Quotes of the Day:

“The historian's rightful task is to distil experience as a medicinal warning for the future generations, not to distil a drug.”

– B.H. Liddell Hart

"When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies... "

– Robert Kennedy

“Each of us was put here in this time and this place to decide the future of humankind. Did you think you were put here for something less.”

 – Chief Arvol Looking Horse

1. A Disaster of the U.S. Military’s Own Making

2. What to Know About Suicides in the U.S. Army

3. Pentagon sued over deletion of ‘Duty, Honor, Country’

4. What the Putin-Pyongyang Axis Means

5. America Is Running Out of Options in the Gaza War

6. Putin Shows He Can Antagonize the U.S. Far Afield From Ukraine

7. Putin Came to Asia to Disrupt, and He Succeeded

8. Donald Sutherland’s Oddball history: how true was Kelly’s Heroes?

9. Marine Corps Global Response in the Age of Precision Munitions

10. What Happens When Migrants Arrive in America’s Suburbs?

11. Who will win a post-heroic war? by Edward Luttwak

12. US "Hellscape" Strategy - Sells Taiwan Cutting Edge "Attack Drone" Technology

13. Xi Jinping's Aggressive Talk About Taiwan Is Hiding a Reluctance to Act

14. How rising anti-American axis sees US weakness, and is ready to pounce

15. Opinion | Why Netanyahu Doesn’t Take Biden Seriously

16. Fallujah's Crucible: Strategic and Operational Insights in Urban Warfare

17. Bye, Google Maps: This AI mapmaking app blew me away

18. Philippines says it did not consider invoking US pact over South China Sea clash

19. How China could take Taiwan without even needing to invade

20. Hudson has questions about what DOD is doing about US military base infiltrations

1. A Disaster of the U.S. Military’s Own Making

A long painful read. Tragic and frustrating on so many levels.

Was I blind or naive during my 30 years of service? I just do not recall the suicides at this rate, at least 20 years before 2001.

A Disaster of the U.S. Military’s Own Making

Austin Valley’s death exposed the Army’s most urgent challenge: a suicide crisis among soldiers in peacetime.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/19/magazine/suicide-military-austin-valley.html?pgtype=Article&action=click&module=RelatedLinks

By Janet Reitman

Janet Reitman is a contributing writer for the magazine who has been reporting on the military and mental health since the mid-2000s.

• Published June 19, 2024Updated June 20, 2024

Austin Valley had just arrived at his Army base in Poland, last March, when he knocked on his buddy Adrian Sly’s door to borrow a knife. The base plate of his helmet was loose and needed fixing, he told Sly. The soldiers had spent most of their day on a bus, traveling from their former base to this new outpost in Nowa Deba, near the border with Ukraine. It had been a monotonous 12-hour journey with no stops and nothing to eat but military rations. Sly thought his friend looked exhausted, but then so did everyone else. He handed Valley an old hunting knife, and Valley offered an earnest smile. “Really appreciate it, man,” he said. Then he disappeared.

A boyish-looking 21-year-old, Valley grew up in a military family in rural Wisconsin and declared his intention to join the Army at age 7. He enlisted on his 18th birthday, so intent on a military career that he tried to sign a six-year contract until his father, a Gulf War veteran, persuaded him to take it more slowly and commit to three. Stationed at Fort Riley, in Kansas, he made an immediate impression on his superiors. “He was one of the best workers that I’ve seen in the military,” a squadmate says, recalling how Valley, who drove an armored troop carrier, thought nothing of crawling into its guts to check for broken parts, emerging covered in grease, a flash of mischief in his deep brown eyes.

Valley left Sly’s door and walked into the forest. A fresh snow had fallen, and the larch trees towered above him, their branches bare and ghostly. Valley carried the borrowed knife and some nylon cord he’d probably procured from another fellow soldier. He texted his parents: Hey mom and dad I love you it was never your fault.

Thirty minutes passed before Erik Valley, Austin’s father, saw the text. He called Austin’s cellphone several times but got only his voice mail. He contacted Austin’s unit at Fort Riley and eventually reached a sergeant; Erik explained the situation and forwarded Austin’s note. “Could someone please check on him and let me know what’s going on, please,” he said.

Word of a soldier’s disappearance spread quickly across the Polish base. Sly recalled sergeants pounding on doors and shining their flashlights. “Where’s Valley?” one asked him. Sly and several others from Valley’s unit took off into the woods. Seeing fresh tracks in the snow, one soldier followed them until he heard a faint gurgling sound. Drawing closer, he saw Valley, hanging from a tree. He was alive, but barely conscious. The soldier cut Valley down, while another called for the medics, who sped off with him into the night. His friends would never see him again. The following morning, Valley was taken to the U.S. Army hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, and then returned to Fort Riley. Four weeks later, he was dead.

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Valley at the U.S. Army National Training Center in California, in a photo found on his phone.Credit...From the Valley family

Valley was one of at least 158 active-duty Army soldiers to die by suicide in 2023. According to the investigative-journalism nonprofit Voice of San Diego, young men in the military are more likely to die by suicide than their civilian peers, reflecting a suicide rate that has risen steadily since the Army began tracking it 20 years ago. That these deaths are occurring within a peacetime military contradicts a common misperception that soldier suicide is closely linked to PTSD from combat. In fact, those at the highest risk for suicide are active-duty personnel who have never deployed. During the first half of 2023, 102 soldiers from Valley’s 4,000-person brigade were hospitalized for suicidal ideation. “Unfortunately, I think suicide has just become a normal part of Army culture,” one former officer at Fort Riley says. “It doesn’t even surprise anyone anymore when it happens.”

Since the end of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army has maintained its global footprint, even as the force has shrunk. (Last year, the Army had to lower its recruiting goal after it fell short by 10,000 recruits in 2022.) But the Army’s “operational tempo” — the amount of time soldiers spend on deployments or training missions — is as high or higher in some units than it was at the peak of the war on terror. American soldiers are currently training foreign troops in Eastern Europe as part of a NATO mission to support Ukraine; conducting military exercises across the Far East and South Pacific as a counterweight to China; and also monitoring Africa and the Middle East for terrorism threats.

“Senior leadership, in my view, became habituated to the go-go tempo of the past 20 years — it’s all they ever knew, and now it’s seen as normal,” says Dr. Stephen Xenakis, a psychiatrist and retired Army brigadier general who has served as an adviser to the Joint Chiefs of Staff on mental health. “It’s not normal. It’s a climate rooted in constant pressure, constant movement and constant trauma. And the legacy of that trauma and combat cascades down on the soldiers.”

The Army’s motto is “People First.” But a yearlong investigation into Austin Valley’s death — including more than three dozen interviews with family, friends, fellow soldiers, senior Army leaders and mental-health specialists, as well as a review of Valley’s medical records, social media posts and text messages — shows that the Army failed to live by it. The Army’s mental-health system, experts say, is focused more on ensuring that units meet their personnel goals than on the welfare of soldiers. A result is some of the highest suicide numbers the Army has ever seen — despite the millions of dollars in suicide-prevention research the Defense Department has invested over the past two decades.

In February 2023, the most recent of the department’s independent suicide-prevention committees published its findings in a 115-page report, one of several released since 2008 that have often repeated the same basic findings and recommendations. “My expectation is that this study will sit on a shelf just like all the others, unimplemented,” says M. David Rudd, a clinical psychologist and the director of an institute that studies military suicides at the University of Memphis. The committee cited high operational tempo, ineffective leadership and poor quality of life on many bases as areas of particular concern. “I would argue that the well-being of your troop force is central to having a ready military,” Rudd told me. “Unfortunately, the Department of Defense doesn’t see it that way.”

After Military.com published a story about Valley and I began reporting on his death, the soldiers in his unit were instructed by their leadership not to talk to me. Nearly 20 of those soldiers, as well as some officers and senior enlisted personnel, did so anyway. Many of them spoke on the condition of anonymity, as they are still on active duty and fear reprisal, but Adrian Sly, who left the Army late last year, disillusioned by its handling of Valley’s and other suicides, is one of several people who were eager to use their names. “We’ve had countless suicides and suicide attempts,” he says, “almost all of them swept under the rug. The Army failed Valley, time and time again, just like they’ve failed all of us.”

A senior officer in Valley’s brigade I spoke to says the military has created a mental-health crisis so acute that he regards it as the Army’s new war. “Every generation of soldiers is defined by the conflicts that killed them,” he says. “For the greatest generation, it was World War II; for baby boomers it was Vietnam; for Gen X it was Iraq and Afghanistan. This new generation, what’s killing them is suicide.”

If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources. Go here for resources outside the United States.

Valley joined the First Infantry Division at Fort Riley in March 2021 as a gawky teenager. He had dreamed of becoming an elite Army Ranger, but after failing to make the cut for Ranger school, he quickly recalibrated and decided to follow in his father’s footsteps: Erik Valley was an infantryman who had commanded a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, a hulking troop carrier that looks like a modified tank. Austin idealized the life of a soldier, says his mother, Diane, who is divorced from Erik. He was drawn to the infantry’s ethos of brotherhood and teamwork, which he absorbed over countless hours playing military-themed video games as well as in conversations with his recruiter.

Valley was assigned to the 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Battalion 70th Armored Regiment; he joined C Company, known as Carnage, a unit with a fleet of Bradleys. According to The Army Times, some armored units have been shown to have some of the highest operational tempos in the Army, with deployments roughly every 18 months. Since the early aughts, the Army has overhauled its training methodology at least twice, switching, in 2017, from one that allowed soldiers a year of low-intensity duties after a deployment, known as a reset period, to one that provides for no break in activity at all. Under this model, known as Sustainable Readiness, soldiers return from eight- or nine-month training missions and almost immediately get ready to deploy again. “It is not sustainable, what we are asking people to do,” one high-ranking sergeant says.

Valley had only recently arrived at Fort Riley when his unit, which had just returned from a nine-month deployment to South Korea, began to plan for its next long deployment, to Poland. “The op-tempo was like nothing I had ever seen in 16 years in the Army — and that was Iraq and Afghanistan,” the senior officer in Valley’s brigade says. Most of Carnage’s Bradleys dated back to Operation Desert Storm and had been rarely used during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now soldiers were tasked with fixing them to ensure as many vehicles as possible could deploy with the unit. Often, this required troops to cannibalize components from their most broken-down Bradleys. “We would spend all day fixing a vehicle that would just break the next day,” says one former soldier from Valley’s unit, Hector Velez. One brigade medic told me he spent most of his three years in the Army working on vehicles.

Senior leadership tried to rally their soldiers around the mission of deterrence. “Officially,” says one close friend of Valley’s stationed in Europe, “we’re ‘giving Russia the middle finger’ by ‘showing them we can deploy anywhere by any means with all our gear.’” Unofficially, he adds, “I have no idea what we’re doing here.” Low morale, or what soldiers called a sense of purposelessness, was palpable. “Sometimes we sat around and joked all day about killing ourselves,” says a platoonmate of Valley’s who recently left the Army. “I mean, we were all depressed. Everyone in the Army is depressed.”

More on U.S. Armed Forces

• A Domestic Crisis: A Times investigation into the death of Specialist Austin Valley exposed a suicide crisis among U.S. troops in peacetime, highlighting that mental-health care providers in the Army often fail to act in the best interest of soldiers.
• New Star Wars Plan: The Pentagon is rushing to expand its capacity to wage war in space, citing rapid advances by China and Russia in space-based operations.
• Brain Injury From Mortar Blasts: Soldiers exposed to thousands of low-level blasts from firing weapons say that they wind up with debilitating symptoms of traumatic brain injury — but no diagnosis.
• Navigating the Arctic: A New York Times photojournalist embarked on a nuclear-powered attack submarine to see how the Pentagon is training for a potential war below the frozen sea.

Among themselves, soldiers in Carnage talked about feeling disposable — like broken parts on a Bradley. Valley cracked jokes or stuck cigarettes up his nose to lighten the mood among his friends, but with his superiors, he endeavored to do everything perfectly. He tried to memorize the thousands of parts to his Bradley and kept a running list on his phone of not only his own vehicle’s deficiencies but the others’ as well. “Austin worked his ass off,” the squadmate says. “He did everything they asked of him.” There was one evening, Erik Valley recalls, when Austin called him from work, “really pissed off” because no one had been sent to relieve him so he could get dinner before the cafeteria closed. He thought his leaders had forgotten about him. “That shocked me,” Erik said. “Forgot? Something like that would never have happened in the Army I joined in 1987.”

By the spring of 2022, Valley had dropped 8 pounds from his already lanky 150-pound frame. He had trouble sleeping, waking several times during the night. In the morning, he would wake up feeling sluggish and irritable and then drag himself through another 12-hour day. He seemed affectless; one of his supervisors said it was as if he were “moving and talking in slow motion.” When he went home to Wisconsin for a week’s leave that May, Diane immediately noticed the change in her son. “He was saying things like, ‘Mom, I’m so tired, I don’t care about anything anymore,’” she says. “That’s not Austin.” Worried, Diane urged Austin to get help.

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Valley’s mother, Diane, with her son’s uniform in her home in Kewaskum, Wis.Credit...David Guttenfelder for The New York Times

That July, Valley walked into one of the clinics at Fort Riley for an intake appointment with a counselor. Though Army bases now offer a range of programs to improve mental health, from confidential stress-management sessions to yoga and meditation, the primary resource is clinical counseling through the Army’s Behavioral Health department, referred to colloquially as B.H., which both providers and military personnel describe as dysfunctional. “It’s like a cesspool,” the former officer at Fort Riley says. “They simply don’t have the resources to give soldiers the help they need.”

There are approximately 21 B.H. officers and civilian counselors in the clinics at Fort Riley serving over 12,000 soldiers. Tara Fields, a former provider at the base, told me its hospital has been running on roughly 40 percent staffing for years.

Valley explained how he was feeling to a counselor and was given an appointment for the following month. By then, his condition had worsened. His unit, the 2-70, was in the last months of preparing to deploy to Poland. He had recently been promoted to gunner, a position he coveted, but he worried about not being “good enough.” He was sleeping even less than he had before, plagued by nightmares and racing thoughts he called the “what ifs”: What if I jumped in front of that tank? At the clinic, he took a test to assess whether he had suicidal ideation, a six-question survey given to every soldier who receives mental-health counseling, at every visit. When asked if he’d wished he were dead or could “go to sleep and not wake up,” Valley answered yes.

After a single 60-minute appointment, the counselor suggested medication. Clinicians at Fort Riley have been instructed to assess and diagnose patients thoroughly before taking this step, but counselors I spoke to, citing their heavy caseload, said that the rule is not always followed. (Sly says he was offered medication before he even sat down for an official session.) Valley was prescribed an antidepressant called mirtazapine, the generic version of the drug Remeron. Because of that, he was given a special designation and issued what’s known in the Army as a profile, a health care form provided to a soldier’s command that details his condition and treatment plan. (Soldiers who have received one are commonly referred to as being “on profile.”) Valley’s profile noted that he should not handle heavy machinery while on the medication. Several days after it was issued, he was taken off the gunner position.

“They told me it wouldn’t really affect my job,” he texted Sly.

“They lied,” Sly replied. “B.H. always [expletive] lies.”

Valley’s profile stipulated a 90-day period of medication adjustment, during which he would be marked “nondeployable” unless given a special waiver. Granting medical waivers to troops so they can deploy is a longtime practice in the Army, provided a soldier is not in crisis. “I think being with their teammates in that deployed environment where they are surrounded by their buddies 24/7 is arguably a better environment for them to be in than to be left back in garrison,” one high-ranking official at Fort Riley told me. But it is also a product of the pressure put on units to maintain mandated troop levels for training missions like the one in Poland.

Several Army leaders I spoke with told me they believed the practice of granting waivers to soldiers on profiles for mental-health concerns had become more common over the past five or six years, as unit commanders struggled to meet personnel quotas. These quotas are set at the highest level of the Army and passed down to brigade leaders, who have no choice but to fill them. For the NATO mission in Europe, Valley’s brigade was required to deploy at least 80 percent of its soldiers within the first month of its deployment.

“No one wants to admit that it’s all a big numbers game, but that’s what it is,” one of Valley’s former sergeants says. “If your roster says you need 160 soldiers to make your quota, it doesn’t matter if 40 are broken, 10 are almost dead and the rest are on profiles — you’ll somehow find a way to count them.” I spoke to one soldier previously hospitalized for a suicide attempt, who said his unit commander overrode his profile just so he could deploy and come back a few weeks later — once the quota was met.

In October 2022, a month after starting medication, Valley was asked by his superiors if he would be amenable to telling his behavioral-health counselor that he wanted a waiver to deploy. Valley later told his friends that Carnage Company’s two seniormost leaders presented the scenario in stark terms. The whole unit would be in Europe, except for a small rear detachment of soldiers who were either too sick or had some other reason they couldn’t deploy. He didn’t want to be left behind, they said, especially since they would be training with Polish troops. It was the closest thing to a combat mission that he, as an infantry soldier, could have at this point — and given the war in Ukraine, who knew? Maybe they would see some action. “In his words, they told him that he would ‘probably feel like a shitbag’ if he didn’t come out,’” Sly recalls.

None of his friends thought a waiver for Valley was a good idea. “Those of us who worked with him every day knew he was struggling,” Sly says. “But the leaders guilted him into it, and being Valley, he didn’t want to let them down.”

Though the Army insists it is working to remove the stigma around seeking behavioral-health support, unit leadership often undermines some of its most basic safety protocols. In Carnage, soldiers I spoke to told me, everyone was aware of who was on a profile and who wasn’t — sergeants kept track of their soldiers’ mental-health appointments on a large whiteboard. “That profile really lowered his self-esteem,” Hector Velez, the former soldier in Valley’s unit, recalls.

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Adrian Sly, an Army buddy of Valley’s who left the service last year, says that ‘‘the Army needs to be held accountable’’ for Valley’s death.Credit...David Guttenfelder for The New York Times

Valley was still working long hours as the unit scrambled to ready its vehicles for deployment. Though the medication helped with his insomnia, it often left him so lethargic that he nodded off at work or slept through morning formation. Every time that happened, one of Valley’s platoonmates says, the platoon was “smoked” — made to repeat intense physical tasks like push-ups or laps, as a form of discipline. They would line up next to a log, hold it above their heads and move it from shoulder to shoulder, he said, “while Valley stood there and watched.”

At Valley’s next appointment with a counselor, in late October, he said he would like to deploy with his unit, insisting he was feeling much better. His medical records were riddled with red flags. He was still reporting suicidal ideation at least once or twice a month. A provider who knew Valley might have scrutinized his records more carefully, but according to many soldiers at Fort Riley, there is little continuity of care within the mental-health clinics. Valley had never seen this provider before, and he insisted that in spite of his reported suicidal ideation, he couldn’t even remember the last time he had a suicidal thought. The provider took Valley at his word, noting that he was stable on his medication and that therefore she had “no imminent concerns” about suicide.

Ultimately, the decision on whether to request a waiver for Valley fell to his battalion commander, Lt. Col. Michael Kim. As the date of its deployment neared, the 2-70 was having trouble making its quota. They were hovering around 75 percent, according to one officer who recalls meetings where his colleagues agonized over how to increase the numbers. Carnage, with about 150 soldiers, had by some accounts a particularly high number of soldiers designated “nondeployable.” Commanders were scrambling, numerous sources told me. “Instead of saying, ‘OK, who is nondeployable,’” one former platoonmate says, “it was more like, ‘Who is the least nondeployable we can still deploy?’”

The Army’s procedure for sorting through that question is a meeting known as a profile scrub that happens on every base before deployment. According to the former officer at Fort Riley, battalion leaders and medical and B.H. personnel discuss every soldier on profile, writing their names on a whiteboard. The meeting takes place in front of all the staff or company commanders, many of whom do not need to know about soldiers’ medical status, she notes. Then the doctor goes through the list and tells the battalion commander if each person is waiverable or not. One of Valley’s former sergeants told me that there was robust discussion within the company about whether to move forward with a waiver request for Valley. “As I recall, the initial consensus was ‘no,’” he says. “And then battalion called, and it became ‘yes.’”

Since 2008, military command has tried to exert more control by making mental-health units answerable to brigade leaders, who write their annual evaluations and control their career prospects. Commanders can exert pressure to adjust treatment plans or request waivers to allow soldiers to deploy, and providers, many of whom are themselves young, inexperienced and overworked, feel they are unable to push back. “You have to make a choice,” one B.H. officer told me. “Your career or the lives of your soldiers.”

In 2021, a counselor at Fort Riley who refused to sign off on returning a severely depressed pilot to duty was removed and threatened with investigation, according to multiple sources. The counselor’s caseload of patients was given to other clinicians. Soon after the counselor was removed, one of those patients, a lieutenant being treated for suicidal ideation, committed suicide.

When I spoke to the B.H. officer about this, she blamed the system for this tragedy. “Putting unit readiness above a soldier’s welfare is unethical and negligent, but there is no accountability for the higher chain of command to do the right thing for these individual soldiers,” she says. “The accountability is: Meet these training timelines, meet these deployment schedules, meet these personnel quotas.”

In mid-November 2022, as the first wave of soldiers from the 2-70 deployed to Poland, the battalion’s B.H. officer, Capt. Melissa Samio, filled out a waiver request form citing Valley’s “symptom improvement” and his stability on medication, writing that he was now “good” with “no required follow-up.” Based on his medical records, it is unclear whether Samio, at least the fourth B.H. provider Valley had seen since his first appointment in July, had met Valley before this date. Two days later, a memo using the same language was submitted by the 2-70’s commander, Lieutenant Colonel Kim.

Now that his deployment was becoming real, Valley began to have second thoughts. He told his family that his medication wasn’t working anymore, though he continued to feel the side effects. “We all thought he was overmedicated,” his father says. Valley told his parents that one of his rotating cast of counselors didn’t think his deployment was a good idea. They never learned which one, because this information was not reflected in the records they obtained. Valley’s latest counselor, a civilian social worker at the hospital, diagnosed his increasing anxiety over deploying as “undue concern.”

“No one is listening to me,” Valley said to his mother. He had told the platoon medic that his medication was no longer effective and reported that he was having “active” thoughts of suicide. There is no mention of this in the social worker’s notes. “What I’ve observed,” the former officer at Fort Riley says, “is that a lot of the providers are just so burned out and so detached and overwhelmed, you could tell them just about anything, and it doesn’t get in.”

By Thanksgiving, with most of his buddies already gone to Poland, Valley was resigned. “The Army’s gonna do what it’s gonna do,” his father recalls him saying. On Dec. 5, Valley’s waiver was approved. On Dec. 7, in a last attempt to stave off deployment, he scheduled an emergency session with the social worker and reported that he was now having active thoughts of suicide, “with method.” She made a few important notes — stating that Valley’s depressive symptoms had worsened, and recommending a follow-up appointment — but as Valley didn’t say he had an active suicide plan, he was again reported as not under “imminent threat.” The social worker marked Valley as “psychologically fit for duty.”

Four days later, he left Kansas for Poland.

“Today is my birthday, but it doesn’t really feel like it,” Valley wrote in his journal on Dec. 17, 2022. He was 21. He had arrived a week earlier at L.S.A. South, his unit’s base in the Polish woods near the border with Germany. It was a raw facility, with little more than a dining hall and a recreation tent where soldiers could play video games or watch TV. The soldiers were housed in 50-person tents arranged around a two-mile track, with a helicopter landing pad in the center. The winter was bleak and desolate, with temperatures in the single digits; it was dark for half the day. A few of the soldiers who had deployed to Afghanistan told their friends they’d had better conditions in Helmand.

The unit had come to Poland as part of the joint U.S.-NATO mission to support Ukraine and prevent further Russian aggression. For the members of Valley’s company, they might as well have been back in Kansas, remaining mostly on base, doing the same sort of vehicle maintenance they did at Fort Riley. They had deployed with more than 80 percent of their equipment, meeting their readiness quota, but according to several soldiers, most of their vehicles barely worked. “If we had an enemy who had functional weapons and knew how to use them, we’d stand no chance,” Sly says. (The Army said in a statement that its vehicles were in a “high state of readiness.”)

Valley spent his birthday thinking about suicide. He went out to smoke a cigarette in the hopes of easing his mind, but he wrote in his journal that it didn’t help. He had envisioned how he would do it: He would go to the base’s shooting range, gun holstered, and then, just when the ready-to-fire order was given, he would put his pistol to his head. He told no one about this vision. Instead, he told Brandon Uttaro, the friend he confided in the most, that he probably shouldn’t be trusted with a weapon.

Senior Army officials told me that any soldier who is deployed after receiving a waiver for a health condition must be sent to a location where they can receive a similar level of care. This was not possible for Valley. There were only two B.H. officers embedded with the 3,000-odd soldiers of 2nd Brigade, split among bases in Poland, Kosovo, Bulgaria, Romania and Germany. Half a dozen or so counselors with the Army’s confidential counseling service also deployed with the brigade but could usually be reached only by phone, as they, too, were spread across the region. Valley asked about the availability of therapy almost as soon as he got to Poland, but was told it could take weeks to get an appointment. Providers were booked solid for telemedicine sessions and rarely made it out to remote bases like L.S.A. South, where the only reliable resource was the chaplain.

Valley spoke to the chaplain but told friends it didn’t help. “I don’t know what I can do anymore,” he told Uttaro in a text message. “I’ve tried everything.” Uttaro had recently been sent to Kosovo, and he urged Valley to talk to his leadership. “Please?” he said.

“I don’t want to get kicked out,” Valley said.

“It’s better than being dead,” Uttaro said.

In late December, Valley was transferred out of Carnage to serve as the driver for the battalion’s sergeant major. He now lived and worked in a different part of the base from his former squadmates, whom he rarely saw. “I feel like a big piece of me was stolen,” he texted Uttaro.

One of Valley’s sergeants, Howard Fritch, told me that shortly after Valley arrived in his company, he pulled Fritch aside and told him that he didn’t think he should be in Poland. Fritch, who had not been advised of Valley’s mental-health history, was “confused about how he got sent out,” he says, and approached one of his superiors. No one in company leadership had been made aware that Valley had been struggling. “We were not advised of anything,” Fritch says.

By early February, according to a note in Valley’s medical records, his company leadership was informed that he was exhibiting depressive symptoms and suicidal ideation, but Valley still received no formal behavioral-health counseling. Instead, Fritch and another soldier told me, some of Valley’s squadmates were instructed to keep an eye on him. They did the best they could, making sure Valley ate his meals with them and went with them if they left the base to go out in town.

One weekend, one of Valley’s buddies managed to get them weekend leave, and they went to Berlin. During that trip, he seemed like his old self, his friend says. They went clubbing, got drunk and visited Checkpoint Charlie, the famous Cold War border crossing between East and West Berlin. When they got back, he seemed better, his friend says. He even talked about enrolling in college so he could become an officer. But after a few weeks, he was down again.

In early March, Valley’s girlfriend broke up with him. Valley, according to many of his friends, had a hard time accepting it. Around this same time, he was taken off mirtazapine and put on the antidepressant Celexa. Valley had been complaining that the mirtazapine no longer worked for him, but there are no notes in Valley’s medical records that explain why this switch was made or if the prescriber was aware of Valley’s psychiatric history.

Either way, several Army behavioral health care specialists I spoke with found the choice of Celexa troubling, as it is part of the class of antidepressants that comes with a black-box warning, because it can increase suicidal thinking in some young patients. “I’d argue that a 21-year-old soldier who has a history of suicidal ideation and is still adjusting to a new environment warrants a closer look before putting them on that drug,” says one B.H. officer informed of the details of the case.

“I’m losing my mind,” Valley texted one of his sergeants about a week after starting the Celexa. He begged for help: “I need an actual B.H. person.” On March 9, after three months of asking for therapy, Valley was finally given an appointment with Melissa Samio, one of the two B.H. providers embedded with the unit, who was now stationed in Bulgaria. Samio hadn’t seen Valley since she requested his waiver at Fort Riley in November. Now, during a video session, Samio asked Valley how he was feeling. “Really, really shitty, ma’am,” he said, according to her notes. He told her about his breakup and said that he had thought about suicide that morning. “Everything’s falling apart,” he told Samio. Concluding that he was an “intermediate risk” for suicide, Samio issued a new 30-day profile that barred him from carrying or firing a weapon. After the session, she reached out to the battalion primary care officer to arrange for Valley to be evaluated in person. The officer, Samio later noted, never called her back.

Under Samio’s orders, Sergeant Fritch was assigned to administer Valley’s medication, and a small group of fellow soldiers, designated as “battle buddies,” was instructed to watch him around the clock, even when he went to the bathroom or shower. Most of them, Fritch told me, were in their early 20s. Fritch himself was 24. David Rudd, the University of Memphis psychologist, sees the assignment of suicide watch to nonclinicians as dangerous. “It’s a myth that somehow a unit can effectively do a suicide watch,” given their lack of specialized training, he says.

For all of its stated commitment to suicide prevention, the Army only recently released its suicide-prevention policy, three years after promising it. The policy does not provide additional guidance for how soldiers or officers are supposed to respond if someone in their ranks is contemplating suicide beyond what’s offered in the annual 60-minute module that has been in place for years — a program called “Ask, Care, Escort.” The soldiers in the 2-70 said this mainly consists of asking someone if they feel suicidal, “and if they’re honest and said yes,” Sly explains, escorting them to someone higher up.

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Items honoring Valley in his mother’s home. “I will never get out of this hole,” he texted her after his first suicide attempt. “It’s dug too deep.”Credit...David Guttenfelder for The New York Times

“I’m so sorry you have to do this,” Valley apologized to his friends. He texted his father to tell him. “I just want to feel normal,” he said. But the next day, he felt worse. During an emergency session with Samio that evening, Valley said that he was suffering dramatic mood swings he described as “happy, sad, insane” and had spent most of the afternoon ruminating about suicide. Samio changed her assessment of Valley to “high risk.” Still, she agreed to allow him to travel to Nowa Deba the next morning with a small group of soldiers selected to help set up the 2-70’s new base. After the session, Samio made another call to the battalion primary care officer to request that Valley be seen by the medical team before his departure, but it is unclear if she reached him, and Valley left the base without being checked out.

As the bus wound its way along the snowy highways, Valley stared at his phone. A friend in Kansas had sent him his ex-girlfriend’s Tinder profile. He texted his friend Brandon Uttaro in Kosovo. “I’m serious about killing myself now,” he said.

“Don’t,” Uttaro urged him helplessly from 900 miles away.

Valley texted one of his sergeants. “I need to talk to you later.” The sergeant didn’t respond. Valley texted a few others.

Yo, I really need to talk later.

Hey man I’m really sorry I’m going nuts.

He called a buddy at Fort Riley, twice. His friend didn’t call back.

Many hours later, after Valley vanished into the woods, Fritch blamed himself. He had been assigned to room with Valley and went with him to dinner, then back to their quarters to unpack. But then Fritch got a phone call to check on some vehicles, and Valley said he was tired and wanted to sleep. “I left him alone for five minutes,” he told me. This gave Valley the opportunity to leave his room and gather the supplies he needed from friends like Sly, who, as they were now in different companies, had not been told about the suicide watch. Sly was angry not to have been informed, and he was even more angry about what happened after Valley was cut down from the tree and saved. “The Army was given a miraculous second chance to help him,” he says. “Despite that chance, they changed nothing.”

At the hospital in Germany, Valley was diagnosed with acute adjustment disorder and borderline personality disorder. “A diagnosis of borderline personality disorder during a three-day hospitalization is highly questionable, especially in a 21-year-old male who was considered a good, strong soldier,” says Dr. Stephen Xenakis, the retired general, who is trained in child and adolescent psychiatry and reviewed Valley’s records this year with his parents’ consent.

He found nothing in Valley’s behavioral-health history to support a diagnosis of B.P.D. His symptoms — suicidality and feelings of emptiness or low self-esteem — can be present in many other more common psychological illnesses, like depression. Young adults with personality disorders generally do not perform well in the military, Xenakis points out, and have frequent conflicts with superiors and other interpersonal issues. But Valley’s superiors, and his counseling records, consistently describe him as “polite,” “forward-thinking,” high-functioning and eager to improve.

Borderline personality disorder can qualify a soldier for rapid discharge from the Army. Because it is considered a pre-existing condition, soldiers who receive the diagnosis can be denied disability benefits and may even receive less-than-honorable discharges, effectively blocking their access to any military benefits, including those granted by the G.I. Bill.

Valley was adamant that he did not want to be discharged. The inpatient-care team in Germany noted that he had responded well to treatment, including a new prescription for Prozac. They recommended that, before a decision was made about his status, Valley be “afforded a greater opportunity to engage in more extensive care.” But instead of creating a plan for that treatment, they sent Valley back to Kansas only with the recommendation that he attend therapy sessions once or twice a week. It would prove to be a crucial misstep.

Valley was released from the hospital on Friday, March 17, with papers indicating that he was no longer suicidal, but his next B.H. appointment wasn’t until the following Monday. Escorted by his company commander, Capt. Alex Savusa, he flew back to Kansas. His mother says she had spoken to Savusa on the phone and was assured that Austin would be hospitalized, and she was shocked when her son called her to say he was back at his barracks. “He told me he was on duty,” she says. “My reaction was, Whoa, whoa, whoa — what’s going on here?” Accompanied by a friend, Austin was going off-base to eat, shop and visit his storage unit. Like his ex-wife, his father was horrified. “He’d just hung himself and now he was free-ranging,” Erik says.

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Bradley Fighting Vehicles at the Fort Riley U.S. Army installation in Kansas, where Valley once served as part of the 2nd Battalion, 70th Armored Regiment.Credit...David Guttenfelder for The New York Times

At the brigade’s headquarters at Fort Riley, a handful of officers and senior enlisted soldiers had been tasked with managing the roughly 1,000 troops who had not deployed. There was no plan in place for what to do with Valley over the weekend, and Savusa and the brigade’s senior enlisted officer for the 2-70’s rear unit once again relied on the ad hoc battle-buddy system they had in Poland. Valley’s friends checked in and spent time with him, but no one followed him to the bathroom or did anything else that might have felt intrusive. “He wasn’t, like, physically watched, because anybody who goes through that stuff doesn’t want to be, like, in prison,” one of his battle buddies said. I asked this soldier how you watch someone without physically watching them. “You can’t,” he admitted. “It’s a messed-up system.”

The following Monday, Valley was escorted by a sergeant to the hospital, where he had a behavioral-health intake appointment and was once again assessed as a “high risk” patient. Fort Riley has an intensive outpatient program that would have required Valley to visit the hospital for counseling three or more times a week; he expressed interest in this program, but according to one officer apprised of the situation, the head of behavioral health at the hospital said he didn’t think it was necessary. Instead, Valley was put on the schedule for weekly therapy sessions. “I’d never seen anything like that — this soldier hung himself,” he told me. “I was just speechless.”

Valley went back to his room and texted his mother. “I will never get out of this hole,” he said. “It’s dug too deep.” He added that he wanted to go to sleep and maybe not wake up. Diane forwarded the message to Erik and his wife, Stephanie, an Army Reserve officer and registered nurse. Erik called the behavioral-health department at the hospital but was told that privacy laws prevented them from sharing information about a patient. “We weren’t asking for information,” Stephanie says. “We were trying to provide them with information so they had a clearer picture.”

By the middle of Valley’s first week back at Fort Riley, Stephanie called Savusa and tried to appeal to him as a fellow officer as well as a parent. “I really had to ask him, as a peer, if he understood the seriousness of this, and the implications,” she recalls. As a critical-care nurse, she had worked with suicidal patients. Without regular monitoring, a person would probably try suicide again, she told the captain. Savusa, she recalls, was sympathetic but said they simply didn’t have the manpower for a sustained watch. “He told me, ‘It’s not the Army’s job to babysit these children,’” she says. (Savusa declined to comment.)

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The bedroom Valley shared with a stepbrother at his father’s house in Kewaskum, Wis. He declared his intention to join the Army at age 7 and enlisted at 18.Credit...David Guttenfelder for The New York Times

Valley’s family believed he was being denied access to appropriate care. “He kept saying he needed help, and no one was helping him,” Diane says. “For two weeks straight, he would call me every night and vent, and every night I’d have to talk him down.” Austin’s conversations with his family took on an erratic and desperate tone. He told Diane that he thought he had a parasite growing in his head. He accused Erik, who had been managing his money while he was deployed, of trying to steal from him, and told a friend that his dad had insulted him after his failed suicide attempt. He accused his sister, who texted him regularly, of abandoning him. One night he called his mother, sobbing that he needed help and saying that he wanted to take all his pills. The next day he texted to apologize, writing, “I’ve been having weird mood swings.” A bit later, he added: “I’m not going to get better mom. This is with me forever now.”

Valley’s superiors, one of whom told me they met every week to discuss his situation, saw a much different Austin. Shortly after arriving at Fort Riley, Captain Savusa tried to impress upon Valley the need to demonstrate his commitment to staying in the Army. Fearing an early discharge, Valley took this warning seriously. He accepted whatever responsibility he could, serving as a battle buddy for a fellow soldier who had been sent back from Poland for surgery. He struck his leaders as a soldier who was trying his best to get better — and, as they saw it, was gradually improving.

In a few weeks, he had gone from having a regular escort to his appointments to being able to roam around the base relatively freely, with regular text and phone check-ins with his sergeants. (According to Valley’s phone records, these generally took the form of brief text exchanges between Valley and his squad leader, Sgt. Armando Cazarez. “Up?” Cazarez texted. “Up,” Valley wrote back.) He started working out at the gym and bought a car. “The situation as I understood it was: ‘He’s saying he’s fine, he looks fine, he’s acting fine. There’s no major red flags,’” one of Valley’s former sergeants says. “If you knew Valley, that is exactly how he would try to seem to his leaders.”

Valley’s discharge papers from the hospital in Germany stated “No alcohol.” Alcohol use can worsen behavioral-health conditions and can also interact negatively with psychiatric medication. Despite this warning, by the start of April, Valley was drinking heavily. As with other behavioral-health recommendations, it is the soldier’s command that has the final decision, and one officer from Valley’s unit told me that prohibitions against alcohol use are almost never enforced. Valley was also left to administer his own meds, and he told one buddy that he had stopped taking them. The friend, unaware of Valley’s medication protocols, told no one. “What I want to know is,” Diane says, “where were the people with a mature mind-set to stop any of this?”

That same week, Valley asked for a four-day pass to leave the base over Easter weekend. The medical team had approved Valley for Fort Riley’s intensive-care program, which he was scheduled to begin on April 11. An official agonized over whether to give Valley the pass. But the behavioral-health officials, loath to impose too many restrictions on Valley, encouraged it. The official gave in.

On April 6, in the evening, Valley left the base with some friends and headed to Manhattan, Kan., where they spent the night barhopping. At some point that evening, Valley saw his ex-girlfriend walk into a bar with another guy. He proceeded to drink himself into a stupor.

“It [expletive] me up,” he told a friend the next morning. He sounded as if he were still drunk.

That afternoon, he walked into a pawnshop to buy a gun. Federal law prohibits people who have been involuntarily committed to a psychiatric ward or institution from purchasing a firearm, but Valley had voluntarily checked into the psych ward at the Army hospital in Germany after his suicide attempt. Army records show that Valley was marked as “high risk” and was prohibited from handling weapons on base, but federal law dictates that the policy can’t extend beyond the installation’s gates. It also does not apply to personally owned firearms. Without any red flags appearing on his federal background check, Valley was able to buy a Taurus 9-millimeter pistol, which he brought back with him to Fort Riley later that day. He texted Uttaro to tell him. “How the [expletive] you have a pistol on high risk?” Uttaro asked.

“America,” Austin replied.

On the night of April 10, Valley spent several hours drinking heavily in his barracks and then drove to his ex-girlfriend’s apartment in Topeka. He arrived just before midnight, and called her, but she didn’t answer. “Can I just get one last kiss,” he texted. “It’s an emergency.”

“Go to the emergency room then,” she replied.

“I don’t think you understand,” he wrote.

Valley vomited in the parking lot and texted her a few more times. Then, carrying the pistol, he entered the building and pounded on her door. She called the police and locked herself in the bathroom. Valley forced his way into the apartment; a police unit, sirens wailing, grew closer. By the time officers arrived, he was bleeding from a gunshot to the head.

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Valley’s father, Erik, a Gulf War veteran, and his stepmother, Stephanie, a former Army Reserve officer. Both were in contact with Army officials before Valley’s death, trying to make the gravity of his condition clear.Credit...David Guttenfelder for The New York Times

Valley was taken to a hospital in Topeka, where he was admitted to the I.C.U. and put on life support. The Valleys received a call from a nurse and immediately drove 12 hours to Kansas. No one from Fort Riley had reached out to them, Stephanie told me, and for most of the night, Valley lay in the I.C.U. alone. “The abandonment,” Stephanie says. She held Austin’s hand, thinking of something she had said to Savusa. She warned him in their phone conversation that following a suicide attempt, the most dangerous time for a second attempt is in the following month. Austin shot himself on April 11, 2023, exactly a month after he hanged himself in Poland. The next morning, he was declared brain-dead.

Word reached Poland immediately that a soldier from the unit had died by suicide. The chaplain gathered the soldiers who had gone to Nowa Deba with Valley back in March and told them who it was. He encouraged them to talk to their buddies if they needed support, and reminded them that they had good leaders. The squadmate who had found Valley in the woods told me he stood there in disbelief. For a month, he had suffered nightmares about the experience. There had been no real discussion within the unit after Valley’s suicide attempt, no real acknowledgment that it had happened. A B.H. counselor had visited Nowa Deba, but offered little meaningful support. “He advised me to drink water,” the squadmate says. After hearing about Valley’s death, he told me, “I went back to my room and sat there for a long time and didn’t leave until the next day.”

The soldiers of the 2-70 were told to go back to work and instructed not to post about Valley on social media. A few days later, at Nowa Deba, Valley was given a cursory memorial service. For many, it felt to them as if their grief was brushed aside, along with the gravity of what had happened. Their leaders advised the soldiers not to feel guilty, as there was nothing they could have done, Sly told me. He disagreed: “There were plenty of things that plenty of people could have done.”

A thick layer of humidity hung over the Valleys’ five-acre property in Kewaskum, Wis., when I visited last summer. Sitting at his kitchen table, Erik, a burly, bearded man in his mid-50s, was hunched over his laptop, scrolling through photos on Austin’s Facebook page. “Like here,” Erik said. “See how happy he looked? He was doing good here.” Taken during a training exercise in the Mojave Desert in March 2022, the photo showed Austin in a flak vest, wraparound shades and a green watch cap, posing with his buddies on a rocky hillside. “I miss my son every minute of every day,” he said.

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Valley’s dog tags.Credit...David Guttenfelder for The New York Times

For months, Erik Valley spent his days going through the boxes of papers Austin left behind, combing through Austin’s phone and text messages, as well as his medical records, which Erik notes are incomplete, to try to piece together an explanation of how his son was allowed to try to kill himself — twice. There have been four investigations into Valley’s suicide, one conducted by the Topeka Police and three by the Army. Erik has filed several Freedom of Information Act requests for more of Austin’s medical and other records and has enlisted the help of Wisconsin’s junior senator, Tammy Baldwin, who wrote to the Army on the Valleys’ behalf, but they have not received the Army’s final investigative report.

Of the 20 or more soldiers interviewed for this article, most now say they’re leaving the Army. Sly finished his contract in November. “I couldn’t do it anymore,” he says. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to have faith in this Army if it’s so willing to just abandon the individual for the sake of the collective and still manage to fail the collective.”

Last June, Diane received a text from one of Austin’s battle buddies saying that a supervisor had asked him to make a statement that Erik was “a reason that everything happened” because of the harsh comments Austin claimed he’d made about the first suicide attempt. That soldier told me that the supervisor who’d approached him about it was Staff Sergeant Cazarez, who was tasked with checking in on Valley at Fort Riley and who seemed worried that The Times was reporting on the suicide. “I really wasn’t supposed to talk to you,” the soldier says. (Cazarez, who has left the Army, denied that he asked soldiers to implicate Erik; the Army said in a statement that “no member of the command asked soldiers to lie.”)

Erik was outraged when he heard what Cazarez had reportedly asked the soldier to do; he denied that he ever stole from Austin or ridiculed him after his suicide attempt. “People want to shift blame from themselves to me,” Erik says. “That’s just dereliction of duty, plain and simple.” Erik told me that he’s been “pro-military” all his life. “The Army I joined was all about honor and courage, and doing the right thing, telling the truth,” he said. “So show me your integrity by holding those responsible accountable. Otherwise, soldiers will continue to die, and during peacetime, not combat, for no good reason.”

If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources.

Additional research by Amber Von Schassen.

Janet Reitman is a contributing writer for the magazine. Her upcoming book from Random House traces three decades of political and economic upheaval that have broken people’s faith in the promise of America. David Guttenfelder has documented the U.S. military at war for more than a decade as a photographer, including years spent in Afghanistan and Iraq. His coverage also includes the struggles of service members who return home and are at a high risk for suicide.

Read by January LaVoyNarration produced by Tanya Pérez and Krish SeenivasanEngineered by Devin Murphy

2. What to Know About Suicides in the U.S. Army

What to Know About Suicides in the U.S. Army

A Times investigation reveals a crisis of the military’s own making.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/19/magazine/suicides-military.html?searchResultPosition=1

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Austin Valley at the U.S. Army National Training Center in California, in a photo found on his phone.Credit...From the Valley family

By Janet Reitman

June 19, 2024

Soldiers are more likely than their civilian peers to die by suicide. Many people wrongly believe this is because of combat trauma, but in fact the most vulnerable group are soldiers who have never deployed. The Army’s suicide rate has risen steadily even in peacetime, and the numbers now exceed total combat deaths in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. A Times investigation into the death of Specialist Austin Valley, stationed at Fort Riley in Kansas, found that mental-health care providers in the Army are beholden to brigade leadership and often fail to act in the best interest of soldiers.

Here’s what you need to know about the Army’s suicide crisis:

The size and psychological strength of the Army has declined.

After the Vietnam War, the Army went through a period of recalibration, a slowing-down that allowed leaders to take stock of their troops and assess their strategies. That hasn’t happened since the military pulled out of Afghanistan in 2021. For some units, in fact, the “operational tempo,” or amount of time soldiers spend away from home, is as high as it was during the peak of the war on terror, though the size of the force is smaller: The Army lowered its recruiting target in 2023, after falling thousands of people short of their goal in recent years.

The Army’s strategy is to deter nuclear rivals like China or Russia by placing troops all over the world on peacetime missions. This requires that the Army be able to deploy anywhere, at any time, for any reason. Maintaining constant “readiness” often comes at the cost of the health and well-being of soldiers, who describe feeling purposeless as they are worked as hard or harder than ever with no clear goal. “Everyone in the Army is depressed,” one soldier says.

More on U.S. Armed Forces

• A Domestic Crisis: A Times investigation into the death of Specialist Austin Valley exposed a suicide crisis among U.S. troops in peacetime, highlighting that mental-health care providers in the Army often fail to act in the best interest of soldiers.
• New Star Wars Plan: The Pentagon is rushing to expand its capacity to wage war in space, citing rapid advances by China and Russia in space-based operations.
• Brain Injury From Mortar Blasts: Soldiers exposed to thousands of low-level blasts from firing weapons say that they wind up with debilitating symptoms of traumatic brain injury — but no diagnosis.
• Navigating the Arctic: A New York Times photojournalist embarked on a nuclear-powered attack submarine to see how the Pentagon is training for a potential war below the frozen sea.

The Army’s mental-health care system is broken.

Soldiers struggling with their mental health are sent to the Army’s Behavioral Health department, referred to colloquially as B.H., which experts and providers call severely dysfunctional and understaffed. At Fort Riley, for example, there are only about 20 mental-health counselors tasked with caring for more than 12,000 soldiers. As a result, soldiers seeking help can wait weeks or months to get an appointment. Providers can keep spotty medical records and fail to thoroughly assess patients before prescribing medications, including antidepressants that carry black-box warnings that they might worsen suicidality in some young people.

Army leaders routinely undermine privacy and safety protocols.

Though the Army says it is trying to remove the stigma around mental-health care, it can be careless with patient confidentiality. Some unit leaders publicly display a list of their soldiers’ mental-health appointments or openly discuss their health statuses. They can also put pressure on providers to make decisions that go against the best interests of their patients.

In recent years, to exert more control over soldier care, Army leaders have integrated mental-health providers directly into their units, writing their annual evaluations and determining their promotions. Providers say they can feel pressured to change a course of treatment or allow soldiers to deploy overseas to help the Army make its personnel quotas. “You have to make a choice,” one B.H. officer says. “Your career or the lives of your soldiers.”

Easy access to guns is an ongoing problem.

Firearms are used in a majority of suicides among active duty troops. Unrestrictive gun laws in the United States make it harder for the Army to protect soldiers who have reported suicidal ideation. Federal law bars people who have been involuntarily committed to a psychiatric ward or institution from buying a gun, but not those who have sought help voluntarily. Even if the Army marks soldiers as “high risk” and prohibits them from handling military-issued weapons, the policy cannot apply to personally owned firearms and has no power outside the base.

The Army fails to take the advice of its own experts.

The Department of Defense has spent millions of dollars on suicide-prevention research over the past two decades, but the findings of those studies are routinely ignored. In February 2023, the most recent of the department’s independent suicide-prevention committees released a report that cited high operational tempo, lax rules around guns and poor quality of life on bases as major problems. M. David Rudd, a clinical psychologist and the director of an institute that studies military suicides at the University of Memphis, says that the committee’s report echoes many others that have been produced since 2008; he has no confidence that this time, the recommendations will be taken seriously. “My expectation is that this study will sit on a shelf just like all the others, unimplemented,” he says.

If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources. Go here for resources outside the United States.

3. Pentagon sued over deletion of ‘Duty, Honor, Country’

The definition of a frivolous lawsuit in the phoney culture war. Maybe if we did not have these idiotic distractions by culture warriors we could focus on real and more pressing problems.

The West Point leadership knows what it is doing. 

Pentagon sued over deletion of ‘Duty, Honor, Country’ - Washington Examiner

Washington Examiner · June 21, 2024

In its effort to blast “woke” military policies, a Washington-based legal watchdog this week sued the Pentagon for documents detailing the hows and whys of the U.S. Military Academy’s decision to delete its famous motto “Duty, Honor, Country” from its mission statement.

Judicial Watch told Secrets that the move came after West Point refused to turn over information about the change. As a result, the group filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit earlier this week.

“Given the woke virus infecting West Point, deleting the words ‘Duty, Honor, Country’ from its mission statement has sparked justified concern about what the Army’s rising leadership is being taught at the United States Military Academy. And the unlawful stonewalling of the release of records about the issue makes matters worse,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said.

Well folks, its come to this-The U.S. Military Academy at West Point has dropped the motto 'Duty, Honor, Country' from its mission statement, as veterans' slam 'progressive ideology' for eroding tradition. pic.twitter.com/8aIo8WYsFc

— Ron Milner (@RonMilnerBoodle) March 14, 2024

Top brass at West Point shocked many when it eliminated the three words from its mission statement.

The statement used to read, “To educate, train, and inspire the Corps of Cadets so that each graduate is a commissioned leader of character committed to the values of Duty, Honor, Country and prepared for a career of professional excellence and service to the Nation as an officer in the United States Army.”

According to Superintendent Lt. Gen. Steven Gilland, the mission statement now reads, “To build, educate, train, and inspire the Corps of Cadets to be commissioned leaders of character committed to the Army Values and ready for a lifetime of service to the Army and Nation.”

Gilland said the change was developed over a year and a half and better explains the role of West Point. He also said the school is still dedicated to “Duty, Honor, Country,” even if the words are not in the mission statement.

SEE THE LATEST POLITICAL NEWS AND BUZZ FROM WASHINGTON SECRETS

The change outraged conservatives who have watched as the military becomes more politically correct. Fox host Pete Hegseth has been so alarmed at the changes that the military veteran just published a hit book on the subject, The War On Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free, which debuted as a New York Times bestseller.

Judicial Watch has investigated and exposed “woke” policies at other military academies.

Washington Examiner · June 21, 2024

4. What the Putin-Pyongyang Axis Means

At least people are not including north Korea in the axis. Most of the pundits and mainstream press have only focused on China, Russia, and Iran. But it is north Korea that has long been inextricably linked to all three (and other malign actors). But of all our, it is the least understood.

But I suspect this will soon pass and the focus on north Korea will fade and will be relegated to the backwater by national security and foreign policy specialists, pundits, the press, and policy makers (except for those who focus on the Korea question).

What the Putin-Pyongyang Axis Means

Adversaries are working together. The U.S. will have to adjust to this new world disorder.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-the-putin-pyongyang-axis-means-a95799c9

By The Editorial Board

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June 19, 2024 5:38 pm ET

Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Pyongyang on Wednesday. PHOTO: KREMLIN POOL/ZUMA PRESS

For the benefit of the liberal internationalists in the White House who still live in the 1990s, take a look at Vladimir Putin’s visit to North Korea this week. This is another illustration of the axis of authoritarians working together around the world against America and its allies.

Not very long ago North Korea was isolated, subject to United Nations sanctions and a global effort to enforce them. Donald Trump thought he could cajole the North into giving up his nuclear weapons in return for investment and commercial ties. Our sources say he has mused about trying again in a second term.

But today that’s even more of a fantasy. The U.N. sanctions are still in place but are evaded with ease with the help of Russia and China. Mr. Putin’s visit symbolizes this shift that has been going on for some time and has accelerated with the Ukraine war.

Mr. Putin and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un signed a new agreement this week to come to each other’s aid if one faces “aggression.” Both define aggression to include a war they start, like Russia’s in Ukraine.

The details of their cooperation aren’t public. But the U.S. has accused North Korea of “unlawfully” sending ballistic missiles and 11,000 containers of munitions for Russia to use against Ukraine. In return, Russia is propping up the North with money and other aid, as well as technology for advanced weaponry. Especially dangerous is Russian help for the North’s long-range-missile and satellite-launch programs. These could put U.S. space assets and the homeland at risk.

The “international community,” to use a favorite Barack Obama phrase, is as effective at stopping this as the League of Nations. The U.S. response is to issue statements of denunciation that include words like “unlawfully,” as if either the North or Russia care. Russia used its veto at the Security Council in March to disband a U.N. panel that monitored North Korea’s compliance with sanctions. The realistic conclusion is that Russia and China want North Korea as a nuclear-armed state to threaten South Korea, Japan and the U.S.

The dictators don’t agree on everything, and a skillful U.S. diplomacy would look for opportunities to exploit differences. But the first necessity is to shed illusions that this axis is going away. Beijing, Moscow, Tehran, Pyongyang, Havana, Caracas and others share a common interest in creating mayhem that stretches U.S. and Western defenses.

Another illusion to drop is that these nations will give up their malign ambitions if the U.S. accommodates them and retreats to the Americas. This is the fantasy of some in the Trump wing of the GOP. The emergence of this hostile axis is a direct response to the perception of U.S. weakness and retreat. More weakness will court more aggression.

The U.S. and its allies will have to rearm, and far more urgently than President Biden and Mr. Trump seem willing to do. The West will also have to stop thinking that global institutions like the U.N. are serving U.S. interests. The U.N. is now useful mainly to Russia and China as veto blockades against the U.S., and to Iran and Hamas as a forum for hostility to Israel.

The International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice are now as intent on prosecuting leaders of free countries as they are marauding dictators. The G-20 forum, meanwhile, is increasingly being used by left-wing governments to weaken U.S. economic interests.

***

The “collective security” of the West will have to come from alliances like NATO, the AUKUS accord and the Quad in the Indo-Pacific. The U.S. will have to use its economic clout, open trade, and soft power to court the global South against the money and debt traps offered by China in particular.

Perhaps most important, the U.S. will have to stop solely playing defense and start looking to exploit vulnerabilities within the new axis. This means supporting sources of opposition within these countries, and pushing against their weakest links. This is what the Reagan Doctrine did against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and Eastern Europe.

The Biden Administration has behaved as if the world still wants to play by post-Cold War rules. The result is growing disorder and the menacing ambitions of anti-American states. If Mr. Trump has a better response than saying there were no wars when he was President, the American people would love to hear it.

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Review and Outlook: Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker, the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, is pushing much higher defense spending to meet the growing threats from China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. Image: Mc2 Evan Mueller/US Navy/Zuma Press

Appeared in the June 20, 2024, print edition as 'What the Putin-Pyongyang Axis Means'.

5. America Is Running Out of Options in the Gaza War

Excerpts:

Eventually the leaders will tire of war and favor a deal, but not as quickly as Biden hopes. “Their clocks are not synchronized with Biden’s,” said Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “They are much more in line with one another, and they are ticking much more slowly.”

Biden has tried to strike a balance between supplying Israel with arms while criticizing a military operation that has killed, according to local health authorities, roughly 38,000 Palestinians in Gaza, many of them women and children. That figure doesn’t distinguish between civilians and militants. 

U.S. officials have touted the deliveries of food aid to the Gaza Strip, and its pressure on Israel to scale back a planned assault on the Hamas stronghold of Rafah so that it used fewer troops and is employing smaller munitions. 

But acrimony with the Israeli leader recently spilled into the public, when Netanyahu aired a video message in English claiming the U.S. was withholding weapons from Israel. The Israeli prime minister doubled down on the complaints in an interview published Friday by the online publication Punchbowl News. 

America Is Running Out of Options in the Gaza War

Biden’s stalled cease-fire plan is a political vulnerability ahead of his debate with Trump. Israel and Hamas have a longer timeline.

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/america-is-running-out-of-options-in-the-gaza-war-4d66b989?mod=latest_headlines

By Alan CullisonFollow

, Michael R. GordonFollow

 and Anat PeledFollow

Updated June 22, 2024 12:04 am ET

WASHINGTON—When war erupted in Gaza last year, the Biden administration hoped to keep the conflict short, stay closely aligned with Israel and stem the war’s spread to Lebanon and other parts of the Middle East.

Eight months later, achieving those goals is proving increasingly difficult for the White House, highlighting a political vulnerability for President Biden ahead of his face-to-face debate against the presumed Republican nominee, Donald Trump, on Thursday.

U.S.-led talks on a cease-fire to halt the war and free hostages held by Hamas have all but collapsed. Attacks by Hezbollah across Israel’s northern border have intensified, raising the Biden administration’s fears of a full-fledged conflict. And the White House and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have traded accusations over whether the U.S. has slowed arms deliveries.

The strains underscore Biden’s challenge of achieving a foreign-policy win ahead of the November U.S. presidential election, a win that would require agreement from warring parties operating under a very different timeline.

The Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar has shown little interest in concluding a swift cease-fire, and Netanyahu’s opposition to a Palestinian state has sidelined the Biden administration’s broader strategy for the region, including stabilizing a postwar Gaza.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking at a cemetery in Tel Aviv on Tuesday. PHOTO: SHAUL GOLAN/PRESS POOL

Eventually the leaders will tire of war and favor a deal, but not as quickly as Biden hopes. “Their clocks are not synchronized with Biden’s,” said Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “They are much more in line with one another, and they are ticking much more slowly.”

Biden has tried to strike a balance between supplying Israel with arms while criticizing a military operation that has killed, according to local health authorities, roughly 38,000 Palestinians in Gaza, many of them women and children. That figure doesn’t distinguish between civilians and militants. 

U.S. officials have touted the deliveries of food aid to the Gaza Strip, and its pressure on Israel to scale back a planned assault on the Hamas stronghold of Rafah so that it used fewer troops and is employing smaller munitions. 

But acrimony with the Israeli leader recently spilled into the public, when Netanyahu aired a video message in English claiming the U.S. was withholding weapons from Israel. The Israeli prime minister doubled down on the complaints in an interview published Friday by the online publication Punchbowl News. 

“There has been a great slowdown in the provision of the important ammunition and weapons,” Netanyahu said. 

U.S. officials said Friday that they were mystified by Netanyahu’s comments. “There are no bottlenecks,” Matthew Miller, the State Department spokesperson, said Thursday.  

Palestinians in Khan Younis gathering Wednesday to receive food cooked by a charity kitchen. PHOTO: HATEM KHALED/REUTERS

Current and former U.S. officials said Netanyahu’s comments appeared to be driven by Israeli political calculations and insisted that the administration hasn’t delayed any weapons, except for a shipment of 2,000-pound bombs the White House has said is under review because of concerns over civilian casualties in Gaza. 

Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli diplomat, said that the prime minister’s behavior is part of a pattern of instigating spats and confrontations with the administration to show he is standing up to the U.S. “This is 100% manufactured,” Pinkas said. 

The shipment of 2,000-pound bombs was held up in May in the hope of forcing Israel to rethink its plans for attacking Hamas fighters in Rafah. Since then, Israel has retooled its plan for a two-division sweep through Rafah and has instead concentrated on sealing the border between Egypt and Gaza, conducting smaller-scale ground operations in the city and using smaller munitions in its airstrikes.

The White House fears that sustained fighting in Gaza could lead to a spread of the war to Lebanon. Israel and Iranian-backed Hezbollah fighters have been exchanging tit-for-tat fire over the Lebanese border since Oct. 7, when Hamas-led militants launched an attack from Gaza on Israel that killed 1,200 people, most of them Israeli civilians.

Biden’s proposed cease-fire plan in Gaza is the best way to head off a wider confrontation, according to U.S. officials. The plan would start with a temporary cease-fire and an exchange of Hamas’s hostages for prisoners held by Israel, followed by a permanent end of hostilities and an influx of aid and reconstruction money to Gaza.

While Netanyahu has said he favors the initial cease-fire plan put forward by Biden, the Israeli prime minister has yet to outline a workable blueprint for the long-term governance of Gaza, focusing instead on the military destruction of Hamas.

Israeli soldiers in southern Israel near the border with the Gaza Strip earlier this month. PHOTO: OHAD ZWIGENBERG/ASSOCIATED PRESS

The Biden administration has called for revitalizing the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority in hopes that it can also administer the Gaza Strip once the Israel-Hamas war ends, should Israel be persuaded to accept a Palestinian state. But the Ramallah-based government is on the verge of financial collapse, in part because of a suspension of Israeli tax revenue after the Oct. 7 attacks. 

Khaled Elgindy, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, said that both Netanyahu and Sinwar are paying lip service to favoring a cease-fire, but that both in fact gain a political advantage from the war.

Sinwar, he said, has seen Hamas’s popularity rise dramatically throughout the Arab world, despite the high level of Palestinian civilian casualties brought about by the war. Netanyahu’s ratings have been buffeted in Israel, and he is danger of being ousted after any peace deal, Elgindy said. 

“Netanyahu would love nothing more than to have cease-fire talks drag out forever so that he can stay in power,” Elgindy said. “Because the moment that this war ends, the clock starts ticking to the end of his term.”

In public, the U.S. has blamed Hamas roundly for blocking the cease-fire and causing more loss of life in Gaza. But neither Biden nor his Arab partners have been able to exert any meaningful pressure on Hamas.  

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that Netanyahu is committed to the Gaza cease-fire plan, and that if it doesn’t progress Hamas will be to blame. The onus, Blinken said after meeting with the Israeli prime minister, was on “one guy” hiding “10 stories underground in Gaza” to cast the deciding vote, referring to Sinwar.

Palestinians on Tuesday at what was left of a home in the central Gaza Strip. PHOTO: OMAR ASHTAWY/ZUMA PRESS

David Satterfield, who until April served as U.S. special envoy to the Middle East for humanitarian issues, told a recent online event hosted by the Carnegie endowment that obstacles to a peace deal are the worst he has seen in 45 years. One difficulty, he said, is that the respective parties to the conflict, Israel and Hamas, aren’t worried so much about scoring political tangible gains in negotiations as about their own existence.

“This is a fundamental clash of interests, where any kind of calculus that works for all the parties involved—and one of those parties is a vicious terrorist organization—is very, very difficult to contemplate,” he said.

Write to Alan Cullison at alan.cullison@wsj.com, Michael R. Gordon at michael.gordon@wsj.com and Anat Peled at anat.peled@wsj.com

6. Putin Shows He Can Antagonize the U.S. Far Afield From Ukraine

Putin Shows He Can Antagonize the U.S. Far Afield From Ukraine

His support for North Korea’s military ambitions showed he can inflict pain on the U.S. and its NATO allies in ways beyond aggression in Ukraine.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/21/world/europe/putin-russia-north-korea.html

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President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in Pyongyang, North Korea, on Wednesday, in a photo released by Russian state media.Credit...Pool photo by Gavriil Grigorov/Sputnik

By Paul Sonne

Reporting from Berlin

June 21, 2024

When the United States and its Western allies declared that Ukraine could strike Russian territory with their weapons, President Vladimir V. Putin began ratcheting up the threats.

He triggered drills in Russia to practice the use of tactical nuclear weapons. He said Moscow would consider changing the doctrine that outlines when it would use its nuclear arsenal. He reminded unnamed NATO countries in Europe of their small territories and dense populations, implying they could be easily obliterated.

And this week, the Russian leader took his threats to another corner of the globe, reviving a Cold War-era mutual defense pact with North Korea and warning that he may arm Kim Jong-un in response to the loosened restrictions on Ukraine’s use of Western arms.

“The Westerners supply weapons to Ukraine and say that ‘we don’t control anything here at all,’” he said Thursday, failing to acknowledge the limits Washington and its allies have placed on Ukraine. “We can also say that we delivered something to someone, and then we have no control over anything. Let them think about that.”

His ominous warnings, at the end of a two-day trip to North Korea and Vietnam, placed Russia and the West in a new round of escalation over Ukraine. They come amid distraction and political uncertainty among Kyiv’s chief backers, with potentially game-changing elections on the horizon in the United States and France.

Beyond using nuclear weapons or causing more destruction on the battlefield in Ukraine, the Russian leader is seeking to prove he can pressure and antagonize the West in other ways and other places.

Image

Ukrainian soldiers in the Kharkiv region on Tuesday. Russian forces have been attempting to advance in the area over the last month.Credit...Sergey Kozlov/EPA, via Shutterstock

“I am afraid we are in a bad spiral, that policymakers have an illusion of control,” said Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. “The really dangerous part of what is happening is that Russia is ready to act as a spoiler and is determined to extract a cost from the West for supporting Ukraine militarily — and it is ready to do several irreversible acts, like sharing sophisticated military technology with North Korea.”

With Western officials more inured to Mr. Putin’s threats than during the early days of the war, the Russian leader has changed the content and turned up the volume, asking rhetorically at one point Thursday why Moscow shouldn’t “go all the way” — an apparent reference to nuclear war — if the West indeed is seeking its “strategic defeat.”

From the start, Mr. Putin has used the threat of nuclear war as a way to deter Western nations from supporting Ukraine. When he launched his full-scale invasion in early 2022, he warned any country considering intervening that they would face consequences “such as you have never seen in your entire history.”

Initially, the threat worked. President Biden’s administration made the avoidance of nuclear war the North Star of its Ukraine policy. The United States and its allies withheld a full suite of sophisticated weapons from Kyiv out of fears that Mr. Putin would carry out a nuclear strike or retaliate directly against a NATO member state.

Critics of that restraint have argued it robbed Ukraine of its best chance at victory during the first year of the invasion, when Russia was failing badly on the battlefield and Ukraine still had an abundance of trained personnel.

But supporters say the approach allowed the West to arm Ukraine with weapons that would have triggered a stronger reaction from the Kremlin had they been given all at once. Ukraine’s allies gradually increased the sophistication and scope of their weapons deliveries, first with HIMARS missile launchers, later with tanks and F-16 fighter jets, in a strategy that some Western officials likened to the gradual boiling of a frog.

Image

Prime Minister Alexander De Croo of Belgium, left, with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine at an inspection of F-16 fighter jets in Belgium last month.Credit...Eric Lalmand/Belga, via Agence France-Presse Getty Images

The latest change — permission for Ukraine to conduct limited strikes into Russia to defend itself against cross-border attacks — appears to have Mr. Putin feeling the heat. Since that shift, he has frequently mentioned his nuclear arsenal and suggested other ways Russia could escalate in response to the West.

Skeptics of Mr. Putin’s rhetoric say they see little reason for him to use a nuclear weapon. A senior NATO official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss private assessments, said the alliance judged it “unlikely” that Mr. Putin would use nuclear weapons in the conflict and hadn’t seen any changes to Russia’s nuclear posture to suggest otherwise.

But Mr. Putin showed in Pyongyang that he can take measures short of firing off a nuclear weapon and far afield from Ukraine, and still unnerve the United States and its allies.

The Russian leader’s willingness to brandish the possibility of arming Pyongyang, which earlier in Mr. Putin’s tenure as president would have been unthinkable, shows how much the war in Ukraine has become a singular, defining principle of his foreign policy and his rule.

“Russian foreign policy is now structured around the war,” Mr. Gabuev said. “In every relationship, there are three goals: first, support for the Russian military machine; second, support for the Russian economy under sanctions; and three, how can I instrumentalize this relationship to inflict pain on the U.S. and its allies for their support of Ukraine?”

The discomfort could go beyond arming Mr. Kim. A comment Mr. Putin made earlier this month in St. Petersburg led some analysts to suggest that he was considering giving weapons to the Houthis, the Iran-backed Shiite militants in Yemen, who have been attacking U.S. vessels and aircraft in and around the Red Sea, or other groups hostile to the United States and its allies.

Doubters of Mr. Putin’s nuclear saber rattling reason that Russia is on the front foot in Ukraine, making him unlikely to do anything dramatic that could further mobilize Kyiv’s backers or jeopardize his battlefield trajectory. Former President Donald J. Trump, who has made clear his distaste for U.S. spending on Ukraine, may be back in the White House in seven months.

“If Russia is fundamentally confident that the future is better than the past, then that makes the use of nuclear weapons very unlikely,” said Nigel Gould-Davies, senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies and a former U.K. ambassador to Belarus.

Image

Mr. Putin and Kim Jong-un at an official welcome ceremony for the Russian president in Pyongyang on Wednesday. Credit...Vladimir Smirnov/Sputnik, via Associated Press

Still, some analysts worry that Western desensitization to Putin’s warnings have created a precarious situation.

In Moscow, a foreign policy expert who has advised the Kremlin acknowledged that Russia at times has cried wolf, “but the wolf never appeared.”

There is a growing sense in Moscow, the person said, that Russia’s threats directed at the West had not been sufficiently convincing and that it was necessary to raise the temperature a little bit.

Beyond arming American adversaries, including North Korea and Iran, experts in Moscow were discussing the possibility of cyber or space attacks, the person said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared retribution for speaking with an American news outlet.

Andrea Kendall-Taylor, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, said there was now an increased risk of an unintended escalation, where one side takes an action based on a misperception of what the other is doing. Officials in the United States, for example, recently expressed worries about the Kremlin misinterpreting Ukrainian attacks against Russian sites that are part of Moscow’s nuclear early-warning system.

Image

Billboards depicting members of the Russian military in St. Petersburg last month.Credit...Dmitri Lovetsky/Associated Press

“I think we keep focusing on nuclear escalation, and it’s distracting us from fully coming to grasp all the ways he is escalating out of that domain,” Ms. Kendall-Taylor said.

Rogue arms transfers or increased sabotage attacks outside Ukraine would be a logical escalation for Mr. Putin, analysts say, given Russia’s unique Soviet inheritance — global reach, weapons-making prowess and intelligence services skilled in unconventional warfare.

“People knock Russia and say it is a declining power,” said Bobo Lo, a nonresident fellow at the Lowy Institute in Sydney, Australia, and a former Australian diplomat in Moscow. “But it is still a formidable disruptive power. That’s its comparative advantage. It not only has the capability to disrupt, it has the will.”

Anton Troianovski and Lara Jakes contributed reporting.

Paul Sonne is an international correspondent, focusing on Russia and the varied impacts of President Vladimir V. Putin’s domestic and foreign policies, with a focus on the war against Ukraine. More about Paul Sonne

See more on: Russia-Ukraine War, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, President Joe Biden, Kim Jong-un , Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump

7. Putin Came to Asia to Disrupt, and He Succeeded

He only disrupts if we allow him to. Our alliances are stronger and we should not fall for his malign activities in the region or anywhere in the world.

Putin Came to Asia to Disrupt, and He Succeeded

His embrace of North Korea and deal making with Vietnam injected more potential threats into a region already strained by Taiwan tensions and South China Sea clashes.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/22/world/asia/putin-korea-china-disruption.html

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in Hanoi, Vietnam, on Thursday.Credit...Pool photo by Manan Vatsyayana

By Damien Cave

Reporting from Sydney, Australia

June 22, 2024

Updated 4:17 a.m. ET

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Four days in Asia. That’s all President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia needed to anger Washington, undermine Beijing and rattle a collection of Indo-Pacific nations already scrambling to cope with a jumbled world order.

After stops in Pyongyang and Hanoi this week that were draped in Communist red, Mr. Putin left behind a redrawn map of risk in Asia. North Korea sat at the center: a rogue nuclear state that regularly threatens its neighbors, suddenly empowered by Russian promises of sophisticated military aid and a mutual defense pact.

Mr. Putin also signed at least a dozen deals with Vietnam — a country of growing importance for both China and the United States as they vie for influence — where he insisted that “reliable security architecture” could not be built with “closed military-political blocs.”

The trip was both defiant and disruptive. It showed that the jockeying for power sometimes framed as a new Cold War between the United States and China is less binary than it might seem, and many countries in the region seemed to emerge from the week with a deeper sense of unease.

Mr. Putin’s presence and his threats, bold one minute, vague the next, have added even more complexity to their already difficult calculations around security and Great Power competition.

Image

Reading news about Mr. Putin’s visit in Pyongyang on Thursday.Credit...Jon Chol Jin/Associated Press

Over the past few years, the Indo-Pacific has been knocked around by a geopolitical shoving match between the United States and China, primarily over China’s claims on Taiwan, and increasingly over heightened Chinese militarization in the South China Sea.

In May, China launched two days of intense navy and air force drills around Taiwan in what it called a form of “strong punishment.” The exercises came after Taiwan’s new president pledged to defend the sovereignty of the self-governing island that Beijing sees as lost territory.

Just this week, another flashpoint — the South China Sea — edged closer to conflict. After months of bitter standoffs in the middle of a turquoise choke point for global trade, a Philippine Navy sailor was injured Monday after ships from China and the Philippines collided near a disputed archipelago. Widening the potential ramifications, the Philippines is an ally the United States is treaty-bound to help in case of war.

Image

A photo released by the Philippine military showing Chinese coast guard personnel clashing with Philippine Navy boats in the South China Sea on Monday.Credit...Armed Forces of the Philippines

Many countries in the region were already beefing up their militaries to deal with China’s pressure and the uncertainty over how far the rivalry between the United States and China might go.

Add to those concerns a wave of jitters in the region over the U.S. presidential election, not to mention a new report this month showing that China is in the midst of a “significant” expansion of its nuclear capabilities, and headaches have become common in the region’s foreign policy circles.

Now Mr. Putin has induced a few more. With his embrace of North Korea, including his open threat to better arm Kim Jong-un’s military, he has effectively added another potential crisis to Asia’s list of concerns, reigniting old hostilities on the Korean Peninsula..

Officials in South Korea and Japan — North Korea’s avowed enemies — were especially alarmed. Both countries had already been talking about toughening their defenses and growing closer to the United States and each other, particularly since Mr. Kim’s rhetoric has become markedly more hostile toward them in recent months​.

Rahm Emanuel, the U.S. ambassador to Japan, described Mr. Putin’s burst of activity in Asia as “your worst fears come true.”

“What Russia just did is they told us they are going to be the principal organizers of rogue states that develop nuclear weapons, violate nonproliferation treaties, and allow countries under U.N. sanctions to get outside those sanctions,” he said.

Peter Tesch, Australia’s ambassador in Moscow from 2016 to 2019, stressed that Mr. Putin favors keeping the world chaotic because he believes Russia benefits from keeping other countries off-kilter. Disinformation and partnerships with other provocateurs have become Putin doctrine.

“He’s quite happy for Russia to be the smelliest, farting uncle at the barbecue,” Mr. Tesch said. “The signal is, ‘Yes I am a disrupter. I can act in ways that increase the complexity of what you’re trying to manage.’”

Image

Mr. Putin and Mr. Kim riding in a limousine in Pyongyang on Wednesday, in a photo released by Russian state media.Credit...Gavriil Grigorov/Sputnik Kremlin, via Associated Press

China, North Korea’s largest trading partner and arguably its biggest influence, must also contend with the fallout. That could include pressure to clarify what its “no limits” friendship with Russia means for China’s stated goal of stability on the Korean Peninsula.

Some analysts suggest Mr. Putin had all of this in mind. He may have tightened the bond with Mr. Kim, who greeted him with hugs at the airport, to both scare the United States and signal frustration to China’s leader, Xi Jinping, for not doing more to help Russia win in Ukraine.

“If Putin cannot get everything he wants from Beijing, he will look to get it elsewhere, and there aren’t a lot of supermarkets that cover his wish list — arms, labor and a willingness to pick a fight with Washington,” said Samuel Greene, a professor of Russian politics at King’s College London. “Iran is one. North Korea is another.”

“The point is that, while Putin recognizes his dependency on China, he can’t afford to let Beijing dictate the course of the war effort — because as goes the war, so goes Putin.”

To some degree, Mr. Putin’s trip to Asia was also a potent reminder of Russia’s historic military ties: North Korea, India, and Vietnam are just a few of the countries that have been heavily dependent on Russian hardware for decades, creating links in training and maintenance that keep Moscow deeply embedded in the region.

But even before Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, those ties were fraying: Russia’s arms sales to Southeast Asia dropped to $89 million in 2021, down from $1.2 billion in 2014, according to independent studies. A clean break or even significant diversification is what Mr. Putin has sought to delay.

And if Mr. Putin’s gestures toward North Korea do end up fueling an arms race in Asia, Moscow also stands to gain: Weapons from Russia do not just intensify the risk of chaos when shared with a country like North Korea. They also bring in revenue, much needed for a Russian economy that has been squeezed by sanctions, war, inflation and 16 percent interest rates.

Mr. Putin’s visit to Hanoi focused on deals. The full scope of what was agreed is not clear, but analysts predicted that some would probably emerge later as defense-related, with financing devised to skirt international sanctions — possibly with payment in the form of oil and gas rights in the South China Sea.

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Outside the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum during Mr. Putin’s visit in Hanoi on Thursday.Credit...Pool photo by Athit Perawongmetha

“Vietnam hasn’t made a major upgrade to its land forces in years, but supposedly that’s coming,” said Derek Grossman, a senior defense analyst at Rand. “You may see Vietnam purchase new Russian tanks.”

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Nguyen The Phuong, who studies Vietnam’s military affairs at the University of New South Wales in Australia, said Vietnam also needs new fighter jets and bigger warships in line with what Beijing uses to mark territory that Hanoi also claims in the South China Sea.

He added that the high-stakes security dynamics in Asia have put countries like Vietnam in a bind. “Western weapons are expensive and politically sensitive,” he said.

But would Vietnam use new Russian vessels to stand up to China over oil deposits explored with Moscow’s help and claimed by both Beijing and Hanoi?

For many countries, the Putin tour has raised another round of such aggravating questions. Beijing has clearly sided with Moscow over the war in Ukraine. In May, Mr. Putin visited Beijing, and while his trip to North Korea may bother Mr. Xi, analysts do not expect a major rupture in the relationship.

Angering one leader may risk punishment from another, or both.

“I think there’s some concern about Russia-China ties strengthening,” Mr. Grossman said, “and the potential for both countries to gang up on the smaller and medium-sized ones.”

At a defense conference in Singapore this month, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said that was already happening. He accused China and Russia of colluding to undermine a peace summit in Switzerland led by Ukraine last week. Only a handful of Asian countries attended.

Motoko Rich contributed reporting from Tokyo.

Damien Cave is an international correspondent for The Times, covering the Indo-Pacific region. He is based in Sydney, Australia.  More about Damien Cave

8. Donald Sutherland’s Oddball history: how true was Kelly’s Heroes?

A Saturday read to remember Donald Sutherland.

For all those saddened by his passing I am sure he is up there saying this: 

(“Why don’t you knock it off with them negative waves? Why don’t you dig how beautiful it is out here?”)

I might have to watch this over the weekend in Sutherland's honor.

Donald Sutherland’s Oddball history: how true was Kelly’s Heroes?

The Telegraph · by Ed Power

Clint Eastwood’s WW2 heist caper featured a hilarious, if historically inaccurate, performance by the late star. But it got the tanks right

Donald Sutherland and Clint Eastwood in Kelly's Heroes Credit: Alamy

Donald Sutherland was on an early hot streak in his career when he agreed to play maverick tank commander Oddball in Clint Eastwood’s Second World War heist movie, Kelly’s Heroes.

He’d just come off another military black comedy, M*A*S*H, and was told that when Robert Altman’s Korean War satire was released, there was a good chance it would make him star. In the meantime, he was advised to pick a role he liked. The time might soon come when his Hollywood profile would make it difficult to choose smaller parts – which is when Oddball entered the story.

“I’d just finished M*A*S*H, and my beloved producer Ingo Preminger [who shepherded M*A*S*H to the screen] told me my life was going to change when it came out,” Sutherland revealed in a 2020 interview with Military Times, a magazine for America’s armed forces. “So I figured maybe I’d not get a chance to play this kind of a fellow again.”

When it reached cinemas in June 1970, Kelly’s Heroes was panned as an unsatisfying mash-up of action and comedy. “Supposed to be zany and funny – it isn’t,” said New York Magazine of the film, in which Sutherland and Eastwood lead a rag-tag of disillusioned US infantrymen on a daring raid to recover stolen Nazi gold from behind German lines in the final months of the war.

“Depresses the mind and bewilders the imagination,” agreed the New York Times, which criticised as anachronistic Sutherland’s portrayal of Oddball as a hippy marooned in 1944 (“Why don’t you knock it off with them negative waves? Why don’t you dig how beautiful it is out here?”).

But time would prove the critics wrong, and Kelly’s Heroes is today regarded as a classic war flick – and a showcase for the under-appreciated comedic skills and chaotic charm of Sutherland, who has died aged 88.

In the movie, Sutherland is the perfect foil for Eastwood’s taciturn Kelly – the latter a former lieutenant demoted to private after his superiors order him to attack the wrong hill and his platoon is wiped out. A smile never darkens Eastwood’s lips throughout the film –while Sutherland seems to stifle giggles from the moment Oddball is introduced, eavesdropping from a bunk-bed on the plan by Kelly and his co-conspirator Crapgame (Don Rickles) to seize the Nazi gold.

“You could probably use some armour,” says Oddball, who reveals he has three Sherman tanks at his disposal (his commander is dead, but Oddball has no intention of informing his superiors, as they would send him back to the frontline).

“I loved Oddball. Adored him,” Sutherland told Military Times, adding that he found Troy Kennedy Martin’s script “hysterically funny”.

Don Rickles, Clint Eastwood and Donald Sutherland in Kelly's Heroes

It wasn’t all laughs during the shoot in Yugoslavia however. Sutherland almost died after contracting meningitis on set and going into a coma. “I got sick in the middle of shooting Kelly’s Heroes… I was out for six weeks,” he would say. “They took me to hospital – I had spinal meningitis. They didn’t have the antibiotics, so I went into a coma, and they tell me that for a few seconds, I died. I saw the blue tunnel, and I started going down it. I saw the white light. I dug my feet in.”

There were further complications when, back in Los Angeles, Sutherland’s wife Shirley Douglas was arrested by the FBI and charged with conspiracy to possess unregistered explosives in relation to her support for the Black Panthers.

As she was led away, her lawyers wondered how they would contact her husband, who was off working in the Balkans. A message was eventually relayed to a colleague. He agreed to pass on details of Douglas’s detention.

“Clint Eastwood came walking out of the sun like it was a spaghetti western and said, ‘I have some bad news for you. Your wife’s been arrested,’” Donald Sutherland would later remember.

“For buying hand grenades. From an undercover agent of the FBI. With a personal cheque,” he recalled Eastwood saying. “And when he got to the personal cheque he started laughing so hard he fell to the ground. I had to help him back up.”

An original poster for Kelly's Heroes Credit: Alamy

Sutherland and Douglas had married in 1966. They had two young children, Rachel and Kiefer, but would divorce in 1970, not long after he shipped back from Yugoslavia. It can’t have been the easiest period for Sutherland. He was returning to marital turmoil having spent much of 1969 sitting in a Yugoslav People’s Army Sherman Tank in the withering heat of Croatia’s Istrian Peninsula.

But then, making Kelly’s Heroes was not a particularly happy experience for any of the cast and crew. Croatia was remote and oppressively warm, except when it was swept by downpours And the filming seemed never to end.

“Bad weather, mishaps with pyrotechnics and the… enormous number of extras made for complicated logistics, and to [Eastwood’s] particular irritation, the shoot went on and on and on,” wrote David Sterritt in the Cinema of Clint Eastwood: Chronicles of America. And yet somehow from this upheaval and unhappiness emerged a beloved Second World War romp.

Kelly’s Heroes was loosely based on the true story of a hunt for Nazi gold undertaken as Allied Forces swept towards Germany at the end of the war. Verisimilitude, however, was not a priority for director Brian G Hutton. Where the original heist was rumoured to have occurred in Bavaria, now the location was north-eastern France, near Nancy.

Clint Eastwood on the set of Kelly's Heroes Credit: Getty

The gold becomes an obsession for Eastwood’s Private Kelly. Taking advantage of the US military’s shambolic command structure, he leads a mechanised reconnaissance platoon of the 35th Infantry Division into Nazis lines in search of the loot. They laugh, they cry, they have a close encounter with a trio of indestructible Tiger Tanks.

Kelly’s Heroes is a mess but an endearing one. Under pressure from MGM, Hutton had made sure to include plenty of cartoon Nazis and blazing gun fights. As the New York Times pointed out in 1970s, Sutherland’s tank-commander, Oddball is a hippy adrift in the wrong time period. The wise-cracking tough guy quotient is ticked by co-stars Telly Savalas, comedian Don Rickles and Harry Dean Stanton (billed as Dean Staunton).

Never more taciturn, Eastwood, for his part, appears to have settled for parodying his Man with No Name character from Sergio Leone.

With its portrayal of the US military as a two-ring circus, the movie is, moreover, clearly coloured by American experiences in Vietnam in the late Sixties. Yet, and to Eastwood’s regret, Kelly’s Heroes ultimately found its audience not as social commentary but as rifles at dawn escapism.

“It is a Sixties film with Sixties attitudes, dialogue and even looks,” says Dr. Mark Felton, military historian, author and creator of the YouTube channel Mark Felton Productions. “For example, Oddball is wrong on several levels. Firstly, beards are not allowed in the US Army and any look at photos of soldiers in combat shows them clean-shaven or stubbly, but never with full face beards.

The cast of Kelly's Heroes Credit: Getty

“He is essentially a hippy in uniform, and such people didn’t exist until the Sixties. The lax uniform regulations are again inaccurate, and nearly all of the actors are about 10 to 20 years too old.”

Little about Kelly’s Heroes sat well with Eastwood. Having belatedly recognised Vietnam as a disaster he signed on to the project under the impression he would be spinning an anti-war parable in the vein of Catch 22 or Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H (the latter would trounce Kelly’s Heroes at the box office the following year). But then came upheavals at MGM and a decision from on high to pivot away from artier projects.

Halfway to the ends of the earth in Croatia, Eastwood could feel the film he’d agreed to make slipping away before his eyes. Anti-war satire was out, came the word from on-high. In place of a gonzo meditation on the madness of conflict, Hutton – with whom Eastwood had worked on 1968’s Where Eagles Dare – had new orders: to churn out a rough ’n ready action flick.

“It was a very fine anti-militaristic script, one that said some important things about the war, about this propensity that man has to destroy himself,” is how Eastwood characterised the initial incarnation of Kelly’s Heroes. “In the editing, the scenes that put the debate in philosophical terms were cut and they kept adding action scenes. When it was finished, the picture had lost its soul. If action and reflection had been better balanced, it would have reached a much broader audience.

“I don’t know if the studio exercised pressure on the director or if it was the director who lost his vision along the way, but I know that the picture would have been far superior if there hadn’t been this attempt to satisfy action fans at any cost. And it would have been just as spectacular and attractive. It’s not an accident that some action movies work and others don’t. What makes the difference is the quality of the writing.”

Donald Sutherland as Oddball in Kelly's Heroes Credit: Getty

Eastwood was underwhelmed, to put it mildly. As were audiences, with Kelly’s Heroes only a moderate hit on release (its US gross of $5.2 million was the 25th highest of 1970). Yet with time its fortunes would change. By the end of the Seventies, the movie had joined the pantheon of Second World War classics.

True, it may fall short of the iconic status of The Dam Busters or The Great Escape. Nonetheless, Kelly’s Heroes is loved for what it is: a big, silly war film. It helped that it had a cracking theme tune in the Mamas and Papas-esque Burning Bridges, penned by composer Mike Curb and his supergroup the Mike Curb Congregation.

Curb had written the song around the time he became president of MGM Records in 1969. He would, in the latter capacity, soon prove a controversial figure. In 1971 he ordered the label to drop 18 acts who “promote and exploit hard drugs through music”. Among those receiving the tap on the shoulder were Lou Reed’s Velvet Underground and Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention. Encouraged by Ronald Reagan, Curb later entered politics, serving as Lieutenant Governor of California.

But if Curb’s trajectory was unlikely it was as nothing compared to the true life story from which Kelly’s Heroes allegedly took inspiration.

“The basis for the film is the disappearance of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of gold bullion and foreign currency that was evacuated from the Reichsbank in Berlin to Bavaria and Austria at war’s end,” explains Felton. “The US Third Army captured the bulk of the German gold and currency reserves at Merkers [in central Germany] in April 1945, but many more smaller stashes were discovered all over the region in the immediate postwar period.

“A minority of a few corrupt officers and men on the US Occupation Government in Bavaria who were tasked with collecting and collating this material stole many millions in gold and currency, and it has never been recovered. They did not represent the majority working in the occupation administration, but there was so much gold and other valuables around that it was quite easy to siphon off small amounts for themselves.”

Friendly fire is a constant danger for Kelly and his men as they bear down on German lines and all that gleaming Nazi gold. Ironically, the film itself was derailed by sustained shelling from the studio. Eastwood had already signed up when MGM fell into the clutches of casino owner and corporate raider Kirk Kerkorian (who, flying with RAF Command, had helped transport de Havilland Mosquitos across the Atlantic during the War). Grand epics such as Doctor Zhivago and 2001: A Space Odyssey had cost it a fortune. Kerkorian was determined to stanch the bleeding.

To that end, he hired former CBS television boss James Aubrey as head of production (at CBS his achievements included commissioning The Beverly Hillbillies). Aubrey was respected around Hollywood but not liked. Producer John Houseman once called him “a smiling cobra”. In the summer of 1969 he was spitting venom in the direction of Kelly’s Heroes – then still shooting under its original name of The Warriors.

Aubrey’s first decision was to cut a female role to be played by Polish-British actress Ingrid Pitt (she was about to leave for Europe when the call came through). And he pushed Hutton to lean into the gung-ho elements of the script. He also insisted the film’s title be changed from The Warriors to Kelly’s Heroes. And he cut a crucial sequence in which Kelly and Sgt “Big Joe” (Savalas) discuss the futility of war.

Eastwood went back and forth in his feelings for the movie. For instance, when footage was accidentally exposed and thus rendered unusable en route to the editing suite, Hutton begged his star to stay on for reshoots.

But Kelly demurred and was soon en route to Baton Rogue to make The Beguiled (later remade by Sofia Coppola), in which he was involved behind the scenes via his Malpaso production company. On the other hand, he obviously cared enough to beseech Aubrey to give him 12 hours to recut Kelly’s Heroes and restore some of its seriousness – a request the studio head rejected on the spot.

Donald Sutherland and Don Rickles in Kelly's Heroes Credit: Getty

And yet, despite this dumbing down, Kelly’s Heroes was in several broad aspects truthful to the experience of the fighting post D-Day and the widespread disillusionment among American forces.

“The film takes place in late September 1944 by which time a lot of US frontline troops – infantry especially – had grown resentful that so many of their comrades in rear area units, such as supplies, logistics, intelligence, military police etc, weren’t pulling their weight and were living in comparative luxury while they got the short end of the stick and suffered pretty much all the casualties,” says Jonathan Trigg, historian and author of To VE Day Through German Eyes: The Final Defeat of Nazi Germany.

“In total some 21,000 American soldiers were tried for desertion during the war, the vast majority in Europe. By the autumn of 1944 it was becoming a real problem, so much so that Private Eddie Slovik from Detroit became the first US serviceman since the American Civil War to be executed for desertion. He deserted in early October 1944 and was shot by firing squad in January 1945, with Eisenhower himself confirming the execution order.”

Kelly’s Heroes got another thing right. When Kelly informs his co-conspirators that their Nazi gold is guarded by three Tiger Tanks they turn pale (the tanks we see on screen are actually modified Soviet T-34s). In real life troops were terrified of the hulking war machines (in the end Kelly’s solution is to convince the German crews to share in the plunder).

“The Tiger I was superior to every tank the Anglo-Americans had, apart from the British Sherman Firefly which was only available in small numbers. It was especially superior to the M4 Sherman which is what Oddball and his men drove in the film,” says Trigg.

“The Tiger’s gun – the 88mm – was a superb weapon, being capable of destroying a Sherman at 2,000m range, whereas – as in the film – the Sherman’s only hope of killing a Tiger was to hit it from behind or, if very lucky, from the side, where its armour was weakest. The Tiger had such a psychological impact on Anglo-American troops that they tended to describe every German tank they came across as a Tiger, and the phenomenon was called ‘Tiger fright.’”

Still, nobody should watch Kelly’s Heroes expecting an authentic depiction of the Western front, says Mark Felton, who cites Band of Brothers as a more truthful portrayal of the experiences of American GIs.

“[Kelly’s Heroes] is inaccurate on so many levels, but here are a few of my favourites,” he says. “Hollywood rifles and machine guns never have to be reloaded and the rate of fire of Kelly’s little section of men would require a truck load of ammunition following them at all times.

“They have no fire discipline or idea of tactics, the Germans are portrayed as both stupid and tactically incompetent, which they were not. And Kelly’s bunch apparently have no food or supply worries even though deep behind enemy lines.

“In reality, such an excursion would last about five minutes and have resulted in them all being killed or taken prisoner, and, if they returned to US lines, being court-martialled for desertion.”

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The Telegraph · by Ed Power

9. Marine Corps Global Response in the Age of Precision Munitions

Excerpts:

To remain meaningful, the Marine Corps must be organized and equipped to meet the uncertainties of an increasingly dangerous world. This requires a Marine Corps that is built on four pillars. As articulated in Vision 2035, it is a Marine Corps that:

       “is immediately ready to respond to crises and contingencies anywhere in the world.”

       “is relevant, manned and equipped to support the Secretary of Defense’s requirements with scalable, flexible, adaptive, and lethal forces.”

        “is capable of fighting and winning in any conflict.”

       “has the capacity to rapidly converge and build to a Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF).”

Each of these pillars requires operating forces that are rapidly deployable and sustainable, which is only possible by full throated U.S. Navy support, especially a robust fleet of operationally ready amphibious shipping and a strategically positioned, immediately deployable maritime prepositioning force.

Marine Corps Global Response in the Age of Precision Munitions

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By Charles Krulak & Anthony Zinni , Paul Van Riper , Jerry McAbee

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2024/06/22/marine_corps_global_response_in_the_age_of_precision_munitions_1039773.html

Editors Note: The graphic represents the Marine Corps 9-1-1 force, a capability quicly eroding under Force Design 2030.

Photo; A graphic created as a banner for 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit social media platforms to highlight the 13th MEU’s warfighting readiness at Camp Pendleton, California, June 11, 2024. The social media banner was designed to feature the 13th MEU as a forward deployed, flexible sea-based Marine Air Ground Task Force capable of conducting amphibious operations, crisis response and limited contingency operations. This graphic was created in Adobe Photoshop 2021. (U.S. Marine Corps graphic by Cpl. Kayla Halloran)

Four years ago, the United States Marine Corps embraced Force Design 2030 as its capstone operating concept. This unproven and unsolicited concept transitioned the Marine Corps from a global force in readiness to a regional force in waiting and was not vetted with most of the Geographic Combatant Commands or managed at Quantico by the Marine Corps Combat Development Command’s highly regarded and effective combat development process. Nevertheless, the 38^th Commandant of the Marine Corps, using his Title X, U.S. Code authorities to organize, train, and equip the service, reorganized, and restructured the operating forces to fight a single known threat (People’s Liberation Army Navy) in a specific location (Western Pacific region).

Much has been written about the flaws and shortcomings of Force Design. The purpose of this article is not to relitigate these charges but to highlight an alternative vision, which has been previously articulated but conveniently overlooked.

The alternative option – Vision 2035 – provides the framework for developing an operating concept from which the Marine Corps through the combat development process can determine capabilities and requirements (doctrine, force structure, equipment, training and education, and facilities and support) needed to restore the Marines as the nation’s premier 9-1-1 force for the full spectrum of crises and contingencies.

To remain meaningful, the Marine Corps must be organized and equipped to meet the uncertainties of an increasingly dangerous world. This requires a Marine Corps that is built on four pillars. As articulated in Vision 2035, it is a Marine Corps that:

       “is immediately ready to respond to crises and contingencies anywhere in the world.”

       “is relevant, manned and equipped to support the Secretary of Defense’s requirements with scalable, flexible, adaptive, and lethal forces.”

        “is capable of fighting and winning in any conflict.”

       “has the capacity to rapidly converge and build to a Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF).”

Each of these pillars requires operating forces that are rapidly deployable and sustainable, which is only possible by full throated U.S. Navy support, especially a robust fleet of operationally ready amphibious shipping and a strategically positioned, immediately deployable maritime prepositioning force.

A lot has changed strategically since the publication of Force Design. The war in Ukraine; the fighting in Gaza; and a more belligerent Iran are just three examples. Like previous threat assessments, this year’s Annual Threat Assessment recognizes countries other than China as inimical to U.S. national interests, specifically North Korea, Iran, Russia, and various nonstate actors. We believe the Corps’ single focus on confronting China’s Navy along the First Island Chain in the Southeast Pacific, at the exclusion of other global threats, is a danger to our national security. In our opinion, a retooled Marine Corps flexibly organized, trained, and equipped for a full range of global contingencies in an increasingly unstable world is a better option.

The Marine Corps must also be enabled by capabilities that promote readiness and relevancy. Vision 2035 lays out seven enabling capabilities. Chief among them are sustainment and technology. Combat operations are not possible without adequate supplies and equipment, which must be moved by ships. Technology will allow the Marine Corps to adapt and evolve to changing threat environments and remain “adaptive, maneuverable, lethal, and survivable.”

Vision 2035 is anchored in two fundamental and enduring certainties: the United States is a maritime nation with global interest and the nature of war is unchanging, although the character of war does change. Force Design disregards both premises and assumes China will pursue limited objectives confined to the South China Sea.

To pursue transformation, the Marine Corps accepted a dramatic reduction in the number of amphibious assault ships and maritime prepositioning ships. Supporters of these reductions argue that amphibious landings on hostile shores are an anachronism and prepositioning ships are nothing more than targets (unlike aircraft carriers or fixed bases like Guam and Diego Garcia, one presumes). Serious strategists recognize that the amphibious and prepositioning fleets are vital to the rapid projection of decisive force into contested regions of the world where U.S. interests are at risk. Marine Air-Ground Task Forces (MAGTFs), operating afloat as Marine Expeditionary Units or Marine Expeditionary Brigades, ashore as Special Purpose MAGTFs (most recently in Africa, Europe and the Arabian Peninsula), or as Marine Expeditionary Forces can conduct a wide range of expeditionary operations to include persistent forward presence, military engagement, humanitarian response, and, if required, combat operations to defeat hostile threats and set conditions for decisive operations by the Joint Force.

Expeditionary forces provide US leaders with options to assert US influence in regions where access is limited or unavailable. The arrival of sea-based expeditionary forces operating in international waters near hotspots sends a powerful signal to both allies and adversaries alike without creating additional force protection challenges attendant with establishing land bases in low-security environments. Unfortunately, the structural changes mandated by Force Design have weakened US global force projection capabilities and reduced the range of response options available. Vision 2035 offers a plan for restoring them.

Many articles have already been published touting the tenets of Vision 2035. Two of the best are “Reduce the Risk to National Security: Abandon Force Design 2030” and “A Better Plan for the Marine Corps and the Nation: Vision 2035.” These articles convey our belief that precision weapons have not made maneuver impossible, which is counter to the underlying premise of Force Design. We know from history that for every advancement in military technology a countermeasure can be developed making the new shiny object irrelevant or at least manageable. The philosophical foundation for this contention can be found in another recently published article, “Force Design 2030 is Trying to Solve the Wrong Problem.”

Finally, America’s Marines must possess an enduring set of capabilities and values that define them. These are enduring requirements that make United States Marines different. Vision 2035 affirms nine requirements that are unassailable. The most important of the nine is arguably the mindset to retain an offensive orientation, which requires scalable Marine-Air-Ground-Logistics Task Forces and modern and effective combined arms. Others include remaining a versatile and resilient force. Marines must be ready for any mission, anywhere and large enough to continue the mission after taking casualties. And one that is often overlooked is to remain a youthful force. The strength of the Corps has always been the individual Marine and his or her willingness to march to the sounds of the guns, which is a hallmark of youth.

Vision 2035 may disappoint the armchair generals who want to talk numbers of ships, battalions, and squadrons, and so on. Others may find the vision lacking because it fails to specify numbers and types of tanks, artillery, airplanes, and the like. But no skilled carpenter would build a house without first getting the blueprint right. And no knowledgeable officer would build a certain force for an uncertain future without first getting the operating concept right. Once the concept is right, it’s a relatively easy task to determine the capabilities and requirements, which must be integrated and supportable.

Vision 2035 provides the framework for the Marines to develop an operating concept that better addresses all the nation’s threats, not just one of them. To paraphrase the authors of Vison 2035, “Our vision for the Marine Corps reduces risk to national security. The vision is a forward look at all threats, not a concept focused on one threat in a single theater. By returning to a more capable combat development process and leveraging innovation and technology, the Marine Corps can regain its offensive capabilities by restoring maneuver, which will enable the nation’s Corps of Marines to respond quickly and effectively to global threats across the spectrum of conflict.” 

The Marine Corps leadership needs to work with the Navy and the Congress to ensure the Marine Corps is better positioned to meet the global challenges of the 21^st Century. The time to start is now.

If you have not read Vision 2035, we encourage you to do so. If you disagree with it, attack the message. Too often informed and uniformed people only attack the messenger, which does nothing to further the national defense.

General Charles (Chuck) Krulak, (USMC, ret.) was a career infantry officer. His assignments include Commanding General, Marine Corps Combat Development Command. His last assignment was the 31^st Commandant of the Marine Corps

General Anthony (Tony) Zinni, (USMC, ret.) was a career infantry officer. His assignments include Deputy Commanding General, Marine Corps Combat Development Command. His last assignment was Commander, United States Central Command.

General Paul K. Van Riper, (USMC, ret.) was a career infantry officer. His assignments include President of the Marine Corps University. His last assignment was Commanding General, Marine Corps Combat Development Command.

Brigadier General Jerry McAbee, (USMC, ret.) was a career artillery officer. His assignments include Chief of Staff, Marine Corps Combat Development Command. His last assignment was Deputy Commander, United States Marine Corps Force, Central Command.

10. What Happens When Migrants Arrive in America’s Suburbs?

The good and bad.

Excerpt:

One student is Erick Sanoja, a 38-year-old Venezuelan who arrived legally last year with his wife and children after his cousin, who lives in Herriman, sponsored him through a humanitarian-parole program. Equipped with employment permits, Sanoja now works at a spray-foam insulation company, and his wife, Nora Muñiz, 37, works at a fast-food restaurant.

Before coming, the couple said they worried about chatter back home that Americans disliked immigrants. What they found instead was a community that made them feel at home, they said.

“The goodness and affection that they show toward us is awesome,” Muñiz said.

What Happens When Migrants Arrive in America’s Suburbs?

Postpandemic arrival of migrants across southern border nearly broke big U.S. cities. Suburbs and smaller towns are now feeling the strain.

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/what-happens-when-migrants-arrive-in-americas-suburbs-8605cf6f?mod=latest_headlines

By Arian Campo-FloresFollow

 | Photographs by Kim Raff for WSJ

June 22, 2024 8:00 am ET

HERRIMAN, Utah—When the first migrants began arriving in this affluent suburb tucked in a valley flanked by snow-capped mountains, few took notice. Now, schools and apartment complexes are suddenly filled with newcomers, and Spanish has become a common language heard at the local Walmart.

With no shelters and no federal or state funding to rely on, Herriman officials struggled to respond to the arrivals, many of them from Venezuela. Residents, often drawing on a tradition of service in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, tried to fill the void, operating an English-language learning center and a food pantry.

“It almost felt like it came out of nowhere,” said Lorin Palmer, Herriman’s mayor. “It’s been hard, but we’ve got a community that’s sure trying.”

Record waves of illegal border crossings in recent years have sent tens of thousands of migrants to urban centers including New York, Chicago and nearby Salt Lake City, straining their budgets and services. Arrivals are increasingly making their way to suburbs and small cities across the U.S. that are even less prepared to handle them, forcing communities to improvise responses and sometimes generating hostility. 

The number of people with new immigration cases—a proxy for migrant arrivals—has soared in some suburban counties ringing metro areas, according to data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.

A kite festival in Herriman was organized by the local Venezuelan community to help integrate new migrants.

In Denton County, Texas, outside Dallas, those with new cases ballooned 16-fold to 8,632 between 2020 and 2023. In Kane County, Ill., outside Chicago, their number jumped 17-fold to 3,496 over that period, while in Rutherford County, Tenn., outside Nashville, it increased 20-fold to 3,315.

Bradenton, Fla., a city of 57,000 people south of Tampa, has seen its foreign-born population rise sharply, according to census data. At an April meeting, county commissioners sought to assess the impact of unauthorized migrants on the community—hearing from a hospital executive who said such arrivals were taking a financial toll on his facility.

“What options do we have? Obviously we can’t deport people,” said Kevin Van Ostenbridge, one of the commissioners.

Hamilton, Ohio, a city of 63,000 people north of Cincinnati, has witnessed blowback to jumps in the migrant population. After police announced an aggravated-murder charge in April against a man who had entered the U.S. illegally numerous times, Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones pointed to what he called a “border invasion.”

“We’re all border states, we’re all border counties,” he said.

In Utah, where members of the Church of Jesus Christ have a tradition of welcoming refugees, policies are more favorable toward migrants than in many conservative states. Utah allows driving privileges and in-state tuition rates for some unauthorized migrants. In 2010, an array of business, religious and community leaders signed the Utah Compact, a set of principles that includes acknowledging the economic role migrants play.

The rush of arrivals has been so sudden and pronounced that it is testing those principles. Some residents gripe that the newcomers are securing benefits that should go to American citizens. They complain that migrants are burdening schools, which have few Spanish-speaking teachers, and heightening demand in a tight housing market.

A recent alert by the state warned asylum seekers that no shelter space is available and that food banks are at capacity. Unless they have stable connections, it said, “consider another state to settle in the U.S.”

Herriman saw its foreign-born population rise nearly ninefold to about 5,300 between 2015 and 2022.

All of it is playing out in the midst of polarizing debates over illegal immigration in the presidential race and statewide campaigns for Utah governor and U.S. Senate.

“It’s been a lot in a little bit of time for our community,” said Palmer, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ who learned Spanish during a mission in Uruguay. “It’s that fine line of how do we show compassion and support, but at the same time recognize at some point our resources are going to be tapped out.”

Herriman, one of the fastest-growing suburbs of Salt Lake City, roughly doubled in size between 2015 and 2022, when its population reached 59,000, according to census data. The foreign-born population increased nearly ninefold, to about 5,300, over that period.

The number of people with new immigration cases climbed to 12,840 in Salt Lake County, which includes Herriman, in fiscal year 2023, from 752 in fiscal year 2020, according to TRAC data.

Migrants have headed to Herriman for various reasons. Some had friends or family in the area. Others came in search of jobs in construction and service industries—positions in plentiful supply given the Salt Lake City metro area’s unemployment rate of 2.8% in April. Still others heard that Utah was a hospitable place. 

Many migrants have found footholds. Victor Hugo Mayoral, a 38-year-old Venezuelan, arrived in March after crossing the border and requesting asylum. He decided to go to Herriman because a childhood friend lives in the city and agreed to provide him lodging.

Venezuelan migrants recently sorted through clothing and supplies at the Herriman food pantry.

Cortney Denison, a volunteer in Herriman, helped a child pick out a toy at the food pantry.

Mayoral, whose wife and two children remain in Venezuela for now, said he was awaiting an employment permit he was told would come soon. For now, he has picked up work doing food delivery and construction. He said he had his Venezuelan university degrees in education and psychology translated and validated in the hope of eventually becoming a teacher, as he was back home.

“I think I can fit in perfectly in this society,” Mayoral said. “With a good job, I can really improve conditions for my family.”

Still, signs of strain are emerging. An early indicator for Mayor Palmer of the scale of new arrivals came last year, when he said the principal of Herriman High School called to say the wave of migrant students was starting to overwhelm the school. The number of students learning English as a second language at the school reached 270 this year, compared with 17 a decade ago, said Kelli Nielsen, who leads the program.

Unable to communicate with students, teachers relied on translation software and visuals. With the help of a community fundraiser, they acquired about 150 sets of earbuds that provide simultaneous translation.

The school set up a hall of flags to recognize the newcomers’ heritage and posted photos of those who passed English proficiency tests, said Laura Visaggio, the multilingual learner coordinator, adding that she considers them an asset to the community.

But Natalie Cline, a member of the State Board of Education, said the demographic change in schools has been disruptive. Teachers are overhauling classroom instruction to accommodate the needs of migrants, and schools are turning into what she called “social welfare centers.”

“The growing needs of this dependency class will eventually outgrow the taxpayers’ ability to keep up with the demand,” Cline said.

Sean Marchant heads a center that offers English classes for migrants. Pins on a world map show where his students hail from, mostly Venezuela.

In October, Palmer convened nonprofits and other organizations to determine migrants’ needs. Among the participants was Sean Marchant, board president of the Columbus Adult Education Center, which got its start providing free English classes in the Salt Lake City area to refugees from Myanmar.

The center’s leaders decided to launch a new English-language center in Herriman that opened in March. It operates with about 250 volunteers and serves some 250 students, Marchant said. But demand is so strong that the waiting list numbers as high as 400.

One student is Erick Sanoja, a 38-year-old Venezuelan who arrived legally last year with his wife and children after his cousin, who lives in Herriman, sponsored him through a humanitarian-parole program. Equipped with employment permits, Sanoja now works at a spray-foam insulation company, and his wife, Nora Muñiz, 37, works at a fast-food restaurant.

Before coming, the couple said they worried about chatter back home that Americans disliked immigrants. What they found instead was a community that made them feel at home, they said.

Erick Sanoja and Nora Muñiz, Venezuelan migrants, said they have been warmly received by the local community after arriving in Herriman last year with their children.

“The goodness and affection that they show toward us is awesome,” Muñiz said.

Athlos Academy, a charter school, operates a food pantry that staff members and parents created after learning that a migrant student was in need. Twice a month families can pick up groceries, along with clothing and other supplies, said Cortney Denison, a volunteer who oversees it.

Election-year politics is a factor. In the Utah gubernatorial race, the Republican challenger Phil Lyman has criticized the incumbent, GOP Gov. Spencer Cox, as soft on immigration for supporting such measures as in-state tuition for some migrants. 

“Utah is not spending any state resources to house or provide other basic services for illegal immigrants or asylum seekers,” Cox said in a statement. “Municipalities, local nonprofits, faith-based organizations and schools have been shouldering the burden.”

Palmer said he worries that the nonprofit and volunteer corps is burning out and that Herriman’s generally welcoming posture could invite even more newcomers it isn’t equipped to receive. But he said the city would keep trying to address challenges as best it can.

Palmer recently attended a kite festival organized by a group including Antonio Valbuena, a Venezuelan migrant who arrived in Herriman more than five years ago and is heavily involved in civic activities. The event’s aim was to integrate the city’s migrant and native-born residents.

“It’s about trying to keep the community together,” Palmer said.

Despite the kite festival’s goal of integration, some in Herriman worry that the community’s resources will eventually be tapped out.

Write to Arian Campo-Flores at arian.campo-flores@dowjones.com

11. Who will win a post-heroic war?  by Edward Luttwak

An ominous assessment:

The result is that, all across Europe, entire military institutions are colluding from top to bottom to sustain the illusion that they are capable of combat, which is now only true in rare cases, such as with Britain’s shrunken but still combative armed forces. But to some extent, the same can be said of their adversaries in Russia and China. In our current post-heroic age, everyone’s calculations of the true balance of power need to be revised.

Who will win a post-heroic war?

Neither side is prepared to fight

unherd.com · by Edward Luttwak · June 18, 2024

A US soldier in Mosul in 2003, when America still believed in war (Scott Nelson/Getty Images)

Edward Luttwak

June 19, 2024 5 mins

Neither the West not its enemies are prepared to fightSome 30 years ago, I coined the phrase “post-heroic warfare” to acknowledge a new phenomenon: the very sharp reduction in the tolerance of war casualties. My starting point was President Clinton’s 1993 decision to abandon Somalia after 18 American soldiers were killed in a failed raid. But in truth, post-heroic attitudes had already emerged — and not just in affluent democracies. In 1989, the Soviet Union, whose generals could once lose 15,000 men before breakfast without batting an eyelid, abandoned Afghanistan after 14,453 of its soldiers were killed over almost a decade.

Nor was the post-heroic phenomenon strictly related to the merits, or lack thereof, of any particular act of war. Margaret Thatcher stayed up all night writing personal letters to the families of every one of Britain’s 255 dead in the Falklands. But it did not mollify her critics, who argued that Britain should never have used force, even if it meant that Argentina would be allowed to conquer the islands.

Four decades later, it is even more obvious that we are living in a post-heroic age, to the great benefit of the West — at least for now. In 2022, Ukraine found itself fighting an enemy that could have mobilised its regular army formations, each with its quota of 18-year-old conscripts, and also recalled two million reservists. But Putin did neither, fearing the fury of Russia’s mothers, who even under the restrictions of Soviet rule had successfully pressed for the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

But for Kyiv, the new post-heroic rules are only partly advantageous, and might even result in its final defeat: for while they have prevented an all-out Russian invasion, they also severely inhibit Nato’s capacity to help Ukraine.

On paper, Nato has some sizeable armies, but when French President Emmanuel Macron called for arms and troops to be sent to Ukraine in February, his plea fell on deaf ears. Indeed, the Italian defence and foreign ministers went out of their way to publicly declare that they wouldn’t send even one soldier to Ukraine, under any circumstances. In a similar vein, in spite of the severe economic damage that Houthi pirates in the Red Sea have inflicted upon European economies, only the US Navy and the Royal Navy have responded in earnest — while Italy’s navy was only allowed to send one ship, despite suffering the greatest damage from traffic being diverted from the Mediterranean. The same is true of Nato’s air forces: only the US and UK have bombed Houthi weapon stores in Yemen, while no European air force has taken any action, not even the French with their base in Djibouti next door.

The great question, of course, is why? Why is it that, with larger populations than ever before, our tolerance for casualties is increasingly low?

Back in 1994, I offered a simple theory: the wars of history were fought by “spare” male children. Even as late as the mid-20th century, the average European family had several children. In agricultural households, one male could inherit the family’s land, another might advantageously marry a land-owning wife, and one more might go into the Church — or off to war. If he failed to return, the survivors might miss him most intensely, but the family would not be extinguished. Today, however, with the average fertility of women across Europe less than two and still falling — the EU average was 1.46 in 2022 — there are no spare children.

The extreme case here is China, with its fertility rate of 1.1. President Xi is, by all accounts, a bellicose man who enjoys threatening war against Taiwan. And yet, curiously, in 2020 he took eight months to reveal that one PLA officer and three soldiers had died during the fighting on India’s Ladakh frontier. During that period of official silence, the families of the four were re-housed and provided with welfare payments or better jobs; the officer’s wife who taught piano in a village school was elevated to the Xi’an Conservatory of Music, with a new house to go with it. Each of the four also became the subject of dedicated media campaigns, which portrayed the youngest as cinematically good-looking and the officer as so conscientious that, up in cold Tibet, he would wake up before his soldiers to prepare hot-water bottles for them. Later, the names of the four were added to many highway bridges to remind all of their sacrifice.

Why the grand acts of remembrance? The answer is demographic. Thanks to China’s one-child policy, imposed in 1980 with the abundant use of forced abortions, the four deaths extinguished eight family lines.

The good news, then, is that because of China’s low birth rates, the post-heroic syndrome makes it unlikely that Beijing will act on its pugnacious threats. Given the regime’s most elaborate response to four combat deaths, how could it cope with the 4,000 that might be lost in one day in a war for Taiwan? Incidentally, Iran is also suffering a crisis in fertility; it was only 1.7 when last measured, way below the replacement rate, with many of the births among restive minority populations rather than Persians. But Tehran has found an effective remedy: it arms, trains and funds expendable Arab militias while being extremely careful with its Persian manpower

As for Israel, it is the only country in the world where even secular, university-educated, professionally employed, married women have two or more children on average, with more than three children on average for the religious. This high fertility rate is the fundamental reason why Israel is not post-heroic, and will not be forced to abandon its current military plans because of combat casualties. This is especially important because the war started so badly, and because urban combat becomes so deadly once tunnels are added to the usual perils of high-rise snipers and alley mortar crews.

“This high fertility rate is the fundamental reason why Israel is not post-heroic.”

In the immediate aftermath of the October 7 atrocities, most Israelis were very eager to fight, including all those reservists with families who flew back from their homes in Silicon Valley or New York to rejoin their old units. Now, however, that initial enthusiasm has waned: only the new recruits who have just finished their combat training are eager for action, while many are fed up with a war that in Gaza now only makes incremental advances. As for the Israelis who face Hezbollah in the north, almost daily attacks seem set to continue without end, leading to calls for more decisive action. But the total number of Israeli war casualties, tragic as each death is for family and friends, does not weigh on the nation as it would if it had fertility rates at Chinese or even Iranian levels.

For the rest of the West, meanwhile, these new post-heroic limits raise a question that nobody is willing to confront in earnest: why keep armies that will never be asked to fight?

The fact that so many European units have served in Afghanistan and Iraq does not prove anything at all, because in most cases their governments ensured that they would not be employed in raids or assaults, limited to cautious patrols close to their heavily fortified bases. (At least one Nato government sent intelligence agents to pay off the local Taliban to allow patrols to proceed unmolested.) As for the European troops serving in the United Nations peace-keeping force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) — established to ensure that Hezbollah stays well away from Israel’s border — they are considered war-experienced veterans when they return to their respective armies. But this overlooks the fact that UNIFIL has not even tried to keep Hezbollah from the border, for the simple reason that no UNIFIL battalion is willing to confront even the smallest Hezbollah infiltration.

The result is that, all across Europe, entire military institutions are colluding from top to bottom to sustain the illusion that they are capable of combat, which is now only true in rare cases, such as with Britain’s shrunken but still combative armed forces. But to some extent, the same can be said of their adversaries in Russia and China. In our current post-heroic age, everyone’s calculations of the true balance of power need to be revised.

Professor Edward Luttwak is a strategist and historian known for his works on grand strategy, geoeconomics, military history, and international relations.

ELuttwak

unherd.com · by Edward Luttwak · June 18, 2024

12. US "Hellscape" Strategy - Sells Taiwan Cutting Edge "Attack Drone" Technology

Excerpt:

Taiwan's integration of cutting-edge UAV technology underscores its commitment to maintaining a technological edge over potential adversaries. This acquisition not only strengthens Taiwan's defense capabilities but also signals a broader trend towards the adoption of advanced unmanned systems in modern warfare. The use of AI-driven loitering munitions and versatile UAVs represents a shift towards more autonomous and precise combat operations.

US "Hellscape" Strategy - Sells Taiwan Cutting Edge "Attack Drone" Technology

The deal includes up to 720 Switchblade 300 loitering munitions and up to 291 ALTIUS 600M-V unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), valued at approximately $300 million

• OLAWALE ABAIRE, WARRIOR CONTRIBUTOR16 HOURS AGO

https://warriormaven.com/china/us-hellscape-strategy-sells-taiwan-cutting-edge-attack-drone-technology

By Olawale Abaire, Warrior Editorial Fellow

In a significant development, the U.S. State Department has approved the sale of advanced suicide drones to Taiwan, with deliveries expected between 2024 and 2025. The deal includes up to 720 Switchblade 300 loitering munitions and up to 291 ALTIUS 600M-V unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), valued at approximately $300 million. This package marks the 15th arms sale to Taiwan under the Biden administration, reflecting a consistent effort to enhance Taiwan's military readiness.

According to an article in the Washingtonpost by Josh Rogin, U.S. Navy Adm. Samuel Paparo, the new head of the Indo-Pacific Command, recently outlined a new strategy termed "Hellscape." This strategy involves deploying thousands of unmanned submarines, surface ships, and aerial drones to flood the Taiwan Strait in the event of a Chinese invasion. The goal is to create a hostile environment that delays Chinese advances and provides time for a coordinated defense by Taiwanese, U.S., and allied forces.

Adm. Paparo's vision is to turn the Taiwan Strait into an "unmanned hellscape" using classified capabilities, thereby making any Chinese military operation exceedingly difficult and costly. This approach aligns with the broader U.S. strategy of using technological superiority to offset numerical and geographical disadvantages.

Switchblade 300 Loitering Munitions

The Switchblade 300, developed by AeroVironment, is a lightweight, portable loitering munition designed for precise strikes. Weighing about 2.5 kg, it can be deployed from a variety of platforms, including ground troops and vehicles. Its key features include:

• Range and Endurance: The Switchblade 300 has a range of 10 km and can loiter for up to 15 minutes.
• Precision Strike Capability: Equipped with high-resolution optics and GPS, it can target enemy positions with pinpoint accuracy, minimizing collateral damage.
• Portability: Its compact size allows for easy transport and rapid deployment by infantry units, enhancing operational flexibility.

ALTIUS 600M-V UAVs

The ALTIUS 600M-V, manufactured by Anduril Industries, is a versatile UAV designed for both reconnaissance and strike missions. Key specifications include:

• Range and Endurance: With a range of over 440 km and an endurance of more than 4 hours, it provides extensive coverage and sustained surveillance capabilities.
• Payload Flexibility: Capable of carrying various payloads, including sensors and munitions, it can adapt to a wide range of mission requirements.
• Stealth and Survivability: Its low acoustic signature and radar cross-section enhance its survivability in contested environments.

Taiwan's acquisition of these advanced drones is a strategic move to bolster its multi-layered defense system. The Switchblade 300 and ALTIUS 600M-V complement Taiwan's existing arsenal of precision-guided missiles, providing a layered approach to deterrence and defense. This multi-layered system integrates ground-based air defenses, long-range missiles, and now, loitering munitions and UAVs, creating a robust network capable of responding to various threats.

Mr. Young Bang, Principal Deputy, Asst. Secretary of the Army - Acquisition, Logistics & Technology talks to Warrior about new Army "Defend AI" plan

Furthermore, China has repeatedly criticized U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, accusing Washington of undermining the "One China" principle and escalating tensions in the region. Despite these criticisms, the U.S. continues to enhance Taiwan's defensive capabilities. New Taiwanese defense chief Wellington Koo announced that the island would soon receive all 1,700 TOW 2B anti-tank missiles and 100 launchers procured from the U.S. These additional weapons systems further strengthen Taiwan's ability to deter and respond to any potential aggression.

The ALTIUS 600M-V's combination of range, endurance, and payload flexibility positions it favorably against competitors such as the General Atomics MQ-1C Gray Eagle or the Bayraktar TB2. While the Gray Eagle offers greater endurance, the ALTIUS 600M-V's modular design allows for a broader range of mission profiles. The Bayraktar TB2, though effective, does not match the ALTIUS 600M-V's range and stealth capabilities, making the latter a more versatile choice for Taiwan's defense strategy.

Taiwan's integration of cutting-edge UAV technology underscores its commitment to maintaining a technological edge over potential adversaries. This acquisition not only strengthens Taiwan's defense capabilities but also signals a broader trend towards the adoption of advanced unmanned systems in modern warfare. The use of AI-driven loitering munitions and versatile UAVs represents a shift towards more autonomous and precise combat operations.

BY OLAWALE ABAIRE, WARRIOR CONTRIBUTOR

OLAWALE ABAIRE is a Warrior researcher, writer and analyst who has written over 75 nonfiction books

13. Xi Jinping's Aggressive Talk About Taiwan Is Hiding a Reluctance to Act

Xi Jinping's Aggressive Talk About Taiwan Is Hiding a Reluctance to Act

Newsweek · by Gordon G. Chang · June 21, 2024

The Financial Times on Saturday reported that Xi Jinping in April of last year told European Union Commission President Ursula von der Leyen that the U.S. was, in the words of the paper, "trying to goad Beijing into attacking Taiwan." The Chinese leader described the U.S. tactic as a "trick," but the FT reported that he said he "would not take the bait."

As Brussels-based Theresa Fallon of the Centre for Russia Europe Asia Studies told me in response to the FT report, Xi is "sounding increasingly unhinged."

We do not know if the Chinese leader believed what he said or why he said it. We can say, however, that none of the explanations are good.

There are many possible reasons for the Chinese ruler's startling comment. For one thing, he may be simply out of touch. "If Xi genuinely believes that the U.S. actively seeks conflict with China over Taiwan, then concerns that Xi has created an information vacuum or is otherwise getting poor council from subordinates are, worryingly, true," said Jude Blanchette of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies to the FT. "Whatever the explanation for Xi's comments, it's clear that the decision-making environment—and the information feeding into it—is being warped, either by Xi's lieutenants, or by his own autocratic behavior."

All dictators suffer from poor information flows, and absolute dictators even more so. Xi may not yet wield absolute power, but he nonetheless has demanded absolute obedience and therefore has created an environment where discordant views have been banned and information severely restricted.

Of course, Xi may have been devious rather than oblivious, trying to hold America responsible for an invasion that he had been planning to launch. This is perhaps something he learned from Vladimir Putin, who blamed Ukraine for his attack on that country.

Chinese President Xi Jinping reviews the honour guard during the welcome ceremony for Bahrain's King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa at the Great Hall of the People on May 31, 2024 in Beijing, China. Chinese President Xi Jinping reviews the honour guard during the welcome ceremony for Bahrain's King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa at the Great Hall of the People on May 31, 2024 in Beijing, China. Tingshu Wang - Pool/Getty Images

Xi is certainly an aggressor. He has, after all, been waging proxy wars on three continents—Europe in Ukraine, Africa in its northern areas, and Asia in the Middle East. He has also been sending troops deep into Indian-controlled territory in the Himalayas, and he is pressuring both Taiwan and the Philippines with belligerent tactics that could trigger war.

There is, however, another explanation, which puts Xi in a different light. Charles Burton of the Prague-based Sinopsis think tank compares the Chinese supremo to Ah-Q, the famous Chinese archetype from the short story by China's 20th century literary giant, Lu Xun. "Lu Xun describes someone who chooses not to face up to reality and deceives himself into believing he is successful, or has unjustified beliefs of superiority over others," Burton, a former Canadian diplomat in Beijing, tells me.

"Xi Jinping's trademark was his utter confidence that under his signature Stalinist program, China would rapidly rise to surpass the United States as the dominant global superpower," Burton points out. "Unfortunately for him, before dethroning America, he ran out of everything but hubris. He can pick on weak targets, but China's failing economy and corrupt military have shattered Mr. Xi's China dream of replacing the United States of America."

Xi's successive military purges last year, especially in the Rocket Force, which is crucial to the annexation of Taiwan, make clear that the People's Liberation Army is in disarray. The Chinese military, therefore, is not ready to cross the Taiwan Strait in force.

"Xi now realizes that he is being profoundly let down by the military officers that he naively envisioned would lead him to historic glory," notes Burton. "Xi understands that bringing Taiwan into the embrace of the Motherland on his watch is not the given that he built his legitimating prestige on. So he re-defines his backing off from a Taiwan war as strength, not weakness, by claiming that he is triumphantly avoiding a U.S. trap to weaken China through goading him into taking the bait of forcing a military confrontation that China would inevitably lose."

In this regard, Xi reportedly told von der Leyen that war, in the words of the FT, would "destroy many of China's achievements and undermine his goal of achieving a 'great rejuvenation' by 2049." That, of course, is true, but the tone of that reported comment is not consistent with his public words and actions.

Xi has based his legitimacy on annexing Taiwan. "Looking further ahead, the issue of political disagreements that exist between the two sides must reach a final resolution, step by step, and these issues cannot be passed on from generation to generation," he declared in October 2013, within the first year as ruler of China.

Xi Jinping has staked his rule on taking the island, creating a marker that opponents can now use against him.

Perhaps that is why Xi can't stop talking about war in public addresses. "Dare to Fight," repeated often, could be his favorite motto.

Moreover, he is fast preparing for war. He is engaged in the fastest military buildup since the Second World War, purging officers opposed to war, trying to sanction-proof his regime, stockpiling grain and other commodities, surveying the U.S. for nuclear weapons strikes, and mobilizing civilians for war.

And Xi's ambitions are large. He maintains Taiwan, Japan's Senkaku islets in the East China Sea, large parts of India, and most of the South China Sea are China's. His regime is laying the basis to claim Okinawa and the rest of the Ryukyu chain from Japan and Vladivostok and surrounding areas from Russia.

Throughout this century, Xi has been propagating the imperial-era notion that China has the right to rule the entire planet, and since 2017 his officials have been saying that the moon and Mars should be considered parts of the People's Republic.

There has never been a more ambitious aggressor in history—at least in public.

We don't know what Xi Jinping in fact intends. He could, as Fallon thinks, be merely trying to drive a wedge between Europe and America. He could, as Burton, suggests, be unwilling to take on a determined foe. And maybe he is being deceptive, about to launch an all-out invasion of Taiwan.

Is Xi Jinping with his words merely acting? Or is he about to act? We now have to assume the worst. We know in any event that he is obsessed with Taiwan.

Gordon G. Chang is the author of The Coming Collapse of China and China Is Going to War. Follow him on X @GordonGChang.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.

Newsweek · by Gordon G. Chang · June 21, 2024

14. How rising anti-American axis sees US weakness, and is ready to pounce

north Korea is a "new recruit" to the "Axis of Ill WIll?"

How rising anti-American axis sees US weakness, and is ready to pounce

New York Post · by Social Links for Niall Ferguson View Author Archive Get author RSS feed · June 22, 2024

For anyone slow on the uptake, Presidents Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un provided some helpful show-and-tell in Pyongyang on Wednesday.

A year ago, I warned that a new “Axis of Ill Will” was forming.

Now you get my drift.

Kim gave Putin a vintage 1930s reception, complete with vast flags, red carpets and temporarily well-fed children.

The two signed a pact committing themselves to mutual assistance in the event of “aggression” against either country.

Putin hinted at the “development of military-technical cooperation” — the least he can do in return for the dozens of ballistic missiles and 11,000 shipping containers of munitions that (according to US intelligence) Kim has sent him to carry on Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.

With a cynicism worthy of Joseph Stalin, Putin thanked Kim for his “consistent and unwavering support” against “the hegemonic and imperialist policy” of the United States.

The new recruit

Kim is a relatively new recruit to an Axis that originated in Beijing three weeks before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, when Putin signed a “no limits” security pact with Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader.

In March 2023, the two dictators met again.

“Right now, there are changes, the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years,” Xi told Putin at the Kremlin.

“And we are the ones driving these changes together.”

The fourth member of the Axis of Ill Will is the Islamic Republic of Iran, led by Ali Khameini (inset, far right).

After Hamas’s Oct. 7 pogrom in Israel, China promptly took the Palestinian side at the United Nations as well as in social media, where TikTok has been a key channel for anti-Israel propaganda.

The Chinese are, of course, the number-one buyers of Iran’s oil exports.

This picture taken on June 19, 2024 and released on June 20, 2024, from North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) via KNS shows North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un presenting a gift to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. KCNA VIA KNS/AFP via Getty Images

The Russians, meanwhile, have been buying drones from the Iranians and massive quantities of dual-use hardware from China.

The British government believes China is now sending Russia weapons, too.

The “Axis of Evil” that George W. Bush talked about after 9/11 was a speechwriter’s flight of fancy.

The Axis of Ill Will is real — and becomes better organized with every passing month.

The original Axis was dreamt up by Benito Mussolini in 1936, to mark the signing of a protocol pledging lasting friendship between Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.

Of course, now as then, an Axis is an alliance between villains, based on mistrust as much as common interest.

see also

Russia agrees to come to North Korea’s immediate defense if ever attacked after Putin meets Kim Jong Un

When Germany went to war with Poland, France and Britain in September 1939, Mussolini waited to see who had the upper hand before joining forces with Hitler.

Likewise, China and Russia are setting aside centuries of mutual antagonism to maintain today’s Axis.

There is no love lost between Moscow and Beijing — witness the hard bargain the Chinese are driving over a new gas pipeline from Russia to China.

But what all four Axis members can agree on — despite their many differences — is that the era of American primacy needs to be terminated.

What’s more, they are doing a good job of persuading many developing countries in the so-called “Global South” to take their side, blaming the war in Ukraine on NATO expansion and now claiming — as Xi told European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last year — that Washington is trying to goad Beijing into attacking Taiwan.

Emboldened by Biden

The Axis has of course been emboldened by Joe Biden’s preference for “de-escalation” over deterrence.

Having failed to deter the Taliban in Afghanistan (2021), the Russians in Eastern Europe (2022) and the Iranians and their proxies in the Middle East (2023), the Biden administration now looks alarmingly capable of repeating the process in the Far East this year.

Republican national security hawks such as Matt Pottinger and Mike Gallagher complain that Biden’s policy is no better than the détente of the 1970s, which (they argue) failed to deter the Soviet Union from aggression all over what was then called the Third World.

see also

Putin gifts car buff Kim Jong Un a fancy limousine, dagger in visit to North Korea

Donald Trump’s national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, took a similarly critical line last week.

And in a damning report just published, Republican Sen. Roger Wicker has warned that “America’s military has a lack of modern equipment, a paucity of training and maintenance funding, and a massive infrastructure backlog. . . . It is stretched too thin and outfitted too poorly to meet all the missions assigned to it at a reasonable level of risk. Our adversaries recognize this, and it makes them more adventurous and aggressive.”

The new Republican line — which is markedly different from the Russophile isolationism of Tucker Carlson — is that it is time for America to get tough with the Axis.

“The United States shouldn’t manage the competition with China; it should win it,” Pottinger and Gallagher opined in a recent article for Foreign Affairs.

“A cold war is already being waged against the United States by China’s leaders. . . . Victory requires openly admitting that a totalitarian regime that commits genocide, fuels conflict, and threatens war will never be a reliable partner.”

Risky aggression

In response, foreign policy liberals argue that it would be risky for the United States to be more combative, especially towards China.

The Yale historian Arne Westad warns that “China [is] making military plans to . . . invade Taiwan, producing a war between China and the United States just as the Schlieffen Plan helped produce a war between Germany and Britain” in 1914.

Unless the US and China dial back their rhetoric, “Taiwan . . . could be the Balkans of the 2020s. Both China and the United States seem to be sleepwalking toward . . . confrontation.”

What Biden’s critics have in common is a conviction that the US needs to up its military game.

Pottinger and Gallagher want the defense budget increased from 3% of GDP to “4 or even 5%.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping during a meeting in Beijing, China May 16, 2024. via REUTERS

O’Brien, too, wants Ronald Reagan to be Trump’s model if he is re-elected on Nov. 5.

“Congress and the executive branch,” O’Brien writes, “should recommit to the goal of having a 355-ship navy by 2032, which Trump set in 2017.”

The government should also build 100 (or more) B-21 stealth bombers, resume production of uranium-235 and plutonium-239 to upgrade the US nuclear arsenal, and invest in hypersonic missiles.

Wicker’s report is an even longer shopping list of new weapons the Pentagon needs to buy.

There’s only one problem.

While it is quite easy for Republican hawks to call for increased spending on weapons and defense research, it is much harder to say where the money will come from.

According to the latest report of the Congressional Budget Office, the US budget deficit will be around $1.9 trillion this year — a whopping 6.9% of GDP, compared with the 5.6% it forecast in February.

That’s an astounding number at a time of near-full employment, reflecting the fact that the Biden administration just keeps overspending on everything from foreign aid to student-loan forgiveness.

Defense $$ ‘unlikely’

As O’Brien himself admits, “large increases to defense expenditures are unlikely” even if Trump wins in November.

Already this year, interest payments on the federal debt will exceed the defense budget.

see also

NATO leader blasts China for helping Russia while courting West: ‘You can’t have it both ways’

This is where I get very uneasy.

According to the only law of history I have ever discovered, any great power that spends more on debt service than on its armed services doesn’t stay great for long.

Now, you can believe — as Jake Sullivan evidently does — that economic measures will suffice to rein in the Axis of Ill Will, and that Americans themselves will be able to avoid fighting wars.

Protectionist tariffs and export controls have their uses, no doubt.

But — as with sanctions, which have conspicuously failed to cripple Russia’s war economy — those should not be exaggerated.

China suffers setbacks when the US restricts its access to the most sophisticated semiconductors, but it is not clear that the setbacks are more than temporary.

As the former Google chair Eric Schmidt has said: “For now, the United States remains in the lead [in artificial intelligence]. But China is catching up in many areas and has already surged ahead in others.”

According to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s Critical Technology Tracker, “China’s global lead extends to 37 out of 44 technologies that ASPI is now tracking, covering a range of crucial technology fields spanning defense, space, robotics, energy, the environment, biotechnology, artificial intelligence, advanced materials, and key quantum technology areas.”

In the past five years, to give just one example, China generated just under half of the world’s high-impact research papers on advanced aircraft engines, including hypersonics.

This should make all sentient Americans pay attention.

For, if China is not merely catching up but has actually overtaken the United States in certain key fields of defense technology, nothing could be more dangerous than a hot war with China any time soon.

It is a harsh reality, exposed in multiple war games, that in such a war the United States would run out of key weapons, such as long-range anti-ship missiles, in about a week.

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Not many wars are over in a week.

Diplomats hope to avoid wars; soldiers and sailors have to prepare for them.

According to Adm. Samuel Paparo, the new head of US Indo-Pacific Command, if the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) made a move against Taiwan, he would “deploy thousands of unmanned submarines, unmanned surface ships and aerial drones to flood the area and give Taiwanese, U.S. and partner forces time to mount a full response.”

“I want to turn the Taiwan Strait into an unmanned hellscape using a number of classified capabilities,” Paparo told The Washington Post earlier this month.

“So that I can make their lives utterly miserable for a month, which buys me the time for the rest of everything.”

I’ll leave to your imagination where the world economy would be by the end of that month, given that its most valuable companies, led by Nvidia, all depend on the ability of Taiwan’s TSCM to manufacture their semiconductors.

War over Taiwan bursts the AI bubble before a shot has even been fired.

Expect the unexpected

But you never know quite what to expect from an Axis.

Maybe China will blockade rather than invade Taiwan.

Or maybe the flashpoint will be the Philippines.

On Monday, Chinese coastguards and Filipino sailors clashed in the vicinity of the Second Thomas Shoal, a reef in the South China Sea that China claims but the Philippines garrisons.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., says he would consider any Chinese action that killed a Filipino as being “very close to . . . an act of war.”

The US has a mutual defense treaty with the Philippines that would oblige it to step up if hostilities broke out.

The South Thomas Shoal is such an oddity — a dagger-shaped sandbank guarded by a few Filipino marines on board a rusting wreck — that it’s hard to believe it could be a cause of World War III.

To an extent too few Americans realize, we are in very dangerous territory between now and 2027, the year the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, William Burns, believes Xi Jinping has ordered the PLA to be ready for war.

The Axis has started two fires already, one in Ukraine and one in the Middle East.

A third fire in East Asia would likely be much bigger.

Indeed, it would confront the United States with a stark choice — between a global conflagration or a humiliating acknowledgement of Chinese primacy in the Indo-Pacific . . . and Axis primacy in the world.

Niall Ferguson is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford, and a columnist for The Free Press.

New York Post · by Social Links for Niall Ferguson View Author Archive Get author RSS feed · June 22, 2024

15. Opinion | Why Netanyahu Doesn’t Take Biden Seriously

Please no more red lines (unless we really mean to enforce them with all means necessary). That said, has our failure to enforce red lines done quantifiable damage to US foreign policy?

Excertps:

If Biden shows that his red lines are meaningless in Gaza, why should Russia, China or Iran find him credible? If he is too timid to take on an ally dependent on American arms, what reason is there to think he would confront a rival?

The paradox is that Biden has generally had a successful foreign policy, especially in knitting together an alliance in Asia to reduce the risk of war with China. Yet he now finds himself mired in a mess in the Middle East that could well worsen. The war in Gaza may drag on at a lower level for the rest of this year, and Israel is talking of attacking Hezbollah in Lebanon in the coming weeks, triggering a separate war that could be even more catastrophic. Biden is trying to prevent a Lebanon war, but the way he projects weakness to Netanyahu limits his influence.

Look, I recognize that it’s easy to write these critical columns from the sidelines and that it’s much harder to actually navigate real-world policy. The realm of diplomacy always has more problems than solutions, and American politics and Netanyahu’s slipperiness make it all the more complicated. Yet after eight months of unremitting horror in the Middle East, Biden should recognize that his Gaza policy is a moral, practical and political failure that has not helped anyone but Netanyahu.

Opinion | Why Netanyahu Doesn’t Take Biden Seriously

The New York Times · by Nicholas Kristof · June 22, 2024

Nicholas Kristof

Why Netanyahu Doesn’t Take Biden Seriously

June 22, 2024, 7:00 a.m. ET

An Israeli airstrike on Rafah, Gaza, in May.Credit...Abdel Kareem Hana/Associated Press

By

Opinion columnist, reporting from Tel Aviv.

A few months ago, President Biden seemed so fed up as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel ignored his calls for restraint in Gaza that he finally sounded tough.

In March, Biden was asked if his calls for Israel not to invade the southern Gaza city of Rafah marked a “red line,” meaning that an invasion would lead to serious consequences.

“It is a red line,” Biden said, “but I’m never gonna leave Israel.”

What that added up to wasn’t clear, perhaps not even to Biden. But as someone who generally admires Biden’s foreign policy, I wanted to think that the president meant that an Israeli invasion of Rafah would lead to a suspension of transfers of offensive weapons, but no interruption of defensive weapons such as protections against incoming missiles.

Then in April, Biden called Netanyahu and seemed again to draw a line that was at least pink. He urged an immediate cease-fire and, according to the White House announcement, “made clear the need for Israel to announce and implement a series of specific, concrete, and measurable steps to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering, and the safety of aid workers.”

The statement continued, “U.S. policy with respect to Gaza will be determined by our assessment of Israel’s immediate action on these steps.”

In May, Biden once more seemed to establish a red line. “If they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons” used against cities, he told CNN.

All this seemed to signal Biden’s belated willingness to stand up to Netanyahu and avert a humanitarian catastrophe in Rafah. After being widely urged to do more for Gazans — even by his wife — Biden seemed to condition assistance so as to push Israel to flood the territory with aid, avoid an invasion of Rafah, stop killing aid workers and move toward a cease-fire.

In the period since that stern April phone call, Biden has again allowed Netanyahu to walk all over him.

Israel did invade Rafah. The supply of food reaching people in southern Gaza dropped. At least an additional 15 aid workers have been killed in Gaza. And Israel has continued reckless bombings like the one that ignited a tent camp in Rafah, killing dozens.

Now that Biden’s red and pink lines have been ignored, what is the president planning next? The administration is moving ahead with an $18 billion sale of F-15 fighter jets to Israel; I’ve no objection to the sale in principle, but the timing sends an awful signal that there are no consequences for ignoring Biden.

“What Biden has shown Netanyahu over and over is that he will wag his finger but he won’t enforce the finger-wagging,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, a former administration official who is the president of Refugees International.

This war began when Israel suffered a horrendous terrorist attack, and it had every right to strike Hamas — but not to level entire neighborhoods or to starve civilians. Biden has enabled Netanyahu and protected him at the United Nations even as a U.N. commission found Israel responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Biden seems to have believed initially that he could best influence and restrain Netanyahu by holding him close. And in fairness, this approach worked to some degree: Israel did not invade Lebanon last fall, as it was considering, and its invasion of Rafah seemed more measured than its invasion of other Gaza cities. It has also allowed more food into northern Gaza, aid workers say.

But the bottom line is that Biden’s Gaza policy has helped Netanyahu stay in power without, in my view, advancing Israel’s long-term security interests. The war has made a mockery of Biden’s arguments that the United States backs the “rules-based international order” and has thus undermined our position in Ukraine.

Meanwhile, in a remarkable show of ingratitude to a president who has been his lifeline, Netanyahu used an English-language video to criticize the Biden administration for being insufficiently supportive and is preparing to sidestep the White House and speak to Congress.

We all know that diplomacy involves sticks as well as carrots. If Netanyahu doesn’t take Biden seriously, that’s because Biden mostly speaks softly and carries a big carrot.

After the latest Netanyahu attack on the Biden administration a few days ago, the White House responded that it found the prime minister’s remarks “deeply disappointing.” That sure taught Netanyahu a lesson.

“How much more proof does Biden need that Netanyahu is not a U.S. ally?” asked Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper. It advised Biden that Netanyahu “has taken you for a ride.”

If Biden shows that his red lines are meaningless in Gaza, why should Russia, China or Iran find him credible? If he is too timid to take on an ally dependent on American arms, what reason is there to think he would confront a rival?

The paradox is that Biden has generally had a successful foreign policy, especially in knitting together an alliance in Asia to reduce the risk of war with China. Yet he now finds himself mired in a mess in the Middle East that could well worsen. The war in Gaza may drag on at a lower level for the rest of this year, and Israel is talking of attacking Hezbollah in Lebanon in the coming weeks, triggering a separate war that could be even more catastrophic. Biden is trying to prevent a Lebanon war, but the way he projects weakness to Netanyahu limits his influence.

Look, I recognize that it’s easy to write these critical columns from the sidelines and that it’s much harder to actually navigate real-world policy. The realm of diplomacy always has more problems than solutions, and American politics and Netanyahu’s slipperiness make it all the more complicated. Yet after eight months of unremitting horror in the Middle East, Biden should recognize that his Gaza policy is a moral, practical and political failure that has not helped anyone but Netanyahu.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp, X and Threads.

Nicholas Kristof became a columnist for The Times Opinion desk in 2001 and has won two Pulitzer Prizes. His new memoir is “Chasing Hope: A Reporter's Life.” @NickKristof

1

The New York Times · by Nicholas Kristof · June 22, 2024

16. Fallujah's Crucible: Strategic and Operational Insights in Urban Warfare

From Strategy Central. https://www.strategycentral.io/stratbot

·       

• 3 hours ago
•  
• 12 min read

Fallujah's Crucible: Strategic and Operational Insights in Urban Warfare

https://www.strategycentral.io/post/fallujah-s-crucible-strategic-and-operational-insights-in-urban-warfare?postId=59f2774b-1931-4509-9c4c-5bb7f205a38e&utm

INTRODUCTION

The first and second battles of Fallujah, Iraq, in 2004, offer important insights into the complexities of urban warfare and the importance of strategic patience, planning, and adaptability. The First Battle of Fallujah, also known as Operation Vigilant Resolve, was a U.S. military operation prompted by the brutal murder of four American contractors. The assault, which began on April 4, 2004, faced intense resistance from insurgents entrenched within the city. Under the command of Major General James Mattis, the Marines encountered severe urban combat and significant media scrutiny, which influenced public perception and political decisions. Despite initial advances, the operation was halted due to mounting political pressure and negative media coverage, leading to a negotiated settlement and the withdrawal of U.S. forces. This premature end to the battle underscored the need for a comprehensive, well-prepared operational approach and highlighted the critical role of media and public opinion in modern warfare.[1]

The aftermath of the first battle and the establishment of the ineffective Fallujah Brigade allowed insurgents to strengthen their hold on the city, necessitating a renewed military effort. The Second Battle of Fallujah, from November 7 to December 23, 2004, demonstrated the successful application of lessons learned from the initial conflict. This operation, known as Operation Phantom Fury or Operation al-Fajr, involved extensive intelligence preparation, careful planning, and a coordinated assault by a significantly larger and better-supported coalition force. The coalition employed thorough shaping and deception operations to mislead the insurgents and evacuated civilians to minimize casualties. The integrated information campaign successfully countered insurgent propaganda and garnered international support. These operational and tactical adjustments enabled coalition forces to secure the city more effectively, resulting in a decisive strategic victory.[2]

The experiences in Fallujah illustrate the importance of strategic patience, comprehensive intelligence gathering, and the integration of political and military planning. They also highlight the necessity of robust information operations and protecting and winning over civilian populations in urban conflict zones. These lessons are vital for understanding past engagements and provide crucial guidance for current and future military operations in similar environments.

THE FIRST BATTLE

Lieutenant General Conway and the 1st Marine Division’s commander, Major General James Mattis, recognized the event as a ploy by insurgent forces to provoke an aggressive coalition retaliation and that a large-scale operation would send the wrong message, unnecessarily endanger civilians, and ultimately fail to achieve the primary objective of locating the individuals responsible for the murders. Instead of an immediate massive response, Mattis wanted to allow time for a methodical intelligence preparation of the battlefield, followed by a deliberate plan to take the city. However, senior political leaders in Washington, including the president and US media organizations, had an immediate, public, and heavy response.

Lieutenant General Conway and Major General Mattis objected strenuously as they believed that any operational counterattack seemingly based on revenge would play directly into the insurgency’s strategic goals. Moreover, there had been little time for the Marines to do the methodical intelligence preparation of the city or to conduct other steps of the military planning process. These arguments were overridden, and the Marines were directed to execute the mission within seventy-two hours. On April 2, checkpoints were emplaced around the city to ensure no military-age males could not leave the city, with only those escorting families allowed out. On April 3, the 1st Marine Division was directed to conduct an offensive operation against Fallujah. A frustrated Major General Mattis requested but was denied US Army units from the theater reserve, an additional Marine regiment, and a tank unit, forcing him later to strip forces from other areas of al-Anbar province to conduct the operation. In retrospect, the denial of these additional forces was more than likely because the Americans as a whole had to contain the counterinsurgency due to fighting that appeared to be spinning out of control and spreading to nearby Ramadi, as well as Mosul, Baghdad, and Najaf in early April.

Before the First Battle of Fallujah in April 2004, the American presence in the city had been sporadic, with various US Army units, including the 82nd Airborne Division, rotating through since the 2003 invasion. These units attempted a "carrot and stick" approach, offering reconstruction contracts and civic actions while conducting aggressive raids against insurgents. Despite these efforts, the lack of sufficient American forces and the unwillingness of local Iraqi police to engage with insurgents led to increasing violence and insurgent control over Fallujah.

On March 24, 2004, the 1st Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment, handed over responsibility for Fallujah to the 1st Marine Division. Lieutenant General James Conway and Major General James Mattis sought a more nuanced approach, hoping to win over the civilian population and discreetly eliminate insurgent leaders. However, the situation deteriorated rapidly. Within weeks, insurgent attacks escalated, culminating in the brutal killing and public display of four American contractors on March 31, which provoked outrage and calls for immediate retaliation.

Despite Conway and Mattis advocating for a measured response, higher authorities demanded a swift, forceful reaction. On April 3, the Marines launched Operation Vigilant Resolve with the objectives of capturing the insurgents responsible for the contractors' deaths, clearing out foreign fighters, seizing heavy weapons, and reopening Highway 10. The Marines faced fierce resistance as they moved into the city, encountering well-coordinated insurgent attacks and heavy urban combat.

The insurgents effectively used the media to portray the Americans as indiscriminately destructive, significantly affecting public perception. As a result, political pressure mounted, leading to a suspension of offensive operations on April 9. Although Marines were briefly ordered to resume attacks on April 11, they were soon halted again. During a tense two-week ceasefire, negotiations led to the creation of a "Fallujah Brigade" composed of former Iraqi military personnel tasked with securing the city.

On May 1, the Marines withdrew, ending the First Battle of Fallujah. The battle resulted in 39 American and approximately 200 insurgent deaths, with civilian casualties estimated between 220 and 600. Despite the Marines' efforts, the battle highlighted the complexities of urban warfare and the challenges of balancing military objectives with political and public pressures.

The First Battle of Fallujah taught the Marine Corps several critical lessons that shaped their approach in the subsequent Second Battle of Fallujah. Initially, the rushed and haphazard plan of the first battle, driven by political pressures, led to high civilian casualties and a premature withdrawal, demonstrating the necessity of integrating senior political and military leaders into the planning process. This integration ensured a comprehensive understanding of the time and resources needed for effective urban warfare. The battle highlighted the importance of thorough intelligence preparation of the environment, as the lack of sufficient intelligence in the first battle resulted in numerous operational challenges.

Additionally, the Marines learned that urban operations require effective isolation of the battlefield to prevent insurgent reinforcements and resupply, which was inadequately addressed in the first engagement. The need for a robust sustainment and logistics plan became evident, as urban combat demands significantly more resources than other environments. The importance of combined arms maneuver and interoperability among units was also underscored, as the fragmented approach in the first battle hindered operational effectiveness. These lessons collectively informed the more deliberate, well-prepared, and coordinated strategy that led to the successful execution of the Second Battle of Fallujah.[3]

THE SECOND BATTLE

The Second Battle of Fallujah occurred from November 7 to December 23, 2004, during Operation Iraqi Freedom. After the premature end of the First Battle of Fallujah in May 2004, the city fell under the control of the Fallujah Brigade, a newly formed Iraqi security unit. The brigade's lack of motivation to confront the insurgency led to the city spiraling out of control. The insurgency grew stronger, with some personnel deserting or joining the insurgents. The city became a safe haven for insurgents, and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was believed to have established his headquarters in Fallujah.

Realizing that Fallujah could not remain a terrorist safe haven, the Iraqi Interim Government and the coalition decided to take action, especially with the upcoming national election in 2005 in mind. Despite debates about the merits of an attack and concerns about collateral damage, the coalition committed to providing humanitarian relief and reconstruction support to address these concerns. The First Battle of Fallujah taught the importance of shaping the political environment to sustain operations.

Once Iraqi and coalition leaders had established the political objectives and the parameters, American forces were finally allowed to begin planning. This second assault was initially named Operation Phantom Fury. Still, it was renamed Operation al-Fajr (“Dawn,” in Arabic) by the Iraqi prime minister before the attack to show that it was an Iraqi-approved operation. The primary objectives of Operation al-Fajr were similar to April’s First Battle of Fallujah: to defeat all opposition forces and occupy the entire city, clear out insurgent caches and the resources that were sustaining them, and eliminate the threat posed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

By November, insurgent fighters in the city had grown to about three thousand. While coalition forces planned their attack, insurgents fortified their defenses, planting hundreds of IEDs made from propane bottles, gasoline drums, and ordnance. They created mouseholes in walls, barricaded doors, and rooftops. They dug trenches and tunnels for escape and maneuvering between caches of weapons, body armor, and ammunition hidden in schools and mosques. Expecting the coalition attack from the south or southeast, they concentrated their defenses on the city's southern and eastern edges.

Coalition forces, learning from the First Battle of Fallujah, waited until November to attack, ensuring time for intelligence gathering, planning, and preparation. Operation al-Fajr involved thorough intelligence preparation, extensive training, a shaping and deception campaign, a logistics buildup, and a careful fire support plan. Over several months, coalition forces identified insurgent positions, disseminated intelligence, and trained together to integrate their procedures. Shaping operations aimed to evacuate civilians and deceive insurgents about the attack direction. Deception tactics included leaflets, a fake military base, and probing attacks.

The coalition worked to maintain information dominance, embedding journalists and running a media campaign to expose insurgent violence and encourage civilian evacuation. This campaign reduced civilian casualties and minimized political pressure to end the battle prematurely. A fifteen-day supply of rations, water, fuel, ammunition, and other materials was staged at the city's edge for quick resupply and evacuation. Maintenance points were established nearby to keep vehicles battle-ready.

On the evening of November 7, the Marines began their assault. Task Force Wolfpack, consisting of units from the Marines, Army, and Iraqi forces, swiftly entered Fallujah from the west, securing the hospital and two bridges to disrupt insurgent command and control. On November 8, coalition forces conducted a twelve-hour air bombardment on the city's south and southeast to mislead insurgents about the attack's direction. Learning from past mistakes, coalition forces isolated the city with extensive coverage, preventing insurgents from entering or exiting.

Attacking from the north, coalition forces avoided the strongest insurgent defenses. They cut the city's power and breached the northern railroad berm, though some units faced delays. Task Force 2-7 and Task Force 2-2 used combined arms techniques to break through insurgent positions. Differences in unit capabilities, such as access to armor, created challenges and gaps in the advance. Despite these issues, by November 9, some units had reached Highway 10, halfway through the city.

Between November 10 and 14, American and Iraqi battalions continued to advance deliberately. There was varying resistance, with some areas being heavily contested. The Americans employed airstrikes, artillery, and combined arms teams to clear buildings. Insurgents typically fought from inside buildings, using small arms, RPGs, and IEDs. The fighting was intense and close-quarters, and American forces used overwhelming firepower to dislodge defenders. Urban operations consumed significantly more ammunition due to the defensive advantages of the terrain. Constant face-to-face coordination was necessary to adjust boundaries, adapt tactics, and conduct forward passages in the challenging urban terrain. Units shared resources, such as armored vehicles or weapons systems, as needed. Bing West noted that American Marines and soldiers systematically cleared thirty thousand buildings, engaging in hundreds of room-to-room firefights.

By November 15, officials announced most of the city was captured, with fighting limited to isolated pockets in the south. American and Iraqi units then methodically cleared IEDs and remained resistant until December 23. The 4th Civil Affairs Group supported reconstruction and humanitarian efforts, and civilians returned through security checkpoints.

The battle cost 38 American, 4 British, and 8 Iraqi military lives, with hundreds wounded. About 1,000 to 1,500 insurgents were killed, 1,500 captured, and 800 civilians killed. Over 60 percent of buildings were damaged, 20 percent destroyed, and many mosques heavily damaged. The battle caused unrest among Iraq’s Sunni population, but elections were held in January 2005. The Second Battle of Fallujah was the heaviest urban combat for the U.S. since the Battle of Hue in 1968.[4]

TACTICAL AND OPERATIONAL LESSONS LEARNED 

The First Battle of Fallujah provided important lessons for the American-led coalition, which they documented, analyzed, and used to plan the Second Battle of Fallujah, leading to its success. Key lessons learned include:

Tactical & Operational Lessons:

1.       Integrated Planning: Senior political and military leaders must be fully integrated into planning and clearly understand the time and resources needed. Rushing the first battle led to poor outcomes, whereas careful planning for the second battle allowed for domination in nearly every aspect, achieving significant control in just nine days.

2.       Information Operations: Effective information operations are vital, especially in urban environments. The coalition’s well-integrated media campaign exposed insurgent violence, leading to international and local support, and encouraged civilians to evacuate, minimizing casualties and political pressure.

3.       Thorough Intelligence Preparation: Time is essential for gathering and analyzing intelligence in complex urban environments. From May to November, extensive intelligence efforts allowed coalition forces to understand and overcome Fallujah’s challenges.

4.       Isolation of the City: Isolating the city to prevent enemy reinforcements is crucial. The coalition's sufficient forces and checkpoints in the second battle ensured no undetected movement, depleting insurgent resources and shortening the battle.

5.       Logistics and Sustainment: Urban operations are resource-intensive. A well-planned logistics strategy, including stockpiling supplies and protecting logistics personnel, allowed continuous offensive operations without resupply pauses.

6.       Combined Arms Maneuver: Effective urban operations require fully interoperable combined arms units. The integration and teamwork between Marines and Army units, along with shared resources, led to the successful securing of Fallujah in a relatively short time.

By addressing these operational and tactical lessons the coalition forces achieved a swift and decisive victory in the Second Battle of Fallujah. Given the historical difficulty in this type of operation, the result was impressive.[5]

THE STRATEGIC LESSON

The first and second battles of Fallujah provide clear lessons on the link between tactical victories and strategic outcomes. The First Battle of Fallujah in April 2004 ended in an embarrassing withdrawal for the Marines due to high civilian casualties and international pressure. This failure forced an operational re-evaluation pivotal to the outcome of subsequent Second Battle of Fallujah in November 2004. The Marines adopted a more effective counterinsurgency approach that emphasized separating civilians from insurgents through extensive evacuation efforts and providing humanitarian aid. This change in operational approach transformed a tactical victory into a more sustainable strategic success. This victory did not change the final outcome of OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM, but it did prove that the counterinsurgency approach could be highly successful if done right.

Fallujah's primary strategic lesson is the civilian population's critical importance in modern warfare. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin noted that the civilian population is often the center of gravity in such conflicts.[6] If military operations drive civilians into the arms of the enemy, any tactical victory can quickly become a strategic defeat. In Fallujah, the U.S. Marines recognized that to defeat the insurgents, they needed to win over the civilian population by minimizing civilian casualties and demonstrating a commitment to their safety and well-being. This involved not only military might but also psychological operations, humanitarian aid, and efforts to gain the local population’s trust.

The lessons from Fallujah are particularly relevant for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). In the context of the ongoing conflict with Hamas in Gaza, the IDF's strategy of heavy bombardment in densely populated areas can result in high civilian casualties, potentially driving more Palestinians to support Hamas. Israel can learn from the U.S. experience in Fallujah by adopting a strategy that prioritizes the protection of civilians as a core objective. This includes providing safe evacuation routes, minimizing the use of indiscriminate airpower, and ensuring that humanitarian aid reaches those displaced by the conflict.

A tactical victory in military terms, such as eliminating insurgents or capturing territory, can be undermined if it leads to greater support for the enemy among the civilian population. This was evident in Fallujah, where the initial heavy-handed approach led to greater resistance and international condemnation. In contrast, the revised strategy that focused on minimizing civilian harm and winning hearts and minds helped to isolate the insurgents and achieve a more durable victory.

The implications for the IDF are clear: to avoid turning tactical successes into strategic defeats, they must implement measures to protect civilians and win their support. This involves military tactics and a broader strategic vision that includes political and humanitarian dimensions. A strategy informed by a counterinsurgency when attempting to seize a city is a moral and strategic necessity. If done well, it can ensure long-term peace and stability.

We can conclude that both battles of Fallujah teach that in modern warfare, winning the peace is as important as winning the war. This is true for any government attempting to assert control over a large group of people in an urban environment. The current battle in Gaza is a great example of how the IDF would apply these lessons by adopting a strategy that protects civilians and builds trust, transforming tactical victories into sustainable strategic successes. The circumstances are different, and the follow-through would be critical in Gaza, but there is likely no other strategy to give peace a chance.

[1] Spencer, John, and Jayson Geroux. "Urban Warfare Case Study #6: First Battle of Fallujah." Modern War Institute, October 28, 2022. Accessed June 22, 2024. https://mwi.westpoint.edu/urban-warfare-case-study-6-first-battle-of-fallujah/.

[2] Spencer, John, Jayson Geroux, and Liam Collins. "Urban Warfare Case Study #7: Second Battle of Fallujah." Modern War Institute, July 25, 2023. Accessed June 22, 2024. https://mwi.westpoint.edu/urban-warfare-case-study-7-second-battle-of-fallujah/.

[3] Spencer, John, and Jayson Geroux. "Urban Warfare Case Study #6: First Battle of Fallujah." Modern War Institute, October 28, 2022. Accessed June 22, 2024. https://mwi.westpoint.edu/urban-warfare-case-study-6-first-battle-of-fallujah/.

[4] Spencer, John, Jayson Geroux, and Liam Collins. "Urban Warfare Case Study #7: Second Battle of Fallujah." Modern War Institute, July 25, 2023. Accessed June 22, 2024. https://mwi.westpoint.edu/urban-warfare-case-study-7-second-battle-of-fallujah/.

[5] Spencer, John, Jayson Geroux, and Liam Collins. "Urban Warfare Case Study #7: Second Battle of Fallujah." Modern War Institute, July 25, 2023. Accessed June 22, 2024.

[6] Moulton, Seth. "The Lesson Israel Must Learn From America’s Fight in Fallujah." TIME, December 4, 2023.  Accessed June 22, 2024.

17. Bye, Google Maps: This AI mapmaking app blew me away

When I read this I thought about the potential use for targeting.

What if you combined this capability with John Warden's Five RIngs theory (just as an example) and were able to assess the systems impact of various targets within the five rings? Could this be a helpful tool if adapted effectively for targeteers (and more importantly campaign planners who are seeking to achieve specific effects?)

Bye, Google Maps: This AI mapmaking app blew me away

Hey, Google: PamPam is how custom mapmaking should be done.

Fast Company · by JR Raphael · June 22, 2024

Look, I’ll be honest: By and large, I’ve found most of the AI hype of our current moment to be pretty underwhelming from a practical perspective.

Oh, another app now has a way to generate poorly written text or offer up answers of questionable accuracy, you say? Yaaaaaaay. Color me sarcastically ecstatic.

So when I tell you that the tool I’m about to share with you has truly blown my mind with the way it uses AI to offer something new, different, and actually useful for real living humans, believe me: I don’t say that lightly.

This tool is so cool, in fact, that I find myself questioning how Google didn’t come up with it first—’cause at its heart is the type of intelligent, next-level sharing system you’d expect to see right within an app like Google Maps.

Get ready to be impressed.

Psst: If you love these types of tools as much as I do, check out my free Cool Tools newsletter from The Intelligence. You’ll be the first to find all sorts of simple tech treasures!

A whole new way to think about maps

Now, first things first: This tool isn’t meant to be a full-fledged replacement for Google Maps or whatever manner of mapping app you usually use when it comes to navigation, directions, and other such tasks.

➜ Nope—it’s a specific tool for the very particular purpose of helping you share a series of locations with other people.

So, for instance:

• Maybe you want to create a map of all your favorite restaurants or cookie shops within a given city.
• Maybe you need a map of all of your company’s offices (or some random company’s offices) around the world.
• Or maybe a map showing specific locations for upcoming events in an area is what you’re after.

Whatever the case may be, PamPam​—yes, PamPam—is a killer new tool I recently came across to make it happen. No exaggeration: This thing makes every other mapping app you’ve used look like child’s play in comparison when it comes to its custom mapmaking abilities.

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And it’ll take two minutes or less to start using, depending on the type of map you’re making.

Once you open up the PamPam website, you can create custom maps in all sorts of speedy and easy ways—by searching for or pasting in specific business names or addresses, by importing a list from a spreadsheet or even an existing Google Maps collection, or by pasting over the URL of a web page that has addresses listed on it in any ol’ way.

Here, for example, is a map I made in about seven seconds simply by pasting over ​the link to a page​ with the addresses of every Google office.

The source page has the addresses spread out over multiple tabs and sections, without any special sort of formatting. And yet, seconds after pasting that link into PamPam, the service was able to find and identify all of ’em, import ’em into my map, and create custom AI-generated descriptions for each and every one as well as for the map itself.

A custom PamPam map, created in seconds from a single web link. [Photo: pampam.world]

Speaking of AI, if you have an idea but no specific places in mind, you can also use PamPam’s AI building option and type out a simple prompt—like “The best delis in Los Angeles”—then let PamPam pull data from the web to start a new map for you.

PamPam created this entire map for me from a six-word prompt. [Photo: pampam.world]

You can still customize and add to it from there, but it’s an interesting way to save time and let the service do some of the initial heavy lifting.

You can ​check out my interactive Google office map for yourself​, if you want, though since I’m on PamPam’s free personal plan, it’s possible we may exceed the allotted monthly views pretty quickly. (The free plan is actually pretty generous, but it really isn’t designed for high-profile public sharing.)

If that map isn’t working by the time you read this, try this one instead​. It’s a map PamPam provides as a demo showing recommended places throughout Kansas City.

• PamPam is available on the web​ in any browser, on any device.
• It’s completely free for up to five maps with as many as 100 places and with up to 500 views per month. That’s intended for casual, personal use and small-scale sharing; if you’re using the service for professional or business purposes, you can lift those limits with ​plans starting at five bucks a month​.
• PamPam does require you to sign in with a Google account before you can make your own maps, but it doesn’t require any personal info beyond that—and its ​privacy policy​ doesn’t include anything unusual about how it handles the limited amount of data involved.

Navigate your way to even more productivity-boosting goodness with my free Cool Tools newsletter. You’ll get an instant introduction to an AI-powered supertool that transcribes your brain and another off-the-beaten-path gem every Wednesday!

Recognize your brand’s excellence by applying to this year’s Brands That Matter Awards before the extended deadline, June 14.

Sign up for Brands That Matter notifications here.

Fast Company · by JR Raphael · June 22, 2024

18. Philippines says it did not consider invoking US pact over South China Sea clash

​The question is when they do, how will we respond? Are we ready?

Philippines says it did not consider invoking US pact over South China Sea clash

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/philippines-says-did-not-consider-invoking-us-pact-over-south-china-sea-clash-2024-06-21/

By Reuters

June 21, 20247:42 AM EDTUpdated a day ago

An aerial view shows the BRP Sierra Madre on the contested Second Thomas Shoal, locally known as Ayungin, in the South China Sea, March 9, 2023/File Photo/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab

Summary

• Maritime issue can easily be resolved, says executive secretaryResupply missions will continue, presidential adviser says

MANILA, June 21 (Reuters) - The Philippines did not consider invoking a mutual defence treaty with the United States after accusing China of disrupting a resupply mission in the disputed South China Sea, officials said on Friday.

A Philippine sailor suffered serious injury after what its military described as "intentional-high speed ramming" by the Chinese Coast Guard on Monday, aiming to disrupt a resupply mission for troops stationed on the Second Thomas Shoal.

Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin, who also chairs the national maritime council, said the confrontation between Philippine navy sailors and the Chinese coast guard "was probably a misunderstanding or an accident".

"We are not yet ready to classify this as an armed attack," Bersamin told a briefing. "I think this is a matter that can easily be resolved by us and if China wants to work with us, we can work with China."

China's foreign ministry disputed the Philippines' account, with a spokesperson saying on Thursday that the necessary measures taken were lawful, professional and beyond reproach.

China's embassy in Manila did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Philippines has a mutual defence treaty with the United States, and U.S. officials including President Joe Biden have reaffirmed its "ironclad" defence commitments against any attack on Philippine aircraft and vessels in the South China Sea​.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in a call with the Philippines' foreign minister on Wednesday, "underscored the United States' ironclad commitments to the Philippines under the Mutual Defense Treaty.

Andres Centino, a presidential assistant for maritime concerns, said invoking the treaty was not considered in discussions.

The council, however, had recommended to President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. that its resupply missions to the disputed shoal should be announced and continue to be "scheduled regularly".

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

Reporting by Mikhail Flores, Karen Lema and Neil Jerome Morales, Editing by Ed Davies and Timothy Heritage

19. How China could take Taiwan without even needing to invade

Winning without fighting is the acme of skill.

The three warfarse: psychological, legal, and media warfare. Unrestricted Warfare. All are political and irregular warfare.

How China could take Taiwan without even needing to invade | CNN

amp.cnn.com · by Brad Lendon · June 21, 2024

CNN —

China’s military could isolate Taiwan, cripple its economy, and make the democratic island succumb to the will of Beijing’s ruling Communist Party without ever firing a shot, a prominent think tank warns.

Fears the Communist Party might make good on its promise to one day take control of Taiwan, by force if necessary, have been heightened in recent years by Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s increasingly bellicose actions towards the self-ruled island.

China’s refusal to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has only added to those fears.

In such a scenario, analysts and military strategists have long focused on two key options available to China – a full-scale invasion or a military blockade.

But a Washington think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), warns there is a third way, one that will make it far harder for the United States and other like-minded democracies to counter: Quarantine.

Using “gray zone” tactics – actions just below what might be considered acts of war – the China Coast Guard, its so-called maritime militia and various police and maritime safety agencies could initiate a full or partial quarantine of Taiwan, possibly cutting off access to its ports and stopping vital supplies like energy from reaching the island’s 23 million people, a newly released report from CSIS says.

TAIWAN COAST GUARD/Handout/Reuters

A Chinese warship navigates on waters near Pengjia Islet in northern Taiwan, in this handout image released May 23, 2024.

The naval, air and ground components of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the world’s largest military force, might play only auxiliary and support roles, authors Bonny Lin, Brian Hart, Matthew Funaiole, Samantha Lu and Truly Tinsley write.

“China has significantly increased pressure on Taiwan in recent years, stoking fears that tensions could erupt into outright conflict. Much attention has been paid to the threat of an invasion, but Beijing has options besides invading to coerce, punish, or annex Taiwan,” the report says.

View this interactive content on CNN.com

At the Shangri-La Dialogue defense summit in Singapore earlier this month, Chinese Defense Minister Adm. Dong Jun warned those who support any moves for Taiwan independence will “end up in self-destruction.”

“We will take resolute actions to curb Taiwan independence and make sure such a plot never succeeds,” said Dong, speaking through a translator, while slamming “external interfering forces” for selling arms and having “illegal official contacts” with Taiwan.

China’s escalating gray zone tactics were on stark display this week as China Coast Guard vessels clashed with Philippine Navy boats in the South China Sea.

Videos showed Beijing’s troops threatening Filipinos with an axe and other bladed weapons, and Manila said one of its soldiers lost a thumb in a Chinese-instigated collision.

The level of violence was a major step up from previous clashes near Second Thomas Shoal, where the Philippines maintains an outpost on a beached warship in waters claimed by both Beijing and Manila.

Similarly, Beijing’s military and economic intimidation of Taiwan, a highly developed free-market economy, has grown much more pronounced under Xi.

China’s ruling Communist Party claims the island as its own, despite never having controlled it, and has vowed to “reunify” with it, by force if necessary.

But the CSIS report says Beijing has strong options that could not only keep the PLA out of the fight but could actually put the island democracy or its supporters like the United States in the role of initiators of military conflict to preserve Taiwan’s autonomy.

01:27 - Source: CNN

Video shows confrontation between Filipino forces and Chinese coast guard

The report notes that the China Coast Guard – like most coast guards around the world – is considered a law-enforcement agency. This means it can stop and regulate shipping around the island in what is termed a quarantine, which differs from a blockade.

“A quarantine (is) a law enforcement–led operation to control maritime or air traffic within a specific area while a blockade is foremost military in nature,” the report says.

International law considers a blockade an act of war, experts say.

“A quarantine led by China’s coast guard is not a declaration of war against Taiwan,” the report says, and would put the US in a difficult position, its authors warn.

Cpl. Alexis Moradian/U.S. Marine Corps/AP

This image provided by the US Marine Corps shows a Switchblade 300 10C drone system being used as part of a training exercise at Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms, California, on Sept. 24, 2021.

Taiwan to acquire more than 1,000 armed drones in new US arms sale

Washington is legally required – under the Taiwan Relations Act – to provide the island with the means to defend itself, and it supplies it with defensive weaponry.

US President Joe Biden has gone further than the legal requirement, saying repeatedly he would use American troops to protect Taiwan, a warning that appeared to deviate from Washington’s previous stance of “strategic ambiguity” and one that the White House officials have walked back.

But if US military ships or aircraft intervened in what China says is a law enforcement operation, the US could be seen as initiating military hostilities.

The report puts the China Coast Guard numbers at 150 ocean-going vessels and 400 smaller ones, like the PLA Navy, the world’s largest force in terms of fleet size. Beijing has hundreds of more vessels in its Maritime Safety Agency and maritime militia, fishing boats integrated into China’s military and law enforcement services.

Kyodo News/Getty Images

A large screen in Beijing shows on May 23, 2024, news that China's military began a two-day drill around Taiwan. The exercises, involving China's army, navy, air and rocket forces, followed the May 20 inauguration of Taiwan President Lai Ching-te.

China says military drills encircling Taiwan designed to test its ability to ‘seize power’

Taiwan’s coast guard, with only 10 ocean-going ships and about 160 smaller ones, lacks the numbers to push back a quarantine effort, the report says.

The CSIS authors note that quarantine actions taken by Beijing could be extremely limited and still have the effect of strangling Taiwan economically. Few operators would want to face the possibility of having their assets seized by Chinese authorities and might voluntarily stop servicing the island.

“Demonstrated Chinese willingness to search and seize only a handful of commercial ships could have an outsized deterrent impact and discourage similar transgressions,” the report states.

Limited search and/or seizure actions have an effect on flights to Taiwan as a quarantine can easily be extended to the air, the report states.

Only a handful of flights would need to be warned off by Chinese aircraft to have a stifling effect on all traffic, according to the report.

China regularly flies military aircraft around the island, sometimes dozens in a day. In the 24 hours ending at 6 a.m. Friday, 36 Chinese military aircraft crossed into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone, Taiwan’s Defense Ministry says.

Meanwhile, a quarantine, rather than a blockade, would not require China to close or restrict access to the Taiwan Strait, the CSIS report notes. That means Washington and its allies could lose one of their biggest claims to intervene under international law, preserving freedom of navigation in an international waterway.

“If the quarantine is cast as a law enforcement operation, China can easily announce the end of the operation and claim its objectives were met,” the report says.

An Rong Xu/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Gantry cranes at the Port of Taichung in Taichung, Taiwan, on Thursday, May 23, 2024.

To keep things even more low-key, China might not even need to use the word “quarantine” to begin an operation to isolate Taiwan, the authors say.

Under its claims that Taiwan is Chinese territory, Beijing could require customs declarations to be filed before vessels can call in Taiwan. For those that fail to comply, enforcement mechanisms could have a chilling effect on all shipping.

“Chinese law enforcement vessels will be authorized to board vessels, conduct on-site inspections, question personnel, and undertake other measures against noncompliant ships,” the report said.

This idea allows a limited scope of operations for China. For instance, it could just target the island’s busiest port, Kaohsiung, responsible for 57% of Taiwan’s maritime imports and most of its energy imports, according to the study.

Plausible, but still fraught with risk for China

Outside analysts who reviewed the CSIS report and spoke to CNN found it plausible. But they also harbored important doubts about how things might play out.

Some mentioned how the economics don’t necessarily play in Beijing’s favor.

“Maintaining the quarantine will be expensive and time consuming,” said Carl Schuster, a former director of operations at the US Pacific Command’s Joint Intelligence Center.

“Taipei won’t give up in under 60 days,” Schuster contends. “Can Beijing sustain the effort and possible international reaction for that long?”

Efforts to upset the status quo across the Taiwan Strait could further erode Beijing’s foreign trade, the experts warn.

Nhac Nguyen/AFP/Getty Images

China's Defense Minister Dong Jun speaks during the Shangri-La Dialogue summit in Singapore on June 2.

Those who back Taiwan independence face ‘self-destruction,’ China’s new defense minister warns in combative summit speech

Alessio Patalano, professor of war and strategy at King’s College in London, notes the challenges the Chinese Communist Party is already facing with an economy still struggling to recover from Covid-19 isolation that has seen growth rates plummet and new trade restrictions, like tariffs on its electric vehicle exports.

Taiwan is a prominent industrialized economy, a crucial node in global supply chains and a manufacturer of the vast majority of the world’s most advanced semiconductors. A quarantine on the island would have economic repercussions not just domestically, but globally.

While most nations diplomatically recognize Beijing over Taiwan, the island has forged increasingly strong unofficial relations with major western democracies, deepening those ties in recent years as Beijing’s threats have hardened.

Taiwan and China are also deeply economically intertwined. Last year, 35% of the island’s exports went to the Chinese mainland, most of which were integrated circuits, solar cells and electronic components, according to Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs.

Imports from the mainland accounted for 20% of the island’s total imports in the same year. Between 1991 and 2022, Taiwanese companies invested a total of $203 billion in the mainland, according to Taiwan government statistics, creating millions of jobs in China.

Additionally, quarantines can push populations to rally with the government, rather than rise up against it, says Sidharth Kaushal, senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London.

“Historical evidence shows that even severe blockades have limited coercive value, and a limited quarantine might result in a rally around the flag effect,” he says.

A quarantine could also push Taiwan’s government to declare independence, something Beijing has repeatedly said would likely bring armed conflict, Kaushal warns.

“This would then leave the (Communist Party) with the options of either escalation or a major setback,” he says.

Patalano says for China, patience is the key to realizing its goal of “reunification.”

Escalation, and certainly invasion, is not “cost-efficient,” he says. War costs not only lives but national wealth.

amp.cnn.com · by Brad Lendon · June 21, 2024

20. Hudson has questions about what DOD is doing about US military base infiltrations

Enquiring minds want to know.

Hudson has questions about what DOD is doing about US military base infiltrations

carolinajournal.com · June 21, 2024

Federal Government

Theresa Opeka

June 21, 2024

Rep. Richard Hudson, R-NC8, at a House Subcommittee hearing, July 26, 2023. Source House on Energy and Commerce YouTube channel.

Listen to this story (4 minutes)

Congressman Richard Hudson, R, NC-09, along with fellow Republican congressmen Pat Fallon, TX, and Jimmy Panetta, CA, are seeking answers from Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin about what the Department of Defense is doing about the recent rise in incidents of foreign nationals attempting to infiltrate US military installations or spy on military personnel across the country.

The trio recently sent a letter to Austin that pointed out that several of the country’s installations are strategic power projection platforms or places where important or sensitive activity occurs.

Counterintel-Letter-to-SECDEF-1Download

“These locations are, therefore, surveillance targets for foreign nationals who want to collect data on installation operations and uniformed and non-uniformed personnel,” the letter reads. “This places our servicemembers, their families, and Department of Defense personnel at risk of exploitation and harm.”

This letter comes after a study released by Duke University in December revealed that the personal information of US military members, including addresses and health status, is available for purchase, raising significant national security issues surrounding Fort Liberty.

Since then, Hudson has probed the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on this and cosponsored H.R. 6573 — a bill to protect service-members’ information.

Most recently, two Chechen nationals were involved in potentially suspicious surveillance activity of an Army Special Forces soldier’s property near Fort Liberty, formerly Fort Bragg.

A shooting in Carthage occurred on May 3 following a phone call about a suspected trespasser near a Special Forces soldier’s property.

Two Chechen men who spoke broken English were found near the soldier’s home. One was allegedly taking photos of the soldier’s children. After a confrontation, the soldier shot and killed one of the men. Both men supposedly worked for a utility company based out of New Jersey. The case is still under investigation.

In December 2022, vandals fired guns at two electric grid substations in Moore County, causing power outages that left up to 40,000 customers without power for two weeks.

In their letter, the congressmen said they fear the US is ill-prepared to respond to foreign adversaries’ increased intelligence-gathering and surveillance activity.

They asked, “We request a briefing from your team on the Department of Defense’s assessments of recent trends and efforts to address infiltration and information-gathering attempts on the following questions.”

1. What is the DOD’s assessment on trends of foreign national intelligence, reconnaissance, and surveillance on United States military personnel and domestic bases?
2. Which bases, assets, or groups are targeted the most by foreign nationals?
3. How many situations are misunderstandings handled by DOD and the FBI versus real counterintelligence operations?
4. How is DOD working with other departments and agencies to include FBI and DHS in fighting these counterintelligence threats?
5. How are we training our military members to detect, identify, and respond to attempts by foreign personnel to infiltrate bases or collect sensitive information?
6. What resources or additional authorities does the Department need to combat these threats?

On Tuesday, US Sen.Ted Budd, R-NC, and US Sen. Thom Tillis were among a group of 21 senators that sent a letter on Tuesday to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas demanding answers after eight suspected terrorists from Tajikistan with ties to ISIS were arrested last week in a sting operation in Los Angeles, New York, and Philadelphia.

Theresa Opeka is the Executive Branch reporter for the Carolina Journal.

carolinajournal.com · June 21, 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