Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

“In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.”

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

“What's the best way to control people? Divide them into different ideological groups and they'll soon start fighting against each other. This way they will forget who their true enemy is.”

- Sofo Archon

“I'm not telling you to make the world better, because I don't think that progress is necessarily part of the package. I'm just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment. And if you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you that the grave's a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that's what there is to do and get it while you can and good luck at it.”

- Joan Didion

1. Chinese Operational Art – The Primacy of the Human Dimension

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16. Nuclear Talks With China Are Essential and Long Overdue

17. Fact Check: Has Google Earth captured Crimea bridge attack damage?

18. Why Do Young Americans Support Hamas? Look at TikTok. by Rep. Mike Gallagher

19. Why Liberal Academia Needs Republican Friends

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1. Chinese Operational Art – The Primacy of the Human Dimension

Long read but an interesting article to ponder on a Sunday.

Conclusion:

The modern American military can afford to focus on high-cost technology-centric solutions, but that may not always be the case. As demonstrated recently in Ukraine, the Army with the greatest amount of high-tech weaponry does not always win. Morale, cohesion, training, leadership, intelligence, information, deception, and many other intangible and uncertain human factors are at play when the instrument of war is unleashed. There is much we can learn from Chinese military history and theory when it comes to the human dimension and practicing the art of deception. China’s preference for low-cost human-centric solutions comes from thousands of years of practicing warfare. Now they have the resources to invest in high-tech weaponry as well. If they are successful at combining the latest weapons technology with their human-centric operational art, China will be a formidable foe on the battlefield.

Rather than just a cursory reading of Sun Tzu’s Art of War, Western military professionals must do more to learn from China’s immense experience so we can know our adversary. U.S. Army doctrine should expand on the ways Army forces and commanders can exploit the human dimension during competition, crisis, and conflict. Finally, the U.S. Army needs to reincorporate operational art into its capstone doctrine with a focus on the human and information dimensions, operational and tactical deception, and defeat and stability mechanisms.

Chinese Operational Art

The Primacy of the Human Dimension

https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review/English-Edition-Archives/November-December-2023/Chinese-Operational-Art/

Rob Hafen

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Chinese soldiers march past the six-centuries-old Tian’anmen Rostrum during a military parade on 3 September 2015 in Beijing to commemorate the seventieth anniversary of China’s victory against Japanese aggression. Although the modern Chinese military is considered to be a pacing threat by the United States, Chinese doctrine draws from over 2,500 years of military history and theory. (Photo by Imaginechina, Alamy Stock Photo)

American military colleges like the U.S. Army War College and Command and General Staff School spend a great deal of time studying the Western, or American, way of war. Although U.S. national security documents identify China as our pacing challenge and with over 2,500 years of Chinese military history and theory to draw from, the American military spends very little time learning about the Chinese way of war. At the Command and General Staff School, there is only one elective course on the Chinese way of war with a U.S. Indo-Pacific Command training scenario put in place for academic year 2024.

Depiction of Lao Tzu in E. T. C. Werner’s Myths and Legends of China (Project Gutenberg, February 1922). (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Most American military officers are told to read Sun Tzu’s Art of War at their precommissioning source. This classical work is one of the world’s most influential books on military strategy and is highly instructive on Chinese strategic, operational, and tactical art. It was compiled toward the end of China’s preunification spring and autumn period (772–476 BCE) and the beginning of the warring states period (475–221 BCE).1 However, it only scratches the surface of Chinese military thought. Other theorists such as Confucius, Lao Tzu, Mao Zedong, and many others contribute to a diverse and complex array of Chinese strategic theory.

Is there a difference between the American way of war and the Chinese way of war in the current strategic environment? Scholars have argued the intricacies of the East-West cultural and philosophical divide for centuries. Clearly, there are some major cultural and philosophical differences. In the current environment, however, both the United States and China are great power actors in the international system drawing from similar theoretical, doctrinal, materiel, and organizational means of national power. For example, the founder of the modern People’s Republic of China (PRC), Mao Zedong, drew just as much if not more from Prussian theorist Carl von Clausewitz’s On War as he did from Sun Tzu’s Art of War.2 During the last twenty-five years, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) invested deeply in modern information and weapons technology, training, education, and organization, attempting to bring its land, air, maritime, cyber, and space capabilities to parity with the United States. China’s heavy investment in antiaccess/area denial (A2/AD) capabilities is causing the American military to look at new materiel and organizational solutions for a potential conflict over Taiwan.3 However, there is an important difference between the Chinese and American approaches to solving strategic, operational, and tactical problems. Where the American military tends to focus on high-cost, technology-centric solutions, over 2,500 years of Chinese military history and theory reveals a preference for low-cost, human-centric solutions.

Looking at the U.S. Army’s technology-focused multidomain operations concept as outlined in U.S. Army Field Manual (FM) 3-0, Operations, will illustrate the difference in each country’s approach. This article will analyze key concepts from China’s feudal and dynastic periods using Sun Tzu’s Art of War and a distillation of China’s thirty-six stratagems. Finally, this article will look at modern Chinese operational art as demonstrated by Mao during the Chinese Civil War (1946–1949) and as outlined in Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui’s Unrestricted Warfare, published in 1999. Generally, when operational art is referenced in this article, strategic and tactical art are implied as well.

The U.S. Army’s Technology-Focused, Multidomain Operations Concept

The introductory chapter of the U.S. Army’s recently published capstone doctrinal manual, FM 3-0, highlights the importance of the land domain to decisive strategic outcomes. However, it also recognizes that the land domain requires combined arms employment in the air, maritime, cyber, and space domains to achieve success. This convergence of effects from all domains is known as multidomain operations (MDO).4 MDO recognizes the immense challenge for U.S. forces needing to win outnumbered, while isolated, by creating and exploiting positions of relative advantages. Chinese operational art espouses isolation of adversaries, and they are already working toward achieving that capability with their A2/AD umbrella. The MDO concept was developed primarily as a way for joint forces to defeat China’s A2/AD systems.5

Confucius circa 1770 (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

The MDO concept also introduces three dimensions: physical, information, and human. The physical dimension includes “the material characteristics and capabilities, both natural and manufactured, within an operational environment.”6 The information dimension is defined as “the content, data, and processes that individuals, groups, and information systems use to communicate.”7 The human dimension is defined as “encompassing people and the interaction between individuals and groups, how they understand information and events, make decisions, generate will, and act within an operational environment.”8 All three dimensions are interrelated, interdependent, and impact all domains. However, most of FM 3-0 is dedicated to acting in the physical dimension. The MDO concept relies heavily on innovative, technology-focused solutions leveraging space, cyber, artificial intelligence, robotics, unmanned systems, and extended range firepower.

Although FM 3-0 addresses the human and information dimensions, there is very little development of how the U.S. Army plans to create relative advantage to exploit these dimensions and how they relate to the practice of operational art, deception, psychological operations, and information operations. In the introductory chapter, FM 3-0 recognizes the complex current environment that demands leaders who understand both the science and art of operations:

There is no way to eliminate uncertainty, and leaders must exercise operational art to make decisions and assume risk. Intangible factors, such as the impact of leadership on morale, using shock effect to defeat enemy forces, and supportive populations are fundamentally human factors that can overcome physical disadvantages and often decide the outcomes of an operation.9

If operational art and human factors are so decisive, why is there so little mention of them in the 2022 version of FM 3-0?

Read Unrestricted Warfare by Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui (Beijing: PLA Literature and Arts Publishing House, February 1999) online at https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/doc/10.1.1.169.7179.

In the previous 2017 version of FM 3-0, the idea of operational art was addressed with a few pages in the introduction.10 Information operations, military deception, and military information support operations were also covered in chapter two.11 In the 2022 version, explanations of these concepts and capabilities are removed. The 2022 version of FM 3-0 outlines a Clausewitzian view of the nature of war in the introduction by highlighting war’s political purpose, its inherent chaos and uncertainty, and that it is a human endeavor.12 It also adds informational considerations to mission variables, defined as “aspects of the human, information, and physical dimensions that affect how humans and automated systems derive meaning from, use, act upon, and are impacted by information.”13 However, the only significant application of operational art and the human domain in the 2022 version of FM 3-0 is in a two-page section on defeat and stability mechanisms.14 This lack of focus on operational art, human, and informational factors in warfare is consistent with the American military’s preference for high-tech, high-cost, materiel solutions to solve strategic, operational, and tactical problems.

Sun Tzu’s Art of War

The global influence of Sun Tzu’s Art of War on strategists, operational artists, and tacticians cannot be overstated. A Jesuit missionary, Father Joseph-Marie Amiot, brought Sun Tzu’s work to the West with his 1782 translation into French.15 It was first translated into English by Lionel Giles in 1910 and then by Samuel B. Griffith in 1963. However, it has guided military thought in East Asia for millennia. Edward O’Dowd and Arthur Waldron stated that “the strategic patterns based on Sun Tzu’s writing are deeply embedded in the thinking of Sinicized Asian nations.”16 Many Western military professionals have a cursory and superficial understanding of Sun Tzu’s work. Military scholars must delve deep into the historical, cultural, and philosophical context of fourth century BCE China to understand the unique characteristics of Chinese operational art espoused in Art of War. Understanding the diverse and sometimes conflicting Chinese philosophies of Taoism, Confucianism, and legalism sheds light on Sun Tzu’s sometimes cryptic maxims.

To decode the Art of War, the four key concepts of tao (often translated as “the Way”), shih, cheng, and ch’i should be appreciated. The first paragraphs of Art of War state, “Warfare is the greatest affair of the state, the basis of life and death, the tao to survival or extinction.”17 Sun Tzu lists the tao as the first of the five factors a general officer needs to evaluate before embarking on a campaign. He goes on to elaborate that the tao causes soldiers to be fully in accord with their leader, not fearing danger, and willing to die with him.18 This would imply that the tao consists of the intangible moral force or spirit that binds a nation or army together. In Western military thought this is known as esprit de corps, morale, or fighting spirit. Recognizing the tao of war is directly related to understanding the human dimension of warfare. In another paragraph, Sun Tzu states, “Warfare is the tao of deception. When capable, display incapability. When committed to employing your forces, feign inactivity.”19 The art of deception resides fully in the human dimension and psychology. Deception and defeat both take place in the mind of the national leader, commander, or military forces. This tao of warfare in Sun Tzu’s operational art places priority on intangible effects and ways to exploit the human dimension.

Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz, 1 June 1780 (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Shih is the next concept that is key to understanding Art of War. In Ralph D. Sawyer’s translation, shih is translated as strategic power. “After estimating the advantages in accord with what you have heard, put it into effect with strategic power (shih).”20 Timothy L. Thomas translates it as strategic advantage.21 This concept is often compared to the sudden onrush of water coming down from mountains after a rainstorm or water bursting from a break in a large dam. It creates an immense reservoir of potential energy. When released at the right time and turned into kinetic energy, it creates an irresistible flow, allowing a general or political leader to prevail over his enemies. Using the well-known axiom from Art of War of knowing yourself, your enemy, and the terrain, a leader can find or create advantages to exploit.22 Shih is comparable to the current focus in the U.S. Army’s MDO concept of creating and exploiting relative advantages.23 However, for Sun Tzu, this is not done just by looking for materiel, firepower, or terrain advantages. It is equally important to create strategic, operational, and tactical advantages to exploit in the human dimension using your own troops, people, and political leaders as well as those of allies and adversaries.

The concepts of cheng and ch’i are also crucial for understanding Sun Tzu’s operational art. These concepts are similar to the dualistic Taoist ideas of yin and yang. Cheng refers to orthodox, regular, conventional, substantial, or usual ways and means of solving military problems. Ch’i denotes unorthodox, irregular, unconventional, or unusual ways and means.24 Like two sides of the same coin, cheng and ch’i need to be used together to gain victory. This passage from Art of War shows how they interact.

In battle one engages with the cheng and gains victory through the ch’i. Thus, one who excels at sending forth the ch’i is as inexhaustible as Heaven, as unlimited as the Yangtze and Yellow rivers ... The notes do not exceed five, but the changes of the five notes can never be fully heard. The colors do not exceed five, but the changes of the five colors can never be completely seen. The flavors do not exceed five, but the changes of the five flavors can never be completely tasted. In warfare the strategic configurations of power do not exceed the cheng and ch’i, but the changes of the ch’i and cheng can never be completely exhausted. The ch’i and cheng mutually produce each other, just like an endless cycle. Who can exhaust them?25

Comparable to the science and art of war, the physical and human dimensions, or tangible and intangible forces, the skillful use of mutually supporting cheng and ch’i is essential for Sun Tzu’s concept of operational art.

Qing-era representation of Sun Tzu (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

One often-quoted maxim from Art of War is “subjugating the enemy’s army without fighting is the true pinnacle of excellence.”26 When thinking operationally or tactically, this approach seems very difficult and unreasonable. If forces have already been committed to battle, how can operational or tactical commanders win without fighting? However, from a strategic perspective, Sun Tzu’s proverb makes a great deal of sense. Sun Tzu emphasizes that it is most preferred to attack the enemy’s plans, then their allies, then their army, and lastly their fortified cities.27 The first two, plans and allies, are strategic level objectives that attack an enemy’s moral center of gravity. O’Dowd and Waldron identify this as attacking the political harmony of an adversary. They argue the Chinese way of winning without fighting was to use psychological warfare to sow chaos in the enemy’s society, economy, domestic politics, alliances, and military readiness. If an adversary’s state was in chaos, the legitimacy of the political leadership would be called into question, making them vulnerable to internal rebellion or invasion.28 The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) current strategy seems to be very focused on the psychological human and information dimensions at the strategic level.29 The American strategy of deterrence through strength, alliances, and forward-deployed forces is another example of a psychological strategy designed to prevent an adversary from deciding to use force in the first place.

In summary, most military professionals read Sun Tzu’s Art of War to glean the universal strategic, operational, and tactical concepts that still apply to warfare today. However, to truly comprehend how the work informs Chinese thought, we need to appreciate the fundamental philosophical context and concepts developed in China 2,500 years ago.30 This contextual knowledge is further illustrated by China’s thirty-six stratagems.

China’s Thirty-Six Stratagems

The following selections from China’s thirty-six stratagems will show the Chinese preference for exploiting the human dimension by using espionage, deception, manipulation, psychological warfare, and information warfare. The thirty-six stratagems are a collection of expressions on political and military strategy dating back to predynastic China, passed down through written and oral histories. They were not compiled into a single volume until sometime in the seventeenth century CE when an anonymous scholar published them in a book called Secret Art of War: Thirty-Six Strategies.31 Sun Haichen’s The Wiles of War and Harro Von Senger’s The Book of Stratagems deliver two comprehensive English versions with various historical vignettes and analysis to help us understand these distinctly Chinese proverbs. The following list shows some of the most relevant stratagems illustrating the current CCP strategic approach and possibilities for PLA operational art.

Strategic Stratagems Using Elements of National Power

Borrow a corpse for the soul’s return. This implies taking an institution, technology, method, historical narrative, or ideology that has been forgotten or discarded and revive it to boost the morale and fervor of the population and the troops.32 A prime example of this is the powerful “century of humiliation” historical narrative that blames Western colonialism for the deterioration of dynastic China and the civil chaos that followed. The CCP and PLA continue to use this narrative to inspire nationalistic achievement and competition with the West as well as justify their Taiwan reunification policy.

Photo of Mao Zedong sitting, originally published in Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung circa 1955. (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Observe the fire on the opposite shore. Here the strategist recommends a delay in entering a conflict until the other parties become exhausted by fighting amongst each other. Then go in at full strength to finish them off or gain the dominant position.33 Xi Jinping’s relationship with Vladimir Putin is an example of this. Xi is giving Putin tacit support but watching patiently while Russia and NATO exhaust themselves in Ukraine.

Kill with a borrowed knife. The idea here is to cause damage to the enemy via a third party.34 Possible use of this stratagem would be the CCP using Russia, North Korea, Iran, or potentially a terrorist group to distract the United States or dilute any response to a Taiwan invasion.

Hide your dagger behind a smile. This stratagem is the charm offensive. Ingratiate yourself with your adversary. When their trust is gained, move against them in secret.35 This is clearly demonstrated by China’s neocolonialist economic policy and Belt and Road projects that have tied into the global economy and influenced Western business to invest under Chinese rules. The current American crisis with cyber security, Chinese data mining, and semiconductor manufacturing is a result of trusting the PRC did not have malevolent intentions until it was too late.

The cicada sloughs its skin. This implies either leaving one’s distinctive traits behind and becoming inconspicuous or masquerading as something or someone else.36 It is demonstrated by the PRCs transition from a communist command economy to state capitalism with a market export economy in the 1980s. Most Western scholars expected China’s political system to liberalize along with its economic policy, however that clearly did not happen.

Loot a burning house. When a country is plagued by internal problems such as disease, famine, corruption, and crime, it is ill-equipped to deal with an outside threat. If one uses the “hide your dagger behind a smile” stratagem to start the fire or add fuel to it, so much the better.37 This stratagem is a key component of the PRC’s information and cyber warfare efforts. As the world struggles with the COVID-19 pandemic, governance crises, cyber security, misinformation, inflation, debt, and economic crises, China continues to leverage data collection and use information and cyber warfare to inflame the West’s woes. Chinese technology companies, pervasive in foreign markets, are increasingly integrating with the PRCs data storage, processing, control, and security systems. This exposes huge swaths of the world’s population to a broad spectrum of Chinese data accumulation, espionage, and manipulation.38 According to Matt Pottinger, the primary aim of China’s strategy of information dominance is “dismantling American influence around the globe.”39 By using a combination of these stratagems, the CCP is doing everything it can to strengthen the courage, will, and morale of its own people and troops, while weakening that of its adversaries.

Operational and Tactical Stratagems

Besiege Wei to rescue Zhao. When the enemy is too strong in one place, attack so they will be forced to defend one another. Avoid the enemy’s strength; instead, strike at their weakness elsewhere and prepare to ambush them. This will exhaust your enemy and will give you a much higher chance of success.40 A possible use of this stratagem would be to facilitate a crisis in another part of the world or Pacific region like the Korean peninsula to tie up American forces before China makes its move to seize Taiwan.

Read Moving the Enemy: Operational Art in the Chinese PLA’s Huai Hai Campaign by Dr. Gary J. Bjorge (Leavenworth Paper #22) online at https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/combat-studies-institute/csi-books/bjorge_huai.pdf.

Clamor in the east, attack in the west. Even when face-to-face with an enemy, surprise can still be employed by attacking where they least expect it. Create an expectation in the enemy’s mind using a feint or demonstration. Manipulate the enemy to focus their resources elsewhere before attacking an inadequately defended area.41 This tactical stratagem is very similar to the more operational besiege Wei to rescue Zhao stratagem.

Lure the tiger down from the mountain. Never directly attack an opponent whose advantage is derived from their position. Instead, lure them away from their position to separate them from their source of strength.42 In any conflict with China, American forces would start at a disadvantage due to extended sea and ground lines of communication.

Climb up the roof and remove the ladder. With baits and deceptions, lure the enemy into complex terrain and cut off their lines of communication and escape routes. To save themselves, they must fight both their own forces and the elements of nature.43 A good example of this is from the Korean War where PLA forces attacked during the winter and enveloped the United Nations forces after they reached the limits of their operational reach in northern Korea.44

Seize the opportunity to lead the sheep away. While carrying out operations, be flexible enough to take advantage of any opportunity that presents itself, however small, to create a relative advantage.45 Similar to “loot a burning house,” this stratagem refers to seizing every opportunity that presents itself like luring allies away from your enemy.

Bolt the door to seize the thief. When planning to deliver the final blow to the enemy, plan carefully for success; do not rush into action. First, cut off the enemy’s escape routes and any routes for external aid.46 During the Chinese civil war and the Korean War, the PLA showed clever use of these six operational and tactical stratagems. Avoiding enemy strengths, using maneuver to surround enemy forces, finding, creating, and exploiting relative advantages, and the use of feints and demonstrations are all critical components of Chinese operational art.

Chinese Operational Art

In his work, Moving the Enemy, Gary Bjorge argues that operational art is not about technology; rather, it is about human thought. The practice of operational art requires the intangible factors of experience, instinct, and intuition. “The ability to visualize, anticipate, create, and seize opportunities does not reside in a computer data base.”47 He goes on to show how the PLA under Mao Zedong practiced this human-dimension-focused operational art throughout the decisive Huai Hai Campaign (1948–1949) during the Chinese civil war. This large campaign involved over a million military forces. When the campaign was over, the PLA had defeated five nationalist armies and was directly threatening the nationalist capital of Nanjing. Later, in 1949, Chiang Kai-shek and his nationalists were forced to flee to the island of Formosa (Taiwan).48 Although the American-supported nationalists had a larger military force, greater air power, and better equipment, the communists had many human dimension advantages they exploited very effectively.

One critical advantage the communists had was political and military cohesion. They effectively used the Japanese invasion and communist ideology to politically unify areas they controlled and their military forces. The Huai Hai campaign was led by Chen Yi, Liu Bocheng, Su Yu, Tan Zhenlin, and Deng Xiaoping. Since these leaders fought together for decades, they developed a high level of trust and confidence in each other. Mao trusted these operational commanders and allowed them to plan and execute the campaign with little interference.49 On the other hand, the nationalists were plagued by factionalism, communist infiltration, and corruption. Chiang Kai-shek was a micromanager who held most decisions at his level. He also did not appoint an operational command to oversee all land, maritime, and air forces involved in the campaign.50 This human dimension difference allowed the communists to make decisions and maneuver to positions of advantage much more rapidly than the deliberate and inflexible nationalist forces.

A second advantage for the communists was better information and intelligence that allowed them to maneuver their forces at a higher tempo than the nationalists. Due to communist collaborators within the nationalist headquarters and Army commands, the PLA knew where the nationalist armies were, where they were moving to, and how they would react. They used this knowledge, combined with speed, timing, and a flexible logistics system to gain a numerical superiority at decisive points during their offensives around Xuzhou. Communist logistics were not tied to rail and major road networks like the nationalists. Since Xuzhou was a major north-south and east-west railroad junction, it was critical for the nationalists to maintain control of it. When the communist forces had the nationalist Seventh Army surrounded east of Xuzhou, Chiang Kai-shek sent two more armies to relieve the Seventh. The communist commanders anticipated this and prepared a plan to surround and defeat the two other nationalist armies sent north. Bjorge relates this back to Sun Tzu and the concept of shih or strategic advantage outlined earlier. The communists were able to recognize the potential energy (shih) in the situation and maneuver their forces to surround and annihilate three nationalist armies instead of just one.51

The PLA leaders during the Huai Hai campaign were well versed in modern military theory as well as Sun Tzu’s Art of War. As Bjorge reasons, they understood human psychology and how to motivate and manipulate others. They knew how to use the right combinations of cheng (fixing/holding) and ch’i (maneuver/surprise) forces to proactively move the enemy, instead of moved by him.52 This demonstrates a high level of operational art that is focused on exploiting the human dimension.

In the current global environment, the PRC continues to apply its legacy of operational art handed down from Sun Tzu. Qiao and Wang’s 1999 book, Unrestricted Warfare, put the world on notice that a resurgent China was ready to challenge the American led world order using all means at their disposal. However, this willingness to exploit the internet, financial institutions, media, trade policy, the United Nations, and other global organizations is not anything new.53 It is just a modern extension of Chinese strategic and operational art that looks creatively at all domains, dimensions, and elements of national power to achieve its strategic goals.

Conclusion

The modern American military can afford to focus on high-cost technology-centric solutions, but that may not always be the case. As demonstrated recently in Ukraine, the Army with the greatest amount of high-tech weaponry does not always win. Morale, cohesion, training, leadership, intelligence, information, deception, and many other intangible and uncertain human factors are at play when the instrument of war is unleashed. There is much we can learn from Chinese military history and theory when it comes to the human dimension and practicing the art of deception. China’s preference for low-cost human-centric solutions comes from thousands of years of practicing warfare. Now they have the resources to invest in high-tech weaponry as well. If they are successful at combining the latest weapons technology with their human-centric operational art, China will be a formidable foe on the battlefield.

Rather than just a cursory reading of Sun Tzu’s Art of War, Western military professionals must do more to learn from China’s immense experience so we can know our adversary. U.S. Army doctrine should expand on the ways Army forces and commanders can exploit the human dimension during competition, crisis, and conflict. Finally, the U.S. Army needs to reincorporate operational art into its capstone doctrine with a focus on the human and information dimensions, operational and tactical deception, and defeat and stability mechanisms.

Notes

Geoff Babb, China’s Military History and Way of War: A Backgrounder (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Army University Press, March 2023), 1–3, accessed 28 July 2023, https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review/Online-Exclusive/2023-OLE/Babb/.
Michael I. Handel, Masters of War, 3rd ed. (London: Frank Cass, 2001), xix.
Matt Pottinger, “Beijing’s American Hustle: How Chinese Grand Strategy Exploits U.S. Power,” Foreign Affairs 100, no. 5 (September-October 2021): 107–10; Matthew Johnson, China’s Grand Strategy for Global Data Dominance (Washington, DC: Hoover Institution, April 2023), 3–5; Timothy L. Thomas, The Dragon’s Quantum Leap: Transforming from a Mechanized to an Informatized Force (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Foreign Military Studies Office, 2009), 8–10.
Field Manual (FM) 3-0, Operations (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Publishing Office, 2022), ix.
Thomas, The Dragon’s Quantum Leap, 8–10.
FM 3-0, Operations, 1-21.
Ibid., 1-22.
Ibid.
Ibid., 1-1.
Ibid., 1-19–1-22.
Ibid., 2-26–2-29.
Ibid., 1-6–1-7.
Ibid., 1-23.
Ibid., 3-19–3-20.
Sun Tzu, “Art of War,” in The Seven Military Classics of Ancient China, trans. and ed. Ralph D. Sawyer (New York: Westview Press, 1993), 149.
Edward O. O’Dowd and Arthur Waldron, “Sun Tzu for Strategists,” Comparative Strategy 10, no. 1 (1991): 25, https://doi.org/10.1080/01495939108402828.
Sun Tzu, “Art of War,” 157.
Ibid.
Ibid., 158.
Ibid.
Thomas, The Dragon’s Quantum Leap, 8.
Sun Tzu, “Art of War,” 155.
FM 3-0, Operations, 1-2.
Sun Tzu, “Art of War,” 155.
Ibid., 164. Sawyer translates cheng as orthodox and ch’i as unorthodox. These English terms do not fully describe these concepts, so I have kept the Chinese terms in this quotation.
Ibid., 160.
Ibid., 155.
O’Dowd and Waldron, “Sun Tzu for Strategists,” 27.
Timothy L. Thomas, The Dragon’s Quantum Leap: Transforming from a Mechanized to an Informatized Force (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Foreign Military Studies Office, 2009), 8–12. Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, Unrestricted Warfare, trans. Foreign Broadcast Information Service (Beijing: PLA Literature and Arts Publishing House, 1999), 206–16. Unrestricted Warfare is not offical PLA strategic doctine, but it does provide a framework for the theoretical debates that have informed PLA doctrine since 1999.
O’Dowd and Waldron, “Sun Tzu for Strategists,” 34.
Haichen Sun, The Wiles of War: 36 Military Strategies from Ancient China (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1991), i.
Ibid., 125; Harro Von Senger, The Book of Strategems: Tactics for Triumph and Survival, trans. and ed. Myron B. Gubitz (New York: Viking Penguin, 1991), 215.
Sun, The Wiles of War, 77; Von Senger, The Book of Strategems, 123.
Sun, The Wiles of War, 24; Von Senger, The Book of Strategems, 41.
Sun, The Wiles of War, 88; Von Senger, The Book of Strategems, 135.
Sun, The Wiles of War, 189.
Ibid., 43; Von Senger, The Book of Strategems, 67.
Johnson, China’s Grand Strategy for Global Data Dominance, 3.
Pottinger, “Beijing’s American Hustle,” 105.
Sun, The Wiles of War, 10; Von Senger, The Book of Strategems, 33.
Sun, The Wiles of War, 51; Von Senger, The Book of Strategems, 75.
Sun, The Wiles of War, 133; Von Senger, The Book of Strategems, 233.
Sun, The Wiles of War, 251.
O’Dowd and Waldron, “Sun Tzu for Strategists,” 29–30.
Sun, The Wiles of War, 105; Von Senger, The Book of Strategems, 171.
Sun, The Wiles of War, 195.
Gary J. Bjorge, Moving the Enemy: Operational Art in the Chinese PLA’s Huai Hai Campaign, Leavenworth Paper #22 (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, 2003), 5.
Ibid., 1.
Ibid., 21–25.
Ibid., 118–19.
Ibid., 159–60.
Ibid., 269.
Qiao and Wang, Unrestricted Warfare, 2.

Rob Hafen is a retired Army officer and assistant professor with the Department of Army Tactics at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff School. He is a graduate of the U.S. Army School of Advanced Military Studies with a Master of Military Art and Science. He is currently working on a terminal degree in security studies with Kansas State University.

2. Counterterrorism is Strategic Competition

Excerpts:

To solve a problem, one must first recognize that there is a problem, and then accurately define the problem. The Trump and Biden administrations correctly identified strategic competition with China and Russia as the gravest foreign policy challenges facing the nation, but they have been groping toward an accurate definition of the problem. The Trump administration recognized the direct threat from agents of the CCP, such as Chinese People’s Liberation Army, Chinese State-Owned Enterprises, and China’s Maritime Militia, but they did not embrace the governance aspect of strategic competition. They criticized the authoritarian nature of the CCP, but they did not embrace the need to advance democracy and counter authoritarianism generally. The Biden administration is getting closer. They correctly identified the strategic competition between the U.S. and China as part of a larger global competition between democratic and authoritarian governance. That realization helped them see the need to advance democracy and counter authoritarian governance globally. However, the Biden administration has thus far failed to recognize that CT and countering VEOs is a core function of government, that there are fundamental differences between democratic and authoritarian responses to terrorism and VEOs, and that how a government responds to the existential threat from violent extremists can define whether that government is authoritarian or democratic.

The U.S. approach to strategic competition and countering VEOs still assumes these are two unrelated problems and that the U.S. can remove resources from countering violent extremists without impacting strategic competition. This is an easy but fatal mistake. It is an easy mistake because the terrorists are not agents of Russia or the CCP and therefore appear to be a different and separate problem. Fatal because scores of countries are threatened by VEOs. Failing to help them in their hour of need concedes the competition for influence in those states to Russia and the CCP by forcing the threatened government to accept assistance from authoritarian sources. Authoritarian assistance will lead to authoritarian actions that will lock the government into an authoritarian mold, beholden to authoritarian patrons.

Accurately defining the challenge from the CCP and other authoritarians requires the U.S. to recognize that the way a nation responds to terrorism and other forms of organized extremist violence largely determines whether that nation is democratic or authoritarian. To compete with authoritarianism, the U.S. must not only advance democracy in principle, but also provide specific CT and counter violent extremism assistance, in the democratic mode, to threatened nations. This does not mean the U.S. must invest extravagant resources to compete everywhere. There will be places where the costs are too high, the rewards are too small, and the U.S. will have to concede the competition to the CCP and other authoritarian forces. However, this must be a conscious choice made with full understanding that withholding CT assistance will impact strategic competition with the CCP and other authoritarians.

Counterterrorism is Strategic Competition

interpopulum.org · by ByThomas R. Searle · October 15, 2023

Thomas R. Searle, Joint Special Operations University, Tampa, Florida, USA

ABSTRACT

The Trump and Biden administrations loudly proclaimed the end of the counterterrorism era and its replacement with a new era of competition. Following these new priorities, both administrations have slashed resources to support counterterrorism by friendly foreign nations. This is a serious strategic error because counterterrorism is not a distraction from competition but is instead at the center of competition. By slashing support to counterterrorism, the Trump and Biden administrations have started down a five-step path to disaster: (1) U.S. withdraws counterterrorism support to nation X; (2) terrorists destabilize nation X; (3) nation X turns to an authoritarian U.S. competitor for counterterrorism support; (4) nation X becomes more stable and less democratic; (5) nation X is locked into authoritarian governance and opposition to the U.S. Thus, one nation X at a time, slashing counterterrorism resources leads to exactly the anti-U.S. authoritarian world order the U.S. is trying to prevent.

Under the Trump and Biden administrations, U.S. national security priorities shifted dramatically and decisively away from counterterrorism (CT) (often described as countering violent extremist organizations [VEOs]) and toward strategic competition against authoritarian nation states, particularly Russia and China. This bipartisan shift is one of the few things that President Joe Biden, President Donald Trump, and their respective supporters, all agree on. Russia’s large-scale combat operations in Ukraine, starting in February 2022, seem to vindicate this shift since Russian aggression and potential future Chinese aggression are clearly greater threats to U.S. interests than terrorists.

Unfortunately, the dramatic spectacle of Russian firepower unleashed on Ukraine is distracting us from subtler forms of strategic competition. On closer examination it will become apparent that CT and strategic competition are not mutually exclusive. In fact, CT is a vital aspect of strategic competition and abandoning CT puts the U.S. on a five-step path to defeat in strategic competition with China and other authoritarian nation states.

We shall start by describing the five-step path to defeat, assess how far the U.S has gone down this path, and then develop recommendations to get off the path to defeat.

The Five-Step Path to Defeat in Strategic Competition

Step 1: The five-step path to losing in strategic competition begins with the U.S. (and the West more generally) withdrawing support for a nation in its fight against violent extremists. We will call the unfortunate U.S. partner nation X, since it could be any number of countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, or the Middle East. Most governments in the developing world face some sort of violent opposition every day, and while few of them are fully democratic, neither are they fully authoritarian. The U.S. government justifies the withdrawal of CT support from nation X based on the need to concentrate U.S. resources for competition with China, Russia, and authoritarianism more generally, and U.S. leaders imagine this justifies shifting resources away from countering VEOs.

Step 2: The withdrawal of support leads to the second stage where the terrorist threat to nation X increases since local VEOs continue, or increase their terrorist and insurgent activities, and the government of nation X responds less effectively due to decreased outside support. Note that the actual decrease in effectiveness and increase in threat need not be substantial, it only must change the level of confidence in the government and expectations about the future. The loss of outside support will make the government of nation X feel less confident and secure, and it will embolden the local terrorists and insurgents, and both sides will see even a small increase in terrorist success as confirmation that the future is looking brighter for the insurgents and darker for the government.

Step 3: The third step is when the government of nation X loses confidence that it can handle the threat on its own, recognizes that the U.S. (and the West) will not provide the assistance it needs, and turns to China (or another authoritarian state). Aid from authoritarian sources was already appealing in certain ways. For example, China often brags that its aid comes “with no strings attached” because it does not demand the kinds of human rights, accountability, and anti-corruption reforms that the U.S. and other Western nations typically require. Thus, the temptation to look for support from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and other authoritarians was already significant, even before the West withdrew support.

Step 4: In step four, China (or another authoritarian power) answers the call and provides an authoritarian, CCP-style solution to the challenge posed by VEOs. This authoritarian solution might include facial recognition software, social credit scores, and legal “reforms” that address terrorism by outlawing all opposition. It will certainly include heavy-handed repression applied not only to the violent extremists, but to other forms of dissent as well. This combination of technology and technique helps convince the government of nation X that it can violently crush all opposition and that it attempts to do so. President John F. Kennedy famously said: “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” As predicted by President Kennedy, when the government of nation X responds violently to all opposition, it forces all opponents to join the violent extremists. The U.S. and other Western nations will respond to the violent authoritarian turn in nation X by further decreasing support and even placing diplomatic and economic sanctions on nation X that increase its dependence on China and force it further into the authoritarian camp.

Step 5: In the fifth and final step, the threat to nation X from terrorists and VEOs has receded, but the newly authoritarian government remains and refuses to return to its more-democratic, pre-crisis form. It retains its authoritarian character partly due to continuing Chinese (Russian, Iranian, etc.) support, partly due to continuing U.S. and Western hostility, but mainly because dictators intuitively understand what Alexis de Tocqueville pointed out back in 1856: “the most dangerous time for a bad government is usually when it begins to reform.” De Tocqueville could have added that the worse the government, the greater the danger from reform, and the newly authoritarian government of nation X has gotten much worse through the five steps. By stage five, the government of nation X finds democratic reform unnecessary (since China and other authoritarian powers assist friendly dictators) and dangerous (as de Tocqueville pointed out) locking it into its new form: authoritarian, pro-China, and anti-United States.

The Trump and Biden administrations thought the shift away from CT would strengthen the U.S. in strategic competition with China, but it can instead put us on a five-step path to defeat in strategic competition. This path takes us from the current liberal, democratic, and U.S.-led world order to a new, authoritarian, CCP-led world order, one nation X at a time.

Is the U.S. on the Five-Step Road to Defeat?

The five-step road to an authoritarian world order is possible, since the world contains scores, perhaps hundreds of nation Xs in danger of heading down this path, but is it taking place and if it is, how far down this path has the world traveled? Let’s consider each step.

Step 1: Stage one is where the U.S. and other Western nations start shifting away from countering violent extremists overseas in a (shortsighted) effort to counter China, Russia, and other nation-state strategic competitors. This shift has been widely publicized and is undeniably underway. In the words of the Trump administration’s 2018 National Defense Strategy: “Inter-state strategic competition, not terrorism, is now the primary concern in U.S. national security.” The top priorities of Mark Esper, as Trump’s Secretary of Defense, were often described as “China, China, China.” Esper and Trump pushed for dramatic reductions in CT resources to facilitate the shift in focus to China. The Biden administration endorsed and expanded this shift away from CT/countering VEOs, and toward strategic competition with China and Russia. Biden completed Trump’s withdrawal from Afghanistan and continues to look for ways to shift resources away from CT and toward strategic competition with China and Russia. The Biden administration is under continuing pressure to speed up the shift away from countering VEOs overseas to devote additional resources to the China problem. Other Western powers, such as France, are following the U.S. example in places like the African Sahel region. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine beginning in February 2022 has reinforced these trends by drawing U.S. and Western attention and resources into Eastern Europe and potentially leaving countless nation Xs outside Europe to fend for themselves.

Step 2: In stage two, the withdrawal of Western support leads to decreased local effectiveness against VEOs and expansion of the terrorist threat. This one is also underway. Afghanistan in 2021 was, of course, the poster child for local government collapse when Western support ended, but Afghanistan was exceptional. In most places, local government performance decreases more gradually and there is usually a significant time lag between the loss of outside support and any obvious increase in terrorist threat. However, recent global assessments of terrorism, including those published by the U.S. government, have noted the diffusion of terrorist organizations into more countries as the threat has “metastasized” in the words of President Biden. According to one recent assessment “the global jihadi terrorist movement now has more fighters in more countries than ever before.” While it is difficult to prove a causal connection in every case, it is at least a very unfortunate coincidence that the terrorists are fielding more fighters in more places at exactly the moment the U.S. and its allies are shrinking the breadth and depth of their support to CT. As more countries feel the terrorist threat, they will look for more CT assistance. If that assistance is not coming from the U.S. and other democracies, then they will look elsewhere.

Stage three is where beleaguered governments turn to China, Russia, and other authoritarian sources of support. This stage is also well underway. China has been building security assistance programs in Africa and elsewhere for years, actively working to replace U.S. influence and security cooperation. There is talk of future Chinese military bases in Mozambique and elsewhere in Africa, and Chinese support against local insurgents will certainly help those basing arrangements come to pass. In the Pacific, the Government of the Solomon Islands announced in December 2021 that it had accepted a Chinese offer of riot control equipment and police trainers to assist the Solomon Islands Police in response to rioting there the previous month. In the words of the official announcement by the government of the Islands: they accepted the Chinese offer of assistance “mindful of the urgent need to strengthen Royal Solomon Islands Police Force capability and capacity to respond to future unrest.” The expectation of “future unrest” suggests the government has limited interest in reforming to address the causes of the unrest and is instead turning to authoritarian solutions as China’s influence continues to grow. (The Solomon Islands have no military forces making the police the only armed security force on the islands.)

The Russians, often under cover of the Wagner Group, have been even more aggressive than the CCP in replacing the West as a provider of counterterrorist assistance. Readers of this journal are already well aware of the Wagner Group, its connections to the Russian government, and its activities across three continents from articles by Tor Bukkvoll and Åse G. Østensen, and by Christopher Spearin. Since those articles came out, the role of the Wagner Group and Russia has continued to increase. In Mali, where the French (with U.S. assistance) had long been the CT partner of choice, the Russians have largely replaced them. Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group have also conducted CT operations on behalf of the governments of Mozambique, the Central African Republic, Syria, factions in Libya, and elsewhere. All this new and varied foreign CT experience will make Wagner Group and similar Russian forces even more capable of providing CT assistance—in the authoritarian model—to likeminded nations anywhere in the world. The current war in Ukraine has forced Russia and the Wagner Group to refocus their efforts on Eastern Europe, but it is too early to tell how long that shift will last and whether China will fill any vacuum that might result. In considering the possibility of Wagner Group retrenchment, it is important to remember that the Wagner Group has a completely different business model from Western security force assistance. The Western model assumes that security force assistance represents a one-way transfer of resources from the U.S. (and/or other Western nations) to the receiving nation. The Wagner Group provides security assistance for a fee and turns a profit on its activities. The intensity of the Russo-Ukraine war in 2022 has forced the Wagner Group to shift its limited resources to Ukraine, but the quest for profit will probably draw Wagner back to Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America when the fighting in Ukraine becomes less intense.

Step 4: Stage four is where authoritarian assistance and an authoritarian approach to countering violent extremists turns the tide in favor of the government. Fortunately, this stage has not been reached in many places. Syria is the obvious success story for authoritarian assistance in countering violent extremists, but the Assad regime was not receiving CT assistance from the U.S. and other Western nations, so it falls outside the five-stage model. Other clear successes for authoritarian assistance replacing U.S. and Western assistance are not yet apparent. However, clear and objective proof that authoritarian methods brought success is not required. All that is required is for the government to believe its authoritarian approach worked, and the government will already be inclined to believe it made the right choices and that even its most authoritarian actions were both necessary and appropriate. If the government starts to waiver in its commitment to authoritarian approaches, there will be abundant Chinese and Russian propaganda encouraging it to stay on the authoritarian course. Thus, anything short of being overthrown will probably be regarded by the newly authoritarian government as proof of authoritarian effectiveness.

Step 5: Stage five is where an authoritarian approach to countering violent extremism locks in an authoritarian government hostile to the United States. For example, in Syria, the way Bashar al-Assad handled the 2011 protest movements was the defining moment for his regime and appears to have made reform impossible for at least a generation. Similarly, the way his father crushed the uprising in Hama in the 1980s helped define his regime. Authoritarian methods of countering opposition are not yet the global norm, but China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and other authoritarian regimes are working to change those norms and democratic reform after a truly authoritarian response to violent extremism is extremely rare.

Clearly, the world has taken some steps down the five-stage road to an authoritarian world order led by the CCP, but there is still time to change course.

How Should the U.S. Change Course?

To solve a problem, one must first recognize that there is a problem, and then accurately define the problem. The Trump and Biden administrations correctly identified strategic competition with China and Russia as the gravest foreign policy challenges facing the nation, but they have been groping toward an accurate definition of the problem. The Trump administration recognized the direct threat from agents of the CCP, such as Chinese People’s Liberation Army, Chinese State-Owned Enterprises, and China’s Maritime Militia, but they did not embrace the governance aspect of strategic competition. They criticized the authoritarian nature of the CCP, but they did not embrace the need to advance democracy and counter authoritarianism generally. The Biden administration is getting closer. They correctly identified the strategic competition between the U.S. and China as part of a larger global competition between democratic and authoritarian governance. That realization helped them see the need to advance democracy and counter authoritarian governance globally. However, the Biden administration has thus far failed to recognize that CT and countering VEOs is a core function of government, that there are fundamental differences between democratic and authoritarian responses to terrorism and VEOs, and that how a government responds to the existential threat from violent extremists can define whether that government is authoritarian or democratic.

The U.S. approach to strategic competition and countering VEOs still assumes these are two unrelated problems and that the U.S. can remove resources from countering violent extremists without impacting strategic competition. This is an easy but fatal mistake. It is an easy mistake because the terrorists are not agents of Russia or the CCP and therefore appear to be a different and separate problem. Fatal because scores of countries are threatened by VEOs. Failing to help them in their hour of need concedes the competition for influence in those states to Russia and the CCP by forcing the threatened government to accept assistance from authoritarian sources. Authoritarian assistance will lead to authoritarian actions that will lock the government into an authoritarian mold, beholden to authoritarian patrons.

Accurately defining the challenge from the CCP and other authoritarians requires the U.S. to recognize that the way a nation responds to terrorism and other forms of organized extremist violence largely determines whether that nation is democratic or authoritarian. To compete with authoritarianism, the U.S. must not only advance democracy in principle, but also provide specific CT and counter violent extremism assistance, in the democratic mode, to threatened nations. This does not mean the U.S. must invest extravagant resources to compete everywhere. There will be places where the costs are too high, the rewards are too small, and the U.S. will have to concede the competition to the CCP and other authoritarian forces. However, this must be a conscious choice made with full understanding that withholding CT assistance will impact strategic competition with the CCP and other authoritarians.

Presidents Trump and Biden tell us the shift away from CT will help free up resources for strategic competition but abandoning CT support to imperfect democracies risks forfeiting the competition to the CCP one nation X at a time, guaranteeing exactly the authoritarian, CCP-dominated world order the U.S. is trying to prevent.

In moving away from the George W. Bush administration’s Global War on Terrorism, the Obama administration also tried to correct Bush’s overreliance on the terms “terrorist” and “terrorist organization” by replacing them with “violent extremist organizations” (VEO) in most DOD documents and that trend has continued. For example, in place of a Global War on Terrorism the DOD now has a Global Campaign Plan to Counter Violent Extremist Organizations. In U.S. national policy documents outside DOD terms like “terrorism” and “violent extremism” are often used interchangeably. See, for example, President Joseph R. Biden, Jr., Interim National Security Strategic Guidance, March 2021, (Unclassified), https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/NSC-1v2.pdf.

Various projects attempt to monitor the number and scale of ongoing terrorist and insurgent conflicts around the world. Two of the best known are the University of Maryland’s START (Study of Terrorism And Response to Terrorism) https://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/access/ and the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) run by Uppsala University Department of Peace and Conflict Research, https://ucdp.uu.se/encyclopedia.

For example: Xiaojun Li, “China is offering ‘no strings attached aid’ to Africa” The Washington Post, 27 September 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/09/27/china-is-offering-no-strings-attached-aid-to-africa-heres-what-that-means/.

President John F. Kennedy, Remarks on the first anniversary of the Alliance for Progress, 13 March 1962, https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/89101-those-who-make-peaceful-revolution-impossible-will-make-violent-revolution.

This is sometimes referred to as the “Tocqueville effect” or the “Tocqueville paradox,” Evgeny Finkel and Gehlbach, Scott (16 July 2018); “The Tocqueville Paradox: When Does Reform Provoke Rebellion?” https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3202013.

Jim Mattis, Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy of the United States, (unclassified), 3. https://dod.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/2018-National-Defense-Strategy-Summary.pdf.

Tom Rogan, “Defense Secretary Mark Esper: It’s China, China, China” Washington Examiner, 28 August 2019, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/defense-secretary-mark-esper-its-china-china-china.

Helene Cooper, Thomas Gibbons-Neff, Charlie Savage and Eric Schmitt, “Pentagon Eyes Africa Drawdown as First Step in Global Troop Shift: The deliberations stem from a push to reduce missions battling distant terrorist groups, and to instead refocus on confronting so-called Great Powers like Russia and China,” New York Times, 24 December 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/24/world/africa/esper-troops-africa-china.html.

Jim Garamone, “Official Talks DOD Policy Role in Chinese Pacing Threat, Integrated Deterrence” DOD NEWS, 2 June 2021, https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/2641068/official-talks-dod-policy-role-in-chinese-pacing-threat-integrated-deterrence/.

For example, the Biden Administration’s Global Posture Review was widely criticized for not including a more rapid and dramatic shift in forces away from counterterrorism and toward countering China in the Indo-Pacific. Jack Detsch, “‘No Decisions, No Changes’: Pentagon Fails to Stick Asia Pivot”, Foreign Policy, 29 November 2021, https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/11/29/pentagon-china-biden-asia-pivot/.

Angela Charlton And Carley Petesch, “France to pull more than 2,000 troops from Africa’s Sahel” AP, 9 July 2021, https://apnews.com/article/europe-government-and-politics-france-e384891a63e6ac15c02177b2c095bf26.

President Joseph Biden, “Remarks by President Biden on Afghanistan,” 16 August 2021. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/08/16/remarks-by-president-biden-on-afghanistan/.

Katherine Zimmerman, “Al Qaeda & ISIS 20 Years After 9/11: Twenty years after the 9/11 attacks, the global jihadist movement has more fighters in more countries than ever before” Wilson Center, 8 September 2021, https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/al-qaeda-isis-20-years-after-911.

Will Reno and Maj. Jesse Humpal, “As the US Slumps Away, China Subsumes African Security Arrangements: Organizations created to fight terror groups after 9/11 are becoming conduits for Beijing’s surveillance and influence” Defense One, 21 October 2020, https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2020/10/us-slumps-away-china-subsumes-african-security-arrangements/169431/.

Dipanjan Roy Chaudhury, “Hydrocarbon rich Mozambique a future military base for China?” The Economic Times of India, 16 September 2021, https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/defence/ hydrocarbon-rich-mozambique-a-future-military-base-for-china/articleshow/86250224.cms? utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst.

Andrew Greene, “Solomon Islands accepts Chinese offer for riot police help” ABC News, 23 December 2021, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-24/solomon-islands-accepts-chinese-offer-for-riot-police-help/100724296.

Michael E. Miller, “China’s growing reach is transforming a Pacific island chain” Washington Post, 11 August 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/11/solomon-islands-china-australia-pacific/.

Tor Bukkvoll and Åse G. Østensen, “The Emergence of Russian Private Military Companies: A New Tool of Clandestine Warfare” Special Operations Journal, 2020, Vol. 6 Issue 1, 1-17; and Christopher Spearin, “Russian Private Military and Security Companies and Special Operations Forces: Birds of a Feather?” Special Operations Journal, 2021, Vol. 7, Issue 2, 152-165.

“At UN, Mali army-appointed PM slams France, praises Russia ties,” Al Jazeera, 24 September 2022, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/9/24/mali-denounces-france-salutes-russia-at-un; and Mucahid Durmaz, “Talk of Wagner mercenary deal shines light on Mali power politics: Possible deal with private security firm reflects ongoing political shift in Mali and changing dynamics in its ties with two powers, Russia and France” Al Jazeera, 21 September 2021. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/21/talk-wagner-mercenary-deal-shines-light-mali-power-politics.

Tim Lister and Sebastian Shukla, “Arrival of Russian Wagner mercenaries in Mali condemned by European governments” CNN, 24 December 2021, https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/24/africa/russia-mercenaries-mali-intl/index.html.

Benjamin Arbiter and Kurt Carlson, “The Changing Face of Russian Counter-Irregular Warfare” War on the Rocks, 21 December 2021, https://warontherocks.com/2021/12/the-changing-face-of-russian-counter-irregular-warfare/?utm_source=WOTR+Newsletter&utm_campaign=01e304c4e1-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_10_30_2018_11_23_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8375be81e9-01e304c4e1-83315199.

interpopulum.org · by ByThomas R. Searle · October 15, 2023

3. U.S. and Israel Split Over Gaza Goals, Muddying War’s Endgame

Excerpts:

“The current rate of civilian death inside Gaza is unacceptable and unsustainable,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D., Conn.), who sits on the Middle East subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Affairs panel, said Thursday. “I urge Israel to immediately reconsider its approach and shift to a more deliberate and proportionate counterterrorism campaign.”

A recent Gallup poll found that Biden’s job-approval rating among Democrats fell 11 percentage points in the past month to 75%—the lowest from his own party during his presidency.

Some Republicans, meanwhile, including 2024 GOP presidential contenders, are citing Biden’s call for a pause in Gaza as evidence that his support for Israel is softening.

And Netanyahu, who before the conflict was already unpopular with Israelis over his push for a controversial judicial overhaul, is now dealing with criticism over how the Oct. 7 attacks happened, his refusal to accept any responsibility for it and questions about whether he should resign.

The prime minister, who built a reputation as a security hawk, has said an investigation would have to wait until the conflict is over and the “only thing that I intend to have resign is Hamas.”

U.S. and Israel Split Over Gaza Goals, Muddying War’s Endgame

Biden and Netanyahu have different long-term aims for the region’s future

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/u-s-and-israel-split-over-gaza-goals-muddying-wars-endgame-9055c329?utm

By Tarini PartiFollow

in Washington and Anat Peled in Tel Aviv

Nov. 4, 2023 9:00 am ET

U.S. and Israeli interests in the ongoing Middle East conflict are diverging in both the short and long term, muddying the path to ending Israel’s war against militant group Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Above all, Israel views Hamas as an existential threat and sees eradicating it as a crucial goal; anything short of that is a failure. The U.S. has committed to helping Israel defeat Hamas, but for President Biden, the threat goes beyond Hamas. His administration is trying to keep its allies united against Iran, Russia and China. Both countries want to avoid a larger regional war, but Israel is willing to take more risks in pursuit of defeating Hamas.

The ‘pause’ debate

In the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas, Biden made his staunch support for Israel clear, embracing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on a trip to Tel Aviv, a rare presidential visit to a war zone. But in the days since, Biden, under pressure from critics in his own party, has repeatedly stressed in phone calls with Netanyahu that Israel should run its military campaign in accordance with international humanitarian law. The U.S. is also increasingly calling for a pause in the fighting to get humanitarian aid into Gaza and hostages safely out, though resisting calls for a full cease-fire.

At a campaign fundraiser Wednesday, an attendee shouted, “As a rabbi I need you to call for a cease-fire right now.” Biden responded: “I think we need a pause.”

As U.S. Pushes for Temporary Halt to Fighting, Netanyahu Pushes Back

Gaza’s unclear future

In the long term, Biden is increasingly calling for a two-state solution, and Blinken has conferred with Israel’s government on what comes next for Israel and Gaza after its military campaign against Hamas.

“We are and will continue to have discussions with partners throughout the region and well beyond about what should follow once Hamas is defeated,” Blinken said Friday. “The best path, maybe even the only path, as I said, is through two states for two peoples.”

Israelis are unclear on what the end of the war would mean for Gaza’s future. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has said the goal is to destroy Hamas’s military capabilities and its ability to govern, but added that his country has no interest in permanently reoccupying Gaza. And some on the Israeli far right have backed occupying Gaza in the longer term or pushing Gazans to the Sinai region of neighboring Egypt, which Egyptian leaders oppose.

Domestic pressures intervene

As the conflict continues with no clear end, Biden and Netanyahu both face growing political pressures at home.

Biden, who was initially praised for his support for Israel, is now seeing criticism from members of his own party—especially younger voters and Muslims and Arab-Americans—who are concerned about the growing death toll in Gaza and urging the administration to call for a cease-fire.

Even members of Congress who have been supporters of Israel and back military aid for the country said this week they wanted to see more restraint in its military campaign against Hamas.

Photos of hostages taken by Hamas during the Oct. 7 attacks line a street in Tel Aviv. PHOTO: ODED BALILTY/ASSOCIATED PRESS

“The current rate of civilian death inside Gaza is unacceptable and unsustainable,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D., Conn.), who sits on the Middle East subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Affairs panel, said Thursday. “I urge Israel to immediately reconsider its approach and shift to a more deliberate and proportionate counterterrorism campaign.”

A recent Gallup poll found that Biden’s job-approval rating among Democrats fell 11 percentage points in the past month to 75%—the lowest from his own party during his presidency.

Some Republicans, meanwhile, including 2024 GOP presidential contenders, are citing Biden’s call for a pause in Gaza as evidence that his support for Israel is softening.

And Netanyahu, who before the conflict was already unpopular with Israelis over his push for a controversial judicial overhaul, is now dealing with criticism over how the Oct. 7 attacks happened, his refusal to accept any responsibility for it and questions about whether he should resign.

The prime minister, who built a reputation as a security hawk, has said an investigation would have to wait until the conflict is over and the “only thing that I intend to have resign is Hamas.”

Write to Tarini Parti at tarini.parti@wsj.com

4. Special Ops command publishes fictional anthology, envisioning the operator of the future

The anthology can be downloaded here: https://www.jsou.edu/Press/PublicationDashboard/239

They should put this in an audiobook format as I know a lot of people who would like to listen to these stories while working out (or rucking).

Conclusion:

P.W. Singer and August Cole were the perfect team to compile this anthology, having written near future military fiction such as the novels Ghost Fleet and Burn In. They not only edited but also wrote three of the short stories. Other authors include academics and Special Forces officers. The Fourth Age is a worthwhile read for anyone wanting to understand what the future aspirations of Special Operations Command is. It's an interesting work of fiction, for now at least.

Special Ops command publishes fictional anthology, envisioning the operator of the future

audacy.com · by Jack Murphy · November 3, 2023

A Ranger task force strikes a Chinese space port in South America, a civil affairs soldier hunts for rogue genetically modified crops in Africa, an experimental dive unit destroys Chinese infrastructure, and Special Forces conduct influence operations in Tel Aviv in a new fictional anthology published by U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM).

The Fourth Age: The Future of Special Operations published by the Joint Special Operations University and SOCOM and edited by P.W. Singer and August Cole contains a series of fictional vignettes that are intended to offer challenging new ideas, as well as offer forward the future aspirations that SOCOM has about their future.

In The Fourth Age gone is the muscle bound tattoo'ed operator shooting guns and kicking in doors. This anthology envisions an alternative take where Special Operations should evolve, one where enablers are more important than operators, where using key technologies is what wins battles, and where it is largely women who are calling the shots. That's right Chad Thundercock, your time has come and gone, along with your homophobic jokes...and 20 years of combat experience, sorry bro.

While that cliche carries a bit of truth, the Special Operations community really is imagining a future force that is more diverse both in terms of the composition of its team members but also in the special skills that are brought to the fight. Currently, Special Forces is experimenting with different types of team composition, possibly even a 16-man (and woman) Operational Detachment Alpha (ODA) that includes psychological operations specialists, civil affairs soldiers, cyber warfare experts, and even Space Force liaisons.

But of course, this is nothing new. Such endeavors have been attempted before. The so-called Revolution in Military Affairs, Don Rumsfeld's net-centric warfare, and today's flirtations with mixed reality goggles that reportedly have soldiers stumbling around training areas vomiting on themselves. In recent years SOCOM blew through millions of dollars developing a silly "Iron Man" type powered armor suit that never went anywhere.

Some of these technologies and tactics pan out, others don't.

In the Fourth Age, a not so-distant future is imaged where Iran and Russia continue to be annoyances to the United States, and China far from having its economy stall out as some predict, continues to roar forward into the 21st century. In this fiction, the men and women of Special Operations Command are called to fight a global battle against the Chinese communist party as a part of full blown political warfare fought across all of the spectrums and domains of warfare not just for influence, but for access to rare earth minerals.

Many of the vignettes in The Fourth Age are indeed thought provoking and interesting, but one can't help but notice what is absent. Combat is left off camera or simply is not present. One of the final stories details the Ranger Regiment and SEALs capturing a Chinese space port where a few PLA soldiers are killed, again "off camera."

While a project like this by no means can, or necessarily, should be a blood and guts shoot 'em up, one cannot help being slightly disturbed by how sterile this future vision of war is. Such premonitions have been made in the past, that robots would fight our wars for us, that conflicts would become more humane through our treaty obligations. Instead we've witnessed wholesale slaughter and barbarism from Syria to Ukraine to Gaza just over the last few years.

Technology is going to change the modern battlefield, but decisions in combat are unlikely to be made on the deck of the star ship Enterprise by a female Green Beret with a graduate degree wearing VR goggles. As we've seen recently, despite living in a world of technology at some point soldiers have to assault the enemy trench line and when it happens, the result is not far removed from what troops in World War I did a century ago.

The dream of two Green Berets in a hotel room with M4 rifles, laptops, and suite of hacking tools that are able to conduct direct action, special recon, and cyber warfare is not a new one. The stumbling blocks to get there are partly the massive shift in Special Ops culture (mentioned above) that would be required as well as bureaucratic and legal issues over authorizations and title authorities.

Many of the activities described in The Fourth Age are things that Special Forces would love to do, but absent of an AI "black box" that authorizes mission plans without human oversight as one short story details, these ideas are solidly in the realm of science fiction.

While technology acts as an enabler for Special Forces, rarely discussed is how it acts as a disabler. The force has made great strides in modernization but one area that Special Forces has actually backslid on is decentralization. Due to limited communications technology, Green Berets in the past had to act on their own and be trusted to carry out the mission and satisfy the commander's intent with little or not input from higher headquarters once deployed to the field.

With the proliferation of communications technologies, commanders now have the ability to reach all the way down through the entire military bureaucracy, down to the individual soldier level. They demand constant updates, want to monitor soldiers in real time using drone feeds, and mitigate risk at each stage of the operation in a zero defect military culture. Real time intelligence has become real time oversight on the soldier. In this scenario, the question is not whether the hyper-enabled technologically competent soldier can defeat the enemy, but rather if his command structure can get out of its own way.

P.W. Singer and August Cole were the perfect team to compile this anthology, having written near future military fiction such as the novels Ghost Fleet and Burn In. They not only edited but also wrote three of the short stories. Other authors include academics and Special Forces officers. The Fourth Age is a worthwhile read for anyone wanting to understand what the future aspirations of Special Operations Command is. It's an interesting work of fiction, for now at least.

The anthology can be downloaded and read free of charge on the JSOU website.

audacy.com · by Jack Murphy · November 3, 2023

5. The Gaza war reveals how colleges lost their way on free speech

Excerpts:

Sometimes the free flow of dialogue can be uncomfortable, and FIRE often defends statements and individuals who are unpopular. Even as people on and off campus fear that heated rhetoric will lead to an increase in Islamophobic or antisemitic violence, Morey argues colleges should not stop their students from making statements that many find deeply upsetting or even dangerous. Instead, she said, colleges should focus on creating a safe environment where even jarring, hurtful, or racist notions can be discussed and debated.

It’s a lot to grapple with, and I talked to Morey about it all: school statements, student protests, faculty speech, whether words are violence, and why certain students are under more scrutiny than others. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

...

Fabiola Cineas

What’s your broad assessment of how the conflict in the Middle East is playing out on college campuses?

Alex Morey

The zoom-out assessment is that it’s a really divisive topic. It’s a big controversy, whether you are looking at it on the ground in the Middle East, or if you are on a college campus. Wherever people are talking about what’s going on with Israelis and Palestinians, this is a hot-button issue.

Lots of people want to express their opinions about it, so it’s no surprise that on college campuses, we are seeing the same level of passion from students and faculty as we’re seeing from anybody who is confronting this long-running and really intractable conflict.

That said, FIRE is always urging colleges and universities and members of those communities, whether you’re a student or the president or a faculty member, to recognize the university’s very special role when it comes to confronting these problems. [Universities] are not corporations. [School leaders] are not politicians.

We have found in recent years that universities are acting a lot more like corporations when it comes to making statements about big political and social issues. They’re worrying about, “Well, how does this look for the brand?” or “If there’s controversy on campus, is that going to make legislators mad at us and take away our funding?” The focus has been removed from what we think is the core mission of the university, which is to foster debate and discussion. It is to welcome not just a diversity of students and faculty and help them thrive, but to also embrace a diversity of views. The college campus is the place to have people’s different authentic views come together, where we can have discussions in a scholarly and civil way. That isn’t a top priority for many universities, it seems, and that is a big mistake.

The Israel-Hamas conversation has seemed to wake administrators up, at least a bit, to the realization that if they continue their practice of taking firm sides on political and social issues, they will, repeatedly, arrive at places like this, where there are conflicts on which there is no “right” side.

The Gaza war reveals how colleges lost their way on free speech

A First Amendment lawyer argues the university’s role in a crisis should be shutting up.

By Fabiola Cineas Nov 5, 2023, 7:00am EST

Vox · by Fabiola Cineas · November 5, 2023

Students protesting the Israel-Hamas war call for a ceasefire in Gaza.

Michael Nigro/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images

Fabiola Cineas covers race and policy as a reporter for Vox. Before that, she was an editor and writer at Philadelphia magazine, where she covered business, tech, and the local economy.

The Israel-Hamas war has brought the long-simmering debates over free speech on college campuses to a boiling point.

If school leaders released statements, they were criticized — for not denouncing Hamas and antisemitism or for ignoring the Palestinian plight. On campus, both Jewish and Palestinian students say they aren’t getting support from administrators and staff. Campus protests have put pressure on school leaders to choose a side or curb student speech and behavior.

Emotions and fears are running high: Jewish students and student groups say they are fearful of antisemitism on campus. Palestinian students say they are facing Islamophobia and racism. Students who signed petitions that critics say supported Hamas in the wake of its October 7 attack are losing career opportunities or have been publicly named and investigated.

The leading group advocating for free speech on campus argues that the problem is not that universities are doing too little to stifle hateful speech; it’s that they have already done too much. Amid the major social and political catastrophes of the past decade, higher education institutions have strayed away from their mission: to foster dialogue and the flow of different ideas, said Alex Morey, the director of the campus rights advocacy program at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE).

Sometimes the free flow of dialogue can be uncomfortable, and FIRE often defends statements and individuals who are unpopular. Even as people on and off campus fear that heated rhetoric will lead to an increase in Islamophobic or antisemitic violence, Morey argues colleges should not stop their students from making statements that many find deeply upsetting or even dangerous. Instead, she said, colleges should focus on creating a safe environment where even jarring, hurtful, or racist notions can be discussed and debated.

It’s a lot to grapple with, and I talked to Morey about it all: school statements, student protests, faculty speech, whether words are violence, and why certain students are under more scrutiny than others. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Fabiola Cineas

What’s your broad assessment of how the conflict in the Middle East is playing out on college campuses?

Alex Morey

The zoom-out assessment is that it’s a really divisive topic. It’s a big controversy, whether you are looking at it on the ground in the Middle East, or if you are on a college campus. Wherever people are talking about what’s going on with Israelis and Palestinians, this is a hot-button issue.

Lots of people want to express their opinions about it, so it’s no surprise that on college campuses, we are seeing the same level of passion from students and faculty as we’re seeing from anybody who is confronting this long-running and really intractable conflict.

That said, FIRE is always urging colleges and universities and members of those communities, whether you’re a student or the president or a faculty member, to recognize the university’s very special role when it comes to confronting these problems. [Universities] are not corporations. [School leaders] are not politicians.

We have found in recent years that universities are acting a lot more like corporations when it comes to making statements about big political and social issues. They’re worrying about, “Well, how does this look for the brand?” or “If there’s controversy on campus, is that going to make legislators mad at us and take away our funding?” The focus has been removed from what we think is the core mission of the university, which is to foster debate and discussion. It is to welcome not just a diversity of students and faculty and help them thrive, but to also embrace a diversity of views. The college campus is the place to have people’s different authentic views come together, where we can have discussions in a scholarly and civil way. That isn’t a top priority for many universities, it seems, and that is a big mistake.

The Israel-Hamas conversation has seemed to wake administrators up, at least a bit, to the realization that if they continue their practice of taking firm sides on political and social issues, they will, repeatedly, arrive at places like this, where there are conflicts on which there is no “right” side.

Fabiola Cineas

You’re saying universities should not have come out to comment on Hamas’s attack on Israel or on Israel’s continued bombardment of Gaza. But we are now past that point at many schools, as you acknowledged.

Now some students and faculty members are facing consequences as part of this environment you describe in which universities are trying to be arbiters of right and wrong when it comes to speech and actions. In light of this, what are the foundational speech protections that students, faculty, and school leaders have on campus for speaking out on this issue?

Alex Morey

It depends on whether or not you’re on a public or private campus. Public campuses have to follow the First Amendment, which means students and faculty have broad First Amendment rights. Students can express their views on anything on campus. They can protest. They can hand out leaflets, or, in line with the university’s posting policies, hang up posters. They have broad First Amendment rights that would apply to anyone in society when they’re speaking off campus in their free time and in many of the areas on campus. There are exceptions for in the classroom. They can’t get up in the middle of class and be screaming or something because faculty also have First Amendment rights, including the right to academic freedom, which entails, among other things, the right for them to control their classroom.

Faculty also have strong academic freedom rights, which is like a corollary of the First Amendment, to make extramural commentary. That means that on their own time they can talk about things that are related to issues of public concern. So something as politically dicey as what’s happening in the Middle East is an incredibly important issue of public concern.

Administrators actually have fewer rights. Of course they have their rights as citizens when they’re off the clock, but because they are effectively employees of the university, their speech can be restricted in ways that we don’t see for faculty and students, who have much broader rights.

Private campuses that make free speech and academic freedom promises in their mission statements, which is most of them, have to keep those promises. These promises all basically say our students and faculty have free speech rights commensurate with the First Amendment.

Fabiola Cineas

And how does counterspeech fit into that framework of protections?

Alex Morey

Counterspeech is super important. The vision of the First Amendment is not just that people are allowed to say anything without the government suppressing it. It’s this idea that if we all talk together, we will have better outcomes for society. When somebody raises an idea that might be unpopular or wrongheaded or offensive, the idea is that other people will then lend their voices through counterspeech and say, “I disagree with that idea and here’s why. Here’s why my idea is better.”

Fabiola Cineas

That gets complicated in practice.

Alex Morey

There are some nuances that are really important, that illustrate how universities could be doing a better job of explaining this to students and faculty and deans who are in charge of making sure different speaking events and protests go off without a hitch.

One is that when students are speaking in open outdoor areas of campus, areas that function like a public square, if a heated back-and-forth occurs between students, that’s protected speech. We’ve been seeing this a lot in recent weeks, where there might be a pro-Israel protest on the quad and a pro-Palestinian student comes up and says, “You all are a bunch of jerks!” This is all protected as long as there is no physical altercation or true threat, which has a specific legal definition.

Then another situation we often see these issues raised is when it comes to invited speakers or situations where a student group has reserved a space for a speaker or their members to speak. There’s been a lot of confusion about, “Well, can’t a protest group come marching through this speech and shout it down? Isn’t that our free speech?” The Supreme Court has firmly said no, that’s called a heckler’s veto. It means if there is a particular forum that has been reserved for a particular type of speech, those students who are putting on that speaker or who are speaking, have the right to control that forum until they’re done speaking. What those protesters can do instead of censoring the speech is have space nearby outside the venue where they can protest contemporaneously.

Universities should support that kind of exchange and teach students it’s not actually free speech to shout down the speaker. They should facilitate that exchange of ideas. Relatedly, actions like ripping down posters also typically are not protected expression. Blocking access to or egress from buildings, trespassing, incitement — where you’re actively, intentionally encouraging someone to go commit a crime imminently and it’s likely that they will do it — those things are not protected. Most of what we see on campus is just students and some of the faculty having really heated debates and expressing opinions that a lot of people find hateful and offensive and that, without more, is all protected.

A “Kidnapped from Israel” sign is taped to a light post during a rally as students at NYU call for a ceasefire in Gaza.

Michael Nigro/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images

Fabiola Cineas

But I feel like since 2020, a facet of our society now — and this especially plays out on college campuses — is that students look to administrators’ and leaders’ messages to feel safe. There’s the example of how after 9/11, hate crimes against Muslims decreased after President Bush said that America will not tolerate Islamophobia. I spoke to the folks at Hillel International who told me Jewish students on campus don’t feel safe because they don’t believe they have the support of school leadership. A lawyer at Palestine Legal told me Muslim students don’t feel supported right now. And when they say support, it’s not necessarily like, are there more officers on campus to protect our safety, but it’s like, what is the administration communicating in its statement that can help us feel safe?

Alex Morey

This is probably the most important change that we need to see on campuses if we are going to have the kind of speech and debate climate that’s ideal in these university spaces.

There’s been a lot of research about how this generation of students is dealing with more mental health issues than in other generations. One reason is these students have had very intensive parenting that didn’t expose them to views or ideas that could upset them. Now when they get to campus, they have similar expectations, that they can go to someone to say, “Fix this for me, I’m upset.” But universities really need to help teach them that words and ideas are incredibly powerful, but so are they. They can confront a lot of these ideas with confidence.

They need the skills to understand, “Why is it important to listen to people that I might not agree with? What are the contours of listening to an idea that I disagree with? I am actually strong enough to be able to handle that, and, in fact, it’s so much better than when these ideas have to be pushed underground and they fester, that they turn into actual violence.”

There are benefits of genuinely confronting these ideas. We need to help students learn that while words and ideas are incredibly powerful, not only are they not “violence,” but, in fact, they’re the opposite of violence. And they are the best way that we, as humans, have ever devised to work out our problems without killing each other or without jailing each other.

Fabiola Cineas

Is all speech being treated the same right now? Are students who are speaking out in support of Israel being treated the same as students who speak out for Palestinian rights?

Alex Morey

It depends on who you ask. That’s the heart of all of the discussion of “hate speech” right now. Like, if you say, “Free Palestine,” then you must mean that you’re pro-Hamas. Or if you say, “release the hostages,” then that must mean you are cool with genocide in Gaza. Of course, it’s much more nuanced than that. A lot of people are justifying not wanting to talk to each other because they think these are just war criminals on both sides.

From a First Amendment perspective, there should be no value judgment on speech other than is it protected or not. And when we’re asking that question, we’re asking, should the government or the institution that promises First Amendment commitments, should we put them in charge of deciding which is the appropriate view to have on Israel-Palestine?

We think the key to navigating these incredibly divisive and polarized times that are now in front of us, unlike any time in the past, is to have universities not take a stance on these issues for exactly the reason you raise. At the University of Arizona recently, the president came out saying, “We condemn Hamas.” He also basically said, “I’m really nervous about the [Students for Justice in Palestine] chapter on our campus speaking up about Palestine and liberation, they’re going to do a rally on our campus and they have the right to do that, but I don’t really like it. It doesn’t align with our values.”

Then SJP immediately canceled the rally and said they didn’t feel safe doing it on campus. That was a grave situation in which nobody’s First Amendment rights were violated since everybody who was speaking and counterspeaking had the right to do that. But when that speech is coming from the institution itself, an institution that is supposed to embrace all views, the effect is that some views can be marginalized.

We’re seeing many situations of students being investigated, like Ryna Workman, who lost her big law job for saying Israel bears responsibility for the loss of life in Israel. NYU said they are investigating her. We are definitely seeing the pro-Palestinian type of speech being less popular writ large on many campuses. One thing universities can do to signal that they are not elevating some protected speech over other protected speech is for the institution itself to not start from a place of bias.

A truck with pro-Israel messaging parked near the pro-Palestine rally at NYU.

Michael Nigro/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images

Fabiola Cineas

You mention that students who are articulating pro-Palestinian views are being disproportionately challenged on their speech. Why do you think that is?

Alex Morey

It’s probably because the pro-Palestinian students do feel more like the minority on most campuses, and because often they are. And so they feel less empowered and less supported by the university. If universities had come out and said, “We stand with the people of Gaza. End genocide now,” it might be a totally different situation where Palestinian students were feeling like their speech is the one that is important on campus.

And then in broader society, we’re not seeing employers take people’s jobs because they condemned Hamas. The people that stand with Gaza, they’re the ones losing their jobs. The US government is fully behind Israel. Beyond campus, there’s this sense that most people are generally pro-Israel at this moment. So students who are pro-Palestine probably feel like their speech is unpopular and we’re seeing that play out on campuses. I don’t think we’ve yet had a situation where a pro-Israel student or professor is facing some kind of censorship attempt from the university. I could be mistaken but there’s lots coming from the other direction.

Fabiola Cineas

What’s your assessment of how campus protests have played out? They appear to have gotten heated, with clashes between dueling protests. Jewish students are fearful that some pro-Palestine rallies have been antisemitic. There have been images of students with signs that say “keep the world clean” accompanied by an image of the Israeli flag in the trash. Palestinian students and advocates report being shut down.

Alex Morey

It’s all protected, as long as that’s all there is. As long as there is no true threat.

Fabiola Cineas

What is a true threat in this context?

Alex Morey

A true threat is a serious expression of an intent to commit unlawful violence that’s targeted toward a person or a specific group of people, like “Those people over there, we’re going to do something bad to them.” It’s a very high bar, so even stuff that people find very offensive or wrongheaded, like the Star of David in the trash can, is all protected unless there is some kind of substantial step that moves it toward meeting that true threat threshold.

Fabiola Cineas

And how are incitement and discriminatory harassment different?

Alex Morey

Incitement is a statement in which the speaker is asking people to commit an unlawful act of violence. Again, it has to be targeted in the way that a true threat would need to be targeted, and it also has to be likely to occur.

A lot of this generalized, very heated rhetoric around Israel and Palestine is not going to meet that high bar. It’s the same with discriminatory harassment. In higher ed, discriminatory harassment is only those unwelcome statements that are so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive. It is typically repetitive, targeted conduct or speech that is so serious that it deprives the victim of their ability to get an education at the university. So just walking around campus seeing a poster [with hateful language], that’s going to be upsetting. That’s going to make you want to speak out and counter that, but you can just walk away and still go to class.

Of course, universities can speak to campus communities and say, “Look, to the extent that our Jewish or Palestinian students are feeling unsupported or are worried that some of this speech might devolve into violence, here are the steps we’re taking.” And those steps can include ramping up security, providing the contact information for campus safety, and providing mental health resources, other health resources.

Universities can do what they can to make sure that they are creating a campus that’s not a tinderbox for violence. But beyond that, it is very important under the First Amendment that colleges and universities not try to sanitize or civilize a lot of this speech that is heated and passionate for a reason.

Fabiola Cineas

I am still trying to understand how really antisemitic or racist or Islamophobic/anti-Palestinian statements are akin to saying “Fuck the draft,” particularly in this climate.

Alex Morey

It’s a tough one. But I’ve got the answer for you. A lot of people are saying “hate speech isn’t protected speech.” But hate speech is protected speech because there is no legal definition of hate speech.

Israel thinks the Palestinians are engaging in hate speech and the Palestinians think Israel is engaging in hate speech. And who’s right? We can’t know. That’s sort of the idea that’s embraced by the First Amendment, that one man’s vulgarity is another man’s lyric.

Another example is stomping on the American flag. Some people think that we can all agree that stomping on the American flag is unpatriotic and hateful. But you could argue that the person stomping on the American flag loves America too, but maybe they don’t love how it’s being run right now and it’s their First Amendment right to raise those concerns.

The key Supreme Court case that talks about hate speech and why it has to be protected is Snyder v. Phelps, which is the Westboro Baptist Church case in which the church was outside military funerals with signs and shirts that said, “Thank God for dead soldiers” and “Fag troops.” The parents of some of these soldiers sued the church since they believed that the speech was so disgusting. The families believed that that kind of hate speech wasn’t protected.

But the Supreme Court unanimously said the church’s speech is protected. It’s because speech is so powerful. It can make people very upset. It can prompt people to do things and make change and raise their own voices in protest. In the US, we have a unique commitment to leaving debate as wide open as possible so that we don’t stifle debate.

Fabiola Cineas

Are there international comparisons that help us illustrate why America is so committed to protecting speech, even if it’s hate speech?

Alex Morey

There have been attempts in other countries, [in] Europe, France and Germany, in particular, to pass antisemitism laws that make it illegal to say stuff like “I hate the Jews.” But there are a couple of interesting things about those antisemitism laws, about how they don’t work.

One, we have seen uneven implementation of those laws. For example, when the Charlie Hebdo newsroom was shot up because they were making fun of the Prophet Muhammad, a lot of Muslims were saying they’ve been talking about issues that are important in the Muslim community but were being targeted under the antisemitism law. There have been Muslims put in jail for violating the antisemitism law when they were making statements like, “Maybe I can see why some of these Muslims are acting in violent ways.” Muslims have been jailed in France for that, but the Charlie Hebdo staff were making fun of Muslims and it was no big deal.

Separately, Germany has some of the strictest antisemitism laws, where you can’t make certain statements about Jews. And they’ve also got the biggest underground growing ultra-right Nazi crisis — that German authorities can’t keep track of — in the world because we don’t know where these Nazis are. They can’t say this stuff, but they still hold those views.

Students from Hunter College participate in a pro-Palestinian demonstration on campus. The student organization Students for Justice In Palestine (SJP) held protests in colleges across the nation to show solidarity with Palestine.

Michael Nigro/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images

Fabiola Cineas

There’s the sense right now that this kind of hate speech is widespread, that students all across America are engaging in some kind of charged speech that is disrupting the ability of campuses to function right now. And the war in the Middle East is only intensifying. Is it the case that speech is getting worse on campuses because it is going unchecked?

Alex Morey

I think, broadly, those kinds of very extreme statements are not rampant on college campuses. I know we have seen an uptick in this really heated rhetoric in the last few weeks. But a lot of the pushback that I get during this free speech work is like, well, if we allow speech to be that free, then KKK groups are going to be popping up on campuses everywhere. That is not happening. Most people are decent people who want to have these conversations, so universities should be fostering them rather than taking action to silence students.

Fabiola Cineas

Can you talk about why you believe it feels so charged to call someone antisemitic right now, or to call someone a Zionist? Students are saying they’re afraid of being called one or the other, or are being called terrorists or terrorist sympathizers. Are these terms being weaponized in some way and why?

Alex Morey

The zeitgeist for many people is to take a single view that someone might have and extrapolate that to an extreme, and say, “Well, if you believe this one thing then you must believe all these other things.”

People are seeing that happening, and they’re very worried about being misunderstood. I don’t think there’s a lot of recognition in the world right now that people are more than just one particular view. We’re nuanced, complicated creatures. We’re afraid of what’s happening in our world right now and we want to be in our little boxes and look for any signal from other groups that they might be a danger to us.

Vox · by Fabiola Cineas · November 5, 2023

6. Ukraine: 2024 headwinds

Excerpts:

Politics will prove rough for Ukraine in the year ahead. Both the United States and Russia have elections in 2024. In Russia, Vladimir Putin will seek to demonstrate that Russian forces have made gains before the election, and this is what is partially driving the elevated levels of Russian offensive operations in Ukraine.

The US situation will be more complicated. There is growing partisanship over support for Ukraine. A recent survey conducted by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs shows that fewer Republicans than Democrats support ongoing assistance to Ukraine, and that this gap is expanding. Donald Trump, front-runner for the Republican nomination, admires Putin more than Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and is unlikely to support large packages of military and financial support for Ukraine.

The massive consumption of munitions, equipment and other items such as personnel equipment and fuel was a huge surprise to the global arms industry.

Ukraine: 2024 headwinds | Lowy Institute

A country already severely tested will face challenges in politics,

maintaining global attention, and ensuring the necessities of war.

lowyinstitute.org · by Mick Ryan

This week saw the US House of Representatives finally elect a new Speaker after a long and rancorous debate. A bill to fund continued American support for Ukraine’s war effort is now high on the agenda. But newly elected Speaker Mike Johnson has an inauspicious voting record on Ukraine assistance. In some respects, the election of a US Speaker who has opposed aid to Ukraine is a harbinger of the headwinds facing Kyiv as it plans for what will be a difficult 2024.

Politics will prove rough for Ukraine in the year ahead. Both the United States and Russia have elections in 2024. In Russia, Vladimir Putin will seek to demonstrate that Russian forces have made gains before the election, and this is what is partially driving the elevated levels of Russian offensive operations in Ukraine.

The US situation will be more complicated. There is growing partisanship over support for Ukraine. A recent survey conducted by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs shows that fewer Republicans than Democrats support ongoing assistance to Ukraine, and that this gap is expanding. Donald Trump, front-runner for the Republican nomination, admires Putin more than Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and is unlikely to support large packages of military and financial support for Ukraine.

The massive consumption of munitions, equipment and other items such as personnel equipment and fuel was a huge surprise to the global arms industry.

In Ukraine, 2024 was also supposed to be a presidential election year. However, with nearly 20 per cent of Ukraine occupied by Russian forces and polling places an obvious target for Russian artillery, missiles and drones, holding an election before the end of the war would be extraordinarily difficult. An extension to martial law in August this year also puts the 2024 elections in doubt. A delay to the election is certain to be a key element in Russian misinformation operations conducted next year in the West, with an intention to degrade support for Ukraine. It is also likely that putting off the elections will be part of the narrative used by some in the US Congress to justify cutting aid to Ukraine.

Strategically, Ukraine faces new difficulties because it is now competing with Israel for the time and attention of American and European leaders and policymakers. The focus of senior people is even more important than the crucial munitions that both Ukraine and Israel are drawing from their foreign supporters. With decreasing public support for the war, the attention and advocacy of leaders such as US President Joe Biden, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is crucial for securing financial and military assistance.

At the same time, neither the United States nor European nations have yet adopted a clear or coordinated strategy for their Ukraine support. While political leaders use terms such as “we support Ukraine to the end”, this does not comprise a strategy. America and Europe appear to be undecided on the ultimate political objective for the war. Is it to defend Ukraine or defeat Russia? These are two very different strategic objectives, with different levels of support required. A decision on which of these two objectives is to be pursued is necessary, and until that decision is made, Ukraine will need to pursue what it sees as the best way ahead despite Western strategic indecision.

A memorial for fallen soldiers in Independence Square, Kyiv, on 30 October, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine (Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images)

A final component of the headwinds facing Ukraine in 2024 is industrial. The war between Ukraine and Russia is a war of industrial systems. The massive consumption of munitions and other items such as personnel equipment and fuel was a huge surprise to the global arms industry. The return to massed artillery and air defence missile consumption has outstripped the capacity of the market. Demand also exceeds supply for armoured vehicles and drones.

While the Americans and the Europeans have taken the initial steps to increase production, it is unlikely that Western defence production, and Ukraine’s indigenous production, will fully meet the needs of any 2024 offensives by Ukraine. Ukraine needs around 1.5 million rounds of ammunition annually. Europe can produce around 300,000 rounds per year and the Americans are building towards a total production of 1.2 million rounds per year. But at least some of this will be required to backfill stocks that have already been sent to Ukraine. And as the concurrent wars in Israel and Ukraine demonstrate, the US defence industrial base – and that of its allies – are not adequately prepared to support these wars and build up stocks to deter a war with China.

At the same time, Russia increased its defence budget and spent the past year increasing defence production. It is also sourcing defence materiel from the huge stocks of the North Koreans. While Ukrainian munition stocks may last for several more months, the combination of insufficient Western production, dwindling on-hand stocks in the militaries of Europe and the United States, and the increased supply to Russia means that Russia may have an advantage in munitions by the middle of 2024.

None of these headwinds portends disaster ahead for Ukraine, however. It is a nation that has demonstrated widespread individual heroism, societal resilience and a broad spirit of innovation. The political, strategic, and industrial challenges are solvable. But they will demand more attention from Ukrainian strategists – and more assistance from the West – to ensure that in 2024 they do not collectively and with other surprises in war overwhelm a nation that is fighting for its very existence.

lowyinstitute.org · by Mick Ryan

7. An Israeli ‘Pause’ Would Help Hamas

An Israeli ‘Pause’ Would Help Hamas

Why would the jihadists give up their hostage leverage so easily? Meanwhile, Hezbollah blinks—for now.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/israel-gaza-hamas-pause-antony-blinken-joe-biden-5265b7fd?mod=opinion_lead_pos1&utm

By The Editorial Board

Nov. 3, 2023 6:48 pm ET

Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks during a press conference in Tel Aviv on Nov. 3. PHOTO: JONATHAN ERNST/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

President Biden has been stalwart in backing Israel’s right to destroy Hamas after the Oct. 7 massacre. But a political backlash is growing, in the Democratic Party and abroad, to rein in Israel before it can achieve its military objectives. Is the Administration’s support beginning to crack?

Secretary of State Antony Blinken went to Israel Friday to deliver a mixed message: Defeat Hamas—“there cannot and must not be a return to the pre-Oct. 7 status quo”—but pause the fighting and think about a two-state solution for Palestinians “not tomorrow, not after the war, but today.”

He may want to hold off on that last desire. After Hamas used Gaza to carry out massacres, and with some 200,000 Israelis now internally displaced, creating a new Palestinian state near Israel’s big cities sounds reckless even to Israeli doves. Maybe some time down the road.

Mr. Blinken presented “humanitarian pauses” as critical to protecting Gazans, getting them aid and freeing Israeli and U.S. hostages. The “pause” idea was embraced by Mr. Biden Wednesday in response to an anti-Israel protester’s hectoring for a cease-fire. “I think we need a pause,” the President said. “A pause means give time to get the prisoners out.”

On Thursday 13 Senate Democrats echoed that call. Sen. Chris Murphy (D., Conn.) even advised Israeli generals to rethink their “current operational approach.”

The President may conciliate some Democrats to his left, but a pause would halt Israel’s advance and momentum in exchange for uncertain gains. Mr. Blinken acknowledged that Israel has raised “legitimate questions” about “how to connect a pause to the release of hostages, how to ensure that Hamas doesn’t use these pauses or arrangements to its own advantage.”

“We believe they can be solved,” the Secretary of State added, but he didn’t say how. He’ll need details to convince Israel, which won’t consider a temporary cease-fire, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, unless Hamas releases its 242 hostages.

As Israeli forces have advanced, quickly encircling Gaza City and bearing down on tunnel networks and strongholds, Hamas would like nothing more than to slow them down.

It strains credibility to think Hamas wouldn’t use a pause to its advantage. Nor is Hamas likely to release all hostages and forfeit its best leverage. It may drag out negotiations, dribbling out hostages to win reprieve after reprieve, plus propaganda bumps.

The way to help Palestinian civilians isn’t to slow the Israeli advance. The less control Hamas has over Gaza’s streets, the more civilians can escape the fighting and the more aid can be brought in securely. The ground invasion has already allowed humanitarian assistance to ramp up, with more than 100 truckloads now arriving each day. Hamas would use freedom of action to keep civilians as shields and pilfer more aid—limiting what Israel can let in.

Mr. Blinken’s wasn’t the only big speech Friday. Hassan Nasrallah, the terrorist leader of Hezbollah, emerged from the bunker from which he rules Lebanon to huff and puff and conspicuously fail to blow the house down. He made the usual threats against Israel and the U.S., but he also claimed Hezbollah is already doing its part to fight Israel.

Hezbollah’s daily attacks are dangerous, but Mr. Nasrallah said nothing to indicate a break from the low-intensity, tit-for-tat pattern of fighting. This is a tentative success for U.S. policy, which seeks to constrain both Hezbollah and Israel from escalating. The aircraft-carrier strike groups that Mr. Biden deployed so far have served their purpose.

Pushing for pauses in Gaza, on the other hand, could backfire by keeping Hamas afloat and dragging out the conflict—to the detriment of Israeli and Palestinian civilians. The U.S. interest is in a swift and decisive Israeli victory.

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Wonder Land: The Democratic Party never expected Jew-hatred to be a feature of its coalition. Now it is. Images: AP Composite: Mark Kelly

Appeared in the November 4, 2023, print edition as 'An Israeli ‘Pause’ Would Help Hamas'.

8. America Can’t Afford to Alienate Its Undemocratic Allies

Conclusion:

Democracy around the world is America’s spiritual grand strategy. Like all grand strategies, it requires constant bending and adjustment, which is what the present circumstances demand.

America Can’t Afford to Alienate Its Undemocratic Allies

The leaders of Egypt and Saudi Arabia are far from perfect. The alternatives would be much worse.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/america-cant-afford-to-alienate-its-undemocratic-allies-egypt-diplomacy-middle-east-saudi-arabia-b8b3f73b?mod=opinion_lead_pos6&utm

By Robert D. Kaplan

Nov. 3, 2023 2:08 pm ET

Egypt's President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi speaks in Cairo, Oct. 15. PHOTO: JACQUELYN MARTIN/ASSOCIATED PRESS

After spending years criticizing Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the Biden administration is coming to realize that the U.S. needs those Arab leaders.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to Cairo soon after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel. He asked Mr. Sisi to open Gaza’s southern border at Rafah so that trapped American citizens and other foreign nationals could get out and humanitarian aid could get in. Mr. Sisi has now obliged him. Mr. Blinken, as well as President Biden, has asked MBS, as the Saudi crown prince is known, to keep the door open to a security and diplomatic pact among Saudi Arabia, Israel and the U.S. Indications are that MBS remains open to an eventual rapprochement with Israel.

Neither Mr. Sisi nor MBS seemed especially happy to meet Mr. Blinken. The crown prince reportedly kept him waiting for hours, and Mr. Sisi weirdly criticized the secretary of state for emphasizing his Jewish background in remarks about the Hamas attacks. Both leaders were sidelined for years by the Biden administration’s push for an alliance of democracies, which Egypt and Saudi Arabia clearly aren’t and may never be.

Given the practical alternatives, the U.S. is lucky to have Mr. Sisi and MBS leading their respective countries at this terrifying juncture in history. Mr. Sisi came to power almost a decade ago after the Islamist-inspired chaos of the Arab Spring. As well-placed Egyptians explained to me, had the Iranian military had a leader like Mr. Sisi in 1979, there might not have been an Islamic revolution. He is about to enter his second decade in power on a downward trajectory, as poverty intensifies and many Egyptians find his regime’s human-rights violations intolerable.

Still, as Henry Kissinger wrote in 1957, statesmen have to combine “what is considered just with what is considered possible.” And what is possible in Egypt now isn’t a highly imperfect experiment with democracy that again unleashes the Islamic genie, but a hard, secular-spirited ruler with whom the U.S. might be able to do business. The Egyptian-Israeli security relationship has been active and intense under Mr. Sisi. You couldn’t ask for a better behind-the-scenes relationship: For 44 years, Egypt has proved that peace with Israel is sustainable, however fraught it is at the moment.

Mr. Sisi’s present truculence stems from his fears that Islamists in Egypt will react violently to Palestinian deaths. That, again, is the democratic dilemma, since elections would mean ceding considerable power to the sector of society that the coming weeks of combat are likely to enrage. Egypt isn’t a middle-class society but a proletarian one, which produced the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1920s. The country surely needs to evolve politically beyond the Nasserite pharaohs of whom Mr. Sisi is only the most recent. But the U.S. should be careful what it wishes for in Egypt, especially now.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, June 7. PHOTO: SAUDI ROYAL COURT/VIA REUTERS

As for MBS, we can’t ignore that any plausible alternative to his rule would be far worse. The Islamists are the only organized force of any note in Saudi Arabia beyond the extended royal family. Any successor government to the al-Sauds would be an “Islamist populist regime,” writes David Rundell, an Oxford-educated Arabist who has spent his professional life in the Arabian Peninsula.

MBS has moved closer to Israel than any Arab leader since Anwar Sadat. Mohammad al Issa, the MBS-supported Saudi general secretary of the Muslim World League in Riyadh, related to me in 2022 his experience visiting Auschwitz. “Whatever you read about Auschwitz and the Holocaust,” he said, “is not equal to the emotional experience of actually being there. . . . The experience of coming face-to-face with Nazi bestiality and brutality cannot be imagined.” Clearly, a sea change among the ruling elite of the Saudi Kingdom regarding Israel has taken place under MBS—even if it will be severely strained in the coming weeks.

The Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians and soldiers caught MBS off guard, as they did Mr. Sisi. Even a ruthless dictator has to be wary of his own population. MBS can’t go forward with peace negotiations with Israel until a new chapter begins in the Middle East. But that doesn’t mean he can’t be helpful in many ways behind the scenes, especially regarding aid to a post-Hamas government in Gaza City.

Israel has only ever made peace with Arab autocrats: Egypt’s Sadat, King Hussein of Jordan, and the signatories to the Abraham Accords. Any new Middle Eastern democracy is likely to be a weak, multiparty bouillabaisse with extremists who hold veto power. An autocrat can simply fire those who don’t go along with his policies. Dark days lie immediately ahead for Israel and the U.S. in the Middle East. Now is the time to cut Arab allies some democratic slack. This also includes Mohamed bin Zayed of the United Arab Emirates, the architect of the Abraham Accords, another dictator under populist pressures.

Democracy around the world is America’s spiritual grand strategy. Like all grand strategies, it requires constant bending and adjustment, which is what the present circumstances demand.

Mr. Kaplan holds a chair in geopolitics at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and is author of “The Loom of Time: Between Empire and Anarchy, from the Mediterranean to China.”

9. Opinion | Israeli leaders shouldn’t neglect the history of fights against terrorism

Excerpts:

Retired Gen. David Petraeus, who masterminded the “surge” of U.S. forces in Iraq that defeated a series of insurgent and terrorist groups, emphasized to me that separating the general population from the terrorist group is key. In addition, he added, you have to offer the population something, some hope for a better future. In his new book, “Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare From 1945 to Ukraine” (co-written with Andrew Roberts), he attributes the success of the surge as much to these political factors as to purely military ones.

Israel is not following the Petraeus strategy. There are an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 Hamas fighters in Gaza — in a place with a population of more than 2 million, about half of them children. As best we can tell, Gazans have mixed views toward Hamas. It won one election in 2006, mounted a coup in 2007 and has ruled since then with an iron Islamist fist. Now, as Gazans suffer a cruel siege that has blocked most food, water and fuel to all 2 million residents, experiencing hourly bombardment, watching thousands of civilian deaths, they could well rally around Hamas. It is the opposite of what a well-designed counterterrorism strategy aims for.

Opinion | Israeli leaders shouldn’t neglect the history of fights against terrorism

The Washington Post · by Fareed Zakaria · November 3, 2023

Israelis are understandably horrified by the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on their country. The resulting sense of trauma has fueled a desire for what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calls “mighty vengeance.”

But intense emotions often make it difficult to think carefully about the implications of one’s actions. Watching Israel’s growing military operation in Gaza, I am reminded of another invasion by another right-wing Israeli government — also in response to terrorist attacks — and how it ended, which was very different from Israel’s hopes.

Decades ago, the main Palestinian group, the Palestine Liberation Organization, set up base in Beirut. The PLO and other Palestinian organizations controlled parts of Lebanon bordering Israel. They fought continually against the Israel Defense Forces and killed Israeli civilians. In 1982, the Likud government of Menachem Begin (with Ariel Sharon as defense minister) decided to launch an invasion to root out the PLO infrastructure in Lebanon and drive it out of the country altogether. To do this effectively, Israel allied itself with Lebanon’s Christian militias (one faction of many in a multisectarian country). After wiping out the PLO, Begin hoped to install a Christian-dominated government in Beirut.

The invasion was big and bloody. Israel attacked with almost 80,000 troops and more than 1,200 tanks. By one estimate, more than 17,000 people in Lebanon were killed and more than 30,000 injured. In the end, Israel did achieve its goal of expelling the PLO from the country. But the cost was a brutal escalation of violence, which produced a horrific tragedy. A militia allied with Israel and operating in a zone that Israel controlled massacred hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians — including many women, children and elderly people — in Beirut’s Sabra neighborhood and the adjacent Shatila refugee camp. Of greater long-term significance, Israel’s invasion galvanized non-Christian forces in that country and helped create Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shiite group. Since then, Hezbollah has been one of the most potent threats to Israel’s security. On Oct. 7, Hamas claimed to have fired 5,000 rockets on Israel. Hezbollah has an estimated 150,000 rockets and missiles.

The lesson is surely that wars often have outcomes very different from those imagined at the outset. In many ways, the tensions in the Middle East are the unintended consequences of another invasion, the one launched by the United States in Iraq in 2003. It toppled the Sunni-led government of Saddam Hussein, turning Iraq into a Shiite-led country whose ruling elite had deep ties to Iran. This rattled the Persian Gulf Arabs, who are overwhelmingly Sunnis, and Israel, bringing them closer together. And that burgeoning alliance threatened in turn the survival and strength of Palestinian extremist groups such as Hamas, which decided to burn the house down. The U.S. invasion also created al-Qaeda in Iraq, which was the precursor to the Islamic State.

What can Israel do? As University of Chicago scholar Robert Pape notes, careful studies of terrorism suggest that “the only way to create lasting damage to terrorists is to combine, typically in a long campaign of years, sustained selective attacks against identified terrorists with political operations that drive wedges between the terrorists and the local populations from which they come.” He suggests that, alongside a military response, Israel should present some pathway to a Palestinian state.

Retired Gen. David Petraeus, who masterminded the “surge” of U.S. forces in Iraq that defeated a series of insurgent and terrorist groups, emphasized to me that separating the general population from the terrorist group is key. In addition, he added, you have to offer the population something, some hope for a better future. In his new book, “Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare From 1945 to Ukraine” (co-written with Andrew Roberts), he attributes the success of the surge as much to these political factors as to purely military ones.

Israel is not following the Petraeus strategy. There are an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 Hamas fighters in Gaza — in a place with a population of more than 2 million, about half of them children. As best we can tell, Gazans have mixed views toward Hamas. It won one election in 2006, mounted a coup in 2007 and has ruled since then with an iron Islamist fist. Now, as Gazans suffer a cruel siege that has blocked most food, water and fuel to all 2 million residents, experiencing hourly bombardment, watching thousands of civilian deaths, they could well rally around Hamas. It is the opposite of what a well-designed counterterrorism strategy aims for.

I realize it is easy to critique from afar. And Israel, of course, is feeling deeply vulnerable, a vulnerability made worse by the appalling rise of antisemitism in so many parts of the world, including the United States. But it is worth reflecting on whether policies forged in anger and retribution yield lasting gains. Israel invaded Lebanon and got Hezbollah. Israel wore down the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, which strengthened Hamas.

I do not know what this current campaign will produce in the long run. But I fear it will not be good for Israel or the Palestinians.

The Washington Post · by Fareed Zakaria · November 3, 2023

10. Foreign investment in China turns negative for first time

Foreign investment in China turns negative for first time

Money flows out of country on concerns over U.S. tensions, anti-spy laws

https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Foreign-investment-in-China-turns-negative-for-first-time

IORI KAWATE, Nikkei staff writer

November 4, 2023 02:20 JST

BEIJING -- Outflows of foreign direct investment in China have exceeded inflows for the first time as tensions with the U.S. over semiconductor technology and concerns about increased anti-spying activity heighten risks.

The shift was reflected in balance-of-payments data for the July-September quarter released Friday by the State Administration of Foreign Exchange.

FDI came to minus $11.8 billion, with more withdrawals and downsizing than new investments for factory construction and other purposes. This marked the first negative figure in data going back to 1998.

Foreign investment had remained sluggish after falling sharply in the April-June quarter of 2022, when the Chinese economy was in turmoil from the zero-COVID lockdown in Shanghai.

In a September survey of member companies by the Japanese Chamber of Commerce and Industry in China, nearly half of respondents said they would not invest in China at all in 2023 or invest less than in 2022.

Escalating tensions with the U.S. are one reason for the decline in foreign investment. In a survey taken last fall by the American Chamber of Commerce in the People's Republic of China, 66% of member respondents cited rising bilateral tensions as a business challenge in China.

In August, the U.S. announced tighter restrictions on chip and artificial intelligence investment in China. Washington is coordinating with Beijing ahead of a summit meeting between Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping in November, but the U.S. remains committed to technology restrictions in the name of economic security.

Looking at foreign investment in the semiconductor field by destination, China's share has already shrunk from 48% in 2018 to 1% in 2022, according to U.S. research firm Rhodium Group.

In contrast, the U.S. share rose from zero to 37%. The combined share of India, Singapore and Malaysia grew from 10% to 38%.

The revised Chinese counterespionage law, which took effect in July and broadens the scope of what is deemed spying, has also made companies nervous. "China's laws and regulations lack transparency, a factor that increases concerns about business continuity in the country," said Yusuke Miura, a senior researcher at the NLI Research Institute.

As Chinese companies improve their competitiveness, some foreign companies are choosing to leave. Mitsubishi Motors, which was late to shift to electric vehicles, announced in October that it would withdraw from production in China.

In response to the flight of foreign capital, China is launching more policies to open up to the outside world, including easing regulations on foreign investment in the manufacturing sector.

"Foreign companies are becoming increasingly concerned about authorities' emphasis on security, and it is unlikely that their cautious stance toward China will change quickly," Miura said.

China is rushing to build its own chip supply chain in anticipation of prolonged tensions with the U.S., but procurement of necessary equipment and parts from overseas has been slow. If the pace of technological innovation and productivity growth slows, it could put downward pressure on China's economic growth.

11. What is behind the 40% drop in China's U.S. Treasury holdings?

Graphics at the link.

What is behind the 40% drop in China's U.S. Treasury holdings?

Market players see Beijing selling American debt to prop up the yuan

https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Datawatch/What-is-behind-the-40-drop-in-China-s-U.S.-Treasury-holdings

YUSHO CHO, Nikkei staff writer

NOVEMBER 4, 2023 12:39 JST

TOKYO -- China continues to pare its holdings of U.S. Treasurys, arousing market speculations over its motives. The country's stockpile of U.S. government debt hit the lowest level in 14 years at the end of August, with the pace of decline accelerating.

Some analysts said Chinese monetary authorities are leading the move to shore up the yuan, while others blame it for a recent bond rout in the U.S.

"Maybe China is behind the rise in U.S. long rates," said Apollo Global Management economist Torsten Slok in a blog posted in early October, when yields on long-term U.S. bonds reached a 16-year high. A chart displayed with the comment showed China's Treasury holdings falling steadily after peaking in 2013.

The balance of U.S. Treasurys held by China totaled $805.4 billion in August, down 40% from a decade earlier, according to data from the U.S. Treasury Department.

China once actively bought the securities with its ample foreign exchange reserves, becoming the second-biggest foreign investor in U.S. Treasurys after Japan. Given the size of its holdings, China's selling could roil U.S. bond prices, pushing up interest rates.

Not everyone, however, agrees with Slok's views, contending that China could just as easily move its holdings to overseas custodians without selling them. Yet many analysts focus on the decline in the country's Treasury balance as a sign of Beijing's strong determination to defend its own currency.

China is facing serious capital flight caused by rising concern about its economic growth and debt burden. In September, capital outflows reached $75 billion, the biggest such monthly amount since 2016, according to an estimate by Goldman Sachs. This exerts strong downward pressure on the yuan, which now trades at around 7.3 against the dollar, the lowest since 2007.

"China's state-run banks likely dumped the dollar around the [Oct. 1] National Day," said a currency trader at a foreign bank, echoing the views of his peers. It appears that Chinese authorities urged state-run banks to shore up the yuan against dollars and they responded by selling Treasurys to raise needed funds.

Beijing has spent hundreds of billions of dollars out of its foreign exchange reserves on market interventions since 2015, when its devaluation of the yuan led to declines both in stock and currency prices. Eager to maintain the current level of foreign reserve balances, Beijing may have pushed state-owned lenders to support the yuan on its behalf, according to analysts.

The yuan's daily reference rates announced by the People's Bank of China show the sense of crisis being felt by authorities. While the gap between the reference rate and the market value has widened to a record level, the official midpoint remains pegged at 7.17 to the dollar since mid-September. As China allows the yuan to fluctuate only within 2% on either side of the midpoint, it looks as if the country has reverted to a fixed-rate system.

Taking advantage of the country's lower interest rates spurred by monetary easing, some speculators engage in carry trade by borrowing in yuan and converting the money into currencies with higher interest rates. Goldman Sachs has proposed clients use borrowed yuan to fund bets on higher-yielding currencies like the Brazilian real and other South American money.

As speculators seek profits by selling the yuan to buy other currencies, an increase in carry trade could further weaken the Chinese currency. Many analysts expect that if such speculative trading increases, Chinese authorities will have no choice but to step in to bolster the yuan -- possibly by unloading Treasurys.

However, the country's foreign currency reserves -- the source of Treasury purchases -- are unlikely to increase as in the past as export growth slows and the amount of foreign investment declines. Efforts by Western countries to de-risk economic ties with China have only begun to take effect.

If China continues to trim its Treasury holdings, market players may see it as a factor pushing up bond yields and thus as a matter of concern for the U.S. Federal Reserve. The unsteady Chinese economy has added yet another unpredictable variable to global financial markets.

12. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, November 4, 2023

Maps/graphics/citations: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-november-4-2023

Key Takeaways:

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky emphasized that the war in Ukraine is not a “stalemate” in a comment to the media about Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief General Valerii Zaluzhnyi’s essay on the positional nature of warfare in Ukraine.
Zaluzhny’s long essay, “Modern Positional Warfare and How to Win It,” outlines Zaluzhnyi’s consideration of the changes Ukraine must make to overcome the current “positional” stage of the war more clearly than the shorter op-ed and Economist article it accompanied.
Zelensky also denied Western reports that US and European officials are pressuring Ukrainian officials to discuss the possibility of peace negotiations.
NBC added that US officials have no indication that Russian President Vladimir Putin is willing to negotiate with Ukraine or doubts that Russia can continue its war until Western aid for Ukraine falters.
The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) allegedly used claims that the Syrian government agreed to supply weapons to Iranian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah to subsume remnants of the Wagner Group in Syria and seize their air defense systems.
Russian forces conducted a series of missile and drone strikes against Ukraine on November 3 and 4.
Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations near Bakhmut and in western Zaporizhia Oblast on November 4.
English-language Russian outlet the Moscow Times reported that the Russian government dismissed TASS General Director Sergei Mikhailov on July 5 due to TASS’s failure to align with Kremlin narratives while reporting on the Wagner Group rebellion.
The Russian government is testing an electronic voting system ahead of the 2024 presidential elections, likely to further support efforts to manipulate the results in favor of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Russian forces continued offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, north and south of Bakhmut, around Avdiivka, west and southwest of Donetsk City, near Vuhledar, in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area, and in eastern and western Zaporizhia Oblast, and advanced in various sectors of the front.
The BBC and Russian opposition media outlet Mediazona confirmed that at least 35,780 Russian servicemen have died in the war in Ukraine since February 24, 2022, as of November 3, 2023, including 923 deaths in the past two weeks.
Russian authorities continue efforts to settle Russian citizens in occupied Ukraine.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, NOVEMBER 4, 2023

Nov 4, 2023 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, November 4, 2023

Kateryna Stepanenko, Grace Mappes, Angelica Evans, Christina Harward, and Frederick W. Kagan

November 4, 2023, 7:15pm ET

Click here to see ISW’s interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.

Click here to see ISW’s 3D control of terrain topographic map of Ukraine. Use of a computer (not a mobile device) is strongly recommended for using this data-heavy tool.

Click here to access ISW’s archive of interactive time-lapse maps of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These maps complement the static control-of-terrain map that ISW produces daily by showing a dynamic frontline. ISW will update this time-lapse map archive monthly.

Note: The data cut-off for this product was 2:30pm ET on November 4. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the November 5 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky emphasized that the war in Ukraine is not a “stalemate” in a comment to the media about Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief General Valerii Zaluzhnyi’s essay on the positional nature of warfare in Ukraine.[1] Zelensky stated during a joint press conference with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on November 4 that the current situation on the frontlines is “not a stalemate” even if “time has passed” and “people are tired.” Zelensky emphasized that Ukraine prioritizes the safety of its servicemen and needs US F-16 fighter aircraft and air defenses to gain an advantage over Russian forces. Zelensky recalled that many observers were quick to call the battlefield situation in 2022 “a stalemate,” but that Ukrainian forces with several “tricks, tactics, [and] military operations” were able to liberate Kharkiv Oblast and west (right) bank Kherson Oblast. Zelensky added that Russian President Vladimir Putin will not stop at Russia’s currently occupied lines and noted that Ukraine “has no right to even think about giving up.” Zelensky’s statements largely mirror the main arguments in Zaluzhnyi’s essay entitled, “Modern Positional Warfare and How to Win It.”

Zaluzhny’s long essay, “Modern Positional Warfare and How to Win It,” outlines Zaluzhnyi’s consideration of the changes Ukraine must make to overcome the current “positional” stage of the war more clearly than the shorter op-ed and the Economist article it accompanied. Zaluzhnyi wrote that the war “is gradually moving to a positional form” and noted that Ukraine needs to gain air superiority; breach mine barriers in depth; increase the effectiveness of counter-battery; create and train the necessary reserves; and build up electronic warfare (EW) capabilities to overcome positional warfare.[2] Positional warfare refers to military operations that do not result in rapid or dramatic changes to the frontline despite both sides‘ continuing efforts to improve their positions. Zaluzhnyi notably did not say that the war was stalemated in his essay or suggest that Ukraine could not succeed. His essay focused, rather, on explaining that the current positional character of the war was a result of technological-tactical parity on the battlefield and the widespread use of mine barriers by Russian and Ukrainian troops. Zaluzhnyi considered the opportunities presented to Ukraine by Russia’s challenges, including the significant losses suffered by Russian aviation; Ukrainian use of Western missile and artillery weapons; and Russia’s failure to take advantage of its human mobilization resources due to political, organizational, and motivational issues. Zaluzhnyi argued that to avoid World War I-style “trench war” and move to maneuver warfare, Ukraine must develop new approaches including technological and other changes, some of which depend on Western support and others require adaptations within the Ukrainian military, state, and society. Zaluzhnyi concluded that positional warfare benefits Russia as it prolongs the war and could allow Russia to achieve superiority in certain areas. Zaluzhnyi argued that Ukraine or Russia could return to rapid maneuver warfare under the right circumstances, which for Ukraine must include Western-provided military resources. Zaluzhnyi’s essay was all about how to restore maneuver to a positional war, not an argument that the war has reached a stalemate.

Zelensky also denied Western reports that US and European officials are pressuring Ukrainian officials to discuss the possibility of peace negotiations. NBC, citing current and former US officials, reported on November 3 that US and European officials have been “quietly” discussing the prospects of peace negotiations with Ukrainian officials.[3] NBC’s sources stated that these discussions took place during a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group in the past month and were the result of Ukrainian acknowledgment of Western concerns that the war has reached a “stalemate.” Zelensky stated during the press conference on November 4 that, as the leader of Ukraine, he can attest that no one in Europe or the United States is pressuring him to discuss peace negotiations.[4] Von der Leyen also expressed her support for Ukraine’s sovereignty.

NBC added that US officials have no indication that Russian President Vladimir Putin is willing to negotiate with Ukraine or doubts that Russia can continue its war until Western aid for Ukraine falters.[5] ISW has also not observed any indications that Russia is prepared to enter peace negotiations with Ukraine in good faith. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov expressed the Kremlin’s disagreement with the characterization of the war in Ukraine as a “stalemate” on November 2, stating that the war in Ukraine “has not reached a dead end” and that the Russian military continues to conduct offensive operations.[6] Russia’s offensive operations around Avdiivka indicate that the Kremin continues to believe that it is possible to achieve its objectives with military force and is unlikely to enter peace negotiations with Ukraine, except to buy time to reconstitute for future offensive operations. Pressure on Ukraine to negotiate an end to the war will likely remain meaningless if not harmful as long as Putin believes that he can achieve his objectives on the battlefield.

The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) allegedly used claims that the Syrian government agreed to supply weapons to Iranian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah to subsume remnants of the Wagner Group in Syria and seize their air defense systems. A Kremlin-affiliated milblogger claimed on November 4 that Israel communicated information via diplomatic channels to Russia a few weeks ago about Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s alleged agreement to supply Iranian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah with weapons.[7] The milblogger claimed that remnants of the Wagner Group were operating in Syria under an agreement with the Syrian government and that the Russian MoD used this alleged information to pressure the Syrian government to allow the Russian MoD to force Wagner fighters in Syria to transfer their weapons to and sign contracts with the Russian MoD. The milblogger claimed that the Russian MoD seized a Pantsir-S1 air defense system from Wagner personnel near Palmyra, Syria. CNN previously reported that Assad agreed to provide the Russian air defense systems to Hezbollah and tasked Wagner with their delivery.[8] The milblogger did not specify whether the allegations about Assad’s agreement with Hezbollah were true and instead claimed that the truth of that matter is not as important as the fact that the Russian MoD used it as a pretext to make demands of Wagner. The Russian MoD has consistently pursued efforts to subsume Wagner operations abroad recently and is likely concerned about air defense systems in Wagner’s possession because Wagner forces used air defense systems to shoot down multiple Russian aircraft during the June 24 rebellion.[9]

Russian forces conducted a series of missile and drone strikes against Ukraine on November 3 and 4. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian air defenses downed two Shahed-131/136 drones targeting Sumy Oblast on the night of November 3 to 4 and three Iskander-K cruise missiles targeting Dnipropetrovsk and Poltava oblasts on the evening of November 4.[10] The Russian MoD claimed that Russian forces struck a Ukrainian weapons and ammunition arsenal in Pryluky, Chernihiv Oblast.[11] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces also targeted Ukrainian rear areas, including the Kanatove airfield, Kirovohrad Oblast; Myrhorod, Poltava Oblast; Kharkiv City, Kharkiv Oblast; Dnipro City, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast; Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast; Odesa Oblast; and Lviv Oblast.[12]

Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations near Bakhmut and in western Zaporizhia Oblast on November 4. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations in the Melitopol (western Zaporizhia Oblast) and Bakhmut directions.[13] Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces advanced along the forest line north of Klishchiivka (7km southwest of Bakhmut) and are gaining a foothold in the area.[14]

English-language Russian outlet the Moscow Times reported that the Russian government dismissed TASS General Director Sergei Mikhailov on July 5 due to TASS’s failure to align with Kremlin narratives while reporting on the Wagner Group rebellion. The Moscow Times cited anonymous Russian government officials, including from the presidential administration and the State Duma, as stating that the Kremlin dismissed Mikhailov because TASS’s coverage of the Wagner rebellion did not paint Russian authorities in a favorable light and did not include enough pro-Kremlin coverage.[15] Russian government officials stated that Mikhailov was fired because “TASS covered [the Wagner rebellion] in too much detail and promptly” and that “they [TASS employees] had forgotten that their main task is not to report the news [but] to create an ideologically correct narrative for the Kremlin.” A source admitted that the news outlet’s “neutrality” is useless with the war in Ukraine ongoing and the upcoming Russian presidential elections, which Putin “must win on record.” A TASS source stated that Mikhailov adhered to the “basic rules of journalism” and claimed that Russian state media outlet RIA Novosti, in contrast, is similar to a tabloid. ISW previously assessed that Mikhailov had rebranded TASS into a modern publication since his appointment in 2012 and that his dismissal may indicate that the Kremlin was unhappy with the media coverage of the Wagner rebellion and highlighted the continued importance of loyalty to Putin over professional achievement.[16] Putin previously awarded Mikhailov the Order of Friendship in 2021 for his professional successes and “many years of conscientious work.”[17]

The Russian government is testing an electronic voting system ahead of the 2024 presidential elections, likely to further support efforts to manipulate the results in favor of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Russian opposition outlet Meduza reported on November 4 that the Russian government services portal Gosuslugi sent letters inviting Russian citizens, including Meduza employees, to test the remote electronic system on November 15-17. The letters also stated that all adult Russian citizens are eligible to participate in the test.[18] The Russian government officially announced the tests on October 31, and Meduza reported that a government source stated that the Russian government intends to have as many Russian federal subjects utilize electronic voting as possible in the presidential election.[19] These public election preparations are notable as Putin has not announced his official campaign and Russian state media has not yet begun posturing Putin as the only viable candidate.

Key Takeaways:

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky emphasized that the war in Ukraine is not a “stalemate” in a comment to the media about Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief General Valerii Zaluzhnyi’s essay on the positional nature of warfare in Ukraine.
Zaluzhny’s long essay, “Modern Positional Warfare and How to Win It,” outlines Zaluzhnyi’s consideration of the changes Ukraine must make to overcome the current “positional” stage of the war more clearly than the shorter op-ed and Economist article it accompanied.
Zelensky also denied Western reports that US and European officials are pressuring Ukrainian officials to discuss the possibility of peace negotiations.
NBC added that US officials have no indication that Russian President Vladimir Putin is willing to negotiate with Ukraine or doubts that Russia can continue its war until Western aid for Ukraine falters.
The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) allegedly used claims that the Syrian government agreed to supply weapons to Iranian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah to subsume remnants of the Wagner Group in Syria and seize their air defense systems.
Russian forces conducted a series of missile and drone strikes against Ukraine on November 3 and 4.
Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations near Bakhmut and in western Zaporizhia Oblast on November 4.
English-language Russian outlet the Moscow Times reported that the Russian government dismissed TASS General Director Sergei Mikhailov on July 5 due to TASS’s failure to align with Kremlin narratives while reporting on the Wagner Group rebellion.
The Russian government is testing an electronic voting system ahead of the 2024 presidential elections, likely to further support efforts to manipulate the results in favor of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Russian forces continued offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, north and south of Bakhmut, around Avdiivka, west and southwest of Donetsk City, near Vuhledar, in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area, and in eastern and western Zaporizhia Oblast, and advanced in various sectors of the front.
The BBC and Russian opposition media outlet Mediazona confirmed that at least 35,780 Russian servicemen have died in the war in Ukraine since February 24, 2022, as of November 3, 2023, including 923 deaths in the past two weeks.
Russian authorities continue efforts to settle Russian citizens in occupied Ukraine.

We do not report in detail on Russian war crimes because these activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We will continue to evaluate and report on the effects of these criminal activities on the Ukrainian military and the Ukrainian population and specifically on combat in Ukrainian urban areas. We utterly condemn Russian violations of the laws of armed conflict and the Geneva Conventions and crimes against humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.

Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine (comprised of two subordinate main efforts)
Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and encircle northern Donetsk Oblast
Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast
Russian Supporting Effort – Southern Axis
Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
Activities in Russian-occupied areas
Russian Information Operations and Narratives

Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Luhansk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and northern Donetsk Oblast)

Russian forces continued offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line on November 4 but did not make any claimed or confirmed advances. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces unsuccessfully attacked near Synkivka (9km northeast of Kupyansk) and Ivanivka (21km southeast of Kupyansk) in Kharkiv Oblast, Stelmakhivka (15km northwest of Svatove) and Bilohorivka (10km south of Kreminna) in Luhansk Oblast, and Verkhnokamianske (18km south of Kreminna) in Donetsk Oblast.[20] Ukrainian Ground Forces Commander Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi stated that elements of the Russian 6th Combined Arms Army (Western Military District [WMD]) and 1st Guards Tank Army (WMD) continued offensive operations near the Kupyansk forest area, Pershotravneve (24km east of Kupyansk), and Orlyanka (22km east of Kupyansk) and intensified efforts to capture Synkivka and create favorable conditions to capture Kupyansk.[21] Syrskyi stated that Russian forces have suffered significant losses along the Kupyansk Vuzlovyi-Yahidne line (up to 22km southeast of Kupyansk) and are currently regrouping in the area. A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces transferred additional manpower to the Kupyansk-Kreminna direction.[22]

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted unsuccessful attacks along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line on November 4. The Russian MoD claimed that elements of the Russian Western Grouping of Forces repelled Ukrainian attacks near Synkivka and north of Tymkivka (18km east of Kupyansk) and that elements of the Russian Central Grouping of Forces repelled Ukrainian attacks near Novoselivske (16km northwest of Svatove) and Hryhorivka (11km south of Kreminna).[23]

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Donetsk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)

Ukrainian forces reportedly advanced on Bakhmut’s southern flank on November 4. Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces advanced along the forest line north of Klishchiivka (7km southwest of Bakhmut) and are gaining a foothold in the area.[24]

Russian forces continued to attack north and south of Bakhmut on November 4 but did not make any claimed or confirmed advances. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces unsuccessfully attempted to regain lost positions near Klishchiivka and Andriivka (10km southwest of Bakhmut) and launched failed assaults near Bohdanivka (5km northwest of Bakhmut) and Khromove (directly west of Bakhmut).[25] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces launched a ground attack near the Berkhivka reservoir (just north of Bakhmut) but did not advance.[26] Russian milbloggers indicated that elements of the Russian 200th Motorized Rifle Brigade (14th Army Corps, Northern Fleet) are operating on Bakhmut’s northern flank and claimed that elements of the Russian “Viking” Spetsnaz detachment are fighting in the Bakhmut direction.[27]

Russian forces continued offensive operations around Avdiivka on November 4 and made confirmed advances. Geolocated footage published on November 3 and November 4 shows that Russian forces marginally advanced towards the railway southeast of Stepove (8km northwest of Avdiivka) and advanced west of Krasnohorivka (9km north of Avdiivka).[28] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces advanced and consolidated new positions along the railway tracks near Stepove, and one milblogger claimed that Russian forces controlled the railway section near Stepove.[29] A Russian milblogger also claimed that Russian forces are strengthening their positions behind the railway tracks north of Avdiivka.[30] A Kremlin-affiliated milblogger claimed that Russian forces launched assaults from the direction of Spartak (4km south of Avdiivka) and attacked near Stepove and Novokalynove (7km north of Avdiivka).[31] Another Kremlin-affiliated milblogger claimed that Russian forces are attacking in the direction of Sieverne (6km west of Avdiivka) and that heavy fighting is ongoing near the “Tsarska Okhota” restaurant immediately south of Avdiivka.[32] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces launched unsuccessful attacks near Stepove, Tonenke (7km northwest of Avdiivka), Avdiivka, Sieverne, and Pervomaiske (11km southwest of Avdiivka).[33]

Ukrainian forces are reportedly counterattacking against Russian advances in the Avdiivka direction as of November 4. A Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces counterattacked against Russian advances near the railway north of Avdiivka.[34]

Russian sources continued to claim that Russian forces were digging tunnels to destroy Ukrainian positions and launch surprise attacks in the Avdiivka direction. A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces dug a tunnel to a Ukrainian position and mined it, destroying the Ukrainian position.[35] Russian milbloggers claimed that elements of the Russian “Dikiya Divisiya” irregular armed formation, which is partially staffed with former Wagner Group personnel, dug a 160-meter-long tunnel and used it to detonate explosives under an unspecified Ukrainian position near Avdiivka.[36]

Russian forces reportedly lost around 200 armored vehicles while conducting offensive operations in the Avdiivka direction over the past three weeks. The UK Ministry of Defense (MoD) assessed that Russian forces have likely lost around 200 armored vehicles around Avdiivka, likely due to the effectiveness of Ukrainian modern hand-held anti-armor weapons, mines, UAV-dropped munitions, and precision artillery systems.[37] The UK MoD assessed that Russian forces have likely switched their tactics to conducting dismounted infantry-based assaults due to vehicle losses in the area. The Ukrainian General Staff published video footage on November 4 showing Ukrainian forces striking a column of Russian armored vehicles moving in a line along a road in the Avdiivka direction.[38]

Russian forces continued offensive operations west and southwest of Donetsk City and near Vuhledar on November 4 but did not make any claimed or confirmed advances. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian assaults near Marinka (just west of Donetsk City) and Novomykhailivka (10km south of Marinka).[39] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces unsuccessfully attacked Ukrainian positions from the Mykilske direction (4km southeast of Vuhledar).[40]

Russian Supporting Effort – Southern Axis (Russian objective: Maintain frontline positions and secure rear areas against Ukrainian strikes)

Ukrainian forces did not conduct any confirmed or claimed ground attacks in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area on November 4.

Russian forces conducted offensive operations in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area but did not make any confirmed gains on November 4. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian attacks near Staromayorske (9km south of Velyka Novosilka).[41] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces advanced near Pryyutne (14km southwest of Velyka Novosilka) and along the Rivnopil-Staromayorske (10km southwest to 9km south of Velyka Novosilka) line.[42] Ukrainian military observer Kostyantyn Mashovets stated on November 4 that Russian forces conducted a series of unsuccessful counterattacks along the Novodonetske-Zolota Nyva (12km southeast of Velyka Novosilka) line and from the Pryyutne-Zavitne Bazhannya (14km southwest to 13km south) line towards Rivnopil in the past several days.[43]

Russian and Ukrainian forces reportedly skirmished in eastern Zaporizhia Oblast on November 4, and Russian forces recently made confirmed territorial gains. Geolocated footage published on November 3 shows that Russian forces marginally advanced south of Chervone (6km southeast of Hulyaipole).[44] The Russian MoD claimed that Russian forces repelled a Ukrainian ground attack near Marfopil (5km southeast of Hulyaipole).[45]

Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast on November 4 but did not make confirmed gains. Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces continued small-group assaults near Robotyne (10km south of Orikhiv) and Verbove (18km southeast of Orikhiv) on November 3 and 4.[46] A Russian milblogger claimed on November 3 that some positions in forest areas west of Robotyne have changed control several times in the past week.[47]

Russian forces continued limited offensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast on November 4 and did not make any confirmed or claimed advances. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled a Russian ground attack near Robotyne.[48] Mashovets stated that two battalions of the Russian 2nd Motorized Rifle Brigade and 291st Motorized Rifle Regiment (both of the 42nd Motorized Rifle Division, 58th Combined Arms Army, Southern Military District) conducted a tactical rotation near Robotyne to restore combat power after heavy combat losses.[49]

Russian forces continue to fail to push Ukrainian forces from their positions in the east (left) bank of Kherson Oblast. Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces achieved minor success in pushing Ukrainian forces from positions in Krynky but that Ukrainian forces remain in the center of the settlement.[50] The milbloggers also claimed that Ukrainian forces maintain positions near the Antonivsky road and railway bridges.[51] Other Russian milbloggers amplified footage of a Russian infantry squad moving along a road in a condensed formation in Krynky before small arms fire killed and wounded all the personnel, which one milblogger attributed to friendly fire rather than Ukrainian fire.[52] The milbloggers reiterated standard complaints of poor Russian communications between units, lack of counterbattery fire, and poor training of military personnel.[53]

Ukrainian forces continue targeting Russian military assets in rear areas in southern Ukraine. Russian occupation authorities and other Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces targeted the Kerch Strait Bridge in occupied Crimea on November 4 but that Russian air defenses intercepted the missiles.[54] Russian sources claimed that missile fragments hit a dry dock in the Zalyv shipyard in Kerch, and geolocated footage shows a fire at the shipyard.[55] A Russian insider source claimed that the Zalyv shipyard contained Project 22800 Karakurt missile ships, which can carry Kalibr cruise missiles, though ISW cannot verify this claim.[56] Zaporizhia Oblast occupation official Vladimir Rogov claimed that Russian forces also shot down three Ukrainian Storm Shadow missiles above Berdyansk on November 4.[57]

Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts (Russian objective: Expand combat power without conducting general mobilization)

The BBC and Russian opposition media outlet Mediazona confirmed that at least 35,780 Russian servicemen have died in the war in Ukraine since February 24, 2022 as of November 3, 2023, including 923 deaths in the past two weeks.[58] The BBC and Mediazona confirmed the deaths through open-source materials, including a Russian death in the Ukrainian strike on Russian dry docks in Sevastopol on September 13, 2023, and the deaths of two Russian majors in the Ukrainian ATACMS strikes on Russian airfields in occupied Berdyansk and Luhansk City on October 17, 2023. The BBC and Mediazona stated that Russian deaths in Bakhmut still exceed those in the latest Russian offensive operations near Avdiivka.

The Russian government will now register prisoners on a “special military registration.” The Russian government invalidated a subsection of the law on military registration that exempted those serving a prison sentence from military registration and created a “special military registration” for prisoners.[59] Russian military registration and enlistment offices located at correctional facilities and pre-trial detention centers will now input, edit, and remove prisoners' information on the “special military registration” without the prisoner’s personal presence at the office. The Russian prisoners subject to special registration will not undergo medical examinations or psychological screenings.

Russian Technological Adaptations (Russian objective: Introduce technological innovations to optimize systems for use in Ukraine)

Russia is reportedly struggling to improve its strategic nuclear force due to Western sanctions and the lack of domestically produced components.[60] The Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) stated on November 4 that Russia conducted unsuccessful tests of the RS-24 “Yars” intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) on October 25 and November 1. The GUR stated that Russia also conducted an unsuccessful test of the RSM-56 “Bulava” submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) on October 25. The GUR stated that Russia accepted the RS-28 “Sarmat” superheavy ICBM into service in September 2023 after only one full test and years of postponements. The GUR stated that Russia has postponed the delivery of new Tu-160M2 strategic bombers due to Russia’s inability to resume production of the new version of the NK-32 engine.

Activities in Russian-occupied areas (Russian objective: Consolidate administrative control of annexed areas; forcibly integrate Ukrainian citizens into Russian sociocultural, economic, military, and governance systems)

Russian authorities continue efforts to settle Russian citizens in occupied Ukraine. Ukrainian Melitopol Mayor Ivan Fedorov stated on November 3 that Russian forces are searching the settlements in occupied Ukraine for vacant housing that could be allocated to Russian servicemen and citizens and that Russian authorities are evicting local residents under false claims of delinquent debt.[61] Fedorov stated that Russian occupation authorities are expropriating the most housing in occupied Melitopol, Berdyansk, Tokmak, and Molochansk, Zaporizhia Oblast. Former Ukrainian Luhansk Oblast Administration Head Serhiy Haidai stated that Russian forces from Tatarstan are also expropriating property from Ukrainian citizens in Severodonetsk and two other cities in occupied Luhansk Oblast.[62]

Russian Information Operations and Narratives

Russian sources used the celebration of Unity Day in Russia on November 4 to promote Kremlin narratives about interethnic and interreligious harmony in Russia and the Russian military as well as the false unity of occupied Ukraine with Russia. A Russian milblogger claimed that various ethnic minorities serving in the Russian military together, the presence of people from various regions of Russia in occupied Ukraine, and the patronage systems between Russian regions and occupied Ukrainian areas are all characteristic of the meaning of Unity Day.[63] A Russian source claimed that Russian authorities canceled a religious procession in honor of Unity Day in Samara Oblast so as to not disrespect other religions and diasporas.[64] Russian sources also highlighted the opening of the ”Rossiya” International Exhibition and Forum opened in Moscow on November 4, which included exhibits on occupied Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhia oblasts.[65] Antisemitic riots in Dagestan on October 29 and recent controversies surrounding Chechen and regular Russian forces highlighted interethnic and interreligious tensions in Russia.[66]

Russian government officials continue to use escalatory nuclear rhetoric to scare the international community and impede Western military aid provisions to Ukraine. Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev claimed on November 4 that Russia has more nuclear missiles than its “competitors” for the first time in history. Patrushev claimed that Russia’s security will be guaranteed for “decades” due to its “unique strategic weapons,” such as hypersonic missiles.[67] Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko stated on November 4 that Russia will take “all necessary military-technical precautions” in response to the US transfer of F-35 nuclear-weapons capable fighter jets to the United Kingdom and NATO’s activities generally.[68] ISW has consistently assessed that the Kremlin often references Russian nuclear capabilities in an attempt to dissuade the West from providing Ukraine with materiel.[69]

Significant activity in Belarus (Russian efforts to increase its military presence in Belarus and further integrate Belarus into Russian-favorable frameworks and Wagner Group activity in Belarus)

Nothing significant to report.

Note: ISW does not receive any classified material from any source, uses only publicly available information, and draws extensively on Russian, Ukrainian, and Western reporting and social media as well as commercially available satellite imagery and other geospatial data as the basis for these reports. References to all sources used are provided in the endnotes of each update.

13. Iran Update, November 4, 2023

Maps/graphics/citations: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-november-4-2023

Key Takeaways:

Captured Hamas plans suggest that Hamas has not heavily committed to defending parts of the northern outskirts of Gaza City, which may indicate that Hamas units in parts of that area are screening for a main defensive effort in central Gaza City.
Israeli ground forces advanced along the northwestern Gazan coast on November 4.
Israeli forces advanced to the southern Tal al Hawa neighborhood, Gaza City, on or around November 3.
Palestinian militias in the Gaza Strip conducted indirect fire attacks into Israeli territory, primarily in southern Israel.
The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade West Bank Branch responded negatively to LH Secretary General Nasrallah’s November 3 speech and called for permanent mobilization.
Lesser-known West Bank militias also called for Palestinians to revolt against Israel.
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq—an umbrella group of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias—claimed responsibility for three attacks targeting US forces in Iraq between November 3 and 4.
Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian held separate phone calls with his Brazilian and British counterparts on November 3 and 4.

IRAN UPDATE, NOVEMBER 4, 2023

Nov 4, 2023 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Iran Update, November 4, 2023

Ashka Jhaveri, Andie Parry, Johanna Moore, Brian Carter, Amin Soltani and Frederick W. Kagan

Information Cutoff: 2pm ET

The Iran Update provides insights into Iranian and Iranian-sponsored activities abroad that undermine regional stability and threaten US forces and interests. It also covers events and trends that affect the stability and decision-making of the Iranian regime. The Critical Threats Project (CTP) at the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) provides these updates regularly based on regional events. For more on developments and in Iran and the region, see our interactive map of Iran and the Middle East.

Note: CTP and ISW have refocused the update to cover the Israel-Hamas war. The new sections address developments in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria, as well as noteworthy activity from Iran’s Axis of Resistance. We do not report in detail on war crimes because these activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We utterly condemn violations of the laws of armed conflict and the Geneva Conventions and crimes against humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.

Click here to see CTP and ISW’s interactive map of Israeli ground operations. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.

Key Takeaways:

Captured Hamas plans suggest that Hamas has not heavily committed to defending parts of the northern outskirts of Gaza City, which may indicate that Hamas units in parts of that area are screening for a main defensive effort in central Gaza City.
Israeli ground forces advanced along the northwestern Gazan coast on November 4.
Israeli forces advanced to the southern Tal al Hawa neighborhood, Gaza City, on or around November 3.
Palestinian militias in the Gaza Strip conducted indirect fire attacks into Israeli territory, primarily in southern Israel.
The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade West Bank Branch responded negatively to LH Secretary General Nasrallah’s November 3 speech and called for permanent mobilization.
Lesser-known West Bank militias also called for Palestinians to revolt against Israel.
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq—an umbrella group of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias—claimed responsibility for three attacks targeting US forces in Iraq between November 3 and 4.
Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian held separate phone calls with his Brazilian and British counterparts on November 3 and 4.

Gaza Strip

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

Erode the will of the Israeli political establishment and public to launch and sustain a major ground operation into the Gaza Strip
Degrade IDF material and morale around the Gaza Strip

Captured Hamas plans suggest that Hamas has not heavily committed to defending parts of the northern outskirts of Gaza City, which may indicate that Hamas units in parts of that area are screening for a main defensive effort in central Gaza City. The IDF captured and published a Hamas map apparently showing a Hamas company’s area of responsibility between al Toam and Falouja roads west of Jabaliya during a raid on a Hamas intelligence headquarters in Jabaliya.[1] The sector is roughly half a kilometer deep and 1.5 kilometers across, which is a large sector for a company-sized unit defending against a mechanized advance in an urban area, depending on how Hamas tactical units are structured. Most of the area is not heavily built up, however, and Hamas commanders may simply have chosen not to focus on it. Palestinian militant attacks behind the Israeli forward line of advance are probably another supporting effort intended to harass and disrupt Israeli forces, rather than defeat them.

Israeli Clearing Operations

Israeli ground forces advanced along the northwestern Gazan coast on November 4. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) released footage of engineering and infantry forces conducting route clearance operations along the coast.[2] The IDF reported that armor and engineering units cleared areas of explosive devices and targeted Palestinian militants.[3] Independent analyst on X (Twitter) identified Israeli vehicles traveling southwest from areas in which CTP-ISW previously reported Israeli clearing operations.[4] IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari said that the IDF is encircling Gaza City from the air land, and sea.[5]

Palestinian militias continued to attack Israeli ground forces in the northern Gaza Strip with small arms, anti-tank munitions, and indirect fire. The al Qassem Brigades—the militant wing of Hamas—published footage of its militants maneuvering through tunnel systems in Beit Hanoun and attacking IDF forces with various weapons.[6] A Palestinian journalist said that the clashes occurred on the al Karamah Street which runs north-south through the Beit Hanoun.[7] The Wall Street Journal published a map of the tunnel system that Hamas has created below the Gaza Strip, which includes a system underneath Beit Hanoun.[8] Hamas and PIJ-affiliated media reported violent clashes near the border fence east of Beit Hanoun.[9] Al Quds Brigades—the militant wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ)— claimed to clash with IDF forces in the same area.[10]

The al Qassem Brigades claimed to attack IDF forces in the areas northwest of Beit Lahia and west of Atatra.[11] CTP-ISW has tracked IDF advances west of Beit Lahiya along the coast since October 27. A Palestinian journalist reported Israeli ground forces are “actively operating” in northwestern Beit Lahiya.[12] Sounds of nearby small arms fire in local footage from the area corroborate the claims of small arms clashes in Atatra.[13]

Israeli forces advanced to southern Tal al Hawa neighborhood, Gaza City, on or around November 3. Satellite imagery released on November 3 showed Israeli forces arrayed from north of Juhor ad Dik to southern Tal al Hawa on November 3.[14] The al Quds Brigades and al Qassem Brigades fired mortars in a combined operation targeting Israeli vehicles south of Tal al Hawa on November 4.[15] The al Qassem Brigades also fired two anti-tank rockets at two IDF vehicles south of Tal al Hawa.[16]

The al Qassem Brigades continued to attack Israeli forces near Juhor ad Dik on November 4.[17] The al Qassem Brigades claimed that it fired anti-tank rockets at Israeli vehicles near Juhor ad Dik on November 3.[18] The group also said it mortared Israeli vehicles east of Juhor ad Dik on November 4 in a separate attack.[19]

The IDF opened the Salah al-Din road—the primary north-south thoroughfare in the Gaza Strip—to allow civilians to evacuate Gaza City.[20] The IDF spokesperson said on November 4 that al Qassem Brigades fighters used mortars and anti-tank rockets against IDF forces securing the evacuation route during the humanitarian window.[21]

The al Quds Brigades launched an unspecified Ababil drone targeting an Israeli command center southeast of Zaytoun neighborhood on November 4.[22] The al Quds Brigades did not specify if the “Ababil” drone was the Iranian-built Ababil-1 or the locally Gazan-produced Ababil-1, which was developed by Hamas.[23]

An al Quds Brigades operations officer said on November 3 that the al Quds Brigades and al Qassem brigades are coordinating at the tactical and operational levels to defend against the IDF ground operation.[24]

Palestinian militias in the Gaza Strip conducted indirect fire attacks into Israeli territory, primarily in southern Israel. The al Qassem Brigades claimed responsibility for four indirect fire attacks into the areas immediately adjacent to the Gaza Strip.[25] Al Qassem Brigades fired the Ayyash 250 rocket at Eilat in southern Israel for the second time since the war started.[26] Hamas introduced the Ayyash 250 rocket during the 2021 Gaza conflict.[27] Local reporting circulated claims that Qassem Brigades’ naval unit attempted to infiltrate Zikim beach, which is the first infiltration attempt since October 30.[28] The al Quds Brigades claimed responsibility for one indirect fire attack on November 3 and no attacks on November 4.[29]

Hamas official Osama Hamdan on November 4 said that Hamas is proud of the support it is receiving from Lebanese Hezbollah (LH), the Islamic Resistance of Iraq, and the Yemeni Houthi movement in response to LH leader Hassan Nasrallah’s November 3 speech.[30]

Recorded reports of rocket attacks; CTP-ISW cannot independently verify impact.

West Bank

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

Draw IDF assets and resources toward the West Bank and fix them there

Clashes between Palestinian militants and Israeli forces in the West Bank increased slightly on November 4. CTP-ISW recorded 17 clashes in the West Bank, an increase from 12 the day prior.[31] CTP-ISW also recorded five instances of Palestinian militants conducting IED attacks in the West Bank.[32] IDF raids across the West Bank likely contributed to the number of armed clashes.[33] CTP-ISW did not record anti-Israel demonstrations on November 4.

The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade West Bank Branch responded negatively to LH Secretary General Nasrallah’s November 3 speech and called for permanent mobilization. The group’s military communique issued a few hours after Nasrallah’s speech stated, “we have seen that the Palestinian people and the resistance are alone.”[34] The statement also called for a permanent mobilization in the West Bank, the unification of all armed Palestinian factions and for small arms attacks on Israeli settlers. The al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade claimed responsibility for an attack targeting the Israeli settlement of Aveni Hevetz on October 29.[35] The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade is the self-claimed militant wing of Fatah, but Fatah does not claim association with the Brigade.

Lesser-known West Bank militias also called for Palestinians to revolt against Israel. Previously unknown West Bank militia group the “Mountain Guardians Gathering” called on Jenin residents to close roads and sabotage Israeli settler property at midnight on November 5.[36] The militia also called for sabotage around the major West Bank cities of Jerusalem, Jericho, Tubas, Salfit, Bethlehem, Hebron, Nablus, Jenin, Ramallah, Qalqiya, and Tulkarm.[37] Other militias called for popular protection committees to attack the IDF using weapons, incendiary bombs, and stones.[38] Student groups in the West Bank have planned non-violent protests and strikes for November 5.[39] Well-organized Palestinian militias like PIJ’s Jenin Branch and the Lions’ Den have previously called for armed mobilization in the West Bank with limited success, however.[40]

This map is not an exhaustive depiction of clashes and demonstrations in the West Bank.

Southern Lebanon and Golan Heights

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

Draw IDF assets and resources toward northern Israel and fix them there
Set conditions for successive campaigns into northern Israel

Lebanese Hezbollah (LH) and other Iranian-backed militants resumed cross-border attacks into northern Israel on November 4 at their normal rate after a lull the previous day. LH claimed eight attacks out of the 11 conducted on Israeli military and communications points along the border.[41] LH used a Burkan rocket against Israeli sites for the first time in this conflict according to LH-affiliated Al Mayadeen re-reporting Israeli media.[42] The Burkan has a 400kg warhead and a range of five kilometers.[43] CTP-ISW cannot independently confirm the type of rocket used. LH also claimed to detonate pre-planted explosives along the Israel-Lebanon border wall and fence, creating gaps.[44] LH published two video compilations of the group’s attacks on Israeli communication towers and military infrastructure on November 2 and 4.[45] Israeli forces continued retaliatory attacks targeting LH anti-tank missile squads and conducted airstrikes on LH infrastructure in Lebanon including rocket warehouses. [46]

Iran and Axis of Resistance

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

Demonstrate the capability and willingness of Iran and the Axis of Resistance to escalate against the United States and Israel on multiple fronts
Set conditions to fight a regional war on multiple fronts

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq—an umbrella group of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias—claimed responsibility for three attacks targeting US forces in Iraq between November 3 and 4. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq has claimed 32 attacks targeting US forces in the Middle East since October 18. CENTCOM has not commented on the claimed attacks at the time of publication. CTP-ISW cannot independently verify these claims.

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq claimed a rocket attack targeting US forces stationed at Abu Hajar airport, Hasakah Province, Syria on November 3.[47] The group claimed that the rockets successfully hit their targets. [48]
This is the third attack the Islamic Resistance in Iraq has claimed targeting Abu Hajar airport in Syria.[49]
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq claimed a drone attack targeting US forces stationed at al Harir airbase, Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan on November 3.[50] The group claimed it fired two drones at the airbase and that both successfully hit their target.[51] This is the third attack on the Harir airbase the Islamic Resistance in Iraq has claimed since October 18.[52]
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq claimed a rocket attack targeting US forces stationed at al Shaddadi base, Hasakah Province, Syria on November 4.[53] The group fired three rockets at al Shaddadi according to the head of local Syrian news outlet Deir ez Zor 24.[54] The Islamic Resistance in Iraq claimed that its rockets were successful in hitting their target.[55]

Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian held separate phone calls with his Brazilian and British counterparts on November 3 and 4.[56] Abdollahian called for further humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip and urged Brazil to introduce another Israel-Hamas war ceasefire resolution in the UN Security Council during his phone call with the Brazilian foreign minister. Abdollahian again called for humanitarian aid and a ceasefire and claimed that the United States was “spreading flames of war” during his phone call with the British foreign secretary. Abdollahian’s effort to frame the United States as an antagonist in the war and portray Iran as the promoter of peace is consistent with the regime’s ongoing information operation to deflect responsibility for any further escalation of the conflict away from Iran, as CTP-ISW previously reported.[57]

14. Get to Know the Influential Conservative Intellectuals Who Help Explain G.O.P. Extremism

A who's who of thought leaders.

So I checked out the author's website "Notes of the Middle". He says he broke from the right 20 years ago and defines himself as a liberal. So there is that. Not sure about the mIddle ground.

Here is his self-description from one of his articles. He wants to claim the middle ground but... Regardless this is an interesting read about these thought leaders and their....thoughts

Since I broke from the right nearly 20 years ago, I’ve considered myself a liberal. Indeed, one way of understanding that break is to see it as an expression of my dawning realization that I’d been a liberal all along—one forcing himself to play along with the conservatism of the time for complicated personal-psychological-spiritual and career-related reasons. In the hothouse of working at one of the religious right’s leading intellectual magazines during the post-9/11 Bush administration, I snapped, realizing I was living (or rather, working) a lie.

From that point on, I’ve defined myself as a liberal—distinguished on the right from conservatism and Trumpist populism and on the left from progressivism.

OPINION

GUEST ESSAY

Get to Know the Influential Conservative Intellectuals Who Help Explain G.O.P. Extremism

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/04/opinion/sunday/conservative-intellectuals-republicans.html?unlocked_article_code=1.8Ew.5SbU.dNQfIdBGE-du&smid=url-share

By Damon Linker

Mr. Linker, a former columnist at The Week, writes the newsletter Notes From the Middleground.

Nov. 4, 2023

It’s easy to become inured to the extremism that has suffused the Republican Party in recent years. Donald Trump, the dominating front-runner for the party’s presidential nomination, spends days in court, in a judicial system he regularly disparages, charged with a long list of offenses and facing several trials.

In the House, Republicans recently chose a new speaker, Representative Mike Johnson, who not only endorsed the attempted overturning of the 2020 election but also helped to devise the rationale behind it.

We shouldn’t grow complacent about just how dangerous it all is — and how much more dangerous it could become. The efforts to overturn the 2020 election failed. We’re told that’s because the institutions held. But it’s more accurate to say that most of the individuals holding powerful positions within those institutions — the White House, the Pentagon, the courts, election officials in Georgia and other states — sided with the Constitution over Mr. Trump’s desire to remain in power.

But what if key individuals decide differently the next time they are faced with this kind of choice? What if they have come to believe that the country is in such dire straits — has reached a state of apocalyptic decadence — that democracy is a luxury we can no longer afford?

A coalition of intellectual catastrophists on the American right is trying to convince people of just that — giving the next generation of Republican officeholders, senior advisers, judges and appointees explicit permission and encouragement to believe that the country is on the verge of collapse. Some catastrophists take it a step further and suggest that officials might contemplate overthrowing liberal democracy in favor of revolutionary regime change or even imposing a right-wing dictatorship on the country.

The list of people making these arguments includes former officials in the Trump administration, some of whom are likely to be considered for top jobs in the event of a Trump restoration in 2024. It includes respected scholars at prestigious universities and influential think tanks. The ideas about the threat of an all-powerful totalitarian left and the dismal state of the country — even the most outlandish of them — are taken seriously by conservative politicians as well as prominent influencers on the right.

That makes this a crucial time to familiarize ourselves with and begin formulating a response to these ideas. If Mr. Trump manages to win the presidency again in 2024, many of these intellectual catastrophists could be ready and willing to justify deeds that could well bring American liberal democracy to its knees.

The Claremont Catastrophists

Probably the best-known faction of catastrophists and the one with the most direct connection to Republican politics is led by Michael Anton and others with ties to the Claremont Institute, a right-wing think tank in California. Mr. Anton’s notorious Claremont Review of Books essay in September 2016 called the contest between Mr. Trump and Hillary Clinton “The Flight 93 Election.” Mr. Anton, who would go on to serve as a National Security Council official in the Trump administration, insisted the choice facing Republicans, like the passengers on the jet hijacked by terrorists intent on self-immolation in a suicide attack on the White House or the Capitol on Sept. 11, was to “charge the cockpit or you die.” (For a few months in 2000 and 2001, Mr. Anton was my boss in the communications office of Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and we have engaged in spirited debates over the years.)

Mr. Anton’s “Flight 93” essay originally appeared on a website with modest traffic, but two days later Rush Limbaugh was reading it aloud in its entirety on his radio show. The essay set the tone of life-or-death struggle (and related imagery) that is common among catastrophists.

After leaving the Trump White House, Mr. Anton updated and amplified the argument in a 2021 book, “The Stakes: America at the Point of No Return.”

America faced a choice: Either Mr. Trump would prevail in his bid for re-election or America was doomed.

John Eastman, a conservative lawyer also at the Claremont Institute, agreed. That is why, after Joe Biden won the 2020 election, Mr. Eastman set about taking the lead in convincing Mr. Trump that there was a way for him to remain in power, if only Vice President Mike Pence treated his ceremonial role in certifying election results as a vastly broader power to delay certification.

Despite legal troubles related to the efforts to overturn the election, Mr. Eastman’s attitude hasn’t changed. In a conversation this summer with Thomas Klingenstein, a leading funder of the Claremont Institute, Mr. Eastman explained why he thought such unprecedented moves were justified.

The prospect of Mr. Biden’s becoming president constituted an “existential threat,” Mr. Eastman said, to the survivability of the country. Would we “completely repudiate every one of our founding principles” and allow ourselves to be “eradicated”? Those were the stakes, as he viewed them.

Once a thinker begins to conceive of politics as a pitched battle between the righteous and those who seek the country’s outright annihilation, extraordinary possibilities open up.

That’s how, in May 2021, Mr. Anton came to conduct a two-hour podcast with a far-right Silicon Valley tech guru and self-described “monarchist,” Curtis Yarvin, in which the two agreed that the American “regime” is today most accurately described as a “theocratic oligarchy.” In that arrangement, an elite class of progressive “priests” ensconced in executive branch agencies, the universities, elite media and other leading institutions of civil society promulgate and enforce a distorted and self-serving version of reality that illegitimately justifies their rule.

In this conversation, Mr. Anton and Mr. Yarvin swapped ideas about how this theocratic oligarchy might be overthrown. It culminated in Mr. Yarvin sketching a scenario in which a would-be dictator he alternatively describes as “Caesar” and “Trump” defies the laws and norms of democratic transition and uses a “Trump app” to direct throngs of his supporters on the streets of the nation’s capital to do his bidding, insulating the would-be dictator from harm and the consequences of his democracy-defying acts.

A year ago, Mr. Anton revisited the topic of “the perils and possibilities of Caesarism” on “The Matthew Peterson Show” with several other intellectual catastrophists with ties to the Claremont Institute. (Another panelist on the online show, Charles Haywood, a wealthy former businessman, used the term “Red Caesar,” referring to the color associated with the G.O.P., in a 2021 blog post about Mr. Anton’s second book.)

On the Peterson show, Mr. Anton described Caesarism as one-man rule that emerges “after the decay of a republican order, when it can no longer function.” (He also said that he would lament the United States coming to these circumstances because he would prefer the country to embrace the principles of “1787 forever.” But if that is no longer possible, he said, the rule of a Caesar can be a necessary method to restore order.)

The Christian Reverse Revolutionaries

Those on the right primarily concerned about the fate of traditionalist Christian morals and worship in the United States insist that we already live in a regime that oppresses and brutalizes religious believers and conservatives. And they make those charges in a theologically inflected idiom that’s meant to address and amplify the right’s intense worries about persecution by progressives.

Among the most extreme catastrophists writing in this vein is Stephen Wolfe, whose book “The Case for Christian Nationalism” calls for a “just revolution” against America’s “gynocracy” (rule by women) that emasculates men, persuading them to affirm “feminine virtues, such as empathy, fairness and equality.” In its place, Mr. Wolfe proposes the installation of a “Christian prince,” or a form of “theocratic Caesarism.”

Other authors aspire to greater nuance by calling the dictatorship weighing down on religious believers soft totalitarianism, usually under the rule of social-justice progressivism. These writers often draw direct parallels between the fate of devout Christians in the contemporary United States and the struggles of Eastern Europeans who sought to practice their faith but were harshly persecuted by Soviet tyranny. Establishing the validity of that parallel is the main point of the most recent book by the writer Rod Dreher, “Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents.” (The title is drawn from the writings of the Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.)

But Patrick Deneen of the University of Notre Dame offers the most elaborate and intellectually sophisticated response in his recent book, “Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future.” (Mr. Deneen and I worked together professionally at several points over the past two decades, and Mr. Dreher and I have been friends for even longer.)

Mr. Deneen’s previous book, “Why Liberalism Failed,” was praised by writers across the political spectrum, including former President Barack Obama, for helping readers understand the appeal of the harder-edged populist conservatism that took control of the Republican Party in 2016. “Regime Change” is a much darker book that goes well beyond diagnosing America’s ills to propose what sounds, in certain passages, like a radical cure.

The book opens with a tableau of a decaying country with declining economic prospects, blighted cities, collapsing birthrates, drug addiction and widespread suicidal despair. The source of these maladies, Mr. Deneen claims, is liberalism, which until recently has dominated both political parties in the United States, imposing an ideology of individual rights and historical progress on the country from above. This ideology, he says, denigrates tradition, faith, authority and community.

Growing numbers of Americans supposedly reject this outlook, demanding a postliberal government and social, cultural and economic order — basically, hard-right policies on religious and moral issues and hard left on economics. But the forces of liberalism are entrenched on the center left and center right, using every power at their disposal to prevent regime change.

Mr. Deneen is inconsistent in laying out how postliberal voters should achieve the overthrow of this progressive tyranny. In some passages, he advocates a “peaceful but vigorous overthrow of a corrupt and corrupting liberal ruling class” and proposes modest reforms to replace it. They include relocating executive branch departments of the federal government to cities around the country and the establishment of nationwide vocational programs.

But in other passages, Mr. Deneen goes much further, describing the separation of church and state as a “totalitarian undertaking” that must be reversed so that American public life can be fully integrated with conservative forms of Christianity. He even affirmatively quotes a passage from Machiavelli in which he talks of the need to use “extralegal and almost bestial” forms of resistance, including “mobs running through the streets,” in order to topple the powers that be.

Despite that shift in content and tone, Mr. Deneen has been embraced by many New Right conservatives and G.O.P. politicians like Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio. Senator Marco Rubio’s former chief of staff has called him “one of the important people thinking about why we are in the moment we are in right now.”

Mr. Deneen and other discontented intellectuals of the religious right can perhaps be most accurately described as political reactionaries looking to undertake a revolutionary act in reverse.

The Bronze Age Pervert and the Nietzschean Fringe

Farther out on the right’s political and philosophical extremes there’s Costin Alamariu, the person generally understood to be writing under the pseudonym Bronze Age Pervert.

He self-published a book in 2018, “Bronze Age Mindset,” which follows Friedrich Nietzsche and other authors beloved by the European far right in proclaiming that Western civilization itself is on the verge of collapse, its greatest achievements far in the past, its present a “garbage world” in an advanced state of decay.

All around us, Mr. Alamariu declares, greatness and beauty are under assault. Who are its enemies? Women, for one. (“It took 100 years of women in public life for them to almost totally destroy a civilization.”) Then there’s belief in democratic equality. (“I believe that democracy is the final cause of all the political problems I describe.”)

But blame must most of all be laid at the feet of the creature Mr. Alamariu calls the “bugman,” a term he uses to describe a majority of human beings alive today. This insectlike infestation venerates mediocrity and is “motivated by a titanic hatred of the well-turned-out and beautiful.”

Mr. Alamariu proposes breeding great men of strength who model themselves on pirates, disregarding laws and norms, plundering and taking anything they want and ultimately installing themselves as absolute rulers over the rest of us. Mr. Trump, Mr. Alamariu believes, has pointed us in the right direction. But the former president is only the beginning, he writes. “Now imagine a man of Trump’s charisma, but who is not merely beholden to the generals, but one of them, and able to rule and intimidate them as well as seduce the many. … Caesars and Napoleons are sure to follow.”

In a recent essay, Mr. Alamariu wrote: “I believe in fascism or ‘something worse’ …. I believe in rule by a military caste of men who would be able to guide society toward a morality of eugenics.”

It’s hard to know how seriously to take all of this. Mr. Alamariu, who has a Ph.D. in political science from Yale, writes in such a cartoonish way and laces his outrageous pronouncements with so much irony and humor, not to mention deliberate spelling and syntax errors, that he often seems to be playing a joke on his reader.

But that doesn’t mean influential figures on the right aren’t taking him seriously. Nate Hochman, who was let go by the presidential campaign of Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida after sharing on social media a video containing a Nazi symbol, told The New York Times that “every junior staffer in the Trump administration read ‘Bronze Age Mindset.’”

Mr. Alamariu’s recently self-published doctoral dissertation reached No. 23 on Amazon sitewide in mid-September. Among those on the right treating the author as a friend, ally or interlocutor worthy of respectful engagement are the prominent activist Christopher Rufo, the author Richard Hanania and the economist-blogger Tyler Cowen.

Combating the Catastrophists

Some will undoubtedly suggest we shouldn’t be unduly alarmed about such trends. These are just a handful of obscure writers talking to one another, very far removed from the concerns of Republican officeholders and rank-and-file voters.

But such complacency follows from a misunderstanding of the role of intellectuals in radical political movements. These writers are giving Republican elites permission and encouragement to do things that just a few years ago would have been considered unthinkable.

In a second term, Mr. Trump’s ambition is to fire tens of thousands of career civil servants throughout the federal bureaucracy and replace them with loyalists. He also reportedly plans to staff the executive branch with more aggressive right-wing lawyers. These would surely be people unwaveringly devoted to the president and his agenda as well as the danger the Democratic Party supposedly poses to the survival of the United States.

These writers also exercise a powerful influence on media personalities with large audiences. Tucker Carlson has interviewed Curtis Yarvin and declared that with regard to the 2024 election, “everything is at stake. What wouldn’t they do? What haven’t they done? How will you prepare yourself?” Other right-wing influencers with large followings assert more bluntly that if conservatives lose in 2024, they will be hunted down and murdered by the regime.

It’s important that we respond to such statements by pointing out there is literally no evidence to support them. Other intellectual catastrophists are likewise wrong to suggest the country is ruled by a progressive tyranny, and we can know this because people on the right increasingly say such things while facing no legal consequences at all.

Yes, our politics is increasingly turbulent. Yet the country endured far worse turmoil just over a half-century ago — political assassinations, huge protests, riots, hundreds of bombings, often carried out by left-wing terrorists — without dispensing with democracy or looking to a Caesar as a savior.

The question, then, is why the intellectual catastrophists have gotten to this point — and why others on the right are listening to them. The answer, I think, is an intense dislike of what America has become, combined with panic about the right’s ability to win sufficient power in the democratic arena to force a decisive change.

None of which is meant to imply that liberalism is flawless or that it doesn’t deserve criticism. But the proper arena in which to take advantage of liberalism’s protean character — its historical flexibility in response to cultural, social and economic changes over time — remains ordinary democratic politics, in which clashing parties compete for support and accept the outcome of free and fair elections.

Those on different sides of these conflicts need to be willing to accept the possibility of losing. That’s the democratic deal: No election is ever the final election.

In refusing to accept that deal, many of the right’s most prominent writers are ceasing to behave like citizens, who must be willing to share rule with others, in favor of thinking and acting like commissars eager to serve a strongman.

There may be little the rest of us can do about it besides resisting the temptation to respond in kind. In that refusal, we give the lie to claims that the liberal center has tyrannical aims of its own — and demonstrate that the right’s intellectual catastrophists are really just anticipatory sore losers.

Damon Linker writes the Substack newsletter “Notes From the Middleground.” He is a senior lecturer in the department of political science at the University of Pennsylvania and a senior fellow in the Open Society Project at the Niskanen Center.

15. Zelensky Rebuke of Top General Signals Rift in Ukrainian Leadership

Zelensky Rebuke of Top General Signals Rift in Ukrainian Leadership

The presidential office said Gen. Valery Zaluzhny’s declaration that the war is at a stalemate was helpful to the Russians.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/04/world/europe/zelensky-rebuke-general-zaluzhny.html?utm

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A soldier of the 63rd Mechanized Brigade in a contested frontline area near Kreminna, in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine.Credit...Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

By Andrew E. Kramer, Maria Varenikova and Constant Méheut

Andrew E. Kramer and Maria Varenikova reported from Sumy, Ukraine, and Constant Méheut from Kyiv.

Published Nov. 4, 2023

Updated Nov. 5, 2023, 4:05 a.m. ET

Want the latest stories related to Ukraine? Sign up for the newsletter Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send them to your inbox.

The office of President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday chastised Ukraine’s top military commander for publicly declaring the war at a stalemate, suggesting the comments would help the Russian invasion. It was a striking public rebuke that signaled an emerging rift between the military and civilian leadership at an already challenging time for Ukraine.

Speaking on national television, a deputy head of the office of the president, Ihor Zhovkva, said Gen. Valery Zaluzhny’s assertion that the fight against Russia was deadlocked “eases the work of the aggressor,” adding that the comments stirred “panic” among Ukraine’s Western allies.

At the same time, Mr. Zelensky disputed the general’s characterization of the fighting. “Time has passed, people are tired, regardless of their status, and this is understandable,” he said at a news conference on Saturday, adding: “But this is not a stalemate, I emphasize this once again.”

The public censure of General Zaluzhny came a day after the president’s office replaced one of his deputies, the head of special operations forces, who after his firing said he had been blindsided by the dismissal. It was unclear whether General Zaluzhny, the overall commander of Ukraine’s forces, knew in advance of the planned dismissal.

Image

Gen. Valery Zaluzhny at the funeral of a soldier in Kyiv in March.Credit...Sergei Supinsky/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The emerging fissure between the general and the president comes as Ukraine is struggling in its war effort, militarily and diplomatically. Its operations along the roughly 600-mile-long trench line have failed to produce any advances, while resulting in high casualties on both sides, and Ukraine is facing intensified Russian attacks in the East. At the same time, skepticism about Ukraine aid has increased in some European capitals and among members of the Republican Party in the United States.

Ukraine’s leadership is also worried that the attention of Western allies has shifted to the conflict between Israel and Hamas, and away from its war with Russia. “The war in the Middle East, this conflict takes away the focus,” Mr. Zelensky said on Saturday.

The State of the War

Drone Barrage: Russian forces targeted Ukraine with their biggest drone attack in weeks, part of what Ukrainian officials and military analysts say appears to be a campaign to wear down and probe Ukrainian air defenses ahead of winter.
Joining the War Effort: Hundreds of experienced fighters from Colombia have joined Kyiv’s ranks to improve their financial fortunes, reflecting the recruitment struggles faced by Ukraine as the conflict turns from a struggle for national survival into a war of attrition.
Growing Frustration: President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has complained over what he has labeled unrealistic expectations for rapid success on the battlefield amid concerns that slow progress against Russian forces will discourage Kyiv’s allies from sustaining military aid.
Russian Soldiers Detained: The arrest in an occupied area of Ukraine of two Russian soldiers was a rare admission by Moscow that its forces may have committed a crime against Ukrainian civilians. But experts warned that it might just be political posturing.

Even as Ukrainian soldiers endure in the trenches, soaked now into streams of mud by autumn rains, officials and politicians in Ukraine and allied capitals have been passing around blame for the stalled Ukrainian counteroffensive that began in June and has advanced only a dozen or so miles through densely mined fields. American officials have hinted that Ukraine was to blame for dispersing its forces too widely; Mr. Zelensky said his army did not receive sufficient weaponry to advance.

Speculation about tension between the president and the military’s commanding general over strategy and command appointments had been swirling in Kyiv for more than a year but had not spilled into public disagreement previously.

General Zaluzhny did not immediately comment on the government’s rebuke or the dismissal of his chief of special operations.

Image

An injured soldier from the Bakhmut front line receiving treatment in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine on Thursday.Credit...Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

The cause for the breach was an essay General Zaluzhny published in The Economist in which he asserted that drone reconnaissance and other technologies had rendered mechanized assaults by either side impossible. Further advances were improbable, he wrote, and Ukraine would not reach a “beautiful breakthrough” in the war without receiving more advanced weaponry.

“There are difficulties, there are different opinions,” Mr. Zelensky said in his appearance Saturday with Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, who paid a surprise visit to Kyiv on Saturday to discuss Ukraine’s E.U. accession process.

“I believe that we have no right to even think about giving up, because what’s the alternative?” he added.

Though General Zaluzhny was clearly not suggesting that Ukraine was losing the war, and he pointed out that Russia, too, had not made any substantive advances, he acknowledged in his essay that the two sides had entered a “stalemate.” He also wrote that breaking the deadlock would require technological advances to achieve air superiority, emphasizing the role of next-generation drones and electronic warfare.

In his comments Saturday, Mr. Zhovkva, the deputy in the president’s office, said General Zaluzhny’s remarks might reflect “a very deep strategic plan,” but risked harming Ukraine’s war effort. He said the essay had spurred foreign officials to call, asking “‘What should I report to my leader? Are you really at a dead end?’” He added, “Was this the effect we wanted to achieve?”

Image

A pilot and his navigator reviewing footage at a base in the Zaporizhzhia region. General Zaluzhny asserted that drone reconnaissance and other technologies had rendered mechanized assaults by either side impossible.Credit...Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

Olexiy Haran, a professor of comparative politics at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, said the public airing of the dispute was less political than pragmatic, in conveying the president’s wartime communications strategy. “What Zhovkva is saying is that it’s better to communicate on this behind closed doors,” without stirring public debate in allied nations, Mr. Haran said.

He added that Mr. Zelensky’s aides might be worried that General Zaluzhny’s sobering conclusions could discourage some allies from sustaining their military aid.

Signs of friction surfaced on Friday when Mr. Zelensky’s office dismissed one of General Zaluzhny’s top deputies, the commander of Ukraine’s special operations forces, Gen. Viktor Khorenko, without initially providing an explanation. On Saturday, Ukraine’s minister of defense, Rustem Umerov, said he had recommended the dismissal but would not explain why, lest it “give reasons to the enemy to weaken Ukraine.”

The decision puzzled some because General Khorenko had scored a string of successes in striking behind enemy lines, including hitting ships and infrastructure of Russia’s Black Sea fleet in Crimea and targets inside Russia. The long-range strikes and sabotage operations of the special forces had cheered Ukrainians.

But field commanders and military analysts had noted grumbling in the ranks over what were perceived as politically guided decisions on strategy, including the launch of an amphibious assault across the Dnipro River in southern Ukraine that has yet to secure a bridgehead on the Russian-held eastern bank. Another point of tension was the firing of battalion commanders who had led units in the counteroffensive in southern Ukraine over the summer.

Image

Destroyed civilian and military vehicles on the bank of the Dnipro River in the Kherson region in January.Credit...Nicole Tung for The New York Times

U.S. military officers who have worked with General Khorenko were surprised by the news of his ouster and described a close and effective working relationship with him, according to American military officials.

Under Ukraine’s Constitution, the president is empowered to appoint and dismiss the head of the special forces, though the position is directly subordinate to the commander in chief of the military. The firing appeared to undercut General Zaluzhny’s authority.

Commentators including a member of Ukraine’s Parliament said General Khorenko’s firing appeared to be the most significant and potentially disruptive political meddling in the military’s prosecution of the war so far.

“The firing looks like political interference into the armed forces and into its combat actions,” the member, Solomiya Bobrovska, who serves on the Parliament’s defense and intelligence committee, said in an interview. Ms. Bobrovska belongs to an opposition political party, Holos.

“This is a big mistake, and there will be consequences,” she said in the interview. She suggested that in fact it was the presidential office’s firing of a successful general that would aid the Russians.

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington.

Andrew E. Kramer is the Times bureau chief in Kyiv. He was part of a team that won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting for a series on Russia’s covert projection of power. More about Andrew E. Kramer

Constant Méheut has covered France from the Paris bureau of The Times since 2020. More about Constant Méheut

A version of this article appears in print on Nov. 5, 2023, Section A, Page 8 of the New York edition with the headline: Zelensky Rebuke of Top General Signals Friction in Ukrainian Leadership. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

16. Nuclear Talks With China Are Essential and Long Overdue

Excerpts:

It is also in the best interests of both the Americans and Chinese to begin talks on how to integrate artificial intelligence into national defense. The Biden administration took an early step in understanding the challenges the new technology will pose in an executive order issued this week. At the bare minimum, nations should require that humans do — and always will — make the ultimate call to launch nuclear weapons. “The prospects that the unconstrained advance of A.I. will create catastrophic consequences for the United States and the world are so compelling that leaders in governments must act now,” as Henry Kissinger and Graham Allison wrote last month in Foreign Affairs.

Expectations for the low-level talks are modest. But any dialogue between nuclear armed powers is welcome and, if history is a guide, progress often begets progress when managing the world’s most destructive weapons. It is far easier to head off an arms race before it starts than to do so after it has spun out of control.

OPINION

THE EDITORIAL BOARD

Nuclear Talks With China Are Essential and Long Overdue

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/04/opinion/sunday/china-nuclear-weapons-russia.html?utm

Nov. 4, 2023

Credit...Illustration by Rebecca Chew/The New York Times

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By The Editorial Board

The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.

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After months of troubled relations, and then some tentative steps to bridge the gap between the United States and China, there is one glaring omission: American and Chinese military leaders still don’t communicate with one another directly. That’s important because those lines of communication are the best way to avoid the kind of misunderstandings or overreactions that can lead to actual conflict. That’s why it’s encouraging that the countries plan to meet on Monday to discuss arms control.

The talks come at a perilous moment for the systems of global controls, painstakingly built over decades, to avoid nuclear conflict. The landmark Cold War-era treaties between the United States and Russia have fallen by the wayside, one by one, with few meaningful restraints remaining and even less good will to negotiate successor agreements. The last major agreement, New START, expires in February 2026.

This week, the Russian government said it was formally withdrawing from the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, though it said it would continue to abide by the terms of that agreement. The United States, for its part, is in the midst of upgrading its own nuclear weapons.

As the United States and Russia lose their safeguards, the Chinese government is expanding its nuclear arsenal. For decades, the People’s Liberation Army has felt secure with a few hundred nuclear weapons. But over the past few years, the government began a building spree that, if it continues, would leave China with an arsenal of 1,500 nuclear weapons by 2035, according to an estimate released last month by the Pentagon. Currently, the United States and Russia have about 1,670 deployed weapons each, with thousands more in storage.

Arms races tend to acquire a self-sustaining momentum. The danger of the Chinese expansion is that the United States and Russia may each feel that they then need to expand their own arsenals to match the combined total of the other two powers. That’s a formula for the construction and maintenance of arsenals without end.

Such competition would be alarming even if the relations between these three superpowers were otherwise harmonious. Throw in unpredictable points of tension around trade, the military buildup in the South China Sea, the future of Taiwan, the war in Ukraine, espionage in cyberspace and a dozen other fault lines, and the nuclear buildup risks triggering a global crisis with little margin for error and few offramps.

The world has faced such peril before. Some of the most alarming moments of the Cold War came as a result of misunderstandings. That was the rationale for establishing a hotline between Washington and Moscow in the wake of the Cuban missile crisis, to give leaders immediate access to each other, day or night. One such line of communication exists between the United States and China but is not in use, despite years of quiet pressure on Beijing to answer calls.

China’s apparent willingness to now consider an arrangement to open lines of military-to-military communication is welcome news. In addition to a hotline, the United States and China should also agree to provide each other with basic information about test missile launches, as America and Russia have done for years. This kind of visibility and sharing of information is critical for all nations to distinguish between routine tests and potential first strikes, to avoid catastrophe by accident. A terrifying secret of the Cold War was that nuclear war was avoided, on several occasions, by chance.

That helps explain why the Biden administration has placed a high priority on restarting international cooperation on arms control, even as the world seems more chaotic than ever. “We’re under no illusions that reaching risk reduction and arms control measures will be easy,” Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, said in a speech this summer. “But we do believe it is possible.”

Mr. Sullivan also launched a pre-emptive strike against hawks in the United States, noting in that speech that the current arsenal of nuclear weapons is sufficient to deter both Russia and China, even if the number of their weapons grows. In the cold logic of nuclear game theory, having enough nuclear weapons to launch a devastating counter strike is sufficient to deter a first strike.

That’s important to keep in mind when politicians begin to fearmonger about a new missile gap as a justification for more weapons. Americans are rightly worried about the possibility that today’s existing conflicts will turn into even worse regional or global conflagrations. Ukraine is defending itself against Russia, a country that has not ruled out the use of nuclear weapons. Israel’s war against Hamas risks drawing in Iran, a rogue state that is close to recognizing its nuclear ambitions. And North Korea continues to improve its rogue nuclear weapons program, now possibly capable of striking the United States. Yes, these are all destabilizing. But against that backdrop, adding more nuclear weapons to the mix only raises the stakes even further, and will not make the United States safer.

It is also in the best interests of both the Americans and Chinese to begin talks on how to integrate artificial intelligence into national defense. The Biden administration took an early step in understanding the challenges the new technology will pose in an executive order issued this week. At the bare minimum, nations should require that humans do — and always will — make the ultimate call to launch nuclear weapons. “The prospects that the unconstrained advance of A.I. will create catastrophic consequences for the United States and the world are so compelling that leaders in governments must act now,” as Henry Kissinger and Graham Allison wrote last month in Foreign Affairs.

Expectations for the low-level talks are modest. But any dialogue between nuclear armed powers is welcome and, if history is a guide, progress often begets progress when managing the world’s most destructive weapons. It is far easier to head off an arms race before it starts than to do so after it has spun out of control.

Source photograph by Maudib, via Getty Images.

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

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The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.

A version of this article appears in print on Nov. 5, 2023, Section SR, Page 11 of the New York edition with the headline: Nuclear Talks With China Are Long Overdue. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

17. Fact Check: Has Google Earth captured Crimea bridge attack damage?

Video, photos, and graphic at the link: https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-has-google-earth-captured-crimea-bridge-attack-damage-1840669?utm

Fact Check: Has Google Earth captured Crimea bridge attack damage?

Newsweek · by Tom Norton · November 3, 2023

Multiple attacks on the Kerch Strait Bridge connecting Crimea with Russia have caused problems for the Kremlin, compromising an important supply route for Russian forces fighting in Ukraine.

It was first attacked in October 2022, with a massive explosion destroying part of the highway, and was hit again in July 2023—Kyiv has since claimed responsibility for both strikes.

Now, the legacy of these attacks is allegedly being shared by Google. One social media post this week suggested satellite imagery from the aftermath of last year's explosion is now available via the internet giant's mapping software.

A satellite image captured by Maxar Technologies after the Kerch Strait Bridge explosion in October 2022. It was claimed on social media that Google Earth now showed images of the bridge's destruction after the explosion in October last year. Satellite image ©2023 Maxar Technologies

The Claim

A post by political commentator Glasnost Gone on X, formerly Twitter, on October 30, 2023, stated: "If you need to smile about something today, Google Earth now shows good quality images of #Ukraine's successful Oct 2022 strike on Russia's illegal #Crimea bridge. Hopefully soon, Ukraine will finish the job for good."

The post included what looked like a satellite image from Google Earth, showing destruction to a section of the Kerch Strait Bridge. The name "Maxar Technologies" appears at the bottom of the image.

The Facts

Initial searches on Google Maps and Google Earth via a web browser did not show damage to the Kerch Strait Bridge.

However, Google Earth Pro, a high-power desktop software version of Google Earth does show the damage from October 2022.

An image is available, taken on October 12, 2022, four days after the explosion. Just like in the image shared on X, Google Earth Pro's photos show a small section of the eastern side of the bridge collapsed into the water, with fire damage across both sides of the bridge. The east and west sides of the bridge are suspended on two separate platforms.

Newsweek contacted a media representative for Google via email for comment.

Asked about the image shared on X, Maxar Technologies told Newsweek it did not see "anything in that video clip that includes any of our satellite imagery". Newsweek has asked its media representative why its name appears at the bottom of the image on Google Earth Pro.

Maxar did, however, provide satellite imagery showing damage both from the explosion in October 2022 and the attack on the bridge on July 17, 2023.

The images it collected last year were captured on October 8, 2022, showing heavy damage with several rail cars on fire. The damage in these photos is consistent with the images on Google Earth.

Newsweek has asked Maxar for contemporaneous images of the bridge.

The U.K. Ministry of Defense said last month that while the Kerch Strait Bridge is fully operational, new procedures enacted since the attack in October 2022 have led to traffic restrictions, with trucks and fuel supplies continuing to be moved by ferry.

Although the bridge will remain a vital link in sustaining Russia's occupation of Crimea and its forces in southern Ukraine, the ministry said, it is now "almost certainly a significant security burden requiring multi-domain protection, including the use of air defence systems and crews who would otherwise be deployed elsewhere."

The Ruling

True.

A satellite image of the destruction caused to the Kerch Strait Bridge in October 2022 can be seen using Google Earth Pro. The image was captured four days after the explosion took place.

FACT CHECK BY Newsweek's Fact Check team

Uncommon Knowledge

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

Newsweek · by Tom Norton · November 3, 2023

18. Why Do Young Americans Support Hamas? Look at TikTok. by Rep. Mike Gallagher

This appears to be true based on anecdotal evidence. So my daughter has about 160 10th grade English students. I asked her for her assessment of this and she said she thinks 90% of the students are informed by Tik Tok and that is where they get most of their "information."

Excerpt:

Some have argued that there is a constitutional right to TikTok, that banning it would violate Americans’ rights under the First Amendment. But the First Amendment surely does not require us to allow social media apps controlled by foreign adversaries to dominate the U.S. market.

First Amendment

https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-1/#amendment-1

First Amendment Explained

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Explained:

https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/amendment-1/

Amdt1.7 Free Speech Clause
Amdt1.7.1Historical Background on Free Speech Clause
Amdt1.7.2 Procedural Matters
Amdt1.7.2.1The Overbreadth Doctrine, Statutory Language, and Free Speech
Amdt1.7.2.2Vagueness, Statutory Language, and Free Speech
Amdt1.7.2.3Prior Restraints on Speech
Amdt1.7.2.4State Action Doctrine and Free Speech
Amdt1.7.3 Content-Based and Content-Neutral Regulation of Speech
Amdt1.7.3.1Overview of Content-Based and Content-Neutral Regulation of Speech
Amdt1.7.3.2Development of a Judicial Approach to Content-Based Speech Laws
Amdt1.7.3.3Laws Making Facial Content-Based Distinctions Regarding Speech
Amdt1.7.3.4Laws Regulating Speech with a Content-Discriminatory Purpose
Amdt1.7.3.5Laws Making Speaker-Based Distinctions in Regulating Speech
Amdt1.7.3.6Content-Based and Compelled Speech
Amdt1.7.3.7Content-Neutral Laws Burdening Speech
Amdt1.7.4 Viewpoint-Based Regulation of Speech
Amdt1.7.4.1Overview of Viewpoint-Based Regulation of Speech
Amdt1.7.4.2Viewpoint-Based Distinctions on the Face of a Law
Amdt1.7.4.3Viewpoint Discrimination in Facially Neutral Laws
Amdt1.7.4.4Viewpoint-Based Distinctions Within Proscribable Speech
Amdt1.7.4.5Viewpoint Neutrality in Forum Analysis
Amdt1.7.5 Categorical Approach
Amdt1.7.5.1Overview of Categorical Approach to Restricting Speech
Amdt1.7.5.2Early Doctrine of Incitement
Amdt1.7.5.3Incitement Movement from Clear and Present Danger Test
Amdt1.7.5.4Incitement Current Doctrine
Amdt1.7.5.5Fighting Words
Amdt1.7.5.6True Threats
Amdt1.7.5.7Defamation
Amdt1.7.5.8Application of Defamation Cases to Group Libel, Hate Speech
Amdt1.7.5.9False Statements Outside of Defamation
Amdt1.7.5.10Privacy Torts
Amdt1.7.5.11Obscenity
Amdt1.7.5.12Child Pornography
Amdt1.7.6 Commercial Speech
Amdt1.7.6.1Commercial Speech Early Doctrine
Amdt1.7.6.2Central Hudson Test and Current Doctrine
Amdt1.7.7 Public Forum Doctrine
Amdt1.7.7.1The Public Forum
Amdt1.7.7.2Public and Nonpublic Forums
Amdt1.7.7.3Quasi-Public Places
Amdt1.7.8 Role of Government
Amdt1.7.8.1Overview of Government Roles
Amdt1.7.8.2Government Speech and Government as Speaker
Amdt1.7.8.3School Free Speech and Government as Educator
Amdt1.7.8.4Prison Free Speech and Government as Prison Administrator
Amdt1.7.9 Public Employee Speech and Government as Employer
Amdt1.7.9.1Loyalty Oaths
Amdt1.7.9.2Political Activities and Government Employees
Amdt1.7.9.3Honoraria and Government Employees
Amdt1.7.9.4Pickering Balancing Test for Government Employee Speech
Amdt1.7.10 Media Regulation
Amdt1.7.10.1Overview of Media Regulation
Amdt1.7.10.2Taxation of Media
Amdt1.7.10.3Labor and Antitrust Regulation of Media
Amdt1.7.10.4Broadcast Radio and Television
Amdt1.7.10.5Cable Television
Amdt1.7.10.6Newspapers, Telephones, and the Internet
Amdt1.7.11 Political Speech
Amdt1.7.11.1Overview of Campaign Finance
Amdt1.7.11.2Campaign Finance Contribution Limits and Source Restrictions
Amdt1.7.11.3Campaign Finance Expenditure Limits
Amdt1.7.11.4Campaign Finance Disclosure and Disclaimer Requirements
Amdt1.7.11.5Lobbying
Amdt1.7.11.6Legislative Investigations
Amdt1.7.12 Compelled Speech
Amdt1.7.12.1Overview of Compelled Speech
Amdt1.7.12.2Flag Salutes and Other Compelled Speech
Amdt1.7.12.3Compelled Subsidization
Amdt1.7.13 Unconstitutional Conditions on Speech
Amdt1.7.13.1Overview of Unconstitutional Conditions Doctrine
Amdt1.7.13.2Conditions of Public Employment
Amdt1.7.13.3Conditions on Tax Exemptions
Amdt1.7.13.4Conditions on Federal Funding
Amdt1.7.13.5Restrictions on Editorializing
Amdt1.7.13.6Selective Funding Arrangements
Amdt1.7.13.7Government's Message Versus Private Speakers
Amdt1.7.13.8Public Entities and Private Access
Amdt1.7.13.9Conditions Exceeding the Scope of the Program
Amdt1.7.13.10Requirements That Can Be Imposed Directly
Amdt1.7.14 Symbolic Speech
Amdt1.7.14.1Overview of Symbolic Speech
Amdt1.7.14.2Leaflets and Handbills
Amdt1.7.14.3Flags as a Case Study in Symbolic Speech
Amdt1.7.14.4Public Issue Picketing and Parading
Amdt1.7.14.5Labor Union Protests and Marches
Amdt1.7.14.6Solicitation

Why Do Young Americans Support Hamas? Look at TikTok.

thefp.com · by Rep. Mike Gallagher · November 2, 2023

According to a Harvard/Harris poll, 51 percent of Americans ages 18–24 believe Hamas was justified in its brutal terrorist attacks on innocent Israeli citizens on October 7.

I read that statistic at a time where I thought I’d lost the capacity to be shocked. For weeks, I’ve seen the clips and read the firsthand stories documenting Hamas’s atrocities: burned bodies, decapitated babies, raped women, children tied together with their parents, mutilated corpses. I’d seen the rallies on elite campuses celebrating Hamas’s murderous cause, the faculty letters excusing the terrorists. I thought I had grasped the extent of the moral rot. I thought I had seen the bottom.

But I hadn’t.

How did we reach a point where a majority of young Americans hold such a morally bankrupt view of the world? Where many young Americans were rooting for terrorists who had kidnapped American citizens—and against a key American ally? Where were they getting the raw news to inform this upside-down world view?

The short answer is, increasingly, via social media and predominantly TikTok. TikTok is not just an app teenagers use to make viral dance videos. A growing number of Americans rely on it for their news. Today, TikTok is the top search engine for more than half of Gen Z, and about six in ten Americans are hooked on the app before their seventeenth birthday. And it is controlled by America’s foremost adversary, one that does not share our interests or our values: the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is Chinese, and in China there is no such thing as a private company. As if to underscore the point, ByteDance’s chief editor, Zhang Fuping, is also the boss of the company’s internal Communist Party cell.

We know of TikTok’s predatory nature because the app has several versions. In China, there is a safely sanitized version called Douyin. That version, using much of the same technology, shows kids science experiments and other educational content, and its use is limited to forty minutes per day. Here in America, the application’s algorithm is exquisitely tuned to prioritize polarizing outrage and addictive, brain-numbing nonsense (at best) and dangerous propaganda (at worst). Put differently, ByteDance and the CCP have decided that China’s children get spinach, and America’s get digital fentanyl.

And we are absolutely hooked, with 16 percent of teens using it “almost constantly.” Today, 69.7 percent of Americans aged 12–17, 76.2 percent aged 18–24, and 54 percent aged 25–34 use TikTok. By tweaking the TikTok algorithm, the CCP can censor information and influence Americans of all ages on a variety of issues. It can shape what facts they consider accurate, and what conclusions they draw from world events.

If you doubt that the CCP would introduce bias—against Israel, against Jews, against the West, or anything else—into apps under its de facto control, consider that on October 31 The Wall Street Journal reported that Chinese web platforms Baidu and Alibaba have wiped Israel off the map—literally. The two most widely used mapping programs in China show the outlines of Israel’s territory but do not label it as Israel, and may not have for some time.

We know for a fact that the CCP uses TikTok to push its propaganda and censor views that diverge from the party line. Reports have confirmed that TikTok spied on journalists who wrote negative stories about TikTok. Via TikTok, Chinese state media pushed divisive information about U.S. politicians ahead of midterm elections. Numerous reports have found TikTok censoring and suppressing content about Xinjiang, Tibet, Tiananmen Square, and other issues sensitive to the CCP. TikTok has also suppressed content about LGBT issues, and even temporarily blocked a teenage American Muslim activist who criticized the CCP’s treatment of Uyghur Muslims.

For those who know the Chinese Communist Party, this comes as no surprise. Propaganda and censorship are core features of its governing philosophy. In fact, the very word brainwashing originated as a literal translation of the Chinese term xinao, used by early Chinese Communists to describe their system for realigning the beliefs of their reactionary enemies.

Xi Jinping understands the importance of information warfare—or the “smokeless battlefield,” as he’s called it. In a text regarding “military political work,” Xi declared, “The crumbling of a regime always starts in the realm of ideas. . . changing the way people think is a long-term process. Once the front lines of human thought have been broken through, other defensive lines also become hard to defend.”

ByteDance leadership has made it clear that it can manipulate content, and therefore minds, at the behest of the CCP. In 2018, the CCP suspended ByteDance platform Toutiao because it “post[ed] content that goes against socialist core values.” In a fit of groveling self-criticism, the founder of ByteDance apologized for failing to respect “socialist core values,” “deviat[ing] from public opinion guidance,” and “fail[ing] to realize that socialist core values are the prerequisite to technology.” Following this, ByteDance announced a new strategy to hire 4,000 extra censors and integrate “socialist core values” into its technology.

To cover their tracks in the U.S., TikTok and ByteDance have hired an army of lobbyists, including former congressmen and senators, who are working overtime to stall legislative efforts to ban TikTok or force a sale to an American company. (Also helping the effort—the fact that powerful American investors have hundreds of billions of dollars invested in ByteDance’s success.)

Notwithstanding the complexities of regulating cross-border data flows, the House and Senate took overwhelming bipartisan action to ban the app on federal government devices. A growing number of Democratic and Republican governors have done the same. Australia, Canada, and the EU have enacted similar bans on government devices, while pioneering democracies like India have banned the app altogether.

In the best-case scenario, TikTok is CCP spyware—that’s why governments have banned it on official phones. In the worst-case scenario, TikTok is perhaps the largest scale malign influence operation ever conducted.

CIA Director William J. Burns, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and our intelligence chiefs have all warned about the national security threat posed by TikTok. These warnings, combined with the rampant pro-Hamas propaganda on the app, should serve as a wake-up call for Americans.

Some have argued that there is a constitutional right to TikTok, that banning it would violate Americans’ rights under the First Amendment. But the First Amendment surely does not require us to allow social media apps controlled by foreign adversaries to dominate the U.S. market.

Indeed, Congress has a long history of preventing foreign-controlled companies from operating in sensitive sectors of the U.S. economy, including in the media. For a century, the Federal Communications Commission has blocked concentrated foreign ownership of radio and television assets on national security grounds. Various laws and regulations today restrict Beijing-controlled Huawei from building telecommunications infrastructure in the U.S. market, even as such infrastructure serves (like TikTok) as a platform for transmitting speech.

The point is that neither banning Huawei nor banning TikTok restricts the speech of Americans. To the contrary, doing so protects our public square from the surveillance, malign influence, censorship, and propaganda of a foreign adversary.

Allowing a CCP-controlled entity to become the dominant player in America would be as if, in 1962, right before the Cuban Missile Crisis, we had allowed Pravda and the KGB to purchase The New York Times, The Washington Post, ABC, and NBC.

So long as TikTok—and control of its algorithm—remain in the grip of the Chinese Communist Party, we are ceding the ability to censor Americans’ speech to a foreign adversary. Time for Congress to take action. Time to ban TikTok.

Mike Gallagher, a Republican, represents Wisconsin’s 8th Congressional District and chairs the House Select Committee on China.

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thefp.com · by Rep. Mike Gallagher · November 2, 2023

19. Why Liberal Academia Needs Republican Friends

Excerpts:

Whether that squeeze takes the form of DeSantis-style censoriousness or the defund-the-humanities push evident in North Carolina’s budgeting, the left-wing professoriate should have seen it coming. Here I’m going to quote from a social media rant from Tyler Austin Harper, a professor at Bates College and a man of the left:

How did anyone think we could get away with being nakedly ideological for years without any chickens coming home to roost? Universities have always been tacitly left-leaning and faculty have always been openly so, but institutions have never been this transparently, officially political. Almost every single job ad in my field/related fields this year has some kind of brazenly politicized language

… Our society desperately needs the humanities, and a functional public higher education system more broadly. And at the very moment we’re under sustained assault, some of us are still pouring fuel on Chris Rufo’s bonfire.

Rufo being, of course, the anti-woke activist and writer who has helped lead DeSantis’s effort to remake Florida’s public liberal arts college, New College, in the mold of a school like Hillsdale.

OPINION

ROSS DOUTHAT

Why Liberal Academia Needs Republican Friends

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/04/opinion/sunday/liberal-universities-republicans.html?utm

Nov. 4, 2023

Credit...Bea Oyster for The New York Times

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By Ross Douthat

Opinion Columnist

Here are a few snapshots from higher education in America:

Under a new provision in state budgeting, public universities in North Carolina will cease funding distinguished professorships in the humanities, reserving them for science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

The furor around elite universities over their responses (or non-responses) to Hamas’s massacre in Israel has now inspired a group of white-shoe law firms to collectively demand a stronger response to antisemitism from leading law schools.

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, in his continuing higher education wars, is trying to shut down pro-Palestinian student groups whose national chapter supported Hamas’s attacks.

A new survey from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression found weak student support for free speech on campus, and the weakest support among the most liberal students; meanwhile the schools whose students were friendliest to the discussion of unpopular views included the right-leaning Hillsdale College and the self-consciously classically liberal University of Chicago.

And finally, Donald Trump is reportedly poised to promise the establishment of a national public online university, entirely free of wokeness, to be funded with a tax on Harvard-scale endowments.

All these stories are linked to one reality: The trends shaping higher education’s upper tier over the last generation have reached an apparent limit, and we are entering a period of scarcer resources and sustained political conflict.

The first trend hitting its limit is the big higher-ed expansion — more buildings, more amenities, more administrators — that was made possible by a glut of students, in the millennial generation and from overseas, and also by easy credit and low interest rates.

The second trend is the ideological transformation within the liberal university and the liberal arts — the shift from an environment where left-of-center ideas predominated but with a certain degree of diversity and free debate, to the Trump-era environment of default progressivism and D.E.I. loyalty oaths in hiring.

These two trends have created a situation where colleges are overbuilt for an age of declining birthrates and increasing global tensions, and much more out of step with crucial financial sources of support: for private schools, their donors; for public universities, Republican state legislators.

For the richest universities, this is a challenge but not yet an outright threat; elite law schools need to appease elite law firms, donors need to be mollified, but if you have a multibillion dollar endowment, you can ride out a certain degree of discontent. (Pending Trump’s endowment tax, at least.)

But just down the ladder from the Ivy League you have a lot of schools, big and small, that are going to be squeezed by shrinking pools of applicants no matter what, and especially squeezed if their funders decide that they don’t like supporting an ideological monoculture.

Whether that squeeze takes the form of DeSantis-style censoriousness or the defund-the-humanities push evident in North Carolina’s budgeting, the left-wing professoriate should have seen it coming. Here I’m going to quote from a social media rant from Tyler Austin Harper, a professor at Bates College and a man of the left:

How did anyone think we could get away with being nakedly ideological for years without any chickens coming home to roost? Universities have always been tacitly left-leaning and faculty have always been openly so, but institutions have never been this transparently, officially political. Almost every single job ad in my field/related fields this year has some kind of brazenly politicized language

… Our society desperately needs the humanities, and a functional public higher education system more broadly. And at the very moment we’re under sustained assault, some of us are still pouring fuel on Chris Rufo’s bonfire.

Rufo being, of course, the anti-woke activist and writer who has helped lead DeSantis’s effort to remake Florida’s public liberal arts college, New College, in the mold of a school like Hillsdale.

But in that example lies the crucial point that liberal academia needs to recognize. In the squeeze that’s coming, it faces two different schools of conservative critique. One is more censorious but ultimately indifferent to the humanities, happy to see universities function like trade schools, educating for employment and letting the liberal arts wither.

The other imagines using the levers of politics and money to rescue the humanities, not destroy them — whether that means building up the kind of conservative pedagogy you see at great books schools and classical high schools or just seeking a world where the University of Chicago rather than Harvard is seen as the elite-academic ideal.

Republican politicians can be pushed in either direction; DeSantis has tried to play both parts. But it seems clear to me that academia should strongly prefer to negotiate with the conservatives who think the humanities need reform but should be saved — as opposed to just watching their programs get defunded and go dark.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTOpinion) and Instagram.

Ross Douthat has been an Opinion columnist for The Times since 2009. He is the author, most recently, of “The Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery.” @DouthatNYT • Facebook

A version of this article appears in print on , Section SR, Page 3 of the New York edition with the headline: Why Colleges Need Friends. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

20. Migrants Are Flocking to the U.S. From All Over the Globe

Is America still a "city on a hill" and a beacon for the world? Why are people still attracted to America?

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

https://lightomega.org/writing/message-of-statue-of-liberty-promise-of-freedom/

Migrants Are Flocking to the U.S. From All Over the Globe

Arrests at the Southwest border of migrants from China, India and other distant countries have tripled

https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/migrants-are-flocking-to-the-u-s-from-all-over-the-globe-46077c09?mod=hp_lead_pos11&utm

By Santiago PérezFollow

Nov. 4, 2023 5:30 am ET

Hundreds of thousands of migrants from all over the world are making their way to the Southwest border, with U.S. and Mexican authorities reporting a surge in apprehensions of people from Asia and Africa as human smuggling networks widen their reach across the globe.

Arrests at the Southwest border of migrants from China, India and other distant countries, including Mauritania and Senegal, tripled to 214,000 during the fiscal year that ended in September from 70,000 in the previous fiscal year, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data. Fewer than 19,000 migrants from Asia and Africa were apprehended in the fiscal year ended September 2021.

“The increase in migration from Asia and Africa is remarkable,” said Enrique Lucero, head of the migrant support unit of the Tijuana city government, across from San Diego. “These days, we are dealing with 120 nationalities and 60 different languages.”

Travelers say they exchange information and share videos of U.S.-bound routes on Tik Tok and

Facebook, while smugglers offer lodging and travel agencies advertise transport services. Most Asian and African migrants make multiple airport stopovers in what are coming to be known as “donkey flights” to reach countries such as Brazil, Ecuador or Nicaragua, which have few or no visa requirements for some nationalities.Once they set foot in Latin America, they move north in buses or cars and stay at hotels booked by smuggling organizations. Many wear bracelets similar to those of an all-inclusive resort, with inscriptions that identify the organization that coordinated and charged them for the trip, Mexican authorities say.

A Border Patrol agent searched a man from China as he surrendered after crossing the Rio Grande into the U.S. in Fronton, Texas, earlier this year. PHOTO: STAFF/REUTERS

For the second year in a row, arrests by the Border Patrol at the U.S. Southern border surpassed two million. Most of them, almost nine out of 10 apprehensions, are of migrants from Latin America and the Caribbean. But the surge in so-called extracontinental migrants poses a challenge for the U.S. because deporting migrants to Africa and Asia is time-consuming, expensive and sometimes not possible.

Mohamed Aweineny, a 30-year-old Mauritanian who made his living as a driver, left Mauritania Sept. 3. He followed a route from West Africa to Turkey, and on to Colombia before flying to Nicaragua.

“I followed the internet to learn how to get to America without a visa,” he said.

Once in Central America, and with the help of a smuggler he described as “the head of the snake” because he belonged to a larger organization, Aweineny headed north. He recorded his trek through tropical paths and boat rides with his cellphone. Aweineny crossed into San Diego before dawn on Sept. 22 and was released at a makeshift migrant center three days later. Aweineny settled in New York, where he said he is working with a migrant aid group to apply for asylum.

A senior Biden administration official said the U.S. government is recording increasing migrant arrivals at the border from parts of the world that it isn’t used to seeing.

Migrants waited to be processed on the Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, side of the Southern border in El Paso, Texas, recently. PHOTO: BRANDON BELL/GETTY IMAGES

“That puts a lot of strain on our operations because we just don’t have longstanding ties or agreements in place with many countries in order to facilitate quick removals. We are actively working on that,” the official said, adding that high migration levels from parts of the world that weren’t historically big senders will likely continue.

Mexico has reported a fourfold increase in migrants from Asia and Africa so far this year, including a surge in arrivals from Mauritania, neighboring Senegal, India and China.

In July, Mexican authorities said they rescued 46 migrants from India, Mauritania and Senegal who had been kidnapped by local gangs for four days at a safe house in the northern state of Sonora. A month later, 129 migrants from Egypt and eight Mauritanians were apprehended by officials on a bus in the Gulf state of Veracruz.

U.S. and Mexican officials have also seen an uptick in Chinese migrants, who arrive through Ecuador after China’s government lifted pandemic mobility restrictions. Indian migrants fly to Europe and then to Mexico City, or enter the U.S. through Canada. Some Afghans use Brazil as an entry point to the Americas.

U.S. and Mexican authorities have also reported a sharp increase in Russians fleeing their homeland. They fly into Mexico from Turkey, with some 12,500 surrendering to U.S. authorities after illegally crossing the Southwest border since the invasion of Ukraine. Only 509 Russians were detained by the Border Patrol in fiscal year 2021.

Nicaragua, a Central American country under the authoritarian regime of President Daniel Ortega that has strained relations with the U.S., has emerged as a relatively new entry point for Africans wanting to head north. The United Nations reported a sixfold jump in African migration via the country during the first half of this year. The mass arrivals generate millions of dollars in revenue for Ortega’s government, which charges each migrant some $50 for a transit visa.

Arriving in Nicaragua allows the African migrants to bypass the deadly jungle paths of the Darién Gap on their way to the U.S., through which a record 450,000 migrants have crossed so far this year, Panama officials say. That is up from around 248,000 for the whole 2022.

“The Darién Gap stopped being the barrier it once was, but so has the U.S.-Mexico border,” said Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington think tank. “The chance of getting in is pretty good right now, and it’s becoming a global phenomenon.”

Families arrive at the Migrant Reception Station in Lajas Blancas, Darien Province, Panama. PHOTO: ROBERTO CISNEROS/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Once they get to Mexican border communities, some Asian migrants buy local clothing, Texan-style boots and cowboy hats in an attempt to blend in and avoid detection, said one Mexican official.

In Tijuana, mass arrivals of African migrants have overwhelmed some U.S. ports of entry in recent weeks. Videos posted on social media showed large groups of migrants gathering at a square in Tijuana before dawn and rushing to the border fence, in some cases crawling through holes.

Lucero, the city’s migration agency chief, said that the groups are mostly made up of African migrants. They are guided by smugglers who hold them in hotels to wait for the right time to sneak across.

Less than 100 miles east in the Mexican border city of Mexicali, 61-year Ofelia Hernández ran an international human smuggling ring that charged migrants between $10,000 and $70,000 to get through the Southwest border, U.S. prosecutors said in an indictment.

Also known as Doña Lupe, Hernández worked with a network of smugglers handling migrants from as far away as Bangladesh, Yemen, Pakistan, Eritrea, India, Uzbekistan, Egypt and India, according to the recently unsealed indictment charging Hernández with human smuggling. Her lawyer didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Migrants of African, Haitian and Venezuelan origin walk in a caravan in Tapachula, Mexico. PHOTO: JUAN MANUEL BLANCO/SHUTTERSTOCK

U.S. prosecutors say that the organization led by Hernández had links to Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel, which controls smuggling routes along Mexico’s Pacific coast. Her group had operatives in Chiapas state and neighboring Guatemala, and collected payments in Central and South America, Asia and Africa, the indictment said.

In Mexicali, operatives would pick up the migrants at a bus station and take them to two rundown hotels until her organization directed them where and when to cross into the U.S. Smugglers would sometimes provide them with a ladder to climb over the border fence, direct them to a hole to crawl under the fence, or provide a plank for them to walk over a waterway, the indictment said.

Hernández was arrested by Mexican authorities in June and extradited to the U.S. in September.

Alicia A. Caldwell and Michelle Hackman contributed to this article.

Write to Santiago Pérez at santiago.perez@wsj.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

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

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

Access NSS HERE

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