Quotes of the Day:

"It is important, likewise, that the habits of thinking in a free Country should inspire caution in those entrusted with its administration, to confine themselves within their respective Constitutional spheres; avoiding in the exercise of the Powers of one department to encroach upon another. The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create whatever the form of government, a real despotism. A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position."

– George Washington

“Weak men cannot handle power. It will either crush them, or they will use it to crush others”

– Jocelyn Murray, The English Pirate

“for PEOPLE to rule themselves in a REPUBLIC, they must have virtue; for a TYRANT to rule in a TYRANNY, he must use FEAR.”

– William J Federer, Change to Chains-The 6,000 Year Quest for Control -Volume I-Rise of the Republic

1. Israeli Generals, Low on Munitions, Want a Truce in Gaza

2. NATO to Establish Kyiv Post, and Seeks to ‘Trump-Proof’ Ukraine Aid

3. Satellite Images Show Expansion of Suspected Chinese Spy Bases in Cuba

4. The World Is Realigning: An emerging Axis of Resistance confronts the Liberal Alliance.

5. NDU At Fort Liberty/JFK Special Warfare Center and School: Master of Arts in Strategic Studies

6. The weaponization of security clearances

7. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, July 1, 2024

8. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, July 1, 2024

9. Eight Antifa Defendants Sentenced in Pacific Beach Assault Case

10. ‘In the Shadows’ Review: The Hostage Bargainer

11.Solving the Problem of Postwar Gaza

12. China builds new presidential palace in Pacific's Vanuatu

13. A.I. Begins Ushering In an Age of Killer Robots

​14. Lawsuit accuses Iran, Syria and North Korea of providing support for Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on Israel

15. Wokeness Is Awful. Nationalism Is Far Worse.

16. ‘Real Portal to Hell’ – Ukrainian Paratroopers Repel Assault, Destroy Seven Russian Fighting Vehicles With Troops

17. The Digital Battlefield: How Social Media is Reshaping Modern Insurgencies

18. The Looming Crisis in the Taiwan Strait

19. America Is Still Not Ready for the Next Outbreak

20. The Illogic of Doubling Down on a Failed Approach: Security Assistance and Terrorism in Africa

1. Israeli Generals, Low on Munitions, Want a Truce in Gaza

Israeli Generals, Low on Munitions, Want a Truce in Gaza

By Ronen Bergman, Patrick Kingsley and Natan Odenheimer

The reporters spoke with nine current and former security officials.

The New York Times · by Natan Odenheimer · July 2, 2024

Israel’s military leadership wants a cease-fire with Hamas in case a bigger war breaks out in Lebanon, security officials say. It has also concluded that a truce would be the swiftest way to free hostages.

Listen to this article · 9:03 min Learn more

A convoy of Israeli tanks near the border with Gaza on Monday.Credit...Amir Cohen/Reuters

The reporters spoke with nine current and former security officials.

July 2, 2024, 5:09 a.m. ET

Israel’s top generals want to begin a cease-fire in Gaza even if it keeps Hamas in power for the time being, widening a rift between the military and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has opposed a truce that would allow Hamas to survive the war.

The generals think that a truce would be the best way of freeing the roughly 120 Israelis still held, both dead and alive, in Gaza, according to interviews with six current and former security officials.

Underequipped for further fighting after Israel’s longest war in decades, the generals also think their forces need time to recuperate in case a land war breaks out against Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia that has been locked in a low-level fight with Israel since October, multiple officials said.

A truce with Hamas could also make it easier to reach a deal with Hezbollah, according to the officials, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive security matters. Hezbollah has said it will continue to strike northern Israel until Israel stops fighting in the Gaza Strip.

Known collectively as the General Staff Forum, Israel’s military leadership is formed from roughly 30 senior generals, including the military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, the commanders of the army, air force and navy, and the head of military intelligence.

The military’s attitude to a cease-fire reflects a major shift in its thinking over the past months as it became more clear that Mr. Netanyahu was refusing to articulate or commit to a postwar plan. That decision has essentially created a power vacuum in the enclave that has forced the military to go back and fight in parts of Gaza it had already cleared of Hamas fighters.

“The military is in full support of a hostage deal and a cease-fire,” said Eyal Hulata, who served as Israel’s national security adviser until early last year, and who speaks regularly with senior military officials.

“They believe that they can always go back and engage Hamas militarily in the future,” Mr. Hulata said. “They understand that a pause in Gaza makes de-escalation more likely in Lebanon. And they have less munitions, less spare parts, less energy than they did before — so they also think a pause in Gaza gives us more time to prepare in case a bigger war does break out with Hezbollah.”

It is unclear how directly the military leadership has expressed its views to Mr. Netanyahu in private but there have been glimpses of its frustration in public, as well as of the prime minister’s frustration with the generals.

Photos of hostages held in the Gaza Strip on display in Tel Aviv last week.

Mr. Netanyahu is leery of a truce that keeps Hamas in power because that outcome could collapse his coalition, parts of which have said they will quit the alliance if the war ends with Hamas undefeated.

Until recently, the military publicly maintained that it was possible to simultaneously achieve the government’s two main war goals: defeating Hamas and rescuing the hostages captured by Hamas and its allies during the Oct. 7 attack on Israel. Now, the military high command has concluded that the two goals are mutually incompatible, several months after generals began having doubts.

Since invading Gaza in October, Israel has overpowered almost all of Hamas’s battalions and occupied most of the territory at some point in the war. But just under half of the 250 hostages taken to Gaza in October remain in captivity, and the high command fears that further military action to free them may run the risk of killing the others.

With Mr. Netanyahu publicly unwilling to commit to either occupying Gaza or transferring control to alternative Palestinian leaders, the military fears a “forever war” in which its energies and ammunition are gradually eroded even as the hostages remain captive and Hamas leaders are still at large. In the face of that scenario, keeping Hamas in power for now in exchange for getting the hostages back seems like the least worst option for Israel, said Mr. Hulata. Four senior officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity agreed.

Asked to comment on whether it supports a truce, the military issued a statement that did not directly address the question. The military is pursuing the destruction of “Hamas’ military and governing capabilities, the return of the hostages, and the return of Israeli civilians from the south and the north safely to their homes,” the statement said.

But in other recent statements and interviews, military leaders have given public hints about what they have privately concluded.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attending a memorial in Tel Aviv last month.

“Those who think we could make Hamas disappear are wrong,” Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the military’s chief spokesman, said in a television interview on June 19. He said: “Hamas is an idea. Hamas is a political party. It is rooted in people’s hearts.”

To suggest otherwise, Admiral Hagari said in a veiled criticism of Mr. Netanyahu, was to “throw sand in the eyes of the public.”

“What we can do is erect something else,” he said, “something that will replace it, something that will make the population know that someone else is distributing food, someone else is providing public services. Who is that someone, what is that thing — that is for decision makers to decide.”

General Halevi, the chief of staff, has recently tried to play up the military’s achievements, in what some analysts said was an effort to create a pretext to end the war without losing face.

As Israeli troops advanced through the southern Gazan city of Rafah on June 24, General Halevi said that the army was “clearly approaching the point where we can say that we have dismantled the Rafah brigade, that it is defeated. Not in the sense that there are no more terrorists, but in the sense that it can no longer function as a fighting unit.”

The military estimates that it has killed at least 14,000 fighters — the bulk of Hamas’s forces. But officials also believe that several thousand Hamas fighters remain at large, hidden in tunnels dug deep underneath the surface of Gaza, guarding stockpiles of weapons, fuel, food and some hostages.

Mr. Netanyahu’s office declined to comment for this article. In a statement on Monday, he said that Israel was close to “eliminating the Hamas terrorist army,” but stopped short of saying that this would allow Israel to end the war in Gaza.

In a rare television interview in late June, the prime minister dismissed suggestions that the war should end, but acknowledged that the military should draw down its presence in Gaza in order “to move part of our forces to the north.”

According to the military officials, that move is needed to help the army recuperate in case a wider war with Hezbollah does break out, not because Israel is preparing to invade Lebanon imminently. However, other news reports have suggested that Israel may be planning an invasion in the coming weeks.

The aftermath of an Israeli strike against a Hezbollah target in Lebanon on Sunday.

Nearly nine months into a war that Israel did not plan for, its army is short of spare parts, munitions, motivation and even troops, the officials said.

The war is the most intense conflict that Israel has fought in at least four decades, and the longest it has ever fought in Gaza. In an army largely reliant on reservists, some are on their third tour of duty since October and struggling to balance the fighting with their professional and family commitments.

Fewer reservists are reporting for duty, according to four military officials. And officers are increasingly distrustful of their commanders, amid a crisis of confidence in the military leadership propelled in part by its failure to prevent the Hamas-led attack in October, according to five officers.

More than 300 soldiers have been killed in Gaza, short of what some military officials predicted before Israel invaded the territory. But more than 4,000 soldiers have been wounded since October, according to military statistics, 10 times the total during the 2014 war in Gaza, which lasted for just 50 days. An unknown number of others are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

At least some tanks in Gaza are not loaded with the full capacity of the shells that they usually carry, as the military tries to conserve its stocks in case a bigger war with Hezbollah does break out, according to two officers. Five officials and officers confirmed that the army was running low on shells. The army also lacks spare parts for its tanks, military bulldozers and armored vehicles, according to several of those officials.

All the officers, as well as Mr. Hulata, said that Israel had more than enough munitions to fight in Lebanon if it believed it had no alternative.

“If we’re dragged into a bigger war, we have enough resources and manpower,” Mr. Hulata said. “But we’d like to do it in the best conditions we can. And at the moment, we don’t have the best conditions.”

Johnatan Reiss contributed reporting.

Ronen Bergman is a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, based in Tel Aviv. His latest book is “Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations,” published by Random House. More about Ronen Bergman

Patrick Kingsley is The Times’s Jerusalem bureau chief, leading coverage of Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. More about Patrick Kingsley

See more on: Israel-Hamas War News, Hamas, Benjamin Netanyahu

The New York Times · by Natan Odenheimer · July 2, 2024

2. NATO to Establish Kyiv Post, and Seeks to ‘Trump-Proof’ Ukraine Aid

NATO to Establish Kyiv Post, and Seeks to ‘Trump-Proof’ Ukraine Aid

The move is among changes that aim to safeguard support amid European right-wing surge

https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/nato-to-establish-new-kyiv-post-for-ukraine-81b4205c?mod=Searchresults_pos3&page=1

By Michael R. Gordon

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 in Washington and Daniel Michaels

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 in Brussels

July 1, 2024 3:23 pm ET

NATO will station a senior civilian official in Kyiv, among a raft of new measures designed to shore up long-term support for Ukraine that are expected to be announced at a summit in Washington next week, U.S. and alliance officials say. 

The steps seek to buttress Ukraine’s prospects to eventually join the alliance without offering it membership. They come amid a right-wing political surge across Europe and the growing possibility that former President Donald Trump could return to the White House and reduce American support for Ukraine. 

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is also establishing a new command in Wiesbaden, Germany, to coordinate the provision of military equipment to Kyiv and the training of Ukrainian troops. 

The operation, to be called NATO Security Assistance and Training for Ukraine, will be staffed by nearly 700 U.S. and other allied personnel from across the 32-country alliance. It will take over much of a mission that has been run by the American military since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

The new initiatives have been in development for months, but they take on new urgency following President Biden’s weak performance in his televised debate with Trump on Thursday and Trump’s complaints about the money the U.S. has spent on Ukraine.

“A big reason for the change is to Trump-proof the assistance effort to Ukraine,” said Ivo Daalder, who served as the U.S. ambassador to NATO from 2009 to 2013. “Rather than having Washington in charge of managing the training and assistance, NATO will be in charge. So even if the U.S. reduces or withdraws support for the effort, it won’t be eliminated.”

Ukrainian troops near a front line in the eastern Donetsk region on Sunday. PHOTO: ALINA SMUTKO/REUTERS

Firefighters worked to put out a fire at the site of a Russian missile strike in Odesa last month. PHOTO: OLEKSANDR GIMANOVOLEKSANDR GIMAN/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

With far-right parties gaining voter support in France, the Netherlands and across the European Union, the institutionalization of NATO’s role could also make military assistance to Ukraine less vulnerable to policy swings among alliance members.

“It does provide for durability in the face of potential national political changes, whether it is as the result of elections in the United States, France, the U.K. or even in the European Union,” said Douglas Lute, a retired three-star Army general who served as the U.S. ambassador to NATO from 2013 to 2017.

Current and former U.S. officials said that the steps would enable the alliance to better coordinate Western countries’ efforts to provide Ukraine with military support, in what has become a protracted test of wills between Moscow and the West on NATO’s border. The plan also aims to make Ukraine’s military more like those in NATO. 

The NATO summit where the Ukraine initiatives will be highlighted will be attended by all of the alliance’s leaders in Washington, where the alliance’s founding treaty was signed 75 years ago. The aim of that pact was to defend alliance members against threats from Moscow—a mission NATO is assuming again.  

Alliance members hope that the summit will also agree on an annual financial pledge of military support to Ukraine, although terms are still under negotiation, NATO diplomats said. Recent discussions among alliance members have included setting a goal of roughly $40 billion annually and increasing the value of many countries’ contributions, though the U.S. would likely continue to be a major donor. 

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Sweden has officially joined NATO’s as the 32nd member, marking the alliance’s historic expansion. WSJ’s Sune Engel Rasmussen explains what Sweden will bring to the bloc. Photo Illustration: Marina Costa

While many NATO members say that the alliance should invite Ukraine to join, initiating a process that could take years, the U.S. and Germany oppose taking such a step at next week’s summit.

In an effort to paper over differences within the alliance, officials say, NATO is likely to describe Ukraine’s bid to join NATO as “irreversible,” building on language in an alliance communiqué last year that “Ukraine’s future is in NATO” and a 2008 communiqué that said Ukraine would become a NATO member one day.

Under the initiatives already agreed upon for final approval at the summit, staff from non-U.S. members will work alongside Americans at the new NATO command to align military-equipment donations with Ukraine’s needs and coordinate deliveries. They will also coordinate training for Ukrainian troops, to ensure what is being offered meets Kyiv’s needs. NATO staff won’t themselves do any training, officials said.

The shifts are aimed at building institutional momentum and spreading knowledge of the nitty-gritty logistics involved in channeling provisions from dozens of countries to Ukraine’s borders. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said last month in Brussels that the changes would put alliance support to Ukraine “on a firmer footing for years to come.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg at the alliance’s headquarters in Brussels on Thursday. PHOTO: HANDOUT/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

While the change will broaden NATO involvement, the U.S. will continue to provide most of the staff, which will report to Army Gen. Christopher Cavoli, who serves as NATO’s top commander.  

The senior civilian official in Kyiv would focus on Ukraine’s longer-term military- modernization requirements and nonmilitary support, linking to both the planned Wiesbaden command and NATO headquarters in Brussels. 

The new steps also signal an important shift in alliance posture. NATO initially kept its distance from Ukraine’s military campaign to avoid accusations it was a party to the conflict. The organizational changes mean it is now prepared to take a more substantial role in helping Kyiv fight Russia. 

“Since NATO allies have provided over 90% of total security assistance to Ukraine, NATO is the natural place to coordinate assistance to ensure Ukraine is more capable of defending itself now and in the future,” said a senior State Department official. 

NATO’s summit comes at a pivotal time in the American political scene. Biden has touted his role in mobilizing the alliance’s support to Ukraine as one of his cardinal foreign-policy accomplishments, as the White House has sought to help Ukrainian forces stand up to Russia’s attack while limiting the risk that the conflict might escalate into a direct U.S.- Russia clash. Biden also said that halting Russian forces in Ukraine is vital to stopping Moscow’s aggression elsewhere in Europe and even beyond.

“I got 50 other nations around the world to support Ukraine, including Japan and South Korea,” Biden said during the Thursday debate. “No major war in Europe has ever been able to be contained just to Europe.”

Trump called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “the greatest salesman ever” for persuading the U.S. to provide military support to Kyiv and said that the conflict there was more of a security problem for European nations than the U.S. “because we have an ocean in between.” 

Trump also vowed to negotiate a diplomatic agreement between Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin before he was sworn in as president. Trump didn’t explain what the terms of such a settlement might be, but said that Putin’s demand that Moscow keep four provinces in Eastern Ukraine while Kyiv drop its bid to join NATO was unacceptable. 

“I will have that war settled between Putin and Zelensky as president-elect before I take office on January 20,” Trump said.

Write to Michael R. Gordon at michael.gordon@wsj.com and Daniel Michaels at Dan.Michaels@wsj.com

3. Satellite Images Show Expansion of Suspected Chinese Spy Bases in Cuba

Satellite Images Show Expansion of Suspected Chinese Spy Bases in Cuba

Analysts identified four electronic eavesdropping stations, including a previously unreported site near a U.S. naval base

https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/china-cuba-suspected-spy-bases-da1d6ec9?mod=latest_headlines

Aerial view of Havana this year. PHOTO: YAMIL LAGE/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

By Warren P. StrobelFollow

Updated July 2, 2024 12:11 am ET

WASHINGTON—Images captured from space show the growth of Cuba’s electronic eavesdropping stations that are believed to be linked to China, including new construction at a previously unreported site about 70 miles from the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, according to a new report.

The study from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank, follows reporting last year by The Wall Street Journal that China and Cuba were negotiating closer defense and intelligence ties, including establishing a new joint military training facility on the island and an eavesdropping facility.

At the time, the Journal reported that Cuba and China were already jointly operating eavesdropping stations on the island, according to U.S. officials, who didn’t disclose their locations. It couldn’t be determined which, if any, of those are included in the sites covered by the CSIS report. 

A satellite image from a CSIS study showing the Bejucal site in Cuba, with upgraded electronic spying facilities. PHOTO: CSIS/HIDDEN REACH/MAXAR 2024

The concern about the stations, former officials and analysts say, is that China is using Cuba’s geographical proximity to the southeastern U.S. to scoop up sensitive electronic communications from American military bases, space-launch facilities, and military and commercial shipping.

Chinese facilities on the island “could also bolster China’s use of telecommunications networks to spy on U.S. citizens,” said Leland Lazarus, an expert on China-Latin America relations at Florida International University.

The White House and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment.

Authors of the CSIS report, after analyzing years’ worth of satellite imagery, found that Cuba has significantly upgraded and expanded its electronic spying facilities in recent years and pinpointed four sites—at Bejucal, El Salao, Wajay and Calabazar.

While some of the sites described by CSIS, such as the one at Bejucal, have previously been identified as listening posts, the satellite imagery provides new details about their capabilities, growth over the years and likely links with China.

“These are active locations with an evolving mission set,” said Matthew Funaiole, a senior follow at CSIS and the report’s chief author.

View of construction at China’s planned megaport on Peru’s Pacific Coast. PHOTO: ANGELA PONCE FOR WSJ

The report comes amid growing concerns about Great Power competition in the Caribbean and elsewhere in Latin America, where Washington for decades has tried to prevent rivals from gaining military and economic advantage.

China is building a megaport on Peru’s Pacific coast. Russia, meanwhile, recently sent a nuclear-powered submarine, capable of firing Kalibr cruise missiles, and a frigate to Cuba’s Havana harbor. 

In its annual threat assessment released in February, the U.S. intelligence community said publicly for the first time that China is pursuing military facilities in Cuba, without providing details.

Chinese officials stress that the U.S. has a vast global network of military bases and listening posts. “The U.S. is no doubt the leading power in terms of eavesdropping and does not even spare its Allies,” Liu Pengyu, a spokesman for China’s embassy in Washington, wrote in a statement. “The U.S. side has repeatedly hyped up China’s establishment of spy bases or conducting surveillance activities in Cuba.”

Cuba’s embassy didn’t respond to a request for comment.

A satellite image from CSIS’s study showing a facility in El Salao, Cuba. PHOTO: CSIS/HIDDEN REACH/AIRBUS DS 2024

The report says that two of the sites near Havana—Bejucal and Calabazar—contain large dish antennas that appear designed to monitor and communicate with satellites. The report notes that while Cuba doesn’t have any satellites, the antennas would be useful for China, which does have a substantial space program.

The newest dish antenna was installed at Bejucal in January, said the report, which found that and other infrastructure upgrades at the sites over the last decade.

The most recent of the four sites, still being built and not previously known publicly, is at El Salao, outside the city of Santiago de Cuba in the eastern part of the country and not far from the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo. 

Construction there began in 2021, and the site appears designed to hold a large formation of antennas known as a circularly disposed antenna array, which can be used to find and intercept electronic signals, the report said.

The site, when completed, could potentially monitor communications and other electronic signals coming from the Guantanamo base, said Funaiole.

The U.S. and Russia have largely abandoned this sort of antenna array in favor of newer technologies, but China has been building them at several militarized outposts in the South China Sea, he said.

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union operated its largest overseas site for electronic spying, known as signals intelligence, at Lourdes, just outside Havana. The site, which reportedly hosted hundreds of Soviet, Cuban and other Eastern-bloc intelligence officers, closed down after 2001, and its current status isn’t clear. 

China has played a larger role on the island in more recent years, and according to a White House statement last year, conducted an upgrade of its intelligence collection facilities in Cuba in 2019.

Brett Forrest contributed to this article.

Write to Warren P. Strobel at Warren.Strobel@wsj.com

Copyright ©2024 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Appeared in the July 2, 2024, print edition as 'Images Show More China Spy Bases on Cuba'.

4. The World Is Realigning: An emerging Axis of Resistance confronts the Liberal Alliance.

A long read but worth the time.

First I would ask please stop using the word "resistance" to describe the axis of aggressors/dictorators/authoritarians/malign actors, etc. Yes they meet the definition of resistance in that they are resisting the free world. But we should not enhance their legitimacy by letting them use resistance. We should husband the use of the word to describe those who resist tyranny. We want the people of China, Russia, Ina, and north Korea to resist their tyrannical governments.  

This is actually a useful history of the national security challenges of the 21st Century.

And this is a useful description of where we are right now:

In the two current conflicts, Ukraine and Israel act not only on their own behalf but also as surrogates for the broader alliance. Neither Ukraine nor Israel can sustain its position without outside support. That support, therefore, is a primary target of the Axis, which coordinates across both fronts. Russia has ditched its previously warm relationship with Israel to embrace Iran, which supplies the Kremlin with weaponry and equipment. North Korea likewise supplies the Russian war effort, and it recently entered into a security pact with Russia; Hamas praises North Korea as “part of [our] alliance.” China, while keeping some distance from the Ukraine conflict militarily, has declared “unlimited partnership” with Russia, helps Russia defeat economic sanctions, and provides industrial and technological support for Russia’s war effort. Meanwhile, Russia props up the pro-Iran regime in Syria, and militias aligned with Iran use missiles and drones to strike Israel from Gaza and Lebanon, U.S. forces from Iraq and Syria, and Saudi Arabia from Yemen. Even the weakest and poorest of the Axis forces, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, disrupt regional shipping virtually at will. 

The Axis’s principals make no secret of their designs. “We are fighting in Ukraine not against Ukrainians but against the unipolar world,” the Russian ideologue Alexander Dugin said at a conference in Moscow in February. “And our inevitable victory will be not only ours but a victory for all humanity … This is not a return to the old bipolar model but the beginning of a completely new world architecture.” According to the Middle East Media Research Institute, Hossein Salami, the commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, said in a speech in November, “The enemies of the Islamic regime were, and are, the enemies of all humanity, and today the world is rising up against them.” America, he predicted, will “lose [in] the political arena” and “will also fail economically … Be certain that the morning of victory is nigh.”

Rather than latticework I wish we would describe our security arrangements as a silk web which is much stronger than a lattice.

The latticework of cooperation, as Jake Sullivan termed it, is not notional; the world got a vivid preview in April of what it looks like. Iran and its Yemeni proxies launched more than 300 missiles and drones at Israel. All but a handful were shot down, and the remainder caused only minor damage. As significant as the interceptions was the coalition that conducted them, which included U.S., British, and French forces in the region. “Perhaps more striking,” Lawrence Haas wrote, “leading Arab nations also came to Israel’s assistance. Saudi Arabia—which, we must remember, has not yet normalized relations with the Jewish state—and the United Arab Emirates were among several Gulf states that relayed intelligence about Iran’s planned attack, while Jordan’s military reportedly shot down dozens of Iranian drones in its airspace that were headed toward Israel.” In the end, what the strike demonstrated was not Iran’s ability to attack but the Liberal Alliance’s ability to defend.

The World Is Realigning

An emerging Axis of Resistance confronts the Liberal Alliance.

By Jonathan Rauch

The Atlantic · by Jonathan Rauch · July 1, 2024

Like a lightning strike illuminating a dim landscape, the twin invasions of Israel and Ukraine have brought a sudden recognition: What appeared to be, until now, disparate and disorganized challenges to the United States and its allies is actually something broader, more integrated, more aggressive, and more dangerous. Over the past several years, the world has hardened into two competing blocs. One is an alliance of liberal-minded, Western-oriented countries that includes NATO as well as U.S. allies in Asia and Oceania, with the general if inconsistent cooperation of some non-liberal countries such as Saudi Arabia and Vietnam: a Liberal Alliance, for short. The other bloc is led by the authoritarian dyad of Russia and Iran, but it extends to anti-American states such as North Korea, militias such as Hezbollah, terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad, and paramilitaries such as the Wagner Group: an Axis of Resistance, as some of its members have accurately dubbed it.

With the adoption of the Abraham Accords normalizing Israel’s relationship with several Arab countries, and with the accession of Sweden and Finland into NATO, the Liberal Alliance has forged tighter ties. In response, the Axis of Resistance has adopted a more offensive posture. “This is an entente that is really coming together in a way that should alarm us quite a lot,” the American Enterprise Institute’s Frederick Kagan said recently in an interview with the journalist Bill Kristol. “These countries disagree about a lot of things; they don’t share a common ideology. But they do share a common enemy: us. And the thing that they agree on is that we are a major obstacle to their objectives and their plans, and therefore that it’s in each of their interest to help the others take us down.”

The Axis of Resistance does not have a unifying ideology, but it does have the shared goal of diminishing U.S. influence, especially in the Middle East and Eurasia, and rolling back liberal democracy. Instead of a NATO-like formal structure, it relies on loose coordination and opportunistic cooperation among its member states and its network of militias, proxies, and syndicates. Militarily, it cannot match the U.S. and NATO in a direct confrontation, so it instead seeks to exhaust and demoralize the U.S. and its allies by harrying them relentlessly, much as hyenas harry and exhaust a lion.

The Axis has thus developed into an acephalous networked actor, its member states operating semi-independently yet interdependently, taking cues from one another and sharing resources and dividing duties, jumping in and out of action as opportunities arise and circumstances dictate. One country will help another bust sanctions while receiving military equipment from a third. As The Atlantic’s Anne Applebaum has reported, Russia, Iran, and China have also joined forces on the propaganda front, launching waves of disinformation toward the West. Although the Axis normally takes care to keep its hostilities beneath the threshold that would trigger state-to-state military conflict, it can and will resort to direct military confrontation if it sees need or advantage.

In the two current conflicts, Ukraine and Israel act not only on their own behalf but also as surrogates for the broader alliance. Neither Ukraine nor Israel can sustain its position without outside support. That support, therefore, is a primary target of the Axis, which coordinates across both fronts. Russia has ditched its previously warm relationship with Israel to embrace Iran, which supplies the Kremlin with weaponry and equipment. North Korea likewise supplies the Russian war effort, and it recently entered into a security pact with Russia; Hamas praises North Korea as “part of [our] alliance.” China, while keeping some distance from the Ukraine conflict militarily, has declared “unlimited partnership” with Russia, helps Russia defeat economic sanctions, and provides industrial and technological support for Russia’s war effort. Meanwhile, Russia props up the pro-Iran regime in Syria, and militias aligned with Iran use missiles and drones to strike Israel from Gaza and Lebanon, U.S. forces from Iraq and Syria, and Saudi Arabia from Yemen. Even the weakest and poorest of the Axis forces, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, disrupt regional shipping virtually at will.

Arash Azizi: Iran’s proxies are out of control

The Axis’s principals make no secret of their designs. “We are fighting in Ukraine not against Ukrainians but against the unipolar world,” the Russian ideologue Alexander Dugin said at a conference in Moscow in February. “And our inevitable victory will be not only ours but a victory for all humanity … This is not a return to the old bipolar model but the beginning of a completely new world architecture.” According to the Middle East Media Research Institute, Hossein Salami, the commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, said in a speech in November, “The enemies of the Islamic regime were, and are, the enemies of all humanity, and today the world is rising up against them.” America, he predicted, will “lose [in] the political arena” and “will also fail economically … Be certain that the morning of victory is nigh.”

In the Barack Obama years, it seemed tenable to dismiss Russia as a weak and declining regional power that could slow but not block the advance of liberal democracy, and Iran as a vicious but brittle and unsustainable regime that could needle America but not challenge it. Both countries, after all, seemed beset with social, economic, and demographic problems that could hobble them in the long run. But the long run is taking its time arriving. For the moment, the Axis is playing offense and setting the tempo. Even if it cannot drive the United States completely out of Europe and the Middle East, it may well succeed in weakening NATO, dominating the Middle East, and, what is perhaps most significant, calling into question the sustainability of Western-style liberalism. As it aligns its goals and strategies across far-flung theaters, the Axis of Resistance is emerging, alongside the rise of China, as a generational challenge to the Liberal Alliance.

Americans, accustomed to gauging power by counting aircraft carriers and nuclear warheads, have until now underestimated the ambition and sophistication of the forces arrayed against us. The Axis’s strategy of harrying and exhausting us might very well work, and head-on military responses can be at best only partially effective against it. The Alliance must build a network of its own, one that can coordinate across multiple fronts to contain, deflect, and deter the Axis’s provocations. And only one of the two people running for president is capable of doing that.

In June 2021, at an annual summit in Brussels, NATO reaffirmed its commitment to the eventual membership of Ukraine, which was also in negotiations to join the European Union. Eight months later, Russian tanks were streaming toward Kyiv. NATO, the Americans and others said, could not extend its security guarantee to Ukraine during a hot war with Russia. The NATO-Ukraine deal was off, at least for the time being.

On September 22, 2023, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, told the United Nations General Assembly that Israel and Saudi Arabia were “at the cusp” of a deal normalizing relations—a “dramatic breakthrough” and a “historic peace.” Two weeks later, Hamas, an Iran-backed terrorist organization, invaded Israel, killed 1,200 Israelis and foreigners, took at least 240 hostages, and set off a war. The Israeli-Saudi deal was off, at least for the time being.

For Russia and, likewise, for Hamas and Iran, these attacks were epic gambles, the kind of risks leaders take once in a generation. Although the gambles were made in different theaters, their cause was the same: Both actors saw time running out to stop changes they feared.

Vladimir Putin, although once more conciliatory, today describes the Liberal Alliance as Russia’s “enemy” or “adversary,” depending on the translation. He views its geopolitical goals as fundamentally incompatible with his regime’s continued authoritarian rule. In this, Putin is correct. His incorrigibly antidemocratic and corrupt government derives legitimacy from its claim of defending Russia from foreign meddling, Western humiliation, and “LGBT propaganda.” For a time, several U.S. administrations hoped to rub along with Putinism, or outlast it, or distract it with consumer goods and McDonald’s, betting that Putin and his mafia might be content to loot billions from the economy and stash the money in foreign bank accounts and mansions. But in February 2022, Putin dashed those hopes.

Why just then? Putin was not primarily concerned about NATO enlargement. NATO posed no offensive threat to Putin, and a stable and constructive working relationship was his for the asking. But Putin came to perceive any such arrangement as capitulation, and he came to see Ukraine’s independence as a historical aberration and a kind of personal insult. After the Orange Revolution turned Ukraine toward Europe in 2014, he responded by invading and seizing Crimea. That, predictably, strengthened Ukraine’s fear of Russia and its resolve to cast its lot with the West.

In 2014, when Russia’s “little green men” made fast work of Crimea, the Ukrainian state was riddled with corruption and barely democratic. But by 2022, under President Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine was tackling corruption, Westernizing, and consolidating democratic rule. Also, with the help of American military aid (the very aid that Donald Trump held up in an effort to extort political dirt from Zelensky), Ukraine was developing the capacity to defend itself. Putin could see that if he did not intervene soon, Ukraine would join the Liberal Alliance culturally through its Western ties, militarily through NATO, and economically through the European Union. Putin could foresee Russia’s sphere of influence crumbling, and with it, his own fearsome reputation. Russia feared losing a historically significant geographic buffer against invasion from the West. But much worse, Ukraine’s escape from Russia’s orbit might inspire other countries to follow. Liberal democracy, not just NATO tanks, would roll up to Russia’s border. From America’s standpoint, Putin was behaving imperialistically and militaristically. But from Putin’s standpoint, he was acting defensively against the relentless expansion of the Liberal Alliance. One way or another, Zelensky had to go.

Putin’s Russia had sometimes positioned itself as a dealmaker and even a peacemaker, cultivating relations with Israel while keeping a deniable distance from Iran—but the Ukraine invasion, and the swift and vigorous Western reaction, disambiguated the situation, firmly planting Russia in the Axis. Despite Russia’s economic and demographic decline and its stunted and sclerotic politics, its size, strength, resources, and lack of scruples transformed the Axis from a regional menace into a global one. With its successful interventions in Syria, its extraterritorial assassinations, and its aggressive propaganda and cyber operations, Russia has reached far beyond its neighborhood. Putin understands his economic and military weakness relative to the Liberal Alliance, but he is betting that he can divide the Alliance and outlast it—that he can inflict and tolerate more pain. He can look to far-right parties and leaders in America and Europe to help him. His plan is hardly fanciful. If Trump returns to office, Putin might win his bet, with America’s abandonment of its commitments to NATO.

Iran has its own plan, which also relies on harrying, dividing, exhausting, and ultimately rolling back the Alliance. Tehran has spent billions of dollars in aid, and years of military mentoring, to encircle Israel with antagonistic proxies: Hamas to the west, in Gaza; Hezbollah to the north, in Lebanon; Shiite militias to the east, in Syria and Iraq; and the Houthis to the southeast. Iran, writes Thomas Friedman of The New York Times, “is indirectly occupying four Arab capitals: Baghdad, Beirut, Damascus and Sana”—perhaps an exaggeration, but not much of one. Only along its Egyptian and Jordanian flanks does Israel enjoy any kind of security. Iran’s proxies and clients, while maintaining various degrees of nominal independence from Tehran, can harry Israel relentlessly—not just today or next year, but forever. The same proxy network can needle Saudi Arabia and America to keep them constantly jumping. “Iran has coordinated actions taken among its various proxies, including the recent attacks against U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria and the Yemen Houthis’ activities, seeking both to impose costs on the United States for supporting Israel and also to limit additional U.S. assistance,” Katherine Zimmerman of the American Enterprise Institute wrote in January. “To date, Iraq-based groups have attacked U.S. forces at least sixty-six times in Iraq and Syria since the start of this conflict, injuring over sixty troops.”

Like Russia, Iran knows that it cannot win a direct confrontation with the United States; however, also like Russia, it believes that it won’t have to. The pressure of encirclement and relentless harrying will, in its view, erode Israel’s military, divide its democracy, drive away its entrepreneurs and investors, and demoralize its population. Lacking the conditions that make a modern liberal democracy viable, Israel will collapse within 25 years, Iran’s leaders believe. Meanwhile, tied down by Iran’s unpredictable and relentless proxies and reluctant to strike directly at Tehran, the United States will become exhausted and look to exit the region, which it longs to do anyway. As Israel weakens and America withdraws, the way will be clear for Tehran’s mullahs to dominate the region, and the impotence of modern liberal democracy will be exposed.

America, Israel, and the Sunni Arab states are well aware of Iran’s strategy. Whatever the Sunni countries’ tensions with Israel and the U.S., they regard being dominated by revolutionary Iran as far worse. They have noticed that Saudi Arabia was helpless to defend itself from hundreds of drone and missile attacks by the Iranian-backed Houthis on Saudi oil facilities and cities, including a 2019 attack that knocked half the supply of the kingdom’s oil exports offline. They have noticed, too, that Saudi Arabia’s effort to flex its military muscles in neighboring Yemen was a fiasco. They accurately perceive Israel as the lesser threat, which is why Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, followed by Morocco and Sudan, took the dramatic step of normalizing their relations with Israel.

For the Liberal Alliance, though, an even greater prize seemed within reach. Threatened by Iran, Saudi Arabia wants—and needs—a formal defense commitment from the United States, beyond the informal support it enjoys already. It wants access to Israeli technology. It wants nuclear power, to hedge against a post-oil future and a nuclear-armed Iran. By October 2023, negotiations were reportedly well advanced for a deal combining those elements with formal normalization of Saudi-Israeli relations and tangible steps toward Palestinian statehood.

Michael Schuman: China may be the Ukraine war’s big winner

From Iran’s point of view—and, by extension, from Hamas’s—that deal would have been catastrophic. It would effectively have ended the 75-year Arab-Israeli conflict, which Iran has exploited to inflame the region and prevent an anti-Iranian consolidation. Worse still, Israeli-Saudi normalization would turn the tables on Iran’s encirclement strategy; now Iran and its allies would be the ones facing encirclement, in the form of a wall of U.S.- and Israel-aligned Arab states from North Africa to the Persian Gulf. In an interview with Thomas Friedman in January, Secretary of State Antony Blinken put the case straightforwardly: “If you take a regional approach, and if you pursue integration with security, with a Palestinian state, all of a sudden you have a region that’s come together in ways that answer the most profound questions that Israel has tried to answer for years, and what has heretofore been its single biggest concern in terms of security, Iran, is suddenly isolated along with its proxies, and will have to make decisions about what it wants its future to be.” Moreover, from Hamas’s point of view, the deal would add insult to injury by bolstering the Palestinian Authority, Hamas’s bitter rival in Palestinian politics.

And so, Iran and its client Hamas, like Putin, believed that they had to act before they found themselves walled in. They were willing to take incalculable risks, and suffer severe losses, by lighting their regions on fire.

If the clock were stopped right now, the military contest would probably be declared a draw. The wars being waged by Israel and Ukraine both appear likely to end in some form of stalemate. Israel’s military effort to eradicate Hamas will be imperfect and impermanent, and it is incurring unsustainable costs to Israel’s international reputation and relationships. Ukraine, for all its skill and pluck, lacks the manpower and resources to evict Russia from every inch of its territory. Even if American support were not already wavering, Ukraine could not indefinitely throw men and materiel at entrenched Russian positions; even if international support for the campaign against Hamas were not already eroding, Israel could not indefinitely throw its labor force into firefights in Gaza.

Militarily, in Ukraine, Putin can win by not losing. To be sure, he had hoped to topple Kyiv’s democratic government and establish a vassal state. But he can still intimidate Russia’s neighbors, divide the Liberal Alliance, and show that Western power cannot be counted on against determined Russian aggression. Even if he is temporarily stymied in Ukraine, he would be in a position to resume aggression there and elsewhere at a time of his choosing. Moreover, he can use the threat of aggression, plus relentless economic and political pressure, to strangle Ukraine’s economy and influence its politics.

The same is true for Hamas and Iran. Even though they have no hope of defeating Israel militarily, their show of force in Israel and across the region can intimidate the Arab states, divide the Liberal Alliance, and demonstrate the unreliability of Western power. By threatening aggression, keeping Israel on a permanent war footing, and destabilizing the region, they can strangle Israel’s economy and prevent Iran’s rivals from consolidating. On both fronts, the Axis can win by depriving its target countries of the conditions needed to sustain prosperity, democracy, and domestic solidarity.

Against this asymmetrical strategy, conventional military responses are of limited use. They will be necessary on occasion, but the U.S. would run itself ragged attempting to respond militarily to provocations across the Axis network, which is exactly as the Axis intends. The two current hot conflicts, in Ukraine and Israel, have already depleted American means and will.

Fortunately, whether the Axis wins its two wild gambles depends only partially on battlefield outcomes. What matters as much—indeed, more, from a U.S. point of view—is whether the U.S. and its allies can deny Russia and Iran their principal strategic aim by handing them major diplomatic setbacks. That could deter them and other powers (notably China, which is looking on and taking notes) from trying similar gambits in the future. In other words, deterrence can be established strategically as well as militarily.

In an article published in Foreign Affairs last year, just before Hamas attacked Israel, Jake Sullivan, the Biden administration’s national security adviser, touted a “self-reinforcing latticework of cooperation.” He pointed to the global coalition of countries supporting Ukraine against Russia; the expansion of NATO to include Finland and Sweden; deepened U.S.-EU cooperation; the thaw of relations between Japan and South Korea; AUKUS, a security partnership between the U.S., Australia, and Britain (an effort that Japan might informally join); the Quad cooperative framework between the U.S., Australia, India, and Japan; a new coalition with India, Israel, the U.S., and the United Arab Emirates, called I2U2; a 47-country effort to counter cybercrime and ransomware; and more.

Although talking about countering a network with a lattice sounds gimmicky, the concept is substantive and sound. The Axis is well aware that the Liberal Alliance seeks to contain its power through security agreements, sanctions, and commercial ties. The Alliance would thus establish what the Australian journalist and podcaster Josh Szeps has called “an arc of anti-Iranian and potentially anti-Chinese and anti-Russian allies stretching from South Asia through the Arab Gulf states, through North Africa, and into the European Union.” Such a grouping is far better positioned than any individual state—even if that state is as powerful as America—to outlast and outmaneuver the Axis’s strategy of harrying and exhausting the Alliance. It could operate across the Northern Hemisphere to crimp the Axis’s financial and economic resources, to blunt the Axis’s weaponization of energy and commodities, and to deflect and cushion the effects of provocations.

The most important steps that can be taken toward building out this vision are the two that Iran and Russia most fear and loathe: Saudi-Israeli normalization and Ukrainian NATO-ization. Both measures are desirable as security measures in their own right. More than that, however, they would constitute dramatic strategic defeats for the Axis. NATO membership—in tandem with European Union membership—would put Ukraine beyond Putin’s military and economic reach. Putin might wind up with a chunk of territory in eastern Ukraine, but he will have lost the subservient and illiberal satellite he sought to secure. In the Middle East, normal relations among Israel, the Saudis, and most of the region’s other Arab states, along with a U.S.-Saudi defense pact and progress toward a Palestinian state, would greatly reduce the reach, influence, and perceived success of Iran and its proxies.

Have no illusions: This is hard. Russia and Iran will try to spoil any deals by prolonging the conflicts. NATO is reluctant to provide a standard Article 5 security guarantee to Ukraine while Ukraine is in a shooting war with Russia, the Saudis are unlikely to resume negotiations on normalization while Israel is killing Palestinians, and Israel is unlikely to proceed toward a Palestinian state under its current far-right government. In both theaters, there will need to be compromises and work-arounds, as well as some stabilization of the military situations.

China also figures into the equation—albeit in a complicated way. Unlike the Axis of Resistance, China is a full-spectrum competitor of the United States, one that challenges America economically, militarily, and ideologically. But although it is adversarial, China is far more deeply integrated into, and dependent upon, the global economy than is Russia, Iran, or North Korea, and so its interests are conflicted. On the one hand, it benefits from the Axis’s strategy of keeping the Liberal Alliance off-balance and overextended, which is presumably why it sustains Russia’s war against Ukraine; on the other hand, it does not benefit from a chaotic world in which its export-dependent economy is disrupted. And so, although China’s backing increases the Axis’s resilience, China’s influence may also provide a source of restraint. For the Alliance, the trick is to separate China from the Axis and exploit their divergences.

There are domestic hurdles for the Alliance too. The U.S. Senate might balk at a defense treaty with the Saudis. Turkey and Hungary might try to block Ukraine’s entry into NATO. Although the Axis does not have many overt friends in the West, it does benefit from the support of a collection of American and European populist, isolationist, and authoritarian constituencies—MAGA World chief among them. It also benefits from anti-colonialism, anti-Zionism, anti-capitalism, and other leftist ideologies in the West that see Hamas as a liberator and the liberal project as oppressive.

Then there is the biggest potential challenge of all: Donald Trump.

Russia and Iran might well have taken their gambles no matter who was president. If Joe Biden did anything to provoke their attacks, it was the progress he made toward building a sustainable liberal coalition. Some analysts, pointing to the bungled U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, blame the Biden administration for failing to deter adventurism by Moscow and Tehran. There may be something to that charge, even though the Afghanistan withdrawal was negotiated and sealed by Trump, not Biden. A better argument, though, is that Trump’s isolationism, transactionalism, and caprice were the larger factors emboldening the Axis. It was Trump who let attacks on Saudi Arabian oil facilities go unanswered in 2019, diminishing the Saudis’ confidence in American protection and increasing the Iranians’ sense of impunity. By scrapping an agreement to freeze Iran’s nuclear program, Trump eased the way for Iran to reach the weapons threshold. By truckling to Putin in public and delaying military aid to Ukraine in private, Trump may have contributed to Putin’s overconfidence. By sowing doubt about America’s commitment to NATO, and by implying that any U.S. commitment is purely transactional, Trump undermined confidence in the Alliance.

In his 2024 campaign, Trump has gone much further than he did in the past toward repudiating America’s commitment to NATO. Although he might be able to push ahead with an Israeli-Saudi deal (his record negotiating the Abraham Accords was a bright spot), that deal will require deft handling of the Palestinian issue, in which Trump has shown no interest. Most important, however, is that Trump’s mercurial isolationism signals to the world that Americans’ will to build and maintain alliances is flagging, and it signals to the Axis that America is ready to be chased away.

Still, regardless of who sits in the Oval Office, the U.S. and the Liberal Alliance hold some strong cards. Ukraine, Saudi Arabia, and the Western-oriented counties in their regions need a new security order—and they know it. Russia’s and Hamas’s invasions have demonstrated just how vulnerable the democracies and their allies are, and how ruthless and bloody-minded their antagonists are. If Putin and Hamas did nothing else, they shattered illusions that the status quo was adequate or sustainable. No wonder the Saudis have signaled their continued desire for American protection and normal relations with Israel, that EU membership for Ukraine is on a fast track, and that NATO’s members have agreed that Ukraine will join.

Michael Young: The axis of resistance has been gathering strength

The latticework of cooperation, as Jake Sullivan termed it, is not notional; the world got a vivid preview in April of what it looks like. Iran and its Yemeni proxies launched more than 300 missiles and drones at Israel. All but a handful were shot down, and the remainder caused only minor damage. As significant as the interceptions was the coalition that conducted them, which included U.S., British, and French forces in the region. “Perhaps more striking,” Lawrence Haas wrote, “leading Arab nations also came to Israel’s assistance. Saudi Arabia—which, we must remember, has not yet normalized relations with the Jewish state—and the United Arab Emirates were among several Gulf states that relayed intelligence about Iran’s planned attack, while Jordan’s military reportedly shot down dozens of Iranian drones in its airspace that were headed toward Israel.” In the end, what the strike demonstrated was not Iran’s ability to attack but the Liberal Alliance’s ability to defend.

On balance, the crises in Europe and the Middle East, horrible though they have been, have improved the odds of an endgame in which Ukraine is a NATO democracy; in which the U.S., Israel, and the Arab world are linked together to contain Iran; and in which America and its allies together turn the tables on the Axis of Resistance. That strategic endgame, above and beyond any particular military outcome in Europe or the Middle East, is the victory that the U.S. should seek.

The Atlantic · by Jonathan Rauch · July 1, 2024

5. NDU At Fort Liberty/JFK Special Warfare Center and School: Master of Arts in Strategic Studies

This is an excellent program for all SOF personnel, officers, warrant officers, and NCOs.

More information at the link.

https://socoe.libguides.com/edu/degree

APPLICATIONS FOR 2025 ARE OPEN

DEADLINE IS 31 JULY 2024

• National Defense University
• Naval Postgraduate School

Master of Arts in Strategic Studies

Click here to download a full interactive PDF of this program

In September 2010, the United States Army Special Operations Center of Excellence, in partnership with the National Defense University (NDU), began offering a fully accredited program for a Master of Arts in Strategic Security Studies (MASSS).

The program mirrors the Joint Special Operations Master of Arts (JSOMA) offered by NDU’s College of International Security Affairs. The SOCoE/NDU program is offered to eligible Non-Commissioned Officers, Warrant Officers, Officers from all Special Operations Branches and support personnel assigned to a Special Operations Unit, regardless of MOS, that have a bachelor’s degree from a regionally accredited institution.

The 10-month curriculum offers a strategic perspective on the global threat environment; the rise of newly empowered and politicized ideological movements; the relationship between political objectives; strategy; all instruments of national power; and the roles of power and ideology. The rigorous curriculum emphasizes the importance of strategic thinking in the competition continuum via the context of irregular warfare. Through a combination of academic and practical learning, the program will prepare professionals to develop and implement national and international security strategies for conditions of peace, crisis and war.

Applicants must be top performers and have extraordinary potential for future Army service. All students incur a service obligation upon degree completion. Officers and Warrant Officers incur a three-for-one-active-duty service obligation (ADSO) IAW 350-100 and Noncommissioned Officers incur a service remaining requirements (SRR) IAW AR 614-200.

Interested Soldiers should reach out by email to the USAJFKSWCS Education Office

6. The weaponization of security clearances

The weaponization of security clearances

Pattern emerges of turning the system against political opponents

washingtontimes.com · by The Washington Times https://www.washingtontimes.com

By Mark Moyar - Monday, July 1, 2024

OPINION:

Twenty-seven months ago, the FBI suspended the security clearance of employee Marcus Allen after he questioned the agency’s handling of the Jan. 6 investigations. When congressional Republicans questioned the official who signed the clearance suspension, Jennifer Leigh Moore, she testified that the FBI “does not use a suspension as a punitive measure ever.” Ms. Moore returned to Capitol Hill a short time later to say that the Department of Justice had revoked Mr. Allen’s clearance because he had “expressed sympathy” for people who sought to obstruct the government by illegal means.

Mr. Allen’s fate would have been sealed had his advocates not persuaded the department’s inspector general to look into the case. The Justice Department has yet to release the investigation report, but we know that it vindicated Mr. Allen, for it led the Justice Department to reinstate his security clearance and compensate him for lost pay. It turns out that the FBI had used the security clearance system in a punitive manner, and on false pretenses.

Mr. Allen’s case extends a larger pattern of the weaponization of the security clearance system against political opponents. It also provides further evidence of two-tiered justice, whereby supporters of former President Donald Trump are punished on dubious or unsubstantiated charges while Democrats go unpunished. Attorney General Merrick Garland just gave another example by flouting the same type of congressional subpoena that he prosecuted former White House aides Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro for flouting.

Congress has repeatedly tried to increase the transparency and accountability of the security clearance apparatus in order to prevent its weaponization, but thus far with little success. The security clearance system remains so vulnerable to abuse, first of all, because a very small number of people hold the power to revoke clearances. The abuser of authority may be an agency head, or a senior official in an agency’s office of security.

In 2012, the inspector general of the Securities and Exchange Commission investigated the head of the commission’s security office, William S. Fagan, for criminal offenses that included steering contracts to cronies, covering up sexual assault and orchestrating reprisals against whistleblowers. Mr. Fagan turned the tables on the inspector general by using vague complaints to declare that Assistant Inspector General David P. Weber posed a “physical threat” to other staff, resulting in Mr. Weber’s suspension. Although an external investigation cleared Mr. Weber of the charge, agency leaders ignored its findings and fired him.

At the U.S. Agency for International Development, where I worked during the Trump administration, the FBI investigated the office of security’s leaders in 2016 after receiving reports that they were planting phony evidence as pretexts for labeling their bureaucratic adversaries “insider threats.” The FBI investigation ultimately resulted in the ousting of the office director, his deputy and four other officials.

The clearance system’s second vulnerability is the wide latitude afforded to decision-makers. Federal guidelines provide a list of transgressions that can warrant revoking a clearance, and a list of “mitigating conditions” that can offset them. A malicious adjudicator can give great weight to a relatively minor infraction while ignoring major mitigating conditions.

Conversely, a biased adjudicator can spare a favored person who committed serious offenses by giving greater weight to “mitigating conditions” of doubtful importance. The Department of Defense relied on such subterfuge to revoke the security clearance of Adam Lovinger for a trivial offense while ignoring more serious infractions by Biden administration official Colin Kahl.

The system’s third major vulnerability is the frailty of its whistleblower protections. In 2019, USAID suspended my security clearance and then fired me based on an unsubstantiated accusation by a two-star general. When I filed a whistleblower complaint with the USAID Office of Inspector General, the agency’s “whistleblower protection coordinator” wrote back that I was not eligible for whistleblower protections because the agency had not completed the clearance adjudication process. The CIA had previously wheeled out this same argument to deny whistleblower protections to one of its employees, Andrew Bakaj, and had been shot down by an external inspector general.

The Defense Department restored my clearance one year later, but when USAID officials heard about it, they persuaded friends at the Pentagon to revoke my clearance. Federal regulations and policy directives stipulate that when the government revokes an individual’s security clearance, it must give the individual the “documents, records, and reports upon which a denial or revocation is based,” yet the Defense Department and USAID refused to turn these materials over. At nearly the same time, the Defense Department pulled similar stunts on two other Trump supporters, Michael Ellis and Katie Arrington. My ensuing lawsuit, filed more than two years ago, has yet to compel the government’s compliance.

To stop the abuses, Congress must turn executive orders and regulations into laws that the executive branch cannot ignore. It should also pass new legislation permitting whistleblowers to sue for abuses of the security clearance system. The authority to revoke clearances must be removed from agency officials because of their vested interests and personal connections, and given to an independent body. In protecting specific individuals, such legislation will also dissipate the climate of fear that currently discourages government employees from reporting waste, fraud and abuse.

• Mark Moyar is the author of “Masters of Corruption: How the Federal Bureaucracy Sabotaged the Trump Presidency.”

Copyright © 2024 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.

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7. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, July 1, 2024

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, July 1, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-july-1-2024

Key Takeaways:

• Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) Head Vladimir Kolokoltsev boasted that Russian authorities have increased detentions and prosecutions related to illegal migration into Russia while calling for intensified Russian government crackdowns against illegal migration.
• Russia assumed its one-month-long rotating presidency of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) on July 1 for the first time since April 2023 and will likely use this position as a power projection base within the international system as it historically has.
• South Korea's Ministry of Unification announced on July 1 that North Korean state TV channel Korean Central TV switched to transmitting broadcasts via Russian satellites instead of Chinese satellites, reportedly affecting South Korea's ability to monitor North Korean state TV.
• Hungary assumed the six-month rotating presidency of the European Union (EU) Council on July 1.
• Ukrainian forces recently advanced near Kreminna, and Russian forces recently advanced near Avdiivka.
• The Russian information space continues to discuss the mistreatment of wounded and disabled Russian servicemembers in Ukraine.

8. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, July 1, 2024

Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, July 1, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-july-1-2024

Key Takeaways:

• Iran: Hardline presidential candidate Saeed Jalili will likely win the Iranian presidential election in the runoff race on July 5.
• West Bank: Palestinian militia groups in the West Bank appear to be strengthening at the expense of the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinian Authority’s inability to exert effective control over refugee camps in the West Bank has significant implications for the post-war situation in the Gaza Strip, if statements to Western Media about strengthening militia groups in the West Bank are accurate.
• Northern Gaza Strip: The IDF continued operations aimed at degrading a reconstituting Hamas Battalion in Shujaiya. Hamas commanders in Shujaiya may have formed a composite unit there by combining multiple degraded or combat ineffective units to form one combat effective unit. Forming a composite unit is one method through which reconstitution takes place.
• Southern Gaza Strip: The IDF issued evacuation orders for eastern Khan Younis on July 1. These evacuation orders typically precede Israeli operations. 
• Iraq: Iranian-backed Iraqi militias threatened to target US interests in Iraq and the Middle East in the event of an Israeli operation into southern Lebanon. The groups identified the under-construction Aqaba-Basra oil pipeline between Basra, Iraq, and Aqaba, Jordan, as a starting point for a new attack campaign.
• Yemen: Houthi media published footage on June 30 of a Houthi attack targeting a bulk cargo carrier with a new model of unmanned surface vessel.

9. Eight Antifa Defendants Sentenced in Pacific Beach Assault Case

Eight Antifa Defendants Sentenced in Pacific Beach Assault Case

https://danewscenter.com/news/eight-antifa-defendants-sentenced-in-pacific-beach-assault-case/

June 28, 2024

San Diego County District Attorney Summer Stephan announced today that eight defendants convicted in connection with violent criminal acts committed during a demonstration in Pacific Beach have been sentenced and the case, which garnered national attention, is now closed.

 “From the start this prosecution has been about holding individuals accountable for conspiring to bring violence to our community, something we won’t tolerate,” said DA Stephan. “This was a complex case with all 11 defendants convicted. Our prosecution team worked tirelessly with law enforcement on this case to ensure our community remains safe, and that the rule of law is followed.”

Alexander Akridgejacobs, 33; Brian Cortez Lightfoot Jr., 27; Christian Martinez, 25; Ruchelle Ogden, 26; Bryan Rivera, 22; Faraz Martin Talab, 29; Joseph Austin Gaskins, 23; and Jeremy White, 41 received sentences ranging from 180 days in jail to two years in prison. Three other defendants have already been sentenced to state prison ranging from two years, eight months to five years.

The sentencings come after a criminal grand jury returned indictments against 11 individuals charged with crimes including conspiracy to commit a riot, use of tear gas, assault with a deadly weapon, and assault by means likely to produce great bodily injury. In lieu of a preliminary hearing, the grand jury heard testimony over 13 days and delivered the unsealed indictment in May of 2022. In total, the defendants were indicted on 29 felony counts.

The grand jury indictment noted that the defendants were all affiliated with Antifa. A group of the defendants were based in the Los Angeles area and the remaining defendants were from San Diego County. Ten of the defendants faced conspiracy charges after the indictment and prosecutors told the court that the objective of the conspiracy was to incite and participate in a riot. It’s believed that this is the first criminal case in the nation where crimes committed by members of Antifa were brought to justice and held accountable.

In January of 2021, Antifa supporters posted on social media calling for “counterprotesting” and direct action in response to a scheduled political demonstration in Pacific Beach. The defendants and other uncharged co-conspirators confirmed their support and participation by showing up in Pacific Beach dressed in black clothing and armed with weapons and protective gear.

As the case made its way through the criminal justice system, nine of the defendants entered guilty pleas and two others were convicted by a jury at trial. All defendants indicted by the criminal grand jury for conspiracy entered a plea to that charge or were convicted of that charge at trial.

The case was prosecuted by Deputy District Attorneys Makenzie Harvey, William Hopkins, and Evan Andersen with investigative support from District Attorney Investigator Jonah Conley and SDPD Detective Emily Clark.

10. ‘In the Shadows’ Review: The Hostage Bargainer

I would like to get Roger Carstens' take on this book and this person.

I did learn a new term from this, something I have not heard before; "fringe diplomat" (AKA "a freelance international political negotiator").  I guess it is good work if you can get it.

But as Ronald Reagan (and others have said): It is amazing what you can accomplish when you do not care about who gets the credit.

Excerpt:

Back channels, in Mr. Bergman’s telling, are often less about reaching a deal on policy than about reaching a deal on who will take credit and who will accept blame, who will look strong and who will look weak, who will look smart and who will look stupid. These are no small matters to career diplomats and politicians. The State Department isn’t about to let the fringe players announce a deal that has worked out well. It swoops in “at the eleventh hour” and grabs up all the credit, Mr. Bergman tells us. “People in politics and government care a lot about credit, I have learned.”

‘In the Shadows’ Review: The Hostage Bargainer

Backchannel hostage negotiators can be nimble dealmakers, free to explore solutions anathema to Foggy Bottom bureaucrats.

https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/books/in-the-shadows-review-the-hostage-bargainer-a96db325?mod=Searchresults_pos4&page=1

By Eric Felten

June 30, 2024 12:49 pm ET

Mickey Bergman calls himself a fringe diplomat. His mentor, Bill Richardson, the former governor of New Mexico, had a more straightforward description of the type of work they did together: “I get people out of prison.”

GRAB A COPY

In the Shadows: True Stories of High-Stakes Negotiations to Free Americans Captured Abroad

By Mickey Bergman and Ellis Henican

Center Street

320 pages

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“In the Shadows” is a memoir of Mr. Bergman’s time as a freelance international political negotiator, bargaining for prisoner releases in Iran, North Korea and Russia—among other hot spots. He touts the successes possible when tense international negotiations are handled informally and out of the limelight. He argues—not unpersuasively—that if you should find yourself locked up in an inhospitable foreign land, your chances of survival might be better if the negotiators bargaining on your behalf are guys in jeans and T-shirts and not the State Department’s striped-trouser types. Unofficial, backchannel negotiators can be nimble dealmakers, free to explore solutions anathema to Foggy Bottom bureaucrats.

Mr. Bergman emphasizes that he and his colleagues “do not negotiate on behalf of the US government.” Instead, they represent the falsely imprisoned and their families. That doesn’t mean their efforts are independent of partisan politics. Having begun his Washington career raising money for the Clinton Global Initiative, Mr. Bergman has the kind of connections typical in Washington. He knows Secretary of State Antony Blinken personally, for example, having played with “Tony” in the same soccer league. With the election of President Joe Biden, Mr. Bergman expected that working with the White House would be much easier, after four years of trying to coordinate with the Trump administration: “We were dealing now with people we knew, familiar faces from the Democratic side of the foreign-policy establishment,” Mr. Bergman writes. He would now be interacting with “well-credentialed professionals” with whom he had worked for years.

Those credentials were no guarantee of success, however, as in the State Department’s stumbling effort to free Brittney Griner, the WNBA player arrested in Russia for possession of cannabis oil. Behind the scenes, we learn, Mr. Blinken nearly derailed the whole effort when he proposed trading one Russian prisoner for two Americans. “Two for one?” Mr. Bergman’s Russian contacts scoffed. “That’s an insult.”

To help them negotiate with the Russians, Mr. Bergman and Richardson, who died in September, looked to Ara Abramyan, “a wealthy Armenian Russian entrepreneur and a United Nations goodwill ambassador” with apparent ties “to people at the highest levels of the Kremlin, including Russian president Vladimir Putin.” When Moscow made a counteroffer, it involved trading two Americans—one of whom was Ms. Griner—for two Russians, including Vadim Krasikov, a former FSB colonel and professional killer serving a life sentence in Germany. Mr. Abramyan thought the asymmetry of trading a basketball player for a hit man was a terrific joke. “That was just a f— you to Blinken for his f— you to us, when he said he wanted two for one.”

Among the foreign service’s constraints, it has to consider the universe of consequences—most of them bad—that may follow from strategically dubious dealmaking. It must maintain coherent policies and anticipate (and catastrophize) how deals made today are likely to shape the sorts of deals that will be possible tomorrow. By contrast, the independent fringe negotiator is at liberty to focus on today’s crisis without being overly concerned about tomorrow’s.

Consider the effort to free Gilad Shalit, the young Israeli soldier captured in 2006 by Hamas. Working to secure Mr. Shalit’s release was one of Mr. Bergman’s first efforts as a freelance diplomat; the negotiations would take five years and involve multiple independents pursuing secret backchannel communications with Hamas.

Ehud Olmert, Israel’s prime minister at the time, initially refused any sort of prisoner swap, in no small part out of fear that such a concession would encourage Hamas to grab more hostages. But Mr. Bergman reports that he presented the Israelis with Hamas’s proposal anyway—that it would free Mr. Shalit in exchange for some 1,100 Palestinians incarcerated by Israel. The government responded that it would release 20 prisoners; Hamas countered with its original offer: 1,100 Palestinian prisoners for Mr. Shalit. “The Israelis kept bringing their number up,” Mr. Bergman writes. “To seventy-five. Then to one hundred. Then to two hundred.” Hamas, by contrast, never budged. “In the end,” Mr. Bergman tells us, “the deal was made almost exactly as we had structured it”—which is to say, the way Hamas wanted it.

Was that a good deal? In his role as a fringe negotiator, Mr. Bergman says it isn’t his job to have any opinions about the demands being made. “We just needed to get the two sides engaged.” However, he notes that it is “interesting” that “one of those released prisoners, Yahya Sinwar, would go on to head Hamas in Gaza.” Under Mr. Sinwar, Hamas launched the Oct. 7 attack that included taking hundreds of hostages, many of whom remain in captivity.

Among the hostages seized were American citizens. It’s uncertain how many are still alive. Unclear also is how many people would have been taken if Hamas wasn’t convinced that hostages are their aces in the hole.

Back channels, in Mr. Bergman’s telling, are often less about reaching a deal on policy than about reaching a deal on who will take credit and who will accept blame, who will look strong and who will look weak, who will look smart and who will look stupid. These are no small matters to career diplomats and politicians. The State Department isn’t about to let the fringe players announce a deal that has worked out well. It swoops in “at the eleventh hour” and grabs up all the credit, Mr. Bergman tells us. “People in politics and government care a lot about credit, I have learned.”

Mr. Felten is a writer in Washington, D.C., where, as a broadcaster for Voice of America, he participated in U.S. public diplomacy.

11. Solving the Problem of Postwar Gaza

Intelligent people learn from their mistakes and wise people learn from the mistakes of others.

Lesson: do not impose your own form of government on another people. You must support the people's self-determination of government.

This is what I say about supporting indigenous forces in conflict. The same principle may be applied to post conflict stabilization and rebuilding.

Understand the indigenous way of war and adapt to it.   Do not force the US way of war upon indigenous forces if it is counter to their history, customs, traditions, and abilities.

https://maxoki161.blogspot.com/2018/07/eight-points-of-special-warfare.html

Solving the Problem of Postwar Gaza

A document planning for the future of Gazan governance draws from America’s mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

thedispatch.com · by Charlotte Lawson · July 2, 2024

TEL AVIV, Israel—A 28-page document that lays out the clearest plan for postwar Gaza to date has circulated at the highest level of Israel’s security apparatus. In the proposal obtained by The Dispatch, a team of researchers looked to the past to chart out a better future for the war-torn Strip.

The draft proposal, which has not yet been made public, seeks to tackle perhaps the most difficult question facing Israeli decision-makers today: how to create the conditions for Gaza to exist peacefully alongside the state of Israel. To do so, Israeli researchers Netta Barak-Corren of Hebrew University, Danny Orbach of Hebrew University, Netanel Flamer of Bar-Ilan University, and Harel Chorev-Halewa of Tel Aviv University analyzed historical examples of military occupation and attempted societal transformation to learn from the successes and failures.

Though the academics’ findings were first distributed to government officials in February, momentum for such a plan has built in recent weeks—particularly as Israeli forces fight to prevent Hamas from resurfacing in areas of Gaza that were previously cleared. While it’s unclear how the document is being received, it has reached the top echelon of the Israeli government and military.

Calls for a postwar plan for Gaza, which has seen widespread destruction and tens of thousands of deaths from the nearly nine-month war between Israel and Hamas, have increased recently as negotiations for a ceasefire and return of Israeli hostages stalled. During Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s trip to Washington last week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged Israel to come up with a reconstruction and security blueprint for Gaza and its 2.3 million residents.

“If we don’t bring something else to Gaza, at the end of the day we will get Hamas,” Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces, warned last month.

And that “day after” could come sooner than previously thought. As Israeli journalist Nadav Eyal noted in a recent report, Hamas has now lost 95 percent of its rocket arsenal, most of its smuggling routes, and all of its munitions-production capacity. An estimated 35 percent of the terrorist group’s fighters have been killed, while an even larger portion have been injured and taken off the battlefield. The time to plan for Gaza after Hamas is now, argues the team of Israeli researchers that includes a pair of Middle East experts, a military historian, and a legal scholar.

The paper, “From a Murderous Ideology to a Moderate Society: Transforming and Rebuilding Gaza After Hamas,” outlines a series of pragmatic steps that must be taken to reform a society shaped by its terrorist sovereigns for more than 15 years.

“Israel’s ability to achieve its goals depends not only on the military and political campaign going on today, but also on its ability to facilitate rebuilding and transforming a nation that was led by a murderous ideology,” the document asserts, “such that it will grow stable institutions and an Arab culture that does not educate for jihad and that reconciles with the existence of Israel as a state.”

Though the report doesn’t wade into military strategy, its starting condition is clear and controversial: the total defeat of Hamas. Rehabilitation under fire isn’t possible, with the authors pointing to the historical examples of the U.S. campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In Iraq, U.S. forces’ early failure to secure the borders allowed for the flow of jihadists into the country, with those fighters eventually backed by locals disillusioned by the lengthy American occupation. The Obama administration’s 2011 military withdrawal amid that instability worsened the situation, fueling sectarian conflicts and eventually creating the conditions for the Islamic State to win supporters and conquer territory.

A similar vacuum in Gaza could prove disastrous for Israel, as it did after Jerusalem pulled its forces and settlements from the Strip following a wave of terror attacks in 2005. Hamas launched a bloody civil war to oust the Palestinian Authority just two years later and has used the territory as a launch pad for attacks on Israel ever since.

“It should be expected that even in the best case, any governmental structure in Gaza will require guidance, security intervention from time to time, and even assistance from Israel and other partner countries,” the report notes. “The idea that it is possible to abandon Gaza and ‘throw the keys to the sea’ proved to be a disaster already in the years after the disengagement and is also a dangerous illusion today.”

The U.S.’s phased withdrawal from Afghanistan, likewise, expedited the collapse of the American-supported government in Kabul. By broadcasting to the Taliban the date by which U.S. forces planned to depart, Washington empowered the jihadist fighters and undermined morale among its own allies. Thus the report’s authors recommend measuring progress in Gaza’s reform process by achievements, rather than setting a strict timeline for occupation forces’ eventual withdrawal.

“If you want the reform efforts to be successful, you need to focus on achieving qualitative measures and not adhering to a strict timeline,” Barak-Corren, one of the paper’s authors and a legal scholar whose work focuses on conflict resolution, told The Dispatch. Otherwise, “your allies know that you are going to abandon them at that time point and they will not have anyone to rely on, and your enemies know that they just need to survive and prepare themselves for your departure.”

Unsuccessful U.S. efforts to transform Iraq and Afghanistan into liberal democracies should also serve as cautionary tales for Israel, the researchers argue. The key to change is some continuity, the report notes, arguing that Gaza should maintain aspects of its cultural character. But it also concedes the difficulty of achieving deradicalization when religion—and in particular, Hamas’ brand of Islamic fundamentalism—plays a central role in Gazan society. “The close connection between extremism and religion in Gaza makes it difficult to create an alternative narrative to the Hamas narrative.”

But history offers examples of successful religious reforms, even from recent years. In Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman has led a top-down effort to lessen the role of Wahhabism—an ultraconservative form of Sunni Islam—in the everyday lives of his people. The shedding of this ideology has included a relaxation of restrictions on women, crackdowns on imams for incitement, and revisions to the curricula taught in schools. Riyadh recently overhauled the country’s textbooks, removing denunciations of Zionism as a “racist” European movement and references to Israel as an enemy state.

Given Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab states’ steps toward tolerance, the draft proposal advocates for closely involving them in the rehabilitation of Gaza. In particular, it envisions heavy Arab state participation in reworking its education system and religious order in a way that promotes peace but maintains the society’s cultural character.

In the short-term, a regional coalition could also help provide for Gaza’s immediate humanitarian needs, thereby depriving Hamas of the opportunity to reconstitute under the auspices of a civil administration. In the medium- to long-term, the continued involvement of moderate Arab countries is vital for reorienting Gaza away from the Iran-Qatar axis.

Strengthening the defeated regime’s ties to the American orbit was a key component in the two reconstruction success stories analyzed by the postwar report: West Germany and Japan after World War II.

The transformation of postwar Germany, which underwent a dramatic deradicalization, hinged on the complete defeat and unconditional surrender of the Nazi regime. For many Germans, the humiliation of World War II undermined the very basis of the dictatorial and fanatical leadership that brought it about. Thus, when the Allies occupied and began the process of rebuilding and reforming Germany, they encountered very little resistance from the local population. While the researchers note a surge in Palestinian support for Hamas post-October 7, they argue that public opinion can change quickly. The terror group’s defeat, in particular, could bring about the collapse of its support base.

The German example also demonstrates the effectiveness of a phased occupation, particularly if the end goal of restored sovereignty is always in sight. Allied forces directly occupied Western Germany for five years after the war, after which they moved to an indirect occupation until 1955. From that point onward, Germany resumed its independence while maintaining close security and political ties with the U.S. and its allies thanks to NATO. Allowing the country into the regional fold ensured that it maintained its progress toward becoming a prosperous, Western-oriented liberal democracy.

In Gaza, too, the researchers argue there must be an interim period in which the Strip is run by outside forces—preferably, an international and regional coalition but possibly Israel—followed by a gradual return to Palestinian management and sovereignty. That end goal may be something the Israeli government is beginning to consider. In an address before a joint session of Congress on July 24, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is reportedly expected to announce his support for a pathway to Palestinian statehood in exchange for a deal that would see normalized ties with Saudi Arabia and the release of Israeli hostages from Hamas captivity.

Creating a positive horizon for independence and international acceptance is crucial for gaining buy-in from local populations, according to the researchers’ proposal. But so is some degree of continuity.

In postwar Japan, in many ways the closest parallel to Gaza today, allowing the emperor to continue his largely ceremonial role lended legitimacy to the U.S. reform efforts. The symbolic figure blessed the process of demilitarization, including through the adoption of a new constitution that enshrined the democratic and pacifist character of the country. The Japanese army and navy were blamed for imperial Japan’s descent into militarism, just as the authors of the postwar document argue Hamas should be held responsible for the war amid Gaza’s eventual reconstruction process.

“Japan during World War II, under the auspices of an out-of-control army and navy, developed a suicidal, violent military culture of blind sacrifice that in important ways is actually very similar to the jihadi, death cult culture of Hamas,” Barak-Corren said. “There are also many similarities in the methods: indifference to human suffering, prevalent wartime rape, brutal assassinations both of political opponents and of the enemy. The cruelty of the Japanese army was a very well-known phenomenon during the war.”

“That makes the Japanese transformation all the more fascinating, because the Japan we know today is pacifist,” she added.

thedispatch.com · by Charlotte Lawson · July 2, 2024

12. China builds new presidential palace in Pacific's Vanuatu

China builds new presidential palace in Pacific's Vanuatu

02 Jul 2024 04:27PM

channelnewsasia.com

SYDNEY: The government of cash-strapped Vanuatu will soon settle into a suite of new buildings funded by China, a move likely to reignite concerns about Beijing's reach in the South Pacific nation.

At an official handover ceremony conducted in front of a towering China Aid billboard, Vanuatu Prime Minister Charlot Salwai announced the opening of the nation's sweeping new presidential palace.

The project also included the construction of a new finance ministry and renovations to Vanuatu's foreign affairs department, China's embassy said in a statement released on Tuesday (Jul 2).

Australia's Lowy Institute think tank estimated China had spent upwards of US$21 million on construction, a significant sum for an aid project in the developing nation of less than 300,000 people.

China's embassy said the project had gifted Vanuatu "another landmark building", while symbolising a new "milestone" in their increasingly warm relationship.

A Chinese delegation handed Salwai an oversized novelty golden key - also emblazoned with "China Aid" - kicking off a festive opening ceremony replete with Chinese dragon dancers and the brewing of the ceremonial kava drink.

Local media reported that hundreds of public servants would work, rent free, inside the new buildings.

China is "committed to developing friendly cooperation with Pacific island countries", including Vanuatu, foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told reporters in Beijing.

Vanuatu is heavily indebted to China: about 40 per cent of its external debt is owed to China's Exim bank, according to the Lowy Institute.

China has funded a swathe of major infrastructure upgrades across the archipelago, part of an intensifying scramble for influence pitting Beijing against Western rivals.

Beijing's ambassador to Vanuatu, Li Minggang, has said that China is ready and willing to "step up pragmatic cooperation in this field".

But there are fears that Vanuatu and other Pacific states such as Tonga and Solomon Islands are increasingly vulnerable to what critics have described as China's "debt-trap diplomacy".

13. A.I. Begins Ushering In an Age of Killer Robots

A.I. Begins Ushering In an Age of Killer Robots

By Paul Mozur and Adam Satariano

Paul Mozur reported from Kyiv, Lviv, Kramatorsk and near the front lines in the Donbas region, all in Ukraine. Adam Satariano reported from London.

The New York Times · by Adam Satariano · July 2, 2024

A Ukrainian battalion testing a machine gun that can use A.I.-powered targeting, at a shooting range near Kyiv.Credit...Videos by Sasha Maslov For The New York Times and Paul Mozur/the New York Times

A Ukrainian battalion testing a machine gun that can use A.I.-powered targeting, at a shooting range near Kyiv.Credit...Videos by Sasha Maslov For The New York Times and Paul Mozur/the New York Times

In a field on the outskirts of Kyiv, the founders of Vyriy, a Ukrainian drone company, were recently at work on a weapon of the future.

To demonstrate it, Oleksii Babenko, 25, Vyriy’s chief executive, hopped on his motorcycle and rode down a dirt path. Behind him, a drone followed, as a colleague tracked the movements from a briefcase-size computer.

A test of a Vyriy drone system that uses autonomous tracking to fix onto a target, in a field outside Kyiv.Credit...Video by Sasha Maslov For The New York Times

Until recently, a human would have piloted the quadcopter. No longer. Instead, after the drone locked onto its target — Mr. Babenko — it flew itself, guided by software that used the machine’s camera to track him.

The motorcycle’s growling engine was no match for the silent drone as it stalked Mr. Babenko. “Push, push more. Pedal to the medal, man,” his colleagues called out over a walkie-talkie as the drone swooped toward him. “You’re screwed, screwed!”

If the drone had been armed with explosives, and if his colleagues hadn’t disengaged the autonomous tracking, Mr. Babenko would have been a goner.

Vyriy is just one of many Ukrainian companies working on a major leap forward in the weaponization of consumer technology, driven by the war with Russia. The pressure to outthink the enemy, along with huge flows of investment, donations and government contracts, has turned Ukraine into a Silicon Valley for autonomous drones and other weaponry.

What the companies are creating is technology that makes human judgment about targeting and firing increasingly tangential. The widespread availability of off-the-shelf devices, easy-to-design software, powerful automation algorithms and specialized artificial intelligence microchips has pushed a deadly innovation race into uncharted territory, fueling a potential new era of killer robots.

The drone tested by Vyriy, one of many Ukrainian companies driven by the war with Russia to work on the weaponization of consumer technology.Credit...Sasha Maslov for The New York Times

A Vyriy employee used goggles to see what the drone was seeing as it locked onto a target. Credit...Sasha Maslov for The New York Times

The most advanced versions of the technology that allows drones and other machines to act autonomously have been made possible by deep learning, a form of A.I. that uses large amounts of data to identify patterns and make decisions. Deep learning has helped generate popular large language models, like OpenAI’s GPT-4, but it also helps make models interpret and respond in real time to video and camera footage. That means software that once helped a drone follow a snowboarder down a mountain can now become a deadly tool.

In more than a dozen interviews with Ukrainian entrepreneurs, engineers and military units, a picture emerged of a near future when swarms of self-guided drones can coordinate attacks and machine guns with computer vision can automatically shoot down soldiers. More outlandish creations, like a hovering unmanned copter that wields machine guns, are also being developed.

The weapons are cruder than the slick stuff of science-fiction blockbusters, like “The Terminator” and its T-1000 liquid-metal assassin, but they are a step toward such a future. While these weapons aren’t as advanced as expensive military-grade systems made by the United States, China and Russia, what makes the developments significant is their low cost — just thousands of dollars or less — and ready availability.

Except for the munitions, many of these weapons are built with code found online and components such as hobbyist computers, like Raspberry Pi, that can be bought from Best Buy and a hardware store. Some U.S. officials said they worried that the abilities could soon be used to carry out terrorist attacks.

For Ukraine, the technologies could provide an edge against Russia, which is also developing autonomous killer gadgets — or simply help it keep pace. The systems raise the stakes in an international debate about the ethical and legal ramifications of A.I. on the battlefield. Human rights groups and United Nations officials want to limit the use of autonomous weapons for fear that they may trigger a new global arms race that could spiral out of control.

In Ukraine, such concerns are secondary to fighting off an invader.

“We need maximum automation,” said Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s minister of digital transformation, who has led the country’s efforts to use tech start-ups to expand advanced fighting capabilities. “These technologies are fundamental to our victory.”

Autonomous drones like Vyriy’s have already been used in combat to hit Russian targets, according to Ukrainian officials and video verified by The New York Times. Mr. Fedorov said the government was working to fund drone companies to help them rapidly scale up production.

Major questions loom about what level of automation is acceptable. For now, the drones require a pilot to lock onto a target, keeping a “human in the loop” — a phrase often invoked by policymakers and A.I. ethicists. Ukrainian soldiers have raised concerns about the potential for malfunctioning autonomous drones to hit their own forces. In the future, constraints on such weapons may not exist.

Ukraine has “made the logic brutally clear of why autonomous weapons have advantages,” said Stuart Russell, an A.I. scientist and professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who has warned about the dangers of weaponized A.I. “There will be weapons of mass destruction that are cheap, scalable and easily available in arms markets all over the world.”

A Drone Silicon Valley

A soldier in northeastern Ukraine used zip ties to attach explosives to a drone for a strike mission on a Russian target.Credit...Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times

A drone armed with a warhead, to be used along the front line in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region.Credit...Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times

In a ramshackle workshop in an apartment building in eastern Ukraine, Dev, a 28-year-old soldier in the 92nd Assault Brigade, has helped push innovations that turned cheap drones into weapons. First, he strapped bombs to racing drones, then added larger batteries to help them fly farther and recently incorporated night vision so the machines can hunt in the dark.

In May, he was one of the first to use autonomous drones, including those from Vyriy. While some required improvements, Dev said, he believed that they would be the next big technological jump to hit the front lines.

Autonomous drones are “already in high demand,” he said. The machines have been especially helpful against jamming that can break communications links between drone and pilot. With the drone flying itself, a pilot can simply lock onto a target and let the device do the rest.

Makeshift factories and labs have sprung up across Ukraine to build remote-controlled machines of all sizes, from long-range aircraft and attack boats to cheap kamikaze drones — abbreviated as F.P.V.s, for first-person view, because they are guided by a pilot wearing virtual-reality-like goggles that give a view from the drone. Many are precursors to machines that will eventually act on their own.

Drones being assembled at the Kyiv office of PG Robotics, one of several drone companies working on automated targeting.Credit...Sasha Maslov for The New York Times

Also in Kyiv, the manufacturing facilities of Skyeton, which makes long-range drones that use automated systems to fly.Credit...Sasha Maslov for The New York Times

Efforts to automate F.P.V. flights began last year, but were slowed by setbacks building flight control software, according to Mr. Fedorov, who said those problems had been resolved. The next step was to scale the technology with more government spending, he said, adding that about 10 companies were already making autonomous drones.

“We already have systems which can be mass-produced, and they're now extensively tested on the front lines, which means they’re already actively used,” Mr. Fedorov said.

Some companies, like Vyriy, use basic computer vision algorithms, which analyze and interpret images and help a computer make decisions. Other companies are more sophisticated, using deep learning to build software that can identify and attack targets. Many of the companies said they pulled data and videos from flight simulators and frontline drone flights.

One Ukrainian drone maker, Saker, built an autonomous targeting system with A.I. processes originally designed for sorting and classifying fruit. During the winter, the company began sending its technology to the front lines, testing different systems with drone pilots. Demand soared.

By May, Saker was mass-producing single-circuit-board computers loaded with its software that could be easily attached to F.P.V. drones so the machines could auto-lock onto a target, said the company’s chief executive, who asked to be referred to only by his first name, Viktor, for fear of retaliation by Russia.

The drone then crashes into its target “and that’s it,” he said. “It resists wind. It resists jamming. You just have to be precise with what you’re going to hit.”

Saker now makes 1,000 of the circuit boards a month and plans to expand to 9,000 a month by the end of the summer. Several of Ukraine’s military units have already hit Russian targets on the front lines with Saker’s technology, according to the company and videos confirmed by The Times.

In one clip of Saker technology shared on social media, a drone flies over a field scarred by shelling. A box at the center of the pilot’s viewfinder suddenly zooms in on a tank, indicating a lock. The drone attacks on its own, exploding into the side of the armor.

A video of a Saker autonomous drone locking onto and then destroying a tank in eastern Ukraine.Credit...

Saker has gone further in recent weeks, successfully using a reconnaissance drone that identified targets with A.I. and then dispatched autonomous kamikaze drones for the kill, Viktor said. In one case, the system struck a target 25 miles away.

“Once we reach the point when we don’t have enough people, the only solution is to substitute them with robots,” said Rostyslav, a Saker co-founder who also asked to be referred to only by his first name.

A Miniaturized War

Yurii Klontsak, a Ukrainian reservist, demonstrating how to use Wolly, an automated machine gun.Credit...Sasha Maslov for The New York Times

On a hot afternoon last month in the eastern Ukrainian region known as the Donbas, Yurii Klontsak, a 23-year-old reservist, trained four soldiers to use the latest futuristic weapon: a gun turret with autonomous targeting that works with a PlayStation controller and a tablet.

Speaking over booms of nearby shelling, Mr. Klontsak explained how the gun, called Wolly after a resemblance to the Pixar robot WALL-E, can auto-lock on a target up to 1,000 meters away and jump between preprogrammed positions to quickly cover a broad area. The company making the weapon, DevDroid, was also developing an auto-aim to track and hit moving targets.

“When I first saw the gun, I was fascinated,” Mr. Klontsak said. “I understood this was the only way, if not to win this war, then to at least hold our positions.”

The gun is one of several that have emerged on the front lines using A.I.-trained software to automatically track and shoot targets. Not dissimilar to the object identification featured in surveillance cameras, software on a screen surrounds humans and other would-be targets with a digital box. All that’s left for the shooter to do is remotely pull the trigger with a video game controller.

For now, the gun makers say they do not allow the machine gun to fire without a human pressing a button. But they also said it would be easy to make one that could.

Many of Ukraine’s innovations are being developed to counter Russia’s advancing weaponry. Ukrainian soldiers operating machine guns are a prime target for Russian drone attacks. With robot weapons, no human dies when a machine gun is hit. New algorithms, still under development, could eventually help the guns shoot Russian drones out of the sky.

Such technologies, and the ability to quickly build and test them on the front lines, have gained attention and investment from overseas. Last year, Eric Schmidt, a former Google chief executive, and other investors set up a firm called D3 to invest in emerging battlefield technologies in Ukraine. Other defense companies, such as Helsing, are also teaming up with Ukrainian firms.

Ukrainian companies are moving more quickly than competitors overseas, said Eveline Buchatskiy, a managing partner at D3, adding that the firm asks the companies it invests in outside Ukraine to visit the country so they can speed up their development.

“There’s just a different set of incentives here,” she said.

Oleksandr Yabchanka, a commander, left, posted an open request on Facebook for a computerized, remote-controlled machine gun. That spurred innovation as companies tried to help.Credit...Sasha Maslov for The New York Times

Roboneers, a Ukrainian company, developed an automated weapon with a gun turret mounted on a rolling drone.Credit...Sasha Maslov for The New York Times

A repurposed video game system used with the Roboneers gun turret.Credit...Paul Mozur/The New York Times

Often, battlefield demands pull together engineers and soldiers. Oleksandr Yabchanka, a commander in Da Vinci Wolves, a battalion known for its innovation in weaponry, recalled how the need to defend the “road of life” — a route used to supply troops fighting Russians along the eastern front line in Bakhmut — had spurred invention. Imagining a solution, he posted an open request on Facebook for a computerized, remote-controlled machine gun.

In several months, Mr. Yabchanka had a working prototype from a firm called Roboneers. The gun was almost instantly helpful for his unit.

“We could sit in the trench drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes and shoot at the Russians,” he said.

Mr. Yabchanka’s input later helped Roboneers develop a new sort of weapon. The company mounted the machine gun turret atop a rolling ground drone to help troops make assaults or quickly change positions. The application has led to a bigger need for A.I.-powered auto-aim, the chief executive of Roboneers, Anton Skrypnyk, said.

Similar partnerships have pushed other advances. On a drone range in May, Swarmer, another local company, held a video call with a military unit to walk soldiers through updates to its software, which enables drones to carry out swarming attacks without a pilot.

Swarmer, a Ukrainian company, built software on an A.I. model that was trained with large amounts of data on frontline drone missions.Credit...Sasha Maslov for The New York Times

The software from Swarmer, which was formed last year by a former Amazon engineer, Serhii Kupriienko, was built on an A.I. model that was trained with large amounts of data on frontline drone missions. It enables a single technician to operate up to seven drones on bombing and reconnaissance missions.

Recently, Swarmer added abilities that can guide kamikaze attack drones up to 35 miles. The hope is that the software, which has been in tests since January, will cut down on the number of people required to operate the miniaturized air forces that dominate the front lines.

Testing the Swarmer drones outside Kyiv last month.Credit...Video by Sasha Maslov For The New York Times

During a demonstration, a Swarmer engineer at a computer watched a map as six autonomous drones buzzed overhead. One after the other, large bomber drones flew over a would-be target and dropped water bottles in place of bombs.

Some drone pilots are afraid they will be replaced entirely by the technology, Mr. Kupriienko said.

“They say: ‘Oh, it flies without us. They will take away our remote controls and put a weapon in our hand,’” he said, referring to the belief that it’s safer to fly a drone than occupy a trench on the front.

“But I say, no, you’ll now be able to fly with five or 10 drones at the same time,” he said. “The software will help them fight better.”

The Rise of Slaughterbots

The showroom at Roboneers headquarters in western Ukraine.Credit...Sasha Maslov for The New York Times

In 2017, Mr. Russell, the Berkeley A.I. researcher, released an online film, “Slaughterbots,” warning of the dangers of autonomous weapons. In the movie, roving packs of low-cost armed A.I. drones use facial recognition technology to hunt down and kill targets.

What’s happening in Ukraine moves us toward that dystopian future, Mr. Russell said. He is already haunted, he said, by Ukrainian videos of soldiers who are being pursued by weaponized drones piloted by humans. There’s often a point when soldiers stop trying to escape or hide because they realize they cannot get away from the drone.

“There’s nowhere for them to go, so they just wait around to die,” Mr. Russell said.

He isn’t alone in fearing that Ukraine is a turning point. In Vienna, members of a panel of U.N. experts also said they worried about the ramifications of the new techniques being developed in Ukraine.

Officials have spent more than a decade debating rules about the use of autonomous weapons, but few expect any international deal to set new regulations, especially as the United States, China, Israel, Russia and others race to develop even more advanced weapons. In one U.S. program announced in August, known as the Replicator initiative, the Pentagon said it planned to mass-produce thousands of autonomous drones.

“The geopolitics makes it impossible,” said Alexander Kmentt, Austria’s top negotiator on autonomous weapons at the U.N. “These weapons will be used, and they’ll be used in the military arsenal of pretty much everybody.”

Nobody expects countries to accept an outright ban of such weapons, he said, “but they should be regulated in a way that we don’t end up with an absolutely nightmare scenario.”

Groups including the International Committee of the Red Cross have pushed for legally binding rules that prohibit certain types of autonomous weapons, restrict the use of others and require a level of human control over decisions to use force.

Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s minister of digital transformation, at a summit in Kyiv in May. He has championed using tech start-ups to innovate weaponry.Credit...Sasha Maslov for The New York Times

For many in Ukraine, the debate is academic. They are outgunned and outmanned.

“We need to win first,” Mr. Fedorov, the minister of digital transformation, said. “To do that, we will do everything we can to introduce automation to its maximum to save the lives of our soldiers.”

Olha Kotiuzhanska contributed reporting from Lviv, Kyiv, Kramatorsk and near the front lines in the Donbas region.

Paul Mozur is the global technology correspondent for The Times, based in Taipei. Previously he wrote about technology and politics in Asia from Hong Kong, Shanghai and Seoul. More about Paul Mozur

Adam Satariano is a technology correspondent for The Times, based in London. More about Adam Satariano

See more on: Russia-Ukraine War

The New York Times · by Adam Satariano · July 2, 2024

​14. Lawsuit accuses Iran, Syria and North Korea of providing support for Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on Israel

I wonder if the example of the Warmbier family taking Kim Jong Un and north Korea to court (and achieving a favorable verdict) is influencing this.

Lawsuit accuses Iran, Syria and North Korea of providing support for Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on Israel

BY  JENNIFER PELTZ AND JON GAMBRELL

Updated 1:35 PM EDT, July 1, 2024

AP · by JON GAMBRELL · July 1, 2024

NEW YORK (AP) — Victims of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel sued Iran, Syria and North Korea on Monday, saying their governments supplied the militants with money, weapons and know-how needed to carry out the assault that precipitated Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in New York, seeks at least $4 billion in damages for “a coordination of extrajudicial killings, hostage takings, and related horrors for which the defendants provided material support and resources.”

Iran’s mission to the United Nations declined to comment on the allegations, while Syria and North Korea did not respond.

The United States has deemed Iran, Syria and North Korea to be state sponsors of terrorism, and Washington has designated Hamas as what’s known as a specially designated global terrorist.

Because such countries rarely abide by court rulings against them in the United States, if the lawsuit’s plaintiffs are successful, they could seek compensation from a fund created by Congress that allows American victims of terrorism to receive payouts. The money comes from seized assets, fines or other penalties leveled against those that, for example, do business with a state sponsor of terrorism.

The lawsuit draws on previous court findings, reports from U.S. and other government agencies, and statements over some years by Hamas, Iranian and Syrian officials about their ties. The complaint also points to indications that Hamas fighters used North Korean weapons in the Oct. 7 attack.

But the suit doesn’t provide specific evidence that Tehran, Damascus or Pyongyang knew in advance about the assault. It accuses the three countries of providing weapons, technology and financial support necessary for the attack to occur.

Iran has denied knowing about the Oct. 7 attack ahead of time, though officials up to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei have praised the assault.

Iran has armed Hamas as a counter to Israel, which the Islamic Republic has long viewed as its regional archenemy.

In the years since the collapse of Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, Iran and Israel have been locked in a shadow war of attacks on land and at sea. Those attacks exploded into the open after an apparent Israeli attack targeting Iran’s embassy complex in Damascus, Syria, during the Israel-Hamas war, which sparked Tehran’s unprecedented drone-and-missile attack on Israel in April.

Neighboring Syria has relied on Iranian support to keep embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad in power amid a grinding civil war that began with the 2011 Arab Spring protests. Like Iran, Syria also offered public support for Hamas after the Oct. 7 attack.

North Korea denies that it arms Hamas. However, a militant video and weapons seized by Israel show Hamas fighters likely fired North Korean weapons during the Oct. 7 attack

South Korean officials, two experts on North Korean arms and an Associated Press analysis of weapons captured on the battlefield by Israel point toward Hamas using Pyongyang’s F-7 rocket-propelled grenade, a shoulder-fired weapon that fighters typically use against armored vehicles.

The lawsuit specifically cites the use of the F-7 grenade in the attack as a sign of Pyongyang’s involvement.

“Through this case, we will be able to prove what occurred, who the victims were, who the perpetrators were — and it will not just create a record in real time, but for all of history,” said one of the attorneys, James Pasch of the ADL, also called the Anti-Defamation League. The Jewish advocacy group frequently speaks out against antisemitism and extremism.

Hamas fighters killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted about 250 during the Oct. 7 attack. Israel invaded Gaza in response. The war has killed more than 37,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. It doesn’t say how many were civilians or fighters.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of over 125 plaintiffs, including the estates and relatives of people who were killed, plus people who were physically and/or emotionally injured. All are related to, or are themselves, U.S. citizens.

Under U.S. law, foreign governments can be held liable, in some circumstances, for deaths or injuries caused by acts of terrorism or by providing material support or resources for them.

The 1976 statute cited in the lawsuit, the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, is a frequent tool for American plaintiffs seeking to hold foreign governments accountable. In one example, a federal judge in Washington ordered North Korea in 2018 to pay $500 million in a wrongful death suit filed by the parents of Otto Warmbier, an American college student who died shortly after being released from that country.

People held as prisoners by Iran in the past have successfully sued Iran in U.S. federal court, seeking money earlier frozen by the U.S.

The new lawsuit joins a growing list of Israel-Hamas war-related cases in U.S. courts.

Last week, for example, Israelis who were taken hostage or lost loved ones during Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack sued the United Nations agency that aids Palestinians, claiming it has helped finance the militants by paying agency staffers in U.S. dollars and thereby funneling them to money-changers in Gaza who allegedly give a cut to Hamas.

The agency, known as UNRWA, has denied that it knowingly aids Hamas or any other militant group.

___

Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. AP writers Courtney Bonnell and Eric Tucker in Washington contributed.

AP · by JON GAMBRELL · July 1, 2024

15. Wokeness Is Awful. Nationalism Is Far Worse.

Note the author is a libertarian.

This essay will be panned by both sides as both sides will disagree with some of the characterizations but these are general descriptions and not of individuals. Controversially I would argue most of us have some combination of what some would characterize as wokeist and nationalist views (respect for dignity of the individual and patriotic pride in America). But the professor makes some important points that should be discussed objectively by both sides and those in the middle. (I am not going to say there are fine people on...both...sides).

Excerpts:

The fight against wokeness should not be abandoned, especially in places where it enjoys great influence. Academics should do more to combat racial and ethnic preferences in higher education, for example, and reduce ideological discrimination in faculty hiring. Moreover, it should be noted that wokeists are not the only illiberal force on the left; “Democratic socialism” remains a noteworthy threat.

But despite such caveats, the threat of nationalism is on another level. No woke policy that has any plausible chance of enactment in the foreseeable future is likely to cause as much harm as the nationalist agenda. No plausible woke policy is likely to consign millions of people to a lifetime of poverty and oppression, or to massively damage the U.S. economy. And though they are certainly illiberal, wokeists are also comparatively unlikely to severely damage democratic institutions or keep in power a president who has lost an election anytime soon.

Conservatives and libertarians should oppose the excesses of the woke agenda. But doing so at the expense of countering the greater nationalist threat is a recipe for disaster.

Wokeness Is Awful. Nationalism Is Far Worse.

Conservatives and libertarians need to reassess their priorities.

thedispatch.com · by Ilya Somin · July 1, 2024

Many conservatives and libertarians today lament the rise of “wokeness,” even to the point of believing it to be the greatest political danger facing America. Some of these fears are well-taken.

But concerns about wokeness have distracted many on the center-right from a more serious danger, one far more likely to gain widespread support and cause great harm: nationalism. Terrible woke ideas should be criticized. However, their impact is limited by the smaller numbers of their proponents. Nationalists are far more numerous. And if nationalists acquire the power they seek, they would implement an agenda that does great harm to the lives, freedom, and well-being of millions of people.

Wokeness should neither be neglected nor treated as harmless. But when comparing the two, the nationalist threat should take priority. It’s long past time for right-leaning critics of both ideologies to treat nationalism for what it is: the greatest threat to liberal democratic institutions today.

“Nationalism” and “wokeness” are relatively vague terms with multiple meanings, so it’s important to define them from the outset.

Nationalists believe the main purpose of government is to protect the interests of a particular ethnic, racial, or cultural group, usually the majority group within the nation. They generally view foreigners with deep suspicion, support severe restrictions on immigration and international trade, and tend to back large welfare-state programs. Nationalism’s focus on ethnic and cultural particularity distinguishes it from other ideologies that promote patriotism on universalistic grounds, such as the idea that U.S. institutions deserve loyalty because they promote universal values of liberty and democracy.

“Wokeists” hold that the U.S. and other Western nations are deeply compromised by a history of injustice toward “historically marginalized groups.” When it comes to race, for example, they treat this “structural racism” as almost ineradicable. To combat these injustices, wokeists advocate for state-based racial and ethnic preferences, sometimes even including reparations. As wokeist icon Ibram X. Kendi puts it, “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.” Wokeists also push for extensive “antiracist” indoctrination and—in many cases—suppression of what they see as racist and bigoted speech.

For all their mutual hostility, right-wing nationalists and left-wing wokeists actually have much in common. Both groups treat racial and ethnic identity as fundamental and largely immutable. Both want the government to actively promote the interests of some ethnic or cultural groups relative to others. And most of all, both assume a zero-sum world where gains for one group can only come at the expense of others.

But though wokeists and nationalists engage in a similar identity politics, the latter are far more dangerous. Why? In large part, because an identity politics movement promoting the supposed interests of the ethnic majority has a much greater chance of political success in a democratic society than one focused on minority groups. The core potential political constituency for nationalism in the U.S. is white Christians, a group that constitutes a plurality of the population. Many secular whites are also a potential constituency, which is notable since nonreligious members of the ethnic majority have been an important base for nationalist movements in Europe. By contrast, the potential constituency for wokeism—racial minorities and left-wing intellectuals—is far smaller. While people like Elon Musk may fear the “woke mind virus,” many more are susceptible to the nationalist mind virus.

Moreover, most woke policies are highly unpopular. Racial preferences in education, for example, are opposed by over two-thirds of Americans, including most racial minorities. Among women, most oppose woke policies like allowing transgender women to participate in women’s sports or use women’s bathrooms. Wokeists also have a knack for antagonizing members of groups they seek to woo, like insisting on using the term “Latinx,” even though most Hispanics dislike it.

To be sure, woke ideology disproportionately appeals to the highly educated, which gives wokeists an edge in the media, academia, and various bureaucratic institutions. However, nationalists have enough highly educated personnel of their own to counter. TV networks like Fox News and “national conservative” think tanks like The Heritage Foundation (which is planning a wide-ranging nationalist agenda for Trump’s possible second term) provide nationalists with enough media influence and brainpower to get by. Wokeist influence over regulatory bureaucracies is counterbalanced by greater nationalist influence over law enforcement entities—the government agencies with the greatest power to arrest and detain people—and their potential to once again control the White House, which has great leverage over federal regulatory agencies.

History also shows nationalist movements are a menace to liberal political institutions. Whether in 1930s Germany or present-day Russia, nationalist movements have subverted liberal democracy and installed brutal dictatorships in its place. By contrast, not a single wokeist egalitarian movement has achieved such a result. Racial and ethnic minorities have sometimes managed to impose dictatorships over an ethnic majority (as in apartheid-era South Africa). But in those cases, the minority group relied on military and organizational superiority, not on something like a woke egalitarian ideology. There is no real chance of wokeists achieving such military superiority in the U.S. or any other Western nation.

Wokeists have recently suffered setbacks even where their influence is greatest. Nowhere is the power of wokeists greater than in universities, where they are heavily represented among administrators and faculty. Yet numerous leading universities have recently brought back mandatory use of standardized tests in admissions and dropped the use of DEI statements in faculty hiring, two measures long supported by wokeists. Perhaps most visibly, many schools called in law enforcement to crack down on pro-Hamas protesters who had established “encampments” or occupied buildings near end of the academic year. While schools should have taken these steps sooner, the fact so many did so at all is an indication of the limits of wokeist influence.

There is little doubt that nationalists have far greater political influence than wokeists. Nationalists have become the dominant faction of the Republican Party, with Donald Trump openly declaring himself a nationalist. By contrast, committed wokeists are just one of several groups contending for dominance among Democrats. The nationalists, therefore, have a greater chance of leading a political coalition and enacting a more expansive and harmful agenda.

Severe immigration restrictions are at the heart of it—and not just cutting illegal immigration, but the legal kind as well. In his first term, Trump cut the latter far more than the former, and he and his “national conservative” allies would do more in a second term. They plan to gut most types of legal migration, including family reunification, economic migrants, and refugees—such as Ukrainians fleeing Vladimir Putin’s war of aggression under the highly Uniting for Ukraine successful private sponsorship program—among others.

Nationalists usually paint these policies as beneficial for native-born Americans, ignoring evidence to the contrary. Immigration restrictions deprive Americans of numerous valuable economic and social interactions with migrants, undermining natives’ economic liberty more than any other government policy. Moreover, immigrants contribute disproportionately to entrepreneurship and scientific innovation that benefits everyone. Mass deportations supported by Trump and other nationalists predictably raise prices, severely damage the U.S. economy, and destroy more jobs for native-born Americans than they create. Immigration restrictions also threaten natives’ civil liberties, because thousands of U.S. citizens get swept up in the racial profiling, detention, and deportation that are unavoidable aspects of aggressive immigration enforcement. Nationalist restrictions on legal migration, would also predictably exacerbate disorder at the border, as desperate migrants would have no option other than illegal entry. By contrast, expanding legal options is the best way to reduce illegal entry.

There is also a deep moral problem at the heart of immigration restrictions. Libertarians and conservatives rightly oppose woke racial preferences in education and employment because they disadvantage people based on morally arbitrary circumstances of birth. Yet immigration restrictions are much the same: They bar people from living and working in the U.S. because of accidents of parentage and birth. Being born south of the Rio Grande River as opposed to north of it—like being born black instead of white—is a morally arbitrary circumstance outside of people’s control. It should not determine how much freedom and opportunity they have. As Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration analyst at the Cato Institute, has rightly characterized these immigration restrictions as a form of affirmative action for natives. And it’s a far more severe type of discrimination than woke racial preferences: Being consigned to a lifetime of poverty and oppression in Cuba or Venezuela is far worse than being rejected from an elite university for similar reasons.

The nationalist trade agenda is also enormously harmful. Trump promises to impose 10 percent tariffs on all imports, which would severely damage the U.S. economy, exacerbate inflation, and raise prices for a wide range of goods. The American Action Forum estimates that, after accounting for retaliation by trading partners, it would cost Americans some $123 billion per year. Such a trade war would weaken the U.S. credibility abroad and alienate our allies. China, Russia, and other U.S. adversaries would benefit. Additionally, nationalist legislators like Sens. J.D. Vance and Josh Hawley have portrayed industrial policy as a bulwark for the working class—yet they ignore how it rewards poorly performing firms and can be used to support the party in power and punish opponents. And of course, nationalist industrial planning shares many of the flaws of its socialist counterpart.

Nationalists’ fear of cultural change lead them to favor government control of the culture, as well as the economy. Thus, they try to impose speech restrictions on things like drag shows and DEI workplace trainings. Even those who are not fans such programs should be concerned about the threat to free speech.

Perhaps worst of all, the growth of nationalism poses a severe threat to democratic institutions. Historically, nationalist movements tend toward leader-worship and often degenerate into authoritarianism. The belief that they and they alone represent the true people—the “real Americans,” as opposed to minorities or “globalist” elites—often leads nationalists to reject the legitimacy of election results that go against them. Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election based on claims it was rigged against him—by a combination of illegal immigrants and nefarious elites, no less—was in part the product of his personal flaws and idiosyncrasies. But it was also part of a broader tendency of nationalist thinking. A second Trump administration, or a future president influenced by nationalist ideology, might well take more systematic steps to curb free electoral competition. By fiat alone, he could upend not only consequential policies like trade and immigration, but even democratic institutions themselves.

The fight against wokeness should not be abandoned, especially in places where it enjoys great influence. Academics should do more to combat racial and ethnic preferences in higher education, for example, and reduce ideological discrimination in faculty hiring. Moreover, it should be noted that wokeists are not the only illiberal force on the left; “Democratic socialism” remains a noteworthy threat.

But despite such caveats, the threat of nationalism is on another level. No woke policy that has any plausible chance of enactment in the foreseeable future is likely to cause as much harm as the nationalist agenda. No plausible woke policy is likely to consign millions of people to a lifetime of poverty and oppression, or to massively damage the U.S. economy. And though they are certainly illiberal, wokeists are also comparatively unlikely to severely damage democratic institutions or keep in power a president who has lost an election anytime soon.

Conservatives and libertarians should oppose the excesses of the woke agenda. But doing so at the expense of countering the greater nationalist threat is a recipe for disaster.

Ilya Somin

Ilya Somin is professor of law at George Mason University, B. Kenneth Simon chair in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute, and author of Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration and Political Freedom.

thedispatch.com · by Ilya Somin · July 1, 2024

16. ‘Real Portal to Hell’ – Ukrainian Paratroopers Repel Assault, Destroy Seven Russian Fighting Vehicles With Troops

‘Real Portal to Hell’ – Ukrainian Paratroopers Repel Assault, Destroy Seven Russian Fighting Vehicles With Troops

kyivpost.com · by Julia Struck · July 2, 2024

Ukrainian Ground Forces SSO War in Ukraine

Ukrainian forces halted a Russian offensive supported by tanks, armored vehicles, and assault groups in the Novomykhailivka sector of the Donetsk region.

by Julia Struck | July 2, 2024, 1:49 pm

Ukrainian paratroopers in Novomykhailivka (Donetsk region) repelled Russian assaults, destroying seven Russian BMP infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs)) along with their personnel, reported the 79th Separate Air Assault Brigade of the Tavriya Brigade via Telegram.

“The real portal to hell was opened by the occupiers in the Novomykhailivka district of Donetsk region, and they continue to enter it in whole columns,” the report said.

The footage shows the coordinated efforts of Ukrainian attack drone units and artillery. Kyiv Post was unable to independently verify the time and location of the video.

The Russians attempted another assault supported by tanks, armored vehicles, and assault groups. Ukrainian fighters countered the offensive by employing blocking minefields and anti-tank missile systems, halting the main armored forces and forcing the enemy to dismount.

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All Russian equipment that was immobilized was subsequently destroyed by drone operators, using both drops from attack UAVs and targeted hits from kamikaze FPVs.

The surviving Russian personnel attempted to hide in an abandoned building, but Ukrainian artillery quickly targeted the location.

“Some of the Russians proved surprisingly resilient, managing to hide in one of the houses. But Ukrainian aviation left the invaders no chance,” the report stated.

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Dutch F-16s to Show up in Ukraine “Soon,” Says Dutch Defense Minister

Dutch Defense Minister Kajsa Ollongren provided the update to the Dutch parliament but didn’t disclose delivery details, citing “operational security” concerns.

“Right on target!” the paratroopers added.

Earlier, aerial scouts from the 71st Separate Hunting Brigade of the Ukrainian Airborne Assault Forces reported the destruction of a large concentration of Russian troops using FPV drones. They also released footage showing the destruction of a Russian tank and an infantry fighting vehicle with FPV drones.

Additionally, Special Operations Forces (SSO) often report the elimination of enemy manpower concentrations with FPV drones. For instance, they recently eliminated over a dozen Russian soldiers during a successful mission.

The SSO has also destroyed various pieces of military equipment, including armored personnel carriers, tanks, anti-aircraft missile gun complexes, self-propelled artillery pieces, howitzers, mortar positions, and TOS-1A 220mm Solntsepyok MLRS fitted with thermobaric warheads.

Julia Struck

Julia Struck is a news writer and Kyiv Post correspondent who has previously worked as a parliamentary editor, journalist, and news editor. She has specialized in covering the work of Ukrainian parliament, government, and law enforcement agencies.

kyivpost.com · by Julia Struck · July 2, 2024

17. The Digital Battlefield: How Social Media is Reshaping Modern Insurgencies

Excerpts:

The digital revolution has transformed insurgency, turning social media platforms into weapons of war. As we navigate this new landscape, one thing is clear: the future of conflict will be shaped as much by clicks and code as by bullets and bombs. Adaptability, technological savvy, and ethical foresight will be our most valuable weapons in this digital arms race.

The insurgencies of tomorrow will be fought not just on the ground but in the vast, interconnected spaces of our digital world. They will leverage advanced technologies like AI and IoT, exploit the reach of social media, and adapt to new forms of connectivity like direct-to-device satellite networks. Countering these evolving threats will require a multifaceted approach that combines technological innovation, strategic communication, and a deep understanding of the digital ecosystem.

The line between physical and digital conflict will continue to blur as we move forward. The challenges we face are complex, but so are the opportunities for creating more effective, ethical, and responsive approaches to counterinsurgency. By recognizing the pivotal role of social media and emerging technologies in shaping modern insurgencies, we can better prepare for future conflicts and work towards more stable, secure societies in an increasingly connected world.

The Digital Battlefield: How Social Media is Reshaping Modern Insurgencies - Irregular Warfare Initiative

irregularwarfare.org · by Brandon Schingh · July 2, 2024

In the past two decades, the landscape of insurgency has undergone a profound transformation, driven by the rise of social media and increased global connectivity. This digital revolution isn’t just changing how insurgents communicate—it’s fundamentally reshaping the nature of insurgency itself. From the bustling streets of Mumbai to the war-torn landscapes of Syria and Ukraine, social platforms have become the new frontlines of modern conflict, reshaping recruitment strategies, operational tactics, and the very fabric of insurgent movements worldwide.

The Digital Battlefield: How Social Media is Reshaping Modern Insurgencies – Insider: Short of War

The Social Media Surge in Modern Conflict

The 2008 Mumbai attacks marked a pivotal moment in the use of social media in insurgencies. As gunfire echoed through the city, the world watched in real-time as Lashkar-e-Taiba militants used Twitter to coordinate their movements, evade security forces, and amplify their propaganda. This real-time use of social media allowed the attackers to respond dynamically to police actions and ensured worldwide visibility for their cause. It was a chilling preview of insurgents weaponizing digital platforms.

In the years since we’ve seen this digital arsenal expand and evolve. Today, groups like ISIS have turned social media into a global recruitment tool, their hashtags as potent as any propaganda poster. The 2014 #AllEyesOnISIS campaign exemplifies this power. It wasn’t just a trending topic—it was a call to arms that swelled their ranks from 12-15,000 to a staggering 40,000 fighters from over 110 countries. This surge isn’t just a military boost; it’s a testament to the raw power of social media in modern conflict.

These platforms offer insurgents a digital Swiss Army knife with multiple functions. They serve as a global recruitment tool, reaching potential fighters across borders and continents. Real-time communication allows for swift, adaptable tactics, turning every smartphone into a command center. As a propaganda machine, social media amplifies messages and ideologies, with every user potentially becoming a broadcaster. Perhaps most crucially, these platforms boost morale by instantly sharing successes, attracting support, and creating a global community among disparate groups.

The Syrian Civil War provides another stark example of social media’s impact. YouTube became a battleground of narratives, with rebel groups showcasing victories to rally support. The Free Syrian Army, an umbrella organization for various militant groups fighting against the Assad regime, launched its inaugural message on YouTube and other social media outlets. In 2013, a widely circulated video of rebels successfully taking control of the Menagh Air Base did more for morale than any rousing speech could have, demonstrating the immediate and far-reaching impact of digital content in modern insurgencies.

The Double-Edged Sword of Connectivity

The internet’s explosive growth—usage up by 1,355% between 2000 and 2023—has been a game-changer for insurgent movements. By 2007, 80% of the world had mobile coverage, creating unprecedented global connectivity. For insurgents, this means unparalleled reach and adaptability. ISIS, for instance, effectively leveraged platforms like Twitter and Telegram to disseminate tactical manuals, tutorials, and propaganda videos. These materials covered various topics, from bomb-making to cyber-attacks, and were easily accessible to recruits worldwide. Disturbingly, they also published the names of hundreds of U.S. military personnel on social media, inciting followers to target these individuals.

Telegram emerged as ISIS’s preferred platform due to its simple registration process, lax security protocols, and availability as an app for both mobile devices and computers. This allowed users to access an extensive library of ideological and spiritual content, operational tutorials, fundraising resources, and guidance on maintaining anonymity.

The Taliban’s use of WhatsApp during their 2021 takeover of Afghanistan further illustrates this trend. As their fighters entered Kabul, they established a WhatsApp helpline to receive reports of violence and looting, mixing modern tech with medieval ideology. Despite eventual bans from Facebook and YouTube, the Taliban continued to engage with hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter, even after consolidating their control.

However, this connectivity is a double-edged sword. The same tools that empower insurgents expose them to surveillance and counterintelligence efforts. An example is in 2005, Thai authorities introduced new identification standards for mobile phones, believing them to be a boon for separatist insurgents in southern Thailand. This move highlighted a global trend where governments recognized the potential of mobile communications for intelligence collection. The capacities of governments to tap into these communications vary, but the use of cell phones by potential activists generally enhances intelligence gathering opportunities for government forces. For instance, in Afghanistan, the expansion of cellular coverage significantly increased the ISAF’s ability to monitor communications. Today’s groups face similar challenges, constantly balancing reach against security. The digital footprint left by social media activity can be tracked, analyzed, and used against insurgent groups, forcing them to evolve their tactics and platform usage constantly.

The Counterinsurgency Conundrum

For governments and militaries, this new digital landscape presents a maze of challenges and opportunities. The enemy can now recruit, plan, and strike from behind a screen, fundamentally changing the nature of counterinsurgency efforts. The expansive reach of social media complicates these efforts in unprecedented ways.

Some governments are fighting fire with fire, launching social media campaigns to counter insurgent narratives. The Nigerian military, for instance, has taken to posting videos, images, or messages, in an attempt to restore public confidence, invoke sympathy from a neutral population, curbing online firestorms, and win the narrative war online.

But effective countermeasures go beyond just posting content—they require a deep understanding of the digital battlefield. Tools like Livemap, which shows concentrations of online engagement, offer a glimpse into potential hotspots of insurgent activity. These can be analyzed and assessed as potential indicators of where insurgent organizations may be prospecting off social media networks.

Political jamming—repurposing widely circulated memes to disseminate counter-terrorist ideologies—holds the potential to address online radicalization. However, its effectiveness is hindered by the rapid sharing of content across digital platforms.

As insurgencies become more connected, they’re not just linking people—they’re tapping into the Internet of Things (IoT). This trend suggests that future insurgent activities will involve more cyber-related actions, potentially including tapping into IoT networks and using digital weapons like Stuxnet to cause physical damage or disrupt command and control systems across different domains.

The AI Wild Card

As we peer into the future of insurgency, artificial intelligence emerges as a potential game-changer that could reshape the conflict landscape. The applications of AI in insurgency are as diverse as they are concerning.

AI-powered propaganda campaigns could be precisely targeted to exploit societal divisions, manipulate public opinion, amplify grievances, recruit supporters, and sow confusion among opposing forces. Sophisticated cyber warfare, driven by AI algorithms, could identify and exploit vulnerabilities in government systems faster than any human hacker, enabling insurgents to orchestrate large-scale data breaches or disrupt critical communications networks.

In strategic planning, AI could enable insurgents to analyze vast amounts of data to identify weak points in government defenses, predict security force movements, and plan asymmetric attacks with greater precision and efficiency. While ethically controversial, developing or acquiring AI-powered autonomous weapons systems—including drones, robotic weapons, or modified autonomous vehicles—could give small insurgent groups outsized military capabilities.

AI algorithms could also optimize insurgent operations in less visible ways. They could streamline fundraising efforts, manage illicit financial transactions, and optimize supply chains for weapons and resources, enabling insurgencies to operate more efficiently and clandestinely. Additionally, AI-driven surveillance systems could help insurgents monitor government forces, track individuals considered threats, and gather intelligence on potential targets or vulnerabilities.

These advancements in AI technology present a new frontier in the evolution of insurgency, one where the lines between physical and digital warfare become increasingly blurred. The potential for AI to level the playing field between state actors and insurgent groups adds a new dimension of complexity to future conflicts.

Navigating the New Normal

In a world where a tweet can be as powerful as a tank, adaptation is crucial for insurgents and counterinsurgents. The battle for hearts and minds is now largely fought online, and strategies must evolve to include robust digital components. This goes beyond censorship or network shutdowns—it’s about engaging effectively and ethically in the digital space.

Preparedness for the unexpected is key. As technology evolves, so will the tactics of insurgents. The next significant threat might not come from a bomb but from a bot. The rise of direct-to-device satellite networks, like those offered by companies such as Viasat, potentially complicates law enforcement efforts by ensuring remote connectivity through secure satellite connections directly to a user’s cell phone. These networks possess the capability to bypass traditional infrastructure, making them harder to intercept and monitor.

Education plays a crucial role, not just for those fighting insurgencies but for the general public. In an age where online radicalization can target anyone, digital literacy becomes a matter of national security. Understanding the mechanisms of online propaganda and the potential for manipulation through social media is essential for building resilience against insurgent narratives.

We must also grapple with the ethical implications of these new technologies. The balance between security and privacy and the challenge of countering extremist narratives without infringing on free speech require thoughtful consideration. As governments and tech companies work to moderate content and prevent the spread of extremist ideologies, they must navigate thorny questions about censorship, surveillance, and the limits of online freedom.

Conclusion

The digital revolution has transformed insurgency, turning social media platforms into weapons of war. As we navigate this new landscape, one thing is clear: the future of conflict will be shaped as much by clicks and code as by bullets and bombs. Adaptability, technological savvy, and ethical foresight will be our most valuable weapons in this digital arms race.

The insurgencies of tomorrow will be fought not just on the ground but in the vast, interconnected spaces of our digital world. They will leverage advanced technologies like AI and IoT, exploit the reach of social media, and adapt to new forms of connectivity like direct-to-device satellite networks. Countering these evolving threats will require a multifaceted approach that combines technological innovation, strategic communication, and a deep understanding of the digital ecosystem.

The line between physical and digital conflict will continue to blur as we move forward. The challenges we face are complex, but so are the opportunities for creating more effective, ethical, and responsive approaches to counterinsurgency. By recognizing the pivotal role of social media and emerging technologies in shaping modern insurgencies, we can better prepare for future conflicts and work towards more stable, secure societies in an increasingly connected world.

Brandon Schingh holds master’s degrees from Boston University and Arizona State University, where he focused on unconventional warfare in the Global Security program. His career spans military, law enforcement, and intelligence sectors. Schingh served as a noncommissioned officer in the US Army Airborne Infantry. He later worked as a Federal Air Marshal and as a CIA security contractor.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Irregular Warfare Initiative, Princeton University’s Empirical Studies of Conflict Project, the Modern War Institute at West Point, or the United States Government.

Main Image: Generated by DALL-E, OpenAI

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18.  The Looming Crisis in the Taiwan Strait

Why doesn't China have a responsibility to lower the tension? Who is creating the tension? Why is it always the US that must act?  

Excerpts:

Deterrence necessitates more than military steps and warnings. It also requires active diplomacy. In private conversations with Chinese officials, the Biden administration should acknowledge that the tone and content of Lai’s inaugural speech was a departure from those of his predecessors. Administration officials should emphasize, however, that this rhetoric must be distinguished from actions and that there is no evidence that Lai plans to implement destabilizing measures. In return, China must recognize that its efforts to shore up its own redlines—through escalating military, diplomatic, and economic pressure on Taiwan—have contributed to the spike in cross-strait tensions. If Beijing continues to increase the pressure, it could create a downward spiral in cross-strait relations and raise the risk of an accidental confrontation or conflict. Washington should make clear to Beijing that increased Chinese escalation against Taiwan is likely to bring about an increased U.S. commitment and resolve to defend the island—precisely the outcome that China does not want to see.

Washington should encourage Lai to prioritize the strengthening of Taiwan’s defense and resilience above all else. The United States should also caution Taipei against engaging in activities that China could use as a pretext to escalate aggression against the island. Beijing creates and is looking for pretexts, and Taipei must take care to ensure that it does not take actions that will divide international opinion against it. U.S. officials should support Lai in strengthening Taiwan’s relations with other democratic countries, making clear to Taipei that sustaining and expanding global support for Taiwan will be possible only if Lai follows a cross-strait policy that is viewed as pragmatic by the international community.

The United States must also more actively encourage the resumption of dialogue between Beijing and Taipei, highlighting to officials in both capitals the risks that come from a lack of direct communication. In particular, Washington should urge the establishment of reliable backchannel communications between Beijing and Taipei, which are essential to clarifying intentions and preventing miscalculation. Washington should also encourage those on both sides of the strait to allow their scholars to meet in neutral places. This will, at a minimum, help both sides to understand the other’s threat perceptions. Deterrence, dialogue, and avoiding unilateral changes to the status quo are key to managing the situation in the Taiwan Strait. The United States must encourage efforts to achieve them, to ensure that conflict does not break out.

The Looming Crisis in the Taiwan Strait

How Washington Can Lower the Tension Between Taipei and Beijing

By Bonnie S. Glaser and Bonny Lin

July 2, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by Bonnie S. Glaser and Bonny Lin · July 2, 2024

Since 1996, all of Taiwan’s elected presidents have at some point during their time in office declared that theirs is a sovereign, independent state. The new president of Taiwan, Lai Ching-te, who was elected in January and inaugurated in May, is the first to make that declaration at the beginning of his term. The chair of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and a self-described pragmatic worker for Taiwan independence, Lai delivered an inaugural speech that made clear that Taiwan is a de facto sovereign and independent country that is neither a part of nor subordinate to China. At the same time, however, Lai pledged not to provoke China or change the cross-Strait status quo.

Lai’s preference for clarity over ambiguity is rooted in his belief that China’s growing military, political and economic pressure on Taiwan—as well as the people of Taiwan’s increasingly negative views of China—requires a firmer approach. His predecessor, former President Tsai Ing-wen, worked to strengthen Taiwan’s defenses while adopting conciliatory measures and providing assurances to Beijing. But this approach was not reciprocated by Beijing. Instead, China tore up all prior tacit restrictions on the operation of People’s Liberation Army forces around Taiwan. Beijing now conducts military exercises close to Taiwan and on the east side of the island and claims that the strait is its internal waters. This frustrates Lai and likely encouraged him to take a firmer and bolder stance.

Lai’s speech, Beijing believed, required a harsh response. Chinese state media lashed out at him, and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi condemned him as a “traitor.” The Chinese military launched a large-scale two-day exercise that U.S. Indo-Pacific Commander Samuel Paparo said resembled a rehearsal for an invasion. Since then, Beijing has made plain its growing disdain for Lai, and the prospect of establishing a quiet backchannel between Lai and Beijing has dimmed along with the possibility of increasing cross-strait tourism and student and academic exchanges. This lack of communication and dwindling interactions between the two sides increases the risk of misunderstanding and the hardening of positions. It also makes more difficult the United States’ task of managing relations between Beijing and Taipei. To reduce tensions, the United States must encourage Taiwan to strengthen its ability to deter an invasion and, at the same time, to increase its diplomatic contacts with Beijing.

STRAIT TALKING

The Chinese Communist Party studies the inaugural speeches of Taiwan’s presidents to assess how they view the relationship between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait. The only acceptable position, as far as Beijing is concerned, is that Taiwan and China are part of the same country. But such a position is unlikely to be advanced by any future DPP president, and possibly not by candidates from Taiwan’s opposition parties. This is because of the state of public opinion in Taiwan, which is increasingly negative toward China and strongly opposes Beijing’s pressure campaign to isolate the island and its people. For its part, China has taken an uncompromising approach, unwilling to find a modus vivendi with successive presidents of Taiwan. Despite Tsai’s efforts to use conciliatory language in her 2016 inaugural address, Beijing dismissed her speech as an “incomplete exam paper,” because it was ambiguous on the question of Taiwan’s status and did not explicitly affirm that the two sides of the strait belong to the same country.

Eight years later, Lai rejected his predecessor’s mollifying language in his inaugural speech. First, he avoided using the words “mainland” and “Beijing authorities,” opting instead for “China” and the “People’s Republic of China,” terminology that indicates that the two sides of the strait are separate entities. Lai also did not cite the 1992 Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area as an essential part of his approach to handling cross-strait affairs. The act recognizes that the “Taiwan Area” and the “Mainland Area” are both part of Taiwan and regulates how the two sides should conduct exchanges “before national unification.” That there was no mention of the act—which was featured in Tsai’s inaugural speeches in 2016 and 2020—underscored Lai’s message that China and Taiwan are two different countries. Tsai also made references to the Constitution of the Republic of China—Taiwan’s official title—in her inaugural speeches, which were intended to reassure Beijing that she would not seek to make changes to Taiwan’s territory. Lai’s mention of the constitution, however, was interpreted in Beijing as intended to underscore that Taiwan and China are separate, each with their own sovereignty.

Lai also stated that he would uphold Tsai’s “Four Commitments,” which she issued in her National Day speech in October 2021. These are to maintain a free and democratic constitutional system, to cultivate a relationship between Taiwan and Beijing in which neither is subordinate to the other, to resist annexation or encroachment on Taiwan’s sovereignty, and to see Taiwan’s future decided in accordance with the will of the people of Taiwan. The second commitment, that China and Taiwan should not be subordinate to each other, particularly irked Beijing. At the time, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office labeled this commitment a “new two states theory.” Tsai, the TAO continued, had gone even further than Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui, who, in 1999, openly defined relations between Taiwan and China as “special state-to-state relations”—a notion that Beijing believed was an attempt to pursue independence. Then Chinese Defense Minister Chi Haotian warned that the military was ready to “smash any attempts to separate the country.”

There was much else that Beijing viewed as inflammatory. Lai listed various names used to describe his people’s “land,” including the Republic of China, the Republic of China Taiwan, and Taiwan, although he made clear that he personally prefers Taiwan. A spokesperson in Beijing criticized Lai’s use of these names for implying that Taiwan is a separate country rather than a part of China. Lai also marked the 400th anniversary of the Dutch invasion of Tainan, a city in southern Taiwan, as a positive moment that “marked Taiwan’s links to globalization.” This description was interpreted by Chinese scholars as an attempt to distinguish Taiwan’s history from China’s and emphasize the difference between the two.

Lack of communication and dwindling interactions between Taiwan and Beijing increases the risk of misunderstanding.

Beijing used strong language to condemn Lai and his vision for Taiwan. One well-connected Chinese scholar privately stated that Lai had torn up “the exam paper, flipped over the desk, and disrupted order in the exam room.” Chinese officials and scholars were already deeply skeptical of Lai’s promises during the campaign, which he repeated in his inaugural speech, that he will maintain the cross-strait status quo and not provoke Beijing. Accordingly, Lai’s offers to restart tourism between the two sides on a reciprocal basis and enroll Chinese degree students in Taiwan’s universities were viewed by Beijing as being made in bad faith.

Three days after Lai’s inauguration, Beijing launched a large-scale military exercise along with coordinated Chinese coast guard operations against Taiwan. A Chinese military spokesperson declared that these actions were intended to “punish” Taiwan for “separatist acts of ‘Taiwan independence’” and to provide a “stern warning against the interference and provocation of external forces.” Over two days, Chinese forces engaged in air and maritime operations encircling Taiwan and some of its outlying islands. This drill allowed the Chinese military and coast guard to experiment and rehearse coordinated operations. Chinese media showed computer-generated footage of Chinese missile strikes against Taiwan, and the Chinese coast guard using water cannons and inspecting a vessel headed to Taiwan. Beijing’s leaders undoubtedly prepared a range of options in the run-up to Lai’s inaugural speech, including military demonstrations of varying scale. The exercise that they conducted was likely on the more escalatory end of the spectrum and was meant to signal China’s strong displeasure with Lai’s remarks.

China’s military activities are likely to be only the beginning of a military, diplomatic, and economic pressure campaign against Lai and his administration. Beijing has warned that more military exercises will follow “each time ‘Taiwan independence’ separatists make waves.” China has also brought its economic might to bear to deny the entry into its markets of shipments of macadamia nuts and coffee from Guatemala, which is one of Taiwan’s 12 remaining diplomatic partners. Then, at the end of May, China announced the reinstatement of tariffs on 134 Taiwanese items that were formerly exempt under the Cross-Strait Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement, which both sides signed in 2010 to reduce barriers and promote trade. In late June, Beijing released new guidelines that specified that the death penalty could be considered for the most severe crimes committed by the ringleaders of pro-Taiwanese independence activities. Beijing is also working to build stronger ties to the Kuomintang and the Taiwan People’s Party, which are the main opposition parties and would control a majority of seats within the parliament should they choose to work together. All these efforts demonstrate China’s intention to intervene in Taiwan’s domestic politics and undermine Lai’s ability to govern.

Lai’s administration has responded by toughening its position. In mid-June, in a speech to military cadets, Lai called out China for “destroying the status quo across the Taiwan Strait and viewing the annexation of Taiwan and elimination of the Republic of China as its national cause.” China’s Ministry of National Defense, unsurprisingly, condemned Lai and vowed new “countermeasures” to push back against such “pro-independence, anti-secessionist provocations.” At the end of the month, Taipei raised its travel warning for China to orange, the second highest alert, advising Taiwan citizens to avoid unnecessary travel to China.

STUCK IN THE MIDDLE

Beijing’s escalation after Lai’s speech has complicated the United States’ ability to preserve peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait. China believes that Lai has raised the stakes, and unless Washington signals that it understands Beijing’s concerns, China’s suspicions that the United States in fact supports and is emboldening Taiwanese independence will deepen. Accordingly, Beijing is pressing Washington to curb its military and diplomatic support for Taipei’s new government and restrain Lai from taking destabilizing actions. Yet at the same time, China is increasing its paramilitary and military pressure against Taiwan, expanding Chinese coast guard patrols around the Kinmen and Matsu Islands, which are under Taiwan’s control. The combination of Chinese aggression and strong bipartisan support in the United States for Taiwan mean the Biden administration is unlikely to curb its support for Taiwan.

Taiwan wants the United States to step up its efforts to counter Chinese aggression and coercion, including Beijing’s attempts to normalize large-scale and intrusive military and coast guard activities against it. But the Biden administration has not done so and remains largely focused on preventing an invasion of Taiwan. This is partly because the United States cannot take responsibility for dealing with the daily provocations that any U.S. ally or partner faces from China. If it assumed that role for Taiwan, then Japan and the Philippines, which face regular Chinese intrusions into disputed areas of the East China and South China Seas, might expect the same.

If cross-strait tensions continue to worsen, Beijing could decide that it needs to adopt a more aggressive approach toward both Taipei and Washington. This could include China becoming more coercive across the board to restrain Lai because it cannot count on the United States to do so. Beijing may also take steps to inflict greater pain on Washington for what it views as increasingly strong and overt U.S. support for “Taiwan independence.” This could involve suspending U.S.-Chinese military-to-military exchanges and other dialogues with U.S. officials on subjects of importance to Washington, such as stemming the flow of fentanyl into the United States.

China will need to weigh the costs and benefits of such escalation with its desire to focus on addressing its substantial domestic problems. Lashing out at Taiwan or engaging in more destabilizing behavior could invite global pushback and further increase anti-Chinese sentiment in the United States during a critical election year. So far, Beijing appears to be signaling that it does not want a confrontation in the Taiwan Strait. How long that posture will last, however, is uncertain. The United States will have to pay close attention to cross-strait dynamics and manage them proactively to prevent rising tensions that could lead to a crisis or conflict.

A DANGEROUS GAME

The Biden administration congratulated Lai on his inauguration but did not comment on his speech. U.S. officials, however, denounced China’s military exercise. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin called it “provocative” and urged China not to use Taiwan’s “normal, routine, democratic process” as an excuse for coercion against the island. At a meeting with Chinese Executive Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Ma Zhaoxu in June, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell voiced concern over China’s “destabilizing actions” around Taiwan. That same month, in bilateral meetings with Chinese Defense Minister Dong Jun in Singapore, U.S. allies including Australia echoed concerns about Beijing’s military activities.

In June, the Biden administration signaled its support for Taiwan by notifying Congress of two arms sale packages: one with $300 million worth of parts and equipment to support Taiwan’s F-16s and another worth $360 million that includes over a thousand small armed drones. In an interview with Time magazine, U.S. President Joe Biden warned Beijing that “if China unilaterally tried to change the status [quo],” the United States might defend Taiwan. This statement was, however, more careful than the president’s prior unequivocal assertions that the United States would come to Taiwan’s defense if it were attacked by China. Biden reiterated in the Time interview that the United States is “not seeking independence for Taiwan.”

The United States must go further and take more proactive measures to maintain peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait. Militarily, this will require continuing efforts to build Taiwan’s capabilities to fend off an invasion or blockade. But the United States should also help Taiwan establish a robust civil defense program and create strategic reserves of food and energy to bolster deterrence and, if China invades, enable Taiwan to hold out until U.S. forces arrive. Washington should also warn Beijing against making incursions with military aircraft, drones, navy ships, or coast guard vessels in the airspace and seaspace in the 24-nautical mile contiguous zone around Taiwan, and against operating the coast guard in the restricted and prohibited waters around Taiwan’s outlying islands. These warnings need to be accompanied by efforts to impose costs on China should Beijing decide to disregard them.

The United States cannot take responsibility for dealing with the daily provocations that any U.S. ally or partner faces from China.

Deterrence necessitates more than military steps and warnings. It also requires active diplomacy. In private conversations with Chinese officials, the Biden administration should acknowledge that the tone and content of Lai’s inaugural speech was a departure from those of his predecessors. Administration officials should emphasize, however, that this rhetoric must be distinguished from actions and that there is no evidence that Lai plans to implement destabilizing measures. In return, China must recognize that its efforts to shore up its own redlines—through escalating military, diplomatic, and economic pressure on Taiwan—have contributed to the spike in cross-strait tensions. If Beijing continues to increase the pressure, it could create a downward spiral in cross-strait relations and raise the risk of an accidental confrontation or conflict. Washington should make clear to Beijing that increased Chinese escalation against Taiwan is likely to bring about an increased U.S. commitment and resolve to defend the island—precisely the outcome that China does not want to see.

Washington should encourage Lai to prioritize the strengthening of Taiwan’s defense and resilience above all else. The United States should also caution Taipei against engaging in activities that China could use as a pretext to escalate aggression against the island. Beijing creates and is looking for pretexts, and Taipei must take care to ensure that it does not take actions that will divide international opinion against it. U.S. officials should support Lai in strengthening Taiwan’s relations with other democratic countries, making clear to Taipei that sustaining and expanding global support for Taiwan will be possible only if Lai follows a cross-strait policy that is viewed as pragmatic by the international community.

The United States must also more actively encourage the resumption of dialogue between Beijing and Taipei, highlighting to officials in both capitals the risks that come from a lack of direct communication. In particular, Washington should urge the establishment of reliable backchannel communications between Beijing and Taipei, which are essential to clarifying intentions and preventing miscalculation. Washington should also encourage those on both sides of the strait to allow their scholars to meet in neutral places. This will, at a minimum, help both sides to understand the other’s threat perceptions. Deterrence, dialogue, and avoiding unilateral changes to the status quo are key to managing the situation in the Taiwan Strait. The United States must encourage efforts to achieve them, to ensure that conflict does not break out.

• BONNIE GLASER is Managing Director of the Indo-Pacific Program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
• BONNY LIN is Senior Fellow for Asian Security and Director of the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Foreign Affairs · by Bonnie S. Glaser and Bonny Lin · July 2, 2024

19. America Is Still Not Ready for the Next Outbreak

Talking about regaining the public trust - if we can do it with Public health can we then apply it to the Supreme Court and Congress nad other government institutions?

Excerpts:

The benefits of a high-reliability approach would be myriad. Regaining the trust of the American people hinges on excellence. Embracing this approach could also restore the confidence of those hesitant to increase the CDC’s funding and authority because of doubts about the agency’s performance. And high reliability could facilitate outbreak responses that are faster, more effective, and less disruptive to the people affected.

Public health is not a patient the United States can afford to lose.

Longtime public health practitioners will note that the laws and regulatory infrastructure differ greatly between public health and commercial aviation. Public health is primarily governed at the state and local levels, whereas aviation is federally regulated. Moreover, public health depends on the behaviors and choices of the public, which is diverse and autonomous; aviation safety, in contrast, relies only on professionals such as pilots and air traffic controllers. These differences are substantial, but they do not override the enormous benefits that could be gained from a new approach.

Like aviation, surgery also underwent a transformation in recent decades with the introduction of checklists, standard operating procedures to prevent errors and complications, and other principles of high reliability. In an operating room, for example, anyone can call a time-out. From the attending physician wielding the scalpel to the circulating nurse handling the documentation, every member of the team has not just the permission but also the obligation to halt proceedings if they think something is amiss.

During the pause, the surgical team confirms the basics of the task at hand: Is it the right procedure, on the right body part, for the right patient? Does anyone on the team have concerns that must be addressed? What more needs to happen to ensure the best outcome?

Epidemiology has no equivalent of a time-out. But it needs a pause right now so that officials can learn from the experience of the past five years. Public health is not a patient the United States can afford to lose.

America Is Still Not Ready for the Next Outbreak

How to Restore Trust in Public-Health Institutions

By Caitlin Rivers

July 2, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by Crisis Averted. · July 2, 2024

With the acute phase of the COVID-19 pandemic barely in the rearview mirror, already a new round of public health threats is facing doctors and epidemiologists. In March, the U.S. Department of Agriculture confirmed that avian influenza A, also known H5N1 and bird flu, had made the leap from wild birds to dairy cattle. The virus has been detected in at least 129 herds across 12 states. Inactivated virus has been found in some 20 percent of commercial milk samples, suggesting that even more herds may be affected. A survey of wastewater data hints at the same conclusion. Already, three dairy workers, two in Michigan and one in Texas, have been confirmed as infected. Thankfully, unlike in previous outbreaks— when approximately half the people infected with H5N1 died—these workers’ illnesses were mild.

At the same time, a new outbreak of mpox is alarming epidemiologists in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Although the 2022 outbreak in the United States was primarily spread through the sexual networks of gay men, the current outbreak in the DRC seems to be spreading through contact between household members and between heterosexual partners. This is especially concerning because the strain of the virus involved is more deadly than the one that fueled the 2022 outbreak, with an estimated case fatality risk of five to ten percent.

Although neither of these events is dangerous to the American public right now, the future remains opaque. Making matters worse, the United States’ ability to mount an effective response has gotten worse, not better: despite the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic, the country is less equipped to respond to public health challenges than it was five years ago. One of the main problems is the way in which public trust in health authorities plummeted during the pandemic. To regain the trust of the American people, it is time for epidemiology to borrow best practices from other fields where failure is not an option, such as commercial aviation. When there is a disaster onboard a U.S. civilian aircraft, the National Transportation Safety Board immediately investigates and issues recommendations to avoid the same scenario from ever happening again. Through this process, the public maintains its belief that it is safe to fly. Americans need to trust that public health measures are also there to protect them and that failure will not be tolerated.

THE DEMONIZATION OF PUBLIC HEALTH

A poll conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation found a nearly ten-point drop between December 2020 and April 2022 in the percentage of Americans who say they trust the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Another poll, this one conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2022, found that 46 percent of Americans thought public health officials were unprepared for the COVID-19 outbreak, and 32 percent said that officials were too slow to respond to changes during the outbreak. This state of affairs will make it more difficult to enlist members of the public to do their part in managing the next threat—a scenario that is already evident in the demonization of Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and the growing antivaccine sentiment among some Americans.

And it is not just trust that is deteriorating. The legal infrastructure and resourcing that makes outbreak response possible is eroding. The U.S. Congress, for its part, has been reluctant to support some important public health measures. The CDC has not been granted the authority to require state and local jurisdictions to report outbreak data, and Congress has not renewed legislation that requires the reporting of hospital admissions for COVID-19. Even amid the unfolding outbreak of H5N1, there is legislation on the House floor that would legalize the sale of raw milk, which is known to carry H5N1 virus as well as a host of other diseases. This attempt to loosen restrictions during the midst of an outbreak underscores how some policymakers are failing to take the threat of epidemics seriously.

Support for funding, too, has been thin. The CDC’s funding for public health preparedness and response has been waning for years; the inflation-adjusted budget shrank by 20 percent between 2003 to 2023. This money supports not just federal public health but also public health activities at the state and local levels. As a result, budget constraints are felt in communities, not just in Atlanta, where the CDC is headquartered.

Moreover, substantial funding that was created during the pandemic response has been rescinded. Genomic epidemiology, for example, was awarded $1.75 billion in the American Rescue Plan (ARP). That money was used to track variants of SARS-CoV-2, elevating the United States to the top contributor of genomic sequences in the world. But there is not a plan to sustain this capability once ARP funds are exhausted. And some of the public health funding provided during the COVID emergency was clawed back during the debt ceiling negotiations, to be reallocated by Congress for other purposes.

A new outbreak of mpox is alarming epidemiologists in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

In 2021, I helped establish the CDC’s Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics to help predict and track the course of infectious disease outbreaks. (The center funds work to translate outbreak modeling into public health practice at the Center for Outbreak Response Innovation, where I am director.) Already, CFA anticipated the 2022 Omicron wave and helped guide the mpox response. Now, however, anemic funding has put the center’s mission at risk. Although $55 million was appropriated in the fiscal year 2024 budget, those dollars had to be split with other work at the CDC that allows state and local public health departments to report data on infectious diseases. This puts the center short of the $100 million operating budget that would allow it to grow into an organization that could do for infectious diseases what the National Weather Service does for dangerous storms.

At the state level, the situation is even more precarious. Many state legislatures have stripped legal authorities from their public health departments. For example, according to the Network for Public Health Law, North Dakota no longer allows state health officials to require face masks, even if someone is infected with a deadly disease. Montana no longer allows health officials to mandate quarantines. And Arizona now prohibits hospitals and other employers from requiring vaccination against infectious diseases like influenza and COVID-19.

Perhaps most concerning of all is a palpable lack of urgency and purpose at all levels of government. The H5N1 outbreak began in wild birds in 2020 in Europe and reached North America in 2021. Years have passed in which public health officials could have been preparing to mount a robust response, and yet there is little evidence that such preparations had begun until just recently. For example, the CDC has not updated since 2017 the documents meant to serve as the country’s blueprint for responding to a flu pandemic, and so the plans reflect none of the lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic. And officials seem to be doing little to understand and prepare for a scenario where the strain of mpox affecting people in the DRC comes to the United States.

Not all outbreak preparedness and response activities are public. Authorities are likely doing more behind closed doors than is readily evident. But that, too, is reason for pause. Americans and people in the rest of the world rightly demanded transparency during the pandemic, when early reports from China and then Italy foreshadowed the fate that New York City and, later, the rest of the United States suffered. Later, genomic surveillance data reported by other countries was pivotal to identifying and anticipating new variants and their impacts. Public health should continue to facilitate more transparency, not less, in the face of emerging threats.

A NO-FAIL MISSION

There are some simple, if not easy, fixes to these woes. Public health needs durable, flexible government appropriations that can ensure that any response to a public health emergency is funded quickly and generously. There is also a clear need to expand the authority of public health officials in certain areas: for example, Congress ought to allow the CDC to compel and direct data reporting during public health emergencies.

But the bigger problem for public health officials is figuring out how to regain the trust and respect of elected representatives and the U.S. public. In his book The Checklist Manifesto, the surgeon and writer Atul Gawande details the airline industry’s use of checklists to prevent deadly flight errors. Gawande tells the story of a critical incident that nearly led to a disaster involving a Boeing 777 plane carrying 152 passengers. At the end of an uneventful trip from Beijing to London by way of the North Pole, the plane mysteriously lost power to both engines. The pilots were forced to make an emergency crash landing at London’s Heathrow airport. Forty-seven people were injured, one seriously.

Immediately following the incident, the Air Accidents Investigation Branch, the institution charged with aviation safety in the United Kingdom, deployed a team of professional investigators to identify what caused the loss of engine power. The team worked for two years, pouring over the aircraft’s components, the electrical system, the fuel lines. At every turn, they came up empty. No signs of damage or malfunction could be found.

Finally, after every plausible cause had been ruled out, the investigators arrived at a seemingly fantastical hypothesis. Perhaps during the polar segment of the flight, the conduit that fed fuel to the engine developed ice crystals. Then, when temperatures rose as the plane descended, the slushy mixture dislodged into the engine and interrupted its workings.

The U.S. Congress has been reluctant to support some important public health measures.

Thousands of flights cross the North Pole each week, and none had ever experienced such a problem. Still, in the aviation industry, the acceptable number of safety incidents is zero. So safety experts set about devising a protocol in the form of a checklist that could keep ice crystals from disrupting the engines, should it ever happen again. The checklist was added to the procedure book that every flight team uses while on a Boeing 777, anywhere in the world.

Ten years later, disaster struck again. A flight team piloting a jet from Shanghai to Atlanta lost power to both engines during its descent after a trip over the North Pole. They pulled out their protocol book, located the checklist devised after the Boeing incident, followed the recommended procedure, and restored power to the engines. The passengers aboard never knew anything was amiss. They did not need to. Everything was under control.

Gawande used this story to illustrate the power of checklists to help even experienced experts to execute complex protocols without relying on the frailties of human memory. But the story reveals something else as well. Outbreak response, like aviation safety, must be a no-fail mission. Just as planes cannot be allowed to fall out of the sky, disease outbreaks cannot grow unchecked. Every avoidable error should be investigated and accounted for.

But what the aviation industry has, epidemiology does not: a process by which to improve. After the Boeing accident, professional investigators worked relentlessly to diagnose the problem, and then a permanent fix was disseminated and universally adopted by all crews on Boeing aircraft. In outbreak epidemiology, there are no similar mechanisms. At best, the epidemiologists involved conduct their own after-action review, the results of which inevitably languish on a shelf. In the worst (and most common) case, there are no opportunities for learning or reflection after outbreaks at all.

The results speak for themselves. In 2020, across nearly 4.4 million flights totaling 8.3 million flight hours, there were zero aviation fatalities in the United States. In fact, there have been no aviation fatalities in seven of the last ten years. In contrast, more than a million Americans have died from COVID-19, leaving the United States with a higher death toll than that of any other country. Mpox, a disease for which the United States stockpiles vaccines, tests, and therapeutics, has infected over 32,000 people domestically. H5N1 is disrupting the dairy and poultry industries, and epidemiologists fear it may someday adapt to humans. Although these outbreaks likely could not have been prevented entirely, they should never have been allowed to grow so large.

THE SURGICAL PAUSE

Epidemiologists should commit to a plan of action to transform outbreak response from an ad hoc, reactionary enterprise to one more akin to fields such as aviation, where the tolerance for accident and error is zero, and where there are reliable processes in place to drive continual improvements. This concept, known to systems engineers as “high reliability operations,” should guide the changes epidemiology needs to make in the months, years, and decades ahead.

High-reliability industries such as aviation, aircraft carrier operations, and surgery are generally organized around at least one organization that identifies and disseminates best practices, provides trainings, and has an oversight or independent investigation function. The National Transportation Safety Board, for example, is an independent government agency tasked with investigating transportation accidents. The board does not have an any regulatory or implementation authorities but simply makes recommendations based on its findings. The Marine Spill Response Corporation, founded in 1990 after the oil tanker Exxon Valdez dumped 11 million gallons of oil into Alaska’s Prince William Sound, is a nonprofit organization that was established to meet congressional requirements around high reliability in the oil and gas industry. These examples, and others that are similar, could be models for an organization that could drive epidemiology’s transformation.

The benefits of a high-reliability approach would be myriad. Regaining the trust of the American people hinges on excellence. Embracing this approach could also restore the confidence of those hesitant to increase the CDC’s funding and authority because of doubts about the agency’s performance. And high reliability could facilitate outbreak responses that are faster, more effective, and less disruptive to the people affected.

Public health is not a patient the United States can afford to lose.

Longtime public health practitioners will note that the laws and regulatory infrastructure differ greatly between public health and commercial aviation. Public health is primarily governed at the state and local levels, whereas aviation is federally regulated. Moreover, public health depends on the behaviors and choices of the public, which is diverse and autonomous; aviation safety, in contrast, relies only on professionals such as pilots and air traffic controllers. These differences are substantial, but they do not override the enormous benefits that could be gained from a new approach.

Like aviation, surgery also underwent a transformation in recent decades with the introduction of checklists, standard operating procedures to prevent errors and complications, and other principles of high reliability. In an operating room, for example, anyone can call a time-out. From the attending physician wielding the scalpel to the circulating nurse handling the documentation, every member of the team has not just the permission but also the obligation to halt proceedings if they think something is amiss.

During the pause, the surgical team confirms the basics of the task at hand: Is it the right procedure, on the right body part, for the right patient? Does anyone on the team have concerns that must be addressed? What more needs to happen to ensure the best outcome?

Epidemiology has no equivalent of a time-out. But it needs a pause right now so that officials can learn from the experience of the past five years. Public health is not a patient the United States can afford to lose.

• CAITLIN RIVERS is Director of the Center for Outbreak Response Innovation and an Associate Professor at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. From 2021 to 2022, she served as founding Associate Director of the Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She is the author of the forthcoming book Crisis Averted.

Foreign Affairs · by Crisis Averted. · July 2, 2024

20. The Illogic of Doubling Down on a Failed Approach: Security Assistance and Terrorism in Africa

Excerpts:

The retooling that was mentioned in the New York Times article will only be cosmetic without profound changes in approach. For that to happen it would be necessary to recognize that the threat to the United States of terrorism in the Sahel is insignificant and that attempts to counter it militarily have only enhanced it.

Promoting better governance should take priority over all other concerns. The competition for influence between the United States, Russia, and China should not become a Kirkpatrick Doctrine 2.0, whereby any autocrat can gain American support by uttering the magic words—Islamist terrorists.

The challenge is that democracy can be supported, but it cannot be created by outsiders. Civil society can play a crucial role in reducing corruption and encouraging development, but it needs the strong support of the international community.

Saying America will provide and never prescribe is a strategy for repeating failure. AFRICOM and the US government more broadly should learn from what is not working and not simply double down on their mistakes.

The Illogic of Doubling Down on a Failed Approach: Security Assistance and Terrorism in Africa - Modern War Institute

mwi.westpoint.edu · by Dennis Jett · July 1, 2024

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It’s not a good day for a combatant commander when a front-page headline in a major newspaper says one of your most important programs has failed. That’s true even if the commander is not to blame—in this case, the failure is the result of an all-of-government effort that is decades in the making.

The officer is General Michael Langley, commander of the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) since August 2022. The headline on the June 6 story on the front page of the New York Times reads, “U.S. Confronts Failures as Terrorism Spreads in West Africa.” It describes how, after the United States has provided hundreds of millions of dollars in security assistance to several African armies, terrorism has only gotten worse.

Not only have the armies that have benefited from US largesse failed to eliminate the terrorists, but they have also been good at overthrowing existing governments, as demonstrated by the recent coups in Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso, and Niger. On top of this, some governments in the region have given up on help from the United States, as well as France, another longstanding security assistance provider, and have signed up Russian mercenaries instead.

The AFRICOM reaction to this bleak panorama was outlined in an Associated Press article, which noted that “rather than soul-searching or a broad rethink of strategy,” the United States planned to, as General Langley described, “double down and re-engage with these countries.” He also added that “what the U.S. wants is what countries are asking for. We’re not prescribing anything.”

Unlike the Associated Press story, the New York Times article gave some hope for a course correction in the face of failure. It cited unnamed US officials as saying they are “retooling their approach to combat an insurgency that is rooted in local, not global, concerns. Competition for land, exclusion from politics and other local grievances have swelled the ranks of the militants, more than any particular commitment to extremist ideology.” This realization has supposedly prompted a new strategy that will “focus more on well-financed initiatives that include security, governance and development.”

That sounds enlightened but it may not be enough. To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, in this present crisis, a military government is not the solution to our problem; a military government is the problem. As a recent OECD study concluded, the coups of 2020–23 in the Sahel have not only failed to reverse the mounting insecurity in the region. They have accelerated it.

American policy in Africa has long supposedly consisted of three parts—security, governance, and development. While all three have had a role, the creation of AFRICOM and the post-9/11 fear of terrorism has led to the militarization of our relations with African countries and resulted in a disproportionate emphasis on security. When a four-star general is given the job of flying around a continent full of very poor countries and dispensing military aid to anyone interested, it cannot help but overwhelm and undermine the efforts at improving governance and promoting development.

It is important to point out just how poor these countries are to understand why. According to World Bank data, the per capita gross domestic product of the United State is ninety-two times greater than that of Mali and 130 times that of Niger. With such poverty, the armed forces are weak, but they are also the strongest institution in the country. The rest of government and civil society have almost no capacity to limit the power of the military. Security assistance makes this imbalance worse as the more dominant the military is the less likely governance and development programs will succeed.

A recently published book on the impact of security assistance in the Middle East and North Africa by experts on the region reached three conclusions that also apply to the rest of Africa and explain the problem. First, providing security assistance without taking the local politics into account can turn people against their government and the United States as well. In Africa, politics is always heavily influenced by tribal identities, ethnic tensions, and competition for scarce resources, as acknowledged by the officials who claim a retooling is underway.

Second, security assistance has encouraged militarization that has facilitated corruption and retarded economic development by encouraging the intrusion of the military into the private sector. That provides personal profit for the generals and allows the regime in power to buy their loyalty.

Third, there is no case where security assistance in the Middle East and North Africa had a positive impact on democracy either by reducing the clout of militaries or by increasing that of civilians. That is especially true when a government has come to power through a coup as many in Africa have. In those cases, the main task of the army is not to protect the country from threats to national security, but to protect a government with no legitimacy from its own people.

The retooling that was mentioned in the New York Times article will only be cosmetic without profound changes in approach. For that to happen it would be necessary to recognize that the threat to the United States of terrorism in the Sahel is insignificant and that attempts to counter it militarily have only enhanced it.

Promoting better governance should take priority over all other concerns. The competition for influence between the United States, Russia, and China should not become a Kirkpatrick Doctrine 2.0, whereby any autocrat can gain American support by uttering the magic words—Islamist terrorists.

The challenge is that democracy can be supported, but it cannot be created by outsiders. Civil society can play a crucial role in reducing corruption and encouraging development, but it needs the strong support of the international community.

Saying America will provide and never prescribe is a strategy for repeating failure. AFRICOM and the US government more broadly should learn from what is not working and not simply double down on their mistakes.

Dennis Jett is a professor in the School of International Affairs at Penn State University. A former career diplomat, he served as ambassador in Peru and Mozambique, on the National Security Council, and in Argentina, Israel, Malawi, and Liberia. He is the author of four books on peacekeeping and American foreign policy as well as numerous other publications.

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

Image credit: Spc. Zayid Ballesteros, US Army

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mwi.westpoint.edu · by Dennis Jett · July 1, 2024

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com