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Quotes of the Day:
“The primary challenge in unconventional conflicts (or Irregular Warfare) is political-psychological, multi-dimensional, and rarely susceptible to single-component strategies or orthodox political-military operations. While all wars are political and psychological, in unconventional conflicts (or Irregular Warfare) military operations quickly and pervasively take on political and psychological dimensions, often placing military operations in second place.”
– Sam Sarkesian, Unconventional Conflicts, 1993 (page 22)
"I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts."
– John Locke
"Think like a man of action, and act like a man of thought."
– Henri Bergson
1. Israel’s Undercover Forces Emerge as Gaza’s Newest Battlefield Player
2. Russia and China send multiple warships to contested South China Sea
3. The world cannot ignore the evil network of Russia, Iran, Hamas, and North Korea - opinion
4. Former Syrian Official in Charge of Notorious Prison Is Arrested in Los Angeles
5. [Vantage Point] China's silent invasion of the Philippines
6. Asian Powers Have Their Strategic Sights Set on Europe
7. Trump Tells Taiwan to Expect a Higher Price Tag for U.S. Defense
8. He’s a Lock: New brigadier general leading SEALs and Green Berets at SOCEUR
9. Military burn pit exposure not tracked properly, DOD watchdog warns
10. An Army Ammunition Plant’s Bullets Keep Showing Up in Mass Shootings. Lawmakers Want Answers.
11. Experienced Snipers Break Down The Trump Assassination Attempt
12. Afghanistan War Commission wants veteran stories and questions
13. Russia, China, Iran and North Korea are ‘deadly quartet’ – defence review chief
14. Sustainable Sustainment: Supplying War in the Age of Strategic Competition
15. The Case for Inclusive Alliances
16. The Palestinian Authority Is Collapsing
17. Playing Catch-Up on Grand Strategy
18. Teamwork wins as Navy SEALs guide civilians in Paintball With a Mission
19. Trump allies draft AI order to launch ‘Manhattan Projects’ for defense
20. US renews call on China to stop aggressive actions in disputed sea
21. China, Philippines set up hotline to prevent South China Sea clashes
1. Israel’s Undercover Forces Emerge as Gaza’s Newest Battlefield Player
Fauda. I wonder if NETFLIX will air the next season of Fauda which is a fictional account of these forces,
Israel’s Undercover Forces Emerge as Gaza’s Newest Battlefield Player
Last month’s hostage-rescue mission was a watershed in the country’s long history of disguising its forces as Palestinians
https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/israel-military-undercover-unit-gaza-hostage-rescue-7819a7e2?mod=latest_headlines
A dramatic hostage rescue in Gaza on June 8 opened a window to a world of espionage. Former Israeli counterterrorism officer Shir Peled explains the work of the undercover fighters. PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: PALESTINIAN HEALTH MINISTRY/DROR LEBENDIGER
By Dov LieberFollow
Updated July 17, 2024 12:37 am ET
TEL AVIV—The Israeli commandos who rescued four hostages in Gaza drove a pair of battered white trucks—one displaying a soap advertisement, the other bearing a mattress and furniture on the roof. They were armed, but their main weapon was disguise, blending into a Hamas stronghold until the guns started firing.
The early June rescue mission has become the most prominent example of Israel’s famous undercover units on the battlefield in the Gaza Strip, a dangerous foray into a territory that its covert forces once found nearly impenetrable. Subterfuge is a skill set that Israel’s security services have honed for decades in the West Bank, with operatives known as “mista’arvim”—a Hebrew moniker borrowed from an Arabic term for people steeped in Arab culture.
Now, the covert unit’s presence in Gaza adds a volatile new element to the war zone, where a blown cover could be disastrous and civilian disguises sometimes constitute a war crime.
Hamas fighters are also operating in civilian garb in Gaza.
A screen image from a security camera shows Israeli forces in disguise. PHOTO: IBN SINA HOSPITAL/ANADOLU/GETTY IMAGES
Depicted in the Netflix series, “Fauda,” the mista’arvim are lionized as heroes in Israeli society—and hated among Palestinians, who view them as menacing illegal hit squads.
Avi Issacharoff, the co-creator of “Fauda” and a former member of a military undercover unit, said the hostage rescue in Nuseirat was unlike anything he had witnessed. Most missions take place in the West Bank, where Israel has long held security control.
“The new thing is that they do undercover operations during a war inside an enemy territory,” he said. “This is what is so crazy.”
Last month’s rescue in the central Gaza city of Nuseirat relied on weeks of intelligence-gathering, commandos who practiced on replicas of the buildings housing the hostages and the positioning of thousands of soldiers to provide support, Israeli military officials said. The masquerade was vital to the daylight operation. Officials said they feared Hamas guards would kill their captives the moment they detected Israeli commandos.
“It’s not enough to find the right vehicle. You need to disguise it so it will work out in this specific territory,” said Shir Peled, a former undercover fighter for Israeli police.
In simultaneous raids on two apartment blocks, the teams maintained the element of surprise. Israeli forces, military officials said, overwhelmed the captors, extracted their bounty and battled through crowded streets to get the hostages to the beach and spirit them away on helicopters.
It is likely that undercover operatives were in the neighborhood for weeks before the rescue and present when it began to deal with Hamas’s guards, said Tomer Tzaban, a member of a small undercover military unit that operated in the Gaza Strip in the 1990s. Now Israeli intelligence is likely on a recruiting spree for local collaborators inside Gaza while mista’arvim also continue to operate there, Tzaban said.
Shir Peled, who said she was Yamam’s first female operative, on an operation and during an interview with WSJ.
SHIR PELED, YUVAL HORVITZ FOR WSJ
In Tzaban’s era, Gaza was a difficult assignment. Even before Israel and Egypt imposed an embargo in 2006, there weren’t many visitors, so there were few disguises to choose from—construction worker could work, he said. Tourist couldn’t.
Gaza today is much different. The war has left more than 38,000 people dead, according to health authorities in Gaza, who don’t specify how many were combatants. Israeli military operations have destroyed swaths of the strip and displaced most of its two million people.
That makes it easier for undercover operatives. “Right now, it’s a big mess,” Tzaban said. “Every story you tell can be true.”
In February, Israeli special forces rescued two elderly male hostages held in Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city. Just as in the Nuseirat operation, Israeli forces sneaked deep into Hamas territory without being found out.
As Israel gains further control over Gaza, it is expected to become more like the West Bank, with frequent Israeli raids to arrest or kill militants, or rescuing hostages in the absence of any deal for their freedom. That means undercover operations are likely to continue inside the enclave for the foreseeable future.
“If you want to find hostages or search for senior commanders of Hamas, you have to have people on the ground, and they can’t walk around with an Israeli flag,” said a person familiar with Israeli special operations strategy.
The undercover tactic poses legal risks for Israeli forces. In wartime, soldiers disguised as civilians risk being charged with perfidy—pretending to be someone with protected status to carry out an attack. Perfidy was established as a war crime to protect people such as health workers from becoming targets.
Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist group, has published videos of its fighters dressed as civilians attacking Israeli forces. The group’s military wing has uniforms. Operating in civilian clothes in Gaza enables them to mix in with the population. Israeli soldiers who fought in Gaza say it makes them suspicious of any fighting age males.
Michael Schmitt, an expert on the laws of armed conflict at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, said perfidy doesn’t prohibit soldiers from using civilian vehicles or dressing like civilians. It does restrict masquerading as civilians to get close enough to kill or wound the enemy, but that itself is complicated. In Nuseirat, using civilian cars may have prevented an early shootout and saved lives, and the operation was done to rescue hostages, whose abduction itself he said was a war crime.
“I think it’s critically important to remember the context,” Schmitt said.
Spokespeople for the Israeli military, police and the country’s internal security service, known as the Shin Bet, declined to answer questions regarding the issue of perfidy and their undercover operations including the use of disguise.
Every undercover operation is a dangerous risk—and some backfire, or claim innocent lives.
Israel has heavily bombarded the Nuseirat camp where four hostages were rescued. PHOTO: SAHER ALGHORRA/ZUMA PRESS
In 2018, an Israeli team entered Gaza, some posing as aid workers, according to Hamas. After Hamas personnel became suspicious and stopped their vehicle, a shootout followed, killing the Israeli commander, a native Arabic speaker. A helicopter evacuation got the rest of the team out of Gaza.
In Nuseirat, Palestinian health authorities said 274 people were killed and nearly 700 injured in the battle that erupted around the June rescue mission. Israel’s military said around 100 people were killed or wounded, including militants and civilians caught in the crossfire. One Israeli commando was killed.
In the West Bank city of Jenin, where there are frequent Israeli raids, militants try to counter infiltrators with measures like spot checkpoints, said a Palestinian militant there. “The presence of these undercover units has left our community feeling constantly vulnerable,” the militant said.
Covert operatives became a mainstay of Israeli national security around 24 years ago, during the Palestinian uprising known as the second Intifada, when large Palestinian militant networks emerged.
The Shin Bet, the Israeli police and the Israeli military have their own mista’arvim units. The Nuseirat rescue was led by the police team, the Yamam, and aided by the Shin Bet, said officials from both agencies.
One of the four rescued hostages arriving by helicopter at the Sheba Medical Center in Ramat Gan, Israel. PHOTO: ILIA YEFIMOVICH/DPA/ZUMA PRESS
Undercover units recruit from across Israeli society, employing operatives who might blend in as tourists, clergy, doctors or ultra-Orthodox Jews, former operatives said. More than 20% of Israel’s population are native Arabic speakers.
Most mista’arvim are focused on gathering intelligence and making arrests to halt or prevent Palestinian militant attacks on Israel, former operatives said. The units seek recruits who stay calm under pressure, said Peled, who said she was Yamam’s first female operative.
Peled, who has since left the Yamam, said her disguises included being a religious Muslim, a tourist and an ultra-Orthodox Jewish woman. She never learned to speak Arabic.
During her training, her minder took her to a Palestinian bakery in East Jerusalem and gave her the simple mission of keeping him under surveillance. While she waited in line, posing as a schoolgirl, he began shouting that she was a thief. She bolted.
“It was a failure,” she said.
Abeer Ayyoub and Fatima AbdulKarim contributed to this article.
Write to Dov Lieber at dov.lieber@wsj.com
Appeared in the July 17, 2024, print edition as 'Israel’s Undercover Forces Emerge As Gaza’s Newest Battlefield Player'.
2. Russia and China send multiple warships to contested South China Sea
I have not seen much reporting on this.
Russia and China send multiple warships to contested South China Sea
Newsweek · by Ryan Chan · July 15, 2024
ByChina News Reporter
The quasi-alliance of China and Russia is holding joint naval activities in the South China Sea, China's navy announced.
On Monday, the Chinese navy reported details about its fourth joint patrol with the Russian navy since 2021 in a post on a social platform. It said the joint naval formation had entered the South China Sea via the Balintang Channel the previous day.
The formation began the patrol in waters around South Korea's Jeju Island in the East China Sea earlier, the report said. It then transited the Osumi Strait near Japan eastward before heading southward to the South China Sea.
The U.S. Navy regularly holds joint exercises and patrols with its allied navies in the South China Sea. But it is rare for China to do the same, as it views the contested waters as its "backyard."
In Focus
In this image provided by the Chinese navy on July 15, the Chinese and Russian navies conduct a joint patrol in the western and northern Pacific Ocean. The navies' fourth joint patrol since 2021.
The Balintang Channel is located in the Luzon Strait, a strategic choke point that lies between Taiwan to the north, the Philippines to the south, the South China Sea to the west and the Philippine Sea to the east.
Both the Philippines and Taiwan are allies of the United States in the Indo-Pacific region. Taiwan is a self-ruled island claimed by Beijing as a breakaway province. The Philippines has territorial disputes with China in the South China Sea.
China deployed the Type 052D destroyer Yinchuan, Type 054A frigate Hengshui and Type 903 replenishment ship Weishanhu for the joint patrol, while Russia sent the Steregushchiy-class corvette Sovershennyy, the report said.
The joint patrol deepened the mutual understanding and traditional friendship between the Chinese and Russian militaries, the Chinese navy said. It added that the two sides enhanced their abilities to jointly respond to maritime security threats.
In a statement released on Sunday, China's Defense Ministry said the joint patrol in the western and northern Pacific Ocean did not target a third party and "had nothing to do with the current international and regional situation."
It is not immediately clear whether the joint patrol has concluded. Newsweek contacted the Chinese and Russian defense ministries for comment by email.
In Focus
In this screenshot from a video released by the Chinese navy on July 14, Chinese and Russian warships dock at a military port in Zhanjiang in south China's Guangdong province. On Sunday, the two navies kicked off a joint exercise called "Exercise Joint Sea-2024."
On Sunday, the Chinese and Russian navies commenced "Exercise Joint Sea-2024" in Zhanjiang, a Chinese city located in the southern province of Guangdong that faces the South China Sea. The exercise series began in 2012.
The Chinese navy said the two navies have continued to improve their capability to conduct joint military operations. The Russian navy said the joint exercise could contribute to maintaining maritime and regional security.
Warships from the two sides are set to conduct anchorage defense, joint reconnaissance and early warning, joint search and rescue, and joint air defense and antimissile exercises, the Chinese navy said. Training with the use of weapons is included.
A total of seven ships are participating in the exercise, Chinese state media reported. The Global Times said four were from the Chinese side: the Type 052D destroyer Nanning, Type 054A frigates Xianning and Dali, and Weishanhu.
The Russian side dispatched Steregushchiy-class corvettes Gromkiy and Rezkiy and the oiler Irkut, the outlet said. The exercise is scheduled to run until mid-July.
An F-35B Lightning II fighter aircraft preparing to land on the flight deck of the U.S. Navy amphibious assault ship USS America while conducting routine operations in the Philippine Sea on July 13. There are... An F-35B Lightning II fighter aircraft preparing to land on the flight deck of the U.S. Navy amphibious assault ship USS America while conducting routine operations in the Philippine Sea on July 13. There are currently no U.S. Navy aircraft carriers deployed in the South China Sea. Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Jeadan Andre/U.S. Navy
The Global Times said on Sunday that the joint naval activities between China and Russia were routine and showed a wide scope of naval cooperation, quoting military experts in the country.
There are currently no U.S. Navy aircraft carriers deployed in the South China Sea, as they are on missions in other regions or undergoing maintenance.
Photos released by the U.S. Department of Defense showed USS America, an America-class amphibious assault ship that can perform as a light aircraft carrier, conducting flight operations with the stealthy F-35B fighter jets while underway in the Philippine Sea on Saturday.
Ryan Chan is a Newsweek reporter based in Hong Kong, where he previously had over a decade of experience at a local newspaper, covering China and current events around the world. His focus is on security and defense issues in the Western Pacific region. He is a graduate of Hong Kong Baptist University. Contact Ryan at r.chan@newsweek.com
Newsweek · by Ryan Chan · July 15, 2024
3. The world cannot ignore the evil network of Russia, Iran, Hamas, and North Korea - opinion
A view from Jerusalem.
Excerpt:
This web of evil is not just a theoretical threat; it has tangible and devastating consequences.
The world cannot ignore the evil network of Russia, Iran, Hamas, and North Korea - opinion
Together, we must face this threat with the full force of our collective resolve. Let us not be caught in the web of evil intentions.
By YEVGEN KORNICHUK
JULY 16, 2024 04:03
Jerusalem Post
In recent months, a disturbing and dangerous alliance is taking shape on the world stage, threatening the stability and security of many countries. This emerging axis – which includes Russia, Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, and North Korea – represents a convergence of nefarious interests that should alarm us all. As Ukraine’s ambassador to Israel, I am forced to emphasize the serious consequences of this network and urge the international community to respond with determination and unity.
The strategic partnership between Russia and Iran has progressed significantly, culminating in an almost final agreement that emphasizes their shared aspirations. This relationship is not just about economic or military cooperation; it is a partnership built on mutual support of violent nonstate actors and regimes that violate international norms.
Iran’s support for Hamas, a terrorist organization threatened by many countries, including Israel and the United States, is a critical component of this network. Russia’s involvement with Iran and groups such as Hamas is particularly troubling.
Moscow seeks to expand influence
Moscow consistently seeks to expand its influence in the Middle East, often at the expense of regional stability. By aligning with Iran and tacitly supporting its proxies, Russia is complicit in perpetuating violence and unrest. This is the same Russia that is waging a harsh and brutal war against Ukraine and shows a blatant disregard for international law and human rights.
Moreover, the inclusion of North Korea in this alliance adds another layer of danger.
The Iranian flag waves in front of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) headquarters, before the beginning of a board of governors meeting, amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Vienna, Austria, March 1, 2021. (credit: REUTERS/LISI NIESNER/FILE PHOTO)
North Korea’s proliferation and its potential to provide military technology to Iran and Hamas pose a significant threat. Its isolation in the world has not deterred it from engaging in activities that undermine global security, and its connection to this axis of evil actors only increases the risks we face.
This web of evil is not just a theoretical threat; it has tangible and devastating consequences.
In Ukraine, we are witnessing firsthand the horrors of Russian aggression. The ongoing war resulted in tens of thousands of dead, along with millions of displaced persons, and brought enormous suffering to our people. We understand the devastating potential of an uncontrolled malignancy better than anyone.
Israel also knows the pain of living in the shadow of terrorism and the constant threat posed by terrorist organizations, Hamas, for example.
The convergence of these forces – Russia’s strategic maneuvers, Iran’s regional ambitions, Hamas’s terrorist activities, and North Korea’s efforts to arm itself – create a direct threat to Israel’s security and world peace.
The international community must recognize the gravity of the situation and act decisively.
We must strengthen our alliances and support each other in the face of these threats. Diplomatic efforts should focus on isolating and resisting this network through sanctions, strategic partnerships, and more.
Intelligence sharing and coordinated efforts to disrupt financial and military channels to these actors are essential.
Furthermore, we must remain steadfast in our commitment to democratic values and human rights. The axis of Russia, Iran, Hamas, and North Korea thrives on the suppression of these principles. By preserving and promoting, we not only protect our societies but also offer a powerful counter – narrative to those who seek to undermine freedom and stability in the world.
I call upon the world to wake up – the evil network that includes Russia, Iran, Hamas, and North Korea is a clear and present danger that we cannot afford to ignore. Ukraine stands by Israel and together with all nations committed to peace and security.
Together, we must face this threat with the full force of our collective resolve. Let us not be caught in the web of evil intentions.
We must break free and guarantee a more stable and safer world for everyone.
The writer is Ukraine’s ambassador to Israel.
Jerusalem Post
4. Former Syrian Official in Charge of Notorious Prison Is Arrested in Los Angeles
Former Syrian Official in Charge of Notorious Prison Is Arrested in Los Angeles
Samir Ousman al-Sheikh, who was seeking U.S. citizenship, is accused of falsely describing whether he persecuted anyone for their political beliefs or had been involved in any killings.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/16/us/politics/syrian-official-arrested-adra-prison.html
Adra prison on the outskirts of Damascus, Syria, in 2010. Former prisoners describe being starved, beaten, tortured and raped at the complex.Credit...Khaled al-Hariri/Reuters
By Katie Benner and Adam Goldman
July 16, 2024
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A former Syrian military official who ran one of the country’s most notorious prisons and is accused of torturing and killing political dissidents has been arrested in Los Angeles, according to a court filing.
Federal law enforcement agents detained the former official, Samir Ousman al-Sheikh, 72, just before he was scheduled to depart last Wednesday on a one-way flight to Beirut, Lebanon, which shares a border with Syria, according to court papers. Federal investigators requested that a judge approve an arrest warrant a day earlier.
Mr. al-Sheikh, a permanent resident of Los Angeles since 2020, is accused of attempted naturalization fraud in his effort to seek U.S. citizenship, according to a criminal complaint filed last week. According to the complaint, Mr. al-Sheikh, who ran Syria’s infamous Adra prison and was a police commander, intelligence officer and brigadier general, falsely described whether he persecuted anyone for their political beliefs or had been involved in any killings.
The case is continuing and investigators are considering additional charges, according to court papers.
A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment.
Andrew Tabler, who served as the director for Syria on the National Security Council under President Donald J. Trump and later as a senior adviser to the U.S. special envoy for Syria, compared the arrest to the Nazis seeking haven abroad.
“Adra prison is one of the crown jewels of the Assad regime’s gulags,” Mr. Tabler said. “The fact that someone who was in charge of this torture chamber made it into the United States is on par with Nazi commanders living comfortably in Latin America after World War II.”
The charges against Mr. al-Sheikh reflect a long-running effort by American officials to hold the Syrian government accountable for its use of detainment and torture.
The Justice Department is investigating the 2016 death of an American aid worker, Layla Shweikani, as a war crime carried out by Syrian intelligence officials. Officials recently notified the family of an American therapist, Majd Kamalmaz, that he died in captivity. And the government is still investigating the disappearance of Austin Tice, a freelance journalist who was abducted outside Damascus in 2012 while covering the Syrian civil war.
Investigators believe that Mr. al-Sheikh has close ties to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, whose authoritarian government uses kidnappings and violence to quell dissent.
From 2005 to 2008, Mr. al-Sheikh ran Adra prison, a complex on the outskirts of Damascus, the capital, which holds political dissidents, protesters and other civilians accused of crimes.
Former prisoners describe being starved, beaten, tortured and raped at Adra, where many have awaited trial for years or died.
Five former detainees told U.S. investigators that Mr. al-Sheikh oversaw their mistreatment and torture, according to an affidavit filed by an investigator at the Department of Homeland Security.
Mr. al-Sheikh walked the prison with his aides, approving executions and watching as inmates were hanged in a part of the facility known as “execution square,” the prisoners recounted.
One said that under Mr. al-Sheikh’s authority, guards broke his back and stomped on him, according to the affidavit. A former Syrian politician recalled how Mr. al-Sheikh ordered his fellow inmates at Adra to kill him so his death would fly under the radar. The former politician said that an inmate who helped him was beaten with electric cables in Mr. al-Sheikh’s office.
Another prisoner told investigators that guards stripped inmates naked, beating them to unconsciousness and dragging them down stairs.
After the Syrian civil war began in 2011, Mr. al-Assad appointed Mr. al-Sheikh governor of Deir Ez-Zour Province, where citizens staged some of the largest demonstrations against Mr. Assad, according to the affidavit.
Under Mr. al-Sheikh, the military conducted violent crackdowns in response.
“His appointment was not arbitrary,” Amjad Al Sary, a Syrian activist who documents war crimes, said in an interview. “He was willing to kill, maim and terrorize people, and Assad knew only he would be able to stop the protests.”
Zyad al-Kadhem, who worked in the province’s department of agriculture under Mr. al-Sheikh, recalled his brutality.
As governor, Mr. al-Sheikh “fired on protesters and disappeared countless thousands of civilians,” Mr. al-Kadhem told The New York Times.
Mr. al-Kadhem shared evidence with American investigators, including an order from Mr. al-Sheikh informing any government worker who appeared at a protest or missed days from work that they would be questioned by intelligence agents. He said that he was set to be executed, arrested and tortured until his family intervened.
“My family paid all of their life savings so that my fate would not be the same as countless other men, women and children who were arrested and killed by al-Sheikh’s orders,” Mr. al-Kadhem said.
Two years after the crackdowns began in Deir Ez-Zour, Mr. al-Sheikh’s wife became a naturalized U.S. citizen. In 2017, she filed papers for her husband to join her in Los Angeles and he began the process of obtaining an immigrant visa.
Mr. al-Sheikh lied on his application, according to the affidavit, “falsely stating that he had not committed, ordered, incited, assisted or otherwise participated in extrajudicial killings, political killings or other acts of violence.” The affidavit also said that Mr. al-Sheikh lied during his interview for an immigrant visa.
Mr. al-Sheikh flew to Los Angeles on a green card in March 2020, where he began applying to become a naturalized U.S. citizen.
Mr. al-Sheikh is accused of making seven materially false statements on the application, according to the affidavit. He said that he never persecuted anyone for their political beliefs, never was involved in any killings, never tried to hurt another person, never worked in a prison or jail, and never worked with any group that used weapons against others. The government also accused him of providing false documentation and information.
Mouaz Moustafa, the executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, an advocacy group, said his organization became aware a few years ago that Mr. al-Sheikh was hiding in plain sight in Los Angeles.
Mr. Moustafa notified law enforcement, providing documentation and potential witnesses that tied Mr. al-Sheikh to atrocities carried out by the Syrian government.
Katie Benner is a correspondent writing primarily about large institutions that shape American life. More about Katie Benner
Adam Goldman writes about the F.B.I. and national security. He has been a journalist for more than two decades. More about Adam Goldman
5. [Vantage Point] China's silent invasion of the Philippines
Excerpts:
But the pro-China elements in Philippine society are in the minority. A recent study made by the PEW Research Center shows only 16% of Filipinos have a favorable view of China.
In contrast, fully 78% expresses preference for the United States. It used to be 92%, according to the study, which means that the unrelenting propaganda mounted by then President Duterte against the Americans has made some headway.
Something tangible should be done.
The unwanted presence of hundreds of thousands of Chinese nationals in the country, the high social costs of POGO operations, and the encroachment of China in the country’s territorial waters are substantial causes for alarm. We don’t want to wake up one day to see the communist nation’s flag, instead of the Philippine national flag, being hoisted in Malacañang, do we?
[Vantage Point] China's silent invasion of the Philippines
rappler.com · by Glenda Gloria · July 16, 2024
What if I tell you that China could invade the Philippines without firing a single shot? That it doesn’t even need to escalate the smoldering trouble in the West Philippine Sea? And the much talked about Mutual Defense Treaty would be rendered inutile because it precisely requires armed aggression to trigger intervention from the United States?
By this time, it is no longer a secret how the People’s Republic of China salivates over global dominance and that, unfortunately, the Chinese government finds the Philippines a strategic puzzle piece to achieve its ambition.
An article published recently by Italian quarterly Eurasia Magazine observes that China now practically owns a country, the People’s Democratic Republic of Laos, by putting it in debt to the tune of $5.25 billion, a debt that the latter can only hope to repay by signing away to the former its most important national assets: railways, airports and seaports, even roads and bridges.
A fate worse than that was awaiting the Philippines, but for the fact that then-president Rodrigo Duterte had run out of time. His six-year, non-renewable term had expired in 2022. He tried to revise the Constitution with the express purpose of removing the prohibition against re-election, but failed due to strong opposition from the Filipino people.
If he had succeeded, Mr. Duterte would have delivered on his promise to turn the Philippines into a province of China.
Other developing countries owe China much more, among which are Pakistan, Angola, Sri Lanka,, Ethiopia, Kenya, Zambia, Bangladesh, in hock for $26.60 billion, $20.98 billion, $8.84 billion, $6.82 billion, $6.69 billion, $6.08 billion, and $6.05 billion, respectively.
The Philippines, however, should take special interest in the trouble confronting Laos because that country is China’s close ally, which means that China does not spare even friendly countries from depredation. In fact it seems to prefer friendly countries as prey.
It is becoming increasingly clear that friendship with China is a liability.
Indebted to China for only $1.1 billion, the Philippines has avoided falling into the debt trap. But China has another ace up its sleeve. With Mr. Duterte’s acquiescence, it has flooded the Philippines with Chinese migrants from the mainland, both legal and illegal.
According to the Bureau of Immigration (BI), at least 100,000 Chinese have penetrated and now live in the county illegally, most of whom gained entry during Mr. Duterte’s presidency. The number of illegals is a conservative estimate, or it may have been deliberately under-reported by that government agency
A thousand more Alice Guos
The nation’s interest has been transfixed to the tale of “farm girl” Alice Guo who surreptitiously slipped into local politics and whose presence would have escaped notice save for the discovery of foreign nationals who absconded from their detention at her vast property in Bamban, Tarlac. Authorities later found out that her enclave was being used as a shelter for human trafficking. Ms. Guo is a vital sample of how Chinese nationals could gain entry and later settle here by taking advantage of the country’s corrupt bureaucracy. But Ms. Guo is just one in a multitude.
As early as February 2020, Senator Risa Hontiveros exposed a practice of BI officials and staff assigned at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport to escort illegals out of the airport for P10,000 each so that they would not have to go through the normal immigration processing.
The scheme was called “pastillas” because the bribe money was wrapped and rolled in a piece of paper, the way old folks did it when preparing that carabao milk-and-sugar concoction so popular in the old days.
Once the illegals have settled in, the next step is for them to acquire Philippine citizenship.
In the US, Russian spies become American citizens by assuming the birth certificates of persons who died in infancy or as children, preferably in Canada. With a stolen identity, the “spy” is able to obtain a Canadian passport, which enables him or her to enter the US, land a job, and, eventually, become an American citizen.
Illegal Chinese migrants to the Philippines have no patience or interest to go through such a costly and lengthy process. They just enter the country as tourists.
Once they are here, they file a late or delayed registration of birth with the civil registry, which then sends the document to the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), which issues upon request of the party concerned an authenticated birth certificate.
The birth certificate enables the Chinese nationals to apply for Philippine passports, which also allow them to buy land, skirting the prohibition against foreigners owning real estate in the country.
In April of this year, it’s been reported that Congressman Ace Barbers has called on the government to investigate how “fake Filipino nationals [all Chinese],who can’t even utter a single Filipino word, are [able to buy] huge tracts of lands near EDCA (Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement) sites, near major air and sea ports, and establish large numbers of warehouses and other business establishments.”
There are nine EDCA sites all over the country allowed under the Visiting Forces Agreement between the Philippines and the United States. Their apparent purpose is to counter China’s quest for dominance in South China Sea.
Now, to circle back to the late-birth registration issue.
The process is simple and straightforward enough for child applicants. It is a little more complicated for an adult. The applicants have to provide their school record – a requirement Ms. Guo, the embattled mayor of Bamban, Tarlac, skirted by claiming she was home-schooled.
Apparently, the civil registrar accepted the explanation, and let it go at that. For whatever reason or persuasion, it never occurred to the civil registrar that Ms. Guo could get a copy of the document from the Department of Education.
It turned out that Ms. Guo went to Grace Christian School in Quezon City for her elementary education, which explains her fluency in Tagalog.
A week ago, nearly 200 Chinese nationals were issued birth certificates by the civil registrar in Davao del Sur. The fact that the persons concerned could not speak a word of Tagalog or any of the Filipino languages or dialects was a red flag, but the civil registrar just did not care. The applicants may not even have bothered to appear personally to file their request.
Senator Win Gatchalian, citing a National Bureau of Investigation report, said the Chinese nationals paid P300,000 a pop for the fake documents.
The crime was uncovered when one of the Chinese nationals applied for a Philippine passport. An alert DFA employee discovered that the documents the man submitted were spurious.
According to the senator, hundreds of thousands of other Chinese nationals may have successfully manipulated the system, and that is only possible, he surmised, with the collusion of the PSA itself.
But what do these Chinese come to the Philippines for? Well, most of them are posing as migrants in search of a better life. Many Filipinos suspect, however, that these migrants constitute the communist nation’s advance invading force.
While they’re here, they take jobs away from Filipinos, thus exacerbating the country’s unemployment problem. They are absorbed in mining, telecommunications, and the construction industries, run by their compatriots, who are in the country legally, thanks to the relaxation of the rules on immigration made by the Duterte regime.
The more savvy (some say criminally minded) of these migrants find their way to Philippine Offshore Gaming Operator (POGO) companies.
Authorities say there are 34 POGOs, since renamed Internet Gaming Licensees (IGL) because of the unsavory reputation they have brought upon themselves, and some of them have thousands of employees each. That number does not include illegal operators. It is hard to believe that the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation, which is supposed to monitor POGO operations, is not aware of their existence.
POGOS must go
Vantage Point has been clear since it first dwelled on the issue that the government should ban POGO operations across the country. I find it odd that Duterte allowed it here despite strong objections from China where it is strictly prohibited.
Perhaps it is the specter of rising criminality which drove some our lawmakers to tighten the screws on POGO operations. Operatives of the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission (PAOCC) raided, one after the other, two such illegal POGO operation – one in Bamban, Tarlac, and the other in Porac, Pampanga.
The bigger of the two is Lucky South 99, which occupies 34 buildings on a ten-hectare Porac compound. However, the public fascination is centered on the Bamban facility, which is allegedly owned by Ms. Guo, against whom the Senate has recently issued an arrest warrant.
It is apparent that the change of name did nothing to improve the image of POGO or IGL operations in the country.
The PAOCC found them harboring criminals and undocumented aliens, running prostitution rings, and engaging in online scamming activities. Most disturbing of all, the police discovered instruments of torture, believed to have been used to punish employees who fell short of the work expected of them.
Rappler’s Kaycee Valmonte reported that residents of posh Ayala Alabang Village (AAV) are legally going after neighbors whom they suspect to be concealing individuals who are connected to POGOs. Residents bemoan incidents such as kidnapping and seeing armed bodyguards becoming the norm in the usually tranquil upscale village. Again, AAV is just one the of the thousands of subdivisions having similar problems, with smaller ones having no wherewithal to go after these illicit operations.
POGO or IGL has supporters in all branches of government, from local government officials to members of Congress, and, until Mr. Duterte left office, all the way up to the presidency itself.
There are also unverified reports of politicians’ “pilgrimage” to China whenever election season draws near. They trek there along with their families purportedly to unwind but in reality to allegedly solicit campaign funds. It’s about time that we should call out the immigration bureau and put it to task by monitoring the number of politicians going out to China whenever election fever nears.
But the pro-China elements in Philippine society are in the minority. A recent study made by the PEW Research Center shows only 16% of Filipinos have a favorable view of China.
In contrast, fully 78% expresses preference for the United States. It used to be 92%, according to the study, which means that the unrelenting propaganda mounted by then President Duterte against the Americans has made some headway.
Something tangible should be done.
The unwanted presence of hundreds of thousands of Chinese nationals in the country, the high social costs of POGO operations, and the encroachment of China in the country’s territorial waters are substantial causes for alarm. We don’t want to wake up one day to see the communist nation’s flag, instead of the Philippine national flag, being hoisted in Malacañang, do we? – Rappler.com
rappler.com · by Glenda Gloria · July 16, 2024
6. Asian Powers Have Their Strategic Sights Set on Europe
Conclusion:
A Europe that actively engages with Asian geopolitics and pays due respect to the rise and agency of Asian powers will find it possible to upgrade its Asian ties—even as it modernizes its relationship with the United States. By sharing Washington’s burdens in the East and treating Asia as a geopolitical equal, Europe can regain its place on the global chessboard.
Asian Powers Have Their Strategic Sights Set on Europe
After 500 years, the tables have turned, with an incoherent Europe the object of rising Asia’s geopolitical ambitions.
Mohan-C-Raja-foreign-policy-columnist
C. Raja Mohan
By C. Raja Mohan, a columnist at Foreign Policy and a former member of India’s National Security Advisory Board.
Foreign Policy · by C. Raja Mohan
July 16, 2024, 5:30 AM
What has often been circumscribed as “the rise of the rest”—the relative ascendancy of the non-Western powers—has been felt particularly acutely in Asia. When the Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama reached India’s southwestern Kerala coast in 1498, it marked the start of 500 years of European (and later U.S.) dominance over Asia—colonial, imperial, and geopolitical. Decolonization from the middle of the 20th century onward did not much alter Western dominance, nor did it end Asia’s deference to Europe.
Until now, that is. The rapid growth of Asian economies and the redistribution of global power in favor of the East heralds a new era in the relationship between Europe and Asia. What began as a shift in economic power is now extending to the geopolitical, military, and technological realms.
Europe has already become a military theater for Asian actors. Large-scale deliveries of drones, ammunition, and weapons components from Iran, North Korea, and China are helping Russia fight Ukrainian forces and rain death on civilians in Ukrainian cities. Iranian military advisors have been reported on the ground in occupied Ukraine, although the Iranian government denies their presence there. Beijing, too, is a major supporter of Moscow’s war effort—economically, but also through the delivery of weapons components, even if Beijing has been careful so far in order to avoid Western sanctions.
And just last week, Chinese soldiers arrived in western Belarus, only a few miles from the border of Poland—a NATO member state—for 11 days of joint military exercises dubbed Eagle Assault 2024. China and Russia held their own first joint naval exercises in the Mediterranean Sea last year; joint drills between the two have been taking place in the Baltic Sea since 2017. Slowly but surely, Beijing is making it clear that it has military ambitions in Europe.
China’s military reach into Europe might still be modest now, but it will only grow with time. The fact that Chinese troops participating, for the first time, in exercises only a few miles from NATO’s eastern border underlines the extent to which Europe and Asia are trading places—with the former becoming the strategic object of the latter. As China, India, and other rising Asian countries grow more powerful, they increasingly see Europe as the theater of their geopolitical ambitions.
With the European Union roiled by internal divisions and failing to act as a coherent strategic actor in the face of multiple wars and conflicts in its region, the tables have turned. Whereas once-weak Asian powers used to be the object of Europe’s strategic calculations, it will now be the other way around.
Asia’s growing agency in Europe is also demonstrated as many European leaders—who failed to prevent and stop Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—turn to Chinese President Xi Jinping in hopes that he will persuade Russian President Vladimir Putin to end his war. Xi, who was received with much fanfare in Paris, Belgrade, and Budapest earlier this year, is reveling in his ability to play both sides of the war in Europe. But what the Chinese leader clearly understands is that helping Moscow succeed in Ukraine and elsewhere in Europe will make it easier for Beijing to secure primacy in Asia. If the West is tied down by the Russian threat in Europe, Beijing calculates, the Western ability to stand up to the Chinese challenge in Asia will inevitably diminish. In this sense, Europe’s biggest and deadliest conflict since 1945 is China’s first major proxy war against the United States.
Europe is similarly eager for help with peace diplomacy in Ukraine from India, which has not condemned the Russian invasion. Instead of falling in line with the West on Ukraine, New Delhi has been scolding Europe for its lack of understanding of India’s concerns. New Delhi continues to buy and process large quantities of Russian oil (and resell some of it to Europe) while pushing forward its engagement with Moscow.
But India’s interest in Europe is different from China’s. New Delhi considers Europe a future partner for economic and strategic cooperation—and it has no desire to see Europe separated from Washington or weaken either. It needs both powers to balance China in Asia. Europe has steadily risen in India’s geopolitical calculus in recent years. At the same time, New Delhi has long seen Moscow as an important element of Asia’s geopolitical equilibrium. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi traveled to Moscow in early July to strengthen bilateral relations; Modi also hopes that Moscow can still be persuaded not to become a junior partner to Beijing.
“Divide and rule” was the European colonial powers’ old maxim for gaining control of Asia. Today, Asia’s great powers are learning the art of probing European fault lines—whether it’s Russia courting Hungarian President Viktor Orban or Chinese support for those European leaders who seek to defy the United States to pursue the EU goal of “strategic autonomy” or their countries’ expansive commercial interests in China. Naturally, a more autonomous Europe would be an ideal outcome for Beijing. Besides exploiting the trans-Atlantic divide on geopolitics, Moscow and Beijing have more than enough room to work with anti-Americanism on the left and right of the European political spectrum.
Asian powers are also increasingly involved on the Ukrainian side of the war. South Korea, which has emerged as a major weapons producer, is already selling arms to NATO—and could increase its support for Ukraine in response to North Korea’s increasing involvement on the Russian side. Japan has emerged as a major political and diplomatic supporter of Kyiv and will have a key role in the reconstruction of Ukraine when it begins.
The July NATO summit in Washington also showed the extent to which European defense has become a concern of Asian and Pacific powers. The Biden administration has persuaded its four Indo-Pacific allies—Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea—to become part of Europe’s security discourse. Leaders of the four countries, the so-called AP-4, have become regular participants at NATO summits.
A role for Asia in Europe is the flip side of U.S. President Joe Biden’s argument that Europe should do more to secure Asia against China. It is not clear if the Europeans have the capacity and strategic coherence to contribute to Asian security, but Asian leaders recognize their stakes in Europe.
Not all of Asia’s involvement in Europe is new. Although barely acknowledged today, Asians played a major role in European conflicts going back to the late 18th century. Consider the fact, for example, that British India contributed nearly 1 million soldiers to the Allies in World War I and 2 million to the Allies in World War II. Without those Indian troops, Europe’s map might look very different today.
Unlike in the past, Asia will no longer be a passive adjunct to European wars. Indeed, the Russia-Ukraine war suggests that Asian powers—with their own strategic interests in mind—will be direct participants in the future. The fact that Europe struggles to cope with demographic decline, shrinking armies, and diminishing willpower makes the involvement of Asian states in European security even more likely.
Asia’s geopolitical ambitions in and around Europe reach far beyond Ukraine. Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates are playing an expanding role in the South Caucasus, Eastern Mediterranean, and Horn of Africa. Chinese and Persian Gulf capital—as well as Russian mercenaries—are quickly driving the French and other Europeans out of their former colonial bastions in Africa. With Europe unable to secure the arc of instability from the Eastern to the Southern Mediterranean, it will be external powers that will, rather sooner than later, control these gates to Europe.
Europe has a long tradition of underestimating Asia. In his 1968 book Asian Drama: An Inquiry Into the Poverty of Nations, the Swedish scholar Gunnar Myrdal argued that Asia could not develop economically amid multiple structural constraints. Less than two decades later, Asia’s economic rise became one of the most consequential global trends.
Economically, too, Europe must now come to terms with the fact that Asia’s growth is no longer premised on cheap labor producing simple wares. East Asia leads in the production of semiconductors and electric vehicles. Europe still has niche capabilities and remains a powerhouse of science, but there is no escaping the fact that the continent has fallen behind on innovation and lags Asia in the production of certain advanced technological goods. India, meanwhile, has carved out a place for itself as the supplier of technological talent for new industries in the West.
As Asian powers set their eyes on Europe, the greatest source of worry for Europeans must be the fact that they are no longer at the center of the United States’ strategic affections. For more than a century, Europe has been the principal external theater of strategic interest for the United States. After the Second World War, the United States was willing to give its European interests higher priority than those in Asia. Today, U.S. military and strategic attention is increasingly focused on competition with China in Asia. Although the United States is unlikely to completely abandon Europe—not even if former President Donald Trump wins another term in the November U.S. presidential election—it will be a lesser priority than Asia.
None of this is to say that Europe has no options in dealing with a world in which Asia looms large. If it manages to shed its historic condescension toward the East, Europe could find new and mutually beneficial ways of working with Asian powers. For one, Europe must recognize that Asia is not united. Divides and outright confrontations abound—including between China and Japan, South Korea and Japan, Vietnam and China, Cambodia and Vietnam, and India and China.
Europe has a long tradition of engaging with Asia, not least though its past colonial presence. But today’s Europe has taken a long holiday from Asian geopolitics thanks to its illusions about the rise of a post-conflict world; its replacement of foreign policy with mercantilism; its outsourcing of security—and even strategic thinking—to the United States; and its self-deceptions about being an empire of norms wielding not much more than the power of example.
A Europe that actively engages with Asian geopolitics and pays due respect to the rise and agency of Asian powers will find it possible to upgrade its Asian ties—even as it modernizes its relationship with the United States. By sharing Washington’s burdens in the East and treating Asia as a geopolitical equal, Europe can regain its place on the global chessboard.
Foreign Policy · by C. Raja Mohan
7. Trump Tells Taiwan to Expect a Higher Price Tag for U.S. Defense
Although I do not believe in a total or primary transactional relationship, I do think it is important to recognize that we cannot want to defend Taiwan more than the Taiwanese.
Trump Tells Taiwan to Expect a Higher Price Tag for U.S. Defense
Trump also accused Taiwan of sinking the U.S. semiconductor sector, signaling he wants a more transactional approach to shielding the island from China
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/17/world/asia/trump-taiwan-defense-chips.html
Former President Donald Trump backstage before entering the Convention Hall on the first day of the RNC Convention in Milwaukee on Monday.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
By Chris Buckley
Reporting from Taipei, Taiwan
July 17, 2024, 5:53 a.m. ET
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Donald J. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, said that Taiwan should pay the United States for defending it from China, a remark highlighting the uncertainties — and high stakes — of how he might handle the smoldering Taiwan Strait dispute if he should win a second term.
Taiwan depends on political and military support from the United States to help resist pressure from Beijing, which claims the island as Chinese territory. Mr. Trump warned that Taiwan is perilously exposed to any attack from China and far away from U.S. protection, and signaled that he would take a more bluntly conditional approach to Taiwan.
“I think Taiwan should pay us for defense,” Mr. Trump said in an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek that published on Tuesday. “You know, we’re no different than an insurance company.”
Just as Mr. Trump’s denigration of NATO has rattled America’s allies, his comments on Taiwan raised the question of how invested a second Trump presidency would be in the island’s defense. The United States is committed by law to help Taiwan defend itself, and leaves open the possibility of sending forces if Beijing ever attacks the island.
Image
An military exercise in Taiwan in 2023.Credit...Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times
Mr. Trump also took aim at Taiwan’s dominance in making advanced semiconductors, saying: “They did take about 100 percent of our chip business.”
The share price of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company — the world’s biggest maker of advanced computer chips — fell by 2.4 percent on the island’s stock exchange on Wednesday, apparently in reaction to his comments.
Although Mr. Trump has made similar comments about Taiwan in recent years, his latest may land in Taiwan with a bigger impact, given his strong position in the race against President Biden.
“If I was in Taiwan, I would take this statement seriously because it is not an isolated remark — there is now a pattern,” said David Sacks, a fellow for Asia studies at the Council on Foreign Relations “This statement, in particular, epitomizes Trumpism because it reflects his purely transactional view of foreign policy.”
Image
A Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company building in Tainan. The chip maker's stock price fell after Mr. Trump’s remarks about Taiwan monopolizing the industry.Credit...Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times
Taiwan already pays for nearly all of its weapons orders from U.S. manufacturers, though the Biden administration has moved to directly transfer some military equipment to Taiwan, drawing on U.S. stockpiles. Mr. Trump’s broader point seemed to be that Taiwan owed the United States more for its overall security.
Still, Mr. Trump’s comments should not be read as the final word on U.S. policies toward Beijing and Taiwan if he wins in November, Taiwanese experts said. A chorus of voices in Washington, including the Republican nominee for vice president, J.D. Vance, may influence his position, they said.
“During his presidency, he did not openly talk about abandonment of Taiwan,” said Alexander C. Huang, an international security expert who advises Taiwan’s opposition Nationalist Party, referring to Mr. Trump’s term, which ended in January 2021. “We also already understand that President Trump, if he returns to the White House, would ask Taiwan to bear more responsibility for our defense.”
Taiwan’s government has been increasing spending on its military, and in 2022 it began extending conscription from 4 months to 12 months. But many Taiwanese experts and officials say that their island will need to spend more to deter China’s much larger army.
The Trump and Biden administrations both expanded support for Taiwan while U.S. relations with President Xi Jinping in Beijing soured drastically over the past eight years. On Wednesday, China’s foreign ministry again denounced U.S. arms sales to Taiwan and said it would, in retaliation, suspend highly tentative nuclear arms control discussions with Washington.
Mr. Trump’s running mate, Mr. Vance, and other Republicans have argued that China remains the most pressing global challenge to the United States, and some say that protecting Taiwan should be a higher priority for Washington than backing Ukraine against Russia.
“I think that we should make it as hard as possible for China to take Taiwan in the first place,” Mr. Vance told The New York Times in an interview published last month. “We’re not doing that because we’re sending all the damn weapons to Ukraine and not Taiwan.”
Image
The Republican vice-presidential candidate Senator J.D. Vance could one day influence Mr. Trump’s decisions on Taiwan should they win the November election.Credit...Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times
Taiwanese officials have also vigorously courted bipartisan support in Congress. Taiwan’s supporters in the Republican Party could persuade Mr. Trump to be less skeptical of the island if he wins, said Raymond Chen-En Sung, the vice president of the Prospect Foundation, an institute affiliated with the Taiwanese government.
“The strategic competition between the U.S. and China is something for the whole national security circle around Mr. Trump,” he said. If Mr. Trump won a new term, Mr. Sung added, “I believe they will have the task of educating the president about the importance of Taiwan.”
Even so, Mr. Trump’s comments are likely to spur Taiwan to try to assure the United States — and Mr. Trump — that it is committed to completing semiconductor plants in Arizona and to spending more on its own military.
“We’re willing to shoulder more responsibility. This is us defending ourselves,” Taiwan’s premier, Cho Jung-tai, said in response to Mr. Trump’s remarks. “We’re very grateful” for U.S. support, he added.
Officials in Washington have long been concerned about the world’s reliance on Taiwan for advanced semiconductors, the tiny computer chips that power electronic devices from iPhones to fighter jets.
Over the past four years, TSMC has committed to building new factories in Japan, Germany and Arizona. In April, the Biden administration awarded Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, or TSMC, a $6.6 billion grant to try to bring cutting-edge chip making to the United States.
Mr. Trump suggested that was a raw deal.
Image
TSMC is building a factory in Phoenix.Credit...Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times
“Now we’re giving them billions of dollars to build new chips in our country, and then they’re going to take that, too,” Mr. Trump said in the interview. He said that China’s leader, Mr. Xi, also coveted Taiwan’s semiconductor facilities. “That’s the apple of President Xi’s eye,” Mr. Trump said.
The notion that Taiwan had “taken” the United States semiconductor business was a misunderstanding, said Eric Huang, vice president at Digitimes, a tech industry market research firm based in Taiwan. Most of the world’s top semiconductor companies by market value are American firms like Nvidia and Qualcomm, Mr. Huang said.
“Taiwan plays a supporting role primarily by providing manufacturing services for these U.S. chip companies,” he said.
Meaghan Tobin and John Liu contributed reporting.
Chris Buckley, the chief China correspondent for The Times, reports on China and Taiwan from Taipei, focused on politics, social change and security and military issues. More about Chris Buckley
8. He’s a Lock: New brigadier general leading SEALs and Green Berets at SOCEUR
He’s a Lock: New brigadier general leading SEALs and Green Berets at SOCEUR
Stars and Stripes · by John Vandiver · July 16, 2024
Incoming Special Operations Command Europe commander Brig. Gen. Joseph Lock, left, shakes hands with outgoing SOCEUR commander Maj. Gen. Steven Edwards following a change of command ceremony July 15, 2024, at Patch Barracks in Stuttgart, Germany. (Tim Beery/U.S. Army)
STUTTGART, Germany — Army Brig. Gen. Joseph Lock took command this week of U.S. special operations troops in Europe, assuming leadership of a force that has played an integral role in training Ukraine’s military.
On Monday, Lock replaced Maj. Gen. Steven Edwards, who is retiring after leading the Stuttgart-based Special Operations Command Europe for the past two years.
“You’re inheriting a command that is located at the forefront of our nation’s mission,” U.S. European Command’s Gen. Christopher Cavoli said during a Monday ceremony at Patch Barracks.
Cavoli said Russia’s February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine and its aftermath has “jolted us awake.”
U.S. Army Gen. Christopher Cavoli, left, the head of U.S. European Command, passes the organizational colors to incoming commander Brig. Gen. Joseph Lock during the Special Operations Command Europe change of command ceremony July 15, 2024, at Patch Barracks in Stuttgart, Germany. At right is the outgoing commander, Air Force Maj. Gen. Steven Edwards. (Tim Beery/U.S. Army)
“The war in Ukraine has served as a terrible reminder of the large-scale wars throughout history and a reminder that they can occur again today,” Cavoli said.
Lock will lead a mix of Green Berets and Navy SEALs who are involved in an array of training missions with allies across Europe. Over the years, the command also has been involved in the training of Ukraine’s special operations troops.
Lock has served in various special operations units over the years, including a stint leading a joint task force in Central Command and as assistant commander of Joint Special Operations Command.
“I am honored to be a part of this dynamic command that continues to work throughout the theater, preserving security during this critical time,” Lock said.
Besides training, Lock will be tasked with preparing to relocate much of his force from Stuttgart to Baumholder, a more rural area with access to larger training grounds.
Army officials have said the move is expected to happen by 2026, which will add about 1,000 people to the Army’ Baumholder garrison.
Multimillion-dollar construction efforts are underway to support the plan, which has been years in the making. The move doesn’t involve SOCEUR’s headquarters, which will remain in Stuttgart.
John Vandiver
John Vandiver
John covers U.S. military activities across Europe and Africa. Based in Stuttgart, Germany, he previously worked for newspapers in New Jersey, North Carolina and Maryland. He is a graduate of the University of Delaware.
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Stars and Stripes · by John Vandiver · July 16, 2024
9. Military burn pit exposure not tracked properly, DOD watchdog warns
Military burn pit exposure not tracked properly, DOD watchdog warns
militarytimes.com · by Noah Robertson · July 17, 2024
The U.S. military has not properly tracked whether service members are exposed to burn pits, according to a new report by Pentagon’s internal watchdog.
During the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, American personnel regularly used these sites — essentially giant piles of trash set on fire — to dispose of waste. Some of that garbage included plastics, chemicals, rubber and other items that turned when burned.
As a result, military service members stationed near the pits have been found to be more likely to suffer from diseases like hypertension and asthma years later. And in 2022, the president signed a bill speeding up benefits for such personnel.
At issue in the Defense Department Inspector General report released Thursday was whether the Pentagon has monitored burn pits that sit near military sites but weren’t created by the U.S. military itself.
The Office of the Inspector General centered this audit on Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti and investigated from November to April.
Its main finding was a missing piece of the policy. The DOD does not require military commanders to monitor burn pits created by locals rather than the U.S. military, the report said. Without such a policy, American service members exposed to toxic smoke may not have that listed in their health records.
“This policy gap in identifying and reporting non-DoD-controlled burn pits can result in missing information on the DoD’s watch list of known burn pits,” wrote Robert Storch, the Pentagon’s inspector general. “When this information goes unreported, the ong-term health of Service members exposed to deadly toxins from burn pits could be put at risk.”
Storch recommended that the head of Pentagon acquisition and sustainment revise the policy and require commanders in the field to tell their combatant commander about any burn pits within about 2.5 miles of American military sites.
In a response to the report, Ronald Tickle, deputy assistant secretary of defense for environmental management and restoration, agreed with the recommendation and said his office would revise the policy to be clearer.
About Noah Robertson
Noah Robertson is the Pentagon reporter at Defense News. He previously covered national security for the Christian Science Monitor. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English and government from the College of William & Mary in his hometown of Williamsburg, Virginia.
10. An Army Ammunition Plant’s Bullets Keep Showing Up in Mass Shootings. Lawmakers Want Answers.
Hmmm...
Excerpts:
A group of Democratic lawmakers wants to know how the Lake City plant, a government-owned facility operated by Olin Winchester under a Pentagon contract, produced ammo used in some of the country’s most violent crimes.
“[The Department of Defense] must ensure that public tax dollars no longer subsidize the production of military-grade ammunition that finds its way onto our streets and fuels mass shootings,” the group of lawmakers wrote Sunday to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Army Secretary Christine Wormuth.
...
Those rounds are branded with the hallmark “LC” for Lake City on the bottom of the bullet. The ammo has a following among gun enthusiasts. The rounds are generally seen as high quality, and their sturdiness makes the brass easier for die-hard enthusiasts to recycle into new rounds. The ammo is also routinely marketed in stores and by the manufacturer itself as the type used by the military.
“Winchester is the largest manufacturer of small-caliber ammunition for the U.S. military,” the manufacturer notes on its website. “Proven in battle for more than 100 years, we’ve delivered trusted ammunition products for civilians, law enforcement and military.”
An Army Ammunition Plant’s Bullets Keep Showing Up in Mass Shootings. Lawmakers Want Answers.
military.com
An Army Ammunition Plant’s Bullets Keep Showing Up in Mass Shootings. Lawmakers Want Answers. | Military.com
- Military News
Military.com
military.com
11. Experienced Snipers Break Down The Trump Assassination Attempt
Experienced Snipers Break Down The Trump Assassination Attempt
Two veteran snipers and a retired Secret Service agent give us their takes on how these security operations are conducted and what may have gone so wrong.
HOWARD ALTMAN
POSTED ON JUL 16, 2024 7:58 PM EDT
12 MINUTE READ
twz.com · by Howard Altman
Many questions are being asked in the aftermath of the July 13 assassination attempt on Donald Trump at the fairgrounds in Butler, Pennsylvania. Among them are how the U.S. Secret Service (USSS) counter-sniper (CS) teams reacted before and after Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, fired shots from the roof of a building less than 450 feet from where Trump was speaking. Those shots killed a man, bloodied Trump, and wounded at least two others.
The War Zone asked three experts – two experienced snipers and one former USSS Special Agent in Charge – to give their perspectives, breaking down how these operations work and what they observed about how CS teams handled what would become the first time a USSS sniper ever actually killed anyone.
Jeff Bruggeman
For 18 years, Jeff Bruggeman was a sniper for the Fairfax City SWAT team. He spent many hours working with the U.S. Secret Service (USSS), often staring through high-powered Leupold scopes on his custom-built bolt-action .308 sniper rifle scanning for potential dangers. He did this during visits by presidents and candidates, as well as while providing overwatch during several inaugurations.
“A lot of people think of snipers as just shooters,” said Bruggeman, now a private security officer. “The primary objective of a sniper is to be eyes and intelligence, relaying a lot of information back.”
Counter-sniper teams generally work together, scanning separate as well as overlapping fields of view to ensure a full picture is gathered of what is taking place around them, Bruggeman said.
Videos emerged on social media showing Secret Service CS teams on the roofs of a group of three barns behind Trump looking through scopes during the rally. One team was on the northern-most barn roof and another on the southern-most.
New footage shows both Secret Service Sniper teams seemingly getting agitated by the presence of the gunman a minute and a half prior to shots being fired at Trump, adding to the question why Trump wasn't pulled off stage. pic.twitter.com/iF2NZ2tC1K
— Moshe Schwartz (@YWNReporter) July 16, 2024
“…if you really wanna see something that’s sad, take a look at what happened…,” Trump told the audience about eight minutes into his rally, but shots rang out before he could finish his sentence.
“So I will tell you what I think happened,” Bruggeman offered about the video of the counter-sniper team on the north roof. “If you watch the video of the snipers, you’ll see this is when the people started yelling, ‘he has a gun! He has a gun!’ and they were pointing” to the one-story tan building where Crooks climbed onto the roof with his rifle.
The Secret Service snipers “were pointed in that direction,” Bruggeman added. “But what I believe was happening was they were looking hundreds of yards past him into tree lines and windows, looking for what people were talking about.”
“You can only see what you can see,” he added. “The way it was described to me is this guy ducked down on a sloped roof. From their angle, they most likely couldn’t see” Crooks at first.
After the first shot is heard, “that sniper pulls away from his scope” because it provides a very narrow field of view. After getting a wider view without it, “he’s able to see the shooter right in front of him. They were just, unfortunately, looking over [Crooks] for the threat, and didn’t identify him until he gave his position away by pulling the trigger.”
After watching the video “several times” Bruggemen said he does not think that team fired. Their view was likely partially obstructed by a tree.
“I’m not seeing recoil pushing his shoulder back or the muzzle of his rifle rising,” he said. “It’s actually dipping down and his movement makes me think that he’s adjusting his position a bit.”
Two minutes prior to the shooting, while local law enforcement was looking for Crooks on the roof, it appears that the northern USSS counter sniper team realized they were obstructed by the tree.
Just after this the southern team turns 180.pic.twitter.com/yNaCLSHrul
— Oliver Alexander (@OAlexanderDK) July 16, 2024
The video of the CS team on the southern barn roof doesn’t offer as much detail, said Bruggeman, because whoever took it ducked as the shots were being fired. He could not determine from watching it several times whether that team actually fired.
However, that team is claimed to be the one that fired the single shot that killed Crooks, according to CBS News, citing a local law enforcement source. You can see that team in the video below.
New video shows the moment Trump was shot at his rally with this POV also showing the southern Secret Service sniper team (Team with hats).
It's unclear to me if they are firing back as the video looses focus as the responding shots ring out. pic.twitter.com/XzQOjpWAeJ
— Moshe Schwartz (@YWNReporter) July 14, 2024
Regardless of who fired, all the snipers would have had full autonomy to act, Bruggeman explained.
“They are there to take that threat out,” he said. “There’s no ‘Police, don’t move.’ There’s no nothing. The only dynamics that would change that is if they took a hostage, or they just simply threw their gun down and surrendered. But if someone is actually engaging, that’s going to be something that is addressed immediately, because every trigger pull is a potential dead person. So especially the Secret Service with a former president, they’re not going to ask questions on that.”
Several maps emerged on social media showing the location of the CS teams in relation to Crooks’ location atop the roof. Bruggeman said that they offered a good look at the shooter’s line of sight and that of the CS teams once they spotted him. They did not, he argued, provide a true picture of the area those snipers had to scan looking for potential threats.
Trump Assassination Attempt fields of view.
Based on the locations and field of view of the two counter sniper teams and the shooter, it appears that only the southern team depicted as team 1 was not completely obstructed by a tree. Had the shooter been 3ft further east, they… pic.twitter.com/CIHGzwNfb0
— Intelschizo (@Schizointel) July 14, 2024
“The Secret Service snipers are some of the best in the world, and I mean literally, some of the best in the world,” he said. “But their responsibility is just tremendous. What I encourage people to do, and what I ask you to do, is go on Google Maps, put a pin where the President was, and then draw a line out to 1,000 yards, because that’s what our shooters look out to. And you’ll see that it covers another farm, car dealerships. It goes over a highway. There’s businesses, there’s houses, there are dozens of buildings.”
This map shows the 1,000-yard circumference that Secret Service Counter-Sniper teams had to scan during the Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Google Earth image
Bruggeman said that there were several things about this situation that raised concerns based on his previous experience.
One was that there was nobody from law enforcement on the roof where Crooks was firing, an issue we examined previously.
That would have been most likely local law enforcement because the building was outside the inner perimeter where the Secret Service provides security.
“You should have had at least somebody on the roof, whether it be local law enforcement or a Secret Service sniper,” he said. “If they didn’t feel comfortable with a local law enforcement officer with a rifle, they should at least have been up there with binoculars or spy scopes. I’ve deployed both ways, with a rifle and without. That would eliminate that altogether, and that would have forced that shooter to have to switch gears.”
Compounding matters is the emerging news that “three snipers — local tactical teams, deployed to assist the U.S. Secret Service — were stationed inside the building the shooter used in his attack,” according to CBS News. “The operations plan had them stationed inside the building looking out windows toward the rally.”
That, said Bruggeman, ‘tells me there was no security on their command post, which is pretty basic.”
It also contributed to the delayed response between the time Crooks was spotted on the roof and the time he fired the shots, said Bruggeman.
“Absolutely. I still have a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that it wasn’t addressed immediately by someone on the ground.”
Watch the real time assassination attempt on Trump from different angles. With countdown from footage of people warning authorities about the shooter to Trump being whisked away. pic.twitter.com/iJTbRNlCEw
— MilkBarTV (@TheMilkBarTV) July 15, 2024
On Tuesday, Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle said in a television interview that part of the reason no officers were stationed on the building, owned by American Glass Research, because of its slope.
“That building in particular has a sloped roof at its highest point, and so there’s a safety factor that would be considered there that we wouldn’t want to put somebody up on a sloped roof,” she said. “So, you know, the decision was made to secure the building from inside.”
“Director Cheatle’s statement doesn’t make any sense,” Bruggeman opined. “The roof that the suspect was shooting from looks like less of a slope than what the USSS snipers were already on. This incident along with other factors during her appointment proves that she is a failed leader. I think she should resign and a Congressional hearing should be in her future.”
Another problem Bruggeman pointed out, was the apparent lack of drones helping to surveil the area. No video or images of drones have emerged on social media.
“I’m still kind of amazed that there were no drones,” he said, explaining that they could have spotted Crooks on the roof before he opened fire.
We reached out to the Secret Service about whether there were drones, and if not, why not.
Bruggeman expressed gratitude for never having to kill someone.
“I’ve been fortunate,” he said. “I’ve had the safety off of my rifle, and I’ve already picked my spot, but the person did the right thing at the last minute.”
During his time teaching other snipers, Bruggeman emphasized that what happens is dependent on the “suspect or bad guy.”
“They choose how that day ends, not me,” he said.
Brandon Webb
Brandon Webb is a former Navy SEAL sniper and sniper instructor. He is also a New York Times bestselling author and Editor-in-Chief of the SOFREP news team.
“The area where the rally was held is extremely challenging from a counter-sniper mission, probably a 9 out of 10,” said Webb, echoing Bruggeman’s sentiments. “There are infinite threat areas to cover from, the tree line, bushes, buildings, parked cars just to name a few.”
Webb shrugged off concerns about whether Crooks was able to hide behind the roof slope, enabling him to get enough shots in to kill a man and injure the former president.
“This is a moot point because it’s impossible to ask that every angle be covered,” said Webb. “I looked at the map and saw a thousand options I would take to set up and take a shot. This is almost an impossible task for any counter-sniper team.”
You can see Crooks setting up on the roof in the following video.
Footage of Donald Trump’s shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks setting up his weapon on roof surfaces pic.twitter.com/CFWfiD9qPA
— Kollege Kidd Media (@KKMediaTingz) July 15, 2024
“Once the teams have the shooter’s position it looks like a relatively easy target to engage and eliminate but I’m also not sure what kind of sniper training these guys have,” Webb wondered. “In my experience, most law enforcement agencies — I’m unsure of what training is required for the Secret Service — don’t have the budget to train effectively for sniper operations, nor do they have great training programs that cover the science of environmental ballistics, and I’ve trained with some of the larger metro SWAT units. Great guys, highly capable but they lack the foundational training and ongoing training required to be a very proficient sniper.”
The “main breakdown in my opinion was communications between local law enforcement and the Secret Service team,” Webb said. “Bystanders saw and reported a man climbing on a rooftop with what appears to be ample time to report the threat to the protection detail in order to take Trump off the stage.”
He added that there are “counter-sniper optics detection technologies but not sure they were employed or would have been effective unless the shooter was using a high powered optic,” Webb stated. “Again, an impossible situation for any counter-sniper team to cover 100% of all threats.”
Crooks and his father “were members of Clairton Sportsmen’s Club, a gun club about a 25-minute drive from his house, and enjoyed going shooting there together,” CNN reported, citing law enforcement officials.
Still, Webb suggested that Trump was lucky the gunman did not appear to be well-trained.
“If this shooter had any training at all, Trump would likely be out of the race,” Webb postulated. “If it’s a well-trained sniper he would certainly be dead because this shot is an extremely easy one to make.”
Webb offered more thoughts about Crooks in a piece he wrote for SOFRep.
Trump Assassination Attempt: Navy SEAL Sniper's After Action Report | SOFREP https://t.co/dclC6DfR48
— Brandon Webb (@BrandonTWebb) July 14, 2024
Jeffrey James
Jeffrey James was a Secret Service agent for 22 years, serving as a special agent in charge and under four administrations. He worked a detail under President George W. Bush and retired in 2018
USSS CS teams are “totally autonomous,” when it comes to the decision to pull the trigger, explained James, now chief of police at Robert Morris University in Pittsburgh.
“They don’t have to get permission from anyone to use deadly force. So pretty much as soon as they see a target, they can engage the target, because you look at [the Trump rally], even if the shooter had pulled his trigger, if they saw him and they had to radio and say, ‘Hey, man with a gun, do I have permission to fire?’ By the time that comes back, it might be too late, right? So they don’t need any kind of clearance or green light. They can act immediately.”
USSS CS snipers don’t need permission to shoot if a threat is detected said former Special Agent In Charge Jeffrey James. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images) Anna Moneymaker
The FBI is leading an investigation into the incident and there are several others underway as well into apparent breakdowns in planning and communications that allowed Crooks to climb atop a building with snipers inside. Meanwhile, the CS agent who killed Crooks will undergo the standard post-shooting review, James said.
“They’re just going to look to see if it was a to see if it was justified, which I’m sure we all agree that it was,” said James. “And then from there, they’re going to go to interview the sniper and see what they saw and interview the other sniper teams and the sniper’s partner.”
In addition, the review will also include interviews of “witnesses, both law enforcement and civilian, just to ensure that things were done as close to being right as they could.”
The review will “definitely ask ‘when did you first acquire the target?’ ‘When did you first see him or hear him? What do you think stopped you from seeing him before?”
Like Bruggeman, James opined that the CS teams were “just looking over [Crooks] because he was so close.
“I don’t think anyone is questioning whether or not this was a justifiable use of force, but just as an after-action, which is always done, those are the questions that they’ll ask.”
For the sniper who fired the fatal shot, there are “things that are immediately triggered,” said James. “They’re immediately put on administrative leave. They get drug tested.”
There is also psychological help, but James said it wasn’t mandatory by the time he retired in 2018.
“But I’ve got to be honest with you,” he added. “I don’t know any law enforcement agency now that doesn’t make post-shooting psychological care mandatory.”
James agreed that allowing Crooks to climb the roof with his rifle was a security breakdown.
“We use concentric rings of security,” he explained. “They start in close, which is just the agents right around the president, former president, vice president, whoever, and they go out the middle perimeters usually just agents, but occasionally will sprinkle in some other law enforcement entities for certain roles. And then the outer perimeters, which usually are law enforcement partners.”
If the agent in charge during his briefing the day of the visit “told a police officer, ‘hey, you know what? This roof is a problem for us, we’ve identified it as a potential problem. This is your responsibility. Keep an eye on this and make sure nobody gets up there,’ and it turns out that officer didn’t do it, then it’s on the officer,” said James. “But if no one was ever given that direction, then that’s a failure on the part of the site agent.”
The bottom line is that “somebody should have had eyes on that roof, because it was identified during the week as a potential problem” he said.
Investigators will look at whether the USSS agent in charge of the Trump rally was “negligent or delinquent in their duties,” James stated. “And if they were, there’s going to be consequences. You know, for heaven’s sake, someone under Secret Service protection…came an inch from being killed. So if people were found to have been derelict or negligent, there are going to be consequences. I mean, there has to be.”
Cheatle, as USSS director, has come under increasing pressure to step down as a result of what many see as serious failures to protect Trump. Local authorities meanwhile, are blaming the Secret Service for the security lapses.
NEW HERE on Trump assassination attempt:
Local police official warns that @secretservice director is improperly pointing blame at local police for the federal security agency's own plan to protect @DonaldTrump at rally, an event Secret Service controls. w @isaacstanbecker… pic.twitter.com/QkFxi9tbO9
— Carol Leonnig (@CarolLeonnig) July 16, 2024
James said that she wouldn’t necessarily have to take the fall, even after she said the reason no one was on the roof where Crooks was because it was sloped and considered dangerous.
“I think if you look at everyone that was there, the director probably knows the names of the detail leader of the agent in charge from Pittsburgh, and maybe a couple of other people,” James said. “Her direct contact with the journeyman agent is limited, just because of how busy she is, and they’re always moving around.”
“I’ve always found it hard to fire the person in charge over a failure at a lower level unless we find out it’s systemic, which I don’t think there’s any evidence of that right now,” James postulated. “If a car factory in Michigan isn’t putting wheels on properly, you don’t fire the CEO of General Motors.”
Cheatle’s statement about the roof slope “doesn’t change my opinion because she’s just repeating what was reported to her from agents in the field who set up the security.”
As it sits now, nobody is questioning why the sniper took the shot that killed Crooks. The question of why it took so long is now the subject of massive public interest and multiple federal investigations.
Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com
Senior Staff Writer
Howard is a Senior Staff Writer for The War Zone, and a former Senior Managing Editor for Military Times. Prior to this, he covered military affairs for the Tampa Bay Times as a Senior Writer. Howard’s work has appeared in various publications including Yahoo News, RealClearDefense, and Air Force Times.
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twz.com · by Howard Altman
12. Afghanistan War Commission wants veteran stories and questions
Afghanistan War Commission wants veteran stories and questions
militarytimes.com · by Hope Hodge Seck · July 16, 2024
When the congressionally appointed Afghanistan War Commission holds its first public hearing on Friday, witnesses will convene in a location chosen to send a message: the Washington, D.C., headquarters of the Veterans of Foreign Wars.
The 16-member commission, which has spent the last year hiring staff and getting organized, has an historically unique tasking: it aims to produce an accessible and cohesive “after-action review” of the 20-year war that includes perspectives ranging from the U.S. State Department to international governmental partners and possibly even the Taliban.
And as they begin their information-gathering in earnest, the commission’s leaders want to show that the perspectives of the U.S. service members who fought in the war are not merely an aspect of that story, but at the heart of the entire project.
The “Veterans” tab on the commission’s website leads to a form that invites Afghanistan veterans to share their experiences and questions with the commission. “What did you view as your mission during the war?” the form asks, and “To what extent do you believe that mission was accomplished?”
“The veterans community is kind of the wind in our sails, if you will,” commission co-chair Shamila Chaudhary told Military Times during an interview at the commission’s headquarters in Arlington, Virginia.
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Former Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley testified before Congress on Tuesday about the mistakes leading up to the Afghanistan withdrawal in August 2021.
Chaudhary, a former State Department and National Security Council official with expertise in U.S.-Pakistan relations, said it quickly became evident to her as she began her new role that veterans were continuing to discuss and evaluate the outcome and meaning of Afghanistan in a way unparalleled by other stakeholder groups.
“The most vibrant conversations were actually happening in the veteran community, and they were very open,” she said.
Colin Jackson, the commission’s other co-chair, is himself a veteran of the war who served multiple deployments as an Army officer and later served as the senior Defense Department representative to the U.S.-Taliban peace talks. He also chairs Strategic and Operational Research at the U.S. Naval War College. Jackson, who has a son and a daughter serving in and entering the military, hopes the commission’s report will in part formalize the kind of conversations and insights shared while “standing in the driveway at Fort [Liberty]” following a deployment.
“I feel viscerally that we owe it to this future generation to be smarter, better,” Jackson said. “If we don’t do that, then we’re not doing our job properly.”
Veteran responses so far have been few but high in quality, said Matthew Gobush, the commission’s strategic communications advisor. Some responses, he said, will prompt follow-on engagement or interviews. Others may help guide the commission in the inquiries it pursues.
The commission’s mandate is broad. The congressional language that created it in 2021 tasked it with studying aspects of the conflict ranging from U.S. decisions immediately prior to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and the initial invasion to peace negotiations and the ultimate military withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 that was quickly followed by Taliban takeover. The commission chairs don’t describe their objective as creating an aura of defeat. But in the absence of similar projects compiling broad-ranging multi-agency analysis of past U.S. wars, they are informed by another analysis of catastrophe: the 9/11 Commission Report, published in 2004.
That 585-page volume garnered literary praise, climbed some bestseller lists and even received a National Book Awards nomination. Trying to create an accessible, narrative-driven equivalent that covers a sprawling two-decade war rather than a single-day attack is a mammoth task, and the commissioners know it.
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"I found a spot in the clouds [where] I could see the ground, and then we basically dove," Maj. Mark Ross said of the evacuation.
“I mean, we get a lot of unbelievable stares when we talk about the work, because it’s very ambitious. And we could have easily interpreted it in a less ambitious way,” Chaudhary said. “And we decided not to do that, because doing the hard thing at this moment is the right thing to do.”
As the committee has begun to engage with veterans from various eras of the war, using the networks of congressionally chartered veteran service organizations like The American Legion and the VFW, the passion they hear encourages them in their approach.
“The fact that we have the veteran community so interested in our work directly challenges the notion that nobody cares about Afghanistan,” Chaudhary said.
The commission will deliver its final report in 2026, with an interim report charting the way ahead and work already completed set to come out in August. Leaders hope that veterans who read the report will be able to find themselves in the narrative in the context of the whole war, Jackson said.
“This report ideally allows an individual who, say, served once, twice, three, four times in Afghanistan to say, ‘Ah, now I understand how my piece of the action at various points in time related to the larger whole,’” he said. “So while we cannot conceivably cover the entire waterfront, on the technical aspects of the war, hopefully we give an architecture that allows individuals to say, ‘Okay, now I understand how I fit in, in 2005 in Farah province, to a larger project that spanned two decades.’”
Active-duty military leaders, they said, may find a new depth of analysis and application for future conflicts as well.
“They’re going to process current and future events through this Afghanistan lens, whether we like it or not,” Chaudhary said. “And so we will be doing them a service by providing them some depth that doesn’t exist right now. And the report will be just as much about Afghanistan as it will be about future scenarios, future intervention. It has to be; otherwise, it’s just history.”
About Hope Hodge Seck
Hope Hodge Seck is an award-winning investigative and enterprise reporter covering the U.S. military and national defense. The former managing editor of Military.com, her work has also appeared in the Washington Post, Politico Magazine, USA Today and Popular Mechanics.
13. Russia, China, Iran and North Korea are ‘deadly quartet’ – defence review chief
north Korea is finally elevated to elite status with the axis of dictators/aggressors/totalitarians/authoritarians.
Russia, China, Iran and North Korea are ‘deadly quartet’ – defence review chief
Former Nato secretary general Lord Robertson said the UK and allies had to be able to confront the states which were increasingly co-operating.
London Evening Standard · by David Hughes · July 16, 2024
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer meets with Defence Secretary John Healey and former Nato chief Lord Robertson
PA Wire
David Hughes4 minutes ago
The West faces a “deadly quartet” of Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, the head of the Government’s root-and-branch defence review has warned.
Former Nato chief Lord Robertson of Port Ellen said the four states were “increasingly working together”.
Vladimir Putin has relied on supplies from the states to wage his war in Ukraine, with Iranian drones, North Korean munitions and Chinese components sustaining his ability to attack despite Western sanctions.
The strategic defence review launched by Sir Keir Starmer’s administration will examine how to strengthen UK homeland security, bolster Ukraine in its fight against Russia, and modernise and maintain the nuclear deterrent.
Sir Keir Starmer has set a goal of spending 2.5% of GDP on defence spending by 2030 (Benjamin Cremel/PA)
PA Wire
It will also set out a roadmap on how to reach Sir Keir’s target of spending 2.5% of gross domestic product – a measure of the size of the economy – on defence.
Former prime minister Rishi Sunak had set a 2030 goal for spending 2.5%, at a cumulative cost of £75 billion over six years, but the new Labour administration has yet to commit to a timetable.
The co-operation between Mr Putin and his allies has alarmed Western leaders, with Nato’s summit in Washington last week declaring that Beijing and Moscow had a “deepening strategic partnership” while Iran and North Korea are “fuelling Russia’s war of aggression”.
The Washington summit declaration said China had become a “decisive enabler” of the Russian war effort through the supply of components to the defence industry.
Lord Robertson told reporters: “We’re confronted by a deadly quartet of nations increasingly working together, and we in this country, and the Nato alliance that met so successfully last week, has got to be able to confront that particular quartet as well as the other problems that are pervading the world at the present moment.”
Sir Keir Starmer met Nato allies in Washington on his first trip as Prime Minister (Stefan Rousseau/PA)
PA Wire
The Labour peer, a former Nato secretary general and defence secretary, will work with former US presidential advisor Fiona Hill and ex-joint forces command chief General Sir Richard Barrons.
The Prime Minister said: “We live in a more dangerous and volatile world. My Government will forge a new clear-eyed approach to our national defences, equipping us to tackle international threats head-on while keeping the British people safe and secure.”
As part of the process, a defence review team will be established to engage with serving and retired members of the armed forces, the defence industry, the general public, academics, Parliament and the UK’s allies.
At the start of a new era for Britain, we need a new era for defence. Hollowed-out armed forces, procurement waste and neglected morale cannot continue
John Healey
Defence Secretary John Healey will oversee the review and he will be regularly updated on progress, in addition to the Prime Minister and the Chancellor.
Mr Healey said: “At the start of a new era for Britain, we need a new era for defence. Hollowed-out armed forces, procurement waste and neglected morale cannot continue.
“In response, our armed forces need to be better ready to fight, more integrated and more innovative. We need clearer accountability, faster delivery, less waste and better value for money.
“The review will ensure that defence is central to the future security of Britain and to its economic growth and prosperity.”
Labour’s manifesto had committed to conduct the review within its first year in office, but Sir Keir wants the work to be completed much sooner.
London Evening Standard · by David Hughes · July 16, 2024
14. Sustainable Sustainment: Supplying War in the Age of Strategic Competition
Professional talk logistics....
Conclusion:
Today’s military leaders ought to be careful not to fall into the trap of simply relying on the traditional dynamics of supply chain warfare improved with new technologies, such as artificial intelligence and machine learning. Rather, by also thinking in terms of human considerations, material problems may be addressed while simultaneously building stronger relationships in the region.
Sustainable Sustainment: Supplying War in the Age of Strategic Competition - War on the Rocks
LT. GEN. XAVIER BRUNSON, CHRISTOPHER BOSS, AND LEO BLANKEN
warontherocks.com · by Lt. Gen. Xavier Brunson · July 17, 2024
“This is about winning a war. We don’t have time for some politically correct publicity stunt.” This is the typical response we encountered when proposing sustainable logistics and sustainment practices at a recent military exercise in Southeast Asia. The U.S. military personnel responsible for moving materials through the docks and airfields in Thailand were understandably skeptical. They viewed us as “do-gooders” and did not understand why developing processes now to recycle motor oil could be a critical step toward future success in the Indo-Pacific.
But when you zoom out, it makes sense. In the Indo-Pacific the U.S. military faces two tasks: to prepare for a large-scale, high-intensity conflict and to steadily bolster relationships with allies and partners throughout the region. The first cannot succeed without the second. As such, the sustainment and logistics of military exercises ought to reinforce relationships with partners and allies. By thoughtfully reframing basic tasks — some as simple as recycling motor oil — U.S. forces operating in the Indo-Pacific may not only help to solve future logistics problems but also serve to deepen positive relations with partner nations and their societies today. Imposing large numbers of personnel and military vehicles into a fragile ecosystem will have significant impact, and showing respect for the natural environment by mitigating that impact is a strategic choice. What is important is showing a regional partner that its relationship with United States is not simply transactional but based on thoughtful collaboration.
Integrating sustainable logistics and sustainment practices into military operations would offer tremendous benefits to the U.S. military and for the U.S. security architecture in the Indo-Pacific. This drives our concept of sustainable sustainment. This concept aligns with the Indo-Pacific realities of overcoming the formidable distances of the region by reducing a reliance on moving “iron mountains” of materiel across the Pacific to support operations. It also directly addresses environmental concerns, which have been designated a national security priority by the secretary of defense. And finally, it can strengthen relationships with U.S. allies and partners by understanding, acknowledging, and addressing their concerns in peacetime, thereby solidifying strong bonds and cooperation in the event of conflict.
Become a Member
The Current Situation
Over the past 20 years, the United States has economically embedded itself with a formidable major power with whom it competes politically, resulting in a delicate balance of interdependence and deterrence with simultaneous jockeying for relative advantage. This is what strategic competition is all about and why the Indo-Pacific region is so consequential. America’s relationships with the countries that make up the Indo-Pacific region, which constitute nearly two-thirds of the world economy, are just as critical to U.S. economic well-being as they are to its security. As relationships among these governments shift, so does the balance of power between the United States and China. Given these changing realities, conventional U.S. military units operating within the Indo-Pacific need to become more attuned to the social, economic, and environmental impacts of their activities in the region, and how these impacts may shape the competition space. In today’s landscape of strategic competition, emphasis is placed upon campaigning efforts, such as the Operation Pathways series of events, as the primary approach for conventional units to achieve and maintain military readiness. But this approach is more complex than it seems due to the challenges inherent within the region.
The Challenges and Cobra Gold
To prepare for potential conflict in the Indo-Pacific, the U.S. military should re-examine the challenges that both it and its partners face within the region. These include, for example, distance, geography, and weather. But within this examination, the military cannot simply seek ways to improve its own effectiveness, or it will fail at assuring its partners. Likewise, campaign efforts cannot just be about strengthening relationships or else military readiness will inevitably degrade. To figure out ways the U.S. military can both maintain the current equilibrium as well as strengthen wartime readiness, we describe the challenges alongside the current approach displayed in the recent Operation Pathways event known as Cobra Gold.
Cobra Gold is an exercise set in Thailand that enables multinational militaries to practice realistic operations and strengthen strategic relationships, having evolved from a bilateral U.S.-Thai maritime activity in 1982 to the world’s longest-running multinational military exercise. In its 43rd year, this year’s iteration occurred from February 27 to March 8 and featured 10 nations (Thailand, the United States, Australia, India, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, and China) and over 9000 personnel, half of whom were from the United States. It served as a real-world example of the current challenges any military unit faces in an age of strategic competition. One may be surprised to see China listed here, but its role was limited to a humanitarian assistance and disaster relief exercise. This should not be surprising, as it highlights the centrality of the “softer” aspects of military cooperation to steady-state competition in the region.
The first challenge any military leader or logistician recognizes is the sheer distance their units need to overcome just to participate within the region. In fact, the Indo-Pacific theater presents the U.S. military with its longest lines of communication. These significant distances, coupled with the diverse terrain separated by large swaths of water, underscore the need for a persistent military presence and the strategic positioning of resources within allied nations. For these reasons, the units participating in Cobra Gold depended predominantly on local resources for food and supplies and used large-scale generators to accommodate their massive energy needs. While these measures signal U.S. commitment to the region, they alone are inadequate for prolonged engagements.
Adding to the complexity are the changing security dynamics of the region. Foremost among these is the formidable presence of China as a peer adversary and its widely recognized anti-access/area denial capabilities. These swiftly transform much of the key terrain in the theater into contested zones, posing significant challenges for existing military units and impeding the deployment of reinforcements and the resupply of essential sustainment resources. This concern becomes even more pronounced when examining the physical aspect of the U.S. military, as was present during Cobra Gold.
A key training focus for Cobra Gold was simulating a multinational command structure, which brought together seven nations to resolve a notional crisis. Within this command structure, leaders suggested prepositioning supplies and reliance on local support, much like the World War II solution to orchestrating and moving iron mountains of materiel. But these plans neglect the realities of traversing vast, contested distances with limited lift capabilities, as well as the potential that a diminished U.S. industrial base is inadequate to sustain a technology-intensive approach to conventional warfighting. Given that sustainment is a strategic imperative in large-scale combat operations, the number of issues for a military leader to overcome becomes overwhelming. Yet, to be strategically competitive, commanders at all echelons should simultaneously understand partner nation challenges and seek to resolve them as well.
The Indo-Pacific is home to more than half of the world’s population, many of whom are the “most vulnerable to the impact of climate change.” Because climate change affects the Indo-Pacific people so drastically, Pacific nation leaders are increasingly prioritizing climate action within their national security strategies. Within these policies, political leaders are recognizing the costly loss and damage from rising sea levels and intensified storms and therefore seek external support to effectively implement these plans.
To address their concerns of climate-incurred devastation, Cobra Gold also focused on a humanitarian assistance and disaster relief demonstration. While these demonstrations helped to bolster integrated assurance, there is more that can be done that will also aid U.S. military readiness. One option involves sustainable sustainment practices that aid partners’ concerns, thereby strengthening partner relationships, while simultaneously increasing operational readiness.
Thailand is no different. It is strategically vital as an economic player and logistics hub and, even though it is a longstanding treaty partner with the United States as well as its “oldest trade and economic ally” in the region, this relationship cannot be taken for granted. The pressures of strategic competition create the risk of destabilizing these longstanding ties and as a former U.S. ambassador to the region recently argued: “Thailand feels little obligation to deepen ties with the United States at the expense of ties with China; instead, it guards its ability to maintain multiple alignments and adapt quickly to changing circumstances.” Given the malleability of such relationships, assuring partners and demonstrating concern for their priorities through concrete actions is increasingly critical.
The Sustainable Sustainment Solution
Sustainable sustainment offers a solution that harnesses innovations within existing technologies to tackle all these challenges simultaneously. Rather than replacing current sustainment strategies, it enhances them by incorporating contingencies in case of failure or degradation. What sets this approach apart from conventional logistics strategies is its explicit consideration of the political and social concerns held by America’s Pacific partners, fostering those crucial diplomatic victories with partners and allies. Sustainable sustainment innovation is about integrating sustainable technologies with military tactics, techniques, and procedures. These innovations need not be futuristic or too expensive. They encompass a range of advancements, from carbon-free energy generation, battery storage, microgrids, and additive manufacturing (3D printing). However, they can also be as simple as recycling motor oil.
Recycling motor oil addresses geographical, military/physical, and political/social issues inherent in conventional sustainment strategies. Firstly, it reduces the need for frequent fuel and oil deliveries, thereby enhancing unit sustainability and efficiency while lowering costs and risks for soldiers. Secondly, it curtails hazardous waste production, benefiting the host nation. In environments where logistics are contested and resources are scarce, operations characterized by lower resource requirements and reduced waste production alleviate the logistical burden, freeing up essential assets for other critical tasks. Simultaneously, reduced fuel consumption serves as a form of climate change mitigation. But there are more robust options that the U.S. military should also invest in.
Microgrids are all about resiliency when a host nation’s power system is unable to support the demands of a military at war. The best part of microgrids is that they rely on sustainable power sources, such as wind, solar, and methane gas from rotting garbage in landfills. They also help support the military’s goal of carbon neutrality and are an easy social and political win with U.S. allies and partners. The caveat is that these microgrids are expensive at the outset, but they create the type of investment that helps the United States compete against peer rivals such as China.
While these technologies and techniques are still in their infancy and may only marginally increase unit effectiveness and efficiency in the short term, their continual improvement is inevitable. Hence, it is imperative for the military to embrace them now to lay the groundwork for future technological advancements. Moreover, any increase in efficiency and effectiveness, particularly if it reduces risk, would be welcomed by military leaders. Additionally, the immediate benefits they offer underscore the urgency of their adoption.
Recommendations and Ways Forward
Successful campaigning in today’s Indo-Pacific geostrategic landscape requires unwavering support between the United States and its regional allies and partners. Yet, securing this support now entails more than traditional military protection. In the current geopolitical milieu, regional relationships depend upon militaries addressing concerns such as social instability, restricted access to essentials, the fragility of governments and economies, the protection of vital infrastructure, and the downturn in agricultural production. The military can address each of these issues while simultaneously increasing their operational readiness prior to and during large-scale combat operations. This is why we recommend implementing sustainable sustainment practices into future exercises. This approach is couched within the logic of integrated assurance, which seeks to translate the national strategic guidance of integrated deterrence into a tangible, ground-level cultivation of trust and relationships with friendly nations.
By integrating sustainable sustainment in exercises such as Cobra Gold, military units are providing contingency plans that allow units to maintain their missions without delay while primary and alternate sustainment plans are being restored. Furthermore, adopting measures to safeguard installations from climate hazards through conservation practices and nature-based engineering directly addresses the region’s crucial political and social concerns. Such options not only provide economic opportunities and practical benefits to these economies, but they also bolster U.S. efforts. Consequently, this strengthens relationships by showcasing the United States as the preferred partner while mitigating the adverse effects of climate change, which could significantly impact U.S. military units during future conflicts.
Today’s military leaders ought to be careful not to fall into the trap of simply relying on the traditional dynamics of supply chain warfare improved with new technologies, such as artificial intelligence and machine learning. Rather, by also thinking in terms of human considerations, material problems may be addressed while simultaneously building stronger relationships in the region.
Become a Member
Lt. Gen. Xavier Brunson is the commanding general of I Corps and Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington. Previously, he commanded the 7th Infantry Division. Brunson entered active duty in 1990 and has commanded at multiple levels in both conventional and special operations forces in combat. He holds two master’s degrees, one in human resources development and the other in national security and policy.
Christopher Boss is a company commander in 1st Special Forces Group (Airborne) at Joint Base Lewis-McChord. Previously, he taught at Western Michigan University and the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School. Entering active duty in 2011, Boss has several conventional and special operations deployments to Africa, most recently as a special forces detachment commander. He holds two master’s degrees, one in philosophy and the other in applied design for innovation.
Leo Blanken is an associate professor in the Defense Analysis Department at the Naval Postgraduate School and is a non-resident Fellow at the Irregular Warfare Initiative. He is the author of Rational Empires: Institutional Incentives and Imperial Expansion and is co-editor of Assessing War: The Challenge of Measuring Success and Failure. He also collects and DJs rare funk and soul records from the 1960s.
The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of Defense or the U.S. government.
Image: 1st Lt. Mark Andries
Commentary
warontherocks.com · by Lt. Gen. Xavier Brunson · July 17, 2024
15. The Case for Inclusive Alliances
Excerpts:
Ideological rigidity has also been an obstacle to the conclusion of free-trade agreements, which are key to cementing U.S. relationships in the Indo-Pacific. The Trans-Pacific Partnership failed in part because the United States gave too much weight to fighting climate change and encouraging the growth of independent labor unions in Vietnam. Talks surrounding the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity have made little progress because the United States has pushed participants to be sustainable and inclusive without even offering expanded market access in return. The United States will have to make or join a free-trade agreement in the Indo-Pacific if it wants to build up its regional presence, and that means it must be less picky about what values it pushes.
The Biden administration has, of course, maintained productive relations with flawed democracies and outright autocracies, including Saudi Arabia. But its rhetoric and behavior mean that many foreign leaders are worried about the reliability of U.S. support over the long run. They fear that American voters will pressure their lawmakers to punish foreign powers that violate human rights, and they are therefore skeptical about partnering with Washington. The United States must reassure these leaders that it will not turn its back on them over domestic incidents. It must show that its commitment is steadfast.
To some American officials, making such pledges will be deeply discomforting—and understandably so. Many of Washington’s partners engage in deeply repressive and upsetting behavior. But to prevent China and Russia from upending the world order, the West will have to build a broad coalition of partners based not around democracy but around respect for international borders and law. Otherwise, it risks shrinking the pool of potential allies and pushing countries into the arms of its competitors.
The Case for Inclusive Alliances
America Must Rediscover the Ideological Flexibility That Helped It Win the Cold War
July 17, 2024
Foreign Affairs · by Ripe for Revolution: Building Socialism in the Third World · July 17, 2024
“It is clear, absolutely clear,” said Joe Biden, speaking about today’s key geopolitical contest at his first press conference as president, “that this is a battle between the utility of democracies in the twenty-first century and autocracies.” It was a striking statement, but one that should not have come as a surprise. Many U.S. analysts and officials believe that Washington’s struggle against Beijing and Moscow is fundamentally an ideological one.
As precedent, these analysts cite the United States’ triumph against its last great competitor: the autocratic Soviet Union. For example, Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan argued in 2019 that “China may ultimately present a stronger ideological challenge than the Soviet Union did.” In this telling, Washington won the Cold War because it had better ideas about government and economics. The conflict was a contest between communism and capitalism in which free markets and elections prevailed.
But the notion that the Cold War was won simply because of the superiority of Western ideas is incorrect. What mattered to the outcome of the Cold War was not just that the United States had better ideas but that it was more ideologically flexible than the Soviet Union. This openness enabled Washington to be more successful in nurturing alliances, gaining adherents abroad, and maintaining legitimacy at home.
U.S. officials have forgotten this lesson. Instead, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States has grown more rigid than either China or Russia—contributing to its waning popularity abroad. It will have to change course. Instead of plowing ahead with an ideological battle, U.S. policymakers should revisit the Cold War to learn how to win friends and maintain alliances.
MY WAY OR THE HIGHWAY
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was born intolerant. Decades of factional struggles among leftists and revolutionaries led the Bolsheviks to take a hard line on ideology from the moment they seized power in Moscow. Vladimir Lenin, the party’s leader, believed that those who differed from him were inherently counterrevolutionary, and he banned factionalism within the party in 1921. Subsequent Soviet leaders expanded on Lenin’s approach, purging party members for real or suspected ideological deviations. They placed great value on obedience and loyalty, and they saw diversity of thought as a liability rather than an asset.
Such thinking extended internationally. Moscow enforced ideological conformity through its organizations, including the Comintern—the official organization of international communism. The Soviet Union occupied the countries it liberated from Nazi Germany in the 1940s and then made them adopt nearly identical political structures and centrally planned economies. It did not need to do so: by defeating Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union gained immense prestige in the eyes of many Europeans, and they were willing to accept an enduring role for Moscow on the continent. Communist parties across Europe exploded in membership and were poised to gain power without Soviet interference. But the Soviet system was simply too intolerant of disagreements to leave their loyalties to chance.
Strategically, this was a ruinous error. Instead of leading what could have been an organic alliance, Moscow found itself running a costly empire in which it preserved the rule of Soviet client regimes by repeatedly intervening militarily and giving up economic concessions, including by providing energy at below-market prices. More important, Moscow’s demand for strict ideological adherence among its allies caused the defection of its most critical partner, the People’s Republic of China. Chinese leader Mao Zedong and his comrades refused to accept that the Soviet Union was the leader of the international communist movement or the arbiter of Marxist-Leninist doctrine. In response, the Soviets encouraged other communist countries to isolate China. The alienation of China ultimately fractured the entire international communist movement.
Soviet leaders placed great value on obedience and loyalty.
Moscow’s ideological rigidity also prevented it from successfully supporting communism within its adversaries’ borders. By the end of World War II, the Communist Party of the United States was enjoying its highest ever level of membership. But support for the party quickly disintegrated—even before the persecutions of McCarthyism—in part because it followed Soviet dictates to try to gain control of trade unions and other leftist groups. Such an approach alienated many potential allies. By the beginning of 1956, some American communists openly blamed the poor state of their party on Moscow’s ideological inflexibility—and their own leaders’ slavish obedience to Soviet officials.
After Soviet leader Joseph Stalin died, Moscow had a chance to set a new course. In February 1956, Nikita Khrushchev, Stalin’s successor, gave a speech denouncing his predecessor and exposing the crimes and mismanagement under his leadership. In doing so, Khrushchev undermined Soviet credibility, but he also opened the door for reformists around the world. When some American communist leaders tried to reform the party with majority support, however, the Soviets coordinated a campaign of international communist leaders to bolster the hard-line Stalinist holdouts and crush the reformers.
The result was the party’s effective destruction. Of the 20,000 Communist Party members in the United States in early 1956, only about 15 percent remained two years later. When student protests rocked the country in the following decade, the party was too weak to play a role. American student protesters held up portraits of China’s Chairman Mao, the communist revolutionary Che Guevara, and Vietnam’s President Ho Chi Minh. But they ignored Soviet leaders Leonid Brezhnev and Alexei Kosygin.
DIFFERENT COUNTRIES, DIFFERENT STANDARDS
Unlike the Soviet bloc, the Western alliance was not built around dogmatic ideological commitments. Instead, it was based on stopping a common totalitarian enemy. Rather than excluding states for the ideals they lacked, this diverse set of allies united under those they shared. These elements of commonality were often framed in ideological terms—liberty, democracy, free markets—but it was not necessary to subscribe to all of them to join. The United States did meddle in the domestic politics of some of its European partners. For example, the CIA helped defeat communists in the Italian elections of 1948 by funding centrist parties and warning Italians about the dangers of communism in radio broadcasts. But for the most part, Washington did not block socialist parties from assuming or wielding power in the West. In France and Italy, the communist parties remained powerful, legal organizations that dominated trade unions, controlled roughly a quarter of the vote, and would play a role in governance in the 1970s and 1980s.
The Third World, however, was a different story. For much of the Cold War, American politicians believed that the conflict would ultimately be decided in developing countries, and they maneuvered aggressively to constrain or depose communists, real and imagined, across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Washington, for example, sponsored coups in Central America. It funneled arms to an anticommunist Indonesian dictator. It went to war in Vietnam. At times, even a hint of nonalignment or a flirtation with socialism could inspire Washington to be hostile. The United States, for example, organized a coup against nationalist Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq in 1953 out of fear that he was too reliant on communist support. And as the Cold War went on, the United States started adding ever more conditions to its friendships. A focus on human rights led the Carter administration to abandon the shah of Iran, the most reliable U.S. ally in the Middle East.
The United States won the Cold War, of course—a result that might seem to vindicate this intolerance. But its success came despite its rigidity, not because of it. Washington’s behavior made it deeply unpopular in the Third World, costing it many potential friends. The Soviets, meanwhile, were successful at courting some Third World countries because there, unlike in the First and Second Worlds, Moscow tolerated some differences. It came to appreciate the merits of ideological compromise in the postcolonial world, where security concerns seemed less important and the path to scientific socialism—defined by the Soviets as a centrally planned economy built around collectivized agriculture and state-led industrialization—was longer in countries with little industry and few proletarians. The Kremlin collaborated with ideologically heterodox leaders such as Indira Gandhi in India, Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt, and Ruhollah Khomeini in Iran. Although the Soviet Union never abandoned its belief that all countries should eventually adopt the Soviet brand of communism, it was willing to countenance new approaches to socialism in places far from home. When it came to finding anti-American allies in the Third World, the Soviet Union embraced the notion that the enemy of its enemy was its friend. It’s just that these partners could not help it prevail.
SWITCHEROO
Unfortunately, the United States has either missed or forgotten the lessons of the past. Instead, it has assumed that its Cold War victory proved its ideological supremacy, and it has thus become hostile toward any other governing approach. This intolerance has been further fueled by its hegemony. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the United States felt safer and therefore became even pickier with its allies. It no longer needed support from bloody anticommunist dictatorships, so it began to jettison them. Neoconservatism started to guide U.S. foreign policy, and U.S. lawmakers increasingly tried to win support from voters by critiquing the human rights abuses of allies, such as Turkey. Washington’s inflexibility remains most prevalent in developing countries. But now, unlike during the mid-twentieth century, these states are central to great-power competition. (The United States’ contest with China is more global than the Cold War, which was centered in Europe.)
The United States’ agenda has also expanded and, at the same time, become more parochial. Where once the United States stressed democracy and free enterprise, it often now promotes religious freedom, LGBTQ rights, and its own brand of feminism. Even longtime U.S. allies have begun to chafe against the export of American values. In 2021, French President Emmanuel Macron called “certain social science theories entirely imported from the United States” an existential threat to France, referring to progressive ideas on topics such as race and privilege. Other governments have reacted with even more hostility. The United States, for example, threated to cut aid to Ghana in February if it did not roll back anti-gay legislation, leading some Ghanaians to call for their government to build stronger economic ties with China.
The United States won the Cold War despite its rigidity.
Russia and, increasingly, China have taken advantage of this frustration. Moscow and Beijing present themselves as defenders of traditional values—a startling transformation for countries that had until recently been identified with official state atheism and, in the case of China, a one-child limit. Russian President Vladimir Putin has in particular sought to portray himself on the world stage as a leader opposed to Western wokeness. He supports anti-gay laws, mocks inclusive language, and said in 2021 that teaching children about gender fluidity verges on a “crime against humanity.”
China, meanwhile, has been investing in programs to spread its message abroad. It has rapidly expanded the International Liaison Department of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. The department was originally created to liaise between the CCP and other communist parties, but its writ expanded in the 1990s to include relations with all sorts of political organizations. By 2001, it maintained relations with 418 parties in 147 countries, receiving or sending some 300 delegations a year. Its activity has exploded under Chinese leader Xi Jinping. In 2017, the department organized the first “World Political Parties Dialogue” in Beijing, a conference promoting connections between the CCP and other parties around the world. It has since held two more such dialogues, one in 2021 and another in 2023.
But in these meetings, China never demands that its partners adopt its system. Instead, it is trying to sell the notion that it represents pluralism and tolerance as opposed to the hegemony and ideological coercion of the United States. Essentially, China is seeking to make flexibility its brand. In a March 2024 article, Liu Jianchao, the head of the International Liaison Department, championed “the diversity of civilizations” and condemned countries for “imposing their own values and models on others.” Xi had formally enshrined that idea in March 2023 with China’s “Global Civilization Initiative,” a campaign aimed at making China the world’s defender of cultural, political, and ideological diversity.
OPEN THE HISTORY BOOK
It is time for American leaders to remember how important ideological flexibility was to the Cold War. Washington must again learn to tolerate leaders and systems different from the ones it possesses. That does not mean the United States should support the sort of bloody dictatorships that it did during the twentieth century. But it does mean Washington should strengthen ties with flawed democracies, such as Brazil, India, Indonesia, and Turkey. Such ideological openness can help the United States avoid making the perfect the enemy of the good.
Washington can also be more flexible by no longer framing its competition with China and Russia as a contest between democracy and autocracy. Doing so is unhelpful for building the kind of global coalition that it will take to prevail against both states. Washington should then stop holding summits for democracy. In addition to signaling that U.S. officials do not respect autocratic partners, these meetings require Washington to try to parse which countries count as democracies, leading to charges of hypocrisy. The ultimate result is to drive away nondemocratic allies, such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Vietnam.
China seeks to make flexibility its brand.
Ideological rigidity has also been an obstacle to the conclusion of free-trade agreements, which are key to cementing U.S. relationships in the Indo-Pacific. The Trans-Pacific Partnership failed in part because the United States gave too much weight to fighting climate change and encouraging the growth of independent labor unions in Vietnam. Talks surrounding the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity have made little progress because the United States has pushed participants to be sustainable and inclusive without even offering expanded market access in return. The United States will have to make or join a free-trade agreement in the Indo-Pacific if it wants to build up its regional presence, and that means it must be less picky about what values it pushes.
The Biden administration has, of course, maintained productive relations with flawed democracies and outright autocracies, including Saudi Arabia. But its rhetoric and behavior mean that many foreign leaders are worried about the reliability of U.S. support over the long run. They fear that American voters will pressure their lawmakers to punish foreign powers that violate human rights, and they are therefore skeptical about partnering with Washington. The United States must reassure these leaders that it will not turn its back on them over domestic incidents. It must show that its commitment is steadfast.
To some American officials, making such pledges will be deeply discomforting—and understandably so. Many of Washington’s partners engage in deeply repressive and upsetting behavior. But to prevent China and Russia from upending the world order, the West will have to build a broad coalition of partners based not around democracy but around respect for international borders and law. Otherwise, it risks shrinking the pool of potential allies and pushing countries into the arms of its competitors.
Foreign Affairs · by Ripe for Revolution: Building Socialism in the Third World · July 17, 2024
16. The Palestinian Authority Is Collapsing
Excerpts:
To help with longer-term capacity building, key donor countries need to adopt a comprehensive strategy wherein they work jointly toward the same goal but divide up tasks. Division of labor is crucial to avoid overburdening a single international actor with a daunting and politically dangerous task; this concept was envisioned when Salam Fayyad was prime minister in the first decade of this century, but it was never fully implemented. The PA already has an aid-coordination secretariat, which could support collaboration among multiple stakeholders and aid providers.
Countries could take on different and complementary supportive roles. The United States, for instance, could continue training the PA security forces, assist in preparing a force designed to restore law and order in Gaza, and help the new government implement its security-sector reform plans. Germany could lead a comprehensive educational reform effort that both improves educational outcomes and addresses Israel’s concerns that the current Palestinian curriculum incites violence. The United Kingdom could assist the PA to strengthen its municipal governance, and the Netherlands could help it boost the water and energy sector.
Those countries recognizing Palestine or advocating for a two-state outcome must help ensure that the Palestinian state has a fighting chance to dignify its people with proper services and regain the public’s trust. Otherwise, any steps toward realizing two states will be fanciful, built atop a crumbling foundation—and likely to help turn the West Bank into a third front in the current war. Instead of skipping steps and merely trying to will a Palestinian state into being—and idealizing a so-called revitalized PA—the aim must be to help a capable emerge, one that can effectively govern the West Bank and potentially soon return to govern Gaza. Then, when political circumstances change and Israel and the Palestinians resume negotiations over a two-state outcome, there will already be a functioning de facto Palestinian state poised for success—one that will have the backing of the world in deed, not only in name.
The Palestinian Authority Is Collapsing
Helping It Recover Is the Only Way to Save the Two-State Solution
July 17, 2024
Foreign Affairs · by Shira Efron and Michael J. Koplow · July 17, 2024
Since April, nine countries—Armenia, the Bahamas, Barbados, Ireland, Jamaica, Norway, Slovenia, Spain, and Trinidad and Tobago—have formally recognized the state of Palestine. Belgium, Luxembourg, and Malta have hinted that they may soon follow suit. So the United Kingdom’s new prime minister, Keir Starmer; in France, meanwhile, left-wing parties that joined the coalition that won the country’s recent election advocated for recognition. Nearly as many countries now recognize the state of Palestine (149) as well as one disputed territory, Western Sahara) as recognize Israel (165). The accelerating pace of recognitions could soon the two countries close to parity—and significantly, the new wave of states recognizing Palestine includes several large Western European countries whose leaders have openly said that they hope the rest of Europe will follow their lead.
The new recognitions of Palestine constitute a symbolic act of frustration with the bloody war in Gaza and Israeli policies in the West Bank. Leaders of the countries now recognizing Palestine have also indicated that they hope diplomatic recognition will have practical effects on the ground, boosting Palestinians’ sovereignty and bargaining power and improving the chances that the war could end with a successful two-state solution. Most of the outside actors trying to broker a long-term cease-fire between Israel and Hamas believe that advancing the creation of a viable Palestinian state must underpin any such deal. Norway’s prime minister, Jonas Gahr Store, called recognizing Palestine “an investment in the only solution that can bring lasting peace in the Middle East.”
But unilaterally recognizing a Palestinian state is the wrong first step, one that could exacerbate the region’s turbulence. Not only would Israel’s leadership and population see it as an unjust reward after Hamas’s October 7 massacre, but the move, taken alone, has no tangible benefits for Palestinians. Even as the need for real Palestinian sovereignty grows more and more acute, the Palestinian Authority (PA)—the putative ruler of a Palestinian state—is closer to collapsing than it has been since the height of the second intifada in 2002–2003. The Israeli government’s efforts over the past year to demolish the PA’s finances have driven the body to the brink of outright insolvency; in May, the World Bank warned that the PA could soon be forced into an irreversible fiscal crisis. The PA is nowhere near being ready to govern, and Palestinians neither like nor trust it. These challenging conditions would set a new Palestinian state up to fail from nearly the moment it was founded.
There is a genuine danger in recognizing a Palestinian state and raising expectations for its viability without tangibly helping a ruling authority prepare to govern effectively. Countries that wish to pave the way toward a two-state outcome must take a different, two-pronged approach. First, they must use political, economic, and diplomatic levers such as targeted sanctions on settler leaders and entities, and even on Israeli regional councils in the West Bank, to ensure that Israel ceases to encroach on a future Palestinian state’s land. Second, they must work to strengthen the foundations of a future state before declaring it into being.
Without immediate and targeted help from overseas actors, the PA could soon lose its grip on the West Bank—at which point it would stand no chance of ever resuming effective control over Gaza. And most Palestinians, deeply disillusioned with the PA, are themselves ambivalent about its continued rule; outside actors who wish to see the PA lead a future Palestinian state must first help the organization regain the trust of its constituents and nullify Israel’s objections over its lack of capacity to govern. In other words, anybody with the serious intent to promote a Palestinian state must put their energy—and their money—where their mouth is.
STATE OF FLUX
Recognizing the state of Palestine may appear to have many upsides and few risks. According to the standard definition in international law, a state must assert effective control over a permanent population, a defined territory, and a government, and it must have the capacity to conduct international relations. History shows, however, that decisions to recognize a new state do not always reflect whether the state has met these conditions but rather normative and political motives to support a people’s right to self-determination. A number of countries’ swift recognition of the state of Israel in 1948 illustrated that territorial disputes are not always a barrier to statehood. The United States and other countries recognized the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1960 while it was still embroiled in a civil war, and likewise recognized South Sudan in 2011 even though it did not exercise effective control over large parts of its territory.
The case of Kosovo, for instance, suggests that under the right circumstances, early international recognition can help drive a constructive state-building process. Following Kosovo’s 2008 unilateral declaration of independence, large countries including France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States quickly recognized its sovereignty. That move granted Kosovo legitimacy, unlocked aid and foreign support, and allowed it admittance into key international institutions.
The right circumstances, however, are not yet present when it comes to the Palestinian state. In some ways, Palestine is indeed transitioning from a state on paper to a real, meaningful actor in the global arena. Since the UN’s 2012 decision to grant Palestine observer status, it has signed on to almost 200 treaties, joined numerous multilateral forums, and engaged in active lawfare against Israel. But international recognition will not help it overcome the biggest barriers to true independence: the fragmentation of Palestinian territories among the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem; the partial nature of self-rule in the areas nominally allotted to Palestinians; the ongoing expansion of Israeli settlements; and, damningly, the woeful incapacities of the PA itself. The PA, which was already extremely weak, has been rapidly losing its ability to govern since October 7. And although readiness should not be the only criteria for statehood recognition, symbolic Palestinian recognition will not achieve positive outcomes in the absence of strong governing bodies and institutions.
Recognizing the state of Palestine appears to have many upsides and few risks.
The current Israeli government is a chief threat to the health of the PA. Despite superficial efforts to prevent the collapse of the PA, the state of Israel has been seeking, implicitly and explicitly, to weaken the PA’s authority in the West Bank. Even Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, whom many Washington analysts perceive as a moderate, announced in May that Israelis would be allowed to return to three former West Bank settlements from which Israel withdrew in 2005—violating commitments that Israel made to U.S. President George W. Bush in 2005. The more radical right-wing members of Israel’s current government, led by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, are more forthright about their intent to undermine the PA. Smotrich created and oversees the Settlements Administration, a new governmental body within the Defense Ministry that is empowered to appropriate land in the West Bank, construct new settlements, and demolish Palestinian buildings constructed without permits. As a leader in the settlement movement, he is using his political position to condone the establishment of illegal outposts, retroactively legalizing them in what he characterizes as a retaliation against other states’ recognition of Palestine.
Unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state outside of negotiations with Israel—and over its objections—could lead to more of this kind of retaliation. Israel’s far right has long desired to retroactively legalize its own illegal construction. But characterizing this activity as the appropriate response to unilateral recognition of Palestine builds broader support for such encroachments into the West Bank beyond the extremist settler flank. Further recognitions of Palestine could legitimize the Israeli right wing’s longtime calls to annex the West Bank by force. In 1948, when Zionist leaders declared the establishment of Israel, war followed. But although the newly independent Israel had the capacity to defend the borders it had established, a Palestinian state would not.
SQUEEZE PLAY
Israeli policies are also steadily ramping up the economic pressure on the PA. Israel collects taxes on goods that pass through Israel into the West Bank on behalf of the PA. It is required under the Oslo accords to transfer these taxes to Ramallah on a monthly basis. In recent years, this tax revenue has comprised around 70 percent of the PA’s income. These revenues have dropped from a monthly average of $220 million in the months leading up to October 7 to $55 million now, as a result of the economic slowdown prompted by the war in Gaza. But Israel did not even pay out the diminished revenues it owed the PA between October 7 and early July of this year, when a last-minute deal was achieved to secure partial transfer of payments. Moreover, local tax revenues collected by the PA have dropped by over 50 percent since October 7.
Other Israeli policies—including the revocation of work permits for Palestinians and the extension of the fight against Hamas to the West Bank, which has yielded increased Israel Defense Forces activity and stricter limitations on freedom of movement—have pushed the West Bank’s labor productivity down and the unemployment rate up. In addition, the international donations that have historically contributed substantially to the PA’s revenue have all but vanished thanks to donor fatigue and redirection of existing humanitarian aid toward the crisis in Gaza. These donations are now at their lowest point since 2012.
All in all, the PA’s cash deficit is expected to exceed $2 billion in 2024, up from $740 million in 2023 and $451 million in 2022. The PA’s overall debt could climb to $5 billion by the end of this year. As a result of these financial troubles, the PA has had to slash public-servant salaries by as much as 50 percent and delay payments to private-sector providers. In the West Bank, government ministries now only work three or four days a week. As Israel closes its gates to Palestinians, their needs have grown more acute, but the PA has had to significantly reduce service provision in areas such as education, health, and social welfare. Diminished public spending on social assistance, for example, has resulted in cutbacks and delays to cash payments for the West Bank’s poorest families. Medication for chronic illnesses has run out in public hospitals, forcing ordinary Palestinians to rely on charity or seek expensive private medical referrals; private health care is struggling, too, because some 60 percent of the PA’s private-sector arrears is owed to private and NGO health-care providers. Courts have even stopped issuing printed arrest warrants as a way to save paper and printer ink.
The international donations that contribute substantially to the PA’s revenue have vanished.
On top of these challenges, two new Israeli laws came into effect on June 1 that will further undermine the PA’s fiscal situation. Both laws grant victims of Palestinian terrorist acts automatic compensation from the PA and may apply retroactively to October 7. From the tax revenue it is withholding from the PA, Israel is expected to deduct $1.3 million for each person injured in a terrorist attack and $2.7 million for every Israeli death. Although this legislation is still subject to change and is being challenged in court, its full implementation could bankrupt the PA instantaneously.
Smotrich has made clear his enthusiasm for the PA’s financial demise. “Let it collapse,” he declared in May. He has a powerful personal incentive to keep the PA’s finances in a precarious position: that precarity constitutes valuable leverage. Israel’s Finance Ministry currently indemnifies Israeli banks that transfer money to Palestinian banks, which protects Israeli banks against sanctions or lawsuits for transferring money that may assist terrorist activity. Smotrich has repeatedly threatened to end this indemnity, which would make it impossible for Israelis to conduct any business with companies or individuals holding Palestinian bank accounts and with the PA itself. In return for agreeing to temporarily extend Israeli banks’ indemnity and release portions of the PA’s tax revenues, Smotrich has extorted big concessions, such as approvals for more settlement construction and the revocation of travel permits for PA officials. Indeed, Smotrich has demonstrated his willingness to compromise on economic measures for even more significant territorial concessions—an outcome that would lend further blows to any prospect of meaningful Palestinian statehood.
The Israeli defense establishment has greeted Smotrich’s economic threats with deep alarm, knowing that the disintegration of the PA and the Palestinian economy could destabilize the West Bank. Yet these warnings have gone largely unheeded: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is unwilling to do anything that causes his coalition—which depends on Smotrich and Ben-Gvir—to collapse. If Smotrich allows the bank indemnity to lapse when its extension expires in October, that could transform the Palestinian economy overnight into one that relies solely on cash, setting it back decades and further delegitimizing the PA.
ROTTING FROM THE INSIDE
The PA is not only hamstrung by Israel’s policies. Its internal governance is characterized by corruption and authoritarianism. In the areas under its direct control—Areas A and B of the West Bank, comprising 40 percent of the territory—the PA struggles severely to provide services, livelihoods, and dignity to inhabitants. This is only partly due to its budgetary woes; it has also never established a properly functioning West Bank economy. President Mahmoud Abbas, who will turn 90 next year, administers the PA almost exclusively by executive decrees, with little transparency or oversight. Security is a particular problem, as militants from different factions now openly defy the underfunded and undermotivated PA security forces in cities such as Jenin, Nablus, and Tulkarm.
The PA’s poor performance is reflected in its abysmal poll numbers. A Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research poll conducted in both the West Bank and Gaza between May 26 and June 1 found that satisfaction with Abbas’s performance stood at a dismal 12 percent. A quarter of Gazans said they would like a reconstructed Palestinian Authority with an elected president, parliament, and local government officers to control Gaza after the war, and ten percent said they would prefer PA rule under a new leader. But in the West Bank, only 11 percent and six percent of respondents in the West Bank said the same, revealing the party’s lack of popularity among the people directly exposed to its rule.
Under pressure to reform, in February, the PA established a new, technocratic government headed by an economist, Mohammad Mustafa, who immediately announced an ambitious reform agenda. He is trying to implement it, for instance by calling for applications for deputy minister positions instead of merely appointing the usual Fatah cronies. But his current capacity to execute a truly broad shift is limited. An overwhelming majority of respondents to the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research poll in late May said they believed that Mustafa’s new government would not succeed in carrying out necessary reforms.
Turning the PA from a transitional authority into a permanent state with the stroke of a pen will not make this litany of problems go away. The risk that the state of Palestine would become a failed state is very real given the PA’s dysfunctional, insolvent status and its dearth of public legitimacy. Further declines in its ability to provide social services and maintain law and order could yield a situation in which warlords and gangs become de facto rulers in some areas of the West Bank—a worse scenario than existed in 2002 and 2003, during the second intifada.
ORDER OF BUSINESS
If international actors are serious about advancing a two-state outcome, the symbolic step of state recognition must be preceded by concrete acts to insist on reforms to the PA, stop Israel’s attempts to undermine a two-state solution, and help the Palestinians with actual state building. Concerning Israel, other states should direct their political, economic, and diplomatic leverage at toward stopping the country from degrading the little Palestinian capacity that remains without stoking Israeli fears that their country will be delegitimized outright. This means using a scalpel rather than an axe to force Israel to own the consequences of its behavior in the West Bank without eroding its overall security posture in the face of legitimate and ongoing threats from Iran and its proxies.
Other countries could restrict the ability of Israeli people, projects, and assets based on land designated for a future Palestinian state to access cultural and research-and-development programs abroad; require Israeli banks to register clients and institutions that operate in the West Bank; use diplomatic tools in international organizations to oppose Israel’s settlement project rather than its broad legitimacy as a state; and sanction umbrella groups that support settlements, settler-movement leaders, and even Israeli municipal entities that abet the building and funding of illegal outposts or settler violence. U.S. President Joe Biden’s February executive order sanctioning some such leaders is a template, but there is space to broaden its impact and encourage other countries to follow suit.
Concerning Palestinian state building, the most urgent step is to find emergency financial assistance to stabilize the PA. Mustafa has asked for $2.7 billion in emergency budget support over the next 12 months, an amount that would essentially restore international funding for the PA to pre-2013 levels. But this stopgap funding would constitute only a temporary Band-Aid, giving the PA a lifeline for merely a few months.
Palestinians’ deep dismay with the PA is legitimate. Yet no other actor could plausibly fill the void if the PA collapses. For all of its faults and shortcomings, the PA has managed to create institutions and a bureaucracy that now has three decades of governing experience, which are commodities in very short supply. It also continues to maintain important diplomatic relationships across the world. To make international aid to the PA effective, donors must condition this support on the PA implementing specific reforms—and commit to helping the PA implement them, in the hope that gradually boosting the PA’s legitimacy will encourage even more meaningful reforms.
Instead of merely trying to will a Palestinian state into being, other countries must help the PA become capable.
The PA formed its new government following Biden’s promise to support a “revitalized” PA’s rule over Gaza after the war ends. But such promises will be empty so long as no international actor also helps the PA revitalize itself. It cannot do so on its own, partially but not only because of Israel’s pressure campaign. Indeed, setting high (and currently unrealistic) expectations for PA rule merely risks highlighting the gulf between hope and reality—and lending legitimacy to Israeli claims that Palestinian institutions are too incompetent to govern any territory at all.
To help with longer-term capacity building, key donor countries need to adopt a comprehensive strategy wherein they work jointly toward the same goal but divide up tasks. Division of labor is crucial to avoid overburdening a single international actor with a daunting and politically dangerous task; this concept was envisioned when Salam Fayyad was prime minister in the first decade of this century, but it was never fully implemented. The PA already has an aid-coordination secretariat, which could support collaboration among multiple stakeholders and aid providers.
Countries could take on different and complementary supportive roles. The United States, for instance, could continue training the PA security forces, assist in preparing a force designed to restore law and order in Gaza, and help the new government implement its security-sector reform plans. Germany could lead a comprehensive educational reform effort that both improves educational outcomes and addresses Israel’s concerns that the current Palestinian curriculum incites violence. The United Kingdom could assist the PA to strengthen its municipal governance, and the Netherlands could help it boost the water and energy sector.
Those countries recognizing Palestine or advocating for a two-state outcome must help ensure that the Palestinian state has a fighting chance to dignify its people with proper services and regain the public’s trust. Otherwise, any steps toward realizing two states will be fanciful, built atop a crumbling foundation—and likely to help turn the West Bank into a third front in the current war. Instead of skipping steps and merely trying to will a Palestinian state into being—and idealizing a so-called revitalized PA—the aim must be to help a capable emerge, one that can effectively govern the West Bank and potentially soon return to govern Gaza. Then, when political circumstances change and Israel and the Palestinians resume negotiations over a two-state outcome, there will already be a functioning de facto Palestinian state poised for success—one that will have the backing of the world in deed, not only in name.
- SHIRA EFRON is Israel Policy Forum’s Diane and Guilford Glazer Foundation Senior Director of Policy Research. From 2020 to 2021, she was a consultant with the UN’s Jerusalem country team and from 2011 to 2022, a Fellow with the RAND Corporation.
- MICHAEL KOPLOW is Israel Policy Forum’s Chief Policy Officer and a Research Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute’s Kogod Research Center.
Foreign Affairs · by Shira Efron and Michael J. Koplow · July 17, 2024
17. Playing Catch-Up on Grand Strategy
Conclusion
As the twenty-first century progresses, the free world will need strategic agility and cohesive stamina to navigate a world predominantly divided in geostrategic and ideological terms, not just in the familiar multilateral and great power ways, but also between a maritime-democratic bloc and a Eurasian-authoritarian bloc, separated by an unstable Rimland. At a time when the Eurasian-authoritarian bloc seeks to dominate the World-Island, free, open countries cannot afford to relax their grip on the World Ocean—the physical equivalent of the worldwide web—and the international rules-based network system on which they depend.
Playing Catch-Up on Grand Strategy – Christopher Parry
Halford Mackinder, Alfred Thayer Mahan, and Nicholas Spykman have returned to haunt the twenty-first century.
lawliberty.org · by Christopher Parry
“Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” – Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War
In his lead essay, Jerry Hendrix argues that the United States and its leaders are unprepared for the re-emergence of great power competition. We agree that the leaders and populations of the free world are unprepared, but differ slightly on the character of that competition. Hendrix divides the world between authoritarian and liberal democracies. The world is a lot fuzzier and not as binary as this simplistic formula would suggest. We would propose that there is an older, more elemental framework at play today. The ghosts of the early twentieth-century prophets of geopolitics—Halford Mackinder, Alfred Thayer Mahan, and Nicholas Spykman—have returned to haunt the twenty-first century, to deliver a warning and to offer a framework for understanding how grand strategy and geopolitics should be shaped in relation to emerging global forces and power structures.
Mackinder, as a continental power proponent, believed that control of the “World-Island”—the interlinked continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa (Afro-Eurasia)—would confer dominance of the international system. The key advantage of the World-Island was the Heartland, stretching from the Volga to the Yangtze and from the Himalayas to the Arctic, with the combined entity’s large East Asian coastline enabling it to become a major sea power. Meanwhile, he envisaged that the offshore continents of North America, South America, and Oceania, as well as the British Isles and Japan, would struggle to compete with a Heartland that, with expansion into Afro-Eurasia and internal lines of communication, could access and exploit over half of the world’s resources.
Mahan, the maritime proponent, highlighted (as early as 1901) the “immense latent force” of China as a potential geopolitical rival, presciently commenting that “it is scarcely desirable that so vast a proportion of mankind as the Chinese constitute should be animated by but one spirit and moved as a single man.” He also recognized that science and technology would at some point be globalized and that under such circumstances “it is difficult to contemplate with equanimity such a vast mass as the billions of China concentrated into one effective political organization, equipped with modern appliances, and cooped within a territory already narrow for it.” He also worried about “the vast, uninterrupted mass of the Russian Empire, stretching without a break … from the meridian of western Asia Minor, until to the eastward it overpasses that of Japan.” He recommended that Russia, and by extension China, needed to be contained by an alliance of the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, and Japan. More cheerfully, he noted that in history, maritime powers generally prevailed against continental powers when they were able to control the maritime routes between raw materials, manufactures, and markets.
Meanwhile, Spykman highlighted the importance of the control of Rimland, the coastal regions between Eurasia’s Heartland and the offshore maritime zones, in containing and constraining the Heartland. He emphasized the densely populated western, southern, and eastern edges of the Eurasian continent that epitomized the buffer zones between sea power and land power.
The modern and emerging world is eerily crystallizing and settling very much in harmony with this conceptual framework, with the historically familiar bloc-on-bloc competition rather than simply great power competition.
Mackinder and the Eurasian-Authoritarian Bloc
These general theories have been eerily becoming flesh for some time. Russia and China have recently revived Mackinder’s notional Heartland as the self-proclaimed “heart of Eurasia.” Their strategic alignment is based on economic cooperation in Central Asia, military collaboration and arms transfers, strategic competition with the United States, energy exploitation and distribution, and accommodation with each other’s geopolitical ambitions. Iran, with its closed regime, geoeconomic and energy links with China over the past 40 years, and its technological reliance on Russia, is a third member of this relationship, along with an opportunistic North Korea. Together, these countries have the potential to achieve strategic dominance across the whole of the World-Island and the waters around it.
Even if the BRI proves to be of marginal commercial and economic benefit, China will be able to project significant geopolitical power, proprietorial claims, and a substantial level of control across and around the World-Island.
This quest for dominance is being led by China, whose grand strategy appears to mirror its fifteenth-century CE period of greatness, before the European powers had penetrated the Indian Ocean and the Asia-Pacific region. At that time, its commercial and political model was built around a dominant Asia-Pacific trading and tribute-based hub enforced by Chinese commercial and military power. This hub was complemented by trade routes by land across Central Asia via the Silk Roads, and by sea through the Indian Ocean to Africa, the Gulf, and beyond to the Mediterranean. Today, exceptionally high levels of Chinese state and diaspora investment are recreating the trade-and-tribute hub of the Asia-Pacific region while its “Made in China 2025” program and “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI) aspire to replicate the land and maritime Silk Roads across and around Eurasia to Europe, through the Arctic and the Pacific, and into cyberspace. Even if the BRI proves to be of marginal commercial and economic benefit, China will be able to project significant geopolitical power, proprietorial claims, and a substantial level of control across and around the World-Island.
Russia, meanwhile, has sought to promote its own Eurasian Economic Union, both as a means of imposing ties of dependency on the former members of the USSR in Central Asia and to participate in China’s BRI. It has also shown its readiness to intervene in areas that serve its imperial ambitions and geopolitical interests and to stifle energy competitors in Ukraine and the Eastern Mediterranean, the known resources of which could replace Russian exports to Europe and beyond in 10 years. In addition, Iran is seeking regional primacy in the Rimlands of the Greater Middle East and the Persian Gulf. This policy reflects its antipathy to Israel and its confessional and geostrategic rivalry with the Sunni states led by Saudi Arabia. It also reflects China’s desire to build a Shi’a BRI corridor through Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon.
A constant refrain in Russian and Chinese political discourse, academic literature, and media outlets is that the international rules-based system is unbalanced and skewed to the advantage of the United States and its allies. Officials in both China and Russia routinely speak about the need for “new rules or no rules” and a zero-sum desire to “de-Americanize” the world and its institutions by “modernization and mobilization.”
Accordingly, China and Russia are not only consolidating their grip on Mackinder’s Heartland, but also seeking to neutralize or absorb Spykman’s Rimland to the east and west, and also in the Greater Middle East, in order to de-Americanize and dominate the World-Island. In doing so, they hope to keep both potential military rivals and commercial challengers either dependent or at arms’ length.
In the West, this approach can be seen in Russia’s sensitivity to outside interference in the Arctic and the Northern Sea Route, while seeking to reduce its other vulnerabilities by coercing or isolating potential competitors and opponents in the Baltic and Black Seas. In addition, Russia is attempting to apply military, commercial (in the form of energy diplomacy), cyber, and informational pressure on Europe.
Meanwhile, in the East, China is going offshore to consolidate its Asia-Pacific trade-and-tribute hub and to assert territorial sovereignty within a notional ten-dash line, primarily through persistent presence on the ground, but also by the construction and fortification of artificial islands in the South and East China Seas. China’s “land grab” blatantly ignores the rights of other countries in the region under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and threatens to establish Chinese control over international waters.
Likewise, Iran is applying pressure through its proxies and sub-state activities to the Greater Middle East and in particular to Israel.
Mahan and the Maritime-Democratic Powers
The Eurasian, authoritarian World-Island of Mackinder is balanced geographically by Mahan’s offshore continents of America and Australia, the islands of Britain and Japan, and the European and Asia-Pacific democracies that occupy Spykman’s Rimland at the western and eastern ends of the World-Island. Recently, a combination of democratic, predominantly maritime states has emerged whose common interests involve the maintenance of the international rules-based system that has delivered strategic stability, economic growth, and security for the past 70 years.
This maritime-democratic bloc comprises the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, most parts of Europe, South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand. With their distinctive maritime and trading history, human capital, and cultural power—not the least of which is the use of English as a universal data language—their alignment is progressively consolidating around organizations and initiatives like NATO, the “Anglosphere,” the “Five Eyes” intelligence community, AUKUS, the Quad, and the Five Powers Defence Arrangements (FPDA). They all have an interest in the continued free use of the sea and, either individually or collectively, good reason to be wary of the trajectory of the authoritarian Eurasian bloc in general and China in particular.
The United States, having recognized China as an existential strategic competitor, is already moving conceptually and practically towards a model that will contain and constrain China. To this end, it has promoted the idea of the free world re-asserting its values and interests in the face of Chinese assertion and expansion. However, in taking forward Jerry Hendrix’s initial challenge, it has not yet fully calibrated with its allies the totality of the threats and risks inherent in the Eurasian-authoritarian bloc.
This realization is vital because the maritime-democratic bloc will rely on the strategic leadership, industrial capacity, and military power of the United States to offset the Eurasian-authoritarian bloc. The financial and economic power of the United States will also be needed to sustain the maritime-democratic bloc, as the new strategic alignment results in a greater or lesser decoupling of the current globalized financial and economic model. This shift is likely to result in a greater concentration of investment, industrial production, business processes, trade networks and supply chains, as well as employment and automation, within the respective blocs, each with their distinctive, sometimes overlapping, standards, tariffs, compliance, and legal requirements. The changing relationship between the two blocs will also be complicated by the fact that in a previously connected world, states in both camps have traded extensively with each other, even if their strategic interests and aspirations diverged.
The In-Betweeners
The rest of the world outside these two blocs, mostly in the “Rimland,” could be termed as “in-betweeners,” reviving the role of the “non-aligned” countries during the Cold War. These states will try and hedge or balance in relation to the two blocs, but elites will make strategic choices according to their level of economic or strategic dependence on one or other of the blocs, with due regard to their local and regional geopolitical interests, security, and continued regime or electoral legitimacy.
Free, open, and sovereign countries are a constant reproach to authoritarian states and, as was seen during the Cold War and in the Colour Revolutions, extremely corrosive of autocratic regimes.
India, although fortunate in being able to position itself between the two blocs and exert its influence as its national interest demands, is likely to align predominantly, although not exclusively, with the maritime-democratic bloc. This posture reflects its democratic credentials, its geostrategic ambitions, and its ongoing disputes and rivalry with China, along their shared border, in the Indian Ocean and southeast Asia.
Grand Strategy
As an overt manifestation of the central theories of Mackinder, Mahan, and Spykman, this binary geopolitical alignment between a maritime-democratic bloc and a Eurasian authoritarian bloc satisfyingly conforms to type. It is also reinforced by ideological and cultural features associated with what Richard Rosecrance calls maritime-commercial “trading states” and centralizing, continental military powers.
The grand strategic issue for the free world is whether the two sections of the Rimland at either end of the World-Island (democratic Europe and the Asia-Pacific states) and in the Greater Middle East are absorbed into the Eurasian-authoritarian Heartland or remain vital constituents of the maritime-democratic system. It seems clear that if the free world wishes to thrive in the exacting conditions of the twenty-first century, it will need to resist the commercial and military domination of Rimland by the Eurasian-authoritarian bloc and maintain the freedom of the sea as the primary strategic medium of access and exchange. Owing to the deterrent effect of nuclear weapons and the prohibitive cost of massive military incursions by major geostrategic rivals, it is likely that the most challenging geostrategic situations will result from tectonic friction as well as localized conflicts, proxy activities, and frequent, potentially hostile, encounter events around the edges of these two blocs (Rimland). To that end, a maritime-democratic grand strategy should focus on deterring aggression, containing and constraining the Eurasian-authoritarian bloc, keeping its partners loyal, and determining how constant geopolitical and geoeconomic friction between the World-Island and the World-Ocean can be alternately mitigated and exploited.
There is the potential for a Eurasian-authoritarian bloc that feels sufficiently invulnerable to invasion to be able to compete with the maritime democracies at sea. To prevail, all it must do is deny the maritime powers the use of the sea, either through maritime power (China’s massive naval expansion is relevant here) or, as has been seen, by using proxies like the Houthis in the Red Sea, without necessarily dominating or controlling it.
An additional thrust of any maritime-democratic grand strategy should be attempts to fracture the cohesion of the Eurasian-authoritarian bloc. Free, open, and sovereign countries are a constant reproach to authoritarian states and, as was seen during the Cold War and in the Colour Revolutions, extremely corrosive of autocratic regimes once the coercive element is reduced or removed. It should be recognized that China, owing to its commitment to the “Chinese Dream,” its emotionally charged nationalism, and its mass psychological dependence on the Chinese Communist Party, is unlikely to be drawn into the democratic world. However, a wary Russia and a more youthful, politically and economically unstable Iran, with their differing demographic trajectories and geopolitical insecurities might be susceptible to pressures to distance themselves at some stage from the Eurasian-authoritarian bloc. Indeed, Mahan depicted a future struggle for power in the area of what he called the “debatable and debated ground” of Central Asia, which perhaps foreshadows the possible tensions when the Chinese BRI footprint crosses areas of Russian vital interest, language and culture, and military presence. The defection of Russia would especially inconvenience China and break its grip on the World-Island. It would also revive the land threat worry for China that it faced in the fifteenth century when it chose to turn its back on the sea and address internal pressures and external land threats.
Conclusion
As the twenty-first century progresses, the free world will need strategic agility and cohesive stamina to navigate a world predominantly divided in geostrategic and ideological terms, not just in the familiar multilateral and great power ways, but also between a maritime-democratic bloc and a Eurasian-authoritarian bloc, separated by an unstable Rimland. At a time when the Eurasian-authoritarian bloc seeks to dominate the World-Island, free, open countries cannot afford to relax their grip on the World Ocean—the physical equivalent of the worldwide web—and the international rules-based network system on which they depend.
lawliberty.org · by Christopher Parry
18. Teamwork wins as Navy SEALs guide civilians in Paintball With a Mission
Teamwork wins as Navy SEALs guide civilians in Paintball With a Mission
Stars and Stripes · by Roberta Baker · July 16, 2024
A video screen grab shows a Navy SEAL holding a paintball gun at an event in Barnstead, N.H., on July 12, 2024. (Facebook/Swim With a Mission)
BARNSTEAD, N.H. (Tribune News Service) — Paintball rounds pumped through the forest, sounding like muffled gunfire.
2024 Paintball With A Mission was underway at OSG Paintball on Friday, where 287 mostly civilians on 27 teams competed in make-believe military operations to fund real-life changes for U.S. veterans, including Navy SEALs, pummeled by war.
A Canadian special operations veteran known as Yoda briefed the Massachusetts-based Candor Realty team on its task: Rescue a leading U.S. geneticist kidnapped six months ago to create enemy super soldiers and an obedient workforce, and recover the scientific materials related to genetic cloning inside the enemy’s laboratory.
Critical minutes spilled through a sieve.
“Call out ‘hostage!’ Call out ‘jackpot’ for the target. Keep a guy looking aft,” shouted the commander of the Candor group, with players from New Hampshire and Massachusetts.
“You must be back in 10 minutes or the bird’s going to leave without you,” Yoda said.
Wearing helmets with goggles, they disappeared inside a makeshift fort to search a warren of stall-like rooms.
Less than 10 minutes later, they portaged a life-size dummy and the target scientific materials and raced to the imaginary helicopter pickup.
It was a game with actual, lasting and far-reaching consequences. The sixth annual Navy SEALs Paintball with a Mission challenge, along with the SEALs’ 2024 Swim With a Mission held on Saturday, hoped to raise $3 million in two days for veterans and veterans causes. When SWAM began in 2016, the fundraising goal was $500,000.
“It’s gone from a small event to a big event. This is a community that wants to do good things. Between helping so many veterans who need help and being around the Navy SEALs, it’s changed our lives,” said Phil Taub, a Manchester lawyer who founded SWAM with his wife, Julie.
“In our state, in the war on terror, 96 of our own went and served and were killed in action. In the same time, more than 900 came home safely and have taken their own lives,” Taub said. Every eight days a New Hampshire veteran dies by suicide, according to Veterans Administration.
Hector Delgado, a Navy SEAL who later became a U.S. marshal and federal agent, rallied the day’s teams inside the tent — many of them from businesses, where military teamwork and shared mission also breed success.
“It’s not just the SEAL, it’s the team. Together you can accomplish a mission. You’re only as strong as your last man,” Delgado said. “Stress, strength and adversity reveals true character and bonds. You always want to help each other out. You don’t have to have a rank to be a leader.”
Former SEAL Steve Janko of Windham shared his favorite story about President John F. Kennedy touring NASA. “He asked a janitor, ‘What do you do here?’ He answered, ‘I’m working to put a man on the moon.’ You have to find that source of meaning, no matter what the task is,” Janko said.
The U.S. Navy SEAL Museum in Fort Pierce, Florida, presented Gov. Chris Sununu with a statue of “The Naked Warrior,” representing the underwater teams that worked in the Pacific during World War II, carrying knives because they couldn’t carry guns underwater.
SWAM helps veterans “with everything from housing to mental health...getting assistance where it’s needed,” Sununu said.
Teams with names including Baby Beavers, Eager Beavers, Depreciation Doctors and Lawyers, Guns & Money prepared to conquer the course.
On the course it was non-stop action, mixed with quick strategy sessions.
Optiforce, a team formed by Mike and Tommy Bolduc, owners of a Nashua drywall company, included former SEAL Taylor Canfield as a staff adviser.
“Teamwork is essential to paintball and overseas warfare,” said Canfield, who came from Dallas because SWAM “helps so many different assets and war fighters get the help they need.”
“I went through my own trials and tribulations when I left the service,” Canfield said. “Because of organizations like SWAM, I was able to put myself back out there.”
“A sport like paintball engages you in fast decision-making, coaching through critical decisions and making decisions on the spot.” Like actual Navy SEAL training, “It helps with planning and executing, but being flexible when a plan doesn’t go how you want it to go.”
Nearby, the Baby Beaver team plunged into the “Western Town” course, where streets featured a mock church, jail, firehouse, hotel and general store.
“You’ve got to get that flag, guys,” said its leader, as members advanced to positions, firing around the corners of buildings and running forward, checking each structure for enemy players.
“Man, did they nail me,” said one Baby Beaver splotched with paint.
“I got hit like 20 times already,” said another, raising his arms to signal that he was out.
(c)2024 The New Hampshire Union Leader (Manchester, N.H.)
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Stars and Stripes · by Roberta Baker · July 16, 2024
19. Trump allies draft AI order to launch ‘Manhattan Projects’ for defense
Trump allies draft AI order to launch ‘Manhattan Projects’ for defense
The plan to “Make America First in AI” and roll back “burdensome regulations” would favor Silicon Valley investors, who are now flocking to support the former president.
By Cat Zakrzewski
July 16, 2024 at 2:21 p.m. EDT
The Washington Post · by Cat Zakrzewski · July 16, 2024
Former president Donald Trump’s allies are drafting a sweeping AI executive order that would launch a series of “Manhattan Projects” to develop military technology and immediately review “unnecessary and burdensome regulations” — signaling how a potential second Trump administration may pursue AI policies favorable to Silicon Valley investors and companies.
The framework would also create “industry-led” agencies to evaluate AI models and secure systems from foreign adversaries, according to a copy of the document viewed exclusively by The Washington Post. The framework — which includes a section titled “Make America First in AI” — presents a markedly different strategy for the booming sector than that of the Biden administration, which last year issued a sweeping executive order that leverages emergency powers to subject the next generation of AI systems to safety testing.
Employees from the America First Policy Institute, a nonprofit led by Trump’s former chief economic adviser Larry Kudlow and other ex-Trump officials, have been involved in the effort, according to a person familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private plans.
In preparation for this week’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, the GOP adopted a platform that includes repealing the Biden AI executive order, which some tech investors and start-ups have said creates a regulatory burden that stifles innovation. The GOP is taking that tack amid a broader political realignment in Silicon Valley, where some executives and investors who once embraced former president Barack Obama have come out in support of Trump.
“We will repeal Joe Biden’s dangerous Executive Order that hinders AI Innovation, and imposes Radical Leftwing ideas on the development of this technology,” the GOP platform says. “In its place, Republicans support AI Development rooted in Free Speech and Human Flourishing.”
The framework provides an early look at what potential policies Republicans would pursue to replace the Biden executive order.
In response to a request for comment from The Post, the Trump campaign shared a link to a 2023 blog post, which said “no aspect of future presidential staffing or policy announcements should be deemed official” unless they come directly from Trump or an authorized member of his campaign team.
America First Policy Institute spokeswoman Hilton Beckham said in a statement that the document does not represent the organization’s “official position.”
“AFPI does not coordinate with or represent any candidate or campaign,” Beckham said. “We receive thousands of policy ideas from across the country each month. This document is an example of those ideas.”
Greater military investment in AI probably stands to benefit tech companies that already contract with the Pentagon, such as Anduril, Palantir and Scale. Key executives at those companies have supported Trump and have close ties to the GOP.
At the same time, the conservative Heritage Foundation has also been drafting potential new AI policies as part of Project 2025, a blueprint for how a potential second Trump term could overhaul the federal government. The Trump campaign has distanced itself from the plan, which includes several policies that aim to spur AI research and development in the United States and limit China’s access to the technology.
In the chaotic aftermath of the attempted assassination of Trump, key tech executives and investors — including Tesla CEO Elon Musk and hedge fund manager Bill Ackman — have endorsed Trump for president. Their support is the latest sign that a possible second Trump administration would have a friendlier relationship with the tech industry. During his time in the White House, Trump maintained close ties to venture capitalist Peter Thiel and some key executives within the former PayPal CEO’s orbit but often clashed with other tech titans over immigration policies and social media rules.
On Tuesday, venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz endorsed Trump on their podcast. They said he was the best candidate for “Little Tech,” a term they use to refer to start-ups that have raised millions of dollars from their firm, Andreessen Horowitz, and other investors. They have posted a political agenda in which they say the U.S. government has become “far more hostile to new startups than it used to be” by regulating new technologies such as blockchain and AI.
On their podcast, the two venture capitalists said Trump related his views on AI at a recent dinner they had with him. They said Trump had a very simple view of the technology, in contrast to the Biden administration.
“What he said to us is, ‘AI is very scary, but we absolutely have to win,’” Horowitz recounted. “'Because if we don’t win then China wins, and that’s a very bad world.'”
They voiced support for his plan to revoke the Biden AI executive order, which Andreessen said would “enshrine” OpenAI and a handful of other AI companies as monopolies and “destroy the startup ecosystem underneath that.”
Trump has been making greater overtures to Silicon Valley in recent weeks, appearing on the “All-In Podcast,” which is hosted by a group of prominent tech investors, and attending a fundraiser at the home of podcast co-host and former PayPal executive David Sacks. Sacks is scheduled to speak on behalf of Trump at the convention in Milwaukee.
On the podcast, Trump said he had heard from Silicon Valley “geniuses” about the need for more energy to fuel AI development to compete with China.
In an on-air discussion after the interview, the tech investors said Trump needed to surround himself with people who were smart about technologies, including AI and nuclear power. Chamath Palihapitiya, founder of the venture capital firm Social Capital, said Trump’s San Francisco fundraiser showed he enjoys greater support in the tech industry than he had in 2016.
“There are all these people that are coming out of the woodwork,” Palihapitiya said. “If he can figure out how to build a Cabinet with those people — meaning these extremely technical, thoughtful people — then there’s a real shot that you could change it.”
Elizabeth Dwoskin and Nitasha Tiku contributed to this report
The Washington Post · by Cat Zakrzewski · July 16, 2024
20. US renews call on China to stop aggressive actions in disputed sea
US renews call on China to stop aggressive actions in disputed sea
Defense News · by Jim Gomez · July 17, 2024
MANILA, Philippines — The United States on Friday renewed its call on China to stop its aggressive actions in the South China Sea, saying a broader web of security alliances has emerged to preserve the rule of law in the disputed waters.
Washington’s top diplomat in Manila was joined by counterparts from key Western and Asian allies, including Japan and Australia, in a Manila forum to express alarm over increasing hostilities in the contested waters, particularly between China and the Philippines. They committed to help defend a rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific region.
In the worst confrontation so far, Chinese coast guard personnel armed with knives, spears and an axe aboard motorboats repeatedly rammed and destroyed two Philippine navy supply vessels on June 17 in a chaotic faceoff at the disputed Second Thomas Shoal that injured Filipino sailors and led to the seizure of seven Philippine navy rifles.
China and the Philippines blamed one another for the incident, the latest in a series of high-seas confrontations since last year. Aside from China and the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan have been locked in the decades-long territorial conflicts.
"With the backing of an increasingly interconnected latticework of alliances and partnerships, the United States continues to urge the PRC to cease escalatory and dangerous harassment of Philippine vessels lawfully operating in the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone,” U.S. Ambassador MaryKay Carlson told the forum, referring to the People’s Republic of China.
China should “cease interfering with freedom of navigation and overflight of all states lawfully operating in the region,” Carlson said. “The volume of condemnation from the international community is loud and getting louder and it speaks to our common resolve in support of the international rules and norms that benefit us all."
The Biden administration has been strengthening an arc of security alliances in Asia as a countermeasure against an increasingly assertive China. That has dovetailed with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos’s efforts to boost his country’s territorial defense.
Beijing has opposed Washington’s alliance-building and has repeatedly vowed to defend its territorial interests at all costs.
The forum marked the anniversary of a 2016 ruling by an arbitration panel in The Hague, Netherlands that invalidated China’s expansive claims in the South China Sea based on the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea. Beijing refused to join the Philippine-initiated arbitration, rejected the ruling and continues to defy it.
Dozens of protesters separately held a rally Friday to mark the anniversary of the arbitration ruling in suburban Quezon city, waving small Philippine flags and displaying posters that read: “China out!” and “Long live the arbitral ruling victory."
Australian Ambassador HK Yu said the June 17 incident at the shoal was “an escalation in a deeply concerning pattern of behavior by China … which threatens lives and creates risks of miscalculation and escalation.”
“The Philippines is not facing this challenge alone,” Yu said. “I can tell you this, you can count on Australia.”
"As allies, partners and friends, we stand united in navigating these uncertain waters and uphold the fundamental principles that safeguard our shared waters,” Ambassador Kazuya Endo of Japan told the forum that was attended by Manila-based diplomats and top Philippine security officials.
Japan, which has its own dispute with China in the East China Sea, has provided patrol ships and a coastal radar system to boost to the Philippines’ ability to defend its territorial interests in the South China Sea.
Philippine national security adviser Eduardo Ano called for international support in pushing for Chinese compliance to the arbitration ruling.
Manila, he said, would seek peaceful resolutions to the disputes but “we will continue to stand our ground and push back against coercion, interference, malign influence and other tactics that seeks to jeopardize our security.”
21. China, Philippines set up hotline to prevent South China Sea clashes
Will China pick up the phone in a time of crisis?
China, Philippines set up hotline to prevent South China Sea clashes
Defense News · by Jim Gomez · July 16, 2024
MANILA, Philippines — A recently signed agreement will open a direct line of communication between the presidential offices of China and the Philippines to help prevent any new confrontation from spiraling out of control in the disputed South China Sea, according to highlights of the accord seen by The Associated Press on Tuesday.
China and the Philippines have created such emergency telephone hotlines at lower levels in the past to better manage disputes, particularly in two fiercely disputed shoals where the Philippines has accused Chinese forces of increasingly hostile actions and China says Philippine ships have encroached despite repeated warnings.
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Manila has sought to calm ties with Beijing after Chinese sailors escalated a standoff near a Filipino outpost this June.
The territorial disputes, however, have persisted since last year, sparking fears of a larger armed conflict that could involve the United States, which has repeatedly warned that it’s obligated to defend the Philippines, a key Asian treaty ally, if Filipino forces come under attack in the disputed waters.
U.S. Gen. CQ Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, met Philippine military chief Gen. Romeo Brawner in Manila on Tuesday and discussed ways to further boost defense ties, enhance the militaries’ ability to operate jointly and ensure regional ability, the Philippine military said.
During a confrontation between Chinese and Philippine forces at the Philippines-occupied Second Thomas Shoal in August 2023, the Philippine government said it was unable to reach Chinese officials through an established “maritime communication mechanism” for several hours. That emergency telephone hotline was arranged after Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. met Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing in January 2023.
Chinese and Philippine officials dealing with the territorial disputes held talks in Manila on July 2, following a violent confrontation at the Second Thomas Shoal in which Chinese coast guard personnel reportedly wielded knives, an axe and improvised spears and Philippine navy personnel were injured. The Chinese forces also seized seven Philippine navy rifles, said Brawner, who demanded China return the firearms and pay for damages.
Both sides “recognized the need to strengthen the bilateral maritime communication mechanism on the South China Sea” and signed an arrangement “on improving Philippines-China maritime communication mechanisms,” the Department of Foreign Affairs in Manila said in a statement after the talks in Manila, but did not provide a copy or details of the agreement.
A copy of the agreement's highlights, seen by the AP, said it “provides several channels for communication between the Philippines and China, specifically on maritime issues, through the representatives to be designated by their leaders."
The hotline talks could also be done “through the Department of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Foreign Affairs counterparts, including at the foreign minister and vice foreign minister levels or through their designated representatives,” it said, and added without elaborating that Philippine officials were “in discussions with the Chinese side on the guidelines that will govern the implementation of this arrangement."
There was also a plan to set up a new communication channel between the Chinese and Philippine coast guards “once the corresponding memorandum of understanding” between them is concluded, according to the agreement.
During the talks in Manila, China and the Philippines agreed on two other confidence-boosting steps to intensify “cooperation between their respective coast guard authorities” and the possible convening of a maritime forum between Chinese and Philippine scientists and academic leaders.
“Both sides recognized that there is a need to restore trust, rebuild confidence and create conditions conducive to productive dialogue and interaction,” the Philippine department of foreign affairs statement said. It added that China and the Philippines “affirmed their commitment to de-escalate tensions without prejudice to their respective positions.”
It said that “there was substantial progress on developing measures to manage the situation at sea,” but acknowledged that “significant differences remain.”
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
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