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Quotes of the Day:
“Practically all writers and artists are aware of their destiny and see themselves as actors in a fateful drama. With me, nothing is momentous: obscure youth, glorious old age, fateful coincidences — nothing really matters. I have written a number of good sentences. I have kept free of delusions. I know I am going to die soon.”
– Eric Hoffer
"Don't be ashamed of needing help. You have a duty to fulfill just like a s soldier on the wall of battle. So what if you are injured and can't climb up without another solider's help."
– Marcus Aurelius
"A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others."
– Ayn Rand
1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, June 20, 2024
2. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, June 19, 2024
3. China threatens death penalty for 'diehard' Taiwan separatists
4. How Long Can the USS Eisenhower Continue Fighting the Houthis?
5. One of the Army’s top Nuclear teams trained with Rangers and Green Berets
6. China Targets US With Hacking Contests
7. Strength and Wisdom in the Middle East
8. South Korean giant Hanwha agrees to acquire Philly Shipyard for $100M
9. US underscores ‘ironclad commitments’ to Philippines after latest clash with China
10. Using Artificial Intelligence to Rethink the Unified Command Plan
11. Crossing Thresholds: Ukrainian Resistance to Russian Occupation
12. Ultrasecure comms could give special operators a leg up
13. US signals that it has expanded policy to allow Ukraine to counterstrike into Russia
14. How AI is turning satellite imagery into a window on the future
15. NATO's Article 5 isn't as ironclad as many think
16. U.S. and China hold first informal nuclear talks in five years
17. Hypocrisy Is Not a Real Problem in World Politics
18. War Books: Airpower Scholarship for the Army
19. Biden’s Handwringing Over the Houthis is Going to Get U.S. Navy Sailors Killed
20. Why They Don’t Fight: The Surprising Endurance of the Democratic Peace
21. Hamas Is Winning: Why Israel’s Failing Strategy Makes Its Enemy Stronger
22. Rupa Subramanya: I’m Stuck Between the Woke Left and the Nativist Right
23. The Military Was Combating Racism. Then Congress Stepped in.
24. Politicizing America’s Defense Capabilities
25. It Is Time for Radical Candor
26. The Military Was Combating Racism. Then Congress Stepped in.
1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, June 20, 2024
Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, June 20, 2024
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-june-20-2024
Key Takeaways:
- Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a major information operation during his recent visit to North Korea and Vietnam on June 18 and 19 aimed at sabotaging efforts by Ukraine's partners to clearly define a common strategic objective and strategy to decisively defeat Russia’s illegal war of conquest in Ukraine.
- Putin implicitly threatened to use nuclear weapons if the West enables Ukraine to decisively defeat Russia in order to undermine the international community's cohering strategic vision of support for Ukraine.
- Putin’s nuclear threat is part of an ongoing Kremlin nuclear blackmail campaign aimed at dissuading Ukraine’s allies from decisively committing to defeating Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine and is therefore highly unlikely to result in actual nuclear escalation.
- South Korea responded to the Russian-North Korean comprehensive strategic partnership agreement on June 20 and stated that it will reconsider its previous ban on sending lethal military assistance to Ukraine.
- Russian President Vladimir Putin simultaneously attempted to downplay aspects of the Russia-North Korea agreement potentially in response to South Korea's concerns during a June 20 press conference in Vietnam.
- Putin also met with Vietnamese President Tô Lâm, Vietnamese Prime Minister Phạm Minh Chính, and General Secretary of the Central Committee of Vietnam’s Community Party Nguyễn Phú Trọng during his visit and discussed bilateral relations and the Soviet Union's and Russia's support of Vietnam during the 20th and 21st centuries.
- Russian forces used the new FAB-3000 M-54 bomb with a unified planning and correction module (UMPC) to strike Ukrainian positions in Kharkiv Oblast for the first time, representing a new Russian capability with a high potential for destruction if Russian forces continue to be able to use such weapons uninhibited.
- The United States made a policy change to prioritize delivering Patriot air defense interceptors to Ukraine against the backdrop of the increasing threat of Russian guided glide bomb use in Ukraine.
- US policy still prohibits Ukrainian forces from striking military targets with US-provided weapons in the operational and deep rear of Russian territory.
- The Russian military's increased over-reliance on infantry-heavy frontal assault tactics has greatly degraded the distinctions between various Russian combat services on the battlefield in Ukraine, minimizing the operational efficacy of frontline troops.
- Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov used a working visit to the Eastern Military District in Vladivostok, Primorsky Krai to create the appearance of a strict but engaged defense minister.
- Ukrainian forces conducted drone strikes against at least two oil facilities in Russia on the night of June 19 to 20.
- Ukrainian forces recently advanced near Vovchansk, and Russian forces recently advanced near Chasiv Yar, Avdiivka, and Donetsk City.
- Russian milbloggers complained that the Russian military command is failing to properly incentivize Russian servicemen to fight and explain the purpose of the Russian full-scale invasion to its troops.
2. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, June 19, 2024
Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, June 19, 2024
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-june-20-2024
Key Takeaways:
- Iraq: The Iraqi Resistance Coordination Committee issued a statement suggesting a consensus among Iranian-backed Iraqi militias to resume attacks targeting US forces. This is its first coordinated statement since attacks on US forces paused in January 2024 that suggests such a consensus.
- Iran and Hamas: Iran and Hamas are continuing to coordinate politically to maintain alignment across the Axis of Resistance during the Israel-Hamas War.
- Northern Israel Border: Recent US and Israeli reports have emphasized the Hezbollah rocket, drone, and missile threat that Israel could face in the event of a major war between Israel and Hezbollah. Hezbollah is targeting Israeli air defense assets and surveillance equipment, probably to create temporary and local advantages vis-a-vis Israel and prepare for possible escalation.
- Rafah: The tactically sophisticated nature of two Hamas attacks targeting IDF units in Rafah on June 20 underscores that two Hamas battalions in Rafah remain cohesive fighting units that have not been defeated or seriously degraded. This is consistent with the IDF’s report that it has “somewhat degraded” two of the four Hamas battalions in Rafah.
3. China threatens death penalty for 'diehard' Taiwan separatists
I assume the "succession" typo is from Xinhua. Certainly not from Reuters.
Excerpts:
The new guidelines say China's courts, prosecutors, public and state security bodies should "severely punish Taiwan independence diehards for splitting the country and inciting secession crimes in accordance with the law, and resolutely defend national sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity", according to China's state-run Xinhua news agency.
The guidelines are being issued in accordance with laws already on the books, including the 2005 anti-succession law, Xinhua said.
That law gives China the legal basis for military action against Taiwan if it secedes or seems about to.
China threatens death penalty for 'diehard' Taiwan separatists
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/east-asia/china-taiwan-separatists-death-penalty-4426421
A Taiwanese sailor aboard a Taiwan Navy vessel looks towards a Chinese warship while navigating on waters off Taiwan's western coast, in this handout image released May 23, 2024. (File photo: Taiwan Defence Ministry/Handout via Reuters)…see more
21 Jun 2024 06:04PM
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BEIJING: China on Friday (Jun 21) threatened to impose the death penalty in extreme cases for "diehard" Taiwan independence separatists, a ratcheting up of pressure even though Chinese courts have no jurisdiction on the democratically governed island.
China, which views Taiwan as its own territory, has made no secret of its dislike of President Lai Ching-te who took office last month, saying he is a "separatist", and staged war games shortly after his inauguration.
Taiwan has complained of a pattern of ramped up Chinese pressure since Lai won the election in January, including ongoing military actions, trade sanctions and coast guard patrols around Taiwan-controlled islands next to China.
The new guidelines say China's courts, prosecutors, public and state security bodies should "severely punish Taiwan independence diehards for splitting the country and inciting secession crimes in accordance with the law, and resolutely defend national sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity", according to China's state-run Xinhua news agency.
The guidelines are being issued in accordance with laws already on the books, including the 2005 anti-succession law, Xinhua said.
That law gives China the legal basis for military action against Taiwan if it secedes or seems about to.
Related:
Prospect of peaceful 'reunification' with Taiwan being 'eroded', says China
Sun Ping, an official from China's Ministry of Public Security, told reporters in Beijing the maximum penalty for the "crime of secession" was the death penalty.
"The sharp sword of legal action will always hang high," she said.
There was no immediate response from Taiwan's government. One official told Reuters they were still digesting the contents of the new guidelines.
The guidelines detail what is considered a crime worthy of punishment, including promoting Taiwan's entry to international organisations where statehood is a condition, having "external official exchanges" and "suppressing" parties, groups and people that promote "reunification".
The guidelines add a further clause to what could be considered a crime - "other acts that seek to separate Taiwan from China" - meaning the rules can be broadly interpreted.
Lai has repeatedly offered to hold talks with China but has been rebuffed. He says only Taiwan's people can decide their future.
China has taken legal measures against Taiwanese officials before, including imposing sanctions on Hsiao Bi-khim, Taiwan's former de facto ambassador to the United States and now the island's vice president.
Such punishments have little practical effect as Chinese courts do not have jurisdiction in Taiwan, whose government rejects Beijing's sovereignty claims.
Senior Taiwanese officials, including its president, also do not visit China.
Source: Reuters/rj
4. How Long Can the USS Eisenhower Continue Fighting the Houthis?
I recommend following the skipper of Ike on X/twitter to observe the crew's morale: https://twitter.com/ChowdahHill. Everyday the skipper and a crew member(s) communicate with loved ones back home via social media.
How Long Can the USS Eisenhower Continue Fighting the Houthis?
.By Lolita C. Baldor & Jon Gambrell
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2024/06/21/how_long_can_the_uss_eisenhower_continue_fight_against_houthi_attacks_1039563.html
ABOARD THE USS DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER IN THE RED SEA (AP) — The combat markings emblazoned on the F/A-18 fighter jet tell the story: 15 missiles and six drones, painted in black just below the cockpit windshield.
As the jet sits on the deck of the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier in the Red Sea, its markings illuminate the enemy targets that it’s destroyed in recent months and underscore the intensity of the fight to protect commercial shipping from persistent missile and drone attacks by the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.
But they also hint at the fatigue setting in, as the carrier, its strike group and about 7,000 sailors close in on their ninth month waging the most intense running sea battle since World War II. That raises difficult questions about what comes next as U.S. military and defense leaders wrangle over how they will replicate the carrier’s combat power if the ship returns home to Norfolk, Virginia.
Already, the carrier’s deployment has been extended twice, and sailors post dark memes around the ship about only getting one short break during their steadily growing tour. Some worry they could be ordered to stay out even longer as the campaign drags on to protect global trade in the vital Red Sea corridor.
At the Pentagon, leaders are wrestling with what has become a thorny but familiar debate. Do they bow to Navy pressure to bring the Eisenhower and the other three warships in its strike group home or heed U.S. Central Command’s plea to keep them there longer? And if they bring them home — what can replace them?
U.S. officials say that they’re weighing all options and that a decision is expected in the coming weeks.
U.S. commanders in the Middle East have long argued that they need an aircraft carrier in the volatile region. They say that it’s an effective deterrent to keep Iran in check and that the ship gives them critical and unique war-fighting capabilities against the Houthis, who say their attacks are aimed at bringing an end to the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.
The massive ship is a flexible, floating flight line that can launch fighter jets on a moment’s notice, without any of the limits that host nations in the Middle East can place on Air Force aircraft taking off from bases on their soil. And those carrier-based jets can get within striking distance of Houthi weapon systems quickly without crossing borders.
“What the carrier brings is an offensive platform that’s mobile, agile and doesn’t have any access, basing or overflight restrictions,” said retired Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, who headed U.S. Central Command for three years, ending in 2022. “It’s sovereign U.S. territory. You can do as you want with those airplanes on that carrier. So that gives you enormous flexibility when you consider response options across the region.”
Rear Adm. Marc Miguez — who commands Carrier Strike Group Two, which includes the Eisenhower and supporting ships — agrees that the aircraft carrier is crucial to America’s military.
“Every time that there’s a crisis on the globe, what’s the first thing the president asks? ‘Where are the U.S. aircraft carriers?’” Miguez told The Associated Press during a visit to the Eisenhower and the USS Laboon, one of the guided-missile destroyers accompanying it.
On any given day, Navy F/A-18s roar off the Eisenhower and take out Houthi missiles or drones preparing to launch. The U.S. warships have fired volleys of Tomahawk missiles into Yemen to destroy warehouses of weapons, communications facilities and other targets.
Pentagon leaders worry that without the Eisenhower, they will need to tap more Air Force fighter jets based in surrounding countries, including Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
But many Arab nations place flight or other restrictions on the types of offensive strikes the U.S. can do from their land because of regional sensitivities. Others worry about triggering another war between Saudi Arabia and Yemen or inflaming tensions with Iran.
U.S. military leaders say the U.S. can adapt and get forces where they need to be. But that can require longer fighter jet flights from distant bases, requiring refueling capabilities and presenting other hurdles.
Extending the Eisenhower’s deployment again is an option — but for many, it’s the least desirable.
Navy leaders worry about the sailors, who actually have been able to see incoming Houthi-launched missiles seconds before they are destroyed by the ship’s defensive strikes. And officials in the Pentagon are talking about how to care for the sailors when they return home, including counseling and treatment for possible post-traumatic stress.
Miguez also notes the strain on the ships themselves.
“We are constantly reminding the Department of Defense that we’re going to need to take a respite and a break, to try and get back to maintenance,” he said. “These ships are floating around in seawater. They’re steel, and they require a lot of maintenance. And when you run them past red lines, when you run them past scheduled maintenance activities, you have to pay those off somewhere down the line.”
A third option would be sending other ships — perhaps another carrier — to take the Eisenhower’s place. But the massive ships are relatively rare. The U.S. operates 11, which is about 40% of the total number worldwide. Other countries have only one or two.
The U.S. could turn to France or the United Kingdom, which each have one, for at least a temporary stint in the Red Sea. U.S. officials have insisted that protecting the sea lanes is a multinational effort and having an ally take a turn could reinforce that message. It could give the U.S. enough breathing room to get another American carrier there, perhaps late this year.
Of the 11 U.S. carriers, four are deployed, three are in training and preparing to deploy, and four are in routine maintenance and repair, which usually lasts about a year or more.
The USS John C. Stennis, however, is undergoing its major, mid-life overhaul, which can last about four years and calls for the replacement and upgrading of the ship’s nuclear propulsion system and other critical radar, communications, electronics and combat components. A carrier’s lifespan is about 50 years.
One carrier is always based in Japan and does regional patrols and exercises, and another is generally deployed to the Asia-Pacific. That focus on Asia reflects the long-stated belief that China is America’s top strategic challenge, and 60% of U.S. naval forces are based in the Pacific. The rest are Atlantic-based.
A third carrier is off South America’s west coast, heading toward Japan, leaving the Eisenhower as the only one in the Middle East or Europe.
Lacking a carrier, another option would be to deploy the USS Wasp, a large amphibious assault ship now in Europe that carries F-35 fighter jets. Those jets do short takeoffs and vertical landings, so they can do strike missions off smaller ships.
Baldor reported from Washington.
5. One of the Army’s top Nuclear teams trained with Rangers and Green Berets
I am not sure why this should be a surprise.
One of the Army’s top Nuclear teams trained with Rangers and Green Berets
Rangers, Green Berets, and Nuclear Disablement Team 1 trained together in two different states for a rare opportunity to hone their skills together for real-world scenarios.
JOSHUA SKOVLUND
POSTED ON JUN 20, 2024 6:51 PM EDT
3 MINUTE READ
taskandpurpose.com · by Joshua Skovlund
A unique team of Army soldiers who train to defuse nuclear emergencies has been training alongside the elite combat units that might one day have to them into — and back out of — a doomsday-like scenario.
Nuclear Disablement Team 1 recently held training with the 7th Special Forces Group and the 75th Ranger Regiment, the kind of special operations units they may work alongside during a major nuclear emergency.
Steven Modugno, a spokesperson for the 20th Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, Explosives Command (CBRNE), said it’s uncommon for NDTs to train with the type of units that would escort them in real-world incidents.
“We always say, ‘Train as you fight.’ For both the Rangers and the NDTs, going through a facility is what realistic, tough training looks like,” Modugno said. “They’re able to practice and refine processes and figure out how they can effectively work together at a site like that.”
NDTs train for doomsday-style scenarios like sabotaged nuclear power plants and or rogue nuclear devices. The protective suits they wear, along with a respirator protecting them from nuclear and radiological threats, make combat operations a lot more difficult.
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“You’re talking about a potentially radioactive or contaminated environment that they would have to go into, which can be daunting,” Modugno said. “But the teams are self-deployable. They can go in, recon the site, collect samples, and identify them to figure out what materials are there. Like what hazards may be present and if there’s a threat.
The NDTs and the Special Forces troops met to train in a decommissioned Army pulse radiation facility in Louisiana. The team trained with the Rangers at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, where all three of the Army’s NDTs are based.
It’s not uncommon for NDTs to train in these types of decommissioned facilities, but working with the teams that would escort them is not as common, said Maj. Cory Chatigny, a Nuclear Operations Officer with Nuclear Disablement Team 1
“At the end of these events, we want to make sure the units see us as an asset to their organization and not a hindrance,” Chatigny said. “Being able to keep up with them, maneuvering through the facility, and providing the expert analysis that they require has made us look at how we can become even better at what we do.”
The exercise allowed NDT 1 to hone in their gear loadout for an operation while rehearsing safety protocols for themselves and the units assisting them.
U.S. Army Nuclear Disablement Team Soldiers and Army Rangers seized and exploited an underground nuclear facility during a training exercise on June 6. (U.S. Army photo/Sgt. Daniel Hernandez.) 20th CBRNE Command
“We know there is a chance that this could happen somewhere on the planet. Not every nuclear facility is going to be up to the same safety regulations that we see in the U.S. and partner countries,” Chatigny said. “Radiation is nearly impossible to detect without the proper equipment, so we make safety a priority. Our focus is on completing the mission and enabling the unit we support to safely continue on with their mission.”
NDT 1 has been pushing for more realistic training and schedules for both the 7th SFG and the 75th Ranger Regiment, so this presented an opportunity to train together in one of the most realistic training events to date.
Assets from the 20th CBRNE Command are located on 19 different bases in 16 states. Modugno said they are ready to respond to threats worldwide. “They’re able to go in and do limited disablement operations, meaning, possibly shut down a reactor if it’s not being managed at that time so that threat no longer exists [in the area units are conducting operations],” Modugno said.
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Staff Writer
Joshua Skovlund is a contributor for Task & Purpose. He has reported around the world, from Minneapolis to Ukraine, documenting some of the most important world events to happen over the past five years. He served as a forward observer in the US Army, and after leaving the service, he worked for five years in paramedicine before transitioning to a career in multimedia journalism.
6. China Targets US With Hacking Contests
China Targets US With Hacking Contests
Newsweek · by Hugh Cameron · June 20, 2024
China's spy agencies are using talent competitions to recruit young hackers for cyberattacks on the US.
The revelation comes in a new report that has shed fresh light on the secretive state's "hack for hire" programme, which the authors said was "unlike anything we have ever seen."
Cyber experts have called on the government and big business to do more in the wake of the report from ETH Zurich's Center for Security Studies, which revealed how China is weaponizing the brains of its young technophiles.
Beijing has banned homegrown talent from competing in international hacking, in which contestants compete to exploit vulnerabilities in widely used software for cash prizes, and created its own events, the report said.
Chinese hackers are now forced to compete in government-sanctioned domestic events, giving spy agencies a pipeline of knowledge and manpower that can be exploited for use against the U.S. and its allies.
Former top hackers in international competitions, such as Pangu Team, have subsequently been assimilated into Beijing's cybersecurity arsenal. They are now part of the software company Qi An Xin, which the report described as "deeply connected to China's government agencies."
Participants use laptop computers as they take part in the SECCON 2017 hacking competition on February 18, 2018 in Tokyo, Japan. Since 2018, Chinese teams have been prohibited from taking part in international hacking contests,... Participants use laptop computers as they take part in the SECCON 2017 hacking competition on February 18, 2018 in Tokyo, Japan. Since 2018, Chinese teams have been prohibited from taking part in international hacking contests, with Beijing employing their expertise in its state-run espionage operations. Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images
Linda Zecher, the CEO of the US-based cyber security company IronNet, said: "This report demonstrates why governments and corporations need to ensure that their cyber security systems are up to date and can withstand the most sophisticated hacks.
"Hackers will adapt and evolve to break into even the most secure systems and that is why IronNet's collective defence system offers the best protection against hostile state and non-state actors."
Jamie MacColl, a Research Fellow in Cyber Threats and Cyber Security at Royal United Services Institute, told Newsweek that the format overcomes a "libertarian streak in the hacker community," which would be less likely to collaborate with officials in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) or military if not for this contest-based system and cash prizes.
Chinese security researchers began dominating international hacking competitions after 2014. At the Pwn2Own competition, Chinese teams' winnings increased from 13 per cent in 2014 to 79 per cent by 2017.
Realising the strategic value, the Chinese government then banned researchers from international tournaments and created new events.
In 2019, Google researchers identified five "exploit chains" - cyber attacks which utilize multiple vulnerabilities to strike a target - one of which was demonstrated during the 2018 Tianfu Cup. This exploit was later used in "a surveillance and hacking campaign targeting Uyghur Muslims," the CSS report said.
Other revelations include the extensive collaboration between top Chinese universities with the Chinese government across a "spectrum of cyber activities," and a complex "hack-for-hire ecosystem".
FBI Director Christopher Wray speaks at a news conference at the Justice Department in Washington, on Nov. 8, 2021. Wray says the threat to the West from the Chinese government is "more brazen" and damaging... FBI Director Christopher Wray speaks at a news conference at the Justice Department in Washington, on Nov. 8, 2021. Wray says the threat to the West from the Chinese government is "more brazen" and damaging than ever before. In a speech on Jan. 31, 2022, at the Reagan Presidential Library in California, Wray accused Beijing of stealing American ideas and innovation and launching massive hacking operations. Andrew Harnik/Associated Press
Cyber espionage has been an increasingly important aspect of Chinese foreign policy.
In February, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Christopher Wray warned of the Chinese government targeting "critical" American infrastructure, and expressed the need for vigilance.
"There has been far too little public focus on the fact that PRC hackers are targeting our critical infrastructure—our water treatment plants, our electrical grid, our oil and natural gas pipelines, our transportation systems," Wray told a House of Representatives' Select Committee.
The way Beijing has been able to blend its computer-savvy citizenry with the state-run espionage operations adds a new dimension to the U.S. anxiety over Chinese hacks.
About the writer
Hugh Cameron
Hugh Cameron is Newsweek Live News Reporter based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on international politics, conflict, and crime. Hugh joined Newsweek in 2024, having worked at Alliance News Ltd where he specialised in covering global and regional business developments, economic news, and market trends. He graduated from the University of Warwick with a bachelor's degree in politics in 2022, and from the University of Cambridge with a master's degree in international relations in 2023.
Languages: English.
You can get in touch with Hugh by emailing h.cameron@newsweek.com
Hugh Cameron is Newsweek Live News Reporter based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on international politics, conflict, and ...
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Newsweek · by Hugh Cameron · June 20, 2024
7. Strength and Wisdom in the Middle East
Strength and Wisdom in the Middle East | Small Wars Journal
Small Wars Journal
Strength and Wisdom in the Middle East
John Nagl and Kelly Ihme
“Strength and Wisdom” is the motto of the US Army War College, Senior Service College of the United States Army. Located for the first half-century of its existence in Washington DC and for the past seventy-five years in historic Carlisle, Pennsylvania, the Army War College annually educates several hundred Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine lieutenant colonels and colonels, along with representatives of other US government agencies, in leadership, national security, and military science.
The ”superpower” of the Army War College, as in most professional military education institutions in the United States, is the presence of international officers from allied and partner nations around the globe. Each year, some 75 countries send their most talented senior officers to spend a year in Carlisle with their families studying, learning, and living among their American peers. This immersion often leads to forming lifelong personal, as well as professional, bonds that reap rewards for the entire international system for years to come.
Recently, a dozen international graduates of the War College gathered in Amman, Jordan for a reunion conference to discuss global and regional security issues with several American graduates and current War College faculty members. The event was sponsored by the United States Department of State and the range and depth of discussions were invaluable; they reinforced the critical role of the United States in the Middle East while amplifying some of the most pressing challenges the world faces today.
Those challenges are significant and increasing. The Department of Defense defines China as America’s pacing challenge, with Russia presenting an acute threat not just to Ukraine but to the entire North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Yet much of the conversation in Amman examined Iranian direct and proxy threats throughout the Middle East, the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, and the waning influence of the US in the region. This perspective, from the minds and mouths of our allies, should give us pause.
One of the frameworks that governed the conversation in Jordan is an international relations theory called Hegemonic Stability Theory. This theory suggests that the international system works best when there is a country that sets and enforces the rules. There have been three such hegemons in the history of the Western world. The first was Rome, which (often brutally) set and enforced the rules of the system for several hundred years about two millennia ago. After the dark ages and significant great power conflict, Britain was the global hegemon from the Battle of Waterloo until the Battle of the Somme, when its power was destroyed in the bloodletting of the First World War. The economic and security challenges of the interwar period that followed reinforce the need for a hegemon, a role the United States has filled from 1945 until today—although that role is now under threat as it has not been since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
While the United States remains the world’s leading superpower, China aspires to replace the US, at least in its region, as the country that sets and enforces the rules of the international order. China’s rising military and economic power presents a threat not just to Taiwan but also to the Philippines, Indonesia, and other countries of Southeast Asia. That threat and the ongoing war in Ukraine were important topics in Amman, but it is perhaps unsurprising that threats closer to home occupied the attention of the Middle Eastern participants.
One participant lamented, with appreciation, the motto of the US Army War College, “Strength and Wisdom.” He asked those in the room whether America’s strength gave us wisdom or if our wisdom gave us strength? The clear implication was that too often in recent years, specifically across the Middle East, America has applied its enormous strength without sufficient wisdom. The validity of the concern was underlined by the timing of the Amman event itself. This reunion in Jordan was originally scheduled for October of 2023; the horrific Hamas attacks of October 7th and Israel’s counterattack in Gaza caused a six-month postponement of the session.
An expansion of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is in the interest of Russia and China but not the United States nor any countries in the region including Iran. (It was suggested, perhaps not incorrectly, that the continuation of the Gaza War may resound to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s personal political benefit.) There was a strong consensus among both the American and Middle Eastern participants that the official US position supporting a two-state solution and a Palestinian homeland is essential to regional peace and security, even if accomplishing such a task is hard to imagine in the current situation. As our friends mentioned multiple times during the Amman event, “we live here every day”; finding a solution to the crisis in Gaza improves the security and economies of all of the countries in the region, however difficult it is to imagine that solution given the current crisis.
There is another pressing challenge in the Middle East that is difficult to imagine solving given current conditions. Iran has been an avowed enemy of the United States since the Iranian revolution in 1979; the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, “JCPOA” or more familiarly “Iranian nuclear deal” negotiated in 2015 offered a potential opening until it was revoked by then-President Donald J. Trump in 2018. Iran, crippled by decades of sanctions and afraid of a counterrevolution by a young and angry population, was willing to give up its nuclear weapons ambitions in exchange for economic progress and a chance to rejoin the international community of nations. Iran, ironically, should be noted as the dog that didn’t bark much in the past six months. Its relatively restrained responses to Israeli strikes on an Iranian consulate in Syria and—after a largely unsuccessful drone and missile strike on Israel—on an Iranian military base, offer a glimmer of hope that its long sponsorship of proxy forces throughout the region might end in exchange for diplomatic recognition and lifting of sanctions.
There is no doubt that America has the strength to influence the actions of all of the actors in the Middle East, but the wisdom of our policy can be questioned. This is particularly true compared to our Middle Eastern allies who trace their roots back thousands of years before Biblical times. As the Roman philosopher Cicero noted, “Age brings wisdom.” A Middle East participant suggested that the US is not old enough to be endowed with sufficient wisdom to govern the strength it has developed.
One of the Middle Eastern officers remembered an analogy offered by his favorite War College professor: the international system, he suggested, could be thought of as an interlinked and multilayered chessboard. What happens on one level affects all the other layers. In the Middle East, the actions taken by Israel and Iran affect all the other players, but the United States could conceivably use its enormous strength to help both of those countries take actions in the interest of the entire international community— “Inshallah” (“If God wills it”), as the participants argued. The question remains, are we wise enough to do so?
These are the authors’ views and not those of the United States Army War College, the US Army, the US Air Force, or the Department of Defense.
About the Author(s)
Kelly “Curly” Ihme
Lt Col Kelly “Curly” Ihme, Ph.D., is a Pennsylvania Air National Guard officer currently serving as an Assistant Professor in Distance Education at the U.S. Army War College. A graduate of SUNY Brockport, she holds Master's Degrees in American History from the American Military University and in Military Operational Art and Sciences from Air University and a Doctorate in Industrial and Organizational Psychology from the University of Arizona (formerly University of the Rockies). She previously served as a Mental Health Nurse on active duty in the U.S. Air Force and as a historian for Air Force Space Command. She's currently the resilience officer for the Pennsylvania Air National Guard along with her USAWC professorship duties. This article expresses her personal views and not those of the United States Army War College, the United States Air Force, or the Department of Defense.
John Nagl
Dr. John Nagl is a 1988 graduate of West Point and a Professor of Warfighting Studies at the U.S. Army War College. He holds a master’s and a PhD from Oxford in International Relations, and a Masters from the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. He served in combat in both Operation Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom and is the author of Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife (Chicago 2005) and Knife Fights (Penguin 2014). This article expresses his personal views and not those of the United States Army War College, the United States Army, or the Department of Defense.
Small Wars Journal
8. South Korean giant Hanwha agrees to acquire Philly Shipyard for $100M
Will these moves lead to an improvement in US shipbuilding?
South Korean giant Hanwha agrees to acquire Philly Shipyard for $100M - Breaking Defense
It's the latest in a series of moves South Korean shipbuilders have made to advance their interests in American-based facilities.
By JUSTIN KATZ
on June 20, 2024 at 1:48 PM
breakingdefense.com · by Justin Katz · June 20, 2024
A petroleum tanker stands while being built at the Aker Philadelphia Shipyard in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. (Photographer: Bradley C. Bower/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — South Korea’s Hanwha Systems and its shipbuilding arm Hanwha Ocean have agreed to purchase Norwegian-owned Philly Shipyard in a deal valued at $100 million pending relevant regulatory approvals, according to a statement from Philly Shipyard today.
“After two decades of stewardship, it is with great honor that we transition the ownership from Aker to Hanwha,” said Kristian Røkke, chairman of Philly Shipyard ASA. “Recognized as a global leader, Hanwha brings a wealth of sophisticated shipbuilding experience that will enable Philly Shipyard to realize a grander vision for its employees and customers.”
Philly Shipyard, based in the eponymous city, sits at what was once the site of a US Navy facility. It was founded in 1997, best known for its work producing container vessels and tankers, and is a subsidiary of the Norwegian industrial investment group Aker.
The news of Hanwha’s acquisition comes as South Korean shipbuilding giants have taken a keen interest in American-based shipyards at the behest of Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro who has eagerly encouraged as much.
Following the announcement of Hanwha’s acquisition, Del Toro’s office issued a statement hailing the agreement.
“Hanwha’s acquisition of Philly Shipyard is a game-changing milestone in our new Maritime Statecraft,” the secretary said. “This will bring good paying union jobs to Philadelphia, a city with a 250-year relationship with the U.S. Navy. Knowing how they will change the competitive U.S. shipbuilding landscape, I could not be more excited to welcome Hanwha as the first Korean shipbuilder to come to American shores—and I am certain they will not be the last.”
Just this past April, Philly Shipyard signed a separate agreement with Hanwha competitor, South Korean shipbuilder HD Hyundai Heavy Industries to cooperate on various construction projects and maintenance work.
Earlier this year, Hanwha made a play to purchase the Australian shipbuilder Austal, which would include its Alabama-based facilities in Mobile, but the deal was rejected — at least for the time being, with both parties indicating they might reconsider down the road.
In its public statement rejecting Hanwha’s offer, Austal cited possible regulatory concerns in Washington and Canberra over the notion of the South Koreans taking ownership; Austal USA is a staple shipbuilder for the US Navy and has advanced several new projects since introducing steel facilities to its Alabama campuses. (In its own statements, Hanwha downplayed any concern about regulators quashing the deal.)
Philly Shipyard ostensibly does not have those same concerns and the new deal will give Hanwha a chance to test the waters with American regulators. If approvals are given, the deal could close in the fourth quarter of 2024.
“The transaction is subject to the satisfaction of certain customary conditions, including approval by CFIUS (Committee of Foreign Investments in the US) and other regulatory approvals being obtained as well as no material adverse event having occurred in relation to PSI [Philly Shipyard],” according to the company statement.
“In the event of cost overruns in excess of USD 100 million in current projects undertaken by PSI compared to the company’s current estimates, the parties have agreed principles to reduce the payable purchase price at closing. Except for certain transaction costs, the purchase price is not subject to any other adjustments,” the statement continued.
Updated 6/20/2022 at 5:13 pm ET with comment from Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro.
9. US underscores ‘ironclad commitments’ to Philippines after latest clash with China
Will we come to the aid of Philippine vessels that are attacked by the Chinese Coast Guard as they were this week? Will we put a US navy warship in the area of these Philippine islands and contribute to their defense?
China is pushing on our Mutual defense Treaty and probing for the "red line."
US underscores ‘ironclad commitments’ to Philippines after latest clash with China
Stars and Stripes · by Seth Robson · June 20, 2024
A screenshot posted on X by the Philippine military purports to show Chinese coast guard personnel intercepting a Philippine resupply mission in the South China Sea on June 17, 2024. (Armed Forces of the Philippines)
The U.S. Secretary of State reassured his Philippine counterpart of the “United States’ ironclad commitments to the Philippines” two days after a violent clash between Philippine sailors and China’s coast guard in the South China Sea.
The State Department described China’s actions as “escalatory,” and “dangerous and irresponsible,” according to a readout of Secretary Antony Blinken’s phone call Wednesday with Philippine Foreign Secretary Enrique Manalo.
“Secretary Blinken emphasized that the PRC’s actions undermine regional peace and stability and underscored the United States’ ironclad commitments to the Philippines under our Mutual Defense Treaty,” the readout stated.
Chinese coast guard personnel on more than eight motorboats repeatedly rammed then boarded two Philippine navy inflatable boats Monday to prevent Filipino personnel from transferring food and other supplies, including firearms, to the BRP Sierra Madre, The Associated Press reported Tuesday.
The grounded warship serves as a Philippine territorial outpost on Second Thomas Shoal, which Beijing also claims.
After a scuffle and repeated collisions, the Chinese seized the boats and damaged them with machetes, knives and hammers. They also seized eight M4 rifles packed in cases, navigation equipment and other supplies and wounded several Filipino sailors, including one who lost his right thumb, two Philippine security officials told the AP.
A spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry laid responsibility for the incident on the Philippines.
“Let me stress that what directly led to this situation is the Philippines’ ignoring of China’s dissuasion and deliberate intrusion into the waters” around the shoal, spokesman Lin Jian told reporters Wednesday, according to his remarks posted on the ministry website. “The law enforcement action taken by China Coast Guard on the scene was professional and restrained and aimed at stopping the illegal ‘resupply mission.’”
Further escalation at the shoal is possible, according to Carlyle Thayer, an emeritus professor at the University of New South Wales and a lecturer at the Australian Defence Force Academy.
“In recent days China has pushed the envelope beyond dangerous maneuvers, water cannons and ramming to seizing and vandalizing Philippine supplies for its detachment on the BRP Sierra Madre and now boarding and seizing weapons carried by uniformed Philippine officials,” he told Stars and Stripes by email Thursday.
‘Up the ante’
Escalation could result in a Filipino fatality or sinking a Philippine vessel as the Philippines increases the scope and tempo of naval patrols in its territorial waters in the South China Sea, he said.
However, if China holds short of an armed attack on Philippine military ships and public vessels, the risk of U.S. involvement is low, Thayer said.
America’s options include enlisting other allies such as Japan and Australia, along with like-minded maritime powers in Europe, to join patrols and provide overwatch for Philippine supply missions or even escorts for Philippine supply vessels, he said.
Grant Newsham, a retired Marine colonel and senior researcher with the Japan Forum for Strategic Studies in Tokyo, agreed the situation may intensify.
“The Chinese have been clear about what they intend to do with Philippine maritime territory that the PRC covets: dominate, control, and, if necessary, seize and occupy it - make it impossible for their smaller, outmatched victims to retake it,” he said by email Thursday. “This is also the pattern they’ve used throughout the South China Sea. And they are quite willing to use force to get their way.”
Clashes will continue until the Philippines backs off or the United States steps in and lives up to its commitments to its Philippine allies, Newsham said.
U.S. Navy ships and aircraft could accompany Philippine vessels and U.S. ships and helicopters could conduct resupply missions to the shoal, he said.
However, Ian Chong, an associate professor of political science at the National University of Singapore, said on any intensification of the dispute will likely be limited.
“It seems that both sides are trying to show resolve but do not want greater escalation at this point,” he said.
China will likely “up the ante” but the U.S. response depends on what the Philippines wants, he said.
“Manila and Washington probably want to remind Beijing and the world that protecting sovereignty is the Philippines’ prerogative, although they probably have an incentive to show that they are not going to cave to increasing pressure,” he said.
Stars and Stripes · by Seth Robson · June 20, 2024
10. Using Artificial Intelligence to Rethink the Unified Command Plan
Fascinating. This requires some study and thought.
Download the 13 page report here: https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/2024-06/240617_Jensen_Rethink_UCP.pdf?VersionId=2ScV.sUK1.JaEFAcM_qmXMS9DbDHZqje
Below is just the initial excerpt of the report.
Using Artificial Intelligence to Rethink the Unified Command Plan
Report by Benjamin Jensen, Kathleen McInnis, and Jose M. Macias III
Published June 17, 2024
csis.org
Available Downloads
In the Future . . .
- Global competition will force the United States to adopt new combatant command designs optimized for gray zone competition and security cooperation. These new commands will better integrate gender dynamics and analyze human terrain and competing influence networks to gain access, deny benefits, impose costs, and reassure partners.
- The integrated deterrence doctrine will drive the U.S. military to combine cyber, space, and electronic warfare and other information-related capabilities into a new multidomain strategic command. The command will support integrated planning, provide a larger menu of options for conventional and nuclear deterrence, and synchronize multidomain effects.
- There will be fewer combatant commands but more combined joint interagency task forces scaled to meet emerging challenges. The United States will check authoritarian advances globally by better synchronizing instruments of power and creating new command and control architectures to align authorities and partners against missions globally.
Introduction
Every two years, a ritual takes over the Pentagon. A mix of service priorities, presidential prerogatives, defense ideas, and congressional intrigue combine in a cauldron called the Unified Command Plan (UCP).[1] The classified document specifies functional and geographic responsibilities and uses this division to assign missions, planning, training, and operational responsibilities.
As the ritual takes place in the “Puzzle Palace” today, the authors have decided to join the ranks of pundits new and old with ideas for revising the UCP—but with a twist. They have refined a large language model (LLM) with over 600 authoritative texts on topics ranging from military history and international relations theory to competitive strategy and deterrence into nine datasets to explore alternative blueprints for the U.S. military.[2] Two insights have emerged.
This edition of On Future War uses tailored datasets and generative artificial intelligence to analyze alternative approaches to the Unified Command Plan. These outputs are visualized as stylized paintings using the Midjourney AI Pro art generator.
First, the tendency to create new commands may have reached its limit and potentially undermines calls for integrated deterrence and better synchronization of effects across domains, the U.S. government, and the U.S. network of partners and allies.[3] For example, in this study, the LLM—across multiple iterations—kept generating UCP designs optimized for long-term competition with China that merged cyber, space, and electronic warfare capabilities into a unified command.
Second, the current U.S. blueprint for projecting power and influence struggles in day-to-day competition and integrating development assistance, security cooperation, and economic measures in a holistic manner. The LLM consistently generated alternative UCP designs organized around this central idea.
The net result is a series of options the authors hope will help the civil servants and military professionals who have the Sisyphean task of aligning the structure of the Department of Defense (DOD) with the reality of twenty-first-century great power competition.
What’s Wrong with the UCP?
Critiques of the UCP focus either on specific issues and geographic seams or on larger bureaucratic challenges associated with the design of the national security enterprise.[4] In fact, War on the Rocks has been a hotbed for debates about the right types of commands to address the changing character of war and evolving strategic challenges. Authors have debated U.S. Space Command, building a future warfare command, and geographic designs that are better aligned with the prevailing demand signal.[5]
A risk-averse culture and bureaucracy haunt these debates.[6] Combatant commands appear as bloated proconsuls because they try to compensate for a misaligned national security enterprise.[7] Organizationally, the U.S. government struggles to reconcile maps between the Department of State (DOS) and DOD because the perception of the world is shaped by theater and global campaign plans. Out of desperation, many stakeholders therefore turn to the National Security Council (NSC) to synchronize interagency activities. However, statutorily speaking, the NSC is a coordinating body to untangle the differences across the federal government rather than policymaking to align campaign plans. The net result is strategy as cacophony and an inherent dilemma where unity of effort should reside.[8]
Another issue is proponency, a fancy term that describes the advocacy of people sitting at senior decisionmaking tables and, crucially, their priorities. Proponency is a key aspect of defense politics that plays out in UCP revisions, among other places. The higher the rank of the person in charge of a particular issue set, region, or capability, the easier it will be to argue for budget shares. In 2019, concerns about insufficient advocacy for the space mission within the DOD led to a proponency overcompensation in the form of the near-simultaneous creation of the Space Force and U.S. Space Command.[9] In 1986, the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act ensured that operational commanders and service chiefs had a clear division of roles and responsibilities in order to prevent further U.S. military fiascos.[10] Needless to say, focusing a service chief and a four-star commander on the same mission set runs counter to the organizational design of the Pentagon and could create greater risk of future military fiascos.[11]
The other problem with proponency dominating the command structure is that there are only so many senior decisionmaking tables, but the list of issues the department grapples with is enormous and grows every day. There is an inherent mismatch between what is important and who gets to decide what to do about things that are deemed important—not to mention the fact that every four-star leader is supported by a galaxy of subordinate general and flag officers. The issue has led at least one former secretary of defense to complain of “brass creep,” or an inflated number of officers with stars on their shoulders running the U.S. military without solving enduring strategic challenges.[12]
In addition to these concerns, like most bureaucratic processes, the result tends to create winners and losers while leaving both equally unhappy. With a two-year update cycle prone to parochial infighting over budgets and authorities, change tends to take the form of addition over optimization. It is easier to satisfice and add structure than it is to realign or reduce the number of combatant commands.[13] This puts a premium on growth that may be suboptimal and reinforces a tendency for service-level interests over a unified joint or combined approach to modern operational art and campaigning. Furthermore, competing ideas, parochial interests, veto players, and the enduring quest for turf and money plague open dialogue.[14] The net result is diminishing returns and a span of control issues that inflate the number of four-star generals and staffs running the U.S. military without solving enduring strategic challenges. As staffs become bloated, command structures grow unwieldy, and defense budgets balloon, roles and missions expand without a corresponding increase in either security or strategic advantage.
To Answer a Strategy Question, Tailor a Model
To analyze options for UCP reform, the authors worked with the CSIS Futures Lab and Scale AI to build datasets optimized for retrieval augmented generation—a technique for refining how large models weight documents to generate text.[15] This technique is particularly useful for overcoming the inherent limitations LLMs face when addressing specialized questions and context-dependent domains.[16] Applied to national security, these models can help support campaign planning, wargaming, and studying escalation dynamics (Table 1).[17]
11. Crossing Thresholds: Ukrainian Resistance to Russian Occupation
A useful contribution to the study of resistance.
The 34 page report can be accessed here:
https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/2024-06/240618_McGlynn_Ukrainian_Resistance.pdf?VersionId=u45ETQa9E7ymPvRLTakGsYlSnPzKVLta
Crossing Thresholds: Ukrainian Resistance to Russian Occupation
csis.org · by Report by Jade McGlynn Published June 18, 2024
Photo: Aris Messinis/AFP/Getty Images
Table of Contents
Available Downloads
The following report, based on extensive fieldwork conducted by the author in Ukraine (largely in the de-occupied territories) since 2022, provides insights into the importance of the Ukrainian resistance to the Russian occupation, its impact on the sustainability of Russia’s war, the reality of conducting resistance, and the personal stories of some of those involved. This report also provides recommendations and insights into how the resistance can support the Ukrainian war effort, as well as ways for the West to aid the resistance—from boosting morale to providing material assistance. As the involvement of civilian efforts across the West to support Ukraine has been considerable, a number of recommendations are also aimed more generally at interested organizations and individuals who would like to support, morally or otherwise, the Ukrainian resistance against the Russian occupation.
This report is made possible by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York.
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csis.org · by Report by Jade McGlynn Published June 18, 2024
12. Ultrasecure comms could give special operators a leg up
Ultrasecure comms could give special operators a leg up
U.S., Norwegian commands team up to test a quantum-communications prototype.
BY LAUREN C. WILLIAMS
SENIOR EDITOR
JUNE 20, 2024 03:12 PM ET
defenseone.com · by Lauren C. Williams
Quantum computing gets a lot of attention for its potential to break encryption, but it might also make special operators’ communications more secure than ever.
Late last year, a company called Rhea Space Activity demonstrated its quantum communications prototype, QLOAK, in Norway for representatives of U.S. Special Operations Command, Norwegian Special Operations Command, and the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment.
QLOAK promises the ability to “bolt on” to existing laser communications terminals and enable quantum communications, using free-space optics to establish secure links over large distances.
In the October 2023 demonstration, the the Washington, D.C.,-based company sent a simple, highly encrypted message: “grundighet gir trygghet”—or in English, “thoroughness gives security."
Cameo Lance, the company’s co-founder and COO, said the Norway demonstration was a “pivotal step” that “showed we were capable of free-space optical communications outside of a pure laboratory environment.”
It also nodded toward a similar capability to China, which in 2016 reportedly linked two ground stations 1,000 kilometers apart.
“Interoperable communication is critical in the Arctic but is extremely difficult to implement,” a U.S. Special Operations Command spokesperson said when asked about the demonstration. “The Arctic environment presents significant challenges for military operations – harsh temperatures, a predominantly sea and ice environment, poor terrestrial data and communications infrastructure due to a lack of large population centers, and complex ongoing climate, environmental, political, economic, and cultural developments.
RSA’s prototype uses lasers instead of radio signals to bounce signals off satellites, increasing the data rate and decreasing the likelihood of interception.
“Laser signals are highly directed compared to that of radio signals. For example, when a satellite in Low Earth Orbit communicates with the ground using a radio, it will typically send a signal to an area the size of West Virginia. When using lasers, the signal is only accessible to an area on the ground that is about the size of a school bus, which inherently reduces the chance of interception by an adversary,” Lance said.
QLOAK uses quantum key distribution to add another layer of security, encoding information in single photons, he said.
Lawmakers have become increasingly interested in quantum, particularly for its potential military applications. The House version of the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act would require the Pentagon to make a plan to take quantum tech from prototypes to operational use, including the development and adoption of a “fault-tolerant, utility-scale quantum computer.”
The test comes as U.S. and Chinese engineers race to build the first practical quantum computer and militaries prepare for its arrival. For example, China has been working on a space-based network that would use quantum mechanics to secure data transmission.
While spending on quantum information-science tech has been somewhat flat, spending on quantum IT and cryptography saw a compounded annual growth of 23 percent to $619 million from fiscal years 2019 to 2023, according to an analysis by data firm Govini. Overall government spending on quantum hit $4.1 billion, mostly on computing—down 3.5 percent per the compounded annual growth rate.
The test is only the first phase of QLOAK’s development. Cybersecurity testing is planned as part of the next phase “as the technology is transitioned from an experimental demonstration into a fieldable prototype capability,” Lance said. “Our developments related to quantum communication are also enabling other disruptive technologies including large-scale distributed quantum computers, which are specialized for use in codebreaking, and networks of hyper-reactive quantum sensors for improved situational awareness.”
For special operators, the tech could offer more secure, latency-free, and ultimately, more communications. And the demonstration with RSA was designed as a “gamified futuristic” scenario to test unclassified communications with international partners.
U.S. Special Operations Command is experimenting with quantum communications but has not set a timeline for fielding it, a command spokesperson said. For now, USSOCOM is working with academic institutions and university-affiliated research centers, the Department of Energy, military service laboratories, and non-traditional defense contractors “to start transitioning basic research in quantum science into Special Operations-peculiar applications for increased operator capability in the future.”
But the Norway test with USSOCOM may offer a glimmer of that future.
“To make quantum communications competitive and globally relevant, we’re developing advancements in hardware including lasers and control electronics to improve signal rates, better filtering for daytime operation, more sensitive detectors, and miniaturization of electronics to reduce the size and weight of the system,” Lance said.
RSA is planning more quantum communications demonstrations on various platforms, including drones and ships. The company is also planning to test its autonomous navigation designed to work in areas without GPS access, the Jervis Autonomy Module, during a lunar initiative with Draper that will fly NASA’s CP-12 science payloads to the Moon.
defenseone.com · by Lauren C. Williams
13. US signals that it has expanded policy to allow Ukraine to counterstrike into Russia
US signals that it has expanded policy to allow Ukraine to counterstrike into Russia | CNN Politics
CNN · by Haley Britzky, Natasha Bertrand · June 20, 2024
Ukrainian forces claimed they successfully hit a Russian S-300 missile system using Western-supplied weapons inside Russian territory in early June.
From Iryna Vereshchuk
CNN —
The US appears to have expanded its agreement with Ukraine to strike over the border inside Russian territory wherever Russian forces are engaging in cross-border attacks into Ukraine, not just in the Kharkiv region as was previously determined.
National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told PBS News on Monday that the agreement with Ukraine to fire into Russia extends wherever Russian forces are attempting to invade.
“It extends to anywhere that Russian forces are coming across the border from the Russian side to the Ukrainian side to try to take additional Ukrainian territory,” Sullivan said, adding that it’s “not about geography. It’s about common sense.”
Pentagon spokesman Maj. Charlie Dietz said in a statement that the US “has agreed to allow Ukraine to fire US-provided weapons into Russia across where Russian forces are coming to attempt to take Ukrainian territory.”
“If Russia is attacking or about to attack from its territory into Ukraine, it only makes sense to allow Ukraine to hit back against the forces that are hitting it from across the border,” Dietz said.
Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder insisted on Thursday that there had been no change in policy, which was always meant to allow Ukraine to conduct cross-border counterstrikes where necessary.
But Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin suggested during a press conference last week at a NATO meeting that the policy was limited to the Kharkiv region.
“Ukraine requested permission to conduct counter-fire in the Kharkiv area using US weapons, and President Biden granted them permission to do that…but the ability to conduct counter-fire in this close fight in the Kharkiv region is – is what this is all about.”
The change marks a significant shift in the limited nature of the agreement between the US and Ukraine. President Joe Biden gave Ukraine permission in May to conduct limited strikes inside Russia with US-provided weapons, but restricted it primarily to the border in the Kharkiv region after Russian forces launched a renewed offensive there.
Last week, a senior US Defense Department official left the door open for a change of policy, telling reporters at NATO headquarters in Brussels there have been “a number of areas” where the US has given the green light on policies it had previously been reluctant to approve.
“[I]f you look back over the course of the conflict, you can find a number of areas where we were reluctant to do something, and then we did it,” the official said. “So F-16s, ATACMS. DPICMS, whatever it is. So there’s always a constant conversation and reassessment of what the right answer is, and I think that’s healthy. So never say never.”
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg also called for allowing Ukraine more flexibility to fire into Russia, saying last week that Ukraine “has the right to strike military targets on Russian territory.”
Stoltenberg was asked specifically about the Ukrainians being allowed to use F-16s to fire into Russian territory or airspace when their training on the jets is complete.
“Russia opened a new front, they opened the front in the north in Kharkiv, where they’re attacking directly from Russian territory just over the border. The border and the front line is more or less the same,” Stoltenberg said. “And of course, if the Russian forces, the artillery, the missile batteries were safe as soon as they were on the Russian side of the border, it would become extremely difficult for Ukrainians to defend themselves.”
“So I’ll not go into every operational aspect of this, but I’ll only say that Ukraine has the right to strike military targets on Russian territory to the right for self-defense, and we have the right to support them in defending themselves,” he said.
The US has said Ukraine is able to use their US-provided air defense systems to shoot Russian planes out of Russian airspace if they are preparing to fire into Ukrainian airspace.
“There’s never been a restriction on the Ukrainians shooting down hostile aircraft, even if those aircraft are not necessarily in Ukrainian airspace,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said this month. “I mean, they can shoot down Russian airplanes that pose an impending threat. And they have. They have since the beginning of the war.”
CNN · by Haley Britzky, Natasha Bertrand · June 20, 2024
14. How AI is turning satellite imagery into a window on the future
How AI is turning satellite imagery into a window on the future
What can a picture from space tell you? “You're likely to have a drought here that might lead to civil unrest.”
BY PATRICK TUCKER
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY EDITOR, DEFENSE ONE
JUNE 20, 2024 07:50 PM ET
defenseone.com · by Patrick Tucker
Satellite image providers say that new artificial intelligence tools, coupled with more and faster satellite data, will enable image providers to much better anticipate events of geopolitical significance and notify customers and operators of impending crises.
“Analysis is really great, but it's mainly retroactive, a forensic capability of looking back in time,” Planet CEO William Marshall said in an interview last week. “In principle, generative AI models…can leverage satellite data to predict what is likely to happen: ‘You're likely to have a drought here that might lead to civil unrest.’”
Today, relatively simple AI processes such as machine learning can pick out things like cars or ships, but identifying trends across large amounts of imagery remains a heavily human endeavor. Analysis of some image sets—say, to understand where an adversary force might attempt to stage an invasion—can take months.
Planet, whose satellite imagery helped the world understand the preparations for and execution of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, has long experimented with various artificial intelligence models. But Marshall said that recent breakthroughs in large language models promise to enable AI to do more and more complex analysis—and far faster than humans.
“We're going with these large language models, I think is more and more towards getting that sort of accuracy within minutes or so—if you've already got the imagery,” he said.
Troy Tomon, Planet’s senior vice president of product and software engineering, said models can be trained not just to make sense of a given data set but to help humans find data relevant to their problems.
“Nobody really wants to see the same place on Earth every day,” Tomon said. “What they want to know is when someplace they care about has some event that happens that’s interesting to them. The change in economic activity, a change in the health of crops, a change in the soil and its properties and how it relates to particular applications. And so what we're finding is that AI is giving us a way to take all of this data and begin to turn it into insights more quickly.”
But he cautioned that the work of getting AI to save you work is itself a lot of work, requiring experts and operators to continuous training models—not just type prompts.
The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency sees these kinds of AI capabilities as “absolutely the future,” said Mark Munsell, who leads the agency’s Data and Digital Innovation Directorate.
“Essentially, you use a sensor to detect what's happening on the Earth and based on that detection, you can either use it solely to inform future collection, or you can fuse it with other information,” Munsell said. “You can fuse it with open-source information and news reporting. You can fuse it with what we understand about the area, the activity in the area, and then you can have new insight that will tip and cue new collection. So it's just a cycle that's in constant improvement of itself.”
Already, he said, the proliferation of earth-imaging satellites and the advent of new and better AI models are reducing the time it takes to collect and analyze images.
Another step forward, according to satellite imaging company BlackSky, is to bring AI into the process even before the imagery is distributed to customers.
. “Most other companies that are applying AI, the way that they do it: you go into their historical archive and you run AI on old images,” said BlackSky CTO Patrick O'Neill. “So if you want to go count cars from an image from five days ago, that's fine. What we did is, we inserted our AI into the same process that we use to deliver images. So we form an image after the data comes down from the satellite, and then we will run AI and push out the results to our users. That means you get that intelligence right away, and you can do a lot with that information, because now that's machine-readable information.”
O'Neill said that yet another promising avenue is AI-powered collaboration between satellites. BlackSky can revisit a spot more than 15 times a day, which can allow analysts to carefully watch how situations on the ground are developing. But much of the time, watching a specific place is less important than tracking the objects or entities that move through and beyond that space. BlackSky hopes that establishing communications between satellites will enable a new era of smarter satellite image collection, in which entire satellite constellations—with minimal human guidance—follow key objects where they go on Earth.
Such a system would allow a human operator to task the system to, say, follow a particular truck or ship. The human could choose to be notified when the ship does “weird stuff” or not, O’Neill said.
In some scenarios, he said, “if you wait for a human to review it, it might be too late, the ship may have already moved away. And so that's a fully automated system where you don't want any latency introduced, and you want it to be completely autonomous. And that, by the way, is where we think the world is going to end up with this.”
Planet is also looking to use satellite-to-satellite communication to improve collection, analysis, and continuous tracking and has a project with NASA commercial services to develop just that, Marshall said.
But Planet also wants to go one step further and make the satellites themselves smarter. Last month, Planet officials announced that they were working with Nvidia to put Jetson graphics processing units aboard Planet Pelican-2 satellites slated to launch later this year. That will allow some rudimentary AI in space. The hope is that onboard processing will give analysts on the ground a head start, which could be critical in out-maneuvering an adversary.
Munsell described AI aboard satellites, coupled with mesh networking in space, as the next stage of development among satellite companies.
“I think all of this is going to drive more compute, higher bandwidth, more processing done in space,” he said, and compared it to a household Ring camera.
“You're not going to have your Ring camera downloaded to your computer to do the processing, and, five minutes later, turn around and tell you what's happening. You want to do it as fast as possible,” he said. “You also want your main camera to mesh with the other cameras in the area, so that they all can benefit from the knowing the activities that are happening across the board.”
defenseone.com · by Patrick Tucker
15. NATO's Article 5 isn't as ironclad as many think
Excerpts:
One key part of the NATO treaty that countries sign when they join the alliance is called Article 5. This says that an “armed attack” against one NATO member in Europe or North America “shall be considered an attack against them all.”
In the case of such an attack, NATO countries agree to assist the country that requires help, including through “the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.”
But the treaty does not include a clear definition of a what an “armed attack” actually is.
NATO's Article 5 isn't as ironclad as many think
Alliance commitments are not quite as binding, either legally or politically, as the conventional wisdom suggests.
By DAN REITER and BRIAN GREENHILL,
THE CONVERSATION
JUNE 20, 2024 04:31 PM ET
defenseone.com · by Dan Reiter
The outcome of the upcoming U.S. presidential election is going to have major consequences for the relationship between the U.S. and its allies. While President Joe Biden is a firm believer in the value of the transatlantic alliance, Republican contender Donald Trump has for years railed against U.S. participation in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the military alliance commonly referred to as NATO.
In February 2024, for example, Trump said that if he were reelected president, he would tell Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” against NATO members that are “delinquent” in not having invested enough in their own military capabilities. Foreign policy commentators viewed that as an invitation for Russia to attack these NATO countries.
In September 2022, six months after Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukraine applied to join NATO. Now, Ukraine’s potential membership is one of the top questions that representatives from NATO’s 32 member countries in North America and Europe will consider when they meet in Washington in July 2024.
At the root of debates over policy toward alliances such as NATO is the assumption that NATO requires its members to step in and help with defense if another member of the alliance is attacked.
As political scientists who study the role of international organizations like NATO, we think it is important to understand that, in reality, alliance agreements are more flexible than people think.
In practice, it is possible for the U.S. and other Western countries to stay out of a conflict that involves a NATO country without having to break their alliance commitments. The NATO treaty’s language contains loopholes that let member countries remain out of other members’ wars in certain situations.
One key part of the NATO treaty that countries sign when they join the alliance is called Article 5. This says that an “armed attack” against one NATO member in Europe or North America “shall be considered an attack against them all.”
In the case of such an attack, NATO countries agree to assist the country that requires help, including through “the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.”
But the treaty does not include a clear definition of a what an “armed attack” actually is.
This mattered in February 2020, when Turkey asked for a NATO meeting and requested that NATO intervene with military force in response to Russian and Syrian forces’ attacks on its territory, which had killed 33 Turkish soldiers, during the Syrian civil war. NATO allies chose not to defend Turkey with military force, arguing that the level of violence against Turkey wasn’t enough to call it an “armed attack.”
Even when NATO members decide that Article 5 should apply to a specific situation, each country can still individually decide how to act. That is, while NATO does have administrative staff based in Brussels, there is no central NATO authority that tells each country what it must do.
Instead, each country tells NATO what it is – and is not – willing to do.
NATO members have only formally invoked Article 5 once – following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon outside of Washington.
At that time, 13 NATO countries sent fighter aircraft to help the U.S. patrol its skies from mid-October 2001 to mid-May 2002.
But most NATO allies chose not to send troops to Afghanistan to support the U.S. in its fight against the Taliban. This lack of action on the part of some NATO allies was not seen as breaking the treaty and didn’t prompt a major debate – and the countries that chose not to join the fight were not sanctioned by or ejected from the alliance.
The NATO treaty also provides some exceptions based on geography. When Argentina went to war with the United Kingdom (a NATO member) over the Falkland Islands in 1982, the U.S. and other NATO members were able to use the fact that the alliance only applies to the North Atlantic region as a reason to stay out of the conflict.
Some political scientists argue that voters will demand their leaders take the country to war to defend an ally. This implies that what really binds the members of an alliance together is not the legal text of an international treaty itself, given that no international court is empowered to enforce the treaty, but rather the public’s expectations of what it means to be an ally.
As part of our research into how the American public thinks about international legal obligations, we decided to construct an experiment to see if presidents could use alliance loophole language to justify keeping the U.S. out of a war involving an ally.
In 2022 and 2023, we conducted a pair of survey-based experiments that involved asking nearly 5,000 American adults to consider a hypothetical scenario in which a U.S. ally comes under attack from a powerful neighbor.
Some of the respondents were told that the text of the alliance treaty would allow the U.S. government to avoid having to send troops to defend the embattled ally, while others were not told that information. Though the survey did not mention a specific alliance, we described the terms of the alliance in a way that matches the language used in treaties like NATO’s. We then asked the respondents to tell us their views on sending U.S. troops to defend the ally under attack.
Our results revealed a big difference between the people who were told about the flexibility in the alliance treaty and those who were not. While respondents from both groups were generally inclined to come to the defense of an ally, their willingness to do so was significantly lower when they were told that the alliance treaty did not necessarily require the U.S. to send troops.
This suggests that political leaders can, under certain circumstances, manage to convince a large segment of the public that it’s OK to abandon an ally in a time of need.
So, when it comes to debates about U.S. policy toward its alliance partners – and whether it should admit new members like Ukraine – it is important for both sides to appreciate that alliance commitments are not quite as binding, either legally or politically, as the conventional wisdom suggests.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
defenseone.com · by Dan Reiter
16. U.S. and China hold first informal nuclear talks in five years
U.S. and China hold first informal nuclear talks in five years
https://www.reuters.com/world/us-china-hold-first-informal-nuclear-talks-5-years-eyeing-taiwan-2024-06-21/?utm
By Greg Torode, Gerry Doyle and Laurie Chen
June 21, 20247:00 AM EDTUpdated an hour ago
Item 1 of 3 A nuclear-powered Type 094A Jin-class ballistic missile submarine of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy is seen during a military display in the South China Sea April 12, 2018. Picture taken April 12, 2018. To match Special Report CHINA-ARMY/NUCLEAR REUTERS/Stringer/File Photo
[1/3]A nuclear-powered Type 094A Jin-class ballistic missile submarine of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy is seen during a military display in the South China Sea April 12, 2018. Picture taken April 12, 2018. To match Special Report CHINA-ARMY/NUCLEAR REUTERS/Stringer/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab
HONG KONG, June 21 (Reuters) - The United States and China resumed semi-official nuclear arms talks in March for the first time in five years, with Beijing's representatives telling U.S. counterparts that they would not resort to atomic threats over Taiwan, according to two American delegates who attended.
The Chinese representatives offered reassurances after their U.S. interlocutors raised concerns that China might use, or threaten to use, nuclear weapons if it faced defeat in a conflict over Taiwan. Beijing views the democratically governed island as its territory, a claim rejected by the government in Taipei.
"They told the U.S. side that they were absolutely convinced that they are able to prevail in a conventional fight over Taiwan without using nuclear weapons," said scholar David Santoro, the U.S. organiser of the Track Two talks, the details of which are being reported by Reuters for the first time.
Participants in Track Two talks are generally former officials and academics who can speak with authority on their government's position, even if they are not directly involved with setting it. Government-to-government negotiations are known as Track One.
Washington was represented by about half a dozen delegates, including former officials and scholars at the two-day discussions, which took place in a Shanghai hotel conference room.
Beijing sent a delegation of scholars and analysts, which included several former People's Liberation Army officers.
A State Department spokesperson said in response to Reuters' questions that Track Two talks could be "beneficial". The department did not participate in the March meeting though it was aware of it, the spokesperson said.
Such discussions cannot replace formal negotiations "that require participants to speak authoritatively on issues that are often highly compartmentalized within (Chinese) government circles," the spokesperson said.
Members of the Chinese delegation and Beijing's defence ministry did not respond to requests for comment.
The informal discussions between the nuclear-armed powers took place with the U.S. and China at odds over major economic and geopolitical issues, with leaders in Washington and Beijing accusing each other of dealing in bad faith.
The two countries briefly resumed Track One talks over nuclear arms in November but those negotiations have since stalled, with a top U.S. official publicly expressing frustration at China's responsiveness.
The Pentagon, which estimates that Beijing's nuclear arsenal increased by more than 20% between 2021 and 2023, said in October that China "would also consider nuclear use to restore deterrence if a conventional military defeat in Taiwan" threatened CCP rule.
China has never renounced the use of force to bring Taiwan under its control and has over the past four years stepped up military activity around the island.
The Track Two talks are part of a two-decade nuclear weapons and posture dialogue that stalled after the Trump administration pulled funding in 2019.
After the COVID-19 pandemic, semi-official discussions resumed on broader security and energy issues, but only the Shanghai meeting dealt in detail with nuclear weapons and posture.
Santoro, who runs the Hawaii-based Pacific Forum think-tank, described "frustrations" on both sides during the latest discussions but said the two delegations saw reason to continue talking. More discussions were being planned in 2025, he said.
Nuclear policy analyst William Alberque of the Henry Stimson Centre think-tank, who was not involved in the March discussions, said the Track Two negotiations were useful at a time of glacial U.S.-Chinese relations.
"It's important to continue talking with China with absolutely no expectations," he said, when nuclear arms are at issue.
Reuters Graphics
NO FIRST-USE?
The U.S. Department of Defense estimated last year that Beijing has 500 operational nuclear warheads and will probably field more than 1,000 by 2030.
That compares to 1,770 and 1,710 operational warheads deployed by the U.S. and Russia respectively. The Pentagon said that by 2030, much of Beijing's weapons will likely be held at higher readiness levels.
Since 2020, China has also modernised its arsenal, starting production of its next-generation ballistic missile submarine, testing hypersonic glide vehicle warheads and conducting regular nuclear-armed sea patrols.
Weapons on land, in the air and at sea give China the "nuclear triad" - a hallmark of a major nuclear power.
A key point the U.S. side wanted to discuss, according to Santoro, was whether China still stood by its no-first-use and minimal deterrence policies, which date from the creation of its first nuclear bomb in the early 1960s.
Minimal deterrence refers to having just enough atomic weapons to dissuade adversaries.
China is also one of two nuclear powers - the other being India - to have pledged not to initiate a nuclear exchange. Chinese military analysts have speculated that the no-first-use policy is conditional - and that nuclear arms could be used against Taiwan's allies - but it remains Beijing's stated stance.
Santoro said the Chinese delegates told U.S. representatives that Beijing maintained these policies and that "'we are not interested in reaching nuclear parity with you, let alone superiority.'"
"'Nothing has changed, business as usual, you guys are exaggerating'," Santoro said in summarising Beijing's position.
His description of the discussions was corroborated by fellow U.S. delegate Lyle Morris, a security scholar at the Asia Society Policy Institute.
A report on the discussions is being prepared for U.S. government but would not be made public, Santoro said.
Reuters Graphics
'RISK AND OPACITY'
Top U.S. arms control official Bonnie Jenkins told Congress in May that China had not responded to nuclear-weapons risk reduction proposals that Washington raised during last year's formal talks.
China has yet to agree to further government-to-government meetings.
Bejing's "refusal to substantively engage" in discussions over its nuclear build-up raises questions around its "already ambiguous stated "no-first-use" policy and its nuclear doctrine more broadly," the State Department spokesperson told Reuters.
China's Track Two delegation did not discuss specifics about Beijing's modernisation effort, Santoro and Morris said.
Alberque of the Henry Stimson Centre said that China relied heavily on "risk and opacity" to mitigate U.S. nuclear superiority and there was "no imperative" for Beijing to have constructive discussions.
China's expanded arsenal - which includes anti-ship cruise missiles, bombers, intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarines - exceeded the needs of a state with a minimal deterrence and no-first-use policy, Alberque said.
Chinese talking points revolved around the "survivability" of Beijing's nuclear weapons if it suffered a first strike, said Morris.
The U.S. delegates said the Chinese described their efforts as a deterrence-based modernisation programme to cope with developments such as improved U.S. missile defences, better surveillance capabilities, and strengthened alliances.
The U.S., Britain and Australia last year signed a deal to share nuclear submarine technology and develop a new class of boats, while Washington is now working with Seoul to coordinate responses to a potential atomic attack.
Washington's policy on nuclear weapons includes the possibility of using them if deterrence fails, though the Pentagon says it would only consider that in extreme circumstances. It did not provide specifics.
One Chinese delegate "pointed to studies that said Chinese nuclear weapons were still vulnerable to U.S. strikes - their second-strike capability was not enough", said Morris.
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Reporting by Greg Torode in Hong Kong, Gerry Doyle in Singapore and Laurie Chen in Beijing; Additional reporting by Michael Martina in Washington; Editing by Katerina Ang
17. Hypocrisy Is Not a Real Problem in World Politics
Something to reflect on.
Excerpts:
Indeed, what almost always matters when it comes to a policy that was pursued in a manner deemed hypocritical by others is whether it ultimately proved successful. But this, too, is testament to its irrelevance. For, people rarely highlight the hypocrisy of successful policies. The fact that it succeeded surely suggests it was at least prima facie advisable. Conversely, its failure and associated costs are surely more important than the fact that hypocrisy was somehow involved.
In the end, though primacy or superiority accounts for much behavior we perceive as hypocritical, it is by no means the cause of it — the cause being rather the inevitable diversity of interests across different states, and the equally inevitable disagreement about the legitimacy of those interests. That these varied and not-infrequently opposed interests do not lead to the perpetual war of all against all is frequently attributed to the establishment of international law and international institutions. But it has far more to do with the credible authority of a hegemonic power in conjunction with the tools of diplomacy and statecraft, both of which entail in no small part — yes, hypocrisy.
Hypocrisy Is Not a Real Problem in World Politics - War on the Rocks
warontherocks.com · by David Polansky · June 21, 2024
There’s a now-famous exchange from Norm MacDonald’s appearance on Jerry Seinfeld’s Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, in which the two discuss the then-recent sexual assault charges against Bill Cosby.
Norm: [Another comedian] told me, “I think the worst part of the Cosby thing was the hypocrisy.” And I disagreed.
Jerry: You disagreed with that?
Norm: Yeah, I thought it was the raping.
It’s one of those jokes in which the import seems obvious in retrospect. I think of this exchange often during contemporary discussions of world politics, in which hypocrisy is treated as some kind of cardinal sin — sometimes even to the exclusion of more serious crimes.
This is, after all, an arena that features war, mass killings, ethnic cleansing, punishing economic sanctions, territorial grabs, and more. To emphasize hypocrisy feels like missing the point with a vengeance. And yet it keeps coming up. Most recently, American attempts to support opposition against Russia since its invasion of Ukraine, along with its support of Israel since the Oct. 7 attacks, have raised accusations of hypocritical conduct from a variety of sources.
Somewhat amusingly, other powers like China have begun to take this same line. Of course, this is hardly new — such accusations were a staple of Soviet rhetoric during the Cold War. Nor is the United States a unique target, historically speaking. The British were notorious for what George Orwell called their “world-famed hypocrisy,” particularly where their empire was concerned.
A recurring theme of these charges is not just that hypocrisy is undesirable on its own terms, but that to engage in it is somehow bad or dangerous to a state’s international position. This is a claim so often assumed that it has by now become an article of faith. Whether it has been proven is another question.
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Almost everyone has had personal experience with hypocrisy — both displaying and observing it — but it appears to be especially acute in the domain of international politics. In a much-cited work, Stephen Krasner described the sovereign state system itself as one of “organized hypocrisy,” meaning that it rests upon certain fictions of authority and control that fall short of the reality.
In her famous work, Ordinary Vices, political theorist Judith Shklar takes up the theme of hypocrisy at some length, noting:
No occasion reveals the incoherence of our public values more than war… That is why war is psychologically and morally so revealing, as all readers of Thucydides know. In our age it is also the occasion on which charges of hypocrisy may be exchanged with unmatched virulence.
Clearly, there is something here, but why and how does it matter? First, it must be said that pointing out hypocrisy is easy — especially when it involves the other guy. As Shklar also remarks, “It is easier to dispose of an opponent’s character by exposing his hypocrisy than to show his political convictions are wrong.” There’s a reason, after all, that tu quoque is considered a fallacy. This rhetorical habit has extended itself into the geopolitical sphere, where identifying instances of hypocrisy on the part of foreign governments, however trivial, has become a kind of parlor game for public commentators — particularly where they already bear some antipathy toward the state or leader in question.
Beyond its rhetorical value, however, accusations of hypocrisy do seem to derive from certain intuitions about justice and injustice — much the same way we find ourselves offended by instances of hypocrisy in daily life. Hedley Bull referred to this logic as the “domestic analogy,” in which states in the international system are akin to individuals in society. The trouble here is that in liberal democracies we take for granted the basic equality of persons. That concept of equality forms the bedrock principle of rule of law, ensuring that the poorest and weakest do not lose their due protections and the wealthiest and strongest do not assert undue prerogatives. But states are simply very different entities. Just compare the global interests and obligations of the United States with those of, say, Belgium.
Something similar goes for sanctioning behavior on the part of our allies that we would be loath to countenance among enemies or rivals. This sort of unequal treatment under the law is at best corrupt and nepotistic and at worst a miscarriage of justice when practiced at home — for it flouts the rule of law that we mutually rely upon. But in the world of international politics, states do have larger interests and goals that they can pursue in concert with allied countries, and it hardly serves them to spite those interests for the sake of some abstract notion of equality among states — particularly when it is doubtful that rival states enjoy any commitment to that principle in the first place. (This of course says nothing about the wisdom of any particular policy, or even the wisdom of maintaining an allied or client relationship with a given country at all, but that has no bearing on the underlying logic here.)
Another problem with attributing such significance to hypocrisy is that it posits a kind of imaginary audience for one’s actions comprised of members who are not themselves also actors on the international stage. If there is such an audience, who might it be? Many argue that the answer is the countries that comprise the so-called “Global South.” Trita Parsi and Branko Marcetic provide an exhaustive rundown of instances in which the perceived hypocrisy of the United States is mooted as a reason to abstain from joining its support of Ukraine’s defense against Russia. But beyond highly public rhetoric, there is little evidence that anger over U.S. hypocrisy was a decisive factor in their calculations, or why it would override any consideration of material interests at stake.
One is left pondering the rather implausible counterfactual of a perfectly sincere great power whose commitment to principle commands loyalty among distant states irrespective of their own several interests. Indeed, there is a kind of condescension at work in these discussions, as though the countries of the Global South were not capable of operating from the logic of interests in their own right. And at a minimum, it seems to presuppose that such countries are not themselves capable of displaying hypocrisy. After all, the “non-aligned nations” during the Cold War (many of which now comprise the Global South) were particular offenders — for example, decrying the invasion of Egypt by the British-French-Israeli coalition but remaining virtually silent about the Soviet Union’s concurrent invasion of Hungary.
Meanwhile, there are still many who suppose that international organizations might offer an alternative to the dirty business of geopolitics. This is a long-standing liberal position, which holds that formal institutions, with their embedded norms of cooperation, can replace the calculations of power politics with more pacific modes of managing global security. This view, however, overlooks how such institutions are hardly immune to the interplay of power and interest. Just consider the list of members of the U.N. Human Rights Council over the years, which is long and distinguished primarily by irony.
Perhaps the most well-known attempt to justify hypocrisy in U.S. foreign policy was Jeanne Kirkpatrick’s landmark essay, “Dictatorships & Double Standards,” which was widely viewed as establishing much of the logic of policymaking under the subsequent Reagan administrations, in which the United States would favor friendly (typically anti-communist) non-democracies over unfriendly ones. Kirkpatrick in fact justified these policies by emphasizing their continuity with conventional practice:
Inconsistencies are a familiar part of politics in human society. Usually, however, governments behave hypocritically when their principles conflict with the national interest. What makes the inconsistencies of the Carter administration noteworthy are, first, the administration’s moralism, which renders it especially vulnerable to charges of hypocrisy; and, second, the administration’s predilection for policies that violate the strategic and economic interests of the United States. The administration’s conception of national interest borders on doublethink: it finds friendly powers to be guilty representatives of the status quo and views the triumph of unfriendly groups as beneficial to America’s “true interests.”
In other words, some form of inconsistency with respect to principles was built in to geopolitics, and Kirkpatrick was arguing that if the United States was going to display inconsistency anyway, they might as well do so in ways that, as Polemarchus put it in The Republic, benefits friends and harms enemies.
Now it must be said that much of America’s support during that period both for right-wing anti-communist insurgents and for authoritarian regimes (El Salvador comes to mind) looks highly questionable in retrospect. But here too, the central problem wasn’t hypocrisy per se, but that the United States provided diplomatic and material aid to some very nasty people, thus making itself complicit in their crimes without deriving much obvious benefit in many cases. The central problem then was strategic miscalculation: overestimating both the dynamism of Soviet-backed communism and the geostrategic importance of regions like Central America.
Now, it may be that hypocrisy is just a particular problem for great powers — especially the great power. Martha Finnemore makes just this point in a thoughtful article on the matter. She readily accepts that hypocrisy “pervades international politics.” But while this may not be a problem in itself, she argues that it may be a specific problem for a unipolar or hegemonic power that relies upon remaining legitimate in the eyes of other states to maintain its status. Hence the judicious application of hypocrisy can be useful, but when unrestrained, it “undermines respect and deference for the unipole and for the values on which it has legitimized its power.”
This claim, like our general sense that hypocrisy matters, is intuitively plausible, but Finnemore does not actually demonstrate what the costs are for hypocritical behavior or how these are traced to perceptions of hypocrisy by other states. Moreover, legitimacy is a notoriously elusive concept. It is assumed, it seems, that hypocrisy must ultimately blow back on the one who displays it — e.g., America’s global authority is somehow irreparably damaged in the eyes of those who can plainly see the distance between its rhetoric on behalf of the liberal international order and its actions. It is never quite clear, however, how this cashes out.
In this way, hypocrisy is not unlike that other bugbear of international politics: credibility. The loss of credibility is intuitively thought dangerous to a nation’s security. The operating assumption here is that a given state’s past behavior may invite future threats. But as Daryl Press has persuasively argued, states are far more likely to base their decisions on a combination of their own interests and their assessment of their adversaries’ material capabilities, than on an evaluation of past actions. Thus, whatever impact past hypocrisy may have on a given state’s credibility, it likely matters less than people presume for present and future dealings with other countries.
Now, it should be noted that Press’ argument is not above criticism, both because states are not purely rational utility maximizers and because, in the absence of certain knowledge of others’ intentions, states are bound to at least consider their past actions in determining the best policy.
But here is the larger problem: As with credibility, there is that same implicit analogy to interpersonal relations. We would, after all, not put our trust in someone who repeatedly failed to honor their word, nor would we much like someone who displayed blatant hypocrisy in their day-to-day behavior. But arguments about the risks of hypocrisy in world politics should ultimately issue in material conclusions. That is to say, the social externalities of being viewed as a hypocritical actor ought to eventually involve material costs to a state’s economic and security interests — much in the way that a private individual with a reputation for hypocrisy might lose out on job promotions or business opportunities.
The causal relationship between a state’s hypocrisy and material damage to its international position has been more assumed than argued. However plausible, it has not really been demonstrated in any empirical or quantifiable way (and it is striking how many of the relevant discussions rely upon predictive rather than retrodictive arguments).
In the absence of a clear understanding of those material costs, observers tend to fall back on what amount to rhetorical critiques. To take a recent example, Secretary of State Tony Blinken claimed in an interview, “Our purpose is not to contain China, to hold it back, to keep it down. It is to uphold this rules-based order that China is posing a challenge to.” This led to inevitable criticism by members of the smart set, to the effect that the United States has always made its own rules, and that it was historically absurd to equate supremacy with international rule of law. This is to treat global politics like an academic seminar, in which students are exposed for their shaky knowledge. Blinken, however, is not a student but a diplomat making a public statement. What really matters is whether putting it this way is useful or not. Of course, it might not be. But one likely can’t go around saying bluntly that U.S. policy is to hold China down at all costs. Moreover, it is difficult to imagine the critics in this instance preferring such a bald statement of primacy.
To return then to the examples raised at the outset, was it hypocritical of Washington to lend rhetorical support for the International Criminal Court when they prosecuted Slobodan Milošević or issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin, but then criticize it for doing the same thing with Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant? Perhaps. But it was also simply a case of the United States treating an institution as useful when directed against perceived enemies and not useful when directed against allies. Of course, one can argue that an international institution like the International Criminal Court should simply not be allowed to aggrandize itself against leaders of sovereign states lest it grow too powerful altogether, or that the United States shouldn’t be providing diplomatic cover to Israel’s political and military leaders in the first place, but in either instance the hypocrisy involved is a comparatively trivial matter.
All of this seems to presuppose that other states would be satisfied with the same (to them, unjust) outcomes provided that the United States or other powers were less hypocritical about it. But we might remember that hypocrisy is hardly the worst of vices, at least when compared with cruelty. Otherwise, it assumes that what states really care about is fairness as such. That is, they are offended by the failure of the United States to be impartial rather than by its failure to be partial in their favor. Needless to say, both of these are dubious propositions.
Arguably, the real danger is that the practice of resorting to hypocritical rhetoric produces sloppy thinking and poor mental habits where geopolitics is concerned. In an essay in Esquire, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that “the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” And while America has unquestionably benefited from public servants who were also first-rate minds, from John Quincy Adams to George Kennan to William Odom, it is not really feasible or prudent to rely exclusively on such figures.
The execution of a global foreign policy relies upon a vast bureaucratic network of diplomats, foreign service officers, analysts, and so on. On the one hand, the absence of strategic clarity as expressed in public statements at the highest level hampers their ability to perform. On the other, that same lack of clarity has a tendency to filter back up through higher channels resulting in a general confusion of purpose. Though this is another way of saying that the problem isn’t hypocrisy at all but sincerity. That the continued reliance on rhetoric concerning the “rules-based international order” had the result of changing its users’ perception of reality, Sapir-Whorf style, in ways that proved damaging to their foreign policy judgments.
Beyond this, there is another way that hypocrisy might matter, but it is again domestic. For, it may be that the normalization of deeply hypocritical behavior is damaging to the social and political cohesion that is necessary for any society to function. The question is not whether a given state is straightforward in all its dealings with other states — the question is whether its own people continue to believe in their country and are prepared to sacrifice for it. If by hypocrisy, we mean a kind of pure expediency in our dealings with others, with little adherence to steadfast principles, one can see how this is acidic to the ordinary bonds of loyalty and belief that hold a nation together through good and ill fortune.
The political theorist Laurie Johnson explains:
Thucydides’ History teaches that as the Athenians came to believe and act on their [cynical] theory of human nature and state action, their legitimacy declined among their allies and empire and their domestic political order became corrupt and disintegrated amid politicians who each followed his own self-interest.
This may be an extreme case, but something like this is a legitimate concern for (particularly democratic) governments that are obliged to explain their reasoning to their own publics, who might in turn believe that there have to be limits to pragmatism.
Ultimately, however, the consistency or hypocrisy of a given country’s (including America’s) international behavior is really a second-order problem, and focusing on it functions as a proxy for a more substantive issue, be it avoidable evils or ill-advised policy choices. And one suspects that so many dwell on it because it is easier than addressing the first-order questions: What are our interests here, if any, and what should we do about them?
Otherwise, even where hypocrisy appears to be the main problem, there is an imprecision in how we discuss it: The exact nature of the harm it does — whether to ourselves or others — remains vague. And in such discussions, it almost invariably gets caught up with other imprecise terms like “trust” and “credibility,” which are of similarly dubious significance in the arena of international politics.
Indeed, what almost always matters when it comes to a policy that was pursued in a manner deemed hypocritical by others is whether it ultimately proved successful. But this, too, is testament to its irrelevance. For, people rarely highlight the hypocrisy of successful policies. The fact that it succeeded surely suggests it was at least prima facie advisable. Conversely, its failure and associated costs are surely more important than the fact that hypocrisy was somehow involved.
In the end, though primacy or superiority accounts for much behavior we perceive as hypocritical, it is by no means the cause of it — the cause being rather the inevitable diversity of interests across different states, and the equally inevitable disagreement about the legitimacy of those interests. That these varied and not-infrequently opposed interests do not lead to the perpetual war of all against all is frequently attributed to the establishment of international law and international institutions. But it has far more to do with the credible authority of a hegemonic power in conjunction with the tools of diplomacy and statecraft, both of which entail in no small part — yes, hypocrisy.
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David Polansky is a Toronto-based writer and research fellow with the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Toronto. Find him elsewhere at strangefrequencies.co
Image: ChatGPT
Commentary
warontherocks.com · by David Polansky · June 21, 2024
18. War Books: Airpower Scholarship for the Army
I remember receiving a copy of Dr. Mellinger's little book when I visited SAAS. I found it informative and helpful though I think some may not agree with all the propositions or the descriptions of them
"Ten Propositions Regarding Airpower"
Download the PDF here: https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Portals/10/ASPJ/journals/Chronicles/meil.pdf
WAR BOOKS: AIRPOWER SCHOLARSHIP FOR THE ARMY
https://mwi.westpoint.edu/war-books-airpower-scholarship-for-the-army/
Heather Venable | 06.21.24
Editor’s note: Welcome to another installment of our weekly War Books series! The premise is simple and straightforward. We invite a participant to recommend five books and tell us what sets each one apart. War Books is a resource for MWI readers who want to learn more about important subjects related to modern war and are looking for books to add to their reading lists.
This week’s installment of War Books comes from Dr. Heather Venable, an associate professor of military and security studies at the Air Command and Staff College and an MWI research fellow. We gave Dr. Venable the following prompt: What five books would you recommend to Army readers to better understand the role of airpower in war?
Overlord: General Pete Quesada and the Triumph of Tactical Air Power in World War II, by Thomas Hughes
This biography of Army Air Forces officer General Pete Quesada is a perennial student favorite at Air Command and Staff College. The work highlights Quesada’s leadership and adaptation during World War II, particularly highlighting how he improved air-ground cooperation. As this mission has frequently been a tense one between the Army and the Air Force, it is worth appreciating how well both sides learned to work together effectively, thereby contributing significantly to the defeat of Germany.
How the War Was Won: Air-Sea Power and Allied Victory in World War II, by Phillips O’Brien
For a very different vantage point of how airpower contributed to the defeat of Germany and Japan, Phillips O’Brien makes the highly revisionist and fascinating argument that there were no decisive land battles in World War II. Army readers will find this this contrarian statement ranging from intriguing to downright nonsensical. Keep turning the pages. O’Brien is a masterful scholar who makes a compelling case for how air and sea power attrited the German and Japanese militaries. One need not accept his argument regarding decisive land battles to appreciate how much airpower can contribute off the battlefield to what is occurring on the battlefield. Airpower need not be directly overhead to be highly useful in supporting the ground fight.
History of Air Warfare, edited by John Andreas Olsen
This excellent overview of air warfare provides brief historical case studies from World War I to Operation Allied Force, with almost every chapter written by a foremost airpower scholar. Although there is one instance (the chapter on Operation Iraqi Freedom) in which an exclusive focus on Marine aviation presents an incomplete picture, on the whole the reader can be assured of thoughtful analysis of the book’s case studies.
(Bonus book: If you prefer a similar approach to air warfare but focused on more recent campaigns, substitute Airpower in the Age of Primacy, edited by Phil Haun, Tim Schultz, and Colin Jackson.
The Air War in Vietnam, by Michael Weaver
This highly dense book provides thoughtful analysis about airpower with detailed treatment of various airpower missions. The result of meticulous research, this book provides soldiers with a thorough and comprehensive understanding of airpower employment. Although airpower’s capabilities and limitations have changed significantly since the Vietnam War, the actual ideas underpinning airpower employment are far more consistent, making this book highly relevant to understanding airpower today.
Tactical Air Power and the Vietnam War: Explaining Effectiveness in Modern Air Warfare, by Phil Haun
A retired A-10 pilot and political scientist provides a useful model for successful air-ground operations focused largely on the Vietnam War. He argues that airpower is most successfully employed by working together with landpower close to the battlefield. This has not been the Air Force’s historical preference for a number of reasons, however. While he makes a compelling case for the utility of what he calls battlefield air interdiction, it is important to note that more traditional interdiction has been incredibly successful at times, especially by striking ships both in the southwest Pacific and in the Mediterranean during World War II. The author concludes the work with the application of his theory to far more recent conflicts, including the Russo-Ukraine War.
Dr. Heather Venable is an associate professor of military and security studies at the Air Command and Staff College, where she serves as course director of Airpower Strategy and Operations, and an MWI research fellow.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.
Image credit: R. Nial Bradshaw, US Air Force
19. Biden’s Handwringing Over the Houthis is Going to Get U.S. Navy Sailors Killed
Biden’s Handwringing Over the Houthis is Going to Get U.S. Navy Sailors Killed
By Tim Gallaudet
June 21, 2024
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2024/06/21/bidens_handwringing_over_the_houthis_is_going_to_get_us_navy_sailors_killed_1039530.html
This week marks the eighth month of the U.S. Navy’s combat operations against Houthi forces in Yemen. That’s four times longer than the first Gulf War. While Navy sailors have remained vigilant, fighting their ships, and eliminating a portion of their adversary’s combat capability, the Houthis and their Iranian enablers remain entirely undeterred.
Commercial mariners have gotten the message. After more than 50 attacks on shipping in the waters off Yemen, which have killed three, the marine transportation industry has all but abandoned the Red Sea. This caused one Commanding Officer of the Navy ships in the region to call the strategic sea lane a “ghost town.” One must wonder why the U.S. has a Navy in the first place.
The exodus of civilian shipping has only caused the Houthis to concentrate their kinetic effects on allied naval forces, creating the most intense combat conditions since World War II. In a sobering expose this week by the Associated Press, commanders of the U.S. Navy vessels involved described the nearly non-stop barrage of missiles and drones. In each case, the ships had only seconds to respond.
One officer said, “We only have to get it wrong once,” implying that if the Houthis succeed in executing just a single strike successfully, any of the ships could experience what occurred in 1987 when the USS Stark was struck by two Iraqi Exocet air to surface missiles during the Iran-Iraq War, which killed 37 sailors and nearly sunk the ship.
Time is not on the Navy’s side. Consider that Israel’s much-vaunted Iron Dome system has an estimated success rate of 95%, meaning that 5% of all incoming attacks strike home. In the AP article, Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, said, “We’re sort of on the verge of the Houthis being able to mount the kinds of attacks that the U.S. can’t stop every time, and then we will start to see substantial damage. … If you let it fester, the Houthis are going to get to be a much more capable, competent, experienced force.”
Such was the case when a strike by another Iran-backed militia killed three Army soldiers and injured dozens of others last year in Jordan. The forces defending the base mistook the adversary’s drone for an American one.
Why is the world’s strongest Navy being put in the position of a pincushion? The sad fact is that the service’s hands are tied by a White House too fearful to eliminate the threat in Yemen, as well as their support from Iran. Instead, the Biden team is foolishly clinging to the Administration’s “relentless diplomacy” policy which did nothing to deter Russia from invading Ukraine in 2022. While the White House has said nothing about taking the fight to the enemy in Yemen, the Houthis are boasting about what they are doing.
Contrast this to Israel’s approach in their war with Hamas. Their objective is clear: destroy Hamas. This is just what the U.S. needs to do: establish and achieve the goal to destroy the Houthi’s means of attacking both shipping and Israel. When the Trump Administration killed Iranian Quds Force leader Qasem Soleimani in 2020, it forced Iran’s leaders to recalculate their months-long escalation against U.S. forces. Standing up to the Houthi attacks and Iran’s material and financial support will have the same effect.
And you can be sure that China’s President Xi Jinping is not only noticing such dithering by Biden’s Defense Department, but he is also embracing it and factoring it into his timeline to take Taiwan as early as the end of this year.
In an interview last week, former Commander of the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) General Frank McKenzie stated that President Biden disregarded his advice and selected the worst of the four options he developed for withdrawing U.S. forces from Afghanistan in 2021. He is clearly making the same ill-advised decisions regarding Iran right now.
In the previously cited AP article, author Jon Gambrell described the sentiment of Naval personnel on the scene in the Red Sea, “Officers acknowledge some grumbling among their crew, wondering why the Navy doesn’t strike harder against the Houthis.” We can only hope that current U.S. CENTCOM and Navy leadership are more effective than McKenzie in arguing against the Administration’s feckless and failing policy towards Iran and the Houthis. If they don’t succeed soon, the Houthis are going to get their lucky break, and the blood of U.S. Navy sailors will be on Biden’s hands.
Rear Admiral (ret.) Tim Gallaudet is a former acting and Deputy Administrator at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), as well as former acting Under Secretary and Assistant Secretary of Commerce. Prior to NOAA, he served for 32 years in the U.S. Navy, completing his career as the Oceanographer of the Navy and Commander of the Navy Meteorology and Oceanography Command.
20. Why They Don’t Fight: The Surprising Endurance of the Democratic Peace
Excerpts:
This cold war—should the world indeed succumb to it—will be different from the first one. It pits democracies against autocracies, not capitalists against communists. Its geopolitics put a rising power (China) against an old hegemon (the United States), and an aggressive militarist (Putin) against an overstretched alliance (NATO). Every party sees itself on the defensive. The United States and its allies want a “world safe for democracy” in which national security is affordable, elections are secure, markets are free, and human rights remain an ideal. China, Russia, and their allies want a world safe for autocracy, where governments are free to skip elections and neglect human rights, where markets and information are subject to state direction, and where no one outside the government questions state policy. Both sides are threatened because those two visions are incompatible.
The divisions, of course, are not always so neat. As happened during the first Cold War, a number of developing countries, including some democracies, are seeking nonalignment. And as it did during the U.S.-Soviet standoff, Washington has autocratic partners, such as the Arab Gulf countries. But even within these relationships, ideology appears to be having an effect. The largest of the states in the neutral bloc, India, is partnering more closely with the United States as the two countries compete with Beijing, and both have repeatedly praised the other for being a democracy (even if India’s democracy is showing signs of distress). The United States and its liberal allies, meanwhile, are making authoritarian partners uneasy. Biden, for example, referred to Saudi Arabia as a “pariah” during his campaign, even though the United States has relied on Saudi oil production to help keep oil prices down.
The world’s great powers can still prevent these democratic-autocratic tensions from hardening into a full-blown cold war. Through effective diplomacy, they might be able to construct a kind of cold peace, or a détente in which countries shun subversive transformation in favor of mutual survival and global prosperity. Pursuing such a world may, indeed, be an obligation for democracies. As Kant insisted and Kennedy pleaded, in a responsible representative government, leaders must strive to protect free republics but also avoid unnecessary conflict.
Yet a true cold peace would require settling the war over Ukraine, creating a new understanding with Beijing and Taipei about the status of Taiwan, and striking arms control agreements—tasks that are nearly impossible. Instead, the world’s democratic powers appear to be girding themselves for a long twilight struggle with authoritarian regimes. This struggle may be scary, but it should not come as a surprise. It is, in fact, exactly what democratic peace theory predicts. Liberal states are being cooperative and peaceable toward fellow members of the club, working through institutions such as NATO and the Quad. But with respect to autocracies, they remain ready for war.
Why They Don’t Fight
The Surprising Endurance of the Democratic Peace
July/August 2024
Published on June 18, 2024
Foreign Affairs · by Cold Peace: Avoiding the New Cold War · June 18, 2024
Few hypotheses in international relations are more influential than democratic peace theory—the idea that democracies do not go to war with one another. The idea, the political scientist Jack Levy wrote, “comes as close as anything we have to an empirical law in international relations.” It has motivated U.S. foreign policy for nearly a century. In the early 1900s, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson embraced democracy promotion as a means to peace. During the Cold War, successive administrations spoke of the standoff with the Soviet bloc using grand ideological terminology. No distillation was grander than President Ronald Reagan’s address before the British Parliament in 1982, in which he claimed that the West exercised “consistent restraint and peaceful intentions” and then proceeded (seemingly without irony) to call for a “campaign for democracy” and a “crusade for freedom” around the world.
Democratic peace theory became especially influential once the Cold War ended, leaving the United States truly ascendant. In his 1994 State of the Union address, President Bill Clinton claimed that “the best strategy to ensure our security and to build a durable peace is to support the advance of democracy elsewhere.” His administration then surged aid to nascent post-Soviet democracies. Clinton’s successor, George W. Bush, was equally vocal about the need to advance liberalism in order to promote peace, telling the 2004 Republican National Convention, “As freedom advances, heart by heart, and nation by nation, America will be more secure and the world more peaceful.” As president, Bush even used democratic peace theory as one of the justifications for invading Iraq. In a speech on the war in November 2003, he declared, “The advance of freedom leads to peace.”
The idea that democracy breeds peace, however, is at best half true. The United States has repeatedly attacked other countries. Europe’s major democracies also have a long history of intervening in other regions, such as the Sahel. And rather than marking the permanent triumph of liberal democracy, the post–Cold War period is now defined by growing divisions and conflict. As is now plain, the spread of liberalism does not by itself curtail fighting.
Yet the proliferation of wars carried out by democracies does not disprove democratic peace theory wholesale. Liberal states may not act peaceably toward everyone, but they act peaceably toward one another. There are no clear-cut cases of one democracy going to war against another, nor do any seem forthcoming. In fact, the global divisions emerging today confirm democratic peace theory: once again, the line runs between liberal states and authoritarian ones, with the United States and its mostly democratic allies on one side and autocracies, most notably China and Russia, on the other. The world, then, could be peaceful if all states became liberal democracies. But until that happens, the world will likely remain mired in a dangerous ideological standoff.
GREAT MINDS
Democratic peace theory has a long history. In 1776, the American revolutionary Thomas Paine argued that liberal states do not fight one another, writing that “the Republics of Europe are all (and we may say always) in peace.” When Paine’s country gained independence and then drafted its constitution, the document implicitly referred to the idea that democracies should be conflict-averse. It placed the authority to declare war in the legislature—the branch with members directly elected by the public—in part to prevent the country from entering unpopular conflicts.
Democratic peace theory had early proponents across the Atlantic, as well. Its most influential initial champion was the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. In 1795, Kant published Perpetual Peace, an essay that took the form of a hypothetical peace treaty and that established the concept’s theoretical foundations. Representative republics, Kant explained, did not fight one another for a mix of institutional, ideological, and economic reasons.
Kant’s writings called for states to adopt a representative republican form of government with an elected legislative body and a separation of powers among the executive, judiciary, and legislative branches—all guaranteed by constitutional law. Kant’s republic was far from a modern democracy; only male property holders could vote and become what he called “active citizens.” Nonetheless, he argued that elected representation would inspire caution and that the separation of powers would produce careful deliberation. Although these forces would not guarantee peace, he admitted, they would select for rational and popular conflicts. If “the consent of the citizens is required to decide whether or not war is to be declared,” Kant wrote, “it is very natural that they will have great hesitation in embarking on so dangerous an enterprise.” For doing so, he continued,
would mean calling down on themselves all the miseries of war, such as doing the fighting themselves, supplying the costs of the war from their own resources, painfully making good the ensuing devastation, and, as the crowning evil, having to take upon themselves a burden of debt which will embitter peace itself and which can never be paid off on account of the constant threat of new wars. But under a constitution in which the subject is not a citizen, and which is therefore not republican, it is the simplest thing in the world to go to war. For the head of state is not a fellow citizen, but the owner of the state, and a war will not force him to make the slightest sacrifice so far as his banquets, hunts, pleasure palaces and court festivals are concerned. He can thus decide on war, without any significant reason, as a kind of amusement, and unconcernedly leave it to the diplomatic corps (who are always ready for such purposes) to justify the war for the sake of propriety.
Kant also called for republics to make commitments to peace and universal hospitality. The former idea entailed a commitment to peaceful relations and collective self-defense, rather like NATO’s. The latter meant treating all international visitors without hostility, offering asylum to people whose lives were at risk, and allowing visitors to share their ideas and propose commercial exchanges. This combination, Kant said, would build security, create mutual respect, and generate economic ties that lead to tranquility. And thus, republic by emerging republic, the combination would create peace.
Democratic peace theory had early proponents on both sides of the Atlantic.
Kant did not argue that his ideas would stop tension and conflict between republics and autocracies. In fact, he argued that representative republics might become suspicious of states not ruled by their citizens. But he did believe that liberal values such as human rights and respect for property would curb a country’s desire for glory, fear of conquest, and need to plunder—three forces that drive states to war. He therefore thought that liberal republics would be respectful and restrained when addressing one another, even as they remained suspicious and fearful of nonrepublics.
Views similar to Kant’s on liberty, republics, commerce, and peace spread throughout nineteenth-century Europe and beyond. French Foreign Minister Francois Guizot, a conservative liberal who served from 1840 to 1848, spoke enthusiastically about mutual freedom as a foundation for an entente with the United Kingdom. British Prime Minister William Gladstone, who led his country for much of the latter half of the 1800s, was a proponent. And when U.S. President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, it helped tilt liberal opinion in Europe toward the Union and away from the Confederacy.
It was not, however, until World War I that the full democratic peace proposition became central to foreign policy. Wilson’s war message in April 1917—in which he declared that the battle between autocracies and democracies would establish “the principles of peace and justice”—was the clarion call. The clash between democracy and autocracy continued to shape policy as the decades went on. The behavior of the United States during the Cold War, for example, was often motivated by a belief that spreading liberal values would yield peace. As Secretary of State John Foster Dulles declared in his 1953 Senate confirmation hearing, “We shall never have a secure peace or a happy world so long as Soviet communism dominates one-third of all the peoples that there are.” President John F. Kennedy echoed that theme in his 1963 speech in West Berlin, declaring that “when all are free, then we can look forward to that day when this city will be joined as one and this country and this great Continent of Europe in a peaceful and hopeful globe.”
But that same month, in a powerful address at American University, Kennedy warned of the complementary dangers of ideological confrontation with the Soviet Union. “Let us not be blind to our differences—but let us also direct attention to our common interests and the means by which those differences can be resolved,” he said. “If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.”
TIME AFTER TIME
As liberalism endured and spread, intellectuals began empirically testing whether democratic peace theory actually held true. In 1939, the American journalist Clarence Streit published a qualitative historical analysis to see whether liberal democracies tended to maintain peace among themselves. Discerning that the answer was yes, he proposed that the decade’s leading democracies form a federal union, which would help protect them from fascist powers. In 1972, Dean Babst, building on Quincy Wright’s magisterial A Study of War from 30 years earlier, carried out a statistical analysis that also suggested a correlation between democracy and peace. In 1976, Melvin Small and J. David Singer confirmed this finding but demonstrated that democratic peace was limited to relations between democracies. Republics, they showed, were still prone to fight autocratic regimes.
In the decades since, international relations scholars have continued to study the democratic peace paradigm. They have shown that the relationship between democracy and peace is statistically significant even when controlling for proximity, wealth, and trade. They have determined that the theory holds even when states attempt to constrain each other.
Academics have advanced a wide variety of explanations for why the concept is so sturdy. Some have argued that part of the reason lies in the disproportionate influence that international institutions have with liberal countries. Research shows that democracies tend to delegate a lot of policymaking to complex multilateral bodies, such as the European Union and the World Trade Organization, in part because their leaders can use these groups to entrench policies before cycling out of office. Other scholars have argued that liberal norms favoring peace, human rights, and respect for fellow democracies hold sway over policymakers and publics. And still others have pointed to the benefits of trade and economic interdependence associated with relations among capitalist democracies. States that frequently trade, after all, will lose wealth if they fight one another.
Waiting to vote in Imphal, India, April 2024
Stringer / Reuters
Still, democratic peace theory has attracted plenty of critics. Henry Farber and Joanne Gowa have pointed out that there are other forces at work in stopping wars between democracies. During the Cold War, for example, NATO’s need to protect itself from the Soviet bloc ensured that Western Europe cooperated—although the region’s post–Cold War peace suggests more than collaborative containment is at work. Other scholars have pointed out that none of the factors used to explain democratic peace theory can stop war on its own. States that are deeply involved in international institutions, after all, do launch invasions. Peaceful norms and ideas work only if democracies heed them in the policymaking process, yet they are often ignored. The shared decision-making powers of republics should encourage deliberation, but the division of powers and rotation of elites can also lead democracies to send mixed signals, putting other states on edge.
And economic benefits can be achieved through plunder, not just through trade. Powerful democratic states can have rational incentives to exploit wealthy, weak democracies, especially if the latter are endowed with natural resources or strategic assets such as shipping lanes. Rational material interest is not enough to explain why xenophobic democracies have not tried to conquer democracies of other ethnic groups.
But put all the explanatory factors together, and democratic peace theory coheres. When governments are constrained by international institutions, when political elites or the electorate are committed to norms of liberty, when the public’s views are reflected through representative institutions, and when democracies trade and invest in one another, conflicts among republics are peacefully resolved.
RUN IT BACK
U.S. President Donald Trump subjected democratic peace theory to an intense test. He picked fights with European allies while praising Russian President Vladimir Putin and other dictators. Trump also cajoled and threatened liberal allies in other parts of the world, including East Asia. For a time, the United States seemed just as hostile toward fellow democracies as it was toward autocracies.
But under President Joe Biden, democratic peace is back in vogue. Like many of his predecessors, Biden has made promoting freedom a hallmark of his foreign policy. He has routinely described global politics as a contest between democracies and autocracies, featuring the United States and its allies in one corner and China and Russia in the other. Speaking at the UN in 2021, Biden pledged not to enter a “new cold war,” but he also announced that the world is at “an inflection point” and drew a sharp line between authoritarian and democratic regimes. “The future will belong to those who embrace human dignity, not trample it,” Biden said.
The president clearly aims to mobilize democracies, especially liberal industrial democracies, against dictatorships. His broad ideological framing emphasizes the threats posed by Russia to Europe’s democracies and by China to East Asia’s, including Taiwan. He has invoked ideology when promoting the importance of NATO in Europe and the Quad (the U.S. partnership with Australia, India, and Japan) in Asia and invested new resources in both bodies. Whether Biden wants it or not, the world may succumb to a new cold war. Much like the last one, it will be categorized by a clash between different systems of government.
States are already taking sides, lining up according to regime type. Democratic Finland and Sweden, neutral during the first Cold War, have joined NATO. Ireland has moved closer to the alliance. China and Russia have recruited Iran and North Korea to their team, fellow autocracies that are providing arms for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Russia has, in turn, used its UN Security Council seat to make it harder for the world to monitor North Korea’s nuclear program. China is buying up Iranian oil.
Under President Joe Biden, democratic peace is back in vogue.
This cold war—should the world indeed succumb to it—will be different from the first one. It pits democracies against autocracies, not capitalists against communists. Its geopolitics put a rising power (China) against an old hegemon (the United States), and an aggressive militarist (Putin) against an overstretched alliance (NATO). Every party sees itself on the defensive. The United States and its allies want a “world safe for democracy” in which national security is affordable, elections are secure, markets are free, and human rights remain an ideal. China, Russia, and their allies want a world safe for autocracy, where governments are free to skip elections and neglect human rights, where markets and information are subject to state direction, and where no one outside the government questions state policy. Both sides are threatened because those two visions are incompatible.
The divisions, of course, are not always so neat. As happened during the first Cold War, a number of developing countries, including some democracies, are seeking nonalignment. And as it did during the U.S.-Soviet standoff, Washington has autocratic partners, such as the Arab Gulf countries. But even within these relationships, ideology appears to be having an effect. The largest of the states in the neutral bloc, India, is partnering more closely with the United States as the two countries compete with Beijing, and both have repeatedly praised the other for being a democracy (even if India’s democracy is showing signs of distress). The United States and its liberal allies, meanwhile, are making authoritarian partners uneasy. Biden, for example, referred to Saudi Arabia as a “pariah” during his campaign, even though the United States has relied on Saudi oil production to help keep oil prices down.
The world’s great powers can still prevent these democratic-autocratic tensions from hardening into a full-blown cold war. Through effective diplomacy, they might be able to construct a kind of cold peace, or a détente in which countries shun subversive transformation in favor of mutual survival and global prosperity. Pursuing such a world may, indeed, be an obligation for democracies. As Kant insisted and Kennedy pleaded, in a responsible representative government, leaders must strive to protect free republics but also avoid unnecessary conflict.
Yet a true cold peace would require settling the war over Ukraine, creating a new understanding with Beijing and Taipei about the status of Taiwan, and striking arms control agreements—tasks that are nearly impossible. Instead, the world’s democratic powers appear to be girding themselves for a long twilight struggle with authoritarian regimes. This struggle may be scary, but it should not come as a surprise. It is, in fact, exactly what democratic peace theory predicts. Liberal states are being cooperative and peaceable toward fellow members of the club, working through institutions such as NATO and the Quad. But with respect to autocracies, they remain ready for war.
Foreign Affairs · by Cold Peace: Avoiding the New Cold War · June 18, 2024
21. Hamas Is Winning: Why Israel’s Failing Strategy Makes Its Enemy Stronger
Excerpts:
THE STARK REALITY
After nine months of grueling war, it is time to recognize the stark reality: there is no military-only solution to defeat Hamas. The group is more than the sum of its current number of fighters. It is also more than an evocative idea. Hamas is a political and social movement with violence at its core, and it is not going away any time soon.
Israel’s current strategy of heavy military operations may kill some Hamas fighters, but this strategy is only strengthening the bonds between Hamas and the local community. For nine months, Israel has pursued virtually unfettered military operations in Gaza, with little evident progress toward any of its objectives. Hamas is neither defeated nor on the verge of defeat, and its cause is more popular and its appeal stronger than before October 7. In the absence of a plan for the future of Gaza and the Palestinian people that Palestinians might accept, the terrorists will keep coming back and in larger numbers.
But Israeli leaders appear no more willing to conceive of such a viable political plan than they were before October 7. There is little end in sight to the tragedy continuing to unfold in Gaza. The war will go on and on, more Palestinians will die, and the threat to Israel will only grow.
Hamas Is Winning
Why Israel’s Failing Strategy Makes Its Enemy Stronger
June 21, 2024
Foreign Affairs · by Robert A. Pape · June 21, 2024
Nine months of Israeli air and ground combat operations in Gaza have not defeated Hamas, nor is Israel close to vanquishing the terrorist group. To the contrary, according to the measures that matter, Hamas is stronger today than it was on October 7.
Since Hamas’s horrific attack last October, Israel has invaded northern and southern Gaza with approximately 40,000 combat troops, forcibly displaced 80 percent of the population, killed over 37,000 people, dropped at least 70,000 tons of bombs on the territory (surpassing the combined weight of bombs dropped on London, Dresden, and Hamburg in all of World War II), destroyed or damaged over half of all buildings in Gaza, and limited the territory’s access to water, food, and electricity, leaving the entire population on the brink of famine.
Although many observers have highlighted the immorality of Israel’s conduct, Israeli leaders have consistently claimed that the goal of defeating Hamas and weakening its ability to launch new attacks against Israeli civilians must take precedence over any concerns about Palestinian lives. The punishment of the population of Gaza must be accepted as necessary to destroy the power of Hamas.
But thanks to Israel’s assault, Hamas’s power is actually growing. Just as the Viet Cong grew stronger during the massive “search and destroy” operations that ravaged much of South Vietnam in 1966 and 1967 when the United States poured troops into the country in an ultimately futile bid to turn the war in its favor, Hamas remains intractable and has evolved into a tenacious and deadly guerrilla force in Gaza—with lethal operations restarting in the northern regions that were supposedly cleared by Israel only a few months ago.
The central flaw in Israel’s strategy is not a failure of tactics or the imposition of constraints on military force—just as the failure of the United States’ military strategy in Vietnam had little to do with the technical proficiency of its troops or political and moral limits on the uses of military power. Rather, the overarching failure has been a gross misunderstanding of the sources of Hamas’s power. To its great detriment, Israel has failed to realize that the carnage and devastation it has unleashed in Gaza has only made its enemy stronger.
THE BODY COUNT FALLACY
For months, governments and analysts have fixated on the number of Hamas fighters killed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) as if this statistic were the most important measure of the success of Israel’s campaign against the group. To be sure, many Hamas fighters have been killed. Israel says 14,000 of the estimated 30,000 to 40,000 fighters Hamas had before the war are now dead, while Hamas insists it has lost only 6,000 to 8,000 fighters. U.S. intelligence sources indicate the real number of Hamas dead is around 10,000.
A focus on these numbers, however, makes it hard to truly assess Hamas’s power. Despite its losses, Hamas remains in de facto control of large swaths of Gaza, including those areas where the territory’s civilians are now concentrated. The group still enjoys tremendous support from Gazans, allowing militants to seize humanitarian supplies almost at will and easily return to areas previously “cleared” by Israeli forces. According to a recent Israeli assessment, Hamas now has more fighters in the northern areas of Gaza, which the IDF seized in the fall at the cost of hundreds of soldiers, than it does in Rafah in the south.
Hamas is now waging a guerrilla war, involving ambushes and improvised bombs (often made from unexploded ordnance or captured IDF weapons), protracted operations that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s national security adviser recently said could last through the end of 2024 at least. It could still strike in Israel; Hamas likely has some 15,000 mobilized fighters—roughly ten times the number of fighters who carried out the October 7 attacks. Further, upward of 80 percent of the group’s underground tunnel network remains usable for planning, storing weapons, and evading Israeli surveillance, capture, and attacks. Most of Hamas’s top leadership in Gaza remains intact. In sum, Israel’s fast-moving offensive in the fall has given way to a grinding war of attrition that would leave Hamas with the ability to attack Israeli civilians even if the IDF presses ahead with its campaign in southern Gaza.
Failed counterinsurgencies in the past often fixated on enemy body counts. The IDF is now engaged in the familiar game of Whac-a-Mole that bogged down U.S. troops in Afghanistan for years. Slavish attention to body counts tends to confuse tactical and strategic success and ignore the key measures that would show whether the strategic power of the opponent is growing even as the group’s immediate losses mount. For a terrorist or insurgent group, the key source of power is not the size of its current generation of fighters but its potential to gain supporters from the local community in the future.
THE SOURCES OF STRENGTH
The power of a militant group such as Hamas does not come from the typical material factors that analysts use to judge the might of states—including the size of their economy, the technological sophistication of their militaries, how much external support they enjoy, and the strength of their educational systems. Rather, the most crucial source of power of Hamas and other militant nonstate actors commonly referred to as “terrorist” or “insurgent” groups is the ability to recruit, especially its ability to attract new generations of the fighters and operatives who carry out the group’s lethal campaigns and are likely to die for the cause. And that ability to recruit is rooted, ultimately, in a single factor: the scale and intensity of support a group derives from its community.
The backing of a community allows a terrorist group to replenish its ranks, gain resources, avoid detection, and generally have more access to the human and material resources necessary to mobilize and sustain lethal campaigns of violence. Most terrorists, including Islamist groups in the Middle East, are walk-in volunteers, often either angry over the loss of family members or friends or more generally enraged at a powerful state’s use of heavy military force. These people often seek out recruiters whose identity could be revealed to security forces were it not for the willingness of community members to protect them. Terrorist groups tend to fight with weapons that have been either made by refashioning civilian materials or seized from state security forces, often with intelligence and assistance provided by members of the local community.
Most important, the support of a community is necessary for fostering a cult of martyrdom. People are less likely to volunteer for high-risk missions if their sacrifices go unnoticed. A community that honors the fallen fighters of a terrorist group helps sustain it; martyrdom legitimizes terrorist actions and encourages new recruits. Terrorists will act as they see fit, but it is the community that ultimately decides whether an individual’s sacrifice is accorded high status or whether it is broadly viewed as irrational, criminal, and worthy of contempt.
At the wreckage of Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, October 2023
Anas al-Shareef / Reuters
It is no surprise that terrorist groups often go to great lengths to curry favor with local communities. By embedding in social institutions, such as schools, universities, charities, and religious congregations, terrorist groups become a part of the fabric of communities, better able to win more recruits and the support of noncombatants.
Many cases showcase these dynamics. Hezbollah flourished with growing popular support among Shiites during the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon from 1982 to 1999, evolving from a small clandestine terrorist group into a mainstream political party with an armed wing of around 40,000 fighters today. Strong community support powered the prolonged terrorist campaigns of the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, the Shining Path in Peru, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party in Turkey, the Taliban in Afghanistan, and the so-called Islamic State and al Qaeda in multiple countries.
Losing the support of a community can be devastating for terrorist groups. Following the U.S. occupation of Iraq in 2003, the number of fighters in the Sunni insurgency grew from 5,000 in the spring of 2004 to 20,000 by the fall of 2004 to 30,000 in February 2007, according to U.S. estimates. The more people the United States killed, the faster the insurgency grew. Indeed, the insurgency did not collapse until the United States shifted to a new approach, offering political and economic incentives to encourage Sunni tribes to oppose the terrorists. That shift ultimately decimated the insurgency, as the loss of local community support led to mass defections, actionable intelligence, and the rise of Sunni opposition forces called the Anbar Awakening. By 2009, the insurgency had virtually collapsed for one major reason: the loss of community support made it impossible for the terrorists to replenish their ranks.
HEARTS AND MINDS
These dynamics help account for Hamas’s staying power in its war with Israel. To assess the group’s true strength, analysts should consider the various dimensions of its support among Palestinians. These include its popularity as compared with its political rivals, the extent to which Palestinians view Hamas’s violence against Israeli civilians as acceptable, and how many Palestinians have lost family members in the ongoing Israeli invasion of Gaza. These factors, more than material ones, provide the best gauge of Hamas’s power to conduct a protracted terrorist campaign going forward.
Surveys of Palestinian opinion can help assess the extent of community support for Hamas. To account for the challenges of surveying the population in Gaza since October 7, the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR), a polling organization established in 1993 after the Oslo Accords that collaborates with Israeli institutions, included interviews of displaced people in temporary shelters and roughly doubled the usual number of interviewed respondents given the uncertain and changing population distributions in the territory.
Five PSR surveys from June 2023 to the most recent, completed in June 2024, present a striking finding: on virtually every measure, Hamas has more support among Palestinians today than before October 7.
Political support for Hamas has grown, especially compared with its competitors. For instance, although Hamas and its main rival, Fatah, enjoyed roughly equivalent levels of support in June 2023, by June 2024 twice as many Palestinians supported Hamas (40 percent compared with 20 percent for Fatah).
The Israeli offensive is not turning Palestinians against Hamas.
Israel’s bombing and ground invasion of Gaza has neither dampened Palestinian support for attacks against Israeli civilians inside Israel nor markedly depressed support for the October 7 attack itself. In March 2024, 73 percent of Palestinians believed Hamas was right to launch the October 7 attack. These numbers are extremely high, not only after the attacks spurred Israel’s brutal campaign, but also in light of the fact that a lower number, 53 percent, of Palestinians supported armed attacks on Israeli civilians in September 2023.
Hamas is enjoying a “rally ’round the flag” moment, helping explain why Gazans are not providing more intelligence to Israeli forces about the whereabouts of Hamas leaders and Israeli hostages. Support for armed attacks against Israeli civilians appears to have risen especially among Palestinians in the West Bank, which is now rightly on par with the consistently high levels of support for these attacks in Gaza, showing that Hamas has made extensive gains across Palestinian society since October 7.
The survey data also shows how Israel’s military campaign has affected Palestinians. As of March 2024, the weight of the perceived price of the war on the Palestinian population is remarkably high. Sixty percent of Palestinians in Gaza report having a family member killed in the current war, while over three-quarters report having a family member killed or injured, both numbers significantly higher than in December 2023. This punishment is not having a significant deterrent effect among Palestinians, failing to reduce their support for armed attacks against Israeli civilians and their support for Hamas.
Before October 7, Hamas had plateaued as a political force and, if anything, was in decline. The group feared that its cause—and the plight of the Palestinians more broadly—was being sidelined by the Abraham Accords, agreements that sought to normalize ties between Israel and Arab countries. Before its brazen assault on Israel on October 7, Hamas reckoned with a future of irrelevance, with Palestinians having fewer and fewer reasons to support the group.
After October 7, Palestinian support for Hamas has surged, to the detriment of Israel’s security. Yes, Israel has killed many thousands of Hamas fighters in Gaza. But these losses in the current generation of fighters are already being offset by the rise in support for Hamas and the group’s consequent ability to better recruit the next generation. In the meantime, until those new recruits arrive, all signs indicate that Hamas’s current fighters are likely more eager than ever to wage protracted guerrilla warfare against any Israeli targets they can strike.
THE POWER OF THE MESSAGE
The tremendous punishment Israel has unleashed on Gaza is surely driving many Palestinians to feel further enmity toward the Jewish state. But why is Hamas benefiting from this reaction? After all, its attack was the immediate cause of the war that has leveled large swaths of Gaza and killed so many people.
The answer lies in large part in Hamas’s sophisticated propaganda campaign, which constructs a favorable interpretation of events and weaves narratives that help the group win more supporters. To paraphrase the American psychoanalyst Edward Bernays, propaganda works not so much by creating and instilling fear and outrage as it does by redirecting these emotions toward concrete objectives. Hamas’s efforts are a prime example of this tactic. Since the war began, the group has disseminated a vast amount of material, mostly online, in a bid to rally the Palestinian people around its leadership and its pursuit of victory against Israel.
The Arabic Propaganda Analysis Team—a dedicated group of Arabic linguists who specialize in gathering and analyzing militant propaganda in Arabic—at the University of Chicago Project on Security and Threats examined the Arabic propaganda produced by Hamas and its military wing, the Al Qassam Brigades, and distributed on the Brigades’ official Telegram channel in the aftermath of October 7. released messages, images, videos, and other propaganda virtually every day since the October 7 attacks. A report by Mohamed Elgohari, the leader of this research team, parsed over 500 bits of propaganda from October 7, 2023, to May 27, 2024. It is not known how many Palestinians consume this material online, but Gaza and the West Bank have daily, albeit intermittent, Internet access. Hamas’s digital content mirrors its analog propaganda efforts in local community networks.
The material centers on three themes: the Palestinian people have no choice but to fight because Israel is bent on committing unspeakable atrocities against all Palestinians even if they are not involved in military operations; under Hamas’s leadership, Palestinians can defeat Israel on the battlefield; and those fighters who die in battle will be accorded honor and glory. Hamas has posted a vast number of videos, statements, and other material to make the case that its attack on Israel on October 7 was a necessary and justified response to Israeli occupation, atrocities, and aggression against the Palestinian people, including frequent incursions into the sacred Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem by Israeli security forces and Israeli activists and settlers.
Praying by the ruins of a mosque in Khan Younis, Gaza, June 2024
Mohammed Salem / Reuters
Consider a Hamas statement originally posted on January 22 and widely circulated even in Israeli media. This extensive declaration explains in depth the group’s justifications for attacking Israel, focusing on what it describes as long-standing grievances about the actions of the Israeli government and settlers, including Israeli intrusions at al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and restrictions placed on Palestinian worshippers there; the continued expansion of settlements in the West Bank; the allegedly horrific treatment meted out to Palestinian detainees in Israel; and Israel’s functional siege and blockade of Gaza and imposition of apartheid-like policies in the West Bank. This statement is just one of dozens of posts making similar points.
Many videos, images, and posters emphasize Hamas’s military prowess, showcasing successful attacks on Israeli targets, particularly armored vehicles and tanks. These posts aim to project the group’s strength and effectiveness, suggesting that Hamas can inflict significant damage on its technologically superior adversary. In this propaganda, fighters appear in full combat gear and tactical uniforms, equipped with helmets, goggles, and advanced weaponry, highlighting their operational readiness. Religious symbolism, such as Koranic verses, also features heavily, casting Hamas’s struggle as a spiritual one. Propaganda helps elevate fallen fighters to the status of martyrs,who died fighting Israel in the service of a noble and divinely sanctioned cause. The glorification of their martyrdom inspires potential new recruits.
Hamas’s propaganda since October 7 is squarely in line with the results found in the PSR surveys of Palestinian attitudes. The tight fit between the substance of Hamas’s propaganda and the growing support found for Hamas in particular and for armed struggle against Israel in general in the PSR surveys suggests that either Hamas is stimulating that support or its propaganda reflects the key reasons for that support. Either way, Hamas is capitalizing on the war to grow stronger through the thickening and widening bonds between the community and the militant group.
THE STARK REALITY
After nine months of grueling war, it is time to recognize the stark reality: there is no military-only solution to defeat Hamas. The group is more than the sum of its current number of fighters. It is also more than an evocative idea. Hamas is a political and social movement with violence at its core, and it is not going away any time soon.
Israel’s current strategy of heavy military operations may kill some Hamas fighters, but this strategy is only strengthening the bonds between Hamas and the local community. For nine months, Israel has pursued virtually unfettered military operations in Gaza, with little evident progress toward any of its objectives. Hamas is neither defeated nor on the verge of defeat, and its cause is more popular and its appeal stronger than before October 7. In the absence of a plan for the future of Gaza and the Palestinian people that Palestinians might accept, the terrorists will keep coming back and in larger numbers.
But Israeli leaders appear no more willing to conceive of such a viable political plan than they were before October 7. There is little end in sight to the tragedy continuing to unfold in Gaza. The war will go on and on, more Palestinians will die, and the threat to Israel will only grow.
- ROBERT A. PAPE is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Chicago Project on Security and Threats at the University of Chicago.
Foreign Affairs · by Robert A. Pape · June 21, 2024
22. Rupa Subramanya: I’m Stuck Between the Woke Left and the Nativist Right
North America. Not just the US.
Rupa Subramanya: I’m Stuck Between the Woke Left and the Nativist Right
https://www.thefp.com/p/rupa-subramanya-woke-left-nativist-right
In the last twenty years, I’ve seen North America become less welcoming. It is now mainstream to be intolerant of immigrants.
By Rupa Subramanya
June 19, 2024
During the last few months of 2023, a Hindu temple in the Toronto suburb of Brampton, Ontario, erected a statue of the Hindu demigod Hanuman. The 55-foot statue, which looms over its neighborhood, was built on grounds owned by the temple, paid for with private funds, and violated no building codes.
I’m a Hindu myself—an immigrant from India who came to Canada in 1998 to attend college. I became a journalist and later a Canadian citizen, eventually gaining a reputation as a reporter and conservative-leaning commenter. Like many of my fellow conservatives, I decried government overreach on Covid-19 policy responses, criticized the government of Justin Trudeau, and covered the excesses of the progressive left. I believe passionately in property rights, the rule of law, and the importance of free expression.
So I was shocked when I saw the torrent of outrage the Hanuman statue ignited among many Canadian conservatives, some of whom I had long viewed as friends.
The gist of their anger was that as the Black Lives Matter movement spread across North America, “anti-racism” protests in Canada led to the removal of statues of prominent historical figures on the grounds that they were racist. It infuriated them that after seeing a statue of Sir John A. Macdonald, the country’s first prime minister, taken down, they were now supposed to accept a statue of some Hindu demigod worshipped by people in India.
As Ben Bankas, a Toronto-based comedian, put it on X, “Explain to me how this statue is okay in Canada but Sir John A. Macdonald is not.”
I had publicly opposed the removal of public statues—not just of Macdonald but American founding fathers like Thomas Jefferson, whose statue had been taken down in New York. When a Macdonald statue was toppled by activists in Hamilton, Ontario, in August 2021, I wrote, “If you’re ok with the illegal toppling of these statues it means two things: a) you don’t believe in the rule of law, b) you don’t believe in Canada.”
And I defended Canada against the ridiculous progressive accusation that it was an irredeemably racist nation. “Canada,” I wrote in the National Post in June 2021, “is one of the most tolerant countries on the planet, and one which I am proud to call home.”
All of which was why seeing my fellow conservatives attack a statue put up on private property that honored my religion was devastating. I had met some of these people while reporting on the 2022 truckers’ protest in Canada. Back then, I had proudly defended their right to oppose vaccine mandates. Was I no longer acceptably “Canadian” to them because I was a Hindu who had immigrated 30 years ago? Another critic of the Hanuman statue wrote, “If you’re not fighting to defend Canadian culture & Canadian people then you’re honestly not helping.”
Deeply hurt, but thinking that my perspective might help, I decided to weigh in. Responding to Bankas on X, I wrote that his comment “sets up a false dichotomy” between the cancellation of Macdonald and the building of a religious statue in a private place of worship. One had nothing to do with the other. Basic property rights decreed that Hanuman should be perfectly at home in Canada. I concluded my lengthy tweet by pointing out that some of the angry posts on X were “really unvarnished bigotry.”
My response triggered a torrent of abuse. I was stunned by its ferocity.
Colleagues whom I had known for years told me that the statue of Hanuman was offensive to “real” Canadians. A woman who had contacted me because she liked my reporting on the truckers’ protest replied to another Hindu Canadian: “If you wanted people to take Hinduism seriously, you might’ve not wanted to start with the dancing monkey statues.”
I was told I should go back to where I came from—and “leave Indian culture in India.” An organizer of the truckers’ protest, with whom I’d struck up a friendship, asked me: “Why did you move here anyway?”
I couldn’t help but wonder: in all the years I’d lived in Canada, interviewing conservatives, writing for conservative audiences, working with and for conservative editors, had they always thought these things about me? Had they always looked down on my “foreign” origin and “foreign” religion? Had their friendship been a facade? It was an awful thought.
Just as awful was the thought that this was something new—that suddenly my fellow conservatives saw immigrants in general and Hindus in particular as destroying “their” culture. In the U.S., Tucker Carlson was saying “Import the Third World, become the Third World.” In Ontario, Premier Doug Ford blamed immigrants—without a shred of proof—for an incident in which a synagogue was fired upon (no one was hurt). No amount of reasoning could ease the backlash against my fellow Hindus and me. After three decades in Canada, my citizenship suddenly seemed to matter less than my place of birth.
It’s not as though I’d never seen racism before.
India, where I was born, is a country obsessed with fair skin; in East Asia, “whiteness” products are a multibillion-dollar industry. In Abu Dhabi, where my family lived when I was in high school, I also experienced bigotry. There was no religious freedom, no Hindu temple we could go to. Churches couldn’t look like churches: they had to look like community centers and had to operate practically in secret. During Ramadan, we couldn’t even be seen outside eating a sandwich. Questions I asked about Islam, as an inquisitive teenager, caused my family to live in fear that the authorities would one day show up on our doorstep.
So when I moved to a small town in Nova Scotia for college, I felt liberated. I embraced the freedoms North America offered along with the values it held dear. I knew that this was where I wanted to be.
One of the things I most disliked about progressives was their embrace of identity politics, which I’d experienced as a child. The left seemed to reduce individuals to their group identities and assumed that members of those groups all acted and thought alike.
Progressives also believed that the role of the state was to give marginalized groups a leg up because they’d suffered disproportionately in society. I remember being told by well-meaning friends and acquaintances that I should apply for a certain government job because “it would be easy for people like me to get it.” I found the idea obnoxious—if I landed a job, I wanted it to be because I earned it, not because I was a member of some underprivileged group. I came to think of this as its own kind of racism: the racism of low expectations.
Perhaps not surprisingly, it was the progressive left that turned on me first. That column I wrote in the National Post saying that Canada was not a racist country? The London BLM chapter responded with a particularly ugly tweet, describing it as an example of “white media finding house slaves to say racism doesn’t exist.”
Until that point, the left-leaning, state-owned Canadian Broadcasting Corporation sometimes had me on as a talking head. After I wrote sympathetically about the truckers’ strike, I was no longer welcome there. I may have been a brown person, but to the left, I was a brown person of the wrong kind.
As for the right, for most of my time in North America, mainstream conservatism has been above identity politics. But that’s obviously not true anymore. Thanks in part to the progressive policies that favor minority groups, many conservatives are now convinced that white people are the ones being discriminated against. And some might feel resentment not just toward the progressive left—depriving their kid, for instance, of a spot in an Ivy League school in favor of undeserving minorities—but also toward the minorities themselves.
People have complained to me that parts of Canada’s big cities, such as Toronto or Vancouver, look more like Mogadishu. They are clearly unsettled by the sheer number of non-white inhabitants, many from the developing world.
And it’s true that Canada’s cities are increasingly populated by people of color. According to the 2021 census, 57 percent of Toronto, Canada’s largest city, comprises what the government calls “visible minorities.” In Vancouver, Canada’s third largest city, 54 percent of the population identifies as a visible minority. The same is true of the States, of course: in New York City, nearly 70 percent of the population identifies as non-white. The percentages are similar in Los Angeles, Houston, and Detroit.
This isn’t to say there isn’t a legitimate debate to be had here: identity politics has gone mainstream on the right partly because of excessive immigration—largely illegal in the U.S. and largely legal in Canada—which is putting a strain on social services and public finances. There is no contradiction in being pro-immigrant but also believing, as I do, that under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government, immigration targets have been set at unrealistically high levels, far beyond the nation’s capacity to absorb so many people in such a small amount of time. The same problem is happening in the U.S., where illegal immigration seems both out of control and unstoppable. Americans now cite immigration as their number-one concern.
But there’s more to it than the fear among conservatives that ethnic minorities are taking over North America’s big cities. There is also a sense that Western culture is under attack—that both Canada and the U.S. are losing their identities—and that we immigrants are the ones responsible.
The most extreme exemplar of this is the writer Ann Coulter, who has two million followers on X. A few months ago, she appeared on Vivek Ramaswamy’s podcast and declared that while she agreed with him on many issues, she could never vote for him to be president, because he is Indian. “There is a core national identity,” she said, “that is the identity of the WASP.”
Ramaswamy, who was born in Ohio, had the perfect conservative rejoinder: insisting on a WASP president, he said, is just another version of the same identity politics that the progressive left embraces. When progressives talk about boosting diversity, he added, their proxy is skin color—whereas what’s actually relevant is a diversity of views. Coulter was using WASPdom as a “left-like false proxy.”
Vivek Ramaswamy and Ann Coulter on the Truth podcast. (Vivek Ramaswamy/YouTube)
Although Ramaswamy’s response won the battle, it’s starting to seem as if Coulter’s viewpoint is winning the war on the right. I’ve seen people posting about how immigrants “hate us and hate Westernization.” About how we need to “keep the culture of Canada (that they are attracted to) Canadian.” Some even believe that “Indians, Africans, Muslims. . . will never be Canadians for the simple reason their ancestors didn’t build Canada.”
In January, in response to the news that Canada planned to temporarily cap international student visas, the conservative Substack writer Chris Brunet, who has 36,000 followers on X, posted: “too late / the Canada you grew up in is over / the future of Canada is an Asian colony.”
The turn toward tribalism in the West is disturbing for those of us who have relocated from less liberal parts of the world. Besides the obvious racism, the fear that immigrants want to destroy Western culture is deeply misplaced. The vast bulk of new immigrants coming to Canada and the U.S. are not coming here to denigrate white European culture. On the contrary: they—we—appreciate living in countries governed by the rule of law, where all citizens are considered equal.
Nor are new immigrants waging a culture war against European values, such as the traditional family—something most immigrants believe in. As a Hindu born outside the West, I find great beauty in Western culture, literature, music, and art—which I enjoy and support financially to the extent I can. The Hanuman statue is not an effort to displace Western culture. It is simply an example of the freedom of religion and freedom of speech that have been essential values in North America for more than two centuries.
For all these years, I really didn’t care what the progressive left thought of me. My acceptance among conservatives represented conservatism at its best: seeing me—and judging me—as an individual rather than a member of a group.
These days, that’s no longer the case. In the three decades I’ve spent in Canada, I’ve never been as aware of the color of my skin as I am now.
Rupa Subramanya is a Canadian-based writer for The Free Press. Read her piece, “What the Truckers Want,” and follow her on X, formerly Twitter, @rupasubramanya.
23. The Military Was Combating Racism. Then Congress Stepped in.
The culture wars continue.
The Military Was Combating Racism. Then Congress Stepped in.
military.com · by Military.com | By Khiet Ho Published June 19, 2024 at 7:38am ET · June 19, 2024
The opinions expressed in this op-ed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Military.com. If you would like to submit your own commentary, please send your article to opinions@military.com for consideration.
The U.S. military will continue to dwindle in size and diminish in quality if it does not fix its racism problem.
My husband has served nearly 20 years in the Marine Corps, and our family would gladly dedicate another decade of service if not for the racism I, his Asian-American wife, and his mixed-race children experience in the current military and political climate.
My spouse is highly skilled and experienced. He has 2,000 flight hours, top-level clearances and qualifications. He has mentored, instructed and led hundreds of others. He loves military service, yet he and others like him are leaving due to Congress' meddling. After decades of progress toward building a more equal nation and a military reflective of these American values, we see those gains evaporating.
Policymakers have come to use increasingly politicized antics to enforce an anti-pluralism agenda. For example, Republican senators continue to hold Air Force Col. Ben Jonsson's promotion hostage -- mirroring Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville's months-long military promotion blockade. Col. Jonsson simply encouraged his fellow officers to learn about modern-day racism -- knowledge that would strengthen leadership skills, and U.S. senators targeted him.
Congressional interference in the nonpartisan military promotions process has rippling consequences. Col. Jonsson's family life is in limbo between their current and future duty stations, without an anticipated move date -- medical care, education plans and the details of daily life remaining suspended.
Every level and rank is watching this drama unfold, wondering whether the military can function on the most basic level while partisan congressional members use the military as political pawns for their own agenda. Folks who care about upholding the military to a standard of operation and humanity, who care about morale and building trust among troops, who will speak out against something as basic and fact-based as racism, wonder whether they will be targeted next. Junior service members lose confidence in leadership. Many will hesitate to extend their time in service and not recommend this vocation to others, given what they've experienced.
I have been racially profiled by military gate guards, local law enforcement and random neighbors demanding extra verification that I am permitted to be in various locations more times than I can count. When my white husband traveled to our new duty station in advance for house hunting, local real-estate agents made racist remarks about people of color in certain neighborhoods, steering him instead to neighborhoods with all-white country clubs.
These examples are minuscule compared to the recent fatal shooting of Air Force Senior Airman Roger Fortson in Florida. They all factor into my family's consideration of safety while serving in the military. The Department of Defense (DoD) lacks sufficient policies or procedures to support families of color; our current Congress wants to keep it that way.
In 2016, 55% of service members would recommend military service to our children; today, only 32% would. Moreover, twice as many of us (31%) are unlikely or would not recommend military service at all today, compared to 2016 (15%).
Approximately 80% of service members hail from military families themselves. The military depends on veterans to recruit future generations of service members. Further, the military depends on retention to maintain expertise necessary to fight wars and save lives, not to mention save on training costs. So these trends beg the question: Who will recruit, enter and make up our military in future years?
The ones who feel safest and will remain in the military are the ones who cater to these partisan attacks. Over time, these political games will reshape the U.S. military's internal culture; rather than a broad workplace that upholds respect, equality and fair treatment, the military will shrink into a haven for prejudicial beliefs instead.
The military will not be able to recruit or retain the best talent. The most skilled will leave for more functional and less toxic institutions, my family included.
Attacks on crucial DoD programs indicate to us that certain politicians will sabotage any of the military's efforts toward self-improvement. In 2023, the House of Representatives passed a version of the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) with 18 provisions targeting diversity and inclusion initiatives within the DoD; two provisions became law. Congress is forcing our military to swing away from reality and progress.
Military families of color make up nearly half of our armed forces. We exist. We dedicate our lives to this country. And we experience racism within the military and the surrounding civilian community in which we live. We voice how these experiences impact the workplace climate and our quality of life to positively shape this community for future generations. We propose solutions at every opportunity, like in NDAA amendments.
We consider racial/ethnic discrimination when deciding whether to remain in service. We evaluate whether our leaders and the institution defend our rights and regard our safety, or if they will needlessly endanger us or ignore our concerns.
There are virtually zero programs or protocols that address racial and ethnic safety concerns of military families, and certain members of Congress aim to maintain this paucity. We don't get to choose where we live. We rely on the DoD to understand these needs and support us. The DoD must either protect against these high-risk situations or respond deftly when these dangers arise, but it does neither systemically. Congress' trend toward disempowering protective DoD programs leaves all military families less safe, and it causes families like mine to leave the service to protect ourselves.
If Congress and the DoD want to fix the military's recruitment, it must face the reality that the service must be a more equitable and less racist institution. Congress can and must pass better policies through the NDAA -- policies that, at the very least, would improve data and transparency for families as they navigate safety concerns within the assignments process, for example. These changes would fortify a stronger, better, smarter military that retains and recruits the best folks across all identities.
Congress must do its job and enable the Department of Defense to meet the needs of today; our military and our country depend on it.
Khiet Ho is a licensed clinical social worker and public health professional advocating for military families at Secure Families Initiative. She is a 17-year Marine Corps spouse.
military.com · by Military.com | By Khiet Ho Published June 19, 2024 at 7:38am ET · June 19, 2024
24. Politicizing America’s Defense Capabilities
Priorities, resourcing, policy, and strategy.
Do we need a (less deeply flawed) 2 MRC strategy? Can we afford one? Can we afford not to have one?
Excerpts:
Consider the 2MRC standard again. It might seem wise to demand the United States maintain the forces necessary to deal with two major regional contingencies, without major mobilizations or conscription, given the aggressiveness of China and Russia. But the 2MRC standard, introduced in 1993 and abandoned in 2012, was always deeply flawed. While the modern 2MRC standard evokes the British two-power standard, adopted in 1889, of maintaining a navy stronger than the next two largest navies, the two-power standard was an exercise in prioritization, rating the Royal Navy and maritime security over other concerns, like having a strong army. Heritage’s 2MRC vision, on the other hand, stretches across all domains and all theaters, abandoning the all-important question of priorities. If all threats are equally important, then none of them are.
Likewise, the decision to simply pour more money into the military avoids difficult tradeoffs. After all, money must be found somewhere. It would be plausible, if politically toxic, to argue that in a more dangerous world Americans must be willing to accept higher taxes and fewer government services in order to spend more on security. Yet Heritage insists its 2MRC plan is consistent with large tax cuts. But Heritage isn’t willing to see the spending financed with government debt, nor does it endorse serious entitlement cuts. Instead, it merely proposes, that entitlements be made “sustainable.” Though the Index prefaces its discussion of the defense budget by claiming that “the goal is not to give a definitive answer,” it feels like it safely defers the important, hard questions to others.
Defense spending is undoubtedly necessary. But as Dwight D. Eisenhower declared in 1953, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” Americans will need to engage in contentious debates over how to balance guns and butter, but the Index is not designed for this. It is designed as a bullhorn for greater military spending that ignores strategic priorities or the present weaknesses of our adversaries. It is a cudgel with which Heritage can fight its progressive enemies by hammering American defense policy into yet another front in the culture war. But it is not the serious, strategic analysis that the United States needs to face the dangers of our world.
Politicizing America’s Defense Capabilities
The Heritage Foundation’s ‘Index of U.S. Military Strength’ leaves tradeoffs and strategy by the wayside.
thedispatch.com · by Bret Devereaux · June 20, 2024
Is the U.S. military merely a marginal force? If you based your answer on The Heritage Foundation’s latest Index of U.S. Military Strength, you might be tempted to think our armed forces are in disarray. But since 2015, the Index has served less as a strategic look at American security and more as a crude tool to promote slanted media coverage. This year is no different.
The overall structure of the Index is designed to project an impression of weakness. The report generally consists of around 600 pages of dense prose, often featuring a series of media-friendly charts rating the level of “Threats to U.S. Vital Interests” (from severe to low) and “U.S. Military Power” by service branch (from very weak to very strong). The problem, however, is that both scales are tilted to produce the intended result. Since 2018—the earliest report with a working hyperlink at Heritage’s website—the overall threat to American interests has never been anything but “high” (the second highest category). Only one threat category, “Af-Pak Terrorism,” has ever been rated as merely “elevated” (the middle category).
Likewise, the military power chart in the Index presents a loaded vision. The middle category labeled “marginal” is so scrupulous that even a service branch that meets the high standards Heritage sets for them can be blasted in headlines rather than being more accurately described as “sufficient” or “adequate.” Like the threats chart, Heritage has not rated any service branch as “very strong” since 2018, and the overall rating has never been higher than “marginal”—a strange state of affairs for the world’s strongest military.
Underlying these slanted assessments is an astoundingly inconsistent analysis. One might assume, for instance, that all of the service branches would be judged by the same standards. They aren’t. The report purports to measure each branch against a “two major regional contingency” (2MRC) standard, or the ability to handle two major wars simultaneously. Yet the Marine Corps—the only branch to get a “strong” rating this year—was judged against a single contingency standard, which contributed to its higher rating. Moreover, ratings of capacity, capability, and readiness for each branch reveal more inconsistencies. The Army and the U.S. nuclear arsenal are rounded down to produce their marginal rating; meanwhile, the Marine Corps is rounded up to produce its strong rating. Even more baffling, the Air Force—the lowest rated (“very weak”) service in the report—isn’t rounded at all. Rather, the Index just glibly declares that “success or failure is determined by the weakest leg,” essentially rating the Air Force based on its weakest category.
The Air Force’s “very weak” ranking reveals further issues with the Index. The branch’s rating is based on several factors, but the ones mentioned explicitly in the report summary are the supposedly “incredibly low sortie rates and flying hours.” Incredibly low compared to what? Given the 2MRC standard, the answer has to be pilot training compared to America’s top two adversaries, China and Russia. Yet the Index cherry-picks its figures, drawing flight time numbers from during the COVID-19 pandemic to complain that mission-ready fighter pilots received only 131 hours of flying time per year and arguing that such low figures put the Air Force at risk of falling behind peer adversaries. Though the Air Force itself has expressed concerns about declining time in the cockpit, American fighter pilots still average far more flight time than our adversaries—100 hours more compared to China’s Air Force, for example.
Indeed, when assessing Chinese military capacity generally, it’s important to remember that effectively none of China’s officers, soldiers, or modern systems have been tested in combat. By contrast, functionally all of America’s systems and many of its officers and soldiers have been tested—and have passed that test.
The lack of a meaningful measure to compare the U.S. military to that of our adversaries plagues the entire Index. Dramatically, the report judges America’s nuclear arsenal as merely “marginal,” despite the country’s current roughly 3,000 nuclear warheads. One struggles to think of a situation in which that stockpile would be insufficient (to say nothing of how too large a force carries risks of its own).
The Index also glaringly overlooks Russia’s war against Ukraine in its assessment. The Kremlin’s full-scale invasion exposed the shocking weakness of the second-strongest American adversary and the destruction of much of its equipment and personnel. Yet these factors seem to have had no effect on America’s comparative strength according to the Index. Likewise, China’s economic woes have cast significant doubt on Beijing’s ability to build its military capacity indefinitely. There isn’t a hint of this weakness in the Index’s headline ratings either.
None of this suggests the U.S. lacks security challenges. The Index is hardly alone in sounding the alarm about how decades of continued procurement debacles and declining shipbuilding capability have left the U.S. Navy without needed ships. For instance, consider the new Constellation-class frigate. Originally intended to save on costs by simply borrowing the design of the existing Franco-Italian FREMM-class, the Navy has squandered this cost advantage by redesigning nearly every aspect of the ship, leading the project to run substantially over budget. This is worth criticizing.
But the Index doesn’t address this problem at all. Instead, it merely calls for more funding to produce a battle force of 400 manned ships without engaging with the issue that, as Navy procurement stands today, no amount of money appears capable of teaching it how to build ships. Some problems cannot be solved by merely calling for more cash.
It’s not particularly hard to detect a probable political agenda for the report, which also decries “Department of Defense officials who pursue a woke agenda.” Presenting the report, Fox & Friends co-hosts Brian Kilmeade and Pete Hegseth seem to have understood the point perfectly well. They blamed DEI for the poor (manufactured) ratings, claiming that the military “Bud Light-ed itself, looking for a new constituency,” referring to the anti-trans Bud Light boycotts from last year. What neither Heritage nor the TV personalities mentioned, however, was that armies that tolerate or reinforce deep social or political inequalities perform poorly on the battlefield. Therefore, the U.S. military’s concern with addressing such inequalities speaks to real concerns over military performance; it is Heritage and its allies who are playing identity politics with our security.
Strategy is fundamentally the art of assigning priorities and making tradeoffs, matching limited resources to limitless interests and threats. But precisely because the Index always seeks to find American military weakness, it is incapable of engaging in questions of priorities and tradeoffs. Put another way, the report fails at the difficult but essential task of strategy-making.
Consider the 2MRC standard again. It might seem wise to demand the United States maintain the forces necessary to deal with two major regional contingencies, without major mobilizations or conscription, given the aggressiveness of China and Russia. But the 2MRC standard, introduced in 1993 and abandoned in 2012, was always deeply flawed. While the modern 2MRC standard evokes the British two-power standard, adopted in 1889, of maintaining a navy stronger than the next two largest navies, the two-power standard was an exercise in prioritization, rating the Royal Navy and maritime security over other concerns, like having a strong army. Heritage’s 2MRC vision, on the other hand, stretches across all domains and all theaters, abandoning the all-important question of priorities. If all threats are equally important, then none of them are.
Likewise, the decision to simply pour more money into the military avoids difficult tradeoffs. After all, money must be found somewhere. It would be plausible, if politically toxic, to argue that in a more dangerous world Americans must be willing to accept higher taxes and fewer government services in order to spend more on security. Yet Heritage insists its 2MRC plan is consistent with large tax cuts. But Heritage isn’t willing to see the spending financed with government debt, nor does it endorse serious entitlement cuts. Instead, it merely proposes, that entitlements be made “sustainable.” Though the Index prefaces its discussion of the defense budget by claiming that “the goal is not to give a definitive answer,” it feels like it safely defers the important, hard questions to others.
Defense spending is undoubtedly necessary. But as Dwight D. Eisenhower declared in 1953, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” Americans will need to engage in contentious debates over how to balance guns and butter, but the Index is not designed for this. It is designed as a bullhorn for greater military spending that ignores strategic priorities or the present weaknesses of our adversaries. It is a cudgel with which Heritage can fight its progressive enemies by hammering American defense policy into yet another front in the culture war. But it is not the serious, strategic analysis that the United States needs to face the dangers of our world.
thedispatch.com · by Bret Devereaux · June 20, 2024
25. It Is Time for Radical Candor
Radical candor. What a concept. But that is a helluva subtitle.
Conclusion:
Over at the Washington Post—where a few reporters are trying to sandbag the new publisher for having the audacity to point out that their work sucks and has sucked pretty hard since 50 years ago when Americans started confusing Bob Woodward with Bob Redford—they’ll tell you: “Democracy dies in darkness.” But that isn’t it, at all. There isn’t any darkness. There are no shadows in which to hide our deeds. There aren’t any secrets. There are just the animal facts, naked and undisguised, right out there in public view for all to see. Even political journalists can see it, in their few sober moments, though they may be constrained at most times by professional norms to pretend that they don’t.
It Is Time for Radical Candor
We are governed by imbeciles and thieves and miscreants and degenerates.
thedispatch.com · by Kevin D. Williamson · June 21, 2024
From the Associated Press earlier this week: “The House Ethics Committee on Tuesday gave an unusual public update into its long-running investigation of Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., saying its review now includes whether Gaetz engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, accepted improper gifts and sought to obstruct government investigations of his conduct.”
Well.
His opponent in the upcoming Florida Republican primary, however, has an even bigger scandal on his résumé: He recently accepted an invitation to give a talk at the annual meeting of the Society of Human Resource Managers of Greater St. Louis.
Angels and ministers of grace, defend us.
Gaetz’s opponent in the August 20 contest, Aaron Dimmock, is one of the apparently endless supply of former naval aviators active in Republican politics. Politically, he looks more than a little like Gaetz, describing himself as a “pro-Trump conservative,” “pro-Trump” being the first political qualifier in his social-media bio. Personally, he seems to be … not very much like Gaetz. He’s been married for 28 years, has four children, has held a number of responsible executive positions, had a long career in the military, holds graduate degrees from Georgetown and the Naval War College, and, as far as the public record shows, has … never been investigated on “allegations that he was part of a scheme that led to the sex trafficking of a 17-year-old girl,” part of a series of crimes for which Gaetz’s buddy and former Florida tax collector Joel Greenberg has been sentenced to 11 years in prison. Gaetz himself has not been charged with a crime.
Gaetz’s campaign against Dimmock has been fairly dirty: His gang (“Friends of Matt Gaetz”) has registered a bunch of dummy websites such as “aarondimmockforcongress.com,” which blares: “DEI Instructor & BLM Activist Aaron Dimmock is a staunch supporter of making America woke!” So, it’s going to be that kind of a campaign: Dimmock is going to be painted as one of those “woke” 20-year military veterans and longtime Republican family men in northwestern Florida. Sure. Various disreputable right-wing media outlets have reported very selectively on Dimmock’s talk to the ladies and gentlemen in St. Louis, the main claim being that he promised to introduce them to several “radical concepts.” The Gaetz element even sent someone to the event to harass Dimmock: Valentina Gomez, a book-burning weirdo who videotaped herself as she shouted that Dimmock was Kevin McCarthy’s “bitch.” A fervent Christian, no doubt—and a candidate for secretary of state in Missouri. The Gaetz element insists Dimmock is a cat’s-paw for the ousted speaker, as though the fading memory of that leadership fight were the only conceivable reason to oppose Gaetz.
The topic of Dimmock’s speech was “radical candor,” which refers to one of those dumb business theory books that give an important-sounding name to something banal and obvious, in this case the usefulness of “feedback that’s kind, clear, specific, and sincere.” Clear, specific, and sincere—the irony of that kind of thing being willfully misrepresented by the likes of Gaetz and his supporters is one more example of the unsatirizeablility of contemporary Republican politics. And the kicker: Dimmock’s other subject that day was Missouri’s GOP Gov. Mike Parsons’ “Leadership Academy,” a project to develop better political leaders, of which Dimmock was the director.
Gaetz is basically a cartoon villain, but Dimmock says this race is really all about military policy and constituent services. He says that Florida’s 1st Congressional District has the largest concentration of military (active duty, retired, and veterans) of any House district in the country, and he faults Gaetz for failing to look after their interests, voting against legislation that included a military pay increase and pushing the federal government into a shutdown that caused hardships for military families. Local voters, he says, “deserve a representative who understands the struggles they’ve faced. Matt was willing to shut down the government and make thousands go without pay for weeks or months on end just so that he could score cheap political points. He voted against the largest pay raise for troops in 22 years.” And then there’s the fact that Gaetz is … Gaetz. “The district wants a Trump Republican,” Dimmock says, “but one without scandal.”
There’s no publicly available polling, and Dimmock doesn’t have any big endorsements to talk about, though he promises there’s news coming on that front. Does he have a chance? Probably not.
And there you have it: That’s 700 words. Cut my check.
And that’s how you write your basic congressional candidate profile. I can do this all day. Give me 20 minutes on the phone with some dentist in Scarsdale who thinks he’s going to be the next Donald Trump (I’d have written something like “the next Sam Rayburn,” but, come on, none of these Navigator-driving suburban Republican jackwagons knows who Sam Rayburn was, and would be terrified to say an admiring word about a Democrat even if they did) and I will give you a column.
I’m not turning my nose up at that: There is—can be—real value in such work, and there are people who do it really well here at The Dispatch, at the Washington Post, at the New York Times, at the Wall Street Journal.
But like our politics and political campaigns per se, our political journalism has rules and parameters, conventions, lines within which you are expected to stay. I suppose that if I were better at that—if I could take the boredom—I’d probably have had a different kind of career than the one I have had. But I get hung up on stuff, e.g., the idiotic words “radical candor” coming out of the mouth of a sniveling little weasel who is going to get stomped into goo by a beady-eyed, cosmically worthless, evolution-missed-a-generation smegma smear of a subhuman being such as Matt Gaetz and deserve it. It’s another little Battle of Stalingrad: It’s a pity somebody has to win; all a decent person can do is pray for casualties.
It is not lost on me that, if what Florida’s 1st Congressional District wants is a “Trump Republican,” then Matt Gaetz is exactly what the witch-doctor ordered. And so I asked Dimmock: “From a certain point of view—and it is my point of view—what you’re doing is trying to beat one dishonest, disreputable, dishonorable man so that you can go can do the bidding of a different dishonest, disreputable, dishonorable man.” Yeah: Gaetz is Gaetz—but Trump is Trump, too, and Dimmock insists he is a “Trump Republican.” And how in the hell does a self-styled “Trump Republican” have it in him to complain about anybody’s character: Matt Gaetz, Joe Biden, Pol Pot, etc.
Oh, but Mr. Radical Candor has an answer for that!
“I think Donald Trump is being targeted by a politically motivated prosecutor. And that’s the only comment I have on that.”
Well, all right, sure. No doubt Alvin Bragg is politically motivated. That’s one reason why they elect prosecutors in lots of places: to keep them politically motivated, which is another way of saying democratically accountable. Democratic accountability is a virtue with very narrow limits, to be sure, but it is a virtue.
But, come on. Trump did the things, right? I pressed Dimmock on it: It’s not like Bragg was making up the stuff about Trump’s turning the possible promise of a spot on The Apprentice into an opportunity to give a particularly gamey pornographic actress a sad little poke in the whiskers in a Tahoe hotel room or paying the hush money or lying about it in business records.
Maybe you don’t think that should be a crime, and maybe you think nobody would get charged in those circumstances if he weren’t Donald Trump. Fair enough. But Trump did all the stuff. It’s not like Alvin Bragg was there holding Trump’s dick with a pair of tweezers and a big brilliant entrapment scheme. Trump has betrayed every wife he’s ever had and just about everybody who’s ever been stupid enough to lend him money or front him services on credit. I asked Dimmock if he thought the Stormy Daniels stuff was made up, if he’d be proud of himself if he had treated his wife the way Trump treated any of his.
“I think Donald Trump is being targeted by a politically motivated prosecutor. And that’s the only comment I have on that.”
Radical candor. Sure, yeah.
I don’t suppose you meet a lot of naval aviators who are cowards, but, if you’re looking for a specimen, Aaron Dimmock is your guy. He’ll strut around calling himself a patriot and talking up his military credentials—and he must have called himself “an operator” at least three times in our short conversation—but what’s he really doing? He’s a retired military guy looking to pump up his HR-consulting gig. I’m sure he’d love to be in the House. I’m sure he detests Matt Gaetz almost as much as Matt Gaetz deserves to be detested. But let’s have some radical candor about what’s really going on, here: Dimmock is a bored military retiree looking for his next job. And while he apparently has guts enough to fly on military missions of various descriptions, he isn’t packing the testicular gear to say whether banging a porn star while your wife is at home nursing the newborn is an admirable quality in a guy who wants to be the so-called Leader of the so-called Free World.
Radical candor. All right. Let’s have some.
It is going to be impossible for me to feel very sorry for a guy who describes himself—first thing!—as “pro-Trump” when he gets done in by Trump-style lying, bulls–t, and low-lifery. You buy the ticket, you take the ride. At least Matt Gaetz knows what he is: He’s a parasite, and happy to be one. He’s thrilled to be a leech on the body politic—a round little tick on the big American national scrotum that is the Florida panhandle—until the host organism either dies or somehow works up the self-respect to flick him off. Absent that, he’ll remain a bloodsucker pumping the political equivalent of Lyme disease into the political bloodstream.
And here’s Aaron Dimmock, taking a bold stand against the black-legged deer tick injecting the political version of Lyme Disease into the national bloodstream while proudly flying the banner of Haementeria ghilianii, declaring for Team Amazon Giant Leech. This is what being an anti-Gaetz, pro-Trump guy is: One more crudely imagined freak in the Chalmun’s Spaceport Cantina that is the God-forsaken Republican Party in Anno Domini 2024.
But I’m a Professional Journalist™ who isn’t supposed to have these thoughts—or who at least isn’t supposed to put them into digital print. I’m supposed to write about polls and endorsements and how Florida’s 1st Congressional District is R+19. You know: the stuff you expect from a media sophisticate, a genuine man of the press. This is one of those things you write and maybe show to your wife or a buddy and then delete. I’m picturing my poor editors clutching their heads right now and saying things that even I might hesitate to put into digital print.
But we could really use some damn radical candor. Because we are governed by imbeciles and thieves and miscreants and degenerates and people who are willing to put up with all that imbecility and thievery and miscreance and degeneracy if it gets them even such a pathetic prize as a temporary seat in the U.S. House of Representatives serving on behalf of the lovely folks who have freely chosen Matt Gaetz, of all bipedal things, as their man in Washington. I don’t know that my own personal soul is worth all that much, but I’d expect more than that in trade.
And so here endeth the candidate profile. Good luck, Aaron Dimmock, “radical candor coach”—coach!—and gormless Trump sycophant. You’re going to lose—for nothing. I may not have a gigantic readership, but this probably will be the most-read thing ever written about you, and it would have been better if you could have worked up the manhood to say what you and I both know to be obviously—and I mean illuminated-by-Klieg-lights obviously—true. It isn’t easy ending up the weasel in a story in which Matt Gaetz figures prominently.
Over at the Washington Post—where a few reporters are trying to sandbag the new publisher for having the audacity to point out that their work sucks and has sucked pretty hard since 50 years ago when Americans started confusing Bob Woodward with Bob Redford—they’ll tell you: “Democracy dies in darkness.” But that isn’t it, at all. There isn’t any darkness. There are no shadows in which to hide our deeds. There aren’t any secrets. There are just the animal facts, naked and undisguised, right out there in public view for all to see. Even political journalists can see it, in their few sober moments, though they may be constrained at most times by professional norms to pretend that they don’t.
Kevin D. Williamson
Kevin D. Williamson is national correspondent at The Dispatch and is based in Virginia. Prior to joining the company in 2022, he spent 15 years as a writer and editor at National Review, worked as the theater critic at the New Criterion, and had a long career in local newspapers. He is also a writer in residence at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. When Kevin is not reporting on the world outside Washington for his Wanderland newsletter, you can find him at the rifle range or reading a book about literally almost anything other than politics.
thedispatch.com · by Kevin D. Williamson · June 21, 2024
26. The Military Was Combating Racism. Then Congress Stepped in.
The culture wars continue. Sadly.
The Military Was Combating Racism. Then Congress Stepped in.
military.com · by Military.com | By Khiet Ho Published June 19, 2024 at 7:38am ET · June 19, 2024
The opinions expressed in this op-ed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Military.com. If you would like to submit your own commentary, please send your article to opinions@military.com for consideration.
The U.S. military will continue to dwindle in size and diminish in quality if it does not fix its racism problem.
My husband has served nearly 20 years in the Marine Corps, and our family would gladly dedicate another decade of service if not for the racism I, his Asian-American wife, and his mixed-race children experience in the current military and political climate.
My spouse is highly skilled and experienced. He has 2,000 flight hours, top-level clearances and qualifications. He has mentored, instructed and led hundreds of others. He loves military service, yet he and others like him are leaving due to Congress' meddling. After decades of progress toward building a more equal nation and a military reflective of these American values, we see those gains evaporating.
Policymakers have come to use increasingly politicized antics to enforce an anti-pluralism agenda. For example, Republican senators continue to hold Air Force Col. Ben Jonsson's promotion hostage -- mirroring Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville's months-long military promotion blockade. Col. Jonsson simply encouraged his fellow officers to learn about modern-day racism -- knowledge that would strengthen leadership skills, and U.S. senators targeted him.
Congressional interference in the nonpartisan military promotions process has rippling consequences. Col. Jonsson's family life is in limbo between their current and future duty stations, without an anticipated move date -- medical care, education plans and the details of daily life remaining suspended.
Every level and rank is watching this drama unfold, wondering whether the military can function on the most basic level while partisan congressional members use the military as political pawns for their own agenda. Folks who care about upholding the military to a standard of operation and humanity, who care about morale and building trust among troops, who will speak out against something as basic and fact-based as racism, wonder whether they will be targeted next. Junior service members lose confidence in leadership. Many will hesitate to extend their time in service and not recommend this vocation to others, given what they've experienced.
I have been racially profiled by military gate guards, local law enforcement and random neighbors demanding extra verification that I am permitted to be in various locations more times than I can count. When my white husband traveled to our new duty station in advance for house hunting, local real-estate agents made racist remarks about people of color in certain neighborhoods, steering him instead to neighborhoods with all-white country clubs.
These examples are minuscule compared to the recent fatal shooting of Air Force Senior Airman Roger Fortson in Florida. They all factor into my family's consideration of safety while serving in the military. The Department of Defense (DoD) lacks sufficient policies or procedures to support families of color; our current Congress wants to keep it that way.
In 2016, 55% of service members would recommend military service to our children; today, only 32% would. Moreover, twice as many of us (31%) are unlikely or would not recommend military service at all today, compared to 2016 (15%).
Approximately 80% of service members hail from military families themselves. The military depends on veterans to recruit future generations of service members. Further, the military depends on retention to maintain expertise necessary to fight wars and save lives, not to mention save on training costs. So these trends beg the question: Who will recruit, enter and make up our military in future years?
The ones who feel safest and will remain in the military are the ones who cater to these partisan attacks. Over time, these political games will reshape the U.S. military's internal culture; rather than a broad workplace that upholds respect, equality and fair treatment, the military will shrink into a haven for prejudicial beliefs instead.
The military will not be able to recruit or retain the best talent. The most skilled will leave for more functional and less toxic institutions, my family included.
Attacks on crucial DoD programs indicate to us that certain politicians will sabotage any of the military's efforts toward self-improvement. In 2023, the House of Representatives passed a version of the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) with 18 provisions targeting diversity and inclusion initiatives within the DoD; two provisions became law. Congress is forcing our military to swing away from reality and progress.
Military families of color make up nearly half of our armed forces. We exist. We dedicate our lives to this country. And we experience racism within the military and the surrounding civilian community in which we live. We voice how these experiences impact the workplace climate and our quality of life to positively shape this community for future generations. We propose solutions at every opportunity, like in NDAA amendments.
We consider racial/ethnic discrimination when deciding whether to remain in service. We evaluate whether our leaders and the institution defend our rights and regard our safety, or if they will needlessly endanger us or ignore our concerns.
There are virtually zero programs or protocols that address racial and ethnic safety concerns of military families, and certain members of Congress aim to maintain this paucity. We don't get to choose where we live. We rely on the DoD to understand these needs and support us. The DoD must either protect against these high-risk situations or respond deftly when these dangers arise, but it does neither systemically. Congress' trend toward disempowering protective DoD programs leaves all military families less safe, and it causes families like mine to leave the service to protect ourselves.
If Congress and the DoD want to fix the military's recruitment, it must face the reality that the service must be a more equitable and less racist institution. Congress can and must pass better policies through the NDAA -- policies that, at the very least, would improve data and transparency for families as they navigate safety concerns within the assignments process, for example. These changes would fortify a stronger, better, smarter military that retains and recruits the best folks across all identities.
Congress must do its job and enable the Department of Defense to meet the needs of today; our military and our country depend on it.
Khiet Ho is a licensed clinical social worker and public health professional advocating for military families at Secure Families Initiative. She is a 17-year Marine Corps spouse.
military.com · by Military.com | By Khiet Ho Published June 19, 2024 at 7:38am ET · June 19, 2024
De Oppresso Liber,
David Maxwell
Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy
Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation
Editor, Small Wars Journal
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
Phone: 202-573-8647
email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com
| 
