Quotes of the Day:

“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’” 

– Isaac Asimov

 “I define manhood simply; men should be tough, fair, and courageous, never petty, never looking for a fight, but never backing down from one.” 

– John Wayne

“Compulsive liars shouldn't frighten you. They can harm no one if no one listens to them. Compulsive believers, on the other hand: they should terrify you. Believers are the liars enablers.” 

– Nick Cohen

1. Six Russian nationals with ISIS ties are arrested in NYC, Philly and LA - with one source fearing they were plotting a Boston Marathon-bombing type attack

2. Feds arrested 8 Tajik nationals on immigration charges after probe found potential ties to terrorism, sources say

3. Junior enlisted pay bump to cost as much as two new aircraft carriers

4. Israel Killed 31 of My Family Members in Gaza. The Pro-Palestine Movement Isn’t Helping.

5. I Went to Cover a Protest. I Was Surrounded by a Mob.

6. Bill aims to strengthen contested logistics strategy in Pacific

7. How Ambitious Plans for a Floating Aid Pier off Gaza Fell Apart

8. Exclusive: Pentagon data reveals US soldier more likely to die by suicide than in combat

9. White House bashes idea of creating Army Drone Corps

10. How Estonia is becoming a hotbed for drone warfare

11. It's time to make a new international cooperation office within the Pentagon

12. How to Convince Putin He Will Lose

13.  U.S. Defense of Taiwan Confronts a Powerful Chinese Nuclear Deterrent

14. Selecting Generals and Admirals Who can Fight and Stay out of Jail

15. China’s overseas bases aren’t a big threat—yet: RAND

16. How a U.S.-Saudi Deal Could Reshape the Middle East

17. A Requiem for Hyperglobalization

18. Spies aren't who you think they are

19. CSA: June Recommended Articles

1.Six Russian nationals with ISIS ties are arrested in NYC, Philly and LA - with one source fearing they were plotting a Boston Marathon-bombing type attack

I wonder if Graham Allison and Michael Morell had been briefed.  Is their red lights blinking terrorist warning coincidental?  https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/terrorism-warning-lights-are-blinking-red-again

Six Russian nationals with ISIS ties are arrested in NYC, Philly and LA - with one source fearing they were plotting a Boston Marathon-bombing type attack

• READ MORE: US warned a terror attack is likely after 'enormous' surge in threats 

By LAURA PARNABY FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

PUBLISHED: 15:51 EDT, 11 June 2024 | UPDATED: 16:55 EDT, 11 June 2024

Daily Mail · by Laura Parnaby For Dailymail.Com · June 11, 2024

Six Russian nationals with potential ties to ISIS have been arrested in New York, Philadelphia and Los Angeles in a coordinated sting by law enforcement.

Two ICE officials have told the New York Post they arrested the suspected terrorist affiliates last week after the FBI raised the alarm.

The suspects are originally from Tajikistan, and they also have Russian citizenship, according to the Post.

Anonymous ICE officials told the newspaper a wiretap revealed one of the suspects talking about bombs.

'Remember the Boston marathon [bombing]? I'm afraid something like that might happen again or worse,' one official told The Post.

Six Russian nationals with potential ties to ISIS have been arrested in New York, Philadelphia and Los Angeles in a coordinated sting by law enforcement - with one source fearing they were planning a Boston Marathon bombing-style attack (pictured)

The suspect in question has been involved with law enforcement before and had a court date next year, according to the source.

It comes as top law enforcement officials warned the threat of a terrorist attack in the US has risen 'enormously' over the past few months.

Attorney General Merrick Garland made the astonishing admission while testifying before the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday last week during a hearing dedicated to investigating the department's politicization.

'I am worried about the possibility of a terrorist attack in the country after October 7,' Attorney General Garland said. 'The threat level for us has gone up enormously.'

'Every morning, we worry about this question. We try to track anyone who might be trying to hurt the country,' he continued. 'Of course, this is a major priority for the Justice Department.'

FBI Director Christopher Wray, speaking to a different committee on the other side of Capitol Hill in the Senate, agreed, saying 'we have seen the threat from foreign terrorists rise to a whole other level' after the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack.

'We have seen a rouges' gallery of foreign terrorist organizations call for attacks against Americans and our allies,' Wray said.

'Just in the time I have been FBI director we have disrupted multiple terror attacks around U.S. cities.'

'I would be hard pressed to think of a time when so many different threats to our public safety and national security were so elevated all at the same time.'

Rescuers work to extinguish fire at the burning Crocus City Hall concert venue following a shooting incident, outside Moscow, Russia, March 22, 2024

Wray said threats against Jewish Americans has been particularly acute.

'We've seen an elevated threat to the Jewish community in the United States.'

Though he said Jewish communities were targeted before the October 7 attack, since then the threats 'went up dramatically.'

'Religiously motivated hate crimes, close to 60 percent of them, are targeted at the Jewish community,' Wray testified, noting how the community only makes up two percent of the U.S. population.

'Increasingly concerning is the potential for a coordinated attack here in the homeland, not unlike an attack we saw in the Russia theater,' he added, referring to the Crocus City Hall concert shooting in March.

One vector for threats to enter the country is through the U.S.-Mexico border, according to the FBI chief.

Daily Mail · by Laura Parnaby For Dailymail.Com · June 11, 2024

2. Feds arrested 8 Tajik nationals on immigration charges after probe found potential ties to terrorism, sources say

I could not find any reporting by the WSJ, NYT, and WAPOST. Here is a report from CNN. There are reports on ABC, NBC, and CBS. But they are someone toned down from the Daily Mail report that came out yesterday.

Feds arrested 8 Tajik nationals on immigration charges after probe found potential ties to terrorism, sources say | CNN

CNN · by Josh Campbell · June 12, 2024

A US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer is seen in 2019.

Gregory Bull/AP/File

CNN —

US federal agents have arrested eight Tajikistan nationals located in the United States on immigration charges following the discovery of potential ties to terrorism, two sources familiar with the law enforcement operation told CNN Tuesday.

The arrests by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement – first reported by the New York Post – included apprehensions in Los Angeles, New York and Philadelphia, the sources said.

One source said the eight had previously entered the US via the Southern border and were screened by US officials, and that no derogatory information in their past was identified at the time.

A second source said investigators later discovered possible links to ISIS members located overseas, which spurred the federal investigation. The method of identifying the suspects inside the US was accomplished in part by the US government’s highly sensitive targeting of the communications of ISIS members abroad, the source said.

The group had been on the radar of US officials for well over a month, but senior US officials recently decided to have the eight expelled from the country under ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations authority rather than risking having the FBI surveil them longer and wait for the potential manifestation of a possible plot, the source told CNN.

The ability to surveil certain foreign targets was the subject of intense debate in Congress earlier this year, with conservatives criticizing the US intelligence community’s sweeping powers. A two-year authorization of one particular aspect of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act – known as Section 702 – finally passed both houses of Congress and was signed by the president in April before the program lapsed.

In a release Tuesday, ICE and the FBI said ICE “agents arrested several non-citizens” in coordination with the FBI’s joint terrorism task forces.

“The individuals arrested are detained in ICE custody pending removal proceedings” the release reads. “As the FBI and DHS have recently described in public and partner bulletins, the US has been in a heightened threat environment.”

Investigators do not currently believe the eight received training abroad or were purposefully sent to the US to engage in violence, one source said.

Of those arrested, a small subset is believed to have espoused concerning extremist rhetoric, according to the source, and it is unclear whether the remaining people were arrested for their mere association with the other people arrested.

CNN · by Josh Campbell · June 12, 2024

3. Junior enlisted pay bump to cost as much as two new aircraft carriers

People are more important than hardware. Let's put our money where our mouth is. And of course two aircraft carriers without sailors is not worth anything.

But I just read an article where members of one of the political parties are quietly discussing a return to a draft, We can man the aircraft carriers with naval galley slaves.

Junior enlisted pay bump to cost as much as two new aircraft carriers

militarytimes.com · by Leo Shane III · June 11, 2024

House plans for a massive pay bump for junior enlisted troops will cost more than $24 billion over the next five years, more than the price tag for two new aircraft carriers, congressional analysts confirmed on Monday.

The calculation comes as both House and Senate leaders debate how to help young military families avoid financial difficulties while ensuring the armed forces have sufficient funding for maintaining operations.

House lawmakers will vote on the enlisted pay raise plan — which would guarantee nearly every service member a base pay of $30,000 a year — in coming days as part of the chamber’s draft of the annual defense authorization bill.

The measure outlines policy and spending targets for nearly $885 billion in national security programs, including an across-the-board 4.5% pay raise for all troops in 2025 and a further pay raise of up to 15% for troops in ranks E-4 and below. E-5s with less than 10 years service will see an average bump of 7%.

RELATED

Junior enlisted to get 20% pay bump, E5s get 13% more under House plan

House lawmakers are looking to overhaul the military's pay tables next year to dramatically boost junior enlisted pay.

For an E-2 with two years of military service, that increase will mean about $5,000 in extra pay next year. For an E-4 with four years of military service, it’s almost $7,500 more.

House appropriators have already signaled they intend to fund the plan in their budget bills later this month, but the financial investment is significant. The Congressional Budget Office on Monday estimated the plan will add $24.4 billion in extra defense spending from fiscal 2025 through fiscal 2029.

The White House on Tuesday put the five-year estimate at just under $22 billion, and at a cost of $3.3 billion next year alone.

Defense planners have balked at similar pay plans in the past because of the significant monetary strain such moves put on the entire military budget.

In recent months, they have lobbied lawmakers behind the scenes to delay any action on junior enlisted pay until next year, when a Pentagon analysis on service member compensation is complete. White House officials on Tuesday issued a new statement of opposition to the pay plan, citing the cost.

For the two aircraft carrier comparison, the USS John F. Kennedy is scheduled to be completed next year at a total construction cost of about $11.4 billion. The USS Enterprise, meanwhile, is set to be finished in 2028 at a price tag of around $12.3 billion, according to statistics from the Congressional Research Service.

The pay plan also approaches the total cost of the Space Force budget for fiscal 2025, estimated by service leaders to be $29.6 billion.

But House lawmakers have argued the investment is necessary to ensure that the military services can keep pace with recruiting and retention goals, and to properly reward young troops and their spouses for the sacrifices of military life.

The House plan also includes a boost in service member housing stipends and more money for on-base daycare services. The plan received bipartisan support in the House Armed Services Committee last month but faces a difficult path on the chamber floor because of potential social issue amendments on issues such as abortion and transgender medical care.

Senate Armed Services officials thus far have been noncommittal on the House’s ambitious enlisted raises. They are expected to unveil the first draft of their service member quality of life ideas on Wednesday, with a committee vote on their draft of the authorization bill later in the week.

A compromise between the separate House and Senate versions of the authorization and appropriations bills is not expected until sometime this fall or winter, possibly leaving the fate of the pay raises unsettled until just a few weeks before the start of 2025.

About Leo Shane III

Leo covers Congress, Veterans Affairs and the White House for Military Times. He has covered Washington, D.C. since 2004, focusing on military personnel and veterans policies. His work has earned numerous honors, including a 2009 Polk award, a 2010 National Headliner Award, the IAVA Leadership in Journalism award and the VFW News Media award.

4. Israel Killed 31 of My Family Members in Gaza. The Pro-Palestine Movement Isn’t Helping.

An important read.

I have not seen any similar articles in any of the mainstream press. Only here in The Free press.

Excerpt:

Whenever I share this story, people assume I must be consumed with rage, eager to get revenge on those responsible. I must despise all Israelis and consider them my sworn enemies.

Despite my deep frustration and resentment with the Israeli government’s action and the ongoing war in Gaza, I don’t. If anything, I’m more critical of some pro-Palestinian activists, many of whom are making things worse, putting the people they claim to defend in increasing danger. In fact, I’d argue that some aren’t all that interested in the well-being of Palestinians.

Israel Killed 31 of My Family Members in Gaza. The Pro-Palestine Movement Isn’t Helping.

thefp.com · by Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib · June 12, 2024

The conflict in Gaza has put my family through hell.

A few weeks ago, I flew to Egypt to help my brother’s wife and their four children flee Gaza and get safely to the UAE. It was just one day before the Rafah border closed on May 7, so we were cutting it close. My brother opted to stay behind. He’s a senior program manager for a British NGO in Gaza—similar to the American Red Cross—and he felt that without him, the whole operation might fall apart. But we all agreed it was time for his family to get out.

Our family’s home in Gaza City was hit by an Israeli air strike a week into the war, injuring several uncles and cousins on my dad’s side, and killing two. My brother’s family walked away from the rubble with minor injuries. But since then, they’ve been displaced eight times as they’ve made their way from Gaza City in the north to Khan Yunis, eventually reaching Rafah, where my mom’s family house has always been—effectively my second home.

That home was hit by an air strike in mid-December, just weeks before they arrived in Rafah. The attack killed twenty-nine of my relatives. All five of my aunts and uncles perished, as did most of my cousins. Those who made it out had the grim task of digging through the wreckage, pulling out the burnt and disfigured bodies of family members.

Almost everyone has known the pain of losing a beloved relative. But so many lost in the blink of an eye, all because they were bystanders in a bloody conflict they wanted no part of? It’s almost unbearable.

Whenever I share this story, people assume I must be consumed with rage, eager to get revenge on those responsible. I must despise all Israelis and consider them my sworn enemies.

Despite my deep frustration and resentment with the Israeli government’s action and the ongoing war in Gaza, I don’t. If anything, I’m more critical of some pro-Palestinian activists, many of whom are making things worse, putting the people they claim to defend in increasing danger. In fact, I’d argue that some aren’t all that interested in the well-being of Palestinians.

Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib at a pro-Palestinian protest in the U.S. in 2014. (Photo courtesy of the author)

For the first fifteen years of my life, Gaza was my home. And from a very young age, I knew that my home wasn’t safe.

I was ten years old in 2000 when the Second Intifada began. I remember it vividly: my friends and older boys talking about the fight against Israeli occupation as if it was something romantic and heroic, claiming that we’d be part of a revolution that would live forever in the history books.

The reality was anything but that—the conflict was violent and bloody, with ongoing air strikes and scenes of death and destruction all around. I never felt completely secure or calm. One day in 2001, when I was eleven, I was walking home from school with friends, and we passed a police station just as it was hit by a massive Israeli air strike. Two of my friends were killed by the attack, and though I survived, the blast left me with asymmetric hearing loss in my left ear and memories that haunt me to this day.

Was I angry at Israel? I was furious. I mourned my friends, and a part of me wanted vengeance. But everything I was told as a kid, every plan for retaliation that I had heard adults and older boys discussing, never made sense to me. Wouldn’t violence just lead to more violence, and more dead children? What sense did it make for the Palestinian people to fight the Israelis, who clearly had far more military strength than we did? I was a preteen who knew almost nothing about the world, but I knew everything I was being told about the revolution wouldn’t work.

I realized I had no future in Gaza, so I worked relentlessly to get out. In 2005, when I was 15 years old, I boarded a plane for California as part of a high school cultural exchange program. By the time it ended a year later, the 33-Day War was raging, and I was unable to enter Gaza through Egypt after the border closure. With the help of some amazing human rights advocates and friends in the Bay Area, I applied for political asylum in the United States. The very day of my asylum interview—June 14, 2007—Hamas violently took over the Gaza Strip and ejected the Palestinian Authority.

In the meantime, I finished high school and obtained a bachelor’s degree. I also became involved in pro-Palestinian activist groups in the Bay Area. Initially, I was enamored. I volunteered with them. I marched with them. I gave them money. I attended dozens of rallies, went to countless university events, and participated in educational conferences and advocacy campaigns, including the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement.

I met and worked with intelligent, sincere, and highly committed individuals who inspired me. I also met a lot of idealists who were too stubborn to realize that their all-or-nothing belief system, by which all Zionists are bad and all Palestinians are angels, isn’t just self-defeating but does an active disservice to the very people they claimed to champion.

As my asylum application progressed, some of my activist friends accused me of being a traitor. They told me I should move back to Gaza to defend the land for my people. I should resist the Zionist plot to empty Gaza of all Palestinian inhabitants. Never mind that returning there would only put my life in danger; if I truly cared, they told me, I would be on the front lines, fighting to destroy our common enemy.

It’s easy to lecture about the virtues of holding the land when you live in a city where it’s unlikely a bomb will ever fall from the sky to kill you and everybody you love. It’s the romantic idealism of somebody who’s never had to bury a cousin or an uncle or a best friend.

In 2008, during a San Francisco rally in support of Gaza, I was approached by a news reporter who asked for an interview. She wanted my thoughts on rockets being fired at Israeli targets. I made it very clear that I didn’t support Hamas, and that I believed the random violence against Israeli citizens was abhorrent and wrong. After the interview, I was taken aside by one of the rally’s organizers, who chastised me.

“Never talk about the rockets,” she told me. “You always pivot. If they ask you about Hamas, bring it back to the Israeli occupation.”

“But my family is there,” I insisted. “I don’t think either side should be killing civilians with rockets.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Stay on message.”

The biggest blow to my faith in the hard-line pro-Palestine movement came in 2015, when I tried (and ultimately failed) to lobby for a Gaza airport. An internationally run, Israeli-approved airfield in Gaza wasn’t going to end the fighting, but it might give people the option to go in and out of Gaza and provide some freedom of movement for Palestinians trapped by the blockade in the Strip.

I had detailed plans: the location, flight plans, the radar coverage, destinations, aircraft type, security, and robust outreach to all relevant parties. I was having productive talks with senior Israeli government officials and the Israel Defense Forces, and used intermediaries to obtain approval and support from the Palestinian leadership. The project received immense interest from the people of Gaza. What I didn’t have was the support of pro-Palestine activists.

They opposed my efforts, because cooperation would just make Israel “look good, if only parts of the blockade are addressed and not all of it.” That wasn’t acceptable to them, even if the Palestinian people stood to benefit. Some believed that with freedom of movement, many Gazans would choose to leave, thereby fulfilling the “Zionist plot” to empty the Strip of its inhabitants, essentially arguing that imprisoned Gazans were better for the greater cause.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Trapping people in Gaza was okay because that made it easier to “expose” and attack Israel? What kind of a cause relies on forcing its people to stay in perpetual misery so that Western activists can have an easier time condemning their adversaries?

Their totalitarian approach to solving the crisis left no room for nuance. “We don’t want partial solutions,” they’d tell me. “We want it all. No blockade, no occupation, no nothing.” It frustrated me, but I didn’t walk away. I still thought I could have a positive influence on the movement. I just had to make the dogmatic activists understand.

Things got much worse after October 7. Those who claimed to be in solidarity with Gaza didn’t just avoid condemning Hamas’s horrendous attack—they dismissed it, claiming the extent of the atrocities committed against Israeli civilians was being exaggerated, or outright invented. When I tried to argue that we shouldn’t look the other way, they scolded me. Focus on what matters, they told me.

That was a turning point for me. I needed to walk away from the pro-Palestine groups that were my community, my second family. Right now, I am not engaged with any of these groups.

It often feels like Palestinians have become pawns for activists, our plight making it easier to criticize Israel. But it’s my family in the crosshairs. My brother and surviving family members are still over there, along with many people I grew up with. This is personal to me.

I remain very pro-Palestine. I’m also in favor of peace and pragmatism. I’m vehemently opposed to everything Hamas represents and all of their vile acts against the Israeli people. I also think Prime Minister Netanyahu is a war criminal, responsible for killing my family members along with tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians in Gaza. He has blood on his hands and will not be easily forgiven. Balancing these multiple truths is not something many activists seem capable of doing. They’re genuinely unwilling to acknowledge that the goal should be coexistence. To achieve true peace and anything approaching a realistic solution, we need to talk to each other as equals.

I have a large and robust network of friends within Jewish communities who are devoted to Israel, while viewing other Palestinians and me as humans who deserve to exist. I certainly don’t agree with many of their opinions, but they, like me, recognize our common humanity as well as the desperate need to work toward a shared future. We have a historic opportunity to push for the two-state solution. A secure and safe Israel right next to a free and independent Palestine is the only thing that would grant my homeland sovereignty and independence.

I know how hard it is not to get caught up in the emotions surrounding this conflict. I can’t stop thinking about my thirty-one dead relatives. I wake up every morning worried about my brother, family, and people, and I tense up every time the phone rings. But it’s precisely those losses and fears that make me want to find another way and not be driven solely by emotions and reactivity. I want to do something realistic, to look toward a better future when we finally break the repeating cycle of incitement, vengeance, anger, and hatred.

Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib is a political analyst from the Gaza Strip who writes about the coastal enclave’s political and humanitarian affairs, and is a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. Follow him on Twitter (now X) @afalkhatib.

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thefp.com · by Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib · June 12, 2024

5. I Went to Cover a Protest. I Was Surrounded by a Mob.

Here are the pro-Hamas supporters who are not helping the Palestinians. 

The Free Press’s Olivia Reingold covering the rally against Israel in Union Square. (The Free Press)

I Went to Cover a Protest. I Was Surrounded by a Mob.

https://www.thefp.com/p/i-went-to-cover-a-protest-i-was-mobbed

But in the context of other incidents over the past 24 hours, what happened to me was mild.

By Olivia Reingold

June 11, 2024

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thefp.com · by Olivia Reingold · June 12, 2024

Last night, I went to New York City’s Union Square to cover a rally against the “massacre in the Nuseirat Camp regions of Gaza.” That’s what pro-Palestinian protesters are calling the operation that freed four Israeli hostages and killed at least a hundred Palestinians—a mix of Hamas combatants and civilians caught in the chaos as Hamas fired RPGs at the hostages. All around the country, similar anti-Israel protests sprung up to rouse those furious at the hostage rescue operation.

I had been at this particular protest in Union Square for about 45 minutes, watching and taking notes, when a man wearing a neck gaiter, sunglasses, and a Hezbollah flag fashioned as a headscarf suddenly pointed at me. “She’s a Zionist!” he shouted. “Get her out of here.”

Immediately, dozens of protesters swarmed me, hoisting their keffiyehs high in the sky and boxing me in to block my view. Most of them were completely shrouded in keffiyehs and masks. A chorus of voices surrounded me, shoving me. “Get the fuck out,” a woman yelled into my ear. “The people are saying we don’t want you here.”

“Get the fuck out,” a woman yelled into my ear. “The people are saying we don’t want you here.” (The Free Press)

A man holding a sign that declared “Long Live October 7th” shouted over the crowd, “Get in her face, make her leave.”

One man fired an air horn into my ears. A girl lurched at my notebook, grabbing it and ripping apart the metal spine. “You’re not writing anything down,” she said, tearing the pages and throwing them into the air. “Get the fuck out—get the fuck out!”

In the context of these protests across the country this week, this was very mild. For anyone visibly Jewish who happens to be near one of these mobs, or anyone like a security guard trying to keep peace, the interactions are often much more harrowing. Here are a few data points of the escalation over the last 24 hours.

• Yesterday at UCLA, a crowd of pro-Palestine protesters, most with makeshift shields, swarmed a security guard. As he tried to flee, one smacked him over the head with a smartphone, causing him to bleed.
• Later that night on campus, a masked protester berated UCLA Chabad Rabbi Dovid Gurevich, calling him a “pedophile rabbi,” adding that “Israel is full of pedophiles.” When Gurevich asked why he wouldn’t reveal his face, the man replied, “If I show my face, I’ll have to fucking kill you.” Other protesters shouted at the rabbi and others: “Go back to Poland or Ukraine,” “Go back to Europe,” and “Death to fucking Zionism.” Twenty-five protesters were arrested.
• More scenes were captured on video in Union Square in New York. One man yelled at a small crowd that had come out to support Israel, “I wish Hitler was still here, he would’ve wiped all you out.”
• On Wall Street, the protest mob chanted “Israel go to hell” outside an exhibition memorializing the Nova Music Festival, where Hamas murdered 364 innocents. As the crowd took its “citywide day of rage for Gaza” downtown via the subway, one protester proclaimed on the train, “Raise your hands if you’re a Zionist. This is your chance to get out.”

Anti-Israel protesters, who have been marching regularly in major cities across the world ever since Hamas invaded Israel on October 7, killing more than 1,200 civilians, claim they are for peace. And yet, they find creative ways to justify the violence of Hamas. I’ve been to 18 of these protests so far, and it’s not unusual to spot the symbols of terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah, and even Nazi swastikas.

A woman holds an Al-Qassam Brigades (Hamas) flag in Union Square, in Manhattan, on June 10, 2024. (The Free Press)

Many believed the protests would die out once college students had dismantled their encampments and gone home for the summer. But instead, with the heat of summer, protesters have spilled into the streets and become even more brazen and confident in what they’re saying out loud.

To be clear: I was in a public park, doing my job as a journalist, simply trying to document the movement as it is. When a mob prevented me from doing so, threatening violence and grabbing my things, I filed a police report for harassment.

“The protesters have a right to march. They have a right to scream vile things—and we have a right to watch, to listen, and to report on what they’re saying.” (The Free Press)

The protesters have a right to march. They have a right to scream vile things—and we have a right to watch, to listen, and to report on what they’re saying. That’s the deal you make when you host a rally on a public sidewalk in America or take over the quad of a public university. You cannot demand that only comrades be allowed to see what you’re doing.

“I’m just going to write down your quotes as they really are,” I tried to reason with the protesters last night. “I want to speak with you. Will you speak with me?”

“Free Palestine,” one girl replied, flipping me off.

Olivia Reingold is a reporter for The Free Press. To support more of our work, become a Free Press subscriber today.

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thefp.com · by Olivia Reingold · June 12, 2024

6. Bill aims to strengthen contested logistics strategy in Pacific

I think Congress is doing its job here by putting a priority on logistics. The logistics challenges in the Asia Pacific are probably the most complex of any theater.

Bill aims to strengthen contested logistics strategy in Pacific

Defense News · by Jen Judson · June 11, 2024

As the U.S. and its allies and partners in the Pacific face down an increasingly aggressive China, a bi[artisan bill introduced in the Senate aims to strengthen the relationship between the U.S. and key countries in the region in order to better protect supply lines and ensure sustained operations, should a conflict occur.

Republican Sen. Mitt Romney, of Utah, who serves on the Foreign Relations Committee, and Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, of Arizona, a member of the Armed Services Committee co-introduced the proposed legislation today.

“With each passing day, China’s military continues to improve and expand its capabilities.” Romney said in a statement to Defense News. “The Chinese Communist Party’s ambitions are clear. In the event of a conflict in the Indo-Pacific, the United States could face challenges effectively moving personnel and equipment in an area that comprises about half of the earth’s surface.”

The legislation “will help us address vulnerabilities and maintain our readiness in contested environments. By strengthening partnerships in the Indo-Pacific, we can better support our troops and uphold our commitments to our allies in the region,” Kelly added in the statement.

The bill would require increased oversight over the U.S. military’s various efforts to conduct logistics and sustainment in a contested environment and also lays the groundwork for increased partnerships specifically for maintenance and repair with allies and partners in the Pacific.

The Defense Department has been working on how to tackle contested logistics from fort to port to foxhole, but the bill would require a review and a report be submitted to Congress accounting for all of the various efforts across military departments.

The legislation would require the secretary of defense to assess each military services’ role within the joint force in a contested logistics environment, the bill states. Specifically, a review would focus on the services’ ability to effectively maintain and repair capabilities, preposition or store materials needed to surge capability or support operations, examine the ability to repair and maintain without dedicated maintenance facilities, and figure out the resources needed to “reduce or mitigate the risks associated with operations in a contested logistics environment.”

A report would be due no later than one year following the enactment of the act.

Local supply chain

Additionally, while Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the U.K. are all able to provide product support to the U.S. in a contested logistics environment such as transferring spare parts to the U.S. in order to more efficiently repair equipment in conflict, the bill would require Japan and South Korea to be included in that group of allies.

Japan and the U.S. recently took new steps to strengthen its relationship, vowing to improve command-and-control systems, form an industrial council to build weapons together, network their missile defense systems with Australia’s and start a joint exercise in the United Kingdom.

South Korea and the U.S. are also exploring whether the country’s defense industry could help maintain, repair and overhaul American warships and weapons.

Lastly, the proposed legislation would authorize the Defense Department to conduct maintenance on certain surface vessels in foreign ports under a U.S. Navy pilot program called Ship Wartime Repair and Maintenance, or SWaRM.

In order to ensure ships can be repaired quickly and easily at foreign ports, the Navy’s SWaRM pilot program aims to test out the process of undergoing repairs away from U.S. ports and would allow the service to figure out how to navigate the contracting process, allowing foreign workers to work on American ships and ensuring those workers are trained in accordance with American standards and regulations.

Keeping ships operational to deliver capability to ports throughout the Pacific is critical to sustaining Navy readiness, the bill emphasizes.

The U.S. Army is also considering, as a part of its watercraft strategy still taking shape, how it might use ships, even commercial ones under contract, from allies and partners.

‘Mesh network of friends’

The Pentagon as well as the individual services have been ringing the alarm bells to ensure the U.S. is ready to supply and sustain the force in conflict in the Pacific. The Pacific accounts for over a quarter of the globe and the vast distances the U.S. must travel to within the theater creates an enormous challenge alone.

The U.S. Army has been working to adapt its approach to logistics to prepare for possible conflict with China but also deter it from increased aggression in the region. The service recognized contested logistics as a key contribution to its Multidomain Operations doctrine published in 2022 in a special annex and created a contested logistics cross-functional team in 2023 to develop capabilities critical to operations where projecting, supplying, maintaining and sustaining the force will be contested across the board by near peer adversaries.

The U.S. military has been working with allies and partners to create capability through exercises like Talisman Sabre in Australia, Operation Pathways and RIMPAC. These exercises give the U.S. the opportunity to see what ports might be ideal for delivering supplies via watercraft and where weapons and supplies can be kept on a more permanent basis.

The Army has been building a “mesh network of friends, partners and allies,” Lt. Gen. Xavier Brunson, who commands the service’s I Corps, said last fall.

Relationships are growing and strengthening, U.S. Army Pacific commander, Gen. Charles Flynn, emphasized in May at a conference in Hawaii. Flynn noted in his speech that the opportunity to increase multilateral cooperation is the highest he has ever seen.

Commanders are working on strategies to lighten the logistics tail in contested environments and keep more capability forward in theater.

Conversations are ongoing with foreign partners about the possibility of tapping local industry in the Pacific to provide repair parts, supplies (even blood) and other capabilities, arrangements that are likely to be essential when the U.S. cannot rely on bringing everything with it to respond to a crisis or conflict.

Following Talisman Sabre, for instance, the U.S. military was given permission to leave behind equipment in prepositioned stock in Australia.

“As logisticians, we need to be successful and to understand the theater and to really set conditions for those joint interior lines,” Maj. Gen. Jared Helwig, the Army’s 8th Theater Sustainment Command commander in the Pacific, said last fall “and build out that architecture that we know that, if we don’t rehearse in competition, will be very difficult to execute in crisis.”

About Jen Judson

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

7. How Ambitious Plans for a Floating Aid Pier off Gaza Fell Apart

I would hate to have been the author of the staff estimate that recommended this course of action.

Or I would hate to be the decision maker who might have overruled a staff estimate that recommended against this course of action.

Or if there was no staff estimate, I would hate to be the person who made the decision to execute this plan without a thorough staff estimate completed.

If I were doing lessons learned research I would want to read the completed staff estimate.

Please go to the link to see the graphics. 

How Ambitious Plans for a Floating Aid Pier off Gaza Fell Apart

Biden promised it would deliver ‘massive amounts’ of aid, but weather and logistics have hampered plans

https://www.wsj.com/world/how-ambitious-plans-for-a-floating-aid-pier-off-gaza-fell-apart-d3336774?mod=hp_lead_pos7

By Nancy A. YoussefFollow

Updated June 12, 2024 12:01 am ET

LARNACA, Cyprus—In a large multistory warehouse, food intended to help stave off famine in Gaza sits alongside cases of Corona, Stella and Brooklyn Lager. 

The aid pallets with food, each with a label of the organization that provided them, are wrapped in either black or clear cellophane for the approximately 36 hours of sea travel to the U.S.-built temporary pier off Gaza. Many of the roughly 4,000 pallets have been sitting here in commercial warehouses for weeks, some covered in a layer of dust, waiting to be delivered. 

The $230 million pier was installed amid the Israeli military advance in the city of Rafah and the closure of the two southern border crossings that were supplying most of the aid to the Gaza Strip. The maritime corridor between Cyprus and Gaza—and an ongoing airdrop campaign—was meant to supplement ground deliveries, which are cheaper and more efficient.

But the hastily constructed pier was never designed to handle the Mediterranean Sea’s rough waters, which are expected to worsen over summer, and the logistics of delivering aid from the pier to the Gazan population proved vexing. The floating structure broke apart late last month after 10 days of operation, something defense officials privately described as all but inevitable, and some humanitarian organizations have all but given up making longer-term plans around the pier. 

After a week of repairs, the pier went back in place Saturday, only to be shut down again Sunday because of the rough waters, the Pentagon said. It reopened Tuesday. 

The maritime corridor was built to help supplement ground deliveries. PHOTO: MAXAR TECHNOLOGIES/ASSOCIATED PRESS

The life and near death of the pier reflect the Biden administration’s larger struggle to deal with the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza. Three months after President Biden announced the pier during his State of the Union address, only enough aid to support Gazans for a few days has flowed through this maritime route, a fraction of what is needed for more than 2 million civilians facing severe hunger and famine.

During his address, Biden said the pier “would enable a massive increase in the amount of humanitarian assistance getting into Gaza every day.”

The Pentagon, which only learned about the president’s plan to mention the pier days before his speech, began scrambling to put it in place, U.S. defense officials said. 

Soon, roughly 1,000 troops left Virginia’s shores in ships carrying parts of the pier. Even then, defense officials said they didn’t know many aspects of the plan, including where inspections of aid would happen.

The concept was daunting: The U.S. military would need to assemble the pier several miles off Gaza’s coast. Support vessels and barges would be used to transport aid from the structure to a roughly 1,800-foot-long floating causeway leading to the shore.

Among the challenges the Pentagon faced was using the pier in the sometimes rough waters off the Gaza coast. 

Ship

Ships bring aid to a floating pier offshore where the aid is offloaded.

1

Floating platform

Assembled at sea several miles off the coast.

Aid

Support vessel

Aid is then loaded onto support vessels

2

Aid is transported to the floating causeway by support vessels.

3

Trident Pier

Support vessels unload

aid onto the anchored

trident pier that

consists of one or two

lanes and can extend

out to 1,800 feet.

4

Times the pier has worked and not worked

Vehicles transport aid to the shore. The types of vehicles have not been determined.

No U.S. troops will be on the ground in Gaza.

5

May 16: Pier went into place

May 26: Pier first broke

May 28: Pier broke a second time and became inoperational

May 28-June 7: Pier was being repaired

June 8: Pier became operational again

June 9-10: Pier closed again, this time because of high sea states

June 11: Pier reopened

Causeway pieces are

either 20’ x 8’ or 40’ x 8’

in dimension depending

on where they will be

used and how much

length is needed.

Shore

Note: Diagram is a general representation of the process and doesn't represent the actual positioning or configuration of equipment. Diagram is not to scale.

Sources: Department of Defense (diagrams); XVIII Airborne Corps (text); U.S. Central Command (chronology)

Jemal R. Brinson/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Military guidance on the pier, known as Joint Logistics Over the Shore or JLOTS, says its usage is “weather-dependent,” and it can’t operate in conditions beyond sea state 3, or short and moderate waves. Such conditions are usually in a bay.

The Mediterranean Sea is often at sea state 4, or significant winds and waves. 

Some defense officials were also skeptical about how well the U.S. military, the Israeli military, the Cypriot government, the U.S. Agency for International Development and others could coordinate with one another, particularly during war and on such a short timeline.

Key details hadn’t been fully sorted out days before the pier went into place, including how to ensure a steady stream of aid to Cyprus. Some private groups such as Fogbow, a private company made up of former U.S. government, military and United Nations officials, which bought 1,100 pallets of aid for Gaza, sought approvals to bring aid over the U.S. pier. The company has yet to receive permission.

Other relief organizations, including José Andrés’s World Central Kitchen, opted to build their own pier off Gaza’s shore to deliver the aid. 

The U.S. military pier was in place by mid-May, but weather damaged the structure May 22 and three U.S. troops were injured, one seriously. But the pier was still functioning. 

A few days after that, parts of the pier broke off and the Pentagon announced that it had been damaged beyond use. The U.S. military moved the pier to Israel’s Ashdod port for repairs. 

Pallets of flour intended for Gazans sit in a food warehouse in Larnaca, Cyprus, alongside food and drinks for Cypriots. PHOTO: NANCY A. YOUSSEF/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Another warehouse with pallets of aid. Each pallet weighs roughly a ton. PHOTO: NANCY A. YOUSSEF/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Those involved in the shipping industry in Cyprus described the pier’s suspension as inevitable. 

“We know the weather, and we know the rhythm of the waves and the wind at any time of year, and we could have told it was not going to work,” Miki Peleg, general manager of EDT Offshore, a Cypriot cargo ship-owning company that, with Fogbow, was contracted by the U.S. military to remove the pier, via tugboats, back to Gaza’s shores. 

On June 7, the Pentagon announced that the repaired pier was reopening. Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, deputy commander, U.S. Central Command, told reporters that “issues with the pier stemmed solely from unanticipated weather.”

Cooper said the Pentagon expected to “increase the volume of humanitarian assistance provided through the pier over the previous levels” after it reopened.

At the port in Larnaca late last week, pallets of aid provided by U.S. Agency for International Development were being loaded onto a U.S. Navy support vessel in anticipation of the pier reopening.

Aid began traveling again from Cyprus to Gaza on Saturday, and U.S. Central Command said that roughly 1.1 million pounds of humanitarian aid was delivered to Gaza through the pier.

“Let’s see how long this lasts,” one U.S. defense official said shortly after the pier resumed operations.

Aid trucks near Wadi Gaza. PHOTO: GEVARA SAFADI/ZUMA PRESS

On Sunday, the U.N. World Food Program said it paused delivery of aid from the pier after two of its warehouses were hit by rockets during one of the deadliest days of the war. 

“I’m concerned about the safety of our people after the incident yesterday” in Gaza, Cindy McCain, the director of the WFP, told “Face the Nation,” addressing the suspended deliveries.

World Central Kitchen, which had relied on its own private pier, moved its staff out of Cyprus roughly one month ago, U.S. officials said, after seven of its workers were killed in Gaza in an Israeli airstrike. One World Central Kitchen staffer returned this week to determine what to do with its aid in Cyprus, a spokesperson for the organization said.

USAID, the leading provider of aid sent over the maritime corridor, said it plans to continue to secure supplies for delivery from Cyprus.

While the Pentagon has allotted enough money to pay for the pier to receive aid for three months, those familiar with its operations say they don’t expect it to last that long, at least not without multiple repairs. 

If the pier shuts down permanently, the aid could end up being delivered by sea to the Ashdod port in Israel, and then sent along the very land routes the maritime corridor was meant to bypass. 

Write to Nancy A. Youssef at nancy.youssef@wsj.com

8. Exclusive: Pentagon data reveals US soldier more likely to die by suicide than in combat

That may be because we have fewer forces engaged in combat operations. But regardless of the amount of combat we have too many military personnel (and family members) committing suicde.

What can be done?

Exclusive: Pentagon data reveals US soldier more likely to die by suicide than in combat

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2024/06/11/military-suicide-defense-department-pentagon-study/73983842007/?utm

Tom Vanden Brook

USA TODAY

WASHINGTON − U.S. soldiers were almost nine times more likely to 

die by suicide

 than by enemy fire, according to a Pentagon study for the five-year period ending in 2019.

The study, published in May by the Defense Health Agency, found that suicide was the leading cause of death among active-duty soldiers from 2014 to 2019. There were 883 suicide deaths during that time period. Accidents were the No. 2 cause with 814 deaths. There were 96 combat deaths.

The suicide figures from 2019 predate some Army and Pentagon initiatives to combat suicide, including a workforce that addresses harmful behaviors like alcohol abuse that can contribute to deaths by suicide. In addition, combat deaths declined from 31 in 2014 to 16 in 2019 as deployments to war zones in the Middle East and Afghanistan decreased.

Suicide, meanwhile, has increased among active-duty soldiers, according to figures obtained by USA TODAY. So far in 2024, 55 soldiers have died by suicide.

Army officials, in an interview with USA TODAY, pointed to increasing rates of suicide in U.S. society as whole that are reflected in their ranks. They also talked about new tactics they're using to reduce suicide.

Prep for the polls: See who is running for president and compare where they stand on key issues in our Voter Guide

More:Alaska's army bases see glimmer of hope after 'horrifically high' suicide rates among soldiers

The rate of suicide, measured by deaths per 100,000 soldiers, generally has been climbing since 2019 when the rate was 28.8 per 100,000. For active-duty soldiers in 2020, the rate was 36.2 per 100,000. It declined in 2021 to 36.1, and in 2022 it fell to 28.9. In 2023, it jumped to 36.6. In 2024, the rate is 31.8 through most of May, according to figures obtained by USA TODAY.

For all Americans, the rate of suicide has climbed 37% since 2000. In 2021, the last year of available data, the rate per 100,000 was 14.1.

The Army’s struggle to curb suicide grew especially acute in Alaska during the study’s timeframe and after.

At Fort Wainwright in Alaska’s isolated, frigid interior, 11 soldiers died by suicide between January 2014 and March 2019. That spike alarmed Army officials, and a commission examining the problem called for spending more than $200 million for better barracks for soldiers and sheltered garages to maintain their combat vehicles.

Military spending didn't stop the suicide problem

The spending didn’t stem the problem. There were eight suicide deaths among soldiers posted to Alaska in 2019, seven in 2020 and a horrific 17 in 2021. Following a USA TODAY investigation, the Army, prodded by Congress, surged dozens of mental health professionals to the state and suicides dropped to six in 2022.

More:An Alaskan army base is the epicenter of military suicides. Soldiers know why

Last September, acting on recommendations made by an independent commission studying suicide in the military, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin outlined the Pentagon's strategy to prevent more deaths. It includes improving access to mental health counseling and incentives for safe storage of firearms, which account for 70% of suicide deaths.

The Pentagon plans to hire as many as 2,000 people over the next four years to focus on preventing problem behaviors, like excessive drinking, that can lead to suicide and sexual assault. The first members of the Integrated Primary Prevention Workforce were deployed to bases at highest risk last year.

Gunshot wounds accounted for 65% of the Army's suicide deaths, according to the study.

"Evaluation of various public health suicide prevention programs and services, and a greater emphasis on firearm storage and safety, may be needed to reduce suicide," the study's authors noted.

The Army has been seeking to normalize safe storage of guns among soldiers a reflex, like fastening a seat belt, said Carrie Shult, the Army's suicide prevention program manager. Secured guns are less likely to be seized by a solider having a suicidal impulse.

At Fort Cavazos in Texas, a program that emphasizes regular conversations by leaders and peers about gun storage has resulted in better planning by soldiers, Shult said.

"We've seen some great initial results from that project and we're also looking to extend that in other areas," she said.

The Army's approach to suicide prevention has evolved over the past four years, said Col. Kevin Goke, an official in the Army's directorate of Prevention, Resilience & Readiness. The focus has shifted from suicide as solely a mental-health problem to addressing a variety of stresses on soldiers, including financial woes and broken relationships that can contribute to a crisis.

Training has also aimed at reducing the stigma about seeking help when needed, he said. Soldiers have been taught to ask one another if they're thinking of hurting themselves.

"As a behavioral health provider, it's a very easy question for me to ask," Goke said. "But we triggered that question down to a healthy-hand approach that folks are willing to ask that question."

9. White House bashes idea of creating Army Drone Corps

White House bashes idea of creating Army Drone Corps

"A Drone Corps would create an unwarranted degree of specialization and limit flexibility to employ evolving capabilities," the Biden administration said in a statement.

BY

JON HARPER

JUNE 11, 2024

defensescoop.com · by Jon Harper · June 11, 2024

You can count White House leaders among those opposed to lawmakers’ proposal to establish a Drone Corps as a basic branch of the Army.

A provision in the House of Representatives’ version of the fiscal 2025 Servicemember Quality of Life Improvement and National Defense Authorization Act, H.R. 8070, would mandate the creation of such an organization, giving it primary responsibility for programs, projects and activities involving small and medium unmanned aerial systems and counter-UAS weapons.

The secretary of the Army would be responsible for appointing the chief of the new branch.

The corps would be expected to serve as a “command center” for Army operations involving these types of weapons; help integrate the platforms with forces that have not traditionally used them; conduct research, development, testing and evaluation of technologies; provide personnel with specialized training; attract and retain personnel with relevant expertise; and develop strategies, according to the text of the legislation.

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However, the White House Office of Management and Budget said in a statement of policy on Tuesday: “The Administration strongly opposes Section 924, which would establish a Drone Corps as a basic branch of the Army. A Drone Corps would create an unwarranted degree of specialization and limit flexibility to employ evolving capabilities. Further, the Secretary of the Army already has the authority to create branches, as needed, and creating a branch through legislation would detract from the Army’s flexibility in addressing current and future requirements.” The statement included a list of concerns about various items in the House version of the NDAA that it finds objectionable.

Senior Army officers have also come out against the proposal.

Boosting the service’s drone and counter-drone arsenal is a top priority for Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George, an objective he’s pursuing as part of his “transforming in contact” strategy. However, he’s not on board with establishing a Drone Corps.

“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,” he said during a Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Defense hearing last month.

Undersecretary Gabe Camarillo has noted that the service is pursuing commercial-off-the-shelf systems and so-called “launched effects.”

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A key element of the modernization effort is providing troops the opportunity to put the tools through their paces during deployments and large-scale exercises.

“Things that we’re doing, like transformation in contact or some of the experiments that we’re performing today are critically important. I think the institutional implications of it to me are secondary at this point, as opposed to figuring out how we’re going to employ the technology, what technology works the best, and most importantly, do we have our buying processes in place in order to be able to get there,” Camarillo said during an event in May hosted by the Center for a New American Security.

“My view is that, you know, creating a corps or other institutional kind of structures to kind of get after it, in some way could take away some focus from some of the things that … we’re actually doing,” he added. “Having a branch or, you know, a [Center of Excellence] or anything like that — it’s not going to help us buy anything faster or get us more resources against this problem set.”

The House version of the NDAA must be reconciled with the Senate version before it can become law. Members of the Senate Armed Services Committee are set to mark up their draft of the legislation this week. President Biden could sign the final bill or veto the legislation.

“The Administration looks forward to working with Congress to address our concerns,” the White House said in its statement of policy Tuesday.

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 · June 11, 2024

10. How Estonia is becoming a hotbed for drone warfare

Estonia is also a cyber center of excellence.

How Estonia is becoming a hotbed for drone warfare

Projects include experimental loitering munitions that cost a fraction of U.S. equivalents.

BY SAM SKOVE

STAFF WRITER

JUNE 11, 2024 12:59 PM E

defenseone.com · by Sam Skove

TALLINN—With a close eye on Ukraine’s use of drones, Estonians are fielding new kit, changing doctrine, and revamping training for unmanned systems in case they also have to repel a Russian invasion one day.

Estonia — a country with a population of just 1.3 million — is also being uniquely thrifty, working to field systems whose price is often orders of magnitude cheaper than similar U.S. systems. Defense One got a close-up look at these efforts on a trip funded by the Estonian ministry of defense.

At the center of many of these efforts is Aivar Hanniotti, the military’s point man for everything related to drone technology and development. He took the job in January, and is already well known in Estonia’s bustling drone industry.

Hanniotti’s team is working on a long list of updates to Estonia’s drone and counter-drone tools. Much of the work is done by members of Estonia’s Defense League, a part-time volunteer organization that serves as a military auxiliary force. Hanniotti himself is a member.

Estonian civil society is heavily engaged in supporting Ukraine, and many Estonian Defense League members help Ukrainian units by delivering supplies to them, like drones. This puts them in touch with Ukrainian troops, who pass on information, said Hanniotti, and this access to battlefield experience helps drive innovation.

Among the projects linked to Ukraine is the “Angry Hedgehog,” a plan to field a domestically produced short-range loitering munition similar to Ukraine’s first-person-view drones.

The drones will have a custom warhead and a range of up to nine miles, said Hanniotti. They will be equipped with artificial intelligence to guide them the last mile to a target, an increasingly popular countermeasure against Russian jamming.

Hanniotti said the drone will cost under 1,000 euros, and use European-manufactured components. It will undergo further tests in June 2024, and Estonia also aims to deliver 1,000 of them to Ukraine to test their use in combat. Formal fielding may occur next year.

The price is far less than similar short-range loitering munitions, like the $94,000 Rogue One. Hanniotti said the aim was to have a drone that was “good enough,” rather than one tricked out with the latest in tech.

Other projects include a Estonian-made hand-held drone detection system, which Hanniottii is working to field to every squad starting sometime next year, he said. Such systems are widely used in Ukraine, and are also coming to the U.S. Marine Corps.

Yet another project seeks to develop a cheap missile for taking out drones. One missile, which so far exists only as a concept, has a theoretical price of 2,000 euros. The price is one-tenth the cost of the APKWS missile, one of the cheapest anti-drone missiles. The planned missile, which is to rely on commercially available parts, will be tested at the end of this year, Hanniotti said.

Other projects are virtually free, such as an Estonian Defense League-designed tool that takes the inputs from passive radio-detection systems and plots them on a map to identify probable enemy locations.

The Estonian drone push isn’t all low-cost initiatives. Between 2024 and 2027, Estonia will spend 220 million euros (about $238 million) on loitering munitions, out of a total outlay of 529 million euros for indirect fire systems, according to a briefing by Oliver Tüür, director of the Defence Planning Department at the Estonian Defense Ministry.

Estonia is planning a special unit to operate loitering munitions, Maj. Andrei Šlabovitš told Defense One last year, in what may be the first dedicated loitering-munition unit fielded in a NATO army.

New technology brings new questions, from what tactics to use to what units should use them. Estonian infantry squads, for example, have begun experimenting with drone operators who scout ahead for hidden enemies.

The Estonian army is also testing how to use drones to support its artillery. Hanniotti said that they are experimenting with linking artillery fire control officers with drone units to reduce the time it takes to target enemy formations. Estonia’s dense forests, however, pose a problem by blocking drone signals, Hanniotti said.

Hanniotti said other experiments have included using the Android Tactical Awareness Kit to mark targets for artillery, but the system—like many sent to Ukraine—has proven vulnerable to GPS jamming.

Hanniotti is also involved in developing a designated unit for operating short-range surveillance and attack drones. Ukraine operates these types of units in large numbers, but the concept is still new for NATO militaries. The U.S. does not operate short-range drone units, although Army experiments have tested the concept informally.

New tech also needs new training, and Estonia plans to launch a drone training center this year. The center will also serve as a test range for new electronic warfare technologies.

Many U.S. efforts parallel Estonia’s, including an Army initiative that aims to field a short-range loitering munition by 2026. U.S. plans, though, generally move slower than Estonia. The Army, for example, will allocate just ten hand-held drone detectors to a division, according to a 2025 budget request, while Estonia is aiming to give one to every squad.

One explanation may be the quasi-civilian nature of the Estonian Defense League, Hanniotti said.

“In the Defense League, we are used to getting by with small funding,” he said. “We are all motivated—and we would like to have fast results.”

defenseone.com · by Sam Skove

11. It's time to make a new international cooperation office within the Pentagon

It's time to make a new international cooperation office within the Pentagon - Breaking Defense

In this op-ed, Jerry McGinn says the Senate Armed Services Committee should seriously consider the creation of a new office inside DoD for international cooperation.

breakingdefense.com · by Jerry McGinn · June 11, 2024

An F-35A Lightning II assigned to the F-35A Lightning II Demonstration Team launches out to perform at the Innovation and Leadership in Aerospace Berlin, held at the Berlin Expo Center Airport, Berlin Brandenburg International Airport, June 8, 2024. (US Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Zachary Rufus)

As the Senate Armed Services Committee marks up its version of the fiscal year 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) this week, one idea deserves close consideration: a new role that would bolster the Pentagon’s global coordination with partners and allies.

The Defense MoU Attachés Group (DMAG), supported by the US Chamber of Commerce and the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA), has proposed the creation of an Under Secretary of Defense for International Cooperation. This position, the DMAG argues, would “enhance the harmonization and efficiency of international armaments cooperation” and “provide interoperable and interchangeable capabilities to our warfighters at this critical time and into the future.”

While this role did not come up during discussions in the House Armed Services Committee, there is reason to believe the SASC may be considering it. That is very good, because focusing DoD international security cooperation efforts is indeed an idea whose time has come as the United States and our close allies and partners support Ukraine and Israel while preparing for potential hostilities in East Asia.

How this is done, however, is key, and I am not convinced an undersecretary role — and its inevitable large staff, reporting directly to the deputy secretary of defense — is the best way forward.

To be clear, there are real issues at play, and having more clarity about who is handling them would be beneficial for the Pentagon, industry and outside partners.

While efforts at joint weapons development are beginning to deliver results, challenges remain. Export controls and technology release procedures, for example, continue to frustrate the ability of firms based in the United States and allied countries to collaborate. The FY24 NDAA did create an AUKUS exemption for Australia and the UK in the International Trafficking in Arms Regulation, but AIA and others are rightly paying close attention to ongoing State Department rulemaking, to ensure that this effort does not fail in implementation as numerous previous efforts like the Defense Trade Cooperation Treaties.

Additional defense-related Buy American provisions, meanwhile, continue to be introduced each year, ignoring the extent to which ally and partner industrial capacity advantages DoD and US companies alike. Finally, there is sentiment in some quarters that international industrial cooperation, particularly regarding Ukraine, is not in the US interest. While DoD data and American Enterprise Institute analysis demonstrate how this funding has significantly benefited the US defense industrial base, skepticism remains.

Addressing these challenges requires two sets of actions, one analytical and one organizational.

First, it is important to demonstrate empirically how international defense cooperation directly and indirectly impacts the US industrial base. A broad-based independent analysis of the impact of international defense cooperation would help to illuminate how US subsidiaries of allied-headquartered firms, foreign and direct commercial sales, international cooperative programs like the F-35 Lightning II, and other efforts contribute to the US and overall global industrial base. I am confident that this analysis will demonstrate that increasing international industrial collaboration and US domestic manufacturing are mutually reinforcing activities, and that additional Buy America provisions are unnecessary and counterproductive.

A second way to increase focus on defense security cooperation is through organizational change. The lack of a single office within DoD that has primary responsibility for fostering collaboration with allies and partners is not a new problem. The lead offices for Foreign Military Sales, defense technology security, and international cooperative programs have been split between the Under Secretaries of Policy and Acquisition and Sustainment for decades, and the services each have strong offices dedicated to international programs.

This has always been sub-optimal, but workable, as companies and partner governments navigated various stakeholders depending on the issue. Given the dramatic need for increased collaboration, operation, and sustainment between the United States and our allies and partners to meet today’s critical national security challenges, we must move beyond that sub-optimal approach and not settle for “workable.” We need something that actually meets the needs of allies and industry.

Creating new offices or reorging existing organizations are hardy perennials for achieving change in government. The effectiveness of these bureaucratic changes, however, depends equally on the nature of the organizational shift and on how well it matches the existing culture and structure of the organization.

The cautionary tale of the former DoD Chief Management Officer (CMO) is important to consider: The CMO function was created by Congress at the undersecretary level to bring business best practices to DoD. Despite its seniority, this role never worked because the function did not fit the culture of the Department and the CMO was eventually cancelled in the FY21 NDAA. An Under Secretary for International Cooperation could similarly struggle.

A better approach would be to create an Assistant Secretary for International Cooperation, one rung down on the defense bureaucracy ladder. That would mirror the approach taken when Congress established the Assistant Secretary of Industrial Base Policy in the FY21 NDAA. As with that role, the important outcome is that international defense cooperation will have a single focal point at the right level that can speak for the Department to Congress and allies and partners but making it an ASD instead of a USD would keep the office from growing too bloated, too quickly, and give it a better chance of matching what is needed.

Whatever the outcome, it is time for action on this critical issue, particularly given its impact on domestic and global industrial base capacity to address today’s national security issues.

Jerry McGinn is the Executive Director of the Greg and Camille Baroni Center for Government Contracting in the Costello College of Business at George Mason University and a former senior DoD acquisition official.

breakingdefense.com · by Jerry McGinn · June 11, 2024

12. How to Convince Putin He Will Lose

So I asked the AI tool "Perplexity" this question: How can we convince Putin that he will lose his war in Ukraine?  I have pasted the response as well as responses to a couple of related questions below this article.

Unfortunately outlasting our enemies has never been a strong suit of western or democratic countries. 

Excerpts:

Wars are fought when two sides disagree about who will win, and diplomacy to end them becomes possible only after those expectations converge. Undermining the reasons why Russian leaders believe they will ultimately win is crucial for getting them to accept a peace that is not to their liking. That is why preparing for a long war in Ukraine is the key to avoiding one.

Absent catastrophic events on the battlefield, the war will end at the negotiating table. Because neither Moscow nor Kyiv appears willing to concede territory the countries claim as their own, the war will more likely end in a cease-fire, a truce that could collapse quickly or last for many years. This fragile peace might resemble the demilitarized zone dividing North Korea from South Korea or the Line of Control between India and Pakistan in Kashmir.

The goal for those who support Ukraine should be twofold: to bring about that cease-fire as quickly as possible with as much territory as possible on Ukraine’s side of the line. Achieving this outcome requires changing Russian expectations about the West’s staying power. Ukraine can win only when Russian leaders worry about how the war will progress in the coming years. The West must invest to produce enough weapons and munitions to sow that fear in Moscow.

How to Convince Putin He Will Lose

The West Must Show That It Can Outlast Russia in Ukraine

By Dan Altman

June 12, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by Dan Altman · June 12, 2024

Two ideas dominate discussions about how to bring the war in Ukraine closer to an end: the West should either pressure Ukraine to make concessions to Russia or support Ukraine’s efforts to win on the battlefield. Both approaches rightly recognize that negotiations will remain futile until changing circumstances compel one side to accept peace terms that it rejects today. Nonetheless, neither approach is likely to end the war.

Withholding arms from Ukraine could eventually force it to offer concessions to Russia as part of a desperate attempt to end the war, but advocates of this approach overlook how it would also affect Russia’s war aims. Moscow would react to its newfound military advantages by doubling down on its most extreme demands—further territorial gains in places such as Kharkiv and Odessa, regime change, demilitarization, and more. Any willingness in Kyiv to make concessions would be offset by Moscow’s newly expanded war aims. The result would be Russian gains on the battlefield, not peace.

Similarly, although the U.S. Congress’ belated passage of $61 billion in aid for Ukraine should be celebrated, it is more likely to increase the amount of territory Ukraine holds a year from now than to end the war. Even in a best-case scenario where a Ukrainian counteroffensive liberates large areas, Russia would likely continue the fight. Providing enough support for Ukraine to defeat Russia’s ongoing offensives is essential, but it will not end the war.

To end the war on acceptable terms, more is needed. Western strategy should not be based solely on determining Ukraine’s immediate need for weapons. A focus on the present is understandable as Ukraine fights to hold back Russian forces on multiple fronts, but it will never be sufficient. If Russia’s leaders believe that they will win in the end, then they will keep fighting. Reshaping Moscow’s long-term calculus is as important as winning today’s battles. Changing that calculus requires making investments to expand weapons and munitions manufacturing that are large enough to convince Moscow that the West will outproduce Russia in the years to come. The objective is to make Russian leaders fear a long war. That fear is vital to avoiding one.

THIS IS NOT A BLUFF

The key to ending the war is changing Moscow’s expectations about how its war effort will fare three, five, and even eight years from now. Influencing the perceptions that exist in the minds of Russian leaders should be a primary goal of Western strategy. Although there is no panacea that will transform these expectations immediately, more can be done to begin eroding Russian optimism.

Crafting such a strategy requires understanding why Russian leaders continued to expect victory even through the serious battlefield reversals of 2022 and 2023. Although it is inherently challenging to pierce the miasma of secrecy and propaganda that surrounds the Kremlin, the best bet is that Russian leadership is putting its faith in the country’s greater staying power. Moscow believes that it can outlast Ukraine’s willingness to fight or—more likely—the West’s willingness to back Ukraine’s war effort. The Ukrainian people and their leaders remain steadfast about fighting through to victory despite the costs. Although Ukraine must demonstrate the continued ability to replenish its ranks by recruiting and training new soldiers, the weak link on which Russian leaders pin their hopes is most likely the West. As long as they believe that Western support will eventually diminish, there is little chance that they will abandon their ambitions to conquer more Ukrainian territory. Consequently, the West must demonstrably prove that its staying power exceeds Russian expectations.

At its core, reshaping Russian expectations is a signaling problem. It requires something that scholars have long studied: signaling resolve to make credible commitments. Scholars’ initial optimism about the ease of doing this eventually gave way to a better understanding of its difficulties; in particular, there is an obvious incentive to bluff. In the case of Ukraine, the West has every reason to proclaim that it will support Kyiv for as long as it takes, regardless of whether this is true, and Russian leaders know this. Overcoming this problem requires sending signals costly enough that only a highly resolved West would send them. There are three basic approaches to sending such signals.

Reshaping Moscow’s long-term calculus is as important as winning today’s battles.

First, Western leaders can shore up their commitment to Ukraine by increasing the costs they would incur from a Ukrainian defeat, thus strengthening their motivation to avoid that outcome. The primary way to do this is to publicly commit to backing Ukraine, making it embarrassing for leaders and damaging to national reputations if Russia wins the war. Along these lines, U.S. President Joe Biden often declares that the United States will support Ukraine for “as long as it takes.” The problem, however, is that Russia knows that Ukraine’s fate is not a decisive issue in American elections, and Biden has no ability to bind a future Republican president to his policy. Statements of enduring support are worthwhile, but Western staying power must be more than a slogan.

Stronger methods of committing to support Ukraine come with escalation risks that most Western leaders will not accept. In February, for instance, French President Emmanuel Macron broached the possibility of deploying Western combat units to Ukraine—putting NATO troops in potential danger and creating pressure to intervene directly in the war if Russian forces continue to advance—but he received little support from other NATO members.

Second, Western leaders can signal resolve by continuing to arm Ukraine. If that support is costly enough or risky enough, then in principle it signals resolve to Russia while tilting the military balance in Ukraine’s favor. Together with making pledges, this method of signaling underpins current policy, and it has proved vital for Ukraine’s defense, but also inadequate to make progress toward ending the war. Plus, this approach comes with limitations. What was once unnecessarily controversial is now clear: arming Ukraine carries little risk of war with Russia. And the West’s immediate capacity for aiding Ukraine—its stocks of weaponry and current manufacturing potential—is too small to upend Russian expectations. Continuing this support is necessary, but maintaining current policies will not change Russian calculations about the war’s future.

Therefore, the West should pivot to placing more emphasis on the third approach to signaling resolve. This is signaling via a down payment—in this case, paying upfront by investing more heavily in weapons and munitions manufacturing today. A down payment on a home makes the commitment to repay a mortgage more credible to a bank. Similarly, down payments on supporting Ukraine demonstrate a willingness to pay higher costs now and make it more credible that the West will support Ukraine later, since doing so will become more economical once the resulting factories become operational.

PARTNER-IN-ARMS

To reshape Russian perceptions and bring Moscow to the negotiating table, the United States and Europe should visibly, publicly invest in the expanding arms and munitions manufacturing to prepare for a war that could last many more years. New factories, increased production, long-term orders, and multiyear planning demonstrate staying power in a way that words alone cannot. The recent opening of a new General Dynamics factory in Texas to make 155-millimeter shells is a step in the right direction and an example of the kind of policy that could make a real difference if scaled up further. The goal is to change Russian perceptions of the West’s resolve to back Ukraine through a long war. Investments that presuppose and fund such support in advance will contribute the most to achieving that goal.

These investments would remedy a serious flaw in Western strategy to date: assessing decisions about how to support Ukraine in terms of fulfilling current battlefield requirements. This perspective seems logical; that is, if the war ends before the factories are finished, one could view them as a waste of resources. But this perspective is wrong. Instead, every dollar and euro will have been well spent. Indeed, ending the war before these factories come into operation is the ideal way for them to fulfill their purpose. The mere fact of investing in weapons manufacturing matters far more than the resulting battlefield effects. Such investments are a strong signal of Western staying power, and sending the right signal can shorten the war. What might seem at first glance to be overcapacity is in fact essential for changing Russian expectations about a long war.

NATO’s combined economy is dozens of times the size of Russia’s. It will take time, but NATO can match and eventually exceed Russia’s arms production at an acceptable cost.

Such a policy may evoke fears of another “forever war” reminiscent of costly U.S. failures in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, but such an outcome is unlikely. Civil wars and counterinsurgencies often linger, but high-intensity interstate wars like the one between Russia and Ukraine are different. The standard list used by scholars reveals that no interstate war since at least 1815 has lasted longer than a decade. The Iran-Iraq War endured from 1980 to 1988, largely as a brutal stalemate. Japan’s 1937 invasion of China, which arguably marked the beginning of World War II, ended with Japan’s surrender in 1945. Even wars from earlier centuries such as the Thirty Years War and the Hundred Years War, whose names suggest drawn-out conflict, in fact consisted of multiple connected wars in succession, not continuous wars. This history suggests that the war in Ukraine is likely to last years, not decades. Eliminating the Taliban was not achievable, but stopping Russia from occupying more of Ukraine is.

EVERY EURO COUNTS

But even these investments will not be enough if Russia believes that new leaders will come to power in the West and abandon Ukraine. Grappling with Russian perceptions of Western domestic politics is just as important as addressing Moscow’s expectations about weapons and munitions production.

Democracies have distinctive advantages and disadvantages when attempting to signal resolve. Enabled by free speech and a free press, opposition parties decide whether to support or oppose policies such as arming Ukraine. When they offer support, it sends a strong message that the entire country is firmly committed to the policy. Dictatorships lack this ability. But when the opposition rejects the policy, as many Republicans have in the United States, this undermines national signals of resolve.

As a result, no one can do more to change Putin’s calculus than the Republican leaders who are seen as least committed to Ukraine. Clear statements of enduring support for Ukraine from Republican leaders would be of the utmost value. Unfortunately, many of these leaders have shown no signs that they are open to changing their tune, which means that Moscow has good reason to doubt U.S. staying power. Republican opponents in the House of Representatives delayed U.S. assistance to Ukraine for months, and slightly more than half voted against it in the end. Although Republican support for Ukraine is stronger in the Senate, it only takes obstruction in one chamber to block legislation. All of this undermines attempts to signal staying power.

Preparing for a long war in Ukraine is the key to avoiding one.

Worse still, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, once responded to a question about continuing to arm Ukraine by falsely complaining, “We don’t have ammunition for ourselves right now”—before declining to promise that he would continue U.S. support and even refusing to say that he wanted Ukraine to win. These are alarming indicators of what Trump might do if he wins the election, but the damage is more immediate than that because they encourage Moscow to continue to fight today.

Regrettably, there is no clear path to curbing Russian optimism about American partisan politics until at least November, and perhaps not even then. But Republican opposition need not be cause for total despair; rather, it should be a reason for Europe to redouble its efforts.

Each dollar spent today on arms for Ukraine counts for as much as each euro, but each dollar pledged for the future counts for less. Russian leaders will discount promises of future American support as long as they remain hopeful that U.S. aid will eventually lapse. Consequently, the only sure path to changing Russian expectations about a long war is for Europe to make the necessary investments to expand weapons production. This should take place across Europe, including in Ukraine itself. Doing so will insure Ukraine—and, indeed, all of Europe—against a prolonged suspension of U.S. support. It will also better position the West to balance both Russia and a rising China as the United States shifts its military focus toward the Pacific. Only European investments can force Russian leaders to accept that Western support for Ukraine will remain strong for as long as the war continues.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

Wars are fought when two sides disagree about who will win, and diplomacy to end them becomes possible only after those expectations converge. Undermining the reasons why Russian leaders believe they will ultimately win is crucial for getting them to accept a peace that is not to their liking. That is why preparing for a long war in Ukraine is the key to avoiding one.

Absent catastrophic events on the battlefield, the war will end at the negotiating table. Because neither Moscow nor Kyiv appears willing to concede territory the countries claim as their own, the war will more likely end in a cease-fire, a truce that could collapse quickly or last for many years. This fragile peace might resemble the demilitarized zone dividing North Korea from South Korea or the Line of Control between India and Pakistan in Kashmir.

The goal for those who support Ukraine should be twofold: to bring about that cease-fire as quickly as possible with as much territory as possible on Ukraine’s side of the line. Achieving this outcome requires changing Russian expectations about the West’s staying power. Ukraine can win only when Russian leaders worry about how the war will progress in the coming years. The West must invest to produce enough weapons and munitions to sow that fear in Moscow.

• DAN ALTMAN is Associate Professor of Political Science at Georgia State University.

Foreign Affairs · by Dan Altman · June 12, 2024

How can we convince Putin that he will lose his war in Ukraine?

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The West's hardest task in Ukraine: Convincing Putin he's losing

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How to Convince Putin He Will Lose - Foreign Affairs

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Vladimir Putin is still convinced he can outlast the West in Ukraine

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Answer

To convince Putin that he will lose his war in Ukraine, the West needs to demonstrate its unwavering commitment and superior staying power over the long term. Here are some key points:

Ramp up Military Aid

The West must significantly increase military aid to Ukraine, including providing advanced long-range weapons, ammunition, and air defense systems. This will allow Ukraine to degrade Russia's military capabilities and gain the upper hand on the battlefield. Increased weapons production in the West is crucial to sustaining Ukraine's war effort for years to come.Maintain Robust Economic Pressure

Tightening economic sanctions and export controls on Russia is vital to undermine its ability to replenish military equipment and fund the war effort. Seizing frozen Russian assets and providing them to Ukraine could further strain Russia's resources.Demonstrate Political Resolve

The West must send costly signals that leave no doubt about its long-term commitment to Ukraine, such as approving multi-year military and economic aid packages. Overcoming domestic political opposition and maintaining unity among allies is key to outlasting Russia.Prepare for a Protracted Conflict

Putin seems convinced that the West lacks the resolve for a long war of attrition. Changing this perception requires the West to plan for a multi-year conflict and make the necessary investments in military production and economic pressure to prevail.By taking these steps, the West can erode Putin's optimism about Russia's ability to outlast Ukraine and its partners. Ultimately, convincing Putin that he cannot win may be the only way to force him to abandon his maximalist war aims and accept a negotiated settlement on terms acceptable to Ukraine.

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What specific actions can the West take to demonstrate its long-term commitment to supporting Ukraine

Sources

Evaluating the West's Ukraine Strategy in 2024: A Conversation With ...

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If the West wants a sustainable peace it must commit to Ukrainian ...

atlanticcouncil

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The West's hardest task in Ukraine: Convincing Putin he's losing

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Answer

To demonstrate its long-term commitment to supporting Ukraine against Russia's invasion, the West should take the following key actions:

Ramp up Military Aid

The West must significantly increase the supply of advanced weapons systems to Ukraine, including long-range missiles, modern air defense systems, tanks, armored vehicles, and ammunition. This will allow Ukraine to degrade Russia's military capabilities and gain the advantage on the battlefield. Ramping up weapons production in NATO countries is crucial to sustaining Ukraine's war effort for years.Approve Multi-Year Aid Packages

Western allies should approve multi-year military and economic aid packages for Ukraine, sending a costly signal that leaves no doubt about their long-term commitment. This overcomes uncertainty from year-to-year funding and demonstrates the West's willingness to support Ukraine until Russian forces are expelled.

Maintain Robust Economic Pressure

Tightening economic sanctions, export controls, and cracking down on sanctions evasion by Russia is vital to undermine its ability to fund the war and replenish military equipment. Seizing frozen Russian assets and providing the proceeds to Ukraine could further strain Russia's resources.Boost Defense Industrial Capacity

NATO countries must ramp up production of ammunition, artillery, armored vehicles, and other military equipment to account for their own rising needs as well as Ukraine's. Increasing defense industrial capacity is key to avoiding future shortages.

Demonstrate Political Resolve

Overcoming domestic political opposition and maintaining unity among allies is crucial for the West to outlast Russia in a protracted conflict. Vocal support from top leaders and a commitment to Ukraine's ultimate victory over Russian forces is essential.By taking these concrete steps, the West can undermine Putin's belief that it lacks the resolve for a long war of attrition in Ukraine. Demonstrating an unwavering long-term commitment increases pressure on Russia to accept a negotiated settlement on terms favorable to Ukraine.

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How can NATO's unity and staying power be leveraged to influence Putin's decisions

Sources

Putin's War Against Ukraine and the Balance of Power in Europe

carnegieendowment

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A Stronger NATO for a More Dangerous World | Foreign Affairs

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Nato aims for Ukraine unity as Putin watches on - BBC

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NATO can leverage its unity and staying power to influence Putin's decisions on the war in Ukraine in the following ways:

Demonstrate Unwavering Military Support

NATO must significantly ramp up the supply of advanced weapons systems to Ukraine, including long-range missiles, air defense systems, tanks, armored vehicles, and ammunition. This shows Putin that Ukraine will be able to degrade Russia's military capabilities over the long term. Increasing defense industrial capacity in NATO countries is crucial to sustaining this military aid for years.Approve Multi-Year Aid Commitments

NATO allies should approve multi-year packages for military and economic assistance to Ukraine. This sends a costly signal of the West's willingness to support Ukraine until Russian forces are expelled, undermining Putin's belief that the West lacks resolve for a protracted conflict.Maintain Robust Economic Pressure

Tightening economic sanctions, export controls, and cracking down on sanctions evasion by Russia is vital to crippling its ability to fund the war effort and replenish military equipment over time. Seizing Russian assets and providing the proceeds to Ukraine could further strain Russia's resources.Strengthen NATO's Deterrent Posture

NATO may need to shift from a tripwire force to a more robust deterrent posture by increasing its forward military presence along the eastern flank. This demonstrates NATO's ability and willingness to raise the costs of any potential Russian attack on NATO territory.Reiterate Open Door Policy

Reaffirming NATO's open door policy to Ukraine's membership, while setting out a clear pathway, signals to Putin that he cannot veto Kyiv's Euro-Atlantic aspirations through force. Establishing a NATO-Ukraine Council also integrates Ukraine closer into the alliance's decision-making.By taking these concrete steps, NATO can undermine Putin's assumptions about the West's stamina and convince him that Russia cannot outlast the economic, military and political costs of his war in Ukraine over the long run.

13. U.S. Defense of Taiwan Confronts a Powerful Chinese Nuclear Deterrent

Why do we seem so much more afraid of north Korean nuclear weapons than we are of Chinese nuclear capabilities?

U.S. Defense of Taiwan Confronts a Powerful Chinese Nuclear Deterrent

By Julian Spencer-Churchill

June 12, 2024

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2024/06/12/us_defense_of_taiwan_confronts_a_powerful_chinese_nuclear_deterrent_1037499.html?mc_cid=cb3119ca8b&mc_eid=70bf478f36

In a War to Defend Taiwan, the U.S. Will Confront a Powerful Chinese Nuclear Deterrent

In any Taiwan contingency, the U.S. will be confronting a totalitarian China with an unprecedentedly strong nuclear arsenal, and with a major incentive to make limited use of its inventory to assert its regional sphere of influence. Although China’s scandal-plagued strategic nuclear arsenal is far less robust than that of the Soviet Union, American cities are well within reach of a first strike. According to the 2024 IISS, since 2017, China has deployed 36 road-mobile solid-fueled 13,000 km range DF-41 100 meter CEP ICBMs with 10 MiRV-ed warheads and 13,000 km range, which translated, and assuming two warheads per target, China can destroy 180 of the U.S.’s largest cities within 45 minutes of a transpolar launch. Estimates are that this arsenal will increase to 100 DF-41 (and 1,000 warheads in 2030, to 1,500 by 2035), thus 500 U.S. cities. A dated but relevant NRDC study demonstrated the vulnerability of Russian mobile SS-25 nuclear launchers to U.S. counterforce. There are 30 older DF-31, six in silos and 24 road mobile. China possesses another 18 largely symbolic (liquid fueled and poorly unprotected) DF-5 missiles.

In the outbreak of war over Taiwan, it is expected that the U.S. will engage in conventional counter-force attacks, as it had planned to do so against the USSR, before the nuclear threshold is crossed by Beijing. China may be tempted to mimic a cancelled 1969 Soviet program (FOBS: Fractional Orbital Bombardment System), which would deploy slow and therefore cold and difficult to detect orbital nuclear warheads, that would be lobbed from Antarctic and across the Mexican border at US targets. China’s principal deployment effort are two new fields of ICBM silos, which according to Kenneth Waltz (More May be Better - 1981), who has influentially argued that nuclear arsenals engender peace, is a stabilizing development. Scott Sagan, who has made a career of cataloguing human and organizational errors and stupidity in the security field, is far less optimistic.

China also operates six Jin class SSBNs, with at least one on patrol in the South China Sea since 2023. They mostly carry the JL-2 missile, with which to hit the U.S., they would need to survive U.S. anti-submarine systems in the Western Pacific. Some are now equipped with the new JL-3 missile, which can strike the U.S. from the Chinese coast. To avoid being hunted by the U.S., Beijing may negotiate with Moscow to deploy the Jin SSBNs in the Russian Far East bastion of the Sea of Okhotsk. China possesses another 250 nuclear-capable ballistic missiles, cruise and hypersonic vehicles, and a few dozen legacy and project bombers, with regional reach.  

Whether counting total submarines (China: 59, Soviet Union peak 300+), or warheads (China: 410 in 2023, out of a peak of 1,000-2,000, Soviet Union: 55,000), or nuclear tests (U.S.: 1,054, USSR: 715, China: 45, the last in 1996), China is not yet at a nuclear breakout stage. In contrast, the Soviet Union’s trans-continental nuclear missile force surged from zero in 1961 to 1,300 in 1970, and then grew to 1,398 by 1980. There is a debate whether China’s low warhead count was the result of a calculated doctrine of minimum deterrence, as articulated by Jeffrey Lewis, or whether it simply fit with persistent shortcomings with China’s breeder reactor program at the Jiuquan Complex in Xinjiang, that limited plutonium production.

China is well aware that once the dedicated infrastructure is in place, thermonuclear nuclear weapons are inexpensive (even if we include the historical thirty percent environmental clean-up surcharge), and easily mass produced. Based on the 70,299 nuclear warheads manufactured by the US between 1945 and 1994, nuclear warhead manufacture cost only 7% of the U.S. nuclear forces budget (average warhead cost of $4.8 million in 1998 USD, or the cost of a pair of tanks), and 14% for delivery systems (missiles, bombers, and submarines). Over half of the U.S. strategic budget was for salaries and overhead. Between 1959 and 1961, the U.S. manufactured a single nuclear warhead every 50 minutes. It was concern over this ease of manufacture that led the U.S. and Soviet Union to cooperate in supporting the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty and to block the sharing of nuclear weapons technology. Neither one wanted Germany or Japan to possess an unsupervised nuclear arsenal, let alone Sweden, Argentina, Iraq or South Korea. China agreed to a similar de facto arrangement, in exchange for cooperating to keep Iran from crossing the threshold. China is aware that Japan possesses a rapidly expandable uranium enrichment and breeder reactor, and a vastly larger stockpile of separated plutonium stocks, enough for between several hundred to a thousand warheads. In 2015, Japan initiated a solid-fuel missile program on the island of Tanegashima, with U.S. help, the preferred launch system for a warhead, and an unnecessarily expensive rocket for civilian purposes.

While some have argued for exceptionalism in Chinese nuclear strategy, it is far more likely that China recognizes that a large warhead stockpile enables reserves for crisis brinkmanship, post-exchange bargaining for war-termination, and provides for general deterrence (which is having an arsenal so large that it disincentivizes regional attempts to match China’s arsenal, in the same way an overwhelming U.S. arsenal dissuades Mexico and Brazil). China has been able to draw insights from nuclear debates for over a century now. John Toland confirmed through his interviews that Adolf Hitler was aware of atomic weapons technology. He was likely informed of H.G. Wells’ vivid description of a nuclear war in his 1913 book, written before even the First World War (The World Set Free). The most influential academic nuclear strategist, naval historian Bernard Brodie (The Absolute Weapon - 1946) argued that given the impossibility of a practical defense, a hidden second-strike arsenal would make deterrence exceptionally robust.

Thomas Schelling (Arms and Influence - 1966) made the point that there was no strategic advantage in fighting nuclear war quickly, as implied by a Lanchester modelling of nuclear war as a counterforce artillery exchange, since two sides needed time to negotiate to avoid mutual annihilation. The most influential nuclear strategist among those in the military responsible for counterforce planning is William Borden (There Will be No Time - 1946), who correctly predicted large arsenals and the logic of the pursuit of nuclear superiority, and argued that cities would be attacked last, not first, since they were large and highly unlikely to move. Napoleon only shelled Vienna to coerce the Austrians to submit, because they uncharacteristically refused to surrender after their defeat at the 1809 Battle of Wagram.

The problem is that China’s aggressive sabre-rattling may be a symptom of self-delusion that a small arsenal is sufficient to coerce its neighbors and deter U.S. intervention on the Asian littoral. It took the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis to alert the Soviet leadership of the dangers of nuclear adventurism and the reality of the shared risk, especially with limited capabilities.

China will not have a large stockpile of tactical nuclear weapons for at least a decade, and so any demonstrative use of nuclear weapons during a conflict over Taiwan will be drawn from its small regional arsenal of perhaps less than 200 warheads. If the U.S. defends Taiwan by attacking Chinese forces, either from bases in the Philippines or on Taiwan itself, Beijing is under the risk that a stability-instability paradox phenomenon (making war “safe” at the conventional level) will neutralize its arsenal of nuclear weapons, giving Beijing a large incentive to restore instability by conducting a single or small-scale nuclear attack. China will in all likelihood confine its nuclear strikes to Taiwan and the surrounding waters and islands, perhaps including U.S. bases in the Philippines and Okinawa. The U.S. needs to prepare and rehearse commensurate responses, the most obvious target being concentrations of PLAN amphibious vessels, logistics depots on Taiwan, or the principal beachhead seized by Chinese marines. 

It is in the U.S. interest, because of the superior resources available to it and its allies after a blockade of China, that any conflict over Taiwan remain non-nuclear, even at the risk of temporarily losing Taiwan to China. Unlike the huge economic loss resulting from a Soviet conquest of West Germany and occupation of the Rhur Valley, which justified initiating a nuclear conflict on the Rhine or even at the East German border, Taiwan is not economically crucial. The loss of smaller democracies to totalitarian occupation or conquest, like Czechoslovakia in March of 1939, or Hong Kong in 1997, can eventually be reversed given a coherent containment strategy targeting China. The long-term advantage that democratic states have in forming overwhelming economic and military coalitions, as compared with the loosely-coordinated coterie of Russia-China-Iran, would be lost by the costs of a strategic countervalue nuclear war.

Dr. Julian Spencer-Churchill is associate professor of international relations at Concordia University, and author of Militarization and War (2007) and of Strategic Nuclear Sharing (2014). He has published extensively on Pakistan security issues and arms control, and completed research contracts at the Office of Treaty Verification at the Office of the Secretary of the Navy, and the then Ballistic Missile Defense Office (BMDO). He has also conducted fieldwork in Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, and Egypt, and is a consultant. He is a former Operations Officer, 3 Field Engineer Regiment, from the latter end of the Cold War to shortly after 9/11.

14. Selecting Generals and Admirals Who can Fight and Stay out of Jail

Who can be part of the "eclectic group?" Who will be those men and women behind the curtain? Will we have a Star Chamber?

Excerpts:

This leads to the question of who should pass judgement on these prospective senior combat leaders? I would recommend an eclectic group of retired senior commanders with proven combat experience and unquestioned integrity as well as former government officials with similar qualifications. These would include ambassadors who have had to manage crisis situations requiring interaction with the military, along with respected retired senior enlisted personnel.

No screening process is foolproof, but I like to think that such an approach might well catch the Admiral Burke's out there as well as the curious schemes of general officers who believe that putting Marine Corps platoons on remote islands in the South China Sea armed with anti-ship missiles will defeat the Chinese Navy is a nifty idea. It might even produce better leaders than the military moral cowards who acceded to the State Department's demand to use Karzai Airport as the key evacuation site for Afghanistan in 2021. Congress has allowed our senior military leadership to go off the rails. The 21st century has seen an almost unbroken decline in military competence and moral integrity. If the members of Congress do not seriously address it, they – not just the military – will be guilty of dereliction of duty.

Selecting Generals and Admirals Who can Fight and Stay out of Jail

By Gary Anderson

June 12, 2024

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2024/06/12/selecting_generals_and_admirals_who_can_fight_and_stay_out_of_jail_1037579.html?mc_cid=cb3119ca8b&mc_eid=70bf478f36

Photo: The General Board (shown here in 1932) was part of an interwar learning campaign, which also included the Chief of Naval Operations, naval intelligence, the Naval War College, and fleet commanders.

U.S. Naval Institute Photo ArchiveThe recent arrest of Admiral Robert Burke on corruption charges is an indication of the decline in the quality and integrity of our general and flag officers (GFOs) to an alarming degree. To remedy this decline, Congress needs to re-evaluate how we GFOs. Since retiring from active duty in 2000, I have known several military officers who achieved flag or general officer rank and for a disturbing number of them, I would not follow into a pillow fight, much less armed combat. Too many reached that rank by being skilled bureaucrats, not making enemies, and keeping superiors happy.

An alarming number led our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, not all were ineffectual, but too many were. That does not mean that they were bad officers, many are accomplished managers and technocrats who have done great service for their country, and we need them to keep our complex war machine running. For example, General Leslie Groves, who managed the Manhattan Project that developed the Atomic Bomb would have been a mediocre combat leader, but his managerial skills and judgment were superb. But how to we ensure that our GFOs possess the warfighting and leadership skill necessary to lead our military.

It takes a special set of skills to be an effective combatant commander. This is particularly true in today's complex environment where civilians are often used as human shields. We need a way to identify those potential GFOs who are fit to command in combat from the division level to theater command from those who should manage offices at the Pentagon and other high-level staff positions. The "One size fits all" GFO selection needs to be replaced.

To start, officers selected to attend war colleges are those the services consider to be potential candidates for higher level command. They are the officers at the 0-5 (Lieutenant Colonel/Commander) rank who have successfully commanded at the battalion/warship level or an equivalent command in logistics or support activities. The logisticians and other service support personnel need not be discussed here as they are the future leaders in the tradition of Groves. Selection of GFO level combatant commanders should begin at the war college level.

War colleges are the places where high level military operations and strategy intersect with civilian political policy making to craft our nation’s grand strategy. This needs to be the core of what is taught at this level, however, what should change is that those officers who desire to be considered for GFO rank combatant command should be held behind for a month of intensive command screening through a series of war games and role playing simulations where the candidate combat flag officers would be required to make difficult decisions under time constraints and with incomplete information. They should also be able to defend their reasoning through tough questioning, some people simply cannot do that. The inability to make tough decisions under pressure need not be career ending. Those who cannot stand up to the rigor, but who have records good enough to be selected for war college should be given a staff or non-combat command track. Those who survive the screening process should go on to command regiments, brigades, air groups, and naval strike groups. If they are successful at that level, then they should be considered for GFO level combatant command.

Such exercises should not be limited to operational and military strategic decisions, they should also examine the moral courage of the candidate. Tough decisions under the pressure of legal and operational uncertainty yield a great deal about a candidate’s character. Along with hard choices regarding purely operational and military decisions, the candidates should be required to make moral judgments in nearly impossible situations. 

If this sounds to informed readers like the old German General staff selection system, it is but with one significant difference. Candidates would also be required to consider the moral, legal, and international diplomatic ramifications of their decisions. That is the kind of filter that the Germans lacked in their disastrous decisions to violate Belgian neutrality in the von Schlieffen Plan and to undertaking unlimited submarine warfare during World War I.

The screening process should have two capstone exercises. The first should be a "Kobayashi Maru" test where the candidate officer is asked to choose between a series of equally bad courses of action or formulate his or her own. For readers not familiar with STAR TREK, the Kobayashi Maru scenario is given to Star Fleet Academy cadets who are put in a "no win" situation and required to make the best of it. The candidates are given several suboptimal courses of action to choose from or to devise an alternate plan of their own. It is a test of character as well as strategy or tactics. The second exercise would be one where the candidate is given an order by civilian authorities that is illegal, immoral, or simply foolish. There are no right or wrong answers to such situations, but how the candidate handles them under pressure will tell a great deal about the moral courage of the prospective general or admiral. 

This leads to the question of who should pass judgement on these prospective senior combat leaders? I would recommend an eclectic group of retired senior commanders with proven combat experience and unquestioned integrity as well as former government officials with similar qualifications. These would include ambassadors who have had to manage crisis situations requiring interaction with the military, along with respected retired senior enlisted personnel. 

No screening process is foolproof, but I like to think that such an approach might well catch the Admiral Burke's out there as well as the curious schemes of general officers who believe that putting Marine Corps platoons on remote islands in the South China Sea armed with anti-ship missiles will defeat the Chinese Navy is a nifty idea. It might even produce better leaders than the military moral cowards who acceded to the State Department's demand to use Karzai Airport as the key evacuation site for Afghanistan in 2021. Congress has allowed our senior military leadership to go off the rails. The 21st century has seen an almost unbroken decline in military competence and moral integrity. If the members of Congress do not seriously address it, they – not just the military – will be guilty of dereliction of duty.

Gary Anderson retired as Chief of Staff of the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab. He served as a civilian State Department officer in Iraq and Afghanistan and as a Special Advisor to the Deputy Secretary of Defense. He lectures at the George Washington University's Elliott Scholl of International Affairs.

15. China’s overseas bases aren’t a big threat—yet: RAND

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery?

The 36 page RAND report can be downloaded here: https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RRA1800/RRA1800-2/RAND_RRA1800-2.pdf

China’s overseas bases aren’t a big threat—yet: RAND

But Beijing is looking to add to its footprint, from Asia to Africa to the Mideast.

BY PATRICK TUCKER

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY EDITOR, DEFENSE ONE

JUNE 11, 2024 07:32 PM ET

defenseone.com · by Patrick Tucker

China’s growing interest in opening more military bases abroad does not pose a big threat to U.S. forces in the next six years, RAND concludes in a new report out Monday. China is not well positioned to build foreign bases or run them in a way that will improve their ability to contest U.S. naval power.

In 2017, China established a logistics support base in Djibouti on the Horn of Africa. “Houthi militants’ current attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea and a renewed attack by pirates on shipping in the waters off Somalia have once again validated the strategic value of Djibouti and ensuring adjacent sea lines of communication such as the Bab al Mandab Strait remain navigable,” Henry Tugendhat of the United States Institute of Peace noted in January.

But according to a 2021 Defense Department assessment, the Djibouti pier China is building is large enough to support vessels like submarines and even aircraft carriers, which are not the sorts of vessels used for counter-piracy or humanitarian assistance.

Instead, the effort is likely part of an effort by China to expand its overseas basing—the Chinese government has been looking to ink agreements in Cambodia, Equatorial Guinea, Namibia, the Solomon Islands, the United Arab Emirates, and Vanuatu, among other locations, according to RAND.

“Recent PLA research on overseas bases describes the ability to project power and win potentially protracted wars in distant theaters as a vital but likely still-distant capability. PLA researchers note the ‘leading premise’ of military construction in general is ensuring victory in war by providing strong supports that enable PLA combat effectiveness,” notes RAND.

Considering China’s navy is already larger than that of the United States and is expected to reach 435 ships in 2030, an increase in overseas basing could–in theory–allow China to contest U.S. naval power virtually anywhere. But according to RAND, China has a ways to go before it can build or use such bases in a way that will really challenge U.S. dominance.

One reason is that China doesn’t have the same sort of sophisticated command and control structures overseas that the United States does.

“PLA researchers describe current overseas command structures as piecemeal and uncoordinated. As of this writing, overseas operations, such as the PLA Navy’s anti-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden, appear to be under the command of individual service headquarters, not a joint command structure,” the report authors write.

China also isn’t good at building bases outside of China. Chinese researchers themselves have determined that “existing Chinese base-building and hardening techniques, which developed from constructing domestic bases in China, are overly dependent on China’s geological features; locally plentiful resources, such as concrete and steel; and sweeping government permissions to harden structures by building deeper underground.”

China’s external relations with host countries are also more limited than those of the United States with partners abroad, as China’s are based largely on loans and less on deep military-to-military relationships. That would be problematic if China needs to use foreign bases for sustained combat operations, since it’s often a challenge for the United States, even with good existing relationships with the host country.

“U.S. military access to its overseas bases was easier for noncontroversial operations, such as [humanitarian assistance / disaster recovery], but became particularly fraught when access was requested to conduct combat operations. There is no reason to expect that China will not face similar challenges,” according to the report.

Perhaps for that reason, the researchers didn’t find any PLA writing that describes conducting military operations from overseas bases aimed at the United States. But, the report notes, “This gap in the literature may arise from the PLA’s recognition of the political challenge of gaining host country support for basing offensive fires abroad.”

That may be reassuring as the U.S.struggles to rebuild its fleet to better counter China across the globe. But the report’s authors caution against complacency on the issue. The threat of Chinese foreign bases is “unlikely to manifest into a significant wartime threat to U.S. operations through at least 2030. Still, a network of overseas bases could pose indirect security challenges to the United States by complicating U.S. defense planning in the highly insecure and conflict-prone countries,” they note.

defenseone.com · by Patrick Tucker

16. How a U.S.-Saudi Deal Could Reshape the Middle East

How a U.S.-Saudi Deal Could Reshape the Middle East

https://www.thecipherbrief.com/how-a-u-s-saudi-deal-could-reshape-the-middle-east?utm

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh on April 29, 2024. (Photo by EVELYN HOCKSTEIN/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

Posted: June 12th, 2024

By The Cipher Brief

SUBSCRIBER+ EXCLUSIVE ANALYSIS — It’s a tantalizing dream for diplomats and longtime observers of the Middle East: A grand bargain that would normalize relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel, pause or end the war in Gaza, and deliver at least a roadmap to a Palestinian state. It’s also widely seen as a non-starter for the current Israeli government – and with that in mind, the U.S. is now pursuing a major strategic arrangement of its own with Saudi Arabia.

The two countries are reportedly close to finalizing a deal that would include U.S. security commitments to Saudi Arabia, a deepening U.S. military presence in the region and the cementing of a relationship that could serve as a bulwark against Iran as well as growing Chinese and Russian influence in the region. There are also economic benefits to be had for both nations – including civilian nuclear assistance for Saudi Arabia – as well as the prospect of pursuing that broader arrangement with Israel once this deal is done.

Saudi Arabia’s leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, met with White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan in Dhahran last month to discuss what the Saudi state news agency called a “semi-final” draft of a deal between the two countries. 

The U.S. and Saudi Arabia have a decades-long relationship that dates to the administration of Franklin Roosevelt, and has taken dramatic turns in recent years. Following the 2018 murder of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi – a killing which the U.S. intelligence community determined had been ordered by Mohammad bin Salman – then-candidate Joe Biden vowed to make bin Salman a “pariah”; but as president, Biden has resumed a close relationship with the Saudi leader. The proposed deal would conclude a remarkable return for bin Salman to the good graces of the White House. 

Hurdles remain – not only in the particulars of the arrangement, but also the political reaction, particularly in Washington.

The Cipher Brief spoke about the possible deal with Gary Grappo, a former U.S. Ambassador to Oman and Deputy Chief of Mission in Saudi Arabia, and Norman Roule, a Cipher Brief expert who served as National Intelligence Manager for Iran at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Both are Cipher Brief experts, and in conversations with Cipher Brief Managing Editor Tom Nagorski, both said a U.S.-Saudi deal was well worth pursuing.

“It’s exactly what we should do to build for the next century,” Roule said, given the economic benefits and the regional threat from Iran and its proxies. Ambassador Grappo called the deal “a win-win for the US and Saudi Arabia,” and a “win-win-win” should Israel ultimately be brought in to a broader agreement.

THE CONTEXT

• The U.S. and Saudi Arabia have reached a “near final set of arrangements” for a potential defense deal that includes security guarantees and cooperation on a civilian nuclear program, officials say.
• President Joe Biden’s national security advisor Jake Sullivan met with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in mid-May to discuss the “semi-final” version of the U.S.-Saudi deal. Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with the de facto Saudi leader about the deal in late April.
• The pact aims to ultimately include Saudi-Israeli normalization, but Riyadh says this is dependent on a ceasefire in Gaza and the establishment of a path to a Palestinian state. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said such a move “would be the greatest reward for the terrorists.”

THE INTERVIEWS

Norman T. Roule

Norman T. Roule is a geopolitical and energy consultant who served for 34 years in the Central Intelligence Agency, managing numerous programs relating to Iran and the Middle East. He served as the National Intelligence Manager for Iran (NIM-I) at the ODNI from 2008 until 2017. As NIM-I, he was the principal Intelligence Community (IC) official responsible for overseeing all aspects of national intelligence policy and activities related to Iran, to include IC engagement on Iran issues with senior policymakers in the National Security Council and the Department of State. Roule is a non-resident senior adviser with the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and an advisor to United Against Nuclear Iran and the Counter Extremism Project, and a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Gary Grappo

Gary Grappo is a former U.S. ambassador who held senior positions including Minister Counselor for Political Affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad; U.S. Ambassador to the Sultanate of Oman; and Charge d’Affaires and Deputy Chief of Mission of the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. As a career member of the Senior Foreign Service of the U.S. Department of State, he served as Envoy and Head of Mission of the Office of the Quartet Representative, the Honorable Mr. Tony Blair, in Jerusalem. He’s currently a Distinguished Fellow at the Center for Middle East Studies at the Korbel School for International Studies, University of Denver.

The Cipher Brief: Given the already robust relationship between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, why pursue this deal now?

Roule: In the many decades since President Roosevelt and (Saudi) King Abdul Aziz bonded together during their meetings on the USS Quincy on the Great Bitter Lake along the Suez Canal in February 1945, the relationship has endured multiple and dramatically different tectonic tests. 

The difficulty is that much of the U.S.-Saudi relationship has been conducted in quiet, but highly consequential, diplomatic and economic discussions involving the seniormost policymakers on each side.

American policymakers have repeatedly told the Saudis that we would remember their diplomatic and economic contributions to U.S. national security. We would stand with them in their time of need. The perception (in Saudi Arabia) is that over the last decade, we have failed to live up to these promises. So the strategic agreement between Washington and Riyadh is a new foundation for an old relationship, in which each side can gain predictability in an increasingly unpredictable world.

Grappo: It was interesting that Biden picked this up given the comments he had made about Mohammed bin Salman during his campaign, the claim of his being a “pariah” and so forth. But Biden realistically understood the critical importance of the Saudi relationship to the United States and vice versa, and swallowed the bitter pill and went to Saudi Arabia and patched over – or at least was able to restart – that relationship between the two heads of state, which is what Saudi Kings and U.S. presidents have enjoyed going back to the time of Roosevelt.

The Biden administration saw an opportunity to build on the Abraham Accords that had been begun by the Trump administration, now with the granddaddy of them all, which is Saudi Arabia. And what this agreement was supposed to imply, but would be difficult to state, is that the U.S. nuclear umbrella would be extended to Saudi Arabia. We officially have never even done that for a country like Japan or South Korea – two stalwart democracies and extremely close allies with whom we have formal security agreements.

So this would’ve been something quite different than anything we’ve done in the past. And that probably caused some heartburn among some members of Congress in both parties. But at that time, the desire, the ambition was the three-part deal (between the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Israel).

And then of course this whole effort ran into very stiff winds with the eruption of the war in Gaza. These negotiations, and the fact that these three countries were close to achieving this, was without question a factor in the timing for the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7th. Hamas saw the Palestinian issue slipping away in terms of being an issue of importance and relevance to other Arab leaders of the Middle East, most important being Saudi Arabia.

So now, looking at what has occurred since then, the question has arisen: Well, could this deal happen without the Israeli normalization component?

The Cipher Brief: What’s in it for the U.S.?

Grappo: We are now in an era of great power competition, and the Middle East is very much in play without any doubt. The United States no longer has — I hesitate to use this word because I don’t think it ever existed, but many others use it — the kind of hegemonic control, or influence, that we once had.

And that’s not necessarily because of a waning of the power of the United States, but the rise in power and influence of so many other players. China especially. To a certain extent, Russia, and then the regional players, to include the UAE, Turkey and of course Iran. And for that reason, I think the Biden administration did a pragmatic and realistic assessment of U.S. interests in the Middle East in this new era and basically reaffirmed the necessity of a strong US-Saudi relationship.

It would mean commitments that would be difficult for any administration to make, because if you’re talking about a security guarantee in the literal sense, of the sort that we have with our NATO partners, that has to go before Congress. And Congress would certainly bolt at providing a security guarantee for a country which shares very few values of the United States. We share lots of interests of course – but values? They’re few and far between. That’s a real obstacle for members of Congress, and even some within the administration. Saudi Arabia is not a democracy and shows no signs of becoming one in the near- to medium-term future. On the other hand, they have been liberalizing, and it’s kind of impressive to see what they have done.

There are genuine interests that will be served for the United States, mostly in the area of securing a relationship with one of the strongest and most influential countries in the Middle East.

Iran has formed this axis with China, Russia, and to a certain extent North Korea, that poses real dangers to not only Saudi Arabia, but to the United States. So securing a strong security relationship with Saudi Arabia has now become a priority for this administration. And I think it’s a prudent one.

Roule: The kingdom has stated publicly, along with other regional leaders, that in recent years, there’s a sense that Washington approaches them with some pretty heavy requests, and explains why this is in the interest of Washington but doesn’t do much to explain why this is in the interest of the region.

A good example would be that the U.S. pressed the region to reduce its trade cooperation with Iran, and they did so, and the U.S. then behind the region’s back negotiated the JCPOA (the Iran nuclear deal), and offered to meet then-President Rouhani (of Iran) at the UN.

We now ask them to reduce their relationship with Russia. And there are many in the region who say, Look, how do we know that the moment we cut our trade by 90%, which was the case with one important partner, that we’re not going to find out the next week that someone in Washington has hit the reset button and we’ve taken this enormous economic hit and you haven’t?

So you need to develop this relationship if we’re going to ask people to carry the water for us to do heavy-lift projects. And now there’s a sense that an agreement would allow each side the confidence that the other is going to be there in time of need.

The Cipher Brief: What does Saudi Arabia stand to gain?

Roule: Stability, predictability, a sense of strategic proportionality in the relationship. The kingdom, like most of the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council), particularly the United Arab Emirates, places their investments in the United States. The kingdom sends their students to study in the United States. They’re looking to maintain a tight relationship with Washington. But they’re trying to make sure the relationship is sustained and won’t fall victim to every fresh administration and every fresh political trend in the United States. 

It’s no secret that at the beginning of the Biden administration, the Biden team had a very public and very negative view of Saudi Arabia, and not just Saudi leadership. Now you see the administration with a very positive view of Saudi Arabia and its leadership and asking the leadership to undertake actions regarding Israel, Iran, Russia, Sudan, Africa, China technology. 

The idea that you go from one extreme to the other within one administration is extraordinarily frustrating. And for foreign policymakers, in this case Saudi Arabia, an agreement would allow them to get past much of that, although there will certainly be disagreements in the future. Each country will make mistakes that will need to be addressed, but the strategic foundation of the relationship won’t be threatened.

The Cipher Brief: How would this deal expand on existing defense ties between the two countries?

Roule: The language for this agreement is probably going to be similar to language the United States has with other partners, namely Japan, South Korea or the Organization of American States, that does not commit each country to go to war in case of a security threat. That’s really important to understand.

I have not seen the agreement, but it’s unlikely to say that if an Iranian missile attacks (Saudi Arabia), then we’re at war the next day with Iran – if only because our constitution places that authority in the hands of Congress. The administration cannot commit to that. That’s a congressional decision. But we would foster defensive assistance, and it would be an environment where we would have more difficulty cutting off defensive weapons in time of conflict simply because one political party or another in the United States feels that that may suit their narrative.

Grappo: It has been an unwritten understanding that if Saudi Arabia is threatened by an outside power, the United States would take action on behalf of Saudi Arabia. And we saw that in the case of the first Gulf War. I went to Saudi Arabia shortly after that and it was impressive to note the impression that left on the Saudi people, the fact that we responded, engaged, and when we were done, job complete, Saddam (Hussein) had been expelled from Kuwait, we picked up our troops and went home, which is exactly what they wanted. And they were impressed by that. We didn’t hang around to kind of exert any undue influence because of a U.S. military presence.

We have a longstanding military training agreement with the Saudis. What would be different? Basing, for example – I don’t think the Saudis would be interested in that on a permanent basis, but on an emergency basis, such as what we did during the first Gulf War, it’s likely that we reach some understandings there. Warehousing facilities for U.S. equipment, enhanced training and exercise schedules – all those things are potentially on the table. There’s a lot that the United States could do and a lot that the Saudis would be interested in having.

The Cipher Brief: What about the nuclear aspect of this deal?

Roule: The kingdom has the same interest in alternative green energy sources as any other country, and that means they have an interest in nuclear power. Next, the kingdom has stated – like every other country – they won’t accept any constraints on the nuclear program that are unreasonable. And they define that as, if you’ve given Iran — a country that has killed and continues to kill Americans — the right to do something, we want the same thing.

The kingdom sees itself as an exporter of energy, not oil, and inherently that will include nuclear fuel. Multiple countries have offered to sell the kingdom nuclear power infrastructure to include enrichment with fewer or no strings – Russia and China have offered the kingdom nuclear power and they have said, We will have few strings on how you use this.

The kingdom has stated that it has no interest in nuclear weapons, but if Iran builds a nuclear weapons program, it’s going to consider doing the same thing.

Our interest is the danger of proliferation, and that means the constraint or management of the enrichment process. The good news is the kingdom seeks U.S. partnership and U.S. technology, and the kingdom’s leadership has stated to the U.S. government that they’re willing to structure that program to satisfy our concerns. I feel confident that an arrangement will be worked out that will meet our respective objectives, but there will be those in Washington who – not unreasonably – oppose an expansion of enrichment processes and continue to believe this agreement is a bad idea.

Grappo: The sharing of nuclear technology is likely to be a sticking point with Congress. It can be overcome, but we would require the Saudis to submit to the same sort of constraints that we ask of other countries with which we share nuclear technology. That is a rigorous inspection regime, likely to be enforced and administered by the IAEA. But it does gain them access to quite a bit of non-weapons-related nuclear technology that could potentially be weaponized under the wrong circumstances.

It’s a potential point of contention, but one that is more easily overcome in my view than the nuclear umbrella, if that were to be in the offering. 

The Cipher Brief: How much of an impact does China’s influence in the Middle East have on this deal?

Grappo: We’re certainly not going to be able to put any constraints on [Saudi Arabia’s] economic relations with China, nor should we even try to do that. China relies heavily on Saudi Arabia for its natural resources and will continue to do so, although it has a similar dependency on Iran and a growing one with Russia. 

But there is something of a natural economic relationship to be had on the part of both countries, and we should not attempt to put constraints on that, with the exception probably of some technology exchange.

But the main concern is on the security side – that Saudi Arabia is not going to turn to China sometime in the future, to play the role the United States has historically played in terms of security, not only in Saudi Arabia but in the Middle East.

Roule: China is essentially a geoeconomic or geocommercial partner. The United States is in essence a geosecurity or geostrategic partner. We therefore respond very differently to events. China has been the Gulf’s primary trade partner since about 2014. The U.S. isn’t going to stop that. This agreement isn’t going to change that. And the U.S. has never said we want the Gulf to stop selling oil to China.

So the idea with China is mainly a technological hedge, and it’s getting ahead of certain issues where the import of Chinese information technology compromises some of our national security issues.

The Cipher Brief: Ultimately, is this a good deal? Would you recommend leaders in Washington and Riyadh go for it?

Grappo: In principle I would say most definitely. This is in the interest of all countries, including Israel. If that piece of it could be worked going forward, it’s definitely for all three countries a win-win-win. And if we can’t do the Israeli component now, it’s still a win-win for the US and Saudi Arabia.

Roule: It’s exactly what we should do to build for the next century. It will allow us to shape the current environment. In a multipolar world where we have Iranian proxies throughout the Middle East and Russian proxies throughout Africa and China, putting islands of aggression throughout the Pacific, you need to create almost counter islands of stability and economic growth. The Gulf has got that capital and western technology, and they’re a natural partner and they have a natural interest to do that, and we have a natural reason to cooperate with them. But you need this foundation, the strategic foundation to enable that to take place in a way that involves trust and reliability.

Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief. 

​17. A Requiem for Hyperglobalization

Excerpts:

By joining the West in repudiating globalization, however, developing countries—especially larger emerging economies—have become complicit in biting the hand that fed them. And some Western progressives have swapped their cosmopolitanism for nationalism without much discomfort or remorse, justifying this shift on the doubtful grounds that globalization harmed developing countries. These days, the demise of hyperglobalization is often met with relief, even celebration.

But the world, and especially developing countries, may well look back on it and the era of convergence it underwrote more elegiacally, the sense of loss compounded by the guilt that perhaps not enough was done to defend it. Hyperglobalization’s death ought to elicit mixed feelings—if not lamentation, then at least not cheerleading. It is open to debate whether protectionist measures by industrialized economies will help to combat climate change or reduce dependence on or conflict with China. But for developing countries, hyperglobalization undoubtedly played a critical role in their post-Cold War economic renaissance. The alternative to hyperglobalization—developing economies become locked into regional and geopolitical trading blocs and struggle to exit from commodity dependence and tap into the more dynamic manufacturing and services sectors—may well prove worse.

No single tariff or trade dispute can determine the economic future of today’s developing economies. But broad strategic vision matters. Economic and political elites must decide whether a more integrated, globalized world is still an intermediate goal worth pursuing or whether globalization’s usefulness has passed. The architects of the world’s economic future must take a moment from their hyperfocus on great-power competition to look at things from developing countries’ perspective. The stunning nature of convergence illuminates the enormity of what has been lost: developing countries, as a group, broke from a 500-year pattern of development; then, for a few brief decades, that historical trend was arrested. Global inequality fell, and the consequences for human welfare were enormous. Just for having been a handmaiden in that extraordinary outcome, hyperglobalization deserves—if not three—at least two cheers.

A Requiem for Hyperglobalization

Why the World Will Miss History’s Greatest Economic Miracle

By Dev Patel, Justin Sandefur, and Arvind Subramanian

June 12, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by Dev Patel, Justin Sandefur, and Arvind Subramanian · June 12, 2024

The Berlin Wall’s fall was a unique moment in geopolitical history, ushering in an era of unipolarity as the United States became the world’s hegemon. But it also heralded an unprecedented economic phenomenon: convergence. As early as the fifteenth century, formerly prosperous societies from Mesoamerica to China suffered reversals of fortune, falling—or being pushed—behind the West. With the advent of the industrial revolution, growth rates in rich and poor nations diverged even further. But as the Cold War drew to a close, this grim historical pattern broke and developing countries started growing faster. Within another decade, they began catching up, albeit slowly, with living standards in the rich West.

Some poorer economies had already experienced success in the twentieth century—South Korea and Taiwan prospered beginning in the 1960s, followed by Indonesia, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Thailand. But the era of convergence that began around 1990 stands out for its ubiquity of remarkable growth, extending to a plurality of developing countries. As a group, they started reversing their previously bleak economic fortunes. The world saw a historic decline in poverty not just in China and India but also in Latin America and, starting in the mid-1990s, in sub-Saharan Africa.

Every country pursued unique policy choices. But although ideology and favorable macroeconomic conditions helped power this astonishing era of convergence, arguably the most important factor was hyperglobalization, the rapid increase in trading opportunities beginning in the late 1980s. It is uncanny how convergence coincided in timing with hyperglobalization: they began together in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when developing countries became more exposed to trade and then started growing faster than their rich counterparts. Hyperglobalization and convergence also peaked together. And since the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, both phenomena appear to be coming to an end. As a share of GDP, developing countries’ trade has returned to where it stood at the start of the twenty-first century, and developing economies have started growing more slowly than advanced ones—returning to the pattern that dominated until the late 1980s.

Economists and politicians alike have concluded that hyperglobalization was responsible for rising domestic inequality and the loss of manufacturing jobs in the West, often ignoring its role in reducing inequality between rich and poor countries. Newer concerns about national security and vulnerable supply chains are pushing rich countries toward protectionist measures to combat China’s rise and, in particular, its dominance in critical technologies and products. The leaders of developing countries—responding in kind or mimicking policy fads in the West—have enacted their own raft of protectionist measures.

But all of these actors should pause before they turn their backs on hyperglobalization. The world will survive a U.S.-Chinese trade war. But it will become poorer and more unequal if it abandons the medium-term goal of achieving a more integrated global trading regime. Hyperglobalization’s total demise could mark a dangerous retreat from the policies that underpinned history’s most golden period of economic development.

WARP SPEED

Globalization occurs when the international flows of goods, services, capital, technology, and ideas experience a rapid increase. Hyperglobalization is simply globalization on steroids. Beginning in the late 1980s, three critical factors drove a truly exponential rise in these flows: a rapid decline in the cost of transporting goods and communicating across borders, political leaders’ embrace of more globalization-friendly policies; and perhaps most fundamentally, the end of the Cold War. That historical event seemed to promise an international environment in which the risk of war and geopolitical conflict was lower—a Pax Americana.

Hyperglobalization was perhaps the most important enabler of the convergence that occurred between the fortunes of rich and poor countries between 1990 and 2020. In the course of conducting research published in the Journal of Development Economics in 2021, we discovered that this convergence reflected three distinct and related phenomena: faster growth in poorer countries; less volatility in domestic countries’ economic growth rates, suggesting that poor nations were becoming less vulnerable to economic shocks; and particularly stellar and steady growth by middle-income countries, belying the assumption that such countries would struggle to grow once they crossed a certain income-per-capita threshold (the so-called middle-income trap).

It is a common view that after the Berlin Wall fell, developing countries—sometimes on their own and often directed by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank—turned toward neoliberal economic policies. Reaganite and Thatcherite economic philosophies spread southward, this argument goes. But in truth, developing countries’ policy shifts were as much a nod to common sense as they were a Damascene conversion to a new neoliberal ideology. In the three decades before the Berlin Wall’s fall, many postcolonial developing countries had adopted reckless and populist macroeconomic policies that led to crises and instability; implemented overly complex trade, interest, and exchange-rate policies that fostered corruption and inefficiency; and sought to prop up loss-making state-affiliated companies. By the end of the Cold War, the evidence of these policies’ damage was glaring. The majority of developing countries began to follow a variant of U.S. President Barack Obama’s famous foreign policy dictum: “Don’t do stupid shit.” They turned toward the private sector, markets, and trade, abandoning the more heavy-handed statist policies that had in many cases delivered only stagnation.

The external environment also helped. Beginning in the 1980s, interest rates in rich countries started falling, in line with inflation. By the turn of the twenty-first century, low interest rates had become entrenched. This meant that developing countries could access cheap finance for infrastructure and other investments as global capital’s appetite to seek returns in poorer countries escalated.

But hyperglobalization was the key driver. In the era of rapid growth, nearly every country expanded trade. Most famously, China and India—followed by Vietnam and Bangladesh—experienced economic-growth miracles on the back of rapid growth in their exports and trade, in manufacturing in the case of China and East Asia and in services in the case of India. Commodity exporters, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, benefited from a surge in commodity prices, itself induced by China’s rapid growth and its voracious demand for oil, copper, iron, and other minerals.

HERD THINKING

After 2020, however, hyperglobalization halted. Even allowing for Brad Setser’s contention in Foreign Affairs that China and the United States are not decoupling and that globalization continues apace, it is clear that for developing countries writ large, the ratio of trade to GDP is declining. Convergence has stalled, too. In the wake of the 2008–9 global financial crisis, the differential between rich and poor countries’ growth rates began to narrow. But convergence truly ended after 2020, when rich countries’ growth rates again began to exceed those of developing countries. It is possible this shift in economic fortunes will be temporary. Key shifts in attitudes toward trade and globalization, however, show every sign of being here to stay.

Western intellectuals have not only recoiled from hyperglobalization because of its adverse impact on manufacturing employment in rich countries or the rise of China. Recently, leading economists have also contended that hyperglobalization has not, in fact, been beneficial enough, or beneficial at all, even for developing countries. Angus Deaton has denied that international trade helped growth or reduced poverty in developing countries. A subtler version of this claim accepts that increased trade powered growth in China in particular but argues that this growth did not fully benefit Chinese workers. Daron Acemoglu, for instance, has argued that China only gained a competitive advantage thanks to its repressive institutions and limited labor rights. Michael Pettis has gone a step further, arguing that trade based on China’s policies of wage suppression leaves everyone—workers outside and inside China—worse off.

The denial that hyperglobalization benefited developing countries is, however, hard to square with the newest data. Twenty years ago, the empirical evidence that developing countries would grow faster if they liberalized their trade policies was still somewhat ambiguous. But a 2024 review by the economist Douglas Irwin concluded that, looking back, there is little reason to remain agnostic: “A consistent finding is that trade reforms have a positive impact on economic growth, on average, although the effect is heterogeneous across countries.”

Our claim here, however, is much more modest: that trade itself, rather than trade reforms, became an engine of growth and poverty reduction in the 1990s and the first decade of this century. That surge in trade was not always achieved through an uncritical embrace of neoliberal dogma. Some successful exporters relied on heavy-handed state intervention and maintained strategic tariff barriers. But developing countries did repudiate many of their most protectionist policies, and Western countries, in turn, kept their markets open to allow developing countries to take advantage of export opportunities. According to the World Bank, the number of people living in extreme poverty wordwide fell from around 2 billion in 1989 to about 1.3 billion in 2008. Over the same period, India cut the proportion of its population living in poverty from about half to a third and China from two-thirds to less than a fifth.

The critique that hyperglobalization’s benefits failed to trickle down to workers falls short, too. At the beginning of the hyperglobalization era, average Chinese wages in the manufacturing sector were mere pennies per hour; by the end of it, in 2020, they had surpassed $5 per hour. There is no doubt that China has suppressed labor rights and favored capital over labor in a host of policy domains, and China’s success in exports cannot cover all sins. But as China has grown, its average manufacturing wages have mostly remained higher in proportion to its per capita GDP than wages in other fast-growing East Asian economies such as Japan and South Korea. In China, workers have most dramatic, quick increases in their earning power in history.

Perhaps the more surprising repudiation of hyperglobalization was led by policymakers in developing countries. The old saying that “success has many parents, but failure is an orphan” was turned on its head. After experiencing the greatest era of economic flourishing in their countries’ histories, they, too, turned inward and away from markets. The role of trade declined in developing countries after the global financial crisis: after four decades of steady increases, in 2008 trade’s share of GDP in developing countries began to fall, and even before the COVID-19 pandemic, it had reached lows not seen since the 1990s. Under Xi Jinping, China stifled the private sector and throttled entrepreneurship. Under Narendra Modi, India bolstered protectionist policies, repudiating a 30-year-old domestic consensus in favor of free trade. According to data from Global Trade Alert, on average, developing countries imposed 101 new tariff measures per year between 2014 and 2023, compared with rich countries’ 89 per year.

After experiencing their greatest era of economic flourishing, developing countries turned inward.

The puzzle is why developing countries turned their back on globalization. This was a reversal without economic justification: trade skepticism was imported from the United States, where globalization was blamed for killing off traditional manufacturing, into countries where globalization had just lifted many millions out of poverty. One possible reason is mimicry. Often, the leaders of developing countries ask: if they can do it (institute protectionist policies, for example), why can’t we?

There is real evidence that economic sentiments percolate from the West to developing countries, Olivier Blanchard and others have argued that, during the hyperglobalization era, advanced economies had more fiscal space to finance macroeconomic stimulus measures than met the eye because of low interest rates. Developing countries thought they enjoyed the same leeway, and some went on unsustainable borrowing sprees. Similarly, during this period, consensus was growing among macroeconomists that borrowing was not as damaging as previously thought, provided countries could do so in their own currencies. Financial instability and crises in Argentina, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Turkey, as well as in other sub-Saharan African countries, stemmed in part from transplanting rich-world macroeconomic policies into contexts where they made little sense.

EXIT INTERVIEW

By joining the West in repudiating globalization, however, developing countries—especially larger emerging economies—have become complicit in biting the hand that fed them. And some Western progressives have swapped their cosmopolitanism for nationalism without much discomfort or remorse, justifying this shift on the doubtful grounds that globalization harmed developing countries. These days, the demise of hyperglobalization is often met with relief, even celebration.

But the world, and especially developing countries, may well look back on it and the era of convergence it underwrote more elegiacally, the sense of loss compounded by the guilt that perhaps not enough was done to defend it. Hyperglobalization’s death ought to elicit mixed feelings—if not lamentation, then at least not cheerleading. It is open to debate whether protectionist measures by industrialized economies will help to combat climate change or reduce dependence on or conflict with China. But for developing countries, hyperglobalization undoubtedly played a critical role in their post-Cold War economic renaissance. The alternative to hyperglobalization—developing economies become locked into regional and geopolitical trading blocs and struggle to exit from commodity dependence and tap into the more dynamic manufacturing and services sectors—may well prove worse.

No single tariff or trade dispute can determine the economic future of today’s developing economies. But broad strategic vision matters. Economic and political elites must decide whether a more integrated, globalized world is still an intermediate goal worth pursuing or whether globalization’s usefulness has passed. The architects of the world’s economic future must take a moment from their hyperfocus on great-power competition to look at things from developing countries’ perspective. The stunning nature of convergence illuminates the enormity of what has been lost: developing countries, as a group, broke from a 500-year pattern of development; then, for a few brief decades, that historical trend was arrested. Global inequality fell, and the consequences for human welfare were enormous. Just for having been a handmaiden in that extraordinary outcome, hyperglobalization deserves—if not three—at least two cheers.

• DEV PATEL is Prize Fellow in Economics, History, and Politics at the Center for History and Economics at Harvard University and a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
• JUSTIN SANDEFUR is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development and a Visiting Scholar at the National School of Development at Peking University.
• ARVIND SUBRAMANIAN is a Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and served as Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India from 2014 to 2018.

Foreign Affairs · by Dev Patel, Justin Sandefur, and Arvind Subramanian · June 12, 2024

18. Spies aren't who you think they are

Remember that there is a difference between intelligence officers who recruit spies, and spies or agents themselves.

Excerpt:

One problem is that in both news reporting and English vernacular, the word “spy” is used to describe both intelligence officers and those they recruit. It is not uncommon for (English-speaking) intelligence officers to accept the label and Bond comparisons. So, these mistakes are easy to make, but the intelligence officer and the recruited spy are not the same.

Perhaps the most crucial difference is that an intelligence officer has chosen a career. A potentially dangerous career for a few, but a job nevertheless. Traditionally, intelligence officers have often enjoyed diplomatic cover, providing them with immunity from arrest and prosecution.

Spies aren't who you think they are - Asia Times

Far from the glamor and suave portrayed in James Bond films, real-life spies tend to be troubled, narcissistic individuals

asiatimes.com · by Tony Ingesson · June 11, 2024

The world is seeing a resurgence in the use of espionage as nations try to get inside information on each other. Beijing accused the United Kingdom of recruiting spies in China, just after British authorities charged two men with violating the Official Secrets Act on behalf of Beijing.

Meanwhile, two men were recently arrested for spying for Russia in Germany, and the US intelligence services are working hard to recruit Kremlin insiders who want to work with them.

For the vast majority of the public, their perception of intelligence work has been shaped by the ever-popular genre of spy fiction.

James Bond, an invention of British author Ian Fleming, was an intelligence officer, who worked for the British Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6, and was able to go undercover in various guises, often with the help of futuristic gadgets. Portrayals of spies and spying are still frequently associated with Bond-like suave characters who smoothly navigate diplomatic receptions.

In fiction, they use these (as well as more martial talents), to get to the secrets they have been dispatched to find. This archetype is familiar from spy novels, films and TV series. It is completely misleading and at the same time not entirely removed from the truth.

Intelligence as a career

One problem is that in both news reporting and English vernacular, the word “spy” is used to describe both intelligence officers and those they recruit. It is not uncommon for (English-speaking) intelligence officers to accept the label and Bond comparisons. So, these mistakes are easy to make, but the intelligence officer and the recruited spy are not the same.

Perhaps the most crucial difference is that an intelligence officer has chosen a career. A potentially dangerous career for a few, but a job nevertheless. Traditionally, intelligence officers have often enjoyed diplomatic cover, providing them with immunity from arrest and prosecution.

Some have served without such immunity, and indeed been sentenced to lengthy prison terms. But they have often been released to their home countries well before the end of their mandated terms by swapping them for people imprisoned by the other side.

Such was the fate of Soviet intelligence officer Konon Molody, also known as Gordon Lonsdale in the 1960s, who was returned in a prisoner exchange after serving a mere three years of his 25-year sentence.

In 2010, Anna Chapman, a Russian intelligence agent and model, and her compatriots were exchanged for ten Russians (among them Sergei Skripal, who would later barely escape a Russian assassination plot).

Intelligence officers have been selected on the basis of their talents and then trained to hone their skills. In particular, those tasked with recruiting sources tend to be socially adept, likable and smooth talkers.

For example, Richard Sorge, a journalist with a doctorate in political science who was secretly a Soviet intelligence officer, used his German roots to successfully infiltrate German diplomatic circles in Tokyo in the 1930s.

A bit like James Bond, he was described as having an irresistible charm. Sorge became close friends with the German military attaché (later ambassador) while simultaneously seducing his wife. Sorge also used to race around Tokyo on a motorcycle, in another reflection of the overlap between truth and fiction.

Recruited spies, on the other hand, are selected solely on the basis of what kind of information they have access to and are willing to hand over. Thus, recruited spies are typically expected to betray their own countries.

Even if there is moral justification in some cases, such as Ryszard Kuklinski’s handing over of Warsaw Pact military secrets to the West during the Cold War, it remains a more extreme choice than that of the career professional.

Psychology of spies

Unlike the intelligence officer, who can look forward to leaving the life of espionage behind at some point, the recruited spy may have to spend the rest of their life looking over their shoulder.

In most countries, espionage is a particularly serious offense and carries a correspondingly heavy penalty. Recruited spies have to lead double lives, presenting a facade of lies even to friends and family. Intelligence officers work for their own country, their own people. Recruited spies work for an outsider, often an adversary.

While some of these recruited spies are coerced, there are also many who have volunteered their services. Among these eager spies, research indicates a disproportionate number of people with psychopathic, narcissistic and immature personalities, as well as many instances of alcohol abuse and personal crises.

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Robert Hanssen, who spied within the FBI on behalf of the Soviet Union and then Russia, has been described as a psychopath. The same goes for John Walker, who sold the secrets of the United States Navy, later recruited family members to work with him. Both men displayed a callous disregard for the safety and well-being of even their own families, as well as a total lack of remorse.

Stig Wennerström, a Swedish Air Force colonel who spied for the Soviet Union for decades, had a very clear narcissistic streak (which is evident from his memoirs, in which he claimed that he single-handedly preserved world peace during the Cold War through his espionage).

While there may be some similarity between the spies of fiction and the real-life intelligence officers who mingle with diplomats, the recruited spies tend to be a very different breed. Far from the glamor of spy fiction, they tend to be troubled individuals.

For them the ending is not likely to be a drive into the sunset as the credits roll, but rather a lonely prison cell.

Tony Ingesson is Assistant Professor in Political Science, Lund University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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asiatimes.com · by Tony Ingesson · June 11, 2024

19. CSA: June Recommended Articles

CSA: June Recommended Articles

https://www.hardingproject.com/p/csa-june-recommended-articles?utm

ZACHARY GRIFFITHS

JUN 12, 2024

For June, General Randy George, the Chief of Staff of the Army, recognized articles related to warfighting, continuous transformation, and strengthening the profession.

Subscribed

• “Setting the Conditions: Teaching Companies and Battalions how to ‘Lead with HE’” by CW3 Tanner Port and Capt. Jared Rooney in Field Artillery.
• “Leaping Ahead in Projecting Combat Power: The View From the 267th Theater Movement Control Element” by Lt. Col. Scott Gum in Army Sustainment.
• “The Coming Military AI Revolution” by Col. Joshua Glonek in Military Review.

He also recognized another “Tool for Strengthening the Profession” that provides a helpful how-to guide for leaders who want to help their units think and share.

• “How to write a book review” by Lt. Col. Zachary Griffiths in Military Review.

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