Korea has not been the only battleground since the end of the Second World War. Men have fought and died in Malaya, in Greece, in the Philippines, in Algeria and Cuba and Cyprus, and almost continuously on the Indo-Chinese Peninsula. No nuclear weapons have been fired. No massive nuclear retaliation has been considered appropriate. This is another type of war, new in its intensity, ancient in its origin--war by guerrillas, subversives, insurgents, assassins, war by ambush instead of by combat; by infiltration, instead of aggression, seeking victory by eroding and exhausting the enemy instead of engaging him. It is a form of warfare uniquely adapted to what has been strangely called "wars of liberation," to undermine the efforts of new and poor countries to maintain the freedom that they have finally achieved. It preys on economic unrest and ethnic conflicts. It requires in those situations where we must counter it, and these are the kinds of challenges that will be before us in the next decade if freedom is to be saved, a whole new kind of strategy, a wholly different kind of force, and therefore a new and wholly different kind of military training.

John F. Kennedy, 35th President of the U.S.

Remarks at West Point to the Graduating Class of the U.S. Military Academy, June 06, 1962

Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

"The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it."

– Albert Einstein

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free."

– President Ronald Reagan

“This is perhaps the most important consequence of Orwell’s time in Burma: If at school he learned to be skeptical of authority, in Asia he learned how the exercise of power can corrupt a person. He hated what he saw it do to himself and feared what would have happened to him had he remained in the role of enforcer of colonial law. As he put it in “Shooting an Elephant,” “When the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys. He becomes a sort of hollow, posing dummy, the conventionalized figure of a sahib.” This conclusion amounted to a wholesale rejection of his own background in the bureaucracy of the British colonies.”

– Churchill and Orwell: The Fight for Freedom by Thomas E. Ricks

1. The NATO Summit 2024 - Summary

2. Trump Shooting Is Secret Service’s Most Stunning Failure in Decades

3. Quarantining the Conspiracy Swamps

4. An Assassination Attempt That Seems Likely to Tear America Further Apart

5. Trillions in Hidden Debt Drove China’s Growth. Now It Threatens Its Future.

6. Trump’s ‘luck’ and American ‘violence’ are the talk of China’s internet

7. Israel’s military, worn down by Gaza, looks warily toward war in Lebanon

8. If You Love America, Turn Down the Temperature. Plus. . .

9. Opinion | Nato barbarians are expanding and gathering at the gate of Asia

10. The Problem With Blaming Words for Political Violence

11. Botched Army Security Briefing Labeled Anti-Abortion, Animal Activist Groups as Potential Terrorists

12. How Can Europe Reduce Its Military Dependency on the United States?

13. After embrace at NATO summit, Zelenskyy takes his case for US military aid to governors

14. How SECNAV’s claims about S. Korean, Japanese shipbuilders do and do not line up

15. Evan Wright, journalist and 'Generation Kill' author, dead at 59

16. A Globally Integrated Islamic State

17. Minimizing Collateral Damage with the Surgical Application of Force: Applying Lessons from the Post-9/11 Wars to Israel’s War Against Hamas

18. The Vicious Cycle of American Political Violence

1. The NATO Summit 2024 - Summary

A useful summary.

The NATO Summit 2024 - Summary

THE STRATEGY WEEKLY – SPECIAL EDITION

Summaries and Links to This Week’s Curated Articles

July 8 – 15, 2024

https://www.strategycentral.io/post/the-nato-summit-2024-summary?utm

The 2024 NATO Summit

At the 2024 NATO Summit in Washington, D.C., discussions centered on the strategic implications of Russian and Chinese military exercises in Belarus and their broader impact on European security. The summit's agenda emphasized the need for robust defense strategies to counter these growing threats. NATO officials highlighted the increased coordination between Russia and China, which has raised significant concerns within the alliance. The Chinese military exercises in Belarus are perceived as a challenge to NATO's eastern flank, prompting calls for enhanced military readiness and cooperation among member states.

NATO leaders underscored the importance of integrating military and civilian defense plans to prepare for potential Russian aggression. This included long-range missile strikes, disinformation campaigns, and assaults on critical infrastructure. The alliance emphasized that each member country must develop comprehensive civil defense plans to ensure resilience in the face of an attack. This would bridge the period before NATO's political leaders could invoke Article 5 of the NATO treaty, which mandates collective defense.

The summit's results were significant. NATO welcomed Sweden as its newest member, further strengthening the alliance's defense capabilities by including Finland and Sweden. The alliance also announced substantial support for Ukraine, including military, political, and financial assistance, and steps to bring Ukraine closer to NATO membership. Additionally, there was a notable increase in defense spending commitments, with 23 members now meeting the 2% GDP target, reflecting a heightened readiness to counter threats.

Moreover, NATO leaders agreed to enhance the defense industrial base to ensure sustainable production of critical munitions and equipment. They also advanced NATO's modernized command structure and comprehensive defense plans spanning air, land, sea, cyber, and space domains. The summit marked a significant step towards bolstering NATO's deterrence and defense capabilities, preparing the alliance to address both current and future threats posed by Russia and China.

The emphasis on strengthening global partnerships, particularly with Indo-Pacific partners like Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea, highlighted NATO's recognition of the interconnected nature of global security. These partnerships aim to address shared security challenges, including cyber defense, disinformation, and the growing military and economic ties between Russia, China, and North Korea.

The allies have stated that Ukraine is on an "irreversible path" to NATO membership. They pledged to continue providing Ukraine with approximately $43 billion in annual support to help defend itself from Russia's invasion and deter future aggression. Additionally, they have promised air defense support, including Patriot missile systems and F-16 fighter jets, and individual security deals with NATO members, seen as a step towards NATO membership for Ukraine.

In a recent NATO meeting, the allies agreed to launch a new program to offer military aid and training to Ukraine and expressed support for Ukraine's future membership in NATO. President Zelenskyy welcomed the increased military aid and the potential to join NATO but urged for faster delivery of aid and the removal of restrictions on the use of U.S. weapons to target military sites in Russia.

NATO emphasized on Wednesday that it "does not seek confrontation, and poses no threat to Russia," while expressing a readiness to "maintain channels of communication with Moscow to mitigate risk and prevent escalation." However, NATO's concerns this week were not limited to Russia alone.

South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol highlighted on Thursday the significance of the Kremlin's close ties with North Korea, stating it serves as a “stark reminder of the fact that European security and Indo-Pacific security are indivisible.” Additionally, NATO criticized China on Wednesday for being a “decisive enabler” of Moscow’s war efforts. The alliance urged Beijing to halt all shipments of weapons components and technological parts crucial for Russia's military rebuilding.

NATO's official summit communique warned that China “cannot enable the largest war in Europe in recent history without this negatively impacting its interests and reputation.” However, it did not outline specific repercussions. In alignment with NATO's stance, U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan announced that the United States would persist in imposing sanctions on Chinese entities supporting Russia's war effort.

Overall, the 2024 NATO Summit demonstrated the alliance's commitment to adapting and reinforcing its defense strategies in response to evolving geopolitical threats, ensuring a united and prepared front against any potential aggression.

Summary of Events

Here is a summary of the key events and decisions from the NATO Summit held in Washington, D.C., from July 9-11, 2024:

1. Welcoming New Members: For the first time, NATO leaders met as a group of 32, welcoming Sweden into the Alliance. Finland and Sweden's integration into NATO's command structures was a focal point, reinforcing their defense capabilities and shared democratic values.

2. Support for Ukraine: The summit emphasized strengthening NATO's relationship with Ukraine. Ukrainian President Zelenskyy participated in discussions on further support against Russian aggression. Significant measures were announced to bolster Ukraine’s defense and move it closer to NATO membership, including establishing the NATO Security Assistance and Training for Ukraine (NSATU) and appointing a senior NATO representative in Kyiv.

3. Defense Spending: The summit highlighted a significant increase in defense spending among NATO members. Twenty-three Allies now meet the defense investment commitment of spending at least 2% of their GDP on defense, a substantial rise from only three in 2014.

4. Defense Industrial Base: There were commitments to enhance the transatlantic defense industrial base, ensuring the production and sustainability of necessary munitions. NATO agreed on contracts worth $10 billion for arms and ammunition production to strengthen defense industrial production and coordination.

5. Modernized Deterrence and Defense: Leaders advanced NATO’s modernized command structure and new generation defense plans, covering air, land, sea, cyber, and space domains. These comprehensive plans are the first since the Cold War and aim to enhance the Alliance's readiness and response capabilities.

6. Strengthening Global Partnerships: NATO continued to deepen its relationships with Indo-Pacific partners, including Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and the Republic of Korea. Discussions included the military and economic relationship between Russia and North Korea, and China's support for Russia. Four new Flagship Projects focused on support for Ukraine, cyber defense cooperation, disinformation challenges, and artificial intelligence.

These events collectively aimed to reinforce NATO's defense capabilities, support Ukraine, and expand partnerships to address global security challenges.

Alexandra Sharp, "NATO Summit Results," Foreign Policy, July 11, 2024.

Jack Detsch, "NATO Sets New Benchmarks for Deterring Russia's Next Attack on Europe," Foreign Policy, July 9, 2024, 6:00 AM.

M. E. Sarotte, "A Better Path for Ukraine and NATO," Foreign Affairs, July 8, 2024.

2. Trump Shooting Is Secret Service’s Most Stunning Failure in Decades

I hate to be an armchair quarterback but it sure does appear that this was a catastrophic failure by the Secret Service. The fact that a rooftop relatively close to the venue was not cleared and secured seems unexplainable. Perhaps there was a failure of coordination among the various law enforcement agencies and one of the agencies that had responsibility for this rooftop failed to secure it. (It may not have been the Secret Service's responsibility though the counter-sniper teams certainly had line of sight to the rooftop (since they neutralized the threat) so I wonder why they did not notice that the rooftop was unsecured before the event began.

Mike Waltz appears to be attempting to introduce a "conspiracy theory" that security was deliberately neglected for the former president.

Excerpts:

Rep. Mike Waltz, a Republican from Florida, said on X that the Department of Homeland Security had denied requests for stronger Secret Service protection for Trump—a claim that Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi called absolutely false.

“In fact, we added protective resources & technology & capabilities as part of the increased campaign travel tempo,” Guglielmi said on X. Waltz vowed to get to the bottom of what he said was a “massive leadership failure with Secret Service and DHS.”

Trump Shooting Is Secret Service’s Most Stunning

Failure in Decades

Targeting of the former president marks perhaps the biggest security

crisis for the agency since Reagan was shot in 1981

https://www.wsj.com/politics/trump-rally-shooting-is-the-secret-services-nightmare-1b35a7d6

By C. Ryan BarberFollow

, James FanelliFollow

and Jan WolfeFollow

Updated July 14, 2024 6:14 pm ET

Donald Trump’s near assassination presents the biggest crisis for the Secret Service in decades. At the heart of what will be a torrent of investigations: How was a 20-year-old lone shooter able to take up an exposed firing position on an open rooftop not much more than a football field away from the former president?

Scrutiny is likely to focus heavily on the Secret Service’s advance work to secure buildings near the Butler, Pa., rally, including one belonging to American Glass Research where Thomas Matthew Crooks was perched when he shot at Trump.

“The reality is there’s just no excuse for the Secret Service to be unable to provide sufficient resources to cover an open rooftop 100 yards away from the site,” said Bill Pickle, a former deputy assistant Secret Service director. “And there’s no way he should’ve got those shots off.”

A Secret Service sniper shot and killed the suspected gunman just moments after he fired multiple rounds. Crooks used an AR-style rifle that had been purchased by his father, according to people familiar with the investigation. Authorities also found explosive devices in the car he had been driving, according to people briefed on the investigation.

One spectator was killed and two were critically injured. The gunman acted alone and wasn’t on the FBI’s radar before the shooting, said Kevin Rojek, the bureau’s special agent in charge of the Pittsburgh office. Investigators were still trying to determine his ideology and motive. They were working to gain access into the gunman’s cellphone and other electronic devices as part of that effort.

The suspected gunman fired from an elevated position outside of the rally

Evans City Road

AGR INTERNATIONAL, INC.

Approximate position

of suspected gunman

APPROX.

400 FEET

BUTLER FARMS

SHOW GROUNDS

Machinery Row

Trump rally stage

Sniper teams

Main Street

Sources: Secret Service, staff reports; Maxar (photo)

In advance of events, the Secret Service routinely visits nearby businesses and buildings and works with local law-enforcement officials to monitor and safeguard structures outside the security perimeter, former agents said.

Pickle said investigators will want to assess how the Secret Service communicated with local law enforcement and used technology, including drones, to identify threats.

The Secret Service is likely to also confront questions about how heavily it relied on local law enforcement for support—and whether federal or state officials knew in the hours or minutes before the shooting that a threat was brewing.

On Saturday, four counter-sniper teams—two from the Secret Service and two from local law enforcement—were deployed at Trump’s rally, a Secret Service spokesman said.

In interviews after the shooting, witnesses recalled their horror at the sound of gunfire and the sight of Trump being swept away by his Secret Service detail.

How the Attempted Assassination of Donald Trump Unfolded

Play video: How the Attempted Assassination of Donald Trump Unfolded

Two Secret Service sniper teams could be seen on rooftops behind former President Donald Trump, positioning themselves toward the shooter less than two minutes before gunfire erupted at a campaign rally in Butler, Pa., on Saturday. Photo illustration: Adam Falk PHOTO: PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: ADAM FALK

Robert Pugar, an Allegheny County resident and off-duty police officer who attended the rally, said he noticed the law-enforcement snipers looking through their binoculars shortly before the shooting happened. “I kept saying to myself, I wonder if they see something. It just caught my attention…or is that just how they pan the horizon?” Pugar recalled.

A day later, Pugar said he was still taking it all in. With all the top-notch security technology available today, “how did somebody get 130 yards away without being recognized?” he asked. “We couldn’t even park within a mile. So how does somebody get on the very first building away from the stage, on the rooftop?”

One witness outside the event told BBC that he saw an armed man crawling on top of a building and pointed him out to law enforcement.

“I’m thinking to myself, ‘Why is Trump still speaking, why have they not pulled him off the stage?’…The next thing you know, five shots ring out,” the witness said.

President Biden on Sunday said that Trump, as a former president and the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, already receives a heightened level of security and said that he has directed the Secret Service to provide Trump with “every resource” and measure to ensure his safety. Biden also said he has directed the head of the Secret Service to review all security measures for the Republican National Convention. And he called for an independent review of the security measures at the rally to establish what happened.

Rep. James Comer (R., Ky.), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said within hours of the shooting that his panel was opening a probe, and he called on the Secret Service’s director, Kimberly Cheatle, to appear on July 22.

Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle has been in the role since 2022. PHOTO: MORRY GASH/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Individual agents showed tremendous bravery, he said, but added: “There are many questions and Americans demand answers.”

The Secret Service regularly trains for a variety of scenarios, “including the worst-case scenario of an assassination attempt against one of its protectees,” said Charles Marino, who served as a supervisory agent on Biden’s Secret Service detail during his vice presidency.

Donald Mihalek, a retired senior Secret Service agent, called the attempted assassination historic, drawing parallels to the 1912 shooting of Theodore Roosevelt in Milwaukee. Roosevelt, then a former president who was running for a third term in the White House, was shot while heading to a campaign event. He survived the attempt on his life.

Typically, the Secret Service has an advance team assess a location ahead of a campaign event to make a security plan, Mihalek said. Agents will take physical measures of the area, determine the necessary personnel and work with counter snipers to examine nearby buildings and their distances to where the president or the presidential candidate will be.

Mihalek said outdoor events like the one in Butler can be challenging. “You can’t shut a whole town down,” he said.

The campaign season makes the job even tougher, he said. While a president’s schedule is typically well mapped out, a candidate’s schedule can be erratic with last-minute events added to the campaign trail. That gives the Secret Service less time to plan, Mihalek said.

The hospital where President Theodore Roosevelt was treated following an assassination attempt in 1912. PHOTO: HARLINGUE/ROGER VIOLLET/GETTY IMAGES

The Trump campaign officially announced the Butler event 10 days ahead of time, on July 3.

Rep. Mike Waltz, a Republican from Florida, said on X that the Department of Homeland Security had denied requests for stronger Secret Service protection for Trump—a claim that Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi called absolutely false.

“In fact, we added protective resources & technology & capabilities as part of the increased campaign travel tempo,” Guglielmi said on X. Waltz vowed to get to the bottom of what he said was a “massive leadership failure with Secret Service and DHS.”

House Republicans were both furious and upset during a security briefing they received Sunday afternoon from the House Sergeant at Arms, according to people familiar with the discussion.

Lawmakers came away from the call without any sense of the specific security flaw to blame for the incident, one person said.

Saturday’s events marked perhaps the biggest security crisis for the Secret Service since President Ronald Reagan was shot leaving the Washington Hilton in 1981 by John Hinckley, Jr. Reagan spent 12 days in the hospital after being struck under the armpit.

President Ronald Reagan was shot in Washington in 1981. PHOTO: RON EDMONDS/ASSOCIATED PRESS

The spotlight will now fall on Cheatle, the Secret Service director, a veteran of the agency who took the helm in 2022, following a turbulent period in which it faced controversies related to its handling of phone records from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

A government watchdog said the agency deleted many of the text messages sent during a two-day period surrounding the Capitol attack that could have shed light on security lapses and Trump’s actions during the riot. The Secret Service said some employees’ phone data were lost during what it called a preplanned technology change, and has denied any wrongdoing.

Cheatle returned to the Secret Service after working as a senior director at PepsiCo North America overseeing facilities, personnel and business continuity.

In her previous stint at the Secret Service, she was the first woman to serve as assistant director of protective operations. Her appointment to lead the Secret Service made her the agency’s second female director. When he appointed her director, Biden said he and first lady Jill Biden got to know Cheatle while she served on his security detail during his vice presidency.

“She has my complete trust,” said the president in 2022.

Sadie Gurman, Jeanne Whalen, Katy Stech Ferek and Natalie Andrews contributed to this article.

Write to C. Ryan Barber at ryan.barber@wsj.com, James Fanelli at james.fanelli@wsj.com and Jan Wolfe at jan.wolfe@wsj.com

Appeared in the July 15, 2024, print edition as 'Trump Assassination Attempt Probed'.

3. Quarantining the Conspiracy Swamps

An important OpEd from the Wall Street Journal.

And to paraphrase an infamous statement from the former president, "There are conspiracy theorists... on both sides."

Quarantining the Conspiracy Swamps

The conspiracists on the right and left deserve to be ostracized.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/quarantining-the-conspiracy-swamps-biden-trump-congress-99cc8863?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

By The Editorial Board

July 14, 2024 4:38 pm ET

Donald Trump is covered by U.S. Secret Service agents at a campaign rally, Butler, Pa., July 13. PHOTO: EVAN VUCCI/ASSOCIATED PRESS

You’d like to think Members of Congress know enough not to indulge conspiracy theories without evidence, but then democracy doesn’t always produce the brightest bulbs. The latest to meet the public’s lowest expectations for our supposed leaders is Rep. Mike Collins, Republican from Georgia’s 10th district, who sent a tweet on Saturday that “Joe Biden sent the orders.”

It’s hard to imagine a more incendiary message in the wake of an assassination attempt. Mr. Collins was retweeting and amplifying a tweet that quoted President Biden’s remark last week that “I have one job, and that’s to beat Donald Trump. I’m absolutely certain I’m the best person to be able to do that. So, we’re done talking about the debate, it’s time to put Trump in a bullseye.”

Mr. Biden was employing a metaphor, however inapt given our current political distemper. He wasn’t giving orders to anyone to shoot Mr. Trump, and if he wanted to do so he wouldn’t do it in public. Mr. Collins is among those who think Mr. Biden lacks the mental acuity to be President, but he then accuses him of masterminding a conspiracy.

It’s embarrassing even to feel obliged to write this, but this is the political world we live in. Social media amplifies falsehoods, which is bad enough when they’re spread by the village idiot. When the village idiot is in Congress, it gives conspiracies a credibility that more people might believe.

House Speaker Mike Johnson and Oversight Chairman James Comer say they plan to investigate the security in place for the Butler, Pa., rally, and well they should. The Secret Service has to explain the safety protocols in place and what it might have missed. But the public wants credible answers, not a partisan probe, and that won’t happen if yahoos on the Hill are accusing the President of ordering a hit on his opponent.

The left is also splashing in the fever swamps on social media, suggesting that Mr. Trump planned it all to get voter sympathy—though he certainly cut that bullet close. Congressmen who indulge in such destructive nonsense, on either side of the aisle, deserve to be scorned and ostracized.

Appeared in the July 15, 2024, print edition as 'Quarantining the Conspiracy Swamps'.

4. An Assassination Attempt That Seems Likely to Tear America Further Apart

An Assassination Attempt That Seems Likely to Tear America Further Apart

The attack on former President Donald J. Trump comes at a time when the United States is already polarized along ideological and cultural lines and is split, it often seems, into two realities.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/14/us/politics/trump-shooting-violence-divisions.html

The scene of former President Donald J. Trump’s campaign rally in Butler, Pa., after the shooting on Saturday.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

By Peter Baker

Peter Baker has covered the past five presidents.

July 14, 2024

阅读简体中文版閱讀繁體中文版

When President Ronald Reagan was shot by an attention-seeking drifter in 1981, the country united behind its injured leader. The teary-eyed Democratic speaker of the House, Thomas P. O’Neill Jr., went to the hospital room of the Republican president, held his hands, kissed his head and got on his knees to pray for him.

But the assassination attempt against former President Donald J. Trump seems more likely to tear America further apart than to bring it together. Within minutes of the shooting, the air was filled with anger, bitterness, suspicion and recrimination. Fingers were pointed, conspiracy theories advanced and a country already bristling with animosity fractured even more.

The fact that the shooting in Butler, Pa., on Saturday night was two days before Republicans were set to gather in Milwaukee for their nominating convention invariably put the event in a partisan context. While Democrats bemoaned political violence, which they have long faulted Mr. Trump for encouraging, Republicans instantly blamed President Biden and his allies for the attack, which they argued stemmed from incendiary language labeling the former president a proto-fascist who would destroy democracy.

Image

Setting up for the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. The shooting in Pennsylvania occurred two days before Republicans were set to gather for their nominating contest.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times

Mr. Trump’s eldest son, his campaign strategist and a running mate finalist all attacked the political left within hours of the shooting even before the gunman was identified or his motive determined. “Well of course they tried to keep him off the ballot, they tried to put him in jail and now you see this,” wrote Chris LaCivita, a senior adviser to the former president.

But the Trump campaign seemed to think better of it, and the post was deleted. A memo sent out on Sunday by Mr. LaCivita and Susie Wiles, another senior adviser, instructed Trump team members not to comment on the shooting.

Either way, the episode could fuel Mr. Trump’s narrative about being the victim of persecution by Democrats. Impeached, indicted, sued and convicted, Mr. Trump even before Saturday had accused Democrats of seeking to have him shot by F.B.I. agents or even executed for crimes that do not carry the death penalty.

After being wounded at the rally, Mr. Trump, with blood staining his face, pumped his fist at the crowd and shouted, “Fight! Fight! Fight!”

What exactly drove the gunman, who was quickly killed by Secret Service counter snipers, remained a matter of speculation. Identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, from Bethel Park, Pa., he was a registered Republican but had also given $15 to a progressive group on Mr. Biden’s Inauguration Day, more than three years ago. The authorities said they were still investigating his motive.

The shooting came at a time when the United States was already deeply polarized along ideological, cultural and partisan lines — split, it often seems, into two countries, even two realities. More than at any time in generations, Americans do not see themselves in a collective enterprise but perceive themselves on opposite sides of modern ramparts.

The divisions have grown so stark that a Marist poll in May found that 47 percent of Americans considered a second civil war likely or very likely in their lifetime, a notion that prompted Hollywood to release a movie imagining what that could look like.

The propulsive crescendo of disruptive events lately has led many to compare 2024 to 1968, a year of racial strife, riots in the cities and the assassinations of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. Protests over the Vietnam War helped prompt President Lyndon B. Johnson to drop out of his race for re-election that year.

Until now, there had been one important difference. “Of all the similarities between 1968 and 2024, the lack of political violence this year has been one of the key areas where the years diverge,” said Luke A. Nichter, a historian at Chapman University and the author of “The Year That Broke Politics,” a history of 1968. “That is no more.”

Michael Kazin, a historian at Georgetown University, said political violence had a long history in America. “As in 1968 — or 1919 or 1886 or 1861 — the violence that just occurred is rather inevitable in a society as bitterly divided as ours,” he said. “And of course there’s actually less violence in politics now than there was in those other years.”

Yet not since President Abraham Lincoln was shot by a Confederate sympathizer at Ford’s Theater has an assassination attempt against a president or major presidential candidate so sharply exacerbated the partisan divide.

Presidents James A. Garfield, William McKinley and John F. Kennedy were shot to death by lone gunmen who were upset with them for one reason or another, but the killings did not become sources of schism between the Republican and Democratic Parties. The same was true with Dr. King and Robert Kennedy’s assassinations, as well as shootings that missed President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt and President Gerald R. Ford.

Gov. George C. Wallace, Democrat of Alabama, was shot at a campaign event during his 1972 presidential run by a man who wanted to be famous. The attack left the segregationist governor paralyzed but eventually contributed to his evolution and disavowal of past racism. John Hinckley attacked Mr. Reagan out of an obsession to impress the movie star Jodie Foster.

In recent years, political violence in America at levels below the presidency has become increasingly partisan. Representative Gabrielle Giffords, Democrat of Arizona, was critically wounded in a mass shooting in 2011, prompting angry criticism of Republicans for fomenting hate. Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, now the Republican majority leader, was shot and injured during a congressional baseball game practice in 2017 by a supporter of Senator Bernie Sanders, Independent of Vermont.

An armed man was arrested outside the home of Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2022 and told the authorities that he wanted to kill the conservative Supreme Court justice because of his positions against abortion and gun control. Later that year, a man wielding a hammer broke into the San Francisco house of Representative Nancy Pelosi, then the Democratic speaker, and beat her husband, Paul Pelosi.

The most famous recent case of political violence before this weekend was the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, by supporters of Mr. Trump trying to block the certification of Mr. Biden’s election victory. The Capitol Police investigated 8,008 cases of threats involving members of Congress last year. While most of them were not serious, it was the second-highest total in the department’s history and has prompted the hiring of more prosecutors.

Many of these recent cases have led to not so much soul-searching as blame-setting. After Ms. Giffords was shot, Democrats assailed Sarah Palin, the former Republican vice-presidential candidate, because Ms. Giffords’s district had been among 20 singled out underneath digitized cross hairs on a map circulated by Ms. Palin’s political action committee, although there was no evidence the gunman knew about or was driven by the map.

House Democrats impeached Mr. Trump for instigating the Capitol attack with his inflammatory language at a rally beforehand. The former president has a long history of encouraging violence. He urged supporters to beat up protesters at rallies, cheered a Republican congressman for body-slamming a reporter, called for looters and shoplifters to be shot, made light of the attack on Mr. Pelosi and promised pardons to Jan. 6 rioters. When some of his supporters chanted “Hang Mike Pence!” on Jan. 6, Mr. Trump told aides that maybe the vice president deserved it because he had defied efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Republicans turned the tables on Democrats this weekend, arguing that if Mr. Trump was responsible for provocative rhetoric, then Mr. Biden should be as well. Speaking with donors on Monday, the president said he wanted to stop talking about his poor debate performance and instead “put Trump in a bull’s-eye.” He described his strategy as “attack, attack, attack.”

“The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs,” Senator J.D. Vance, Republican of Ohio and a front-runner to be named Mr. Trump’s running mate, wrote on social media two hours after the attack on Saturday. “That rhetoric directly led to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”

Mr. Scalise, also the victim of a political attack, agreed. “For weeks, Democrat leaders have been fueling ludicrous hysteria that Donald Trump winning re-election would be the end of democracy in America,” he said. “Clearly, we’ve seen far-left lunatics act on violent rhetoric in the past. This incendiary rhetoric must stop.”

Representative Mike Collins, Republican of Georgia, wrote on social media that “Joe Biden sent the orders” and urged the local prosecutor to “immediately file charges against Joseph R. Biden for inciting an assassination.” But not all hands are clean. Mr. Collins once ran a campaign ad in which he fired a rifle at Ms. Pelosi’s agenda and shot a cardboard cutout of so-called RINO Republicans.

Some Republican leaders took a more measured approach. Speaker Mike Johnson, speaking on “Today” on NBC, said on Sunday that Mr. Trump had “been so vilified and really persecuted by media, Hollywood elites, political figures, even the legal system” and cited Mr. Biden’s “bull’s-eye” comment.

“I know he didn’t mean what is being implied there, but that kind of language on either side should be called out,” Mr. Johnson said. But he emphasized that “both sides” have “got to turn the temperature down in this country.”

Mr. Biden did not directly respond to criticism of his language during three televised appearances since the shooting, but he flatly condemned the attack and called Mr. Trump to wish him well. Like Mr. Johnson, he said that Americans must “lower the temperature” and that “it’s time to cool it down.” During a rare Oval Office address, he added: “Politics must never be a literal battlefield, and God forbid a killing field.”

Image

President Biden delivered brief remarks from the White House on Sunday about the attempted assassination of Mr. Trump.Credit...Yuri Gripas for The New York Times

The danger is if political violence becomes normalized, just another form of the endless partisan wars. A study published in May found that 11 percent of Americans said violence was sometimes or always justified to return Mr. Trump to the presidency, and 21 percent said it was justified to advance an important political objective.

But Garen J. Wintemute, the director of the Violence Prevention Program at the University of California, Davis, and the lead author of the study, said it was important to remember that most Americans still rejected political violence.

“It’s the job of that majority to make their views known, over and over again, and as publicly as possible,” Dr. Wintemute said. “A climate of intolerance for violence reduces the chance that violence will occur. The question before us as a nation is, ‘Will violence become part of American politics?’ Each of us as an individual needs to answer that question, ‘Not if I can help it.’”

Peter Baker is the chief White House correspondent for The Times. He has covered the last five presidents and sometimes writes analytical pieces that place presidents and their administrations in a larger context and historical framework. More about Peter Baker

A version of this article appears in print on July 15, 2024, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: U.S. Is Likely To Be Ripped Further Apart. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

See more on: Donald Trump, 2024 Elections, U.S. Politics

5. Trillions in Hidden Debt Drove China’s Growth. Now It Threatens Its Future.

Excerpts:

Today, overgrown construction sites, sparsely used highways and abandoned tourist attractions make much of that debt-fueled growth look illusory and suggests China’s future is far from assured.

...

“The government is broke,” said one local resident who watched the project falter from her shop across the street.

At the heart of the mess are the complex state-owned funding vehicles that borrowed money on behalf of local governments, in many cases pursuing development projects that generated few economic returns. The deterioration of China’s real-estate market in the past three years meant local governments could no longer rely on land sales to real-estate developers, a significant source of revenue.

Trillions in Hidden Debt Drove China’s Growth. Now It Threatens Its Future.

Local governments racked up as much as $11 trillion in off-the-books debt to build industrial districts, resorts, transit systems and housing projects, including many that failed

https://www.wsj.com/world/china/china-economy-debt-borrowing-33f08b5e?st=o8colle6wkec149&utm

By Brian SpegeleFollow

and Rebecca FengFollow

July 14, 2024 12:00 pm ET

LIUZHOU, China—Officials were bullish about the future of their factory town in early 2019. The economy was prospering, a new industrial district was on the way and an elevated light-rail system was taking shape.

“The achievements of the past year have not come easily,” Mayor Wu Wei said in a city report at the time. He credited the grit of local party leaders but didn’t mention an ace in the hole.

For years, Liuzhou and scores of other Chinese cities together amassed trillions of dollars in off-the-books debt for economic development projects. The opaque financing was the yeast that helped China rise to the envy of the world.

Today, overgrown construction sites, sparsely used highways and abandoned tourist attractions make much of that debt-fueled growth look illusory and suggests China’s future is far from assured.

Liuzhou, a city in the southern region of Guangxi, raised billions of dollars to build the infrastructure for a new industrial district, where a state-owned financing group acquired land and opened hotels and an amusement park. Other tracts of acquired land sit vacant, and many area streets look practically deserted. Birds flit through the rows of abandoned buildings at an unfinished apartment complex.

“The government is broke,” said one local resident who watched the project falter from her shop across the street.

At the heart of the mess are the complex state-owned funding vehicles that borrowed money on behalf of local governments, in many cases pursuing development projects that generated few economic returns. The deterioration of China’s real-estate market in the past three years meant local governments could no longer rely on land sales to real-estate developers, a significant source of revenue.

Economists estimate the size of such off-the-books debt is somewhere between $7 trillion and $11 trillion, about twice the size of China’s central government debt. The total amount isn’t known—likely not even to Beijing, say bankers and economists—because of the opaqueness surrounding the financial arrangements that allowed the debt to balloon.

As much as $800 billion of that debt is at a high risk of default, economists say. If the financing vehicles can’t meet their obligations, Beijing could either pay for bailouts, which might create a bigger problem by encouraging unsound borrowing. Or it could allow insolvent funding vehicles to go belly up, exposing Chinese banks to serious losses and potentially spurring a credit crunch that would further erode economic growth.

An entrance to the abandoned light-rail project in Liuzhou, China. PHOTO: BRIAN SPEGELE/WSJ

An elevated stretch of the unfinished light-rail project. PHOTO: BRIAN SPEGELE/WSJ

Top Chinese leaders are expected to raise the looming threat at a long-awaited summit starting Monday that will chart a course for China’s economy.

What is clear is that all of this built-up debt is part of what is preventing China from doing more to stimulate its economy. Annual growth slowed to 5.2% last year from 7.8% a decade earlier.

China’s Ministry of Finance didn’t reply to a request for comment.

For now, local officials are taking the blame. Wu, the leader of Liuzhou, was fired in November and has been charged with abuse of power and other crimes. Communist Party investigators allege he had pursued wasteful “political vanity projects.”

Wu couldn’t be reached for comment.

A cash crunch and stepped-up scrutiny by central government officials has also stalled the city’s light-rail system, leaving behind a trail of half-built tracks. A Liuzhou official said the city wasn’t able to answer questions about its debts.

Other cities also are scrapping infrastructure projects, which have long driven much of China’s growth. Moody’s Investors Service and Fitch Ratings lowered their outlook on China’s credit rating to negative from stable, largely because of doubts that local governments can properly service their debt.

“The reckoning has arrived,” said Victor Shih, a professor at the University of California, San Diego, who researches China’s politics and financial system.

Financial sinkhole

The municipal debt dilemma grew out of a fundamental weakness in how Chinese cities fund themselves.

Beijing controls the purse strings and puts limits on local-government bonds. At the same time, China expects cities to kick-start economic growth and provide services with limited budgets.

Deficit spending provided one solution. Chinese cities discovered decades ago that they could take on debt through state-owned entities known as local government financing vehicles, or LGFVs, to fund sewers, streets and the like.

Because the debts don’t appear on government ledgers—only on the LGFV books—cities were able to sidestep borrowing limits. The bonds were attractive to Chinese banks and other institutional investors that assumed cities were on the hook to pay them back. Investors figured that allowing bond defaults by LGFVs is too risky for China’s financial system and too costly for its economy.

Risky Bets

Cities sidestepped debt limits set by Beijing with funding vehicles known as LGFVs

LGFVs raise money from bonds and bank loans.

With the money they raised, LGFVs launch projects such as preparing undeveloped land for sale or building infrastructure including highways, bridges and pipelines.

In theory, LGFVs earn their money back when land parcels are sold via government auctions or residents pay fees for using infrastructure LGFVs built.

SOLD

LOAN

The big financial risk If LGFVs don't earn enough, they can struggle to

repay their debts. For many, this happened when China’s property

market crashed, making it harder to sell land. In other cases,

bridges and roads they built didn’t generate

sufficient fees.

Many of the projects funded by LGFVs turned out to be ill-timed, ill-conceived or both.

Liupanshui, a city in the region of Guizhou, set up six LGFVs for 23 tourism projects, including construction of a ski resort on a mountain that typically gets enough snow for less than two months a year, though it also is open for offseason recreation. State media reported that 16 of the 23 city ventures are idle “low-efficiency” projects.

Another LGFV, in neighboring Yunnan province, ran up $8.4 billion in debt to build projects, including “artistic living space.” After the housing was done, not enough people wanted to live there. The project was sold in 2021, literally, for a few cents, to another LGFV in the same province.

Rhodium Group, a research firm, found that only a fifth of nearly 2,900 LGFVs it reviewed last year had enough cash to cover their short term debt obligations and interest payments.

With little cash coming in from its investments, the LGFVs have stayed afloat with money from local governments—and by continuing to borrow. Research by the International Monetary Fund in 2022 found that 80% to 90% of LGFV annual spending came from new financing.

The LGFVs sometimes guaranteed each other’s debts, which made their swelling liabilities look safer to investors. In Liuzhou, one LGFV received guarantees from 13 other state-owned entities in 2022, making all of them liable if it defaults. Some had shared addresses or similar names. A financing vehicle called Liuzhou Urban Investment Construction Development provided $99 million of debt guarantees to Liuzhou Urban Construction Investment Development.

LGFV borrowing became more aggressive as their liabilities grew. Some LGFVs, working together, shifted assets from their balance sheets to another’s when issuing bonds, allowing them to borrow more at lower costs, according to bankers and investors.

Some city officials who initiated LGFVs seemed clueless about how they worked. An investment banker recalled meeting local officials in northern China in 2022 about a potential LGFV bond issue.

The officials had a question: Would they actually have to pay it back?

Yes, they would, the banker recalled telling them.

The Meihuashan resort in Liupanshui, China, which typically has a ski season of less two months. PHOTO: TAO LIANG/XINHUA/ZUMA PRESS

The amusement park in Liuzhou. PHOTO: BRIAN SPEGELE/WSJ

Good view

From the fabled reputation of its coffin artisans, Liuzhou was long regarded as a good place to die. Yet its isolation—250 miles from China’s prime manufacturing hubs in the Pearl River Delta—made it a tough place to attract businesses.

Like other Chinese cities, Liuzhou, with 4.2 million residents, sought to modernize its manufacturing sector, aligning itself with a push by Beijing to make China a powerhouse for semiconductors, electric vehicles and other industries.

City officials envisioned a sprawling district of factories and apartment buildings to replace the ramshackle villages east of Liuzhou’s downtown. They assigned an LGFV called Guangxi Liuzhou Dongcheng Investment Development Group to obtain loans from state banks and sell bonds to help pay for the project.

Dongcheng leveled the plots and installed pipelines, electricity connections and other improvements to attract developers. It told prospective investors that the city wasn’t liable for the debts even though the entity was effectively raising the money on the local government’s behalf.

Dongcheng’s total liabilities hit about $9 billion in 2018. It brought the city’s ambitions to life, opening a convention center, amusement park and a Ramada Plaza hotel, which one foreign visitor praised on Tripadvisor for the view from his bathroom.

Dongcheng expanded into financial services, using borrowed money to make loans to other businesses. It also pursued endeavors in private equity and venture capital, bond documents show. Revenue reached about $1 billion in 2018, most of it from its land-development business with the government. In 2019, its net profit was nearly $100 million.

Two other LGFVs controlled Liuzhou’s bus system, which had been losing tens of millions of dollars a year. Passenger volume was falling, and government-regulated ticket prices average just a few cents each. With LGFV money to prop it up, city officials found little urgency to overhaul bus operations.

Liuzhou officials instead decided the city needed a light-rail network to link its aging downtown with the new industrial district Dongcheng was building. Guangxi Liuzhou Rail Transit Investment Development Group, another LGFV, took charge and by late 2020, it was conducting limited test runs.

Weak factory demand and a lack of new sources of growth finally caught up with the city beginning in 2020.

Work on the light-rail project was suspended. In 2022, local officials disclosed that Beijing, which is supposed to approve major public transit systems, never gave its permission. The amusement park and Ramada turned out to be money losers, according to Dongcheng’s bond documents.

All nine of Liuzhou’s financing vehicles that have published financials are cash-strapped, with cash-on-hand making up less than 5% of their total assets. At the end of 2023, they together recorded nearly $29 billion of interest-bearing debt, according to financial-data provider Wind. The city’s official debt load was around $12 billion.

After China’s real-estate bubble burst in 2021, home sales collapsed and prices sank. Private developers showed little interest in buying land from the local government, so Dongcheng stepped in. It used borrowed cash to purchase large tracts and help refill government coffers. Since 2022, subsidiaries of Dongcheng have purchased 67% of all land parcels sold in the new district, records show.

Despite spending billions of dollars on new development, the city’s economic output last year was slightly smaller than it was in 2019. General revenue fell by about 30% over the same period.

Late last year, China’s Ministry of Finance publicly criticized Liuzhou for its debts, calling out eight city leaders and LGFV executives. In addition to the arrest of the former mayor, Dongcheng’s former chairman was charged with taking bribes. That scrutiny hasn’t stopped the city’s LGFVs this year from ordering the issue of nine bonds totaling $647 million.

The IMF estimates that LGFV debt across China will grow 60% by 2028 compared with 2022 levels.

A taxi driver ferrying passengers earlier this year beneath the abandoned tracks of the failed light-rail project in Liuzhou expressed frustration about the pork-barrel spending.

With city buses underused, he asked, why did the city need to build a rail system?

On a Communist Party-run messaging board, a resident complained about the construction fences still bordering the abandoned light-rail project. The fences block the sidewalk, the resident wrote, forcing pedestrians to walk in the road.

Guangxi Liuzhou Rail Transit, the LGFV responsible for the project, responded candidly to the online post.

“Due to the tremendous financial pressure on our company recently, we’re not able to tear down this part of the fencing,” it said. “Thank you for your concern.”

The Ramada Plaza hotel in Liuzhou. PHOTO: BRIAN SPEGELE/WSJ

Grace Zhu contributed to this article.

Appeared in the July 15, 2024, print edition as 'Trillions in Hidden Debt Threaten China'.

6. Trump’s ‘luck’ and American ‘violence’ are the talk of China’s internet

In China.

Excerpts:

Some social media users were quick to hail former president and presumptive Republican US presidential nominee as “lucky” that he didn’t sustain more serious injury and praised Trump’s “quick reflexes,” while many others made quips about how the situation would boost his re-election bid.

Trump, who said he was shot in the ear, was declared safe following the incident.

As shots rang out during his speech at the rally, the former president ducked to the ground and was covered by Secret Service agents. He then raised his fist in a defiant pose with blood visible on his face before agents took him off the stage – a gesture captured in an image widely shared worldwide and in China.

“Just judging by his quick reaction and agility to duck, I’d vote for Trump. I bet (US President Joe) Biden would take ages to crouch down,” read one social media comment that got thousands of likes and appeared to allude to concerns about Biden’s age.

One blogger with over a million followers noted that the incident made Trump look more like a “a traditional Hollywood president.”

Trump’s ‘luck’ and American ‘violence’ are the talk of China’s internet | CNN

CNN · by Simone McCarthy · July 15, 2024

Former US President Donald Trump is surrounded by Secret Service agents following the failed assassination attempt on July 13, 2024.

Evan Vucci/AP

Hong Kong CNN —

As dramatic images of the failed assassination attempt on former US President Donald Trump spread around the world Saturday, news of the attack also sparked immerse online interest – as well as pointed criticism of the US – on China’s heavily censored internet.

Discussion of the assassination attempt, in which a gunman opened fire at a Trump campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday evening, dominated Chinese social media in the hours after the attack.

Related hashtags garnered hundreds of millions of views on China’s X-like social media platform Weibo, where Trump – who as president played an outsized role reframing the US-China relationship into the more contentious one that exists today – has for years been a frequent subject of discussion, fascination and often ridicule.

Some social media users were quick to hail former president and presumptive Republican US presidential nominee as “lucky” that he didn’t sustain more serious injury and praised Trump’s “quick reflexes,” while many others made quips about how the situation would boost his re-election bid.

Trump, who said he was shot in the ear, was declared safe following the incident.

As shots rang out during his speech at the rally, the former president ducked to the ground and was covered by Secret Service agents. He then raised his fist in a defiant pose with blood visible on his face before agents took him off the stage – a gesture captured in an image widely shared worldwide and in China.

“Just judging by his quick reaction and agility to duck, I’d vote for Trump. I bet (US President Joe) Biden would take ages to crouch down,” read one social media comment that got thousands of likes and appeared to allude to concerns about Biden’s age.

One blogger with over a million followers noted that the incident made Trump look more like a “a traditional Hollywood president.”

Other commentators made morbid parallels between the incident and the 2022 assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, for example noting that the two ex-leaders did not end up “meeting” over the weekend.

There were also repeated links made between the attack and recurring instances of gun violence in the United States, which are often highlighted by Chinese state media as an example of the country’s failings.

Then-US President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping shake hands during a press conference at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing in November 2017.

Kyodo News/Getty Images

“In the land of liberty, gunshots ring out every day,” said one comment on Weibo with several thousand likes, while another said Trump would be “confirmed as the next president with gunfire.”

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs put forward an official comment Sunday, with a spokesperson saying Chinese leader Xi Jinping “expressed sympathy” to Trump.

State-linked media also stepped in to shape public discussion around the incident. Several op-eds or editorials published by such outlets framed Saturday’s violence as a symptom of American democracy, echoing Beijing’s longstanding rhetorical push to portray the US political system as dysfunctional and inferior to its own.

An editorial published by the state-linked Beijing News on Sunday claimed the incident had “combined all the political symbols typical of an American election: violence, uncertainty, and tough guys.”

State-run nationalist tabloid Global Times on Monday published an op-ed from a Beijing-based professor describing how “the escalation of political polarization into violence shows that more people are feeling hopeless about American democracy.”

“Political polarization and violence stem from severe income inequality and hopelessness about social change,” the piece said, while the outlet’s English-language arm repeated similar themes in an editorial for international audiences.

As such commentary filtered across China’s media, Biden, in an Oval Office address Sunday evening, took aim at what he described as “foreign actors” who “fan the flames of our division.

Doug Mills/New York Times/Redux

video

Their aim is “to shape the outcomes consistent with their interests, not ours,” Biden said in an apparent reference to Washington’s concern that China, Russia and other rivals are playing on existing social divisions in the US in influence campaigns, something Beijing denies.

“Tonight, I’m asking every American to recommit …. (to) think about what’s made America so special,” the US president said.

The rapt focus on the attempted assassination in China adds to what has already been frequent discussion of Trump on the Chinese internet, where he earned the nickname “Chuan Jianguo,” or “Trump, the (Chinese) nation builder” during his time in office – a quip to suggest his isolationist foreign policy and divisive domestic agenda were actually helping Beijing to overtake Washington on the global stage.

Trump’s re-election bid is also believed to be watched closely in Beijing, not least because the former president has threatened, if re-elected, to raise tariffs that experts say could trigger a de facto decoupling between the US and Chinese economies – a shock that would hit as China grapples with numerous internal fiscal challenges.

CNN’s Joyce Jiang, Wayne Chang and Isaac Yee contributed to this report.

CNN · by Simone McCarthy · July 15, 2024

7. Israel’s military, worn down by Gaza, looks warily toward war in Lebanon

Israel’s military, worn down by Gaza, looks warily toward war in Lebanon

As Israel trades threats with Hezbollah, there are fears that the military is overstretched and its resources depleted after nine months of war against Hamas.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/07/15/israel-lebanon-hezbollah-war-border/

By Shira Rubin and Lior Soroka

July 15, 2024 at 2:00 a.m. EDT

Israeli firefighters work on the ground and from the air on July 4 to extinguish a fire ignited by Hezbollah rockets sent into northern Israel. (Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

Listen

9 min

Comment

126

Add to your saved stories

Save

KIBBUTZ SASA, northern Israel — Israeli leaders say that they don’t want a war in Lebanon but that their country is ready for any scenario.

Israel is “prepared for a very intense operation,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on a visit to the Lebanese border last month. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant threatened to take Lebanon “back to the Stone Age.”

Beneath the posturing, though, there are growing fears within Israel that its soldiers are overstretched and its resources depleted after the country’s longest war in decades. Nine months of punishing attacks against Hamas in the Gaza Strip have not vanquished the group, and a politically embattled Netanyahu has yet to outline an exit strategy. In Lebanon, Israel would face a larger, better-armed and more-professional foe, experts warn, and the threat of an even deeper military quagmire.

Israel has been fighting on two fronts since Oct. 8, the day after Hamas-led militants assaulted southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages. Within hours, fighters from Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed political movement and militant group that is allied with Hamas, began launching attacks on northern Israel from Lebanon — the start of a tit-for-tat border conflict that has escalated, and spread deeper into both countries, with each passing month.

Reported attacks since Oct. 7

Incidents include airstrikes and

shelling, as well as drone, artillery

and missile attacks.

20 MILES

IDF

LEBANON

Hezbollah

Baalbek

Beirut

Mediterranean

Sea

Sidon

Damascus

Nabatieh

Tyre

Golan

Heights

SYRIA

( Annexed by Israel

in 1981. Not internationally

recognized.)

Haifa

Nazareth

I S R A E L

JORDAN

WEST

BANK

Source: Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project. Data as of June 28.

Israel says it is transitioning to a less intensive combat phase in Gaza, and it has resumed negotiations in Cairo over a possible hostage-release deal. But Hezbollah insists it will not lay down its arms, or consider retreating from the Israeli border, until a cease-fire is in place in the Strip.

Follow World news

Following

Both Israel and Hezbollah say they would prefer a diplomatic solution, but neither seem prepared to make the kind of concessions such a solution would require. The result is a strained stasis, with death tolls mounting; border towns standing abandoned, their fruit trees and dairy farms untended; and pressure building from Israel’s displaced for the government to act.

Israeli military leaders have been drawing up plans for a Lebanon offensive for months. On Wednesday, a day after two Israeli civilians were killed in a Hezbollah missile barrage, former war cabinet member Benny Gantz said that he and others had demanded that Netanyahu authorize an Israeli incursion into Lebanon in March, but that the prime minister “hesitated” — refusing to commit to returning Israeli residents to their homes in the north by Sept. 1, the start of the new school year.

“Israel cannot afford for the events in the north to go on as they are, to lose another year,” Gantz said. “The time has come for the price to be paid in military targets and Lebanese infrastructure, of which Hezbollah is a part.”

An empty playground in northern Israel's Kibbutz Sasa, a mile from the border with Lebanon. Most residents evacuated soon after the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack in southern Israel. (Heidi Levine for The Washington Post)

The pool complex at Kibbutz Sasa, without any swimmers. The few Israelis who stayed in northern Israel to defend the border did not expect to be without their families for so long. (Heidi Levine for The Washington Post)

Netanyahu, who once boasted of his ability to prevent wars, “knows that the Israeli public is not prepared for thousands of rockets on Tel Aviv,” said Gayil Talshir, a political scientist at Hebrew University.

Instead of strategizing, she said, he has “isolated” himself, avoiding hard decisions in order to buy time and surrounding himself with loyalists lacking military expertise.

Since dissolving his war cabinet, after Gantz’s recent departure, Netanyahu has distanced himself even further from the army brass, analysts say, including Gallant, who has pushed for months for a cease-fire and hostage deal in Gaza to allow the military to focus on Lebanon.

“These are critical days in terms of exercising our power against [Hezbollah], which only responds to force,” Gallant said Sunday as dozens of missiles fell on Israel, including at a strategic military base on Mount Meron.

Omer Simchi, whose wife and two young children evacuated Kibbutz Sasa with other residents, has served for nine months on the local defense squad. “The families are tired,” he said. (Heidi Levine for The Washington Post)

The few Israelis who stayed in northern Israel after Oct. 8 to defend the border did not expect to be in limbo for so long.

“The families are tired,” said Omer Simchi, who has served for nine months on the local defense squad of Kibbutz Sasa, an Upper Galilee agricultural commune a mile from the Lebanese border.

Simchi’s wife and two young children were among nearly 100,000 Israelis who evacuated northern Israel as Hezbollah rockets, kamikaze drones and antitank missiles began raining down last year, transforming this pastoral mountain region into a conflict zone. Similar numbers of Lebanese have been displaced by Israeli attacks across the south of their country.

At least 94 civilians and more than 300 Hezbollah fighters have been killed in Israeli strikes in Lebanon; Hezbollah attacks have killed at least 20 soldiers and 11 civilians in Israel.

Hezbollah fighters carry the coffin of senior commander Mohammad Naameh Nasser in a July 4 funeral procession south of Beirut. He was killed by an Israeli airstrike in Tyre. (Bilal Hussein/AP)

Israeli soldiers carry the coffin of Master Sgt. Valeri Chefonov at the military cemetery in Netanya, Israel, on July 12. Chefonov, a reservist, was critically wounded in a Hezbollah drone attack in northern Israel on July 11. (Heidi Levine for The Washington Post)

Simchi finds a replacement on the squad when his family needs him, but there are never enough volunteers.

“I don’t know if there will be a diplomatic agreement or a war, but what I do know is that it cannot go on like this,” he said, speaking in the kibbutz’s school auditorium, destroyed by Hezbollah missiles in December.

Local council head Moshe Davidovich said hundreds of homes have been damaged or destroyed across northern Israel.

It is only a small glimpse of the destruction Hezbollah would be likely to inflict in a full-scale war — expected to bring widespread power outages, massive rocket and missile barrages, and intense ground combat against well-trained and well-equipped fighters battling on familiar terrain. Hezbollah is believed to have more than twice as many fighters as Hamas, and more than four times as many munitions, including guided missiles. Concerns that Israel is unprepared are now being voiced openly.

“The reserves and the regular army system have been worn to the bone,” Yair Golan, leader of Israel’s Labor party and a former deputy chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, told an Israeli radio station last month.

“Israel is used to fighting short wars,” said Yoel Guzansky, a former official on Israel’s National Security Council and now a senior fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies. “But after nine months, the IDF is exhausted, the equipment needs to be taken care of, the munitions have been used up, and every family in Israel is affected by it.”

Even the relatively low-intensity conflict along the border has taken a heavy toll on front-line soldiers. A 25-year-old Israeli reservist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in line with military protocol, was deployed to northern Israel on Oct. 7. Under fire for four months, the “burnout” accumulated, he said.

When his tour ended, “it was hard to return to routine,” he said. He guiltily asked for a break from his job as a teacher so he could readjust to civilian life.

Now preparing to be called up again, he wonders if he is up to it. His friends, he says, are also wrestling with the decision.

Since the start of the operation in Gaza, 325 Israeli soldiers have been killed, more than four times the toll from the 2014 war against Hamas. The losses have been compounded by a mounting sense of strategic failure. In late winter, Israel returned most of its reservists home without achieving either of its stated war goals: the destruction of Hamas and the return of the more than 100 hostages that remain in Gaza.

More than 38,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians but says the majority of the dead are women and children.

An Israel-Lebanon war would be disastrous for both sides, experts say.

Galit Tueta pauses from raking leaves in Kibbutz Sasa on July 8. Tueta was born on the kibbutz and has so far refused to evacuate. (Heidi Levine for The Washington Post)

After publishing drone footage last month of the port in the Israeli city of Haifa, Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah warned of a war “without rules and without ceiling.” On Tuesday, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz posted on X: “Nasrallah, if you don’t stop the threats and violence and withdraw to the Litani River, you will be considered the destroyer of Lebanon.”

But an Israeli invasion of Lebanon could be a “trap,” said Guzansky, pulling Israel into another grueling war with no endgame.

“There is a false belief in Israel that a war there could be finished in a number of days or weeks,” he said.

Scenes of devastation in Lebanon would also intensify international pressure on Israel and increase tensions with Washington.

Last month, Netanyahu said that there had been a “dramatic decline in weapons deliveries from the U.S. to Israel,” and that only “a trickle” had been delivered since — a claim strenuously denied by American officials. On Wednesday, U.S. officials said that some of the bombs held up since May were now en route to Israel.

To avert a Lebanon war, Israeli officials are demanding — through U.S. and European diplomats — that Hezbollah retreat about 10 miles north of the border, past the Litani River, a military demarcation agreed upon at the end of the 2006 war.

Darina Kalabrino, a resident of Kibbutz Sasa, was living in the nearby city of Kiryat Shmona in 2006 and hid in the bomb shelter as her home was hit by a Hezbollah missile. In 2018, the Israeli military said it had uncovered Hezbollah plans to “conquer” the Galilee. It found several cross-border tunnels, though residents believe that there are many more.

Kalabrino says her greatest fear is the kind of mass infiltration and massacres experienced in the southern kibbutzim.

“We need to not become the next Oct. 7,” she said. “We saw what can happen with our own eyes.”

Suzy Haidamous in Beirut contributed to this report.

8. If You Love America, Turn Down the Temperature. Plus. . .

From the online web publication, The Free Press.

Note the recommended questions for President Biden's interview he will conduct with NBC.

Excerpts:

Call me cynical, but I’m under no illusions that this episode will change either campaign’s willingness to say anything to win. And, needless to say, fellow travelers and cranks on either side will quickly blame the other side for the assassination attempt. But I do hold out a small (frankly, tiny) hope that Saturday’s shooting will remove the incentive for the campaigns to continue behaving irresponsibly.

All of us (including your humble correspondent) frequently shake our heads and tut-tut the sad state of politics in America today. But as with the state of the culture, our politics is a mirror of our society. To put it another way: we have seen the enemy, and it is us.

If You Love America, Turn Down the Temperature. Plus. . .

It’s 1968 all over again. Meet the Zoomers going MAGA. A former Marine on Trump’s defiance. Wise words from Walt Whitman. And much more.

By Oliver Wiseman

July 15, 2024

thefp.com · by Oliver Wiseman · July 15, 2024

In the hours since a would-be assassin almost killed Donald Trump, we’ve been working hard to help you make sense of a dark moment in American history. If you missed any of our coverage so far, catch up by reading this harrowing dispatch from Salena Zito, who was four feet from Trump when he was shot at the rally on Saturday; this essay from Niall Ferguson on what might have happened next if the shooter had slightly better aim; and this morale-boosting column from Douglas Murray on how to respond to an assassination attempt, featuring Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan.

On today’s Front Page, we bring you more of the fallout from Saturday’s attack, including Eli Lake on the parallels with 1968, Olivia Reingold on the young Trump supporters galvanized by this moment, Marine turned writer Elliot Ackerman on Trump’s transformation into a “combat leader,” Andy Mills on the questions he’d ask Biden in tonight’s primetime interview, and much more.

But first, our lead story: David Masci, the editor-in-chief of Discourse, asks what we might do to pull our nation back from the brink.

In the hours following Saturday’s incident, both sides acted appropriately. Biden strongly condemned the shooting, calling it “sick” and saying that “there’s no place for this kind of violence in America.” He also called Trump and said that he was praying for him and his family. Good.

For his part, Trump released a statement thanking the Secret Service and law enforcement officials for saving his life and expressing condolences for an innocent bystander at the rally who had been killed and concern for another attendee who was injured. Also good.

Call me cynical, but I’m under no illusions that this episode will change either campaign’s willingness to say anything to win. And, needless to say, fellow travelers and cranks on either side will quickly blame the other side for the assassination attempt. But I do hold out a small (frankly, tiny) hope that Saturday’s shooting will remove the incentive for the campaigns to continue behaving irresponsibly.

All of us (including your humble correspondent) frequently shake our heads and tut-tut the sad state of politics in America today. But as with the state of the culture, our politics is a mirror of our society. To put it another way: we have seen the enemy, and it is us. Keep reading for more from David on how to turn down the temperature.

After Saturday’s assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, young men are coming out of the woodwork to back the former president. Almost immediately in the wake of the news, some of Gen Z’s biggest male icons, including wrestler Jake Paul, YouTuber FaZe Banks, and Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy, rushed online to praise the former president’s “gangster” response to the shooting, which killed one rally attendee and critically injured two others. With blood on his face after a bullet clipped his right ear, Trump raised his fist to the crowd and appeared to shout, “Fight!”

In less than 24 hours, that image became an internet meme—from Trump’s face superimposed onto an iconic Matrix scene to a split screen comparing Trump’s stone-cold reaction to Biden tripping over a flight of stairs.

Jordan Miller, 22, was at an airport bar sipping a margarita when the TV flashed that gunfire had broken out at the rally.

“The guy next to me just goes, ‘holy bleep,’ ” says Miller, an operations analyst in Phoenix. “They didn’t even have all the details, like if he got shot, and in the first clip I see, it’s him getting pushed to the ground and then standing back up. It was really cool when he threw his fist up.”

He adds: “It certainly fired me up.”

Previously, he had been planning to vote for RFK Jr., given his promise to crack down on Big Pharma, but in that moment, he tells me he realized voting for Trump could do a “greater good.”

“It made me feel like I can trust him, and he’s going to stand up for this country,” Miller says of Trump. “I don’t think there’s very many people in this country that after they get shot, one inch from their brain, would be able to get up and essentially tell the country to fight—and I think that’s what he was mouthing while he had his fist up. And I was like, ‘Okay, I’m ready to fight for what I believe in. For what’s right.’ ” Read on for more on the young voters who are turning right.

Listen to Salena Zito talk about the chaos and tragedy she witnessed in Butler, Pennsylvania, in this interview with Michael Moynihan on the latest episode of Honestly:

In an Oval Office address Sunday night, Joe Biden said the nation needs to “lower the temperature in our politics.” (Is the president a Free Press reader?) Easy: saying we should lower the temperature. Harder: actually taking steps to lower the temperature. (The Wall Street Journal)
Corey Comperatore, a former fire chief, was killed trying to protect his family at the Trump rally. Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro ordered the state’s flags be flown at half-mast to honor Comperatore. “Corey was a girl-dad. Corey was a firefighter. Corey went to church every Sunday,” said Shapiro, who added, “Corey was an avid supporter of the former president.” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
After her dispatch for The Free Press on the attempt on Donald Trump’s life, Salena Zito snagged the first interview with the former president, who told her he is completely rewriting his convention speech. “This is a chance to bring the whole country, even the whole world, together. The speech will be a lot different, a lot different than it would’ve been two days ago,” he said. (Washington Examiner)
On Saturday evening, BBC correspondent Gary O’Donoghue spoke to a man who saw Trump’s would-be assassin on the roof with a rifle and tried to get the police to help him. An astonishing interview. (BBC)
Melania Trump said in a statement that when she saw “that violent bullet strike my husband, Donald, I realized my life, and Barron’s life, were on the brink of devastating change.” She called on Americans to “ascend above the hate.” (X)
One sign of post-shooting Republican unity: after saying she hadn’t been invited to the RNC, Nikki Haley will now be in attendance and will make a speech. (Fox News)
How will the assassination attempt impact the presidential race? Trump “just won the election,” predicted one House Republican immediately after the shooting. For election model expert Nate Silver, things are a little more complicated. He thinks the attack probably strengthens Trump, but he adds that it is also a highly uncertain moment in a race Trump was already winning—and so is not without its downside risks. (Silver Bulletin)
The failure to protect Trump on Saturday is the latest blunder in a long track record of Secret Service failures and misconduct. A look down the list of the agency’s recent mistakes is a reminder that reality is a far cry from the crack squad of near superhumans it is portrayed as in the movies. (National Review)
The image of Donald Trump, fist in the air, blood streaming down his face, taken by Associated Press photographer Evan Vucci, has become instantly legendary. “I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that the photo is nearly perfect, one that was captured under extreme duress and that distills the essence of a man in all his contradictions,” writes Tyler Austin Harper. (The Atlantic) For more on the significance of Donald Trump’s raised fist, scroll down and read Elliot Ackerman.
Want to beat Trump? Andrew Sullivan advises Democrats to search for their version of Keir Starmer. The Brits’ biggest problem with Starmer is that he’s boring, but boring doesn’t look so bad right now. (The Weekly Dish)

Honestly listeners will remember Eli Lake’s recent special episode on the parallels between the tumult of 1968 and our present political chaos. While these echoes have grown harder to ignore in recent months, anyone who remembers the horrors of ’68 would have thought that things were much worse then than they are today. Until Saturday. Now, 2024 has taken a bloodier hue, with the attempt on Donald Trump’s life eerily similar to the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy.

Those killings ushered in an era of chaos.

“The question that remains,” Eli writes today, “is whether the near calamity of this weekend will doom America to another era of chaos. Put another way, if Trump wins a second term in November, will the already enraged fringe of the American left go quiet? Or will they seek the bullet over the ballot as they did more than half a century ago?”

Read Eli’s latest: “It’s 1968 All Over Again.”

→ A former Marine says Trump just became a combat leader: When I led raids as a Marine Corps special operations leader in Iraq and Afghanistan, I used to move around the objective with my hands in my pockets. I did this to show the Marines that I wasn’t afraid—even if I was. Acting calm in a firefight wasn’t always easy, but it’s what a combat leader does. Whatever you think of Trump, he proved himself to be a combat leader on Saturday. A bullet came an inch from blowing his brains out. He took cover. And when he stood, with blood splattered across the side of his face, he had the presence of mind to pump his fist in the air and shout, “Fight!” and “USA!” to his supporters, just when they were looking to him for leadership.

The attack fundamentally reshapes the presidential race. Trump’s detractors understand this intuitively. It’s why outlets like MSNBC immediately picked up on a rumor that Trump’s wound came from glass from his teleprompter, not a bullet. A brush with a teleprompter doesn’t possess the same valence as a brush with a bullet—these stories vanished once The New York Times published an extraordinary photograph of the bullet whizzing by Trump’s head.

When a bullet whizzes by your head, a binary choice is immediately presented to you: fight or flight. Trump chose the former. A pair of photos have emerged from yesterday. The first is a close-up of Trump, on the ground, appearing stunned, a trickle of blood coursing down his face. The second is taken a moment later. Trump is standing, his fist defiantly in the air.

The way I “fought” was to stay cool, to show my Marines that no matter how hot a firefight became that we were in control. Trump’s style is a bit more on the nose. The way he “fights” is by literally raising his fist and shouting the word to a crowd. But every part of his response was deliberate. It’s why he was insisting on keeping his shoes on. He wasn’t going to be led from the stage in front of millions of Americans in his stocking feet.

The assassination attempt has also given Trump a new moral authority. What he does with it matters a great deal, both for his election chances and the country. The true leader, the one worth voting for, will figure out how to bring the country together in this crisis, even amid an ongoing election. —Elliot Ackerman

→ The partisan trap: An hour and a half after Donald Trump was nearly killed at a rural Pennsylvania campaign rally, Dmitri Mehlhorn, a Democratic strategist in northern Virginia who advises Democratic mega-donor Reid Hoffman, emailed journalists, suggesting the shooting might have been “staged.”

Mehlhorn acknowledged that the idea of a fake almost-assassination “feels horrific and alien and absurd in America, but is quite common globally.”

This way, Mehlhorn said, “Trump could get the photos and benefit from the backlash.” Vladimir Putin and Hamas terrorists have employed similar tactics, he added.

“If any Trump officials encouraged or knew of this attack, that is morally horrific, and Republicans of decency must demand that Trump step down as unfit.”

By this late date, there’s nothing especially surprising about a partisan, on either side, floating nutty conspiracy theories. Recall that two years ago, Republican influencers like Donald Trump Jr. and Dinesh D’Souza pushed the totally uncorroborated theory that the intruder who attacked Paul Pelosi, husband of then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was his gay lover.

We have come to expect those engaged in electoral battles to say and tweet and post the most absurd, offensive blather. Their job is not to seek out the truth, but to fight relentlessly—blindly.

The problem, of course, is that they forget that the rest of us—the vast majority of us—are not partisans, that we are capable of something more generous and ecumenical. That we are able to disagree passionately with our fellow Americans about the border or the climate or TikTok or whatever and still, somehow, not fall for the most insidious lies about them. That we can make basic moral distinctions. For example, Trump is not Vladimir Putin. Nor is he Adolf Hitler. He’s just the presumptive Republican nominee.

He’s also, as one Democratic consultant put it to me, “the luckiest son of a bitch who ever lived. The fact that he emerged from this thing with the presence of mind to do that fist pump in the air and the whole Rambo thing is just unbelievable.”

There are, to be sure, millions of Americans who fear that President Trump, given a second term, won’t defend and uphold the Constitution. That he endangers our democracy. There are also millions of Americans who believe that President Biden has been a disaster—and that he’s the one endangering democracy with his lies about his mental acuity.

So be it. But we need not succumb to the partisan trap. The partisan stupidity. Because that is exactly what this is. A myopia and mindlessness so blinding that it conjures up scenarios that go beyond the fiercest partisanship into the realm of insanity. That’s what happens when one views one’s political foe not as a human being with human failings, but as Satan himself. Donald Trump, his innumerable foibles notwithstanding, is not Satan.

On Sunday, Mehlhorn followed up with another email: “Last night, I sent an email I now regret. I drafted and sent it without consulting my team. I have apologized to them directly. I also want to apologize publicly, without reservation, for allowing my words to distract from last night’s central fact: political violence took yet another innocent American life.” He also said he agreed “entirely” with Reid Hoffman’s “thoughtful post” Sunday morning, in which Hoffman said that he was “horrified and saddened by what happened to former President Trump and wish him a speedy recovery.”

When I texted Mehlhorn to see if he had anything else to add, he texted back: “Nope that’s it,” adding a sideways smiley face. —Peter Savodnik

→ Six questions Biden must be asked tonight: This evening, President Biden will sit down for his first interview since the assassination attempt on Donald Trump. It will be his second interview since his disastrous debate performance, but arguably, this interview with NBC’s Lester Holt is maybe the most important of Biden’s presidency—and an opportunity for Holt to make not just news, but history.

As a reporter and producer, I have crafted high-stakes interview questions for journalists, including at The New York Times, where I co-created The Daily podcast; at The Free Press; and for my own show, Reflector. If I were writing questions for Holt, here’s what I’d advise him to ask Biden:

Both you and President Trump have continually attacked one another personally and made sweeping claims about the dangers that will befall our country if you lose this election. You have said repeatedly that Trump is a dangerous man who will use his power to “systematically dismantle and destroy our democracy.” In light of the attempt on President Trump’s life, will you pledge today to tone down your rhetoric? Or do you stand by your words?
You ran in 2020 with a pledge to unite the country, but under your leadership the country has continued to see increasing political polarization. You have repeatedly called some of your opponent’s supporters “MAGA-extremists” and said that “MAGA forces are trying to move the country backwards” and take away the rights of citizens, including the right to vote. Do you think these claims have helped further divide the country you pledged to unite?
Many members of the Democratic party regularly liken President Trump to a dictator, saying he poses an existential threat to the country. What would you like to say to members of your party tonight?
In 2022 a man was caught by the FBI attempting to assassinate Justice Brett Kavanaugh. He planned on killing several other conservative members of the Supreme Court. You have spent the last several years repeatedly attacking the judicial branch and their rulings, using increasingly sharp rhetoric and strongly implying the court is a danger to the country. Do you think this contributes to the problem of Americans seeing their fellow countrymen less like political opponents and more like their mortal enemies?
In recent weeks many in the country and several even within your own party have had questions about your mental acuity and ability to do this job for the remainder of your term, let alone for four-and-a-half more years. And yet you’ve refused to take a mental fitness exam. Why not get the exam if you are not worried about what it would reveal?

And, to my mind, the most important question of the night:

You’ve said that your campaign is not about you but democracy. But almost all national polls conducted over the past year show that a vast majority of American people do not want you as the next president. They believe you are no longer fit to do this job. How can you claim to be running to defend democracy while at the same time, knowing you are running despite the will of the people? —Andy Mills

No recommendations today. Instead, we’re ending The Front Page with a poem. Joseph Massey (Substack’s best poet—subscribe here) tweeted Walt Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing” the day after the shooting. We second the sentiment.

I Hear America Singing

By Walt Whitman

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,

Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,

The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,

The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,

The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck,

The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands,

The wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown,

The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing,

Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,

The day what belongs to the day—at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,

Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.

Oliver Wiseman is a writer and editor for The Free Press. Follow him on X @ollywiseman.

To support The Free Press, become a paid subscriber today:

Subscribe now

And if you’re enjoying The Front Page, consider forwarding it to someone else you think might like it.

thefp.com · by Oliver Wiseman · July 15, 2024

9. Opinion | Nato barbarians are expanding and gathering at the gate of Asia

Quite a critique of the "west."

Excerpts:

As Nato’s retiring chief Jens Stoltenberg proudly declared last week, the Western allies will work closely with their four Indo-Pacific partners to “continue to deepen our cooperation in addressing shared challenges”.

Why this renewed aggression? I can think of at least two reasons. One is what may be called Nato’s sunk-cost fallacy in Ukraine. They initially thought they could finish off the Putin regime and the Russian economy. That didn’t work out, and now they are throwing good money after bad. The other reason is that China has always been the ultimate target. But the Western allies thought they had the luxury of doing away with Russia before moving on to China. Now they need to take on both.

But what about the possibility that Moscow and Beijing just want their immediate neighbourhoods cleared of Western encirclement, say, a neutral Ukraine and a South China Sea under some sort of detente? Don’t be so naive, Western critics say.

Well, I say, don’t be naive because the West still thinks it runs the world.

Opinion | Nato barbarians are expanding and gathering at the gate of Asia

Most regional countries want none of it, but four Trojan horses – South Korea, Japan, Australia and New Zealand – are ready to let them in

Alex Lo

in Toronto

Published: 9:00pm, 14 Jul 2024

South China Morning Post · July 14, 2024

America may be destroying trade globalisation. But make no mistake, it is globalising the war. That’s what people more conventionally call, starting a world war. A third one. All this lunacy was on full display in Washington last week, at the Nato’s celebration of death and destruction with its 75th anniversary summit. A defensive alliance long past its expiry date, Nato has been turned into an instrument of Western – or rather American – military expansionism.

Given his obvious mental decline, US President Joe Biden may be forgiven for claiming to ABC News’ host George Stephanopoulos that he was indispensable: “You know, not only am I campaigning, but I’m running the world.”

Nato and other Western leaders can’t claim dementia as an excuse, but they still entertain the delusion that they are running the world. And that’s the real existential danger – to all of us.

Alarmingly, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has described Nato as playing a “bridge” between the Euro-Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific theatres.

That’s the new mandate Washington has handed to Nato. But why? The US already has more naval power in the Pacific than anywhere else. Well, Nato and a handful of Asian allies will help save appearance and legitimise plain old American neo-imperialism.

That’s why Western pundits and politicians are claiming Vladimir Putin has set his sights on Nato countries like Poland and beyond, while China wants to take over the Indo-Pacific.

When there is no demand for your service, you have to create it; hence Nato’s constant threat inflation and threat creation. But has it crossed Blinken’s mind that most of Asia, including the Indian subcontinent, don’t want Nato militarism to infect their parts of the world like the plague?

It certainly has, because Blinken & Co has already prepared a Trojan horse, or rather four of them, for Asia: South Korea, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. The latter two don’t even properly belong to the Indo-Pacific, but never mind, they have been drafted. It’s an offer from the Big Boss that can’t be refused, even if they are putting their own economies and the lives of their young men on the line.

Well, I say, don’t be naive because the West still thinks it runs the world.

South China Morning Post · July 14, 2024

10. The Problem With Blaming Words for Political Violence

Excerpts:

If Biden’s words are to blame for the assassination attempt, then I welcome Vance’s recognition that Donald Trump is to blame for January 6 after all. Trump didn’t call for violence, but he did tell his followers that democracy was on the line.

You can see the clear problem, I hope. Blaming words for the violence that follows sets a bad precedent. This would become an all-encompassing tool of censorship. If any criticism is the moral equivalent of incitement, we have no free speech. We’re obligated to self-censor; we sacrifice speech to eliminate even the smallest possibility that violence might follow from the extremists and the unstable among us.

...

But free speech comes with responsibility; it gives us legal license to say pretty much anything, but no moral license to exaggerate, defame, lie, or ignore the context in which we speak. There is a line we should not cross—even if the First Amendment gives us the right to—out of respect for decency, truth, and democracy. And if you’re going to say potentially inflammatory things, be extra careful in how and where you say them.

The Problem With Blaming Words for Political Violence

If criticism is the moral equivalent of incitement, we have no free speech.

thedispatch.com · by Paul D. Miller · July 15, 2024

My dad has often told me that the Kennedy assassination was one of those moments that defines the stages of one’s life, like 9/11 was for me. There is “before” and “after” the moment, because the moment changes the way life feels. But for the grace of God, we were a few millimeters away from another such moment on Saturday.

The nation found a brief moment of unity denouncing political violence in the aftermath of the failed assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump. “There’s no place for this kind of violence in America,” President Joe Biden said in a released statement, “We must unite as one nation to condemn it.”

Unite we did, to the great relief of millions of Americans exhausted and harried by the increasing extremism lurking throughout our body politic. From the assassination attempt against Republican congressmen in 2017 to the failed pipe bombing against former President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and other prominent Democrats in 2018, violence and the threat of violence has been on the rise.

Violent rhetoric and violent threats have become so commonplace that it has become an open question whether mainstream actors are tacitly complicit with it to gain an edge in political bargaining. Almost half of Americans fear that civil war might occur in their lifetimes. Hollywood dramatized the possibility in a movie earlier this year. In that context, it is even more important for responsible actors to explicitly, repeatedly, and unhesitatingly denounce political violence.

Which is why it was especially welcome to hear so many Republicans, who spent years downplaying January 6, decide that violence is unacceptable after all. Perhaps this moment will prompt some sober reflection on what it means to be complicit with the growing climate of extremism around us on all sides.

Let us first state the obvious: Trump’s antidemocratic instincts do not justify violence: Precisely because we value democracy and the rule of law, we must oppose Trump peacefully and through the democratic process. Additionally, political violence is not only unjust—it is also very stupid. Violence of this sort is counterproductive; it inspires a predictable and fierce backlash.

The shooter, who presumably did not like Trump very much, just helped create a genuinely moving, immortal campaign photograph, surely not what he intended. Trump looks both heroic and besieged, attacked yet unbowed. If you want to reelect Donald Trump, violently attacking him or his followers while surrounded by photographers might do the trick.

s much as Trump has proved impervious to criticism and his followers have stayed loyal despite his often egregious behavior, you’ll still have more success arguing against him by holding up for scrutiny and ridicule than by giving him a stage for his blood-and-fist defiance. And if (heaven forbid) the shooter had succeeded, he would have turned Trump into a martyr, supercharging the former president’s cult of personality even further.

Simply on the grounds of prudence, let alone morality, here’s a simple rule: Don’t try to murder your political opponents.

On the question of blame, many online pundits, and some elected Republicans, immediately blamed the left for calling Trump a threat to democracy. “The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs,” J.D. Vance, senator from Ohio and a candidate to be Trump’s vice president, posted, “That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”

Biden didn’t call for violence, but he did say Trump is a threat to democracy. We fought wars against fascists and authoritarians in the past. If Trump is a fascist and an authoritarian, the conclusion seems obvious: We should fight the same way now. By that reasoning, Vance blames Trump’s critics for the attempt on his life.

Of course, criticism is allowed, and the assassination attempt on Trump does not inoculate him against criticism any more than the pipe bombs inoculated Obama. Trump is a threat to democracy and we shouldn’t stop ourselves from saying so. We shouldn’t let the threat of terrorist violence have a heckler’s veto over our speech. Trump’s brush with an assassin’s bullet does not turn him into a saint or a hero.

If, for example, you’re going to call Trump a fascist (as I have), then at least write a 3,000-word essay carefully examining the historical analogy to see just how far it goes (conclusion: only so far). An accusation that serious doesn’t belong on unserious social media platforms. Calling Trump a threat to democracy is fair game—if you have the receipts and are prepared to make the argument.

By contrast, consider Trump after the 2020 election. Whether or not Trump met the legal threshold of incitement (likely not) he sailed past the threshold of moral culpability for the riot. His monthslong campaign of deceit, manipulation, conspiracies, frivolous lawsuits, and demagoguery had no basis in evidence or argument; he had no receipts. Trump’s claims about the 2020 election were patently false, and they were known to be false at the time. And yet, Trump made them anyway with the clear intent of using the falsehoods to pressure Congress and the mob into extra-constitutional action. Trump’s speech, while legal, was patently irresponsible and willfully inflammatory.

Now that Republicans hopefully have relearned the responsibilities of exercising speech carefully, we can hope they hold themselves and their elected officials up to their newly rediscovered high standard.

Political violence is the norm in much of the world. We don’t want to go down this road. We have no reason. No matter how bad it seems, there is no case for violence in 21st century America. There is no scenario in which violence plays a helpful, constructive, just role in democratic politics.

Yet here we are. For years podcasters and journalists have asked me if I fear an upsurge of political violence. On the record, I give them a bland talking point. “It’s a distant possibility, but let’s remain calm and have some perspective.” Then they turn off the recording and I tell them, off the record, how worried I really am. I don’t share that publicly very often because I recognize that by saying so out loud, I could inadvertently spread fear and alarm and thus make violence more likely. That seems a quaint concern now.

thedispatch.com · by Paul D. Miller · July 15, 2024

11. Botched Army Security Briefing Labeled Anti-Abortion, Animal Activist Groups as Potential Terrorists

Pogo says we have met the enemy and he is us. This is an "own goal."

Botched Army Security Briefing Labeled Anti-Abortion, Animal Activist Groups as Potential Terrorists

military.com · by Steve Beynon · July 12, 2024

Army personnel in charge of security at the gates of Fort Liberty, North Carolina, received an anti-terroism briefing Wednesday, training that typically gives a mundane rundown of how to identify potential threats.

But this PowerPoint presentation had a glaring difference: It conflated mainstream lobbying groups, partisan organizations and non-violent political activism with terror groups such as the Islamic State and the Ku Klux Klan.

A photo of the slide presentation went viral online and raised the ire of Republicans on Capitol Hill and far-right commentators online for highlighting two groups in particular as terrorist organizations -- National Right to Life and Operation Rescue, both anti-abortion lobbying groups that have no record of acting violently.

The Army repudiated the presentation, saying it will review such briefings in the future. The botched briefing comes as the Pentagon grapples with legitimate extremism in the military ranks and provides a snapshot of how educating the force on threats at the ground level can be mishandled.

"The slides were developed by a local garrison employee to train soldiers manning access control points at Fort Liberty," an Army spokesperson told Military.com in a statement. "These slides will no longer be used, and all future training products will be reviewed to ensure they align with the current DoD anti-terrorism guidance."

National Right to Life describes itself as the oldest and largest pro-life organization in the U.S., with 3,000 local chapters across the country. The group advocates for anti-abortion education and legislation, and opposes assisted suicide.

"In a presentation that is deeply offensive to pro-life Americans across the nation, Fort Liberty promoted outright lies about National Right to Life in a demonstration of lazy scholarship," Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life, said in a statement. "In our over 50-year history, National Right to Life has always, consistently and unequivocally condemned violence against anyone."

Operation Rescue is a Christian activist organization that says it uses "investigative techniques to expose deceit, neglect and abuse within the Abortion Cartel, while demanding enforcement of state and federal standards and statutes."

But the briefing on threats also lumped in left-wing groups, according to a copy of the slides obtained by Military.com. Those included People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, a nonviolent animal rights group, which has long blasted the Army for using working dogs, as well as using animals as test subjects.

The briefing noted PETA as an extremist group, seemingly conflating it with the Animal Liberation Front -- an international extremist animal rights group with a history of violence, including firebombing. PETA was investigated by the FBI in the early 2000s, but a Justice Department inspector general report later found that investigation to be inappropriate.

Some information in the presentation appeared more accurate but was outdated. Earth First and the Earth Liberation Front, eco-terror groups with histories of arson and bombings, were listed in the slides, though such groups have lost much of their relevance in recent decades. The Weather Underground and Black Panthers, both listed as terrorist groups, were active decades ago.

It did identify violent movements that are more current, such as neo-Nazis and the Christian Identity Movement, which was connected to the Oklahoma City bombing but may be having a resurgence.

The Army kicked off a 15-6 investigation into the presentation amid the public outcry, one source with direct knowledge of the situation told Military.com. The investigations can be wide-ranging, often include dozens of interviews, and are tools that inform decisions on disciplinary action.

The individual who gave the class did not create the presentation themselves, and it was not immediately unclear who made it and how it got into the formal training.

The presentation was shared widely on social media, and quickly caught the attention of conservative commentators and Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill. A statement posted on X from the House Armed Services Committee noted that it was "demanding answers" from the Army on the matter.

The service has struggled to articulate what is and isn't extremism, sometimes conflating partisan or political movements as radicalism. It recently issued a set of new policies that allow it to more easily hold soldiers accountable for expressing radical views -- even when off duty, when such views may otherwise be constitutionally protected.

The policies generally bar speech and actions that side with violence against the government or systemic discrimination.

military.com · by Steve Beynon · July 12, 2024

12. How Can Europe Reduce Its Military Dependency on the United States?

How Can Europe Reduce Its Military Dependency on the United States?

With Washington looking toward China, and the possibility of another Trump presidency, Europe should do more for its own defense. Here are four key areas to watch.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/12/world/europe/nato-europe-military-russia.html?utm

Ukraine has not only vividly shown that weapons stockpiles “have been too small, and that the production capacity has been delinquent, but it has also demonstrated serious gaps in our interoperability,” the NATO secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said at the NATO summit this week.Credit...Eric Lee/The New York Times

By Steven Erlanger

Steven Erlanger has regularly covered NATO, its summits and its problems.

July 12, 2024

Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Eastern Europe, Northern Europe and Western Europe? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

Even the European members of NATO say that they must do more to defend themselves as the war in Ukraine grinds on and the United States shifts its priorities to Asia and a rising China.

The possibility that former President Donald J. Trump will return to the White House heightens the concern, given his repeated threat to withdraw collective defense from countries that don’t pay their way in the alliance.

In fact, European member states have made considerable progress in the last few years to restore more credibility to deterrence against Russia. But they began from a low base, having cut military spending sharply after the collapse of the Soviet Union and reacting with complacency to Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.

There is a lot more that the Europeans should do to become less dependent on the United States, NATO officials and analysts said this week during the alliance summit in Washington. That includes committing more money to defense, building up arms manufacturing and coordinating the purchase of weapons systems that could replace those now provided solely by the Americans.

With President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia busy with Ukraine and his military degraded by the fierce fighting there, European and NATO officials believe there is a window of perhaps three to seven years before Mr. Putin might be tempted to test the NATO alliance. But will Europe use that window to rearm?

Here are four of the key gaps that the Europeans should fill if they are serious about reducing their dependency on the United States for their own defense.

Image

Mr. Stoltenberg believes the pledge that countries spend 2 percent of gross domestic product on the military “is a floor, not a ceiling.”Credit...Eric Lee/The New York Times

Money

Nothing happens without money.

Ten years after NATO members pledged to spend 2 percent of gross domestic product on the military, two-thirds will do so by year’s end. But a third will not.

And while the NATO secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, insists that 2 percent “is a floor, not a ceiling,” a lot of planks are still missing, including Spain and Italy. The most important European allies, like Britain, France and Germany, have not firmly committed to spending at least 2 percent or more long term, while 2.5 percent or even 3 percent is what European defense really needs.

The main issue about military spending is sustainability, said Camille Grand, a former NATO assistant secretary general. “It’s a decade-long endeavor to restore European defense,” he said. “The Europeans have done better, but there are still a lot of question marks,” including what will happen to budgets in Britain and France, as major political changes take place in the two countries. Britain’s new prime minister, Keir Starmer, arrived at the summit saying that Britain would reach 2.5 percent, but he did not say when.

Troop Numbers

European militaries shrank after the Cold War, with many nations possessing what NATO officials call “bonsai armies.” About 100,000 American troops are now in Europe, an increase after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but that number will inevitably fall, whether Mr. Trump becomes president or not.

“European armies are too small to handle even the arms that they’ve got now,” said Jim Townsend, a former U.S. assistant secretary of defense now at the Center for a New American Security.

“The British and the Danes, to pick two examples, are good militaries, but they would not be able to sustain intense combat for more than a couple of weeks,” he said. “It doesn’t matter how good you are if there aren’t enough of you.”

The British Army is at its smallest since Waterloo; the German Army has been something of a joke since the Soviet Union died. Though it is making efforts to rebuild under Boris Pistorius, the defense minister, it needs 20,000 more soldiers to reach minimum readiness, and his request for a $7.25 billion increase in the 2025 defense budget was reduced to $1.3 billion. He said it did not match what “the threat situation” required.

The problem is not just the numbers in uniform, but also the imbalance between combat troops and the “back offices” of European militaries, leading to a shortage of soldiers skilled in high-tech warfare. Military salaries are comparatively low; retention of skilled soldiers is difficult; and most armies, when they cut back after the Cold War, did so in areas of so-called combat service support, including intelligence officers, medical personnel and mechanics.

“You don’t see them on parade, but you can’t fight a real war without them,” Mr. Townsend said.

NATO’s new force model, which its members agreed on two years ago, aims to make more than 300,000 troops available to respond to any contingency within 30 days (and over 100,000 in up to 10 days) to immediately reinforce the alliance’s eastern flank in the event of a crisis. But NATO officials concede that the alliance is currently considerably short of that number.

Image

The Strategic Enablers

For Europe to defend itself with less help from America, it must fill some pretty big and expensive holes that the Pentagon now handles for NATO, said Mr. Grand, who wrote a detailed report about the problem for the European Council on Foreign Relations.

The main dependencies are what are called “strategic enablers.” They include integrated air and missile defense, long-range precision artillery and missiles, air-to-air refueling tankers, transport aircraft both for troops and for heavy equipment like tanks, airborne surveillance aircraft, sophisticated drones and intelligence satellites.

According to a study by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, European forces also have significant gaps in naval forces and ammunition, evident in their inability to supply Ukraine with basic artillery shells in the numbers needed. Fundamental elements like the number of combat battalions, in-service battle tanks, self-propelled artillery and infantry fighting vehicles have remained static or fallen since 2014, despite Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

Given the deficiencies, “any major combat operation in Europe would rely on U.S. forces to make up for European shortfalls in the land, maritime and air forces required,” said a study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, titled “Is NATO Ready for War?” Turning increases in spending into combat capabilities remains “an important challenge,” the center said.

NATO is ready for war, the study concluded, if it is a short one. “But the question remains whether it is ready to fight — and thereby deter — a protracted war,” the center said.

The Ukraine war has also put in sharp contrast the post-Cold War decline in Europe’s defense industry — its inability to produce enough ammunition, tanks, artillery, missiles, air defenses and sophisticated drones. While progress has been made in the past two years, and more money invested, there is a long lag between orders and delivery. And global demand for some key weapons systems is several times the existing supply.

Ukraine has not only vividly shown that weapons stockpiles “have been too small, and that the production capacity has been delinquent, but it has also demonstrated serious gaps in our interoperability,” Mr. Stoltenberg said at the summit this week. “There is no way to provide a strong defense without a strong defense industry.”

That requires better coordination between NATO and the European Union, to ensure that there is less duplication, less squabbling by countries for contracts and more interoperability.

Europeans are also overly dependent on American military production, with some 63 percent of European military purchases going to companies outside the European Union, mostly American, Mr. Grand said. “That is not the best way to create domestic European support for more military spending,” he said.

The Nuclear Umbrella

In many ways, this is the most sensitive issue. NATO, a nuclear alliance, relies on the American nuclear umbrella as the ultimate deterrent against a Russian attack. No one is suggesting that Washington intends to fold up the umbrella, but doubts inevitably arise about the willingness to use nuclear weapons to defend Europe and in what circumstances.

President Emmanuel Macron of France has said that his country’s interests have “a European dimension.” But French nuclear doctrine is strictly national, and France currently plays no part in NATO’s nuclear plans. Would France be willing to put nuclear assets outside France?

Similarly with Britain, which possesses only a submarine-based nuclear deterrent and is having trouble financing its modernization.

And then there would be serious questions for nonnuclear allies: Would they be willing to host nuclear facilities, or fly nuclear weapons on their planes or invest in more missile defense? Should there be some sort of “Eurobomb,” and who would control it?

“Let’s at least take this debate seriously,” Mr. Grand said. “Let’s talk about what France and Britain are willing to do.”

Steven Erlanger is the chief diplomatic correspondent in Europe and is based in Berlin. He has reported from over 120 countries, including Thailand, France, Israel, Germany and the former Soviet Union. More about Steven Erlanger

A version of this article appears in print on July 13, 2024, Section A, Page 7 of the New York edition with the headline: Europe Looks at How to Build a Military That Doesn’t Lean on the U.S.. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

See more on: North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Russia-Ukraine War

13. After embrace at NATO summit, Zelenskyy takes his case for US military aid to governors

After embrace at NATO summit, Zelenskyy takes his case for US military aid to governors

AP · by HANNAH SCHOENBAUM · July 12, 2024

By and MEAD GRUVER

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Away from Washington, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy sought to broaden support for U.S. military aid by telling state governors Friday that the world’s leaders should see for themselves the carnage wrought since Russia invaded his country more than two years ago.

Zelenskyy’s plea at the National Governors Association summer meeting in Salt Lake City came days after NATO leaders met in the U.S. capital and pledged more help for Ukraine.

“The only thing we ask for is sufficient support — air defense systems for our cities, weapons for our men and women on the frontline, support in protecting normal life and rebuilding,” Zelenskyy told the governors. “This is all we need to withstand and drive Russia from our land and to send a strong signal to all other potential aggressors which are watching.”

NATO members this week agreed to a new program to provide reliable military aid to Ukraine and prepare for its eventual membership in the alliance. They declared Ukraine was on an “ irreversible ” path to join NATO and, for the first time, that China was a “ decisive enabler ” of Russia in the war.

Yet many Republicans including former President Donald Trump have been skeptical and in some cases opposed to continuing to help Ukraine fight off Russia’s 2022 invasion. President Joe Biden highlighted NATO’s world role and his differences with Trump over Ukraine after the summit.

While governors don’t vote on U.S. military aid to Ukraine, Zelenskyy’s appearance showed his willingness to connect with other leaders in the U.S. to plead his country’s case.

He got a warm welcome, introduced to cheers and thunderous applause by Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican and the outgoing National Governors Association chairman.

“There are things that happen in world affairs. Sometimes it’s hard to tell who the good guys and the bad guys are. This is not one of those times,” Cox said.

Cox and Zelenskyy signed a trade agreement between Utah and the Kyiv region. Several governors of both parties pledged in a closed-door meeting with the Ukrainian leader to urge their states’ wealthiest people to give humanitarian aid, said Hawaii Gov. Josh Green, a Democrat.

The Ukrainian president also met Friday with members of Utah’s congressional delegation — all are Republicans — and with leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the uber-wealthy Utah-based faith known widely as the Mormon church.

Zelenskyy’s appeal to governors from both parties could pay dividends if Trump is reelected in November, Green told The Associated Press.

“If Mr. Trump becomes president again, perhaps he’ll listen to some of the Republican governors that were in the room and us, perhaps, as Democratic governors because it’s a humanitarian crisis,” he said.

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican, said Zelenskyy made “a very, very good case” that has motivated him to urge others in his party to continue sending aid. Stitt had previously called for “imposing all possible sanctions” on Russia but had not come out in favor of funding the Ukrainian military.

“We need to punch a bully in the nose when he’s coming in and trying to take over a sovereign country like Ukraine,” Stitt told reporters Friday. “It seems like a pretty good use of funds. These aren’t American forces on the ground, these are just simply dollars, weapons, technology. It makes a lot of sense.”

___

Gruver reported from Cheyenne, Wyoming.

AP · by HANNAH SCHOENBAUM · July 12, 2024

14. How SECNAV’s claims about S. Korean, Japanese shipbuilders do and do not line up

Hmmmm.... protect the primes.

How SECNAV’s claims about S. Korean, Japanese shipbuilders do and do not line up - Breaking Defense

Experts tell Breaking Defense that while Asian shipbuilders have become renowned for good reason, it’s apples and oranges comparing them to the US Navy’s staple prime contractors.

breakingdefense.com · by Justin Katz · July 15, 2024

Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro departs the JS Izumo (DDH-183) during a trip to Japan. (U.S. Navy Photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Ashley M.C. Estrella/Released)

WASHINGTON — In late June, South Korean conglomerate Hanwha, and its shipbuilding arm Hanwha Ocean, announced plans to purchase a controlling stake of Philly Shipyard. And there were likely few people in Washington cheering them on more publicly than Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro.

Philly Shipyard does not build combatant ships, also called “gray hulls,” for the US Navy’s fleet and in fact, until Hanwha’s bid is finalized, the yard is owned by a Norwegian industrial investment group. Nonetheless, the announcement was welcomed by the secretary, who said he anticipates Hanwha “will change the competitive U.S. shipbuilding landscape.”

Del Toro, in fact, has spent most of 2024 praising South Korean and Japanese shipbuilders and encouraging them to invest in American shipyards, while separately admonishing US industry for failing to invest in their own facilities and accusing them of “goosing” their stock prices.

At a surface level, his support for Asian companies seem warranted. A Hudson report published in May states that Japan (389) and South Korea (231) each built significantly more ships in 2023 than the United States (48). In 2022, it was a similar story.

But, experts tell Breaking Defense, the secretary’s praise obscures a more nuanced reality about the differences between how the US Navy’s staple shipbuilders stack up against the biggest names in Asia. Chiefly, they say, the strict requirements instituted by the Navy combined with the instability of annual congressional budgeting makes a one-to-one comparison apples and oranges.

It doesn’t mean that Del Toro is wrong with many of the points he has made in favor of how America’s allies in East Asia do business. But analysts are skeptical that the secretary’s calls to action would result in the sort of widespread reforms his statements about Hanwha predicted.

“By all accounts South Korean and Japanese shipbuilders are good,” said Steve Wills, a fellow at the Center for Maritime Strategy. “Would they be willing to abide by [US Navy shipbuilding requirements] and would they be able to deliver a product at the same cost as they would if they built it for the South Korean or Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force navies? That’s hard to say.”

HD Hyundai Heavy Industries Co. shipyard in Ulsan, South Korea. (Photographer: SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg via Getty Images.)

Where Del Toro Gets It Right

One of the chief claims Del Toro has made about why Asian shipbuilders outperform their American counterparts focuses on how they’ve incorporated high technology into their facilities — hence, the secretary’s own jabs at American industry for, in his view, not always investing to the benefit of the US Navy. And on this claim, analysts said Del Toro is right.

“Japanese and Korean shipbuilders lead in adopting advanced technologies, such as automation and AI,” Robert Khachatryan, CEO of Freight Right Global Logistics, told Breaking Defense. “These innovations significantly enhance efficiency and reduce production times. Digital twin technology, widely used in Korea, improves design accuracy and maintenance predictability, reducing downtime.”

Del Toro has also praised these shipbuilders’ ability to forecast construction schedules with pinpoint accuracy down to the day a vessel will be delivered. Again, analysts concurred.

One shipbuilding industry source familiar with the Asian markets said that during the height of the coronavirus outbreak, South Korean yards spent extra resources ensuring their commercial programs would stay on track to avoid costly damage claims by international customers; post-COVID, those commercial efforts have continued moving forward. And while some government programs were late, South Korean industry received leeway from their government on account of the problems the coronavirus caused, similar to measures taken by the US Navy and its own contractors.

As for Japan, William Schneider, who served in the Reagan administration as under secretary of state, wrote in the May report published by the Hudson Institute that Japanese commercial shipbuilding is second only to China. He too attributed that to Japan’s “history of revolutionizing shipbuilding technology.”

“The Japanese shipbuilding industry was the first to introduce automation to produce modern merchant ships at scale,” he wrote. “This significantly reduced manning levels, a crucial capability as navies face unsustainable manning requirements with current technology.”

US Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro walks with officials from HD Hyundai Heavy Industries. (Photo courtesy of US Navy.)

Where The Comparisons Fall Apart

Where most experts took issue with Del Toro’s comparisons were in fundamental differences between how US Navy shipbuilders, focused mostly on building warships, and Asian shipbuilders, who manage both commercial and military programs, do business. (A spokesperson for Del Toro declined to comment for this story.)

In the US, a handful of specialized shipyards take on the lion’s share of the US Navy’s work building warships. While they aren’t precluded from pursuing other business — many have explored ventures in unmanned systems and emerging technologies — it doesn’t alter the fact that their annual bottom lines are made or broken by the combatant ships the government buys that year. And from year-to-year, these shipyards are always subject to the whims of the congressional appropriations process, which can result in ships being added or cut unexpectedly.

The biggest names in South Korea and Japan have the advantage of building for both the military and commercial markets, which necessarily eases the workforce management issues faced by many American yards that must threaten layoffs if the Navy lets production lines go cold. They also enjoy routine subsidies from their governments that are not as systemic or consistent in the US.

“The volume that the Koreans and the Japanese get on their order books also makes the investments that they do make make more sense,” said Paula Zorensky, vice president of the Shipbuilders Council of America. That volume results in “economies of scale” that are rarely seen by American shipbuilders, she added, particularly from US Navy orders which usually consist of one or two ships per year.

Another issue sources brought up was that American military shipbuilders have to follow the lead of Naval Sea Systems Command, the service’s primary agency for buying, designing and building warships. Marine engineers have previously told Breaking Defense those regulations are unlike any other fleet in the world and that is partly due to the decades of experience — and numerous sailors’ lives lost — the service has in combat zones.

“Each regulation by itself was certainly well-intended,” said Wills. “The combination of these regulations and requirements however creates unintended complexity costs in building the ship, and potential delays in construction of which the Navy may not be fully aware.”

To demonstrate how Navy regulations can increase costs, Wills pointed to the Royal Danish Navy’s guided missile frigate Iver Huitfeldt, which had a rough cost of $355 million. For comparison, the US Navy’s first Constellation-class guided missile frigate is expected to cost more than $1 billion.

“That’s pretty amazing for a guided missile frigate,” Wills said of the Iver Huitfeldt. “What we later discovered was that the Danes built some of the ship in Poland, used recycled materials and weapon systems, and did not perform all of the combat systems integration until after the ships were commissioned. The [US Navy] pays for all of that up front.”

These kinds of differences in the details, experts said, is where Del Toro’s comparisons were not giving US industry a fair shake.

“We aren’t making excuses for anything. We work in the environment that we work in. We have to work with the regulations that are quite onerous, that are thousands of pages of regulations and compliance, and we’re happy to do that,” said Matthew Paxton, president of the Shipbuilders Council of America. “We work in the environment that we have to build in, so I think the comparisons [are] a little bit off.”

Where Do Investments Go From Here?

The bottom line of much of Del Toro’s praise for Asian shipbuilders has been that he wants them to invest in American shipyards, one component of what he calls “maritime statecraft,” a theory that proposes American and allied maritime power depends both on commercial and naval shipbuilding. But, experts said, it’s unclear whether the American market even offers the right opportunities for companies, like Hanwha, that are willing to bite.

Bryan Clark, a fellow at the Hudson Institute who has recently spoken to several Korean and Japanese shipbuilders exploring the American market, said the US has a dozen shipyards focused on building commercial vessels, or what he called “the Jones Act Fleet.”

The Jones Act is a law that dictates goods shipped between American ports must be transported on US-built vessels and operated by American crews. Clark said the types of ships that make up this fleet go through generational recapitalization, and the current cycle is close to ending.

“So the US shipyards that build ships for this fleet, the Jones Act Fleet, are all looking at sort of the end of that business and wondering, ‘Okay, how am I going to keep going until the next cycle?’” Clark said. “There’s about a decade where they really have to come up with alternative orders for their order books.”

And that is the position of Philly Shipyard, the yard currently owned by Norwegians and poised to be taken over by South Korea’s Hanwha. Assuming its bid passes regulatory muster, Clark predicted Hanwha will use its new US-based shipyard to compete for work rebuilding the Ready Reserve Fleet, a group of auxiliary ships the Navy and other government agencies rely upon for non-combat tasks, at least until the next tranche of commercial contracts building Jones Act ships comes around.

What success Hanwha has in that time could prove to be a test case for whether it will continue investment in American facilities. It could also influence the company’s interest in reviving its failed bid to purchase Australian shipbuilder Austal, whose subsidiary Austal USA is a key shipbuilder for the US Navy. (While the takeover bid was rejected, both companies appeared to leave open the possibility of future discussions.)

Clark added that while he agrees with Del Toro’s premise of maritime statecraft — that both naval and commercial shipbuilding will play a key part in American maritime power — the secretary’s solutions are where things get “muddy.”

“He’s arguing that these companies — these foreign shipbuilders should then invest in the US. It’s unclear what the benefit of that is. It’s unclear why they would do it from a business perspective,” Clark said.

“The level of interest these foreign shipbuilders have in the US is, I think, driven mostly by a desire to, on their government’s behalf, to improve relations or maintain strong relations with the US more so than these companies individually seeing the business case,” he added.

breakingdefense.com · by Justin Katz · July 15, 2024

15. Evan Wright, journalist and 'Generation Kill' author, dead at 59

Another loss to suicide.

Evan Wright, journalist and 'Generation Kill' author, dead at 59

The reporter wrote first-hand accounts of the invasion of Iraq while embedded with the Marine Corps’ 1st Reconnaissance Battalion.

taskandpurpose.com · by Nicholas Slayton

Journalist Evan Wright, who wrote for Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair and other outlets and documented the Iraq War in the book ‘Generation Kill,’ died on Friday, July 12. He was 59. According to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office, the cause of death was suicide.

Wright’s widow confirmed his death to Rolling Stone.

Wright wrote extensively about the U.S. military and the Global War on Terror. After several years working as a reporter, Wright went into covering war, going to Afghanistan in 2002. The next year he would embark on his most famous reporting project. Wright was embedded with the Marine Corps’ 1st Reconnaissance Battalion, riding with them in Humvees on the front lines of the invasion of Iraq in 2003. He documented the combat, the lulls between missions and the visceral and honest situation of the war and the Marines who fought it.

He quickly took a liking to the Marines, Wright told Task & Purpose in a 2016 interview. Working with them gave him a chance to see the invasion first-hand.

“So, on a professional level, I wanted to be with the unit that was seeing the most stuff,” he said at the time. “I don’t think that I realized what that meant until we were actually shot at.”

Wright covered the opening weeks of the war for Rolling Stone, following the Marines deeper into the country. The articles, under the title of ‘The Killer Elite,’ would earn Wright the 2004 National Magazine Award for Excellence in Reporting. They also formed the basis for his seminal 2004 book ‘Generation Kill.’ In 2008, the book was adapted into an Emmy Award-winning miniseries for HBO. Like the book, the series remains one of the most accurate and honest depictions of the war in Iraq. In the show he was played by actor Lee Tergesen.

During his teenage years, he was sent to a juvenile delinquents home called The Seed, which would later be the subject of his book The Seed: A Memoir. He also worked in Hollywood as a producer on shows including ‘The Man in the High Castle’ and ‘Homeland.’ Alongside ‘Generation Kill’ and ‘The Seed,’ Wright authored the books 2009’s ‘Hella Nation’ and ‘How to Get Away With Murder in America.’ He co-wrote ‘American Desperado’ with Jon Roberts. Before he covered war, he worked for Hustler and other outlets writing about the porn industry. Other features for Rolling Stone had Wright covering film, pop music and crime.

Subscribe to Task & Purpose Today. Get the latest military news and culture in your inbox daily.

After “The Killer Elite,” Wright continued to cover the military and America’s wars abroad. In his 2016 interview with Task & Purpose, Wright explained what he thought made for good war reporting.

“It’s the characters. It’s also not having an agenda. Again, it’s not knowing in advance what you think the story is going to be,” He said. “Immerse yourself in the characters and try to understand their experiences and, in the end, you have to be very critical as a reporter, but it’s the characters.”

If you’re thinking about suicide, are worried about a friend or loved one, or would like emotional support, the Lifeline network is available 24/7 across the United States. Reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline by calling or texting 988 and you’ll be connected to trained counselors.

The latest on Task & Purpose

This 41-year-old soldier graduated Army basic training after a 20 year break
The woman who predicted the Tết Offensive, but was ignored, passes away at 97
National Guard soldiers training with ‘pocket-sized’ drones
Army vet receives Bronze Star with valor 20 years later for bravery in Iraq ambush
2 Civil War soldiers receive Medal of Honor for ‘Great Locomotive Chase’

Nicholas Slayton

Contributing Editor

Nicholas Slayton is a Contributing Editor for Task & Purpose. In addition to covering breaking news, he writes about history, shipwrecks, and the military’s hunt for unidentified anomalous phenomenon (formerly known as UFOs). He currently runs the Task & Purpose West Coast Bureau from Los Angeles.

16. A Globally Integrated Islamic State

Excerpts:

For policymakers, solely focusing on the Islamic State Khurasan Province as the main actor in the Islamic State’s external operations today misses the broader picture. That’s why broadening the aperture to understand the General Directorate of Provinces and coordination within the Islamic State’s provincial network helps uncover a greater understanding of its current organizational structure. In some ways, the Islamic State is far more integrated today than it was five years ago after it lost its territorial control in Iraq and Syria. Nevertheless, from a policy perspective it is key to still realize the importance of the Islamic State’s focus on governance, foreign fighter mobilizations, and external operations, and that it has not dissipated. The former two primarily are occurring at various levels in Mali, Nigeria, Somalia, and Mozambique today. This does not get much attention likely because it is viewed as peripheral to U.S. interests and is not an immediate threat to the homeland. Plus, in the case of Mali, any effort to do anything today is blunted and complicated by Russia’s current domination of the counter-terrorism space in the Sahel. The latter focus on external operations has truly morphed from primarily being planned from Syria to a more resilient model with planning and coordination spread across the Islamic State’s global organizational network.

Understanding this shows the challenges ahead for policymakers and those operating in or around countries all over the world still trying to degrade and/or defeat the Islamic State. The Islamic State of today is different from the Islamic State of the past, and it has been able to adapt thus far to the pressure that has been put on it with its control of territory in four African countries alongside a renewed external operations capacity, and greater, albeit still small, interest in new foreign fighter mobilizations. This highlights that using the same playbook against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria might not work elsewhere, especially since the United States has other policy priorities and it does not necessarily have the same ability to act in certain parts of the world, due to adversarial challenges to particular spaces like Russia’s control of the counter-terrorism theater in the Sahel region. Ignoring this new reality will only lead to the Islamic State potentially once again being thrust higher up on the policy agenda. It would then siphon time and resources away from other policy issues that from a long-term perspective are probably more consequential to U.S. security. Therefore, getting the reality of the Islamic State today right is more important than ever and it is better to put more resources toward this now than an even greater amount later when there might be a future crisis.

A Globally Integrated Islamic State - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Aaron Y. Zelin · July 15, 2024

The Islamic State today looks different than it did five years ago and is far more integrated now as an organization amongst its global network than al-Qaeda ever was. It has been 10 years since the Islamic State announced itself as a caliphate and more than five years since it lost its last vestige of territory in Syria. However, with the Islamic State back in the news due to an increasing external operations capacity (with attacks in Iran, Turkey, and Russia this year as well as numerous broken up plots in Europe), there is a fundamental misunderstanding of how the group operates today. In many ways, it is either incorrectly viewed through the lens of how al-Qaeda operates (a decentralized branch network), since it had previously been a part of al-Qaeda’s global network, or based on how the Islamic State operated when it was at its prior zenith when it controlled territory in Iraq and Syria. It is also likely why some within the U.S. government may have misinterpreted signals intelligence by pushing the idea that the Islamic State leader targeted in Somalia at the end of May, Abd al Qadir Mumin, became the group’s caliph. These changes in the past five years are crucial for policymakers to understand because the way the threat presents itself today will look different from how policymakers dealt with the issue last decade when much of the focus was on the Islamic State’s territorial control in Iraq and Syria.

The most important body for understanding the Islamic State today is its General Directorate of Provinces, which has previously been based in Syria, but new information suggests that at least at the highest levels of it might now have centrality in Somalia. When one understands that structure, the Islamic State’s actions globally make more sense. It is also why we see far more interaction and connection between its various wilayat (provinces) today than in the past. In many ways, the key aspects that animate the Islamic State as an organization (governance, foreign fighter mobilization, and external operations) remain, they have just moved from primarily being based out of or controlled by its location of origin in Iraq and Syria to being spread across its global provincial network. Its aims remain the same, even if the organization has adapted to a changed environment. It is also why the challenge from the Islamic State today is different from the past and why it is in some ways also more resilient now to pressure than before.

This makes the challenge of the Islamic State more difficult from a security perspective than in the past when there was the ability to primarily zero-in on its efforts in Iraq and Syria. Today, only focusing on Iraq and Syria or any other province independent of understanding its connections to other parts of the group’s global network will lead to missing crucial details due to expediency. This is why, although it is understandable that the United States has shifted a lot of its manpower and budgeting to more existential and larger problem-sets such as China and Russia, it would be a mistake to neglect the Islamic State as a continuing, but evolving security challenge. Therefore, it is still useful to continue to have and add more funded government positions across different agencies and departments to focus on tracking this threat to better get ahead of the next surprise. Otherwise, mistakes of misinterpretation will be made as in the past.

Become a Member

Repeating History?

Without this understanding, it is plausible that policymakers will interpret what the Islamic State is doing today differently than what the reality within the organization is. This is not so far-fetched, either. We have been here before. Before the Islamic State’s reemergence in 2013, many government officials and researchers believed the group had been defeated. Several still referred to it as “al-Qaeda in Iraq” despite its renaming as the Islamic State of Iraq seven years earlier. Similarly, while the Islamic State was marching toward territorial control in Iraq and Syria in January 2014, President Barack Obama called the Islamic State the “JV squad” in contrast to the presumably “varsity” al-Qaeda.

Part of this fundamental misunderstanding arose from the politics of the 2003 Iraq invasion and war, a chapter from which officials and others wanted to move on. Offering further context was the 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden, which dampened public interest in pursuing the jihadist movement in general and the Islamic State of Iraq in particular. The scholarly focus by counter-terrorism experts then centered on al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and East Africa-based Harakat al-Shabab al-Mujahidin, because these groups included Western foreign fighters or inspired homegrown radicals in the West to plot attacks in their countries.

One of the biggest knowledge deficits during the Islamic State’s resurgence involved the group’s development over time. This lack of historical understanding led to widespread misinterpretations. The group was incorrectly assessed, variously, as a front for revanchist Baathists, a home for nihilists without any ideology, a millenarian movement uninterested in real-world governance, and a locally focused movement without any plans for external operations.

Now, in the aftermath of the Islamic State losing territory in Iraq and Syria in 2019, history is, in a sense, repeating itself. Many inside and outside the U.S. government who had previously worked on the Islamic State and the jihadist movement have pivoted to more exigent problems, such as the rise of the far right in Western countries, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and worries over China’s growing military strength and geopolitical revisionism regarding the current world order. Increased attention to such issues is no doubt warranted, but the “lull” between jihadist mobilizations should not be mistaken for an end to the challenge.

The General Directorate of Provinces

In the aftermath of the Islamic State announcing that it had expanded itself beyond Iraq and Syria in mid-November 2014 to Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen, it established a structure called the Administration of Distant Provinces. The name of the structure highlights that it was a separate entity from the way that Islamic State administered its various provinces in Iraq and Syria in its core territory at the time. This body would include the other provinces the Islamic State would add in subsequent years such as those in Nigeria, Afghanistan/Pakistan, the Caucasus, Somalia, etc. The design of how the Islamic State operates internally, however, would change as it lost its territorial control in Iraq and Syria. And while many focus on March 2019, when the Islamic State lost its last bit of territory, more relevant in some ways was when it lost its city strongholds in Mosul, Iraq and al-Raqqah, Syria in the summer and fall of 2017.

The Islamic State already had been preparing for changes as far back as the spring of 2016 when the first signs of its loss of control over Iraq and Syria began to become more evident. For example, in a speech in May 2016, then spokesman Abu Muhammad al Adnani prepared the group’s supporters to endure another tactical defeat:

Victory is the defeat of one’s opponent. Were we defeated when we lost the cities in Iraq and were in the desert without any city or land? And would we be defeated [if we lost] Mosul or Sirte or Raqqa? Certainly not! True defeat is the loss of willpower and desire to fight.

This was followed up with an editorial in the group’s weekly newsletter al-Naba in mid-August 2016, discussing the strategy of retreating to the desert (inhiyaz ila al-sahra) as it had previously done in Iraq following the tribal awakening and U.S. surge of troops, prior to its comeback as a relevant actor in 2013 first in Syria and then Iraq. We have seen the Islamic State do this to an extent in the badiya desert regions of central Syria since 2019.

Because the Islamic State was prepared for change ahead of its full territorial collapse, it shouldn’t be surprising that we began to see its provincial structure within Iraq and Syria begin to evolve again. In mid-July 2018, the Islamic State stopped describing its multiple provinces in Iraq (Baghdad, Shamal Baghdad, al-Anbar, Diyala, Karkuk, Salah al-Din, Ninawa, Janub, Fallujah, Dijlah, and al-Jazirah) and Syria (al-Raqqah, al-Barakah, al-Khayr, Hims, Halab, Idlib, Hamah, al-Sham, Latakia, and al-Furat) as such. The Islamic State changed them to just Wilayat al-Sham (Levant Province) and Wilayat al-Iraq (Iraq Province). This is likely around the time that the Islamic State transitioned from separating its core territories from its external provinces with the creation of the General Directorate of Provinces. Danish researcher Tore Hamming believes it coincided with the Islamic State’s creation of new provinces in Central Africa, Turkey, and India in the spring of 2019. The key point about this change was that no longer was its administration in Iraq and Syria separate from the rest of its global provinces. All of the Islamic State’s provinces were now on par with one another.

However, with the creation of the General Directorate of Provinces also came an extra layer of bureaucracy. It created a superstructure that now oversees the provinces themselves, with the General Directorate of Provinces having its own makatib (offices). Based on leaked internal Islamic State documents, these offices include: Maktab (office of) Ard al-Mubarakah, in charge of overseeing the Islamic State’s activity in Iraq and Syria; Maktab al-Sadiq, covering Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, India, and the rest of South Asia; Maktab al-Karrar, managing Somalia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mozambique, and other parts of eastern, central, and southern Africa; Maktab al-Furqan, administering the Lake Chad Basin and the Sahel; Maktab Umm al-Qura, looking after Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf; Maktab Dhu al-Nurayn, focusing on Egypt and Sudan; and Maktab al-Faruq, organizing Turkey, Georgia, the Caucasus, Russia, and Europe. Previously, there was also a Maktab al-Anfal that covered Libya and North Africa, but that is now defunct and likely subsumed under the Maktab al-Furqan. There also used to be a separate Maktab Bilad al-Rafidayn for Iraq, but has since been subsumed into Maktab Ard al-Mubarakah.

Today, the conventional wisdom from people within the U.S. government when speaking privately suggests that the Islamic State is a manageable issue, especially as it relates to Iraq and Syria, and more dispersed than centralized, but making those assumptions might be more related to wanting to focus on other policy challenges than the reality on the ground as the Islamic State has built itself back up over the past five years. It is a more complicated challenge because the way it has built itself back up is different from how we saw it rebound more than a decade ago now in Iraq and Syria. Thus, the way the threat manifests now will look different for policymakers than before, when the group was primarily focused on its territorial control on Iraq and Syria. Instead, due to the greater integration between and among the Islamic State’s provinces, viewing only one or two of them as a threat misunderstands that the allocation of responsibility and resources within the group’s global network has spread, providing longer-term resiliency.

Therefore, when we discuss the Islamic State today in a global sense, in some ways it makes more sense to describe these offices and how they connect with one another than looking at it strictly through the lens of the distinct provinces, as we have been doing for years. This is also the case because the leader of each of the Islamic State’s various provinces reports to the head of the General Directorate of Provinces’ offices that are for that individual’s particular region. In many ways, this better helps shed light on the issue of Mumin, Islamic State external operations, and financing today, as well as why we still see the Islamic State having interest in governance projects and foreign fighter mobilizations even if they are not at the same levels in the past.

Mumin: The Caliph?

On May 31, U.S. Africa Command announced that it targeted the Islamic State’s Somalia Province in the “remote area in the vicinity of Dhaardaar, approximately 81 km southeast of Bosaso” and claimed that it killed three Islamic State militants. This was later followed up with a leak by someone in the Department of Defense claiming in mid-June that one of the targets had been Mumin, who allegedly was the latest Islamic State caliph. Mumin had been the wali (governor) of the Islamic State’s Wilayat al-Sumal (Somalia) since he and others had broken away from al-Shabab and joined the Islamic State in October 2015. Today, Mumin is now reported to be the emir (leader) of Maktab al-Karrar and his prior deputy within the Islamic State Somalia Province, Abdirahman Fahiye Isse Mohamud, has been promoted to the wali position. Although the mid-June report states that the U.S. government is unsure if the airstrike killed Mumin, it was confident in saying that “they did bring the caliph to that region.”

Yet local rumors that the current Islamic State caliph, Abu Hafs al Hashimi al Qurashi, traveled from Syria or Iraq and then through Yemen to the semi-autonomous Puntland region of Somalia in the country’s northeast does not make sense from a logistical standpoint. Mumin had always previously been in Somalia so there would have been no reason for him to travel since he was already there. Further, from an ideological perspective, the caliph has to come from the Prophet Muhammad’s Quraysh tribal lineage, meaning someone from primarily an Arab background rather than someone from Somalia with no connection to this. Of course, there are Somali traditions that state that Abd al Rahman bin Ismail al Jabarti, the alleged common ancestor of the Somali Darod clan (which Mumin belongs to) from the 10th or 11th century, descended from Aqil ibn Abi Talib, a member of the Banu Hashim clan within Quraysh and a cousin of Muhammad. But these stories are likely just that: tradition and mythos. It is also unlikely in the context of questions raised about the Islamic State’s second caliph Abu Ibrahim al Hashimi al Qurashi, debating whether he was Arab or Turkmen. Aymenn al Tammi, a scholar of the Islamic State and its internal documents, suggests that he was “Turkmen by language, not necessarily racial lineage.” Either way, why would the Islamic State tread on something so potentially controversial and undermine its purist ideological worldview with the case of Mumin? Based on what we know of the Islamic State, it is unlikely they would hinge something so significant as the caliph position on something that can’t be totally proven, especially since it would undermine its own project due to the puritanical nature of how it polices its ideology and worldview.

Nevertheless, I can’t help but wonder if there has been some misinterpretation of signals intelligence on Mumin. Whatever the case, based on what is known of the Islamic State’s organization structure today and ideological proclivities, Mumin is more likely to be either the head of the General Directorate of Provinces or the number two. This makes much more sense from an ideological and organizational perspective than him being the caliph. Mumin is one of the few remaining global leaders within the Islamic State’s network today who has not been killed in the last decade. So, it would not be surprising that he would hold trust at the highest echelons of the Islamic State’s power structure today.

This leadership structure change that put Mumin in this position could have been facilitated by Isse Mohamoud Yusuf, a weapons and logistics facilitator for the Islamic State’s Somalia Province. The U.S. Treasury Department claims he helped facilitate in early 2022 the travel of militants on his dhow (a traditional sailing vessel used in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean) from the Middle East to Somalia to attend meetings on the restructuring of the group’s Somali leadership, tactics, and strategies.

This is all crucial from a policy perspective. Failing to understand how the Islamic State’s leadership structure works or the eligibility for the caliph position (10 years since the group first announced its caliphate!) will lead to incorrect analytical assessments and thus undermine any mission when fighting the group. This would not be the first time that a misinterpretation of the Islamic State’s leadership led to poor policymaking decisions either. In the aftermath of the group announcing itself as the Islamic State of Iraq in October 2006, the new leader of the group was Abu Umar al Baghdadi. The U.S. military proclaimed in July 2007 that he was fictional, did not actually exist, and audio messages by the Islamic State of Iraq under his name were being done by an Iraqi actor. However, he was very real, but because of this assessment, it led many within and outside the government to believe that the threat from the Islamic State of Iraq had dissipated. No doubt, the Islamic State of Iraq was in a weak position, but as Haroro Ingram, Craig Whiteside, and Charlie Winter argued, Abu Umar’s leadership at its most difficult time helped the group survive and rebuild its organization for its future reemergence. He did this by making it more resilient locally in Iraq, before he was killed in 2010 and succeeded by the more well-known Abu Bakr al Baghdadi. In hindsight, the lack of understanding of Abu Umar’s important role in linking the Islamic State of Iraq from its past era under Abu Musab al Zarqawi’s stewardship to its more well-known history since 2013 was a failure by policymakers and researchers to understand the Islamic State of Iraq and its leadership.

Therefore, if Mumin was in fact killed, his death would still be significant within the Islamic State’s organizational structure even if he was not the caliph, since he would have been a key manager between its various global provinces. The significance would also go further since it would highlight how the Islamic State has divested leadership roles primarily from Iraqis and to a lesser extent Syrians (with exceptions such as past top military commanders being the Georgian Abu Umar al Shishani and the Tajik Gulmurod Khalimov), showing greater integration within the Islamic State’s leadership structure of those from outside its original core territory in Iraq and Syria. It would also not be surprising if Mumin took on such a role within the Islamic State. In recent years, Maktab al-Karrar, which is embedded above the Wilayat al-Sumal, has risen to become one of the most important offices within the whole system. This is due to it becoming a key node within the Islamic State’s financial networks, according to the United Nations. It helps with any excess revenue from the area that Wilayat al-Sumal controls around the Cal Miskaad mountain range by transferring hundreds of thousands of dollars (if not more) to Islamic State nodes in South Africa. The cash is further sent to Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania and then repurposed to other Maktab al-Karrar provinces (Wilayat Wasat Ifriqiya in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Wilayat Mozambique) as well as distributed to other offices like al-Sadiq, Umm al-Qura, and al-Faruq, which then provide funding to their provinces in Afghanistan, Yemen, and Turkey.

This trend is also not new. For example, there’s a leaked internal Islamic State administrative letter from Mumin to the emir of the Islamic State’s Administration of Distant Provinces back in November 2018 discussing the issue of sending funds to the group’s members in Turkey and Yemen. Furthermore, according to the U.S. government, Bilal al Sudani, who had been in charge of Maktab al-Karrar global financing network until he was killed in January 2023, helped fund the Islamic State attack that killed 13 U.S. service members at Abbey Gate at the Kabul International Airport in August 2021 during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. When we think about the current threat environment related to the Islamic State Khurasan Province and external operations outside of the Afghanistan-Pakistan theater, it is worth reassessing whether it is only Wilayat Khurasan that is involved in these external operations. It is worth considering if it makes more sense to talk more about a pan-provincial external operations network being planned via the General Directorate of Provinces’ offices, which can better help coordinate different attacks and plots amongst the various provinces.

The Islamic State’s External Operations Are Pan-Provincial

In light of the Islamic State Khurasan Province external operations campaign and successful attacks attributed to it by the governments attacked in Iran, Turkey, and Russia this year, there has been much unsurprising focus on this group. However, in some ways focusing solely on it obscures rather than sharpens our understanding of the Islamic State’s external operations network today. Back when the Islamic State was at its peak, most of its external operations from 2014 to 2019 had some connection back to Syria (whether directed, guided, or inspired), with a couple of exceptions tied to the Islamic State in Libya in 2015 and 2016.

However, unlike in most past cases of jihadist external operations where a safe haven has been crucial, there’s been a paradox whereby the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate has actually degraded much of the Islamic State Khurasan Province’s local capacity in Afghanistan. A lot of Islamic State Khurasan Province-related external operations plotting has more to do with recruitment and inspiration online and guidance through encrypted applications than an individual traveling abroad to gain fighting and training experience and then returning home to plot. While this model is not new, it’s the first time we’ve seen it be successful while a group is not in control of territory and shrinking in its local capabilities. This suggests that it is more likely that the Islamic State’s external operations today are being run through its General Directorate of Provinces, coordinating among its offices and provinces to make its external operations campaign more resilient than with just one province planning and controlling everything.

It is also important to remember that the Islamic State did not claim any of the attacks in Iran, Turkey, or Russia as being conducted by Wilayat Khurasan. Rather, the Iran and Russia attacks were claimed by the Islamic State’s central media under “Iran” and “Russia,” not a province, while the one in Turkey was actually claimed through the Islamic State’s Wilayat Turkiya. This distinction is important because the Islamic State has always been meticulous in the way it releases information on its attacks and ideology in general. There is nothing random about it. This suggests that something else is at play, especially since in the past, for example, a previous Islamic State attack in Iran in September 2018 was actually claimed by the Islamic State Khurasan Province. This signals that the way the Islamic State claims attacks has meaning from an organizational perspective.

On top of this, the Wilayat Turkiya claim gave up the fact that this wasn’t just the Islamic State Khurasan Province’s doing, even if the governments in Iran, Turkey, and Russia have pointed directly at it. There is no doubt that it had some role, mainly with the recruitment of individuals online via Central Asian residual foreign fighter networks from the Syrian mobilization remaining in Turkey. It has also taken advantage of disillusioned individuals within Central Asian migrant communities abroad in places like Iran, Turkey, Russia, and Germany.

The March 2024 Crocus City Hall attack in Moscow and a June 2024 plot broken up by Germany in Cologne that was seeking to target the current European soccer championship are noteworthy examples of these intertwined global networks. Both cases had the individual(s) involved traveling to Turkey ahead of actualizing the attack in Russia and the plot being broken up in Germany. Accordingly, it is possible that in both cases there are Islamic State handlers in Turkey who are there to assist or provide final instructions for any last-minute attack preparation. While it is plausible this could have been a coincidence, Turkey has become an epicenter for Islamic State plotting, with the country having the most Islamic State-related arrests globally in the last year. The Wilayat Turkiya networks continue to also be targeted, including three times thus far in 2024, related to financing and smuggling schemes by the U.S.’s Treasury Department. When one zooms out from thinking of this through the lens of the Islamic State’s traditional provincial system and instead via its General Directorate of Provinces offices network, it becomes a bit more crystalized: Germany, Russia, and Turkey all fall under the Maktab al-Faruq within the General Directorate of Provinces.

Moreover, while unrelated to this year’s successful Islamic State attacks abroad, the Iranian government claims that the main individual involved with the mid-August 2023 attack in Shiraz, a Tajik national named Rahmatollah Nowruzof, had previously trained with the Islamic State in Turkey (as well as the Islamic State Khurasan Province in Afghanistan), further illustrating Turkey as a key node within the Islamic State’s global network. It also highlights overlap between regional zones, potentially showing us that these external operations networks could be pan-provincial and making the case that they are being coordinated at the General Directorate of Provinces level. When put side-by-side with what has already been described about financial networks transcending provincial locales and assisting with the financing of operations abroad alongside local activity, the Islamic State’s leadership is clearly much more integrated and coordinated at various levels than is considered conventional wisdom.

Even amongst Islamic State supporter networks there is crossover amongst those that are connected to or are in touch with different parts of the Islamic State’s global network. For example, in mid-December 2023, Spain arrested 11 individuals involved in an international Islamic State support network, which began in 2021. According to Spain’s Ministry of the Interior, two of the ring leaders were discovered to be part of a larger network of Islamic State supporters with connections to branches in Afghanistan (Maktab al-Sadiq), the Sahel (Maktab al-Furqan), the Levant (Maktab Ard al-Mubarakah), and Europe (Maktab al-Faruq), whose members raised money through criminal enterprises in Europe to finance terrorist attacks and mobilize new followers. This network transferred money through cryptocurrency and international shipments to the Islamic State’s various branches around the world.

On top of this, it is worth reminding that many of the Islamic State financial networks in Turkey assist its activity within Syria. This shows that even if the Islamic State in Syria is not viewed as strongly as it had been previously, it still very much is linked into its global network through Maktab Ard al-Mubarakah within the General Directorate of Provinces. For example, in April 2024, the Syrian Democratic Forces arrested Islamic State financial actors Ahmad Fuwaz al Rahman and Muhammad Amin Khalil al Ubayd. They had received money from the Islamic State in Turkey (and Lebanon) via the Rohin money remittance company to be used in local operations through Katibat al-Zubayr bin al-Awam, an undercover Islamic State division based in Hasaka, Syria. (In this article, I have excluded discussion about how the Islamic State’s media operations have been centralized among all provinces since it expanded beyond Iraq and Syria as this is commonly agreed upon amongst researchers.)

Beyond what appears to be a joint external operations planning network that crosses over within the Khurasan, Somali, and Turkish provinces, other plots that have been broken up have shown direct links to other Islamic State provinces. This further demonstrates that the Islamic State’s external operations are not static in terms of where they are coming from, but rather an assault coordinated via its General Directorate of Provinces. Three plots (two in Germany and one in Kuwait) have been broken up that connect back to Islamic State operatives being sent from Iraq to conduct attacks, with one of the plots in Germany having the individual receiving $2,500 directly from the Islamic State in Iraq. Likewise, we have also seen Islamic State-related plots in Israel, France, Sweden, and India in the past four months that directly link back to Islamic State handlers in Syria, Somalia, and Pakistan. Since these cases have only occurred recently, it would not be surprising if other plots or attacks began emanating from other Islamic State provinces too in the coming year as the General Directorate of Provinces coordinates these various plans.

For policymakers, solely focusing on the Islamic State Khurasan Province as the main actor in the Islamic State’s external operations today misses the broader picture. That’s why broadening the aperture to understand the General Directorate of Provinces and coordination within the Islamic State’s provincial network helps uncover a greater understanding of its current organizational structure. In some ways, the Islamic State is far more integrated today than it was five years ago after it lost its territorial control in Iraq and Syria. Nevertheless, from a policy perspective it is key to still realize the importance of the Islamic State’s focus on governance, foreign fighter mobilizations, and external operations, and that it has not dissipated. The former two primarily are occurring at various levels in Mali, Nigeria, Somalia, and Mozambique today. This does not get much attention likely because it is viewed as peripheral to U.S. interests and is not an immediate threat to the homeland. Plus, in the case of Mali, any effort to do anything today is blunted and complicated by Russia’s current domination of the counter-terrorism space in the Sahel. The latter focus on external operations has truly morphed from primarily being planned from Syria to a more resilient model with planning and coordination spread across the Islamic State’s global organizational network.

Understanding this shows the challenges ahead for policymakers and those operating in or around countries all over the world still trying to degrade and/or defeat the Islamic State. The Islamic State of today is different from the Islamic State of the past, and it has been able to adapt thus far to the pressure that has been put on it with its control of territory in four African countries alongside a renewed external operations capacity, and greater, albeit still small, interest in new foreign fighter mobilizations. This highlights that using the same playbook against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria might not work elsewhere, especially since the United States has other policy priorities and it does not necessarily have the same ability to act in certain parts of the world, due to adversarial challenges to particular spaces like Russia’s control of the counter-terrorism theater in the Sahel region. Ignoring this new reality will only lead to the Islamic State potentially once again being thrust higher up on the policy agenda. It would then siphon time and resources away from other policy issues that from a long-term perspective are probably more consequential to U.S. security. Therefore, getting the reality of the Islamic State today right is more important than ever and it is better to put more resources toward this now than an even greater amount later when there might be a future crisis.

Become a Member

Aaron Y. Zelin is the Gloria and Ken Levy Senior Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy where he also directs the Islamic State Worldwide Activity Map project. Zelin is also a research scholar in the Department of Politics at Brandeis University, an affiliate with the Global Peace and Security Centre at Monash University, and founder of the widely acclaimed website Jihadology. He is author of the books Your Sons Are At Your Service: Tunisia’s Missionaries of Jihad (Columbia University Press) and The Age of Political Jihadism: A Study of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (Rowman and Littlefield). Zelin is currently working on a third book tentatively titled Heartland of the Believers: A History of Syrian Jihadism.

Image: Sgt. Joshua Brownlee

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Aaron Y. Zelin · July 15, 2024

17. Minimizing Collateral Damage with the Surgical Application of Force: Applying Lessons from the Post-9/11 Wars to Israel’s War Against Hamas

Excerpts:

To be clear, the threat to Israel is real. Hamas has demonstrated resilience and a willingness to endure the suffering of Gazans to maintain its grip on power, regardless of the human toll. While Hamas has expressed some willingness to negotiate a hostage exchange for Palestinian prisoners, it has shown no inclination toward complete surrender. Offering lethal aid in conjunction with expertise and support to a clearance-of-fires process that prioritizes long-term sustainment of credibility over perceived short-term tactical success is not demanding a ceasefire. If Israel wants to continue to pursue the perpetrators of the attack of October 7, it must be at a pace and through a process that protects Israel’s legitimacy as a democratic state from the harm resulting from excessive collateral damage. So far, Israel has neither eliminated the threat of Hamas nor demonstrated discriminatory fires as a lawful combatant in the way it has conducted operations.

The Israeli military does not have the time to independently refine a clearance-of-fires process like that eventually developed by the US military, especially while fighting under the bias toward action resulting from the perception of immediate threat. Through its significant materiel and expert support to Israel, the United States can help the Israeli military prioritize the protection of civilians and respect for human rights in its military operations at a level necessary to ensure the long-term legitimacy of Israel as a nation and the United States, if it wants to continue as a strategic partner. Despite Israel’s relentless attacks, Hamas has demonstrated resilience and a willingness to endure the suffering of Gazans to maintain its grip on power, regardless of the human toll. If Israel persists with its current pace in combating Hamas, it might think it can stand a chance of effectively eliminating both ordinary members and key leaders within the group. However, this success could come at a significant cost to the country’s future stability, especially if the rate of Palestinian civilian casualties remains high, making it a Pyrrhic victory in the end.

Minimizing Collateral Damage with the Surgical Application of Force: Applying Lessons from the Post-9/11 Wars to Israel’s War Against Hamas - Modern War Institute

mwi.westpoint.edu · by Amina Kator-Mubarez, Chad Machiela · July 15, 2024

Share on LinkedIn

Send email

For many in the United States, the terrorist attack conducted by Hamas on October 7, 2023, was a reminder that the threat of terrorism has not dissipated despite decades of war. Many felt anew the fury resulting from an armed attack upon civilians. As the United States did after the terrorist attack of 9/11, Israel reacted immediately and with overwhelming force against an asymmetric threat hiding among a population of civilians. According to the Israeli military, its forces have achieved tactical success in Gaza by many Hamas leaders. However, this rapid operational success has been achieved at significant risk to the strategic national interests of Israel. Reports conflict regarding the number of civilians killed, but the White House confirmed the number of civilians killed since October 7 exceed sixteen thousand. According to the United Nations, the total number of Palestinians killed exceeds thirty-four thousand. Multiple sources also allege human rights violations against Palestinian civilians in Gaza and the West Bank. Yet the rapid tactical success of the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza, measured by the reported number of terrorists killed, prevents Israeli leadership from recognizing the strategic hazard resulting from negative public perception of equivalent response, military necessity, and acceptance of collateral damage.

During America’s post-9/11 wars, the US military experienced a similar set of dynamics. After early mistakes, US forces refined their targeting processes and calculation of military necessity and mitigation of collateral damage, making improvements over years of combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Coalition commanders learned through bitter experience that anything less than surgical application of force against combatants resulted not only in lost credibility with the public (measured by participation in development initiatives, voting, and reporting of Taliban activity), but the creation of new resistance among the harmed communities. It is in Israel’s strategic interest—and at this juncture, because Israel is considered a strategic American partner, also that of the United States—to apply the lessons that the US military learned late during its conflict in Afghanistan. Effective counterterrorism requires the application of an unwavering and objective balance of military necessity against the absolute minimum possible collateral damage to civilians.

All nations are required to conduct war in accordance with international law, including the Geneva Conventions and the law of armed conflict. These standards apply even when combating terrorist groups or adversaries that are not signatories to the Geneva Conventions, and the legitimacy of the state will be measured by the international community by how the state wages war—even when opponents do not. These laws establish fundamental principles for the humane treatment of civilians, prisoners of war, and combatants, as well as guidelines for the proportionate use of force and the protection of civilian infrastructure. Upholding these laws is essential to minimize civilian casualties and prevent unnecessary suffering during armed conflicts. Failure to wage war within the limits of the law of armed conflict will reduce the perceived legitimacy of combatants, and in an interconnected world perception is as important as reality. Russia’s economy since its invasion of Ukraine demonstrates that a country may survive under international sanctions and trade restrictions but will struggle to thrive. Sanctions limit available trade partners and reduce standing within those relationships.

The terrorist attack committed by agents of Hamas on October 7 was immediately condemned internationally by all but the most radical observers. Figure 1 below highlights the relationship between the intensity of violence of an action and the appropriate intensity of a military response to that action. The red circle approximates the public perception of the Hamas attack immediately after the attack. The relatively low level of violence by Hamas during the weeks preceding the October 7 attack, coupled with the violence of the attack and choice of targets, suggests a plot high on the Y axis denoting level of violence, and left of center on the X axis (which denotes time). Lack of preceding violence increased the perception of suddenness of violence despite long-stated objections to the living conditions of Palestinians in Israel and the aggressive acts against Palestinians by Jewish settlers. The violence committed by Hamas on that day was unannounced, unexpected, and well above the perceived level of acceptable response to Israel’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank for the international audience. This attack was above the perceived level of violence that an observer would consider appropriate within the conflict’s framework.

Figure 1. Gordon McCormick’s Equivalent Response Model. Graphic published in Eric P. Wendt’s “Strategic COIN Modeling” (Special Warfare, September 2005). Assessment of public perception of Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attack added by authors.

The initial response to the attack by the Israeli military was immediate and overwhelming, as was its response to previous provocations. It has exceeded even the high degree of violence Hamas sought to provoke, which the group hoped would be seen as beyond the elevated threshold of acceptable violence. By allegedly hiding its headquarters and supply positions in hospitals and other civilian facilities Hamas ensured that Israeli responses would be executed in an environment with the highest potential for collateral damage to Palestinian noncombatants. Early Israeli military attacks upon Hamas units and facilities resulted in civilian casualties, only partially offset by international recognition that the colocation of fighters, weapons, or headquarters in targets that would normally be on the restricted fire list removed that protected status. The reports, photos, and videos of significant casualties among women and children transmitted via multiple media venues without offsetting evidence detailing the military necessity of lethal action against specific target locations supported the narrative that the response by the Israeli military did not appropriately balance support to military objectives against potential resulting collateral damage. The resulting perception of the level of violence in the Israel Defense Forces’ response to the provocation by Hamas is demonstrably above the acceptable threshold for many international observers, represented in Figure 2 below. Initial response is graphed high on the Y axis to denote the popular perception of the level of violence applied, and slightly right on the X axis to denote the short passage of time between the attack and Israel’s response. The quick response time by Israel demonstrates a deterrent willingness to respond to provocation—important in competition with terrorist organizations—but the quick response also prevents observers from growing accustomed to seeing collateral damage incurred during military operations.

Figure 2. McCormick’s Equivalent Response Model. Assessment of Israeli response to Hamas’s attack added by the authors.

Early United States military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan also resulted in collateral damage and death to noncombatants. The dearth of privately owned cameras among the population in both countries then partially isolated the public from the daily conflicts, absent journalists. The lack of immediate public response to collateral damage may have encouraged commanders to accept greater levels of risk than were common to operations later in the conflicts. Force protection objectives encouraged commanders early in the conflicts to apply the maximum appropriate lethal force to reduce threats to the unit and the public. Commanders deployed later to both conflicts discovered that many anti-Iraq forces and Taliban fighters had been mobilized based on deaths and injuries of relatives and close personal contacts and noncombatants killed during military operations. They also discovered that the spread of digital cameras, ubiquitous video recording made possible through smartphones, and cellular internet access in remote areas support the broadcast of collateral damage against civilians and resulting suffering in real time and full color. Availability bias supports the terrorist or insurgent, as the public does not see the risk mitigation or damage calculation implanted during planning. It is worth noting, even if modern technology facilitates faster public awareness and response, the primary reason for adhering to the law of armed conflict is the inherent value of these principles in promoting humane treatment and limiting the horrors of war. Public scrutiny can reinforce compliance, but the core obligation to follow these laws exists independently of whether the world is watching.

By 2018, US forces operating in Afghanistan had recognized the impact of real-time communication on the battlefield and had developed robust procedures to balance the military necessity of identified targets against potential collateral damage, with calculations completed in conjunction with coalition partners to maximize transparency (within classification limits). This process drastically slowed the pace of operations and increased intelligence requirements to clear lethal fires, allowing many observed threat actors to escape immediate interdiction. One of the authors participated in a four-day target observation clearance in 2018, employing multiple observation systems to count individual noncombatants near a proposed target. Destruction of this target would have resulted in killing hundreds of terrorists, but clearance of fires was contingent upon estimated collateral damage less than a specified number (this number was expressed in a single digit). As during many other planned operations during 2018, these conditions were not met, and fires never cleared. While not a desirable tactical outcome in this case, US senior commanders had learned that public anger and lost credibility due to collateral damage imposed a greater threat to strategic success than the escape of even hundreds of identified terrorists, and that discretion allowed units to engage targets at a time more advantageous to the mission. This discretion, in conjunction with standing procedures for providing immediate medical aid to injured civilians (to include evacuation to a hospital and lodging for family members to accompany the casualties during treatment), had reduced the significance of collateral damage as a narrative to allow other variables to dominate discussion.

It would be natural if the historical treatment of Jews as a people and the constant threat to Israel as a nation contributes to something of a bunker mentality, where the immediacy of a demonstrated threat biases leaders toward an overwhelming response to ensure survival above other concerns. The attack by Hamas on October 7 was intended to exploit this bias, provoking Israel into a response that would be viewed as disproportionate by those that do not perceive the threat an existential one.

Given the significance of Israel as a strategic ally in the region, the United States military and civilian leadership must assist Israel in refining its targeting process and assessment of military necessity against collateral damage based on the methods employed in the later years of the conflict in Afghanistan. This assistance is unlikely to be accepted willingly. Like the United States after 9/11, stamping out terrorist threats became a national strategic priority, with all else a distraction. Calls to restrict aid to Israel have often been presented as binary, conditioning US aid to Israel upon a ceasefire or restrictions against specific operations. In response, critics express skepticism that a terrorist group like Hamas will observe a ceasefire and allege that conditioning aid to a strategic regional ally is not only poor policy, but antisemitic and a poor way to support a national victim of terrorism given that many Western nations provided unwavering support for the United States after 9/11. The United States might have benefited early after 9/11 had US military forces had access to a partner with experience in minimizing collateral damage during urban operations. Conditioning lethal aid to the application of a deliberate clearance-of-fires procedure—with minimal and clearly defined levels of collateral damage—is not anti-Israel. On the contrary, acceptance of such a condition would help Israel stop the hemorrhage of civilian blood and Israel’s legitimacy as a state with it. Such a condition would at least begin to counter the narrative of US complicity in collateral damage.

Already multiple sources have alleged human rights abuses by the Israeli military, particularly in relation to its actions in the occupied territories and during military operations such as those in Gaza. These allegations include excessive use of force, targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure, starvation as a weapon or war, and restrictions on humanitarian access. The barbarity of war often results in inappropriate actions by even the most disciplined of forces. The more risk of overall collateral damage a commander accepts, the greater the potential for even an unsanctioned action to undermine the legitimacy of the operation to the global community. International public perception of the Israeli military has been further eroded by recent operations in Rafah, a location Israel had designated as a haven for Palestinian civilians. Images have emerged of an Israeli airstrike on a tent camp in Rafah, set up for Palestinians who had been forcibly displaced. Reports indicate that women and children comprised the majority of the forty-five casualties in the assault. Even more recently, while the return of four Israeli hostages was undoubtedly a relief, it came at a considerable expense. The operation to rescue them flagrantly breached the principles of the law of armed conflict, notably regarding proportionality. It remains untenable within any legal framework to argue that the salvation of four hostages justifies the death of over two hundred Palestinian civilian lives, thus exacerbating negative global perception of Israel. The disconnect between global public perception and public opinion among Israelis appears to be only growing. According to a recent Pew Research Center survey conducted by Israelis in Israel, when asked about their nation’s military intervention against Hamas in Gaza, around 40 percent of Israelis believe that it has been appropriately executed, while an additional 34 percent believe it has fallen short.

The Israeli military does not have the time to independently refine the clearance-of-fires process to the point it was developed by the US military, laboriously over years, especially while fighting under the bias toward immediate action resulting from the perception of the scale of the threat. Through its significant military financial assistance ($15 billion in unconditional military aid) and expert support to Israel, the United States can influence Israel and the Israeli military to prioritize the protection of civilians and respect for human rights in its military operations at a level necessary to demonstrate Israel’s compliance with the law of armed conflict and Geneva Convention.

To be clear, the threat to Israel is real. Hamas has demonstrated resilience and a willingness to endure the suffering of Gazans to maintain its grip on power, regardless of the human toll. While Hamas has expressed some willingness to negotiate a hostage exchange for Palestinian prisoners, it has shown no inclination toward complete surrender. Offering lethal aid in conjunction with expertise and support to a clearance-of-fires process that prioritizes long-term sustainment of credibility over perceived short-term tactical success is not demanding a ceasefire. If Israel wants to continue to pursue the perpetrators of the attack of October 7, it must be at a pace and through a process that protects Israel’s legitimacy as a democratic state from the harm resulting from excessive collateral damage. So far, Israel has neither eliminated the threat of Hamas nor demonstrated discriminatory fires as a lawful combatant in the way it has conducted operations.

The Israeli military does not have the time to independently refine a clearance-of-fires process like that eventually developed by the US military, especially while fighting under the bias toward action resulting from the perception of immediate threat. Through its significant materiel and expert support to Israel, the United States can help the Israeli military prioritize the protection of civilians and respect for human rights in its military operations at a level necessary to ensure the long-term legitimacy of Israel as a nation and the United States, if it wants to continue as a strategic partner. Despite Israel’s relentless attacks, Hamas has demonstrated resilience and a willingness to endure the suffering of Gazans to maintain its grip on power, regardless of the human toll. If Israel persists with its current pace in combating Hamas, it might think it can stand a chance of effectively eliminating both ordinary members and key leaders within the group. However, this success could come at a significant cost to the country’s future stability, especially if the rate of Palestinian civilian casualties remains high, making it a Pyrrhic victory in the end.

Amina Kator-Mubarez is a faculty research associate in the Defense Analysis Department at the Naval Postgraduate School.

Chad Machiela is a retired US Army Special Forces warrant officer with more than thirty-six years of experience working in the US Indo-Pacific, Central, Africa, and European Command areas of responsibility. Chad is now a faculty research associate in the Common Operational Research Environment Laboratory at the Naval Postgraduate School.

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

Image credit: WAFA

Share on LinkedIn

Send email

mwi.westpoint.edu · by Amina Kator-Mubarez, Chad Machiela · July 15, 2024

18. The Vicious Cycle of American Political Violence

The Vicious Cycle of American Political Violence

A Conversation With Robert Lieberman on the Trump Shooting

July 14, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by July 14, 2024 · July 14, 2024

The attempt on former U.S. President Donald Trump’s life on July 13 marked the first time in more than 40 years that someone has shot a current or former U.S. president. It is still not clear what motivated the gunman, but his attack comes at—and adds to—a moment of high political tension across the United States.

To understand what this incident means for both the presidential campaign and the future of the United States, Foreign Affairs senior editor Daniel Block spoke on Sunday evening with Robert Lieberman, a professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University. “History reveals that American democracy has always been vulnerable,” Lieberman wrote in a 2020 article for this magazine that he co-authored with the political scientist Suzanne Mettler. Roiled by the divisive Trump presidency, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the unrest sparked by the murder of George Floyd, “the country has never faced a test quite like this,” they wrote. Now it faces another such test. The conversation below has been edited for clarity and length.

Over the past 24 hours, have you been thinking about any particular period or episode in U.S. history?

The thing that I’ve been mulling over is 1968, which was a year of political assassinations, both of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy, in the middle of a very tumultuous presidential campaign in which an incumbent president was in trouble. U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson eventually dropped out leading up to the Democratic Party’s convention in Chicago, which was turbulent. Now, again, we have a tumultuous presidential campaign under the specter of political violence.

What are some of the main lessons from 1968 that we should take away as we’re thinking about what’s going to happen next?

Robert C. Lieberman

One thing we have to remember is that 1968 did not go well for the Democratic Party. Vice President Hubert Humphrey was anointed Johnson’s successor, and he lost the election. Richard Nixon, the winner, was not exactly the soothing, unifying figure the country needed at that moment. For sure, Trump will not be that figure if he ends up winning this election.

Are there any key differences?

At that point in 1968, the country was considerably less polarized than it is today. That’s where the parallel begins to break down. The Trump shooting happened at a moment when polarization is so intense that it is quite worrisome, because when polarization becomes very extreme, it is no longer a game between electoral antagonists. It instead becomes something like mortal combat, where people believe if the other side wins, it’s a mortal threat to their values and to the very existence of the country as they understand it. And it’s not that far a leap from that kind of polarized politics to serious violence.

1968 is a good example. There are also other moments when United States has faced democratic crises, including the fraught 1798 presidential campaign, the Civil War, and Watergate. What forces bring about these incidents, and how are they at work today?

There are four features that help cause democratic crises. The first is political polarization, the second is conflict over who belongs in the political community, the third is high and growing economic inequality, and the fourth is excessive executive power. At least one of these forces has been present at every moment of democratic turmoil in U.S. history.

What makes the last four years different is that all of them are present. They helped fuel Trump’s rise and were part of why the country was vulnerable to an incident like the storming of the Capitol on January 6. And unfortunately, every such event only further weakens the country’s democracy. It makes the Trump shooting even more dangerous and provocative than it otherwise would be.

When polarization becomes very extreme, it becomes something like mortal combat.

When it comes to the possibility of more violence, what are the biggest risks? How out of control could matters reasonably get?

It’s hard to speculate. I don’t think a lot of people would’ve seen January 6 coming, even in the midst of then-President Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric about the election being stolen. But we know that there are Trump supporters who are armed and who celebrate that kind of militaristic style of politics. So I really worry that if Trump and his people start talking about this in an inflammatory way, you could see not just sporadic attacks—which is what this shooting seems to have been—but more collective and organized forms of violence.

How do you expect the shooting will affect the rest of this presidential campaign? How might Trump respond?

Well, Trump has never shied away from embracing or celebrating violence. Think about his Charlottesville comments. Think about all of the rhetoric surrounding January 6, both before and during and after. He uses dehumanizing language to talk about his political antagonists. So what I really fear is that Trump will seize on this incident to further stoke violence among his followers.

We’ve already seen some Trump proxies promoting the idea that it was President Biden’s political rhetoric that provoked the attack. They point out that Biden has advanced the idea that Trump is dangerous, that his victory would be a blow to American democracy. And they are trying to suggest that this campaign rhetoric might be what prompted the shooting. I really worry that Trump and his team will keep promoting this message. And the further that message spreads among an already angry and armed population, the greater the risk of attacks.

I really worry you could see not just sporadic attacks, but more collective and organized forms of violence.

How do you think the Biden administration should respond to this event?

President Biden has done the right thing so far, which is to denounce the act. He expressed condolences for those who were harmed—including Donald Trump, for whom we know President Biden has no particular love. He’s trying to call for some measure of unity.

But Biden is really a little bit on his back foot here, because the shooting becomes a rallying cry for Trump and his supporters. And the president’s job in this moment is to look presidential and look statesmanlike, which puts him in an asymmetrical disadvantage rhetorically.

Could his speeches still help heal the country?

I hope that the Biden campaign and the White House can find a way to sort of put a lid on what seems to be rage and fury and calm things down a little bit. But I fear that what Biden doesn’t have is the rhetorical gift of say, Robert F. Kennedy. After the Martin Luther King assassination in 1968, Kennedy got up and almost extemporaneously gave a pretty well-known speech, calling for unity and calling for calm and calling for something positive to come out of this horrible event. Biden, to the extent that he ever had that kind of gift, doesn’t have it anymore. Especially given the events of the campaign in the last couple of weeks, it’s hard for people to see Biden as the figure who is really going to rally the country.

Is there an optimistic precedent for how the country might recover? What needs to happen for American democracy to survive this crisis?

The shooting becomes a rallying cry for Trump and his supporters.

I think the most optimistic scenario would be some kind of reckoning with political violence that leads to more unity. In the weeks after Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981, his approval rating climbed to the highest point it would reach in his entire presidency, and when he returned from his convalescence, he was greeted with magnanimity even by his political opponents. But for the country to rally against political violence today, there would need to be some restraint on both sides. I’m not sure that’s in the cards, given the forces at work.

The shooting came not long after the Supreme Court decision granted presidents broad immunity from the actions they take in office. If Trump does go on to win, could this shooting expand his plans or reshape how he governs?

The court ruling was another step of what we call executive aggrandizement, which is the gradual growth and consolidation of presidential power, concentrating authority in one person rather than dispersing it among many. It is one of those four forces that prompt democratic crises. The best example is Watergate, which was a story of Nixon using tools that had accrued to the presidency over decades in order to subvert the democratic process.

We already had the sense before the shooting that a second Trump term would mean the executive branch could become an instrument of his own ambitions, obsessions, or vendettas. And I think the worry is that this incident will only further push him in that direction. You can imagine that this incident will prompt Trump and his inner circle to bring the Justice Department or other prosecutorial arms down onto anyone who even has a whiff of political opposition. The gloves could come off—if they were ever on.

Foreign Affairs · by July 14, 2024 · July 14, 2024

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

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

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

Access NSS HERE

Company Name | Website