment. The last time Moscow was on its back foot, in 1991, Ukrainians played their hand brilliantly and won their independence. When the window opens again, Ukraine should be ready to use it for maximum advantage.

In the meantime, Ukraine needs strong Western security commitments. Ukrainians must have the confidence that they will have their partners’ support no matter what course the war takes—even if they decide one day that pursuing a cease-fire is in their interest. And the Russian leadership must understand that its leverage over Kyiv will continue to shrink as Ukraine’s capabilities grow, backed by an unshakeable Western commitment to the country’s long-term security. Whether one believes the war will end on the battlefield or at the negotiating table, a strategy to build Ukraine’s defense and deterrence capacity while signaling the West’s staying power is the best way to create a durable peace in Europe.

ERIC CIARAMELLA is a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and was previously Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Russia and Eurasia at the National Intelligence Council.

Foreign Affairs · by Eric Ciaramella · May 22, 2024

22. The End of Nordic Neutrality

Excerpts:

But the gravest trouble ahead is an inevitable corollary of Finland and Sweden’s accession to the alliance. NATO’s border with Russia now extends nearly 1,600 miles, presenting more openings for small-scale military incidents that could trigger a broader conflict. Russia has already issued warnings about the consequences of an increased NATO presence in the Arctic region. In the future, the organization will likely host more exercises and military simulations in Finland. Moscow will almost certainly view these as provocations necessitating upgrades in Russia’s own military, such as the buildup of troops on its side of the border. That, in turn, will prompt Finland to strengthen its border defenses.

Tensions are also on the rise in the Baltic. The sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines in September 2022 demonstrated the vulnerability of infrastructure in the Baltic Sea. Nine countries border the Baltic Sea; among them, only Russia is now outside NATO, and the balance has tilted clearly against Moscow. But Russian ports in St. Petersburg, Primorsk, and elsewhere remain important for exports and imports. The Kaliningrad enclave remains a major strategic asset, and Moscow is unlikely to let go of what it considers a historic right of navigation in the Baltic Sea.

NATO is history’s most successful military alliance because it has kept peace, not because it has conquered territory and defeated enemies. This was the alliance’s main attraction to Helsinki and Stockholm. But in the coming months and years, Russian propaganda will challenge the wisdom of Finland and Sweden’s entry into the alliance. Putin will continue to hammer on about the existential threat that Western imperialism poses to Russia, and Russian disinformation will present the Nordic countries’ entry into the alliance as needless aggression.

Leaders in Helsinki and Stockholm must push back on these distortions. Finland and Sweden did not join NATO to be part of a U.S.-led plot to encircle Russia; they were reacting to cumulative evidence of aggressive Russian imperialism. Russian military aggression is what killed off Finnish and Swedish neutrality, with the invasion of Ukraine delivering the final blow.

The End of Nordic Neutrality

What Finland and Sweden Bring to NATO

By Jussi M. Hanhimäki

May 22, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by Pax Transatlantica: America and Europe in the Post–Cold War Era · May 22, 2024

If Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ambition in invading Ukraine was to rein in NATO, it had precisely the opposite effect. In April 2023, Finland joined the alliance, more than doubling the length of NATO’s border with Russia, and in March 2024, Sweden became a member as well. As U.S. President Joe Biden has said of Putin: “He thought he’d get the Finlandization of NATO; instead, he got the NATO-ization of Finland—and Sweden.”

Russia’s brutal war on Ukraine hastened the admissions process, but it was only a matter of time before the two Nordic nations shed their neutrality. Finland’s Cold War policy of nonalignment was always rooted less in principle than in the exigencies of survival; the country was coerced into neutrality by its domineering Soviet neighbor. Sweden’s neutrality was more entrenched and more ideological, grounded in the country’s self-image as the conscience of the world, but the country has also long identified with the West. At the earliest opportunity, in 1994, just a few years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, both Sweden and Finland joined NATO’s Partnership for Peace, a forum for security cooperation between members and non-members. And now, the two countries are protected by the alliance’s Article 5 mutual defense clause.

The end of Nordic neutrality signifies the end of the post–Cold War era in the high north. As the third and fifth largest countries in the EU, Sweden and Finland have dramatically extended NATO’s reach and brought significant capabilities to the organization. Their membership represents a major setback for Moscow—but heightened risks of escalation, too.

A PASSIVE NEUTRALITY

Finnish neutrality emerged as a survival strategy after World War II. Between 1939 and 1945, Finland fought in three separate conflicts as its alliances shifted: a defensive war against the Soviet Union, an invasion of the Soviet Union with help from Nazi Germany, and then a war to drive out German troops, mostly from Finland’s north. Afterward, Finland was made to surrender ten percent of its territory to the Soviet Union, as well as pay substantial war reparations. In 1948, as part of the Finno-Soviet Treaty, the Finns formally relinquished their right to join any military alliance. Defeated and afraid, the leadership in Helsinki settled into a long period of uncritical neutrality toward, if not subservience to, the Kremlin.

As the Cold War divided Europe, Finnish leaders used diplomatic acrobatics to position themselves between East and West. Without formally joining the process of European integration, Finland managed to build and retain strong economic links to Europe. In 1975, Helsinki even hosted the first meeting of what would become the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. The summit symbolized Finland’s standing as a neutral meeting place where East and West could come together to craft a new security architecture for Europe.

Even so, the Finns’ freedom to engage with the West was necessarily constrained by the demands of self-preservation; “Finlandization” became a byword for coercive neutralization. The Kremlin did not exactly direct Finnish foreign policy, but lawmakers in Helsinki were careful not to antagonize Moscow. The Finnish government did not protest Soviet misdeeds, such as the invasion of Hungary in 1956 or Afghanistan in 1979. Nor did Helsinki speak up for the victims of political repression inside the Soviet Union. To mollify the Russians, the Finns also practiced self-censorship on a sweeping scale. The Finnish Board of Film Classification, for example, banned scores of movies deemed anti-Soviet.

Finland and Sweden's accession to NATO represents a major setback for Moscow—but heightened risks of escalation, too.

The end of the Cold War presented Finland with an opportunity to reimagine its foreign and domestic policy. The 1948 Finno-Soviet Treaty was replaced by the 1992 Finno-Russian Treaty, which was based on “sovereign equality.” Henceforth, Helsinki would not require Moscow’s tacit approval before entering treaties.

But neither Finnish leaders nor the public were clamoring for NATO membership. For all its limitations, a posture of neutrality had kept the nation safe in a dangerous world. The Finns no longer feared Moscow, and they saw little need to join a defensive alliance; participation in NATO’s Partnership for Peace network sufficed. Even after Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 and annexed Crimea in 2014, only a minority of Finns warned against complacency. The country’s armed forces regularly took part in NATO exercises, but there was little political will to expedite membership.

Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine changed all that. Just weeks into the war, Finland’s president at the time, Sauli Niinisto, met with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg as well as with U.S., British, and French officials. Public support for joining NATO skyrocketed, from 42 percent before the war to 80 percent by September 2022. By the time Finland officially joined the alliance, a new foreign policy consensus had emerged. In January of this year, when Finns went to the polls to pick a new president, not one of the eight candidates criticized the decision to join NATO.

VIRTUE SIGNALER

Neutrality took a much different form in Sweden. If the Finns tended to be passive, reluctant to criticize either side in the Cold War, the Swedes prided themselves on their righteousness. In 1972, Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme compared the United States’ bombardment of Hanoi to the Fascists’ bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War and to the Nazis’ mass shooting of Jews at Babi Yar in Ukraine during World War II. “We should call things by their proper names,” he said in a fiery speech. “What is going on in Vietnam today is a form of torture.” And when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, the Swedes criticized that war as well—just as they had condemned the Warsaw Pact’s invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and the Red Army’s incursion into Hungary in 1956.

On top of its devotion to peace, Sweden earned a reputation for generosity on the world stage. For more than half a century, it has been one of the few high-income countries to meet or exceed the UN target of donating 0.7 percent of gross national income to development aid. In the 1960s and 1970s, Sweden was sometimes referred to as the “darling of the Third World.” And the country’s model social democracy offered a “middle way” for other nonaligned countries hoping to avoid the extremes of capitalism and socialism.

The end of the Cold War dulled some of that shine. What was the point of neutrality if there was no more Warsaw Pact? What was the middle way in a world where one socioeconomic model had triumphed? What had Swedish development aid really delivered? By 1995, when Sweden joined the European Union, it was merely one country among many, shorn of its unequaled status as a blameless paragon of virtue.

In some ways, Sweden’s abandonment of neutrality has been even more dramatic than Finland’s. Until last year, Sweden had practiced nonalignment for over two centuries, since the Kingdom of Sweden ceded Finland to the Russian Empire in 1809. Even now, the Swedish public’s enthusiasm for NATO membership is muted relative to that of the Finns. In January, a national poll found that only 63 percent of Swedes approved of their government’s decision to join the alliance. Still, most Swedes believe that the security environment fundamentally changed after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. A policy of nonalignment no longer offered sufficient assurance of future security; Article 5 did.

TROUBLE AHEAD

Leaders in Helsinki and Stockholm appreciate the threat that a revanchist Moscow poses to Europe, but they will no longer sit on the sidelines. Last year, Viktor Tatarintsev, Russia’s ambassador to Sweden, announced that new NATO members would become “a legitimate target for Russian retaliatory measures, including military ones.” Sweden’s foreign minister, Tobias Billstrom, fired back defiantly: “Sweden’s security policy is determined by Sweden—no one else.”

The new members are not mere recipients of NATO protection; they also contribute greatly to the alliance. Both Finland and Sweden have raised their defense spending above the two percent of GDP that members have agreed on as a minimum. “You have to prepare for the worst in order to avoid it,” Finnish President Alexander Stubb told the Financial Times in April. Among the considerable capabilities that the Nordic countries bring to NATO are opportunities for aerial reconnaissance on Russia’s border, enhancing the alliance’s early warning capabilities. The Finnish and Swedish militaries also have obvious expertise in maneuvering in extreme cold.

Finland and Sweden may be large European countries, but they are sparsely populated and will not add massive numbers to NATO’s military personnel. Sweden, which reintroduced selective conscription in 2018, has about 25,000 active-duty troops, 22,000 home guards, and 12,000 reservists. Finland, “the Arctic Sparta,” as it is sometimes called, has an active, well-trained military force of some 30,000. Because the country has never abandoned conscription, the Finnish military can swell up to 280,000 (twice the number of active-duty military personnel fielded by the United Kingdom) if war breaks out and the reserves are activated. Finland also boasts the largest and best-equipped artillery force in western Europe, a major asset in a potential conventional war.

Far more important than the number of troops each country can contribute is its geography. The strategic shift that their membership is likely to prompt in NATO cannot be understated. Going forward, the alliance will be leaning north and northeast. Take Lapland, the sparsely populated northern territory divided mainly between Finland and Sweden. The area will inevitably become significant for NATO’s Arctic strategy. Not only has Lapland now become territory to be defended against potential attacks; it is also a convenient host of alliance aircraft. In a few years, Lapland will host a large fleet of Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jets. Finland is also the world’s leading manufacturer of icebreakers and able to contribute a fleet of nine to support NATO’s evolving Arctic strategy, which is aimed, in part, at keeping maritime trading routes open and guarding against potential Russian military activity.

Further south, the Finnish and Swedish islands in the Baltic Sea can now be counted among NATO’s assets, constraining the operations of Russia’s Baltic fleet. Meanwhile, Sweden’s diesel-electric submarines (four of which have been made and two of which are under construction) are tailor-made for the Baltic, which is too shallow for nuclear-powered submarines. Although Russia controls Kaliningrad, the enclave surrounded by Poland and Lithuania, the Baltic has now effectively become a “NATO lake.”

Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson and Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo meeting in Helsinki, November 2023

Mikko Stig / Lehtikuva

The addition of two new members does present challenges to NATO’s internal cohesion, of course. More members in a club of hard-to-please democracies is hardly a recipe for consensus. Across the Atlantic, Donald Trump’s possible return to the U.S. presidency may well make things more difficult still. At the same time, the addition of two militarily adept and geopolitically significant European nations to its ranks makes the alliance less dependent on the whims of the American electorate.

But the gravest trouble ahead is an inevitable corollary of Finland and Sweden’s accession to the alliance. NATO’s border with Russia now extends nearly 1,600 miles, presenting more openings for small-scale military incidents that could trigger a broader conflict. Russia has already issued warnings about the consequences of an increased NATO presence in the Arctic region. In the future, the organization will likely host more exercises and military simulations in Finland. Moscow will almost certainly view these as provocations necessitating upgrades in Russia’s own military, such as the buildup of troops on its side of the border. That, in turn, will prompt Finland to strengthen its border defenses.

Tensions are also on the rise in the Baltic. The sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines in September 2022 demonstrated the vulnerability of infrastructure in the Baltic Sea. Nine countries border the Baltic Sea; among them, only Russia is now outside NATO, and the balance has tilted clearly against Moscow. But Russian ports in St. Petersburg, Primorsk, and elsewhere remain important for exports and imports. The Kaliningrad enclave remains a major strategic asset, and Moscow is unlikely to let go of what it considers a historic right of navigation in the Baltic Sea.

NATO is history’s most successful military alliance because it has kept peace, not because it has conquered territory and defeated enemies. This was the alliance’s main attraction to Helsinki and Stockholm. But in the coming months and years, Russian propaganda will challenge the wisdom of Finland and Sweden’s entry into the alliance. Putin will continue to hammer on about the existential threat that Western imperialism poses to Russia, and Russian disinformation will present the Nordic countries’ entry into the alliance as needless aggression.

Leaders in Helsinki and Stockholm must push back on these distortions. Finland and Sweden did not join NATO to be part of a U.S.-led plot to encircle Russia; they were reacting to cumulative evidence of aggressive Russian imperialism. Russian military aggression is what killed off Finnish and Swedish neutrality, with the invasion of Ukraine delivering the final blow.

JUSSI M. HANHIMÄKI is is Professor of International History and Politics at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. He is the author of Pax Transatlantica: America and Europe in the Post–Cold War Era.

Foreign Affairs · by Pax Transatlantica: America and Europe in the Post–Cold War Era · May 22, 2024

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

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

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

Access NSS HERE

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VIRTUE SIGNALER

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