Quotes of the Day:

“Choose someone whose way of life as well as words, and whose very face as mirroring the character that lies behind it, have won your approval. Be always pointing him out to yourself either as your guardian or as your model. There is a need, in my view, for someone as a standard against which our characters can measure themselves. Without a ruler to do it against you won’t make crooked straight.”

– Seneca

“The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes.”

– G.K. Chesterton

“Don’t seek for everything to happen as you wish it would, but rather wish that everything happens as it actually will—then your life will flow well.” 

– Epictetus

1. The Lands Ukraine Must Liberate

2. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, December 31, 2023

3. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, December 31, 2023

4. Israel Plans to Withdraw Some Troops From Gaza

5. Half of Gazans Are at Risk of Starving, U.N. Warns

6. The U.S. and Israel: An Embrace Shows Signs of Strain After Oct. 7

7. China’s Xi Is Resurrecting Mao’s ‘Continuous Revolution’ With a Twist

8. China's military purge deepens

9. U.S. oil production hit a record under Biden. He seldom mentions it.

10. Liberals say the country has moved to the right; conservatives say it's moved to the left

11.  Xi Jinping rings in 2024 with rare admission that China’s economy is in trouble

12. Homicides in U.S. set to drop by record numbers this year

13. Why Gaza Matters

14. New Spin on a Revolving Door: Pentagon Officials Turned Venture Capitalists

15. America’s rising rates and neo-protectionism

16. Israeli Army Discovers 'Massive' Amount of Chinese-Made Weapons in Gaza: Report

17. The Elon Musk industrial complex

18. Analysis: Perception vs. Reality – Russia Is Losing, Not Winning

1. The Lands Ukraine Must Liberate

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/lands-ukraine-must-liberate

Conclusion

The most advantageous lines Ukraine could hold militarily and economically are its internationally recognized 1991 boundaries. Any discussion of recognizing changes to those borders as concessions to try to persuade Russia to stop its unprovoked and illegal invasion must reckon with the heavy blow such concessions would make against core principles of international law banning wars of conquest, ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity, and many other moral and ethical principles that are central to a peaceful world. But discussions of such concessions are already underway, and so we have examined the concrete and pragmatic problems surrounding their implementation.

Freezing the Russian war in Ukraine on anything like the current lines enormously advantages Russia and increases the risks and costs to Ukraine and the West of deterring, let alone defeating, a future Russian attempt to fulfill Putin’s aims by force. The current lines are not a sensible starting point for negotiations with Russia even if Putin were serious about negotiating a ceasefire on those lines. They are, rather, the necessary starting point for the continued liberation of strategically- and economically vital Ukrainian lands, without which the objective of a free, independent, and secure Ukraine able to defend and pay for itself is likely impossible.

THE LANDS UKRAINE MUST LIBERATE

Dec 31, 2023 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

The Lands Ukraine Must Liberate

Frederick W. Kagan, George Barros, Noel Mikkelsen, and Daniel Mealie

December 31, 2023

A Ukraine strong enough to deter and defeat any future Russian aggression with an economy strong enough to prosper without large amounts of foreign aid is the only outcome of Russia’s war that the United States and the West should accept. Trusting Russian promises of good behavior would be foolish. Leaving Ukraine’s economy badly damaged would create a long-term and large drain on Western finances. Discussions about pressing Ukraine to trade land the Russians now occupy for a ceasefire or armistice have garnered attention recently, based on rumors of Kremlin interest in negotiations of some sort.[1] These discussions have thus far largely focused on the supposed intransigence of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky who, it is argued, must be pressed to accept that Ukraine must cede some of its territory. That argument ignores the question that should be central to any such discussion: what are the concrete military, economic, and financial consequences that these territorial sacrifices would have for Ukraine’s long-term security and economic viability or for the future financial burden they would impose on the supporters of an independent Ukraine? The serious evaluation of this question shows that there are real military and economic reasons for Ukraine to try to liberate all of the territory Russia now occupies and that, in any event, the current lines cannot be the basis for any settlement remotely acceptable to Ukraine or the West.

Russia Will Not Abandon Its Maximalist Aims Now or in the Future

Russian President Vladimir Putin and many Kremlin officials have driven deep into the Russian political consciousness the ideas that Ukraine has no independent identity and no basis to continue to exist as an independent state; that any Ukrainian government not totally subservient to Moscow is a pawn of the West and a threat to Russia; that Ukrainian opponents of Russian rule are Nazis intent on conducting genocide against Russians in Ukraine; and that Russia has a legal, moral, and religious obligation to extirpate these supposed threats and restore Ukraine to its rightful place as a historically Russian land.[2] Putin has made these arguments part of his 2024 presidential election platform.[3] Russian administrators are inserting them in curricula throughout Russia and occupied Ukraine.[4] Kremlin mouthpieces speak to the Russian domestic audience with one voice along these lines.[5] Putin is training Russians to commit themselves to the task of subjugating Ukraine, and that training will neither stop nor vanish following some negotiated ceasefire. It will, in fact, shape the thoughts and likely policies of Putin’s successors for years or decades.

The task facing Ukraine and the West, therefore, is to be prepared after the end of this conflict to confront a Russia still determined to achieve its original aims, likely fortified in that determination by a desire to avenge its failures in the course of this war. The damage that the current war is doing to Russia’s military helps to reduce the risks of Russia renewing war quickly, but that effect is temporary and its duration depends in large part on how committed Putin is to rebuilding Russia’s military capabilities rapidly. The Russia-Ukraine frontier will thus be a frontier of potentially imminent conflict for the indefinite future, unfortunately. Peace can only be sustained at an acceptable price if that frontier is defensible by the kinds of forces Ukraine can sustain over the long term.

The Forces Required to Defend Ukraine Depend on Ukraine’s Borders

Military requirements to defend a state depend on many factors including the likely strength and capability of the adversary, the length and configuration of the borders to be held, and the amount of depth the borders provide—that is, the degree to which the defender can temporarily give ground in the face of an attack. Ukraine and the West have little control after the fighting stops over the size and strength of the Russian military, which all current indications suggest will be much greater in a few years than it was in February 2022 by every measure.[6] They can control the other two factors, however, by committing to or refraining from trying to liberate additional Russian-occupied territory.

The amount of depth provided by any given border configuration is far more important than limited changes in the length of the lines in determining the military requirements of the defense and the cost of money, equipment, and social sacrifice needed to hold them. The more the defender must hold the initial line of defense at all costs the more he must maintain large and fully combat-capable forces near that initial line at all times. Sustaining a large, fully-equipped, fight-tonight-trained military is exorbitantly expensive and requires keeping a high proportion of the defender’s population in the military even during peacetime. Keeping many people mobilized all the time imposes a double cost on the state—it must pay each individual for their service, on the one hand, and it loses the contributions of that individual to the economy on the other.

A far more economical approach to defense is to hold a line with smaller forces intended not to defend but rather to delay the attacker’s advance to buy time for reserves of personnel and equipment to be called up and sent forward. Those reserves can then stop and reverse the initial attack, winning back any ground that has been temporarily lost. Reserves are far less expensive than mobilized troops—the defender pays the cost of calling them up and training them to begin with and of some refresher training after their initial service period is done, but they otherwise live normal lives contributing to the economy and raising families.

The land itself, of course, also contributes to the economy. In Ukraine’s case it often does so directly through agriculture and mining, but different frontline configurations can cede more or less of Ukraine’s industrial and other economic potential to Russia—weakening the Ukrainian economy and ability to sustain its military and strengthening Russia’s.

The January 2022 Lines Are Far Easier to Defend Efficiently than the December 2023 Lines

Ukraine’s borders and the line of contact between Ukraine and Russia before the full-scale invasion of 2022 were long—about 3,120 kilometers—but included large areas offering considerable defensive depth, especially in the northeast. Ukraine will always need to defend its northern border, opposite Belarus and then Russia, very close to the border itself on a west-to-east line extending from the Polish border to around Chernihiv. Kyiv is only about 100 kilometers from the border, and essential ground lines of communication run through Rivne and Lutsk at about the same distance. Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, is even closer to the international border and affords no depth at all. The Russian occupation in 2014 of eastern Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts and Crimea brought several other important Ukrainian cities under permanent threat. Mariupol was almost right on the line of contact in 2022.

In January 2022, Kherson and Melitopol were respectively about 90 and 115 kilometers away from Russian control. Their physical situation offers a better prospect for a more efficient defense, however. Kherson lies across the Dnipro River from Crimea, on the one hand, affording the Ukrainians in principle opportunities to fall back to the river line if necessary in the face of renewed Russian attack from there. Melitopol benefits from no such natural defenses, but Russian forces attacking from Crimea must cross several bridges to get to the Ukrainian mainland (a factor from which Kherson also benefits), creating chokepoints that could be used to slow the Russian advance and buy time for Ukrainian reserves to arrive. (That this did not happen in 2022 reflects the fact that, contrary to Russian claims, Ukraine was not preparing for a war with Russia before the full-scale Russian invasion. A future Ukrainian military surely will. Ukraine had fewer armed forces in these areas in 2022 because it had concentrated its best forces in the east opposite occupied Donbas. A future Ukrainian military will likely concentrate differently.)

Northeastern Ukraine offers even more depth. It is among the most fertile lands anywhere in the world but also sparsely populated, especially near the international border:

The terrain provides ample opportunity for delaying actions behind which reserves can mobilize to defend more heavily populated settlements in the rear and prepare to regain ground lost in an initial renewed, Russian assault.

The task of defending these long lines, even with the areas providing strategic depth, is daunting. The future Ukrainian military will have to be much larger and much better trained and equipped than it was in 2022. But it is far less daunting than the challenge Ukraine would face in having to defend the current lines if the conflict were frozen today. We will consider below the reduction in requirements that come from regaining the internationally recognized borders.

Freezing the Lines Unfreezes the Forces

Russian forces on the line of contact today are making marginal gains at a high cost in lives and materiel. A future Russian attempted invasion following a protracted period of reconstitution would not present the Russians with the same challenges.

The current Ukrainian and Russian deployments along the line are shaped by the ongoing active fighting, constraining Russian forces’ ability to optimize their deployments across the theater.[7] Russian forces are concentrated in areas they are focused on trying to seize at the moment, such as Avdiivka. Both sides have pulled artillery, air defense, aviation, and other scarce but vital systems as far out of range of the other’s strike capabilities as possible. Both sides have generally learned the hard way to avoid massing large quantities of tanks, armored personnel carriers, and other such weapons of war because doing so usually leads to their rapid destruction by massed artillery, drone, or air attack.[8] The ongoing fighting is consuming Russian forces generated just about as rapidly as Russia puts them into the field.

Should an armistice be established, however, few of the conditions shaping the deployments of these forces would hold anymore. New Russian forces would not be consumed by fighting after a ceasefire. The Russians would no longer be forced to mass in particular areas where they are currently attacking but would instead be able to rearrange their forces to optimize for other factors. They would be able to mass artillery, air defense, electronic warfare, and engineering capabilities, specifically bridging equipment, and other supplies in fortified defensive positions near the front line—something they cannot do now as Ukrainian forces attack any concentrations within range of their weapons systems when they see them. The Russians would be able to prepare, train, equip, and deploy reserves in echelons throughout southern and eastern Ukraine to reinforce and support future operations and to improve the road and rail infrastructure needed to move them rapidly around. They could optimize, in other words, for a short-notice attack at times and places of their choosing in ways that the ongoing combat now precludes.

No Space to Trade

Ukraine would need to defend right at the current lines in the event that Russia invades again following a period of reconstitution. Too many large population, industrial, and vital defensive centers are too close to the current lines for Ukraine to be able to trade space for time. Major urban areas with total pre-war populations of over five million (a bit over 11% of Ukraine’s total pre-war population) are within 160 kilometers (100 miles) of the current front lines. They include the vital population and industrial cities of Zaporizhzhia and Dnipro; Odesa and Mykolaiv, which are Ukraine’s sole remaining ports and essential to Ukraine’s ability to export its grain and other goods; and the cities of Slovyansk, Kramatorsk, and Kostyantynivka that are both populous and form Ukraine’s major eastern defensive bastion. Kharkiv remains a mere 32 kilometers from the Russian border but is now also threatened by Russian lines about 110 kilometers to the east and southeast.

A Ukrainian military seeking to deter or defeat a future Russian attack that begins on these lines will have to be fully manned and equipped and fight-tonight trained even in peacetime, as it will have no margin for error in almost any direction.

In a future invasion, Russian forces seeking to take Kherson, Mykolaiv, or Odesa will have to cross the Dnipro River—and do so without the benefit of the bridges they used in 2022. Those attacking further east or toward Kharkiv or Kyiv will confront prepared Ukrainian defensive fortifications. The Russians will, thus, face daunting challenges of their own, to be sure.

However, the aggressor benefits from many advantages in war. The Russians will be able to concentrate their own forces as close to the border as they like, along with all the air defense systems, bridging and other engineering equipment, artillery, ammunition, and other supplies they would need for a short-notice attack as noted above. The Ukrainians will not be able to attack those concentrations without breaking the ceasefire. The Russians can keep a sizable portion of their own troops in a constant (and expensive) state of mobilization and readiness if they choose, and Putin has shown a great degree of willingness to burn money (and lose Russian lives) in pursuit of his objectives. The Russians are currently challenged to sustain their mobilized military and the large losses it is taking in Ukraine while also attempting to mobilize their defense industrial base.[9] They can alleviate much of that pressure once the fighting stops, however, because they will no longer be taking losses, on the one hand, and will also be able to meter their defense industrial requirements at their own pace to be prepared for a renewed attack at a time of their choosing.

The Russians can also keep many of their assault forces in reserve, dispersed in training areas throughout Russia, bringing them to war readiness only at the intended moment of attack—at least, they will be able to do so if they can resolve the failures in their pre-2022 and current mobilization and training systems as they have set out to do.[10] The second approach would, of course, give Ukraine warning and the opportunity to mobilize its own reservists. But it would have to mobilize its reserves every time the Russians did in this configuration of the lines because it cannot afford to cede its frontline positions temporarily while mobilizing reserves to regain lost ground. That situation would give the Russians enormous control over the cost of money and social tension of deterring and defending against a Russian attack. The lines as they are now, in either case, would leave it to Putin and his successors to determine the financial and social cost Ukraine and its Western backers must bear for Ukraine’s continued survival, and that cost would likely be very high.

Crimea

The costs and challenges of Ukraine’s defense vary dramatically if Crimea returns to Ukraine or remains in Russia’s hands. The January 2022 lines considered above assume that Russia retains Crimea. If Ukraine liberates the peninsula along with Russian-occupied lines in the south, however, then the imminent threat to Kherson, Mykolaiv, and Odesa vanishes and the threat to Melitopol is dramatically reduced. Mariupol remains the only major front-line city in the south in this case, dramatically reducing the area of limited defensive depth and requiring high levels of prepared and partially- or fully-mobilized Ukrainian forces to defend. The liberation of Crimea also largely obviates the threat of Russian amphibious operations against the southwestern Ukrainian coast, as well as the Russian missile threat to ships attempting to transit the western Black Sea. Unfounded discussions of Russia’s “historic right” to Crimea, which Russia itself recognized as part of an independent Ukraine in 1994, obscure the high military and financial cost Ukraine and its backers will have to pay for as long as Russia occupies the peninsula.

Donbas

Ukraine’s liberation of pre-February 2022 occupied Donbas would not dramatically change the defensive military requirements for Ukraine, since Donetsk City and Luhansk City are so close to the Russian border themselves as to offer no meaningful defensive depth. It would, however, have enormous economic implications for Ukraine, which will be considered here only briefly. Donbas is one of Ukraine’s historic economic heartlands, home to Ukraine’s ore extraction and metallurgical industry. The 2014 line of control resulting from Russia’s first invasion of Ukraine actually divided that industry, separating mines from processing facilities and splitting the rail lines connecting them all. Ukraine did not feel anything like the full economic pain of that division, however, because by tacit agreement Moscow and Kyiv allowed the Ukrainian oligarch who controlled the region to continue to operate on both sides of the line of control.[11] That oligarch no longer controls these industrial assets, and it is almost impossible to imagine that a ceasefire that restored the January 2022 lines would include restoring Ukraine’s ability to benefit economically from its part of the entire industrial enterprise.[12] Accepting Russia’s permanent acquisition of eastern Donbas thus deprives Ukraine of considerable revenues, weakening its economy and increasing its economic and financial dependence on the West.

Conclusion

The most advantageous lines Ukraine could hold militarily and economically are its internationally recognized 1991 boundaries. Any discussion of recognizing changes to those borders as concessions to try to persuade Russia to stop its unprovoked and illegal invasion must reckon with the heavy blow such concessions would make against core principles of international law banning wars of conquest, ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity, and many other moral and ethical principles that are central to a peaceful world. But discussions of such concessions are already underway, and so we have examined the concrete and pragmatic problems surrounding their implementation.

Freezing the Russian war in Ukraine on anything like the current lines enormously advantages Russia and increases the risks and costs to Ukraine and the West of deterring, let alone defeating, a future Russian attempt to fulfill Putin’s aims by force. The current lines are not a sensible starting point for negotiations with Russia even if Putin were serious about negotiating a ceasefire on those lines. They are, rather, the necessary starting point for the continued liberation of strategically- and economically vital Ukrainian lands, without which the objective of a free, independent, and secure Ukraine able to defend and pay for itself is likely impossible.

2. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, December 31, 2023

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-december-31-2023

Key Takeaways:

• Russian President Vladimir Putin used his annual New Year's address on December 31 to concretize Russian ideological priorities for 2024, notably omitting any mentions of the war in Ukraine and instead focusing on setting ideological conditions for the upcoming year.
• Russian forces conducted another series of missile and drone strikes against Ukraine on the night of December 29 to 30 and on December 31, underscoring a notable recent increase in the percentage of Russian Shahed-136/131 drones penetrating or avoiding Ukrainian air defenses.
• Russian forces, particularly Russian airborne (VDV) Forces, are reportedly suffering heavy losses in simultaneous infantry-heavy Russian offensive operations on multiple fronts.
• A prominent Kremlin-affiliated Russian milblogger argued that ethnic Russians do not have enough domestic power in Russia while reiterating a common Russian information operation aimed at erasing Ukrainian identity.
• Russian and Ukrainian forces conducted positional engagements along the entire line of conduct, but there were no confirmed map changes on December 31.
• Russian Presidential Administration First Deputy Head Sergei Kiriyenko is spearheading efforts to consolidate sociocultural control of occupied areas of Ukraine via the information space.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, DECEMBER 31, 2023

Dec 31, 2023 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, December 31, 2023

Nicole Wolkov, Christina Harward, Karolina Hird, Riley Bailey, and Frederick W. Kagan

December 31, 2023, 5:10pm 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: ISW and CTP will not publish a campaign assessment (or maps) tomorrow, January 1, in observance of the New Year holiday. Coverage will resume on Tuesday, January 2.

Note: The data cut-off for this product was 12:45pm ET on December 31. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the January 2 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.

Russian President Vladimir Putin used his annual New Year's address on December 31 to concretize Russian ideological priorities for 2024, notably omitting any mentions of the war in Ukraine and instead focusing on setting ideological conditions for the upcoming year. In stark contrast to last year's New Year's address, wherein Putin addressed the nation at the headquarters of the Southern Military District surrounded by uniformed military personnel and talked explicitly about Russia's goals in Ukraine, Putin's 2023 address shows him standing alone against the backdrop of the Kremlin, without a single mention of the "special military operation."[1] Putin instead opted to very briefly thank Russian military personnel for fighting for "truth and justice," and otherwise focused on emphasizing Russian national unity.[2] Putin also stated that 2024 will be the "Year of the Family," emphasizing that the Russian family is the backbone of "the multinational people of Russia," and that Russia is "one big country, one big family."

Putin has in recent weeks frequently discussed Russia's continued maximalist intentions for the war in Ukraine, and Putin likely sought to set more domestically-oriented ideological conditions during his New Year's speech.[3] Putin's invocation of 2024 as the "Year of the Family," as well as his emphasis on Russian "multinationalism," further serve to clearly delineate the Kremlin's ideological line going into 2024, orienting domestic policy around the preservation of traditional Russian family values and the protection of Russian multinationalism, which both fit into Putin's wider ideology of a Russian World (Russkiy Mir) inclusive of groups within and beyond Russia.[4] ISW has recently assessed that Putin is trying to re-establish the conception of the Russian World as the backbone of Russian domestic and foreign policy, and the 2023 New Year's address identifies Russian families and Russian multinationalism as pillars of this concretized Russian World.[5] The Kremlin's conceptions of the Russian World will undoubtedly impact Russian administrative, bureaucratic, and sociocultural priorities in occupied Ukraine, as well as military goals on the battlefield in the year to come.

Russian forces conducted another series of missile and drone strikes against Ukraine on the night of December 29 to 30 and on December 31, underscoring a notable recent increase in the percentage of Russian Shahed-136/131 drones penetrating or avoiding Ukrainian air defenses. The Ukrainian Air Force reported that Russian forces struck Kharkiv City with six S-300 missiles and launched 49 Shahed drones primarily at Ukrainian frontline positions as well as civilian, military, and infrastructure facilities in Kharkiv, Kherson, Mykolaiv, and Zaporizhia oblasts on the night of December 30 to 31.[6] Ukrainian military sources reported that Russian forces launched 12 missiles at targets in Ukraine on December 31, an unspecified number of which struck civilian infrastructure in Kharkiv and Donetsk oblasts.[7] The Ukrainian Air Force reported that Ukrainian forces shot down 21 of the Shahed drones, a notably lower rate of interceptions for Ukrainian air defenses than ISW has previously observed.[8] Ukrainian Air Force Spokesperson Yuriy Ihnat noted that Russian strikes on Ukrainian frontline positions with Shahed drones are “peculiar,” and it is possible that the lower interception rate is a result of Russian forces targeting frontline areas that have less air defense coverage or coverage less optimized for intercepting drones than population centers in the rear.[9] Ukrainian air defenses similarly had a lower-than-usual interception rate when Ukrainian forces shot down five out of 10 Shahed drones on December 30 and 27 out of 36 Shahed drones on December 29.[10] Russian milbloggers claimed on December 29 that Russian forces launched Shaheds that are harder to detect because they are painted black and partially absorb radio signals.[11] Ihnat previously stated on November 25 that Russian forces are beginning to use black paint and carbon fiber materiel on Shahed drones to complicate the work of Ukrainian air defense systems.[12] It is unclear if adaptations to the Shahed drones are decreasing the Ukrainians’ ability to intercept the drones or if the apparent trend in the decreased Ukrainian interception rate will continue.

Russian forces, particularly Russian airborne (VDV) Forces, are reportedly suffering heavy losses in simultaneous infantry-heavy Russian offensive operations on multiple fronts. A Russian milblogger claimed on December 31 that units of the Russian VDV forces are suffering heavy losses and are unable to rest and recover.[13] The milblogger claimed that experienced and trained VDV contract servicemen (kontraktniki) form a lower proportion of the VDV's personnel, and that the VDV has suffered high losses amongst experienced members of the command cadre that had previously made up the core of the VDV forces. Ukrainian military observer Kostyantyn Mashovets assessed on December 31 that elements of the newly formed 104th VDV Division, particularly its 328th and 337th VDV Regiments, will have to withdraw from the Krynky area in the east (left) bank of Kherson Oblast for rest and replenishment after a month of almost continuous fighting in the area.[14] The United Kingdom Ministry of Defense (UK MoD) assessed on December 14 that elements of the 104th VDV Division likely suffered exceptionally heavy losses near Krynky due to inadequate air and artillery support and the inexperience of many of its personnel.[15] VDV Commander Colonel General Mikhail Teplinsky implied on December 23 that the Russian military command is deploying new VDV officers and troops directly from graduation from initial training to the frontlines without having them complete pre-combat training.[16] Teplinsky stated that some recent graduates of the Ryazan Higher Airborne Command School will join the 104th Division in the Kherson direction.[17]

The high casualty rate, particularly among units such as the VDV that were considered elite before 2022, is largely a reflection of the fact that the Russian military command has chosen to pursue simultaneous offensive operations along the entire frontline, often prioritizing marginal gains at the cost of disproportionate losses. The UK MoD stated on December 30 that “the average daily number of Russian casualties in Ukraine has risen by almost 300 during the course of 2023” and that if the current casualty rate continues Russian forces will have lost over half a million personnel total in Ukraine by the end of 2024.[18] A declassified US intelligence assessment reportedly shared with Congress on December 12 stated that Russian forces have lost 315,000 personnel since the beginning of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.[19] The current tempo and style of Russian offensives in Ukraine are reflective of these estimated casualty rates. Russian forces have conducted multiple waves of mass mechanized assaults and infantry-led assaults to capture Avdiivka, Donetsk Oblast, since October 10 despite heavy personnel losses, for example, and have rushed untrained VDV elements to defend against Ukrainian ground operations in the east bank of Kherson Oblast, where they have also taken heavy losses.[20] The Russian military leadership has undertaken extensive force generation measures as part of efforts to offset manpower losses, however, including partial mobilization since September 2022 and ongoing crypto-mobilization efforts.[21] The current casualty rate should not be taken as permanent—the Russian military command could change the tempo and pace of offensive operations or take time to reconstitute its forces for more effective future offensive operations. Ukraine's Western partners must guard against complacency when assessing Russian losses and operational failures in Ukraine, as ISW has previously assessed.[22]

A prominent Kremlin-affiliated Russian milblogger argued that ethnic Russians do not have enough domestic power in Russia while reiterating a common Russian information operation aimed at erasing Ukrainian identity. The milblogger claimed on December 31 that the illegal Russian annexation of occupied Luhansk Oblast as the Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR), occupied Donetsk Oblast as the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR), and occupied Crimea as the Republic of Crimea created three new republics that are specifically for “ethnic Russians.”[23] The milblogger argued that ethnic Russians do not have enough domestic power because there was not a republic dedicated to ethnic Russians prior to Russia‘s illegal annexation of the LNR, DNR and Crimea. The milblogger claimed that Russia has many republics dedicated to providing “statehood” to ethnic minorities such as the republics of Tatarstan, Karelia, and Dagestan.[24] The milblogger claimed that Russians instead have “territories,” likely referring to other designations for Russian federal subjects such as krais and oblasts. Russian republics, generally named after the ethnic minority inhabiting the area, are nominally allowed under Russian law to exercise more administrative autonomy than other Russian federal subjects.[25] The milblogger argued that Russia needs more "ethnic Russian" republics to promote the interests of ethnic Russians, reflecting the Russian pro-war ultranationalist community’s wider objective to eliminate non-Russian culture from Russian society. The milblogger’s argument rests on the long-running Russian information operation denying the existence of Ukrainian identity by falsely claiming that Ukrainians are ethnic Russians.[26] The milblogger’s argument also attributes coherence to DNR and LNR governance where ISW has consistently observed administrative disorganization and ineptitude.[27]

Key Takeaways:

• Russian President Vladimir Putin used his annual New Year's address on December 31 to concretize Russian ideological priorities for 2024, notably omitting any mentions of the war in Ukraine and instead focusing on setting ideological conditions for the upcoming year.
• Russian forces conducted another series of missile and drone strikes against Ukraine on the night of December 29 to 30 and on December 31, underscoring a notable recent increase in the percentage of Russian Shahed-136/131 drones penetrating or avoiding Ukrainian air defenses.
• Russian forces, particularly Russian airborne (VDV) Forces, are reportedly suffering heavy losses in simultaneous infantry-heavy Russian offensive operations on multiple fronts.
• A prominent Kremlin-affiliated Russian milblogger argued that ethnic Russians do not have enough domestic power in Russia while reiterating a common Russian information operation aimed at erasing Ukrainian identity.
• Russian and Ukrainian forces conducted positional engagements along the entire line of conduct, but there were no confirmed map changes on December 31.
• Russian Presidential Administration First Deputy Head Sergei Kiriyenko is spearheading efforts to consolidate sociocultural control of occupied areas of Ukraine via the information space.

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
• Russian Technological Adaptations
• 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)

Ukrainian forces reportedly advanced southeast of Kupyansk and continued positional engagements with Russian forces along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line on December 31. A Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces counterattacked near Orlyanka (southeast of Kupyansk) and achieved partial success, although ISW has not observed confirmation of this claim.[28] Russian and Ukrainian sources stated that positional fighting continued northeast of Kupyansk near Synkivka, southwest of Svatove near Makiivka, and southwest of Kreminna near Dibrova and the Serebryanske forest area.[29] Ukrainian Ground Forces Command Spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Volodymyr Fityo stated that Ukrainian forces are conducting an active defense in the Kupyansk, Lyman, and Bakhmut directions and are conducting ground attacks when possible.[30]

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

Russian and Ukrainian forces continued positional engagements near Bakhmut on December 31, but there were no changes to the frontline in this area. Russian and Ukrainian sources stated that positional fighting continued northwest of Bakhmut near Bohdanivka and southwest of Bakhmut near Klishchiivka and Andriivka.[31] Elements of the Russian 58th Spetsnaz Battalion (1st Donetsk People’s Republic [DNR] Army Corps) reportedly continue to operate in the Bakhmut direction.[32] Elements of the Russian “Sever-V” (Volunteer Assault Corps) reportedly continue operating on the northern flank of Bakhmut.[33]

Russian and Ukrainian forces continued positional engagements near Avdiivka on December 31, but there were no changes to the frontline in this area. A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces northwest of Avdiivka control about one third of Stepove and are advancing toward Novobakhmutivka and Berdychi and making progress towards the 9th Kvartal area on the southwestern outskirts of Avdiivka.[34] Russian and Ukrainian forces continued positional engagements northwest of Avdiivka near Stepove and the Avdiivka Coke Plant and southwest of Avdiivka near Pervomaiske, Nevelske and Sieverne.[35] Ukrainian Tavriisk Group of Forces Spokesperson Colonel Oleksandr Shtupun reported that Russian forces are increasing the number of reserves in the Avdiivka and Marinka directions.[36]

Russian forces continued ground attacks west and southwest of Donetsk City on December 31, but there were no changes in the frontline in this area. Russian and Ukrainian sources stated that Russian forces continued positional engagements near Marinka, Krasnohorivka, and Heorhiivka (both west of Donetsk City), and Novomykhailivka (southwest of Donetsk City).[37] Ukrainian Kurakhove City Military Administration Head Roman Padun stated that Russian forces conducted strikes on Kurakhove (west of Donetsk City) with S-300 missiles and Uragan MLRS rockets on December 31.[38]

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

Russian forces conducted relatively more ground attacks in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area on December 31 than in previous days, but there were no confirmed changes to the frontline in this area. Ukrainian and Russian sources reported positional engagements near Urozhaine (south of Velyka Novosilka) and Pryyutne (southwest of Velyka Novosilka).[39] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces are focusing on conducting attacks west of Staromayorske (south of Velyka Novosilka) and along the Rivnopil-Pryyutne line southwest of Velyka Novosilka.[40] The same milblogger previously claimed on December 29 that Russian forces became more active in this area, which generally accords with increased Ukrainian and Russian reports of positional engagements in the area.[41] Russian forces may be re-starting attacks here in order to draw some Ukrainian forces away from defensive operations in Avdiivka, but the current rate of Russian attacks in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area is not at a scale beyond small positional engagements. Elements of the 143rd Motorized Rifle Regiment (5th Combined Arms Army [CAA], Eastern Military District [EMD]) are reportedly operating north of Pryytune.[42]

Russian forces continued efforts to regain previously lost positions in western Zaporizhia Oblast on December 31, but there were no confirmed changes to the frontline in this area. Russian and Ukrainian sources reported positional engagements near Robotyne, west of Verbove (east of Robotyne), and east of Kopani (northwest of Robotyne).[43] Russian sources reported intense artillery fire and counterbattery combat by both Ukrainian and Russian forces in this area.[44] One milblogger claimed that Russian forces have made "serious progress" in western Zaporizhia Oblast over the past week, and that the situation for Ukrainian forces is particularly difficult west of Robotyne and near Novofedorivka (northeast of Verbove).[45] Elements of the 42nd Motorized Rifle Division (58th CAA, Southern Military District [SMD]), including the 1st Battalion of the 71st Motorized Rifle Regiment and elements of the 291st Motorized Rifle Regiment, are reportedly operating in the area.[46]

Positional engagements continued on the east (left) bank of Kherson Oblast on December 31, but there were no confirmed changes to the frontline in this area.[47] A Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces unsuccessfully attacked towards Poyma (northeast of Oleshky) and that Russian forces unsuccessfully counterattacked within Krynky.[48] Ukrainian military observer Kostyantyn Mashovets stated that the continued Ukrainian presence on the east bank has forced the command of the Russian "Dnepr" Grouping of Forces to redistribute artillery fire missions to provide increased cover for Russian troops fighting on the east bank, as opposed to striking Ukrainian infrastructure on the west (right) bank.[49]

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

See topline text.

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

Russian Deputy Chairperson of the State Duma Committee on Defense and commander of the “Grom Kaskad” unmanned aviation brigade Denis Sablin claimed on December 30 that the range of Russian first-person view (FPV) drones has increased to 32 kilometers, whereas Sablin claimed Ukrainian FPV drones have a maximum range of 22 kilometers.[50]

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 Presidential Administration First Deputy Head Sergei Kiriyenko is spearheading efforts to consolidate sociocultural control of occupied areas of Ukraine via the information space. Zaporizhia Oblast occupation governor Yevgeny Balitsky stated that he met with Kiriyenko on December 31 during a meeting with "cultural workers" in occupied Zaporizhia Oblast.[51] Kiriyenko and Balitsky reportedly discussed the development of Russian-led cultural programs in occupied Zaporizhia Oblast for 2024, including the creation of a "New Regions" media conglomerate, which will work on media projects in occupied Ukraine with support from the Russian federal government. Russian media reported in June that Russian occupation authorities began efforts to reformat the information space using unified and centralized media agencies.[52]

Russian Information Operations and Narratives

Russian state media outlet RIA Novosti published an interview with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on December 31 wherein he promoted a Russian information operation alleging that Western actors are causing instability in Serbia.[53] The Kremlin will likely continue to exploit protests against Serbian President Alexander Vucic in an effort to drive a wedge between Serbia and the West.[54]

Russian sources continue to promote Kremlin narratives that are part of a wider effort to set conditions to justify potential future provocations with Baltic and Scandinavian NATO members. A prominent milblogger, whom the Russian MoD and Kremlin have previously awarded for his service to the Russian Armed Forces, amplified a claim on December 30 in which another Russian milblogger complained that Estonia and Finland are attempting to provoke a crisis in the region and deprive Russia of its navigational rights in the Gulf of Finland.[55] The Kremlin has recently promoted increasingly aggressive rhetorical and military posturing towards Finland which is cause for concern about Russia’s long-term aims.[56]

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.

3. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, December 31, 2023

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-december-31-2023

Key Takeaways:

1. Israeli forces advanced into Beit Lahiya for clearing operations in the northern Gaza Strip. Palestinian militias attempted to defend against Israeli forces operating in Tuffah and al Daraj in Gaza City. Palestinian militias did not claim any attacks in Jabalia City and Sheikh Radwan neighborhood.
2. Palestinian militias are clashing with Israeli forces in al Bureij in the Central Governorate of the Gaza Strip.
3. Israeli forces continued clearing operations in Khan Younis for the fourth straight week as Palestinian militia fighters tried to defend against Israeli advances. Palestinian militias have sustained almost daily attacks on Israeli forces in Khan Younis since Israel forces advanced into the southern Gaza Strip in early December.
4. Israel has withdrawn five IDF brigades from the Gaza Strip, which is consistent with Israeli forces transitioning to a third phase of operations. The third phase will include the end of major combat operations, a “reduction in forces” in the Gaza Strip, the release of reservists, a “transition to targeted raids,” and the establishment of a security buffer zone within the Gaza Strip.
5. An unspecified Israeli intelligence officer told the Economist that most of Hamas’ command structure is “gone” and that Hamas is no longer operating as a military organization. CTP-ISW assesses that at least three of 30 Hamas battalions in the five brigades are combat ineffective, at least eight battalions are degraded, and at least 12 battalions are currently under intense IDF pressure.
6. An Israeli Army Radio correspondent reported that IDF sources believe the intensification of fighting on the ground in the Gaza Strip has contributed to a reduction in Palestinian rocket capabilities. Palestinian militias did not claim any indirect fire attacks into Israel from the Gaza Strip.
7. Israeli forces clashed with Palestinian fighters in six locations across the West Bank.
8. Iranian-backed fighters, including Lebanese Hezbollah, conducted four attacks from southern Lebanon into northern Israel. LH Deputy Secretary General Naim Qassem stated that LH will not allow displaced Israeli civilians to return to their homes in northern Israel until Israel halts its military operations in the Gaza Strip.
9. Iranian-backed militants conducted two attacks on US forces stationed at Conoco Mission Support Site and al Omar oil field on December 30. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq—a coalition of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias—conducted two attacks targeting US forces in Iraq and Syria on December 31.
10. Houthi fighters conducted two attacks on the MV Maersk Hangzhou container ship in the southern Red Sea. The Houthis likely focused on attacking a Maersk-operated vessel in particular because Maersk announced that it would resume its operations in the Red Sea on December 24. These Houthi attacks are part of a broader regional escalation that Iran is leading against the United States and Israel.
11. Supreme National Security Council Secretary Rear Admiral Ali Akbar Ahmadian discussed the Israel-Hamas war with senior Houthi official Mohammad Abdul Salam in Tehran.

IRAN UPDATE, DECEMBER 31, 2023

Dec 31, 2023 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Iran Update, December 31, 2023

Ashka Jhaveri, Amin Soltani, Johanna Moore, Peter Mills, and Nicholas Carl

Information Cutoff: 2:00 pm EST 

The Critical Threats Project and the Institute for the Study of War will not publish an Iran Update (Israel-Hamas War) on January 1, 2024, due to the Near Year holiday. We will resume publication of the Iran Update (Israel-Hamas War) on January 2, 2024. 

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 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:

1. Israeli forces advanced into Beit Lahiya for clearing operations in the northern Gaza Strip. Palestinian militias attempted to defend against Israeli forces operating in Tuffah and al Daraj in Gaza City. Palestinian militias did not claim any attacks in Jabalia City and Sheikh Radwan neighborhood.
2. Palestinian militias are clashing with Israeli forces in al Bureij in the Central Governorate of the Gaza Strip.
3. Israeli forces continued clearing operations in Khan Younis for the fourth straight week as Palestinian militia fighters tried to defend against Israeli advances. Palestinian militias have sustained almost daily attacks on Israeli forces in Khan Younis since Israel forces advanced into the southern Gaza Strip in early December.
4. Israel has withdrawn five IDF brigades from the Gaza Strip, which is consistent with Israeli forces transitioning to a third phase of operations. The third phase will include the end of major combat operations, a “reduction in forces” in the Gaza Strip, the release of reservists, a “transition to targeted raids,” and the establishment of a security buffer zone within the Gaza Strip.
5. An unspecified Israeli intelligence officer told the Economist that most of Hamas’ command structure is “gone” and that Hamas is no longer operating as a military organization. CTP-ISW assesses that at least three of 30 Hamas battalions in the five brigades are combat ineffective, at least eight battalions are degraded, and at least 12 battalions are currently under intense IDF pressure.
6. An Israeli Army Radio correspondent reported that IDF sources believe the intensification of fighting on the ground in the Gaza Strip has contributed to a reduction in Palestinian rocket capabilities. Palestinian militias did not claim any indirect fire attacks into Israel from the Gaza Strip.
7. Israeli forces clashed with Palestinian fighters in six locations across the West Bank.
8. Iranian-backed fighters, including Lebanese Hezbollah, conducted four attacks from southern Lebanon into northern Israel. LH Deputy Secretary General Naim Qassem stated that LH will not allow displaced Israeli civilians to return to their homes in northern Israel until Israel halts its military operations in the Gaza Strip.
9. Iranian-backed militants conducted two attacks on US forces stationed at Conoco Mission Support Site and al Omar oil field on December 30. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq—a coalition of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias—conducted two attacks targeting US forces in Iraq and Syria on December 31.
10. Houthi fighters conducted two attacks on the MV Maersk Hangzhou container ship in the southern Red Sea. The Houthis likely focused on attacking a Maersk-operated vessel in particular because Maersk announced that it would resume its operations in the Red Sea on December 24. These Houthi attacks are part of a broader regional escalation that Iran is leading against the United States and Israel.
11. Supreme National Security Council Secretary Rear Admiral Ali Akbar Ahmadian discussed the Israel-Hamas war with senior Houthi official Mohammad Abdul Salam in Tehran.

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.

Israeli forces advanced into Beit Lahiya for clearing operations in the northern Gaza Strip. An Israeli Brigade Combat Team identified three Hamas fighters inside a building and directed an airstrike at their position in Beit Lahiya, according to an IDF report on December 31.[1] The al Qassem Brigades—the militant wing of Hamas—intercepted an Israeli reconnaissance drone in Beit Lahiya on December 31.[2] Israeli forces initially advanced into the Gaza Strip west of Beit Lahiya in late October.[3] Commercially available satellite imagery captured on December 31 shows recently flattened terrain in Beit Lahiya City and north of the city, which suggests that Israeli tanks or bulldozers recently began operating in the area. The Wall Street Journal published a map of the tunnel system that Hamas has created below the Gaza Strip based on data from 2014, which includes an extensive tunnel network in Beit Lahiya.[4] Palestinian militia fighters have used tunnel shafts to maneuver through the strip and to ambush Israeli forces.[5] The IDF has located about 1,500 tunnel shafts and routes in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the ground operation in the Gaza Strip, according to an IDF report on December 19.[6]

Palestinian militias attempted to defend against Israeli forces operating in Tuffah and al Daraj in Gaza City. The al Qassem Brigades and al Quds Brigades—the militant wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ)—claimed several attacks on Israeli forces operating in the neighborhoods.[7] The al Qassem Brigades claimed to detonate a Shawaz explosively formed penetrator (EFP) in the neighborhoods, targeting five Israeli vehicles.[8] EFPs are particularly lethal improvised explosive devices designed to penetrate armored vehicles, such as main battle tanks.[9]

Palestinian militias did not claim any attacks in Jabalia City and Sheikh Radwan neighborhood on December 31. CTP-ISW assessed on December 22 that Hamas’ Jabalia al Balad Battalion is degraded and that the Radwan Battalion remains combat effective.[10] Both battalions are facing active and intense IDF pressure, as Israeli forces continue advancing into these areas.[11] Palestinian militias have claimed nearly daily attacks in Sheikh Radwan neighborhood since the humanitarian pause expired on December 1, which suggests that it is one of the remaining areas where they maintain significant defensive infrastructure. The absence of Palestinian attack claims does not necessarily indicate that Hamas lacks the capability to launch attacks in the area, however. Palestinian militias have reported losing contact with specific units for short periods of time in the Gaza Strip, which could have happened in Jabalia City and Sheikh Radwan neighborhood.[12]

Israeli forces continued executing tasks consistent with holding operations in some areas of Gaza City. CTP-ISW reported on December 20 that Israeli forces are transitioning from clearing operations to holding operations in some areas of the northern Gaza Strip.[13] The hold phase is defined by a decreased level of violence but still requires holding forces to engage and eliminate enemy forces and infrastructure to provide security.[14] Palestinian militia attacks in these areas demonstrate that the militias have retained some forces capable of targeting Israeli operations.

• Israeli forces searched the homes of Palestinian militia fighters in al Shaati refugee camp in northern Gaza City.[15] Unspecified Palestinian fighters had planted IEDs in the vicinity of a kindergarten in advance of the arrival of Israeli forces.
• Israeli forces conducted an airstrike targeting a suspicious vehicle that Palestinian fighters were driving toward Israeli ground elements in southern Gaza City.[16]
• The al Quds Brigades detonated a tunnel entrance rigged with explosives targeting Israeli infantrymen in Shujaiya neighborhood, where Israeli forces have been executing tasks consistent with holding operations for over a week.[17]

Palestinian militias are clashing with Israeli forces in al Bureij in the Central Governorate of the Gaza Strip. The al Qassem Brigades published footage on December 31 of its forces moving through buildings to launch rocket propelled grenades (RPG) at Israeli tanks—a tactic that the militia has employed heavily across the Gaza Strip.[18] The IDF said that it expanded clearing operations in Bureij in the central Gaza Strip on December 26 to target Hamas’ Bureij Battalion.[19] The IDF Arabic-language media spokesperson repeated on December 31 evacuation orders covering areas of the central Gaza Strip.[20] Residents of al Bureij refugee camp, Badr, northern coast, al Nuzha, al Zahra, al Buraq, al Salam, al Fayha, al Basma, al Bawadi, al Rawdah, and al Safah must move to shelters in Deir al Balah, according to the IDF evacuation orders.[21]

Israeli forces continued clearing operations in Khan Younis for the fourth straight week as Palestinian militia fighters tried to defend against Israeli advances. The IDF reported on December 31 that an airborne brigade deployed to Khan Younis in recent days after two months of intense fighting in the northern Gaza Strip.[22] The brigade joined special operations, armored, engineering, and air elements in clearing Khan Younis Governorate of militia infrastructure, such as observation outposts, anti-tank positions, and weapons depots.[23] Palestinian fighters emerged from a tunnel shaft in one encounter and attempted to fire RPGs before Israeli forces returned fire.[24] Israeli air and armored elements killed the remaining Palestinian fighters.[25] The IDF also destroyed unspecified militia infrastructure belonging to the commanders of Hamas’ South Khan Younis Battalion, one of five in the governorate.[26]

Palestinian militias have sustained almost daily attacks on Israeli forces in Khan Younis since Israeli forces advanced into the southern Gaza Strip in early December. The al Qassem Brigades claimed three attacks on Israeli forces using mortars and anti-tank RPGs.[27] The National Resistance Brigades—the militant wing of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP)—claimed to target an Israeli tank with an unspecified explosive device north of Khan Younis.[28] The al Nasser Salah al Din Brigades—the militant wing of the Popular Resistance Committees—claimed that its fighters targeted an Israeli tank with a tandem-charged anti-tank rocket in Khan Younis.[29] The al Qassem Brigades and National Resistance Brigades claimed separate mortar attacks on Israeli forces east of Khuzaa, where the IDF began clearing operations on December 27.[30]

Israel has withdrawn five IDF brigades from the Gaza Strip, which is consistent with Israeli forces transitioning to a third phase of operations. The IDF confirmed the withdrawals and that it will include some reservists.[31] Some of these brigades had deployed to and fought in the northern Gaza Strip.[32] Three of the five brigades are training brigades, which are responsible for training officers, tank personnel, and non-commissioned officers during peacetime.[33] Israel’s public broadcaster reported on December 23 that the IDF will transition to the third phase of its ground operation in the Gaza Strip in the “coming weeks.”[34] The report said that the third phase will include the end of major combat operations, a “reduction in forces” in the Gaza Strip, the release of reservists, a “transition to targeted raids,” and the establishment of a security buffer zone within the Gaza Strip.

An unspecified Israeli intelligence officer told the Economist on December 30 that most of Hamas’ command structure is “gone” and that Hamas is no longer operating as a military organization.[35] The officer noted that Hamas maintains many fighters who have reverted to guerilla tactics.

CTP-ISW assesses that at least three of 30 Hamas battalions in the five brigades are combat ineffective, at least eight battalions are degraded, and at least 12 battalions are currently under intense IDF pressure.[36] Hamas has a conventional military order of battle but has fought this war and historically as an irregular (guerilla) force. Hamas very likely retains a deep bench of experienced military commanders.[37] Israeli forces are still actively clearing in some parts of the northern Gaza Strip in addition to the Gaza Strip’s Central and Khan Younis governorates, where Hamas maintains combat effective units. Combat effectiveness measures a unit’s ability to perform its mission; a unit is combat ineffective when it is no longer able to complete its mission.[38] The IDF reported on December 26 that all four battalions in Hamas’ Central Gazan Brigade have sustained “some damage” but are “largely functioning.”[39] Hamas’ combat ineffective units are still capable of waging low-level warfare and reconstituting.

An Israeli Army Radio correspondent reported on December 31 that IDF sources believe the intensification of fighting on the ground in the Gaza Strip has contributed to a reduction in Palestinian rocket capabilities.[40] Palestinian militias did not claim any indirect fire attacks into Israel from the Gaza Strip on December 31. CTP-ISW initially assessed that Israeli clearing operations were likely degrading Hamas’ capacity to conduct indirect fire attacks into Israel from the Gaza Strip on December 12.[41]

The IDF estimates that the war will not completely reduce rocket fire from the Gaza Strip into Israel, however. Israeli clearing operations are primarily focused on dismantling Hamas in the Gaza Strip.[42] The IDF noted that the success of their operations in the strip does not preclude a “lone terrorist” from conducting indirect fire attacks into Israel. Several Palestinian militias operating in the Gaza Strip maintain rocket arsenals and have claimed indirect fire attacks into Israel.[43]

West Bank

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

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

Israeli forces clashed with Palestinian fighters in six locations across the West Bank on December 31.[44] The al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades and one of its affiliated groups, the Tulkarm Rapid Response Battalion, claimed that they conducted IED and small arms attacks on Israeli forces around Tulkarm on December 30-31.[45] Unspecified Palestinian fighters threw IEDs at Israeli forces in Nablus, Tulkarm, and Jericho on December 31.[46] The al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades separately claimed three small arms attacks on Israeli forces and settlements near Qalqilya and Nablus on December 30.[47] Unspecified Palestinian fighters fired small arms and threw Molotov cocktails at Israeli forces near Hebron on December 30.[48] Fatah organized a demonstration against Israeli operations in the Gaza Strip in Ramallah on December 31.[49]

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

Iranian-backed fighters, including Lebanese Hezbollah (LH), conducted four attacks from southern Lebanon into northern Israel on December 31. LH fired anti-tank guided missiles and other unspecified munitions toward three Israeli border positions.[50] Unspecified fighters separately launched rockets toward Metula on December 31.[51] The IDF Air Force conducted airstrikes on LH military infrastructure in Ramiya, southern Lebanon.[52] The IDF stated that LH uses villages along the border to facilitate attacks on Israeli border positions.[53]

LH Deputy Secretary General Naim Qassem stated on December 31 that LH will not allow displaced Israeli civilians to return to their homes in northern Israel until Israel halts its military operations in the Gaza Strip.[54] Qassem stated that LH is in a state of war with Israel and that its forces along the border were positioned accordingly.[55] Qassem also warned that Israeli attacks harming Lebanese civilians would lead to a stronger but proportional response from LH.[56] Head of the Maronite Church Bechara Boutros al Rahi called for LH to withdraw its rocket units from civilian areas in southern Lebanon to avoid IDF retaliation.[57]

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

Iranian-backed militants conducted two attacks on US forces stationed at Conoco Mission Support Site and al Omar oil field on December 30.[58] The militants fired three drones at Conoco Mission Support Site and 14 rockets at al Omar oilfield, according to an unnamed US defense official.[59] The attack on Conoco is the largest barrage of rockets fired at US forces in a single attack that CTP-ISW has recorded since the Israel-Hamas war began, although it is possible that comparable or larger attacks have occurred and that such details have not been published. Syrian opposition media reported that Kataib Hezbollah and other Iranian-backed Iraqi militias were responsible for the December 30 attacks.[60] CTP-ISW previously assessed that the Iranian-led Axis of Resistance may escalate further against US forces in the region in the coming days, especially around the four-year anniversary of the US killing former IRGC Quds Force Commander Major General Qassem Soleimani on January 3, 2024.[61] Iranian leaders have vowed to expel US forces from the region as part of their revenge for the United States killing Soleimani.[62] The IRGC Quds Force engaged senior Iranian-backed Iraqi militia and political leaders likely to discuss their military and political campaign to expel US forces on December 30, as CTP-ISW previously reported.[63]

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq—a coalition of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias—conducted two attacks targeting US forces in Iraq and Syria on December 31. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq claimed two separate drone attacks on US forces at Rmelan Landing Zone, Syria, and Erbil International Airport, Iraq.[64]

Kataib Hezbollah (KH) commemorated its fight against the United States in several posts on its Telegram page on December 31. KH claimed that the United States deployed military advisors to Iraq under false pretexts to reoccupy Iraq and reshape the Middle East according to Israeli interests.[65] KH also celebrated the fourth anniversary of the storming of the US Embassy in Baghdad on December 31, 2019, and 12th anniversary of the US troop withdrawal in 2011.[66] KH also applauded its fighters' continued dedication to removing the United States from Iraq.[67]

Houthi fighters conducted two attacks on the MV Maersk Hangzhou container ship in the southern Red Sea. Likely Houthi fighters conducted a missile attack on the ship on December 30.[68] The USS Gravely destroyer intercepted two anti-ship missiles targeting the Hangzhou, while responding to a distress call from the ship.[69] Four Houthi fast attack craft later approached the Hangzhou, firing on the container ship and attempting to board it.[70] The USS Gravely and USS Eisenhower aircraft carriers sent helicopters to the container ship and issued verbal messages to the Houthi boats, which then fired on the helicopters.[71] The helicopters returned fire in self-defense and sank three of the four Houthi boats, killing ten Houthi members.[72] The fourth Houthi boat fled the area.

Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree said that Houthi fighters had been performing their regular duties to provide security and stability in the Red Sea by preventing Israeli ships or ships en route to Israel from passing.[73] Saree accused the United States of attempting to expand the conflict into the Red Sea and warned other countries of being complicit to US efforts.[74] Saree’s statement notably quoted a Quranic verse that LH and the Islamic Resistance of Iraq regularly cite as justification for their attacks on the United States or Israel. The use of the passage across the Axis of Resistance members is likely meant to signal their unity to external actors, while framing their regional escalation as some kind of religious duty.

The Houthis likely focused on attacking a Maersk-operated vessel in particular because Maersk announced that it would resume its operations in the Red Sea on December 24.[75] CTP-ISW previously assessed that the Iranian and Houthi anti-shipping attack campaign is meant to demonstrate the capability and willingness of the Axis of Resistance to threaten multiple strategic maritime chokepoints across the Middle East. The Houthi framing that the anti-shipping attack campaign is meant to only prevent commercial traffic to Israel is inaccurate, as the Houthi attacks have targeted multiple ships with no immediate connection to Israel or Israeli interests. Maersk announced that it would again suspend its operations in the Red Sea—this time for 48 hours—on December 31.[76]

These Houthi attacks are part of a broader regional escalation that Iran is leading against the United States and Israel. This regional escalation is meant to achieve Iran’s broader regional ambitions rather than achieve any discrete effects vis-a-vis the Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip. This Iran-led escalation includes the almost daily drone, missile, and rocket attacks that Iranian-backed militias have conducted against US forces in Iraq and Syria. Iran and its proxies and partners in the Axis of Resistance are framing falsely this escalation as a response to the Israeli military operations in the Gaza Strip. Iran and its Axis of Resistance have a long history of threatening American servicemembers and international shipping prior to the war because it supports their grand strategic objectives in the Middle East. The current escalation is thus meant to help Iran attain regional hegemony, destroy the Israeli state, and expel US forces from the Middle East. The Israel-Hamas war provides informational cover to Iran and the Axis of Resistance, allowing them to misrepresent their long-standing campaigns as meant to support the Palestinian cause.

Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian discussed recent Houthi attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea during a phone call with his British counterpart, David Cameron, on December 31.[77] Abdollahian suggested that Houthi attacks on maritime traffic would continue so long as Israel continues its military operations in the Gaza Strip. Cameron stated that Iran bears responsibility for the Houthi attacks given its long-standing support for the Houthis. The Houthis have conducted an anti-shipping attack campaign around the Red Sea in recent weeks to disrupt commercial shipping to Israel and demonstrate both the willingness and capability of the Axis of Resistance to disrupt maritime traffic around strategic maritime chokepoints.[78]

Supreme National Security Council Secretary Rear Admiral Ali Akbar Ahmadian discussed the Israel-Hamas war with senior Houthi official Mohammad Abdul Salam in Tehran on December 31.[79] Ahmadian praised the Houthis for their support of the Palestinians against Israeli “aggression.”

Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei met with the family of Qassem Soleimani on December 31.[80] Khamenei praised how Soleimani strengthened the Axis of Resistance and called on the IRGC Quds Force to further strengthen it. IRGC Commander Major General Hossein Salami and IRGC Quds Force Commander Brigadier General Esmail Ghaani attended the meeting. IRGC-affiliated media emphasized that Khamenei’s insistence on continuing to strengthen the Axis of Resistance was directed at Ghaani.[81]

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi met with the family of IRGC Brigadier General Razi Mousavi, whom Israel killed in an airstrike in Syria, on December 31.[82] Raisi threatened that Israel “would pay the price” for killing Mousavi. Western and anti-regime media have reported that Mousavi headed IRGC Quds Force Unit 2250, which manages Iranian weapons shipments to LH and Iranian-backed militias in Syria.[83] Senior Iranian military and political officials have attended Mousavi’s commemoration and funeral ceremonies in recent days, highlighting his prominence in the regime and its regional project.[84]

4. Israel Plans to Withdraw Some Troops From Gaza

I would say this is an indication of a long term commitment. Sustained training will be important as will the ability to sustain rotations of both active duty and reserve forces.  

One of my mentors taught me that at the beginning of an operation one of the first things you must do is plan for the long term commitment and the rotation and training policies are critically important to be able to sustain such a long term commitment.

Israel Plans to Withdraw Some Troops From Gaza

By Aaron Boxerman

Jan. 1, 2024

Updated 9:22 a.m. ET

The New York Times · by Aaron Boxerman · January 1, 2024

Reservists from at least two brigades will be sent home this week, and another three brigades will return to Israel for training, the military said.

Israeli soldiers walk near the border with Israel on Sunday.

The Israeli military announced on Monday that it will begin withdrawing several thousand troops from Gaza at least temporarily, in what would be the most significant publicly announced pullback since the war began.

The military cited a growing toll on the Israeli economy following nearly three months of wartime mobilization with little end in sight to the fighting. Israel had been considering scaling back its operations, and the United States has been prodding it to do so more quickly as the death toll in Gaza continues to rise. More than 20,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the beginning of the war, according to local health authorities.

Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military spokesman, emphasized that the move to demobilize some soldiers did not indicate any compromise on Israel’s intention to continue fighting, and he did not mention the American requests to scale back. He indicated that some will be called back to service in the coming year. Still, the fighting remains intense across Gaza.

Reservists from at least two brigades will be sent home this week, the Israeli military said in a statement, and three brigades will be taken back for training.

“This move is expected to significantly alleviate economic burdens and enable them to gather strength for upcoming activities in the next year,” the Israeli military said.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken is expected to return to Israel in early January for further talks on the war, according to U.S. officials, after having met with a top Netanyahu aide in Washington last week alongside Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser. The three discussed pivoting to a different phase of the war to “maximize focus on high-value Hamas targets,” a White House official said.

Gaza City on Monday. More than 20,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the war began, according to local health authorities.

Israel began its campaign against Hamas after 1,200 people were killed in Israel in an attack by the Palestinian armed group and more than 240 people were taken hostage, according to the Israeli authorities. In response, the Israeli government launched a campaign to topple Hamas’s rule in Gaza and authorized the mobilization of over 350,000 reservists for the war effort.

The call-up added to the economic burden faced by hundreds of thousands of Israelis who fled their homes on Israel’s borders following the attacks. The Israeli economy is expected to shrink by 2 percent this quarter, the Taub Center for Social Policy Studies, a nonpartisan think tank in Israel, said in late December, as many left the labor force for reserve duty or abandoned businesses in their hometowns.

Israeli leaders have continued to tell the public to expect a long military campaign, even as some critics have voiced skepticism as to whether the goal of eliminating Hamas is ultimately feasible.

Israeli troops on tanks rolling back into Israel from the Gaza Strip on Sunday.

“The goals of the war require prolonged fighting and we are preparing accordingly,” Rear Admiral Hagari told reporters in a televised news briefing on Sunday night.

But Israeli officials have said they intend to eventually transition to a new stage of the war, which would see more directed attacks against Hamas rather than the all-out ground invasion seen thus far.

In the Gaza Strip, months of war have displaced more than 85 percent of Gaza’s 2 million-plus residents, according to the United Nations, many of whom have crowded into shrinking safe zones in the enclave’s south. Many have sought shelter in hospitals and schools, where the search for adequate food and water has become a daily ordeal.

Fighting continued overnight on Monday. Shortly after midnight — just after Israelis and Palestinians rang in the New Year — Hamas took responsibility for a rocket barrage from Gaza that sent scores fleeing to bomb shelters in central Israel.

Israeli troops also struck targets in northern and central Gaza, the Israeli military said on Monday, claiming to eliminate a Hamas militant commander. There was no immediate confirmation by Hamas.

Tent camps for displaced Palestinians in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip close to the border with Egypt on Sunday.

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The New York Times · by Aaron Boxerman · January 1, 2024

5. Half of Gazans Are at Risk of Starving, U.N. Warns

Half of Gazans Are at Risk of Starving, U.N. Warns

By Liam Stack, Gaya Gupta and Abu Bakr Bashir

Jan. 1, 2024, 12:01 a.m. ET

The New York Times · by Abu Bakr Bashir · January 1, 2024

More than 90 percent of Palestinians in the territory say they have regularly gone without food for a whole day, according to the United Nations.

Palestinians crowded in to get a free meal in the city of Rafah in southern Gaza last month.Credit...Fatima Shbair/Associated Press

By Gaya Gupta and

Jan. 1, 2024, 12:01 a.m. ET

Walaa Zaiter’s four children have been hungry for weeks, but she can barely find them food.

They ask for sandwiches, fruit juice and homemade Palestinian dishes like she used to cook before the war began. In a fleeting moment of internet access, she said, she once caught the children huddled around her phone to watch a YouTube video of someone eating French fries.

The most they can hope for these days, she said in a recent telephone interview, is a can of peas, some cheese and an energy bar distributed as a family’s rations by the United Nations once a week in Rafah, a city in southern Gaza where they fled to in early December to escape Israeli bombardment farther north. It is not nearly enough to feed her family of seven.

“It’s a daily struggle,” said Ms. Zaiter, 37, whose children range in age from 9 months to 13 years. “You feel you are under pressure and hopeless, and you cannot provide anything.”

Israel’s war in Gaza has created a humanitarian catastrophe, with half of the population of about 2.2 million at risk of starvation and 90 percent saying that they regularly go without food for a whole day, the United Nations said in a recent report.

Arif Husain, chief economist at the World Food Program, said the humanitarian disaster in Gaza was among the worst he had ever seen. The territory appears to meet at least the first criteria of a famine, with 20 percent of the population facing an extreme lack of food, he said.

A Palestinian woman making food outside a house in southern Gaza last month.

“I’ve been doing this for about 20 years,” Mr. Husain said. “I’ve been to pretty much any conflict, whether Yemen, whether it was South Sudan, northeast Nigeria, Ethiopia, you name it. And I have never seen anything like this, both in terms of its scale, its magnitude, but also at the pace that this has unfolded.”

Eylon Levy, an Israeli government spokesman, contended that Israel did not stand in the way of humanitarian assistance and blamed Hamas, the Palestinian group that rules Gaza, for any shortages. He accused Hamas of seizing some of the aid for its own uses. He did not provide evidence, but Western and Arab officials have said that Hamas is known to have a large stockpile of supplies, including food, fuel and medicine.

The war began on Oct. 7 after Hamas attacked Israel and killed an estimated 1,200 people, according to Israeli officials. To retaliate, Israel launched a devastating air bombardment of the small, impoverished enclave, followed by a ground invasion that has displaced roughly 85 percent of the population.

More than 20,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, and it has destroyed much of the territory’s civilian infrastructure and economy. Israel has also imposed a siege on Gaza for months now, cutting off most water, food, fuel and medicine.

Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the United Nations agency that aids Palestinians, said he recently saw desperately hungry Gazans stop the organization’s aid trucks in Rafah, raid their food supplies and devour them on the spot.

“I witnessed this firsthand,” he told a news conference in Geneva two days after visiting Rafah at the southern end of Gaza. “Everywhere you go, people are hungry, desperate and terrified.”

Human Rights Watch has accused Israel of collectively punishing Gaza civilians for the actions of Hamas and of “using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare.” Both are potential war crimes.

Palestinians gathering to receive food cooked by a charity kitchen in Rafah in December.Credit...Reuters

“For over two months, Israel has been depriving Gaza’s population of food and water, a policy spurred on or endorsed by high-ranking Israeli officials and reflecting an intent to starve civilians as a method of warfare,” said Omar Shakir, the Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch.

“World leaders should be speaking out against this abhorrent war crime, which has devastating effects on Gaza’s population,” he said.

At the beginning of the war, Israeli officials vowed to deny humanitarian aid to Gaza.

“I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip: There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed,” Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on Oct. 9. “We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly.”

Nothing was allowed in for the first two weeks. Then some deliveries began to flow, but no fuel was allowed in until Nov. 18.

In recent weeks, Israel has allowed 100 to 120 trucks to enter Gaza each day, said Dr. Guillemette Thomas, a Jerusalem-based medical coordinator for Doctors Without Borders. That is still far less than the 500 trucks that entered each day before the war, and far below what is needed, she said.

Mr. Levy, the government spokesman, pushed back recently against the idea that Israel was preventing or slowing the flow of aid.

“We categorically reject the despicable and libelous allegations that Israel is somehow obstructing the delivery of humanitarian aid into Gaza,” he said on Dec. 20.

“If they want more food and water to reach Gaza, they should send more food and water to Gaza,” he added, referring to international aid groups. “And while they’re sending more aid, they should condemn Hamas for hijacking aid deliveries and diverting them to its fighters. Their silence is shameful. We will not accept international officials deflecting blame onto us to cover up the fact they’re covering up for Hamas.”

Desperate Palestinians looting a humanitarian aid truck as it crossed into Gaza in Rafah.Credit...Fatima Shbair/Associated Press

But Mr. Lazzarini said on Friday that it was “baseless misinformation” to blame the international community for the lack of aid into Gaza. He said deliveries were “limited in quantities and riddled with logistical hurdles” imposed by Israel.

Those include a complicated and lengthy verification process, a ban on the delivery of commercial goods to markets and private businesses, and restricted access to much of Gaza, either because of airstrikes, fighting or Israeli military checkpoints.

Gaza spiraled so quickly into humanitarian catastrophe when the war began because it had already been deep in crisis for many years.

Israel and Egypt imposed a blockade on the territory after Hamas seized power in 2007, largely cutting off Gaza’s economic activity with the outside world. The blockade made up to 80 percent of Gazans reliant on humanitarian aid even before the war, the United Nations said.

Azmi Keshawi, an analyst for the research organization International Crisis Group, said that even if Israel says it does not view its war as one against Gaza’s population, it is civilians who are paying the heaviest price.

“Our daily nightmare is to go hunt for food,” said Mr. Keshawi, who fled his home in Gaza City in the north and now lives in a tent on a sidewalk in Rafah with his children. One of his children was injured by an Israeli airstrike, he said.

“You cannot find flour,” he said. “You cannot find yeast to make bread. You cannot find any kind of food — tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, eggplant, lemon, orange juice.”

When food can be found for sale, he said, the prices have skyrocketed. In Rafah, a sack of flour that might have cost $13 before the war now sells for $138 to $165.

Humanitarian aid trucks and ambulances entering northern Gaza through an Israeli checkpoint in November.Credit...Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times

Thousands of displaced people who fled to Rafah, one of the few so-called safe zones in Gaza today, now struggle to pay for a can of tuna, which once cost less than 30 cents and is now more than $1.50, or a can of corned beef, which once cost about $1.40 but now is more than $5.50, he said.

“These people left home with no money,” Mr. Keshawi said. “Surviving becomes a challenge.”

Tahrir Muqat, 46, said she had fled her home in Gaza City and now lived with four relatives, including a baby, in a school in Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza. There is virtually no regular running water, and on the rare occasions when it does turn on, people stockpile it in the toilet bowl and drink from that, she said.

She waits in line for hours each day to get two packs of feta cheese and three crackers from aid workers at a shelter. Then she and her relatives go from door to door, begging for scraps at ruined houses crammed with displaced people.

“Most of the time we get a ‘No!’ with insulting comments like ‘Go back to Gaza City! Everything has become too expensive since you arrived!’” Ms. Muqat said.

She said she had once seen children eating rotten tomatoes that they had found in the street.

Last month, she said, an airstrike hit nearby while they were begging. Her daughter, Nasayem, in her mid-20s, was sprayed with shrapnel in her leg, arm, chest and back. There is scant medicine to treat her and no heat in their shelter to cut the winter chill. And the injury has made her more exhausted and listless. But Nasayem is focused on protecting her baby, her mother said.

“When it is cold, it hurts her more,” Ms. Muqat said of her daughter last week. “She fell asleep early today and said she would go out tomorrow morning to look for food for her baby,” she added. “She has to.”

Palestinians lining up for food in Rafah.Credit...Fatima Shbair/Associated Press

Roni Rabin and Jonathan Reiss contributed reporting.

Liam Stack is a Times reporter who covers the culture and politics of the New York City region. More about Liam Stack

Gaya Gupta is a reporting fellow on the Live team at The Times. More about Gaya Gupta

A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Half of Gazans Face Risk of Starvation, the U.N. Warns

The New York Times · by Abu Bakr Bashir · January 1, 2024

6. The U.S. and Israel: An Embrace Shows Signs of Strain After Oct. 7

The U.S. and Israel: An Embrace Shows Signs of Strain After Oct. 7

By Peter Baker, Edward Wong, Julian E. Barnes and Isabel Kershner

Reporting from Washington and Jerusalem and in some cases traveling with President Biden and Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken to the region.

Dec. 31, 2023

The New York Times · by Isabel Kershner · December 31, 2023

No other episode in the past half-century has tested the relationship between the United States and Israel in such an intense and consequential way as the Israel-Hamas war of 2023.

President Biden has pressed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to scale back the war to a surgical operation relying more on special forces raids than wide-scale bombing.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times

Dec. 31, 2023, 2:37 p.m. ET

President Biden was getting ready to leave the White House for an audacious flight to Israel to demonstrate solidarity after the Oct. 7 terrorist attack when suddenly the trip seemed to be falling apart before it even began.

An explosion at a Gaza hospital had reportedly killed or wounded hundreds, the Palestinians were blaming Israel, and Arab leaders were refusing to meet with Mr. Biden when he arrived in the region. The president summoned advisers to the Treaty Room on the second floor of the White House family quarters to answer the question: Should he still go?

A robust debate broke out between his national security and political advisers. Some in the room urged Mr. Biden to scrap the trip. It was not clear what could be accomplished. It might not even be safe. What if Hamas launched rockets at Ben-Gurion International Airport when Air Force One approached? Where would the president land then?

The site of the Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City after an explosion in October.

Others argued that he needed to go anyway. He had already announced the visit. They should not lurch from one decision to another. And preliminary U.S. intelligence indicated that Israel was not responsible for the hospital explosion.

Finally, Mr. Biden weighed in. “I’ve got to go,” he said. “I’ve got to see these guys face to face.”

That decision, perhaps more than any other, would come to define Mr. Biden’s approach to what has become the most divisive foreign policy crisis of his presidency. He had to go. He had to see them face to face. With that, he effectively took ownership of the war that would follow in all its overpowering brutality, managing it personally at great political risk to himself at home and abroad.

No other episode in the past half-century has tested the ties between the United States and Israel in such an intense and consequential way. The complicated diplomacy between Washington and Jerusalem since Hamas terrorists killed 1,200 people and seized 240 hostages has played out across both governments, in direct interactions between the leaders and intense back and forth between military and intelligence agencies.

Mr. Biden and Mr. Netanyahu talking in Israel on Oct. 18.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times

The resolve of that dramatic presidential trip to Israel has given way to frustrating phone calls, sharp public comments and exhausting marathon meetings. The relationship has grown increasingly fraught as Mr. Biden has involved himself more intensely in the conflict than almost any other issue in three years in office. The president and his team have intervened time and again to steer Israel away from what they consider the excesses of its retaliation only to have the Israelis defy them at critical moments.

Mr. Biden has seen growing internal resistance to his backing of Israel, including multiple dissent cables from State Department diplomats. In November, more than 500 political appointees and staff members representing some 40 government agencies sent a letter to Mr. Biden protesting his support of Israel’s war in Gaza. Congressional Democrats have been pressing him to curb Israel’s assault, and the United States has found itself at odds with other countries at the United Nations.

The friction appears to be coming to a head as the new year arrives. The Biden team recognizes that its challenge is not just Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, since Israelis across the board support the military operation that according to the Gaza Health Ministry has killed more than 20,000 people. But there is no serious discussion inside the administration of a meaningful change in policy, like cutting off the arms supply to Israel. Instead, Mr. Biden remains determined to navigate the crisis within the crisis by using the credibility he earned through steadfast support of Israel to shape its next chapter, although it is unclear how much leverage that gives him.

Ron Dermer, Israel’s minister of strategic affairs, in Washington last week.

During a tense conversation a week ago, Mr. Biden pressed Mr. Netanyahu to scale back the war to a surgical operation relying more on special forces raids targeting Hamas leaders and tunnels than wide-scale bombing. The Israeli leader then sent his right-hand adviser, Ron Dermer, to Washington for what ended up being a nearly four-hour meeting at the White House the day after Christmas, where he assured Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, that Israel would soon shift to the targeted phase that Mr. Biden has been urging.

The first signs of such a shift could be seen in the coming weeks as Israeli forces wrap up operations in northern Gaza and begin withdrawing many troops from that area, Mr. Dermer told them. But he did not give a firm timetable, and the Americans pressed him to begin the transition sooner rather than later. Mr. Blinken plans to head back to Israel in early January, when Israeli officials hope to give him a decision on next steps

At the same time, Mr. Biden’s team has been quietly working to negotiate a new hostage deal. William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director, met with his Israeli counterpart and Qatar’s prime minister in Warsaw earlier in December to advance a proposal for a seven-day halt to the fighting in exchange for the release of another 35 to 40 people seized on Oct. 7, including civilian women, badly wounded men and other men over 60 years old.

Mr. Biden has relied on officials including Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, center, and Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, right, as he responds to the war.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times

And there are even quieter efforts underway to negotiate through intermediaries an arrangement with Hezbollah to pull back from the area near Lebanon’s border with Israel, preventing the eruption of a wider war in the region and allowing tens of thousands of Israelis who have fled their homes to return.

This account of the relationship between the United States and Israel over the past 12 weeks is based on multiple interviews and trips to the region with key American and Israeli officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share details of internal conversations and deliberations. It is a complicated story where officials on both sides say public assumptions do not always match the private reality.

Fears of a Wider War

The first week after the attack was the most volatile and dangerous. Mr. Biden’s biggest fear, according to advisers, was an expanded war in which Iran would empower proxies in addition to Hamas to attack Israel, or Israel would launch a pre-emptive war against such forces.

A group of rockets fired by Palestinian militants from Gaza City on Oct.Credit...Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times

As he learned about the attack on Oct. 7, Mr. Biden conducted three conference calls and three in-person meetings with his national security team, delivered a statement to the media and made separate calls to Mr. Sullivan; Jon Finer, his deputy national security adviser; Mr. Netanyahu; King Abdullah II of Jordan; Vice President Kamala Harris; Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III; and two congressional Democrats who were in Israel, Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey and Representative Dan Goldman of New York.

He would go on to send a steady procession of officials to the region. Mr. Blinken has made three trips to the area with five stops in Israel, once even joining a meeting of Israel’s war cabinet. Others who have traveled to the region include Ms. Harris; Mr. Austin; Mr. Burns; Mr. Sullivan; Brett McGurk, the president’s Middle East coordinator; Avril D. Haines, the director of national intelligence; Gen. Michael E. Kurilla, the head of U.S. Central Command; and Lt. Gen. James Glynn, who led Special Forces against the Islamic State.

Mr. Biden has now spoken directly with Mr. Netanyahu 14 times, in addition to calling the leaders of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman, as well as Pope Francis. Every presidential call with Mr. Netanyahu typically involves a preliminary meeting with Mr. Biden’s advisers and a debriefing afterward. Mr. Dermer then often calls Mr. Sullivan for another hourlong discussion.

On Oct. 11, Mr. Biden made an urgent call to Mr. Netanyahu. The Israelis had gotten vague intelligence that Hezbollah was about to launch a major strike against Israel, and the Israelis, pushed by Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, were preparing to strike first. The Americans got wind of the situation but believed the intelligence was not so clear.

The Israeli defense minister, Yoav Gallant, and Lloyd J. Austin III, the U.S. defense secretary, met in Tel Aviv in December.Credit...Phil Stewart/Reuters

Joined by Mr. Blinken and Mr. Sullivan, Mr. Biden spoke with Mr. Netanyahu and other Israeli officials to press them not to attack. If you do this, the Americans argued, you will guarantee the very thing we think we can prevent and deter. The Israelis agreed to back down. Mr. Biden, who had already sent one carrier group to the eastern Mediterranean to deter Hezbollah from joining the fray, sent a second one.

American officials began racing to Israel, first Mr. Blinken, then Mr. Austin. On Oct. 13, Mr. Austin privately warned Mr. Gallant that the Israelis needed to establish humanitarian corridors and a defined set of rules to protect Palestinian cities, citing America’s experiences with urban warfare in Iraq.

Mr. Blinken spent a week traveling around the region, briefing the president each day by secure line. On one day alone, he conducted nine hours of talks with the Israelis, and at one point was forced to evacuate during a rocket attack to an underground bunker six floors beneath the surface. Mr. Blinken and his aides sat in one room while Mr. Netanyahu and his war cabinet sat in another. Mr. Netanyahu shuttled back and forth between the rooms, listening to American proposals and bringing them back to his team. He agreed to let humanitarian aid into Gaza as a condition for Mr. Biden visiting.

Mr. Biden’s advisers and allies said his personal involvement has averted a broader war and influenced Israel’s approach, even if not as much as he would hope.

Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware, said Mr. Biden’s involvement has “had some impact.”Credit...Valerie Plesch for The New York Times

“He’s had some impact,” said Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat from Delaware and a member of the Foreign Relations Committee. “He’s been able to move their decisions. But he has embraced Israel in this moment of intense pressure following a terrorist attack because he sees this moment in a regional context and is trying to achieve peace in a regional way.”

While Israeli officials bristle at the constraints Mr. Biden has tried to impose on them, they recognize that he is the most important ally they have amid rising global criticism and understand that he is the only thing stopping the United Nations from imposing sanctions.

“We are deeply appreciative of the support of the Biden administration to Israel in this war and in these difficult days,” said Michael Herzog, the Israeli ambassador to Washington. “We have a very close and productive dialogue between our two governments as regards this war.”

‘Weeks, Not Months’

The Americans were not impressed with the original Israeli plan for a ground invasion of Gaza and sought to temper it. But the Israelis ultimately unleashed more firepower on Gaza than even the Biden team expected, with deadly results. Pictures of dead Palestinians outraged not only many in Mr. Biden’s own party but in his own administration and even his own White House.

Mr. Blinken and Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani, center, the Qatari prime minister, attended a meeting in Doha in October.Credit...Jacquelyn Martin/Associated Press

Mr. Biden kept up a steady stream of phone calls to Mr. Netanyahu, pushing to minimize civilian casualties. Qatar, the Persian Gulf emirate that is friendly with both the United States and Hamas, secretly told Mr. Blinken when he visited on Oct. 13 that Hamas was ready to offer a hostage release for some sort of cease-fire or pause. Mr. Biden assigned a small circle of officials to clandestinely negotiate what ultimately became a one-week pause in fighting in exchange for more than 100 captives.

Mr. Biden kept calling and calling. When he was in his limousine, known as “the Beast,” heading to an unrelated event, the president would pick up the phone to check on the latest. When his meeting in November with China’s president, Xi Jinping, in California broke for lunch, he huddled with Mr. Sullivan to ask for updates in the hostage talks. The four hours he spent with Mr. Xi that day was the most waking time Mr. Biden had spent to that point out of touch with the Middle East.

The pressure-cooker intensity has taxed even a team already tested by the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Mr. Sullivan has talked about being focused hour by hour on the war and losing sleep over what unexpected events might come next. Mr. Finer came up with a stock answer to the question of whether he was getting any sleep at all. “Yes,” he would say, “almost every day.”

When the weeklong pause ended and Israeli bombs began falling again, the Americans once more urged restraint. But Mr. Biden’s advisers were sympathetic to the Israelis, who were discovering a network of Hamas-built tunnels even more extensive than imagined — essentially multistory buildings some hundreds of feet underground, requiring massive bombardment to damage or destroy. The Israelis referred to the catacomb of tunnels as “the Kingdom.”

The Israeli military in December escorted international journalists on a tour of what it said was the largest Hamas tunnel it had discovered to date.Credit...Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times

The sharpest dispute between Washington and Jerusalem centered on the “day after” question — what to do in Gaza after the war ends. Mr. Netanyahu has resisted Mr. Biden’s suggestions that a “revitalized” Palestinian Authority, which is based in the West Bank, run a post-Hamas Gaza to be followed eventually by establishment of a Palestinian state.

Mr. Netanyahu focused especially on the failure of Palestinian Authority leaders to denounce the Oct. 7 attack, worried that granting them a future role would be seen as weakness by his right-wing coalition. Shortly before Mr. Blinken arrived for his fifth visit, Israeli media reported that Mr. Netanyahu had told allies he was the only thing standing between them and Mr. Biden’s two-state solution.

During meetings in Jerusalem on Nov. 30, Mr. Blinken privately told the Israeli war cabinet that it had “weeks, not months,” to wrap up combat operations at the current level of intensity, a comment later leaked to Israeli media and confirmed in recent days by U.S. officials. A defiant Mr. Netanyahu said publicly after Mr. Blinken left that “we will continue the war until we achieve all its goals.” Mr. Austin the same day warned in a speech in California that Israel could “replace a tactical victory with a strategic defeat” if it drove Palestinian civilians into the arms of Hamas.

Mr. Biden remained committed to Israel. When Israeli officials made an urgent plea for more tank ammunition, prompting a U.S. government process that would typically take months, the Biden administration cleared it almost immediately. At 11 p.m. on Dec. 8, the State Department notified Congress that it would bypass congressional processes to send 13,000 rounds to Israel, infuriating some Democratic lawmakers. As of mid-December, the United States had also shipped about 20,000 air-to-ground munitions to Israel, according to internal U.S. government reports.

But the president was growing frustrated, too. During a fund-raiser on Dec. 12, he warned that Israel risked losing international support “by the indiscriminate bombing that takes place.” It was not a scripted comment and sent aides scrambling to explain, but it pleased some administration officials who believed Mr. Biden had been too reluctant to publicly criticize Israel.

Avril D. Haines, the director of national intelligence, and William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director, are among the U.S. officials who have traveled to the Middle East since the Oct. 7 attack.

At the president’s direction, Mr. Burns, the C.I.A. director, embarked on a mission to broker the release of more hostages, including a handful of Americans still being held. His meeting in Warsaw on Dec. 18 en route back from a trip to Ukraine was the product of weeks of intense calls with David Barnea, the director of Israel’s Mossad spy agency, and Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani, the Qatari prime minister. Mr. Burns sometimes spoke with Mr. Barnea three times a day and just as often with Qatari officials.

But the proposal Mr. Burns and Mr. Barnea offered the Qataris in Warsaw has yet to lead to a deal. For Hamas, the price seems to have gone up. American officials believe Hamas does not want to release more hostages for a temporary pause but instead is holding out for a permanent cease-fire. Israeli officials have told American counterparts that one reason they publicly resist pressure to ease their military campaign is to maintain pressure on Hamas to release hostages.

‘A Pipe Dream’

The recent conversations between Mr. Biden and Mr. Netanyahu have grown more strained. Every call is tense and sometimes sharp, officials say, but at the same time matter of fact. Difficult but constructive is the phrase often used. The tone described by insiders has been along the lines of, “Look, man, you’ve got to do more about this or take this more seriously.” The two men have known each other for decades and are not truly friends, but understand each other’s politics and their mutual dependence at this point.

A Palestinian man cried over the loss of one of his relatives after an Israeli bombing near their house.Credit...Yousef Masoud for The New York Times

The Americans recognize that Israelis remain so traumatized by Oct. 7 that there is nearly universal support across the political spectrum for the toughest action against Hamas and little concern about possible consequences. And strategically, Israel does not mind too much if the rest of the world thinks it is willing to go overboard with overwhelming force. It survived the half-century since its 1973 war with its Arab neighbors by fostering the image of invincibility, an image shattered on Oct. 7. Israeli leaders want to reestablish the deterrence that was lost.

As for Mr. Biden’s team, the real debate is about the language to use and how hard to push, but no one inside is really pressing for a dramatic policy shift like suspending weapons supplies to Israel — if for no other reason than they understand the president is not willing to do so.

Mr. Blinken met with Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, in November.Credit...Pool photo by Saul Loeb

The administration’s message has four parts: Israel has a right to self-defense, Hamas must be removed as a threat, humanitarian aid needs to be increased and civilian casualties should be minimized. While some officials emphasize the latter points, the president in public has typically stressed the first ones.

Mr. Biden got on the phone with Mr. Netanyahu on Saturday, Dec. 23, to urge Israel to pivot away from intense military action toward a more targeted approach of raids against specific locations. But Mr. Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders continued to push back publicly. Two days later, Mr. Netanyahu published an opinion essay in The Wall Street Journal dismissing the notion that the Palestinian Authority could demilitarize Gaza as “a pipe dream.”

For Israeli officials, there is pressure to reassure their public that they are not backing off. But there are hints that Mr. Netanyahu could ultimately accept a role for a reformed Palestinian Authority in Gaza, recognizing there needs to be a Palestinian administration of sorts even as they hope to persuade Gulf Arab states to pay for reconstruction.

Israeli soldiers firing 155-millimeter artillery shells near the Gaza border last month.Credit...Abir Sultan/EPA, via Shutterstock

For all the disagreement, there is no serious discussion within the Biden administration about cutting Israel off or putting conditions on security aid. On Friday, three days after the Dermer meeting, the State Department agreed to send $147.5 million in 155-millimeter artillery shells and related equipment, invoking emergency rules to bypass congressional review a second time and again angering Democratic lawmakers.

To the extent that Mr. Netanyahu’s resistance to American entreaties is performative politics for a domestic audience, it also has a time limit, according to Martin S. Indyk, a former two-time American ambassador to Israel.

“It’s a case of steady insistence that Bibi come around,” he said, referring to Mr. Netanyahu by his nickname. “That’s what we’re witnessing. I’m quite confident in predicting that Bibi will do so in the new year. He just has to figure out a way of explaining to his coalition partners that while it might look like he’s giving into Biden, he’s not really doing so. There will be a lot of winking going on.”

Michael B. Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to Washington, noted that despite the tension, Mr. Biden has not used the two most obvious tools available to him to force Israel’s hand, namely the flow of U.S. arms to Israel and the U.S. veto at the U.N. Security Council that protects Israel from international sanctions — at least not yet.

Given that, Mr. Oren said, Israel appreciates Mr. Biden’s support and does not want to alienate him. The Oct. 7 attack undercut Israel’s longstanding mantra that it would defend itself by itself. “That meant whether we liked it or not, we were dependent on the United States,” he said. “And that meant they have a say in things.”

Mr. Biden has seen growing internal resistance to his backing of Israel.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times

Reporting was contributed by Helene Cooper, Eric Schmitt and Michael Crowley from Washington, and Ronen Bergman from Tel Aviv.

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

Edward Wong is a diplomatic correspondent who has reported for The Times for more than 24 years from New York, Baghdad, Beijing and Washington. He was on a team of Pulitzer Prize finalists for Iraq War coverage. More about Edward Wong

Julian E. Barnes covers the U.S. intelligence agencies and international security matters for The Times. He has written about security issues for more than two decades. More about Julian E. Barnes

Isabel Kershner, a correspondent in Jerusalem, has been reporting on Israeli and Palestinian politics since 1990. Her latest book is “The Land of Hope and Fear: Israel’s Battle for its Inner Soul.” More about Isabel Kershner

The New York Times · by Isabel Kershner · December 31, 2023

7. China’s Xi Is Resurrecting Mao’s ‘Continuous Revolution’ With a Twist

"Rule by fear."

Excerpts:

While it has helped Xi accumulate a level of power unseen since Mao, party insiders say his “rule-by-fear” approach has stifled policy debate and fueled indecision among lower-level officials at a time when China requires more decisive leadership to deal with long-term challenges.

A ‘rule-by-fear’ approach has helped Xi Jinping accumulate a level of power unseen since Mao Zedong. PHOTO: JADE GAO/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

The fear is leading bureaucrats to act timidly, with potentially significant impact on the economy, researchers say. “Officials are more inclined to provide favors to [state-owned enterprises], thereby reducing their career risks because such allocations do not imply corruption,” Zeren Li and Songrui Liu, a pair of Chinese researchers, wrote in a recent study. Such favoritism undermines economic efficiency and diverts resources from more dynamic private enterprises, they argued. 

Party authorities also have issued fresh warnings against “formalism,” or box-ticking behavior that cadres engage in to feign compliance with Beijing—bogging down the bureaucracy in unproductive work.

The persistent slowdown in China’s economy magnifies both the stakes and challenges for the party. Xi’s dominance “has made it difficult for lower officials to make decisions because they are concerned about running into trouble,” particularly given conflicting policy demands, said Andrew Collier, managing director of Orient Capital Research in Hong Kong. “They are at the difficult end of choices between paying for social services, economic development, and lowering debt levels—an impossible balancing act.”

Xi has signaled no retreat.

“The struggle against corruption will never end,” the Communist Party’s top antigraft body said in a recent commentary. “It will only be ongoing, but never completed.”

China’s Xi Is Resurrecting Mao’s ‘Continuous Revolution’ With a Twist

The Chinese leader has made his corruption purge—with millions punished—a pillar of his rule. It risks paralyzing his party.

https://www.wsj.com/world/china/chinas-xi-is-resurrecting-maos-continuous-revolution-with-a-twist-ed5ec610?mod=hp_lead_pos5

By Chun Han WongFollow

Updated Jan. 1, 2024 12:08 am ET

Chinese rulers have long used campaigns against corruption to sideline rivals and consolidate power. Xi Jinping is increasingly tying his authority to a new variation: a purge that never ends.

With echoes of Mao Zedong’s “continuous revolution,” Xi has sent fear rippling through the ranks of the Communist Party for more than a decade with the largest campaign against corruption in modern Chinese history. It is now threatening to petrify the party as it tries to steer the world’s second-largest economy through its greatest period of uncertainty in a generation.

Since he came to power in 2012, party enforcers have punished roughly five million people for offenses as serious as abuse of power and as innocuous as creating excessive red tape.

In 2023 alone, the unrelenting campaign swept through the worlds of finance, food, healthcare, semiconductors and sports—taking down scores of senior officials, bankers, hospital directors and even soccer administrators. China’s foreign and defense ministers went missing in the summer before being abruptly removed from their posts, leading to suspicions that they, too, have been purged. Beijing’s recent ouster of a dozen senior military and defense-industry officials from the national legislature and a government advisory body have fueled speculation about a broader shake-up of the country’s military establishment.

There is no end in sight. The Chinese leader recently outlined his plans for how the campaign would proceed in the next few years and has even targeted the very agency tasked with carrying it out.

Critics of Xi say the campaign’s extension into a second decade is a result of his refusal to accept structural changes and greater transparency that are necessary for cleaner governance. 

An anticorruption campaign in China is extending into a second decade as its economy, the world’s second largest, faces several challenges. PHOTO: NG HAN GUAN/ASSOCIATED PRESS

The Chinese leader has instead cast the blame on the moral failings of individuals, while doubling down on his centralized and opaque style of governance, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Xi’s remarks, party directives and official data. Only a continual cleansing can ensure the party remains potent and pure, he has argued.

“Battling corruption is the most thorough form of self-revolution,” Xi said days before starting his third term as party chief in October 2022. “As long as the soil and conditions conducive for corruption continue to exist, the fight against corruption can’t cease for a moment.”

Such an assertion clears the way for Xi to use disciplinary purges indefinitely as a way to enforce fealty, through fear, to himself and his vision.

“In China, campaigns are supposed to be an intense but short burst of enforcement,” said Yuen Yuen Ang, a political-science professor at Johns Hopkins University. “Xi has invented a paradoxical policy tool: a perpetual campaign.”

While the forever purge buttresses Xi’s authority, it also has instilled a constant apprehension and reluctance to act decisively among party members as challenges mount. The economy is struggling to shake its Covid hangover. Youth unemployment has skyrocketed, and the property market and consumer sentiment have tanked. Meanwhile, debt is piling up and foreign investors are increasingly turning their backs on the Chinese market.

In the early years of the campaign, many officials saw it as a longer and more ambitious version of previous efforts. Roughly 180,000 people were disciplined for infractions in 2013, a number that climbed to some 621,000 in 2018, the year Xi proclaimed a “crushing victory” over corruption.

Official data show at least half a million people being disciplined every year since 2017—around four times as many as were typically punished annually when Xi’s predecessor held power from 2002 to 2012. 

By some measures, corruption has indeed fallen under Xi. Berlin-based advocacy group Transparency International ranked China 65th in its 2022 index on perceptions of public-sector corruption in 180 countries and territories, an improvement from 80th out of 176 jurisdictions in 2012, the year Xi took power. 

A survey published in 2020 by Harvard University’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation found that the proportion of Chinese citizens who saw officials as being generally “clean” rose to more than 65% in 2016 from roughly 35% in 2011. 

Xi Jinping has outlined plans for how his anticorruption campaign would proceed in the next few years. PHOTO: NOEL CELIS/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

There are other indications, however, that Xi hasn’t curbed corruption so much as pushed it deeper into the shadows. The new five-year plan for fighting graft released in September pledges to curb new and hidden forms of corruption where officials use murky corporate structures and “revolving doors” between the public and private sectors to seek illicit gains.

A recent case involving Zhang Jing, a former local official in southwestern China, shows corruption has remained insidious and persistent. Zhang’s offenses date to the early 2000s, when as a township party chief, he started accepting “red envelopes” of cash from entrepreneurs and friends in return for providing inside information about government projects, according to an official account.

When one of those entrepreneurs was detained by authorities in 2013, Zhang grew frightened, to the point of asking a feng shui master to pray for his safety, according to the account. He tried to cover his tracks, such as by returning a bribe to one entrepreneur through a bank transfer—so that he could cite bank records to plead innocence—before taking the bribe again in cash later.

Authorities didn’t catch up with Zhang until 2022, when the party detained and eventually expelled him. In March 2023, he was sentenced to four years in jail after being found to have taken more than 1.24 million yuan worth of bribes, equivalent to around $175,000 at current rates.

“I didn’t pull back from the precipice and confess to the organization in time,” he said in his confession. “Instead I racked my brains to try to cover up my crimes.”

Investigations involving more visible forms of corruption have fallen in recent years, according to official data. People punished for dining on public money dropped to around 9,300 in 2022 from 13,600 in 2018, and those disciplined for holding lavish events such as weddings and banquets slipped below 3,000 from 7,000 over the same period.

Meanwhile, the number of people disciplined for improper giving and receiving of gifts—a more hidden form of graft—have steadily climbed, rising to 23,000 in 2022 from about 6,800 in 2015.

The party’s top internal watchdog, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, has warned about a growing trend of “options corruption”—named after a type of financial contract—whereby crooked cadres provide favors in return for deferred bribes to be paid out only after they retire, as a way to mask their misconduct.

Despite his efforts to fight graft, which include cutting government approvals and red tape that officials can abuse to extract bribes, Xi hasn’t enacted deeper structural changes—such as asset disclosures—that experts in clean government say are needed to attack corruption at its root. 

Xi seems to accept some levels of graft as an unavoidable consequence of sustaining one-party rule, some analysts say, whereby corruption is to be suppressed—rather than eradicated—through eternal vigilance.

Communist Party enforcers have punished millions for offenses as serious as abuse of power and as innocuous as creating excessive red tape since Xi came to power in 2012. PHOTO: WANG YE/XINHUA/ZUMA PRESS

For Xi, “it is all about attitude and mental disposition, not about institutional checks and balances,” according to Daniel Leese, a professor of Chinese history at the University of Freiburg.

Leese and other historians say Xi’s perpetual purges are inspired in part by Mao’s ideas on waging “continuous revolution,” which were meant to avert ideological atrophy in the party and broader society. 

But whereas Mao roused ordinary Chinese into purging class enemies and assaulting what he saw as a decaying party from the outside, Xi has shaken up the party from within, using fear to enforce virtuous behavior. Even the party’s discipline inspectors themselves have become targets, under a rectification campaign launched in February that aims to “turn the blade inward and cut out decaying flesh.”

The point is to maintain constant pressure, according to Leese. “There is simply no way of reaching a final stop with this model,” he said.

While it has helped Xi accumulate a level of power unseen since Mao, party insiders say his “rule-by-fear” approach has stifled policy debate and fueled indecision among lower-level officials at a time when China requires more decisive leadership to deal with long-term challenges. 

A ‘rule-by-fear’ approach has helped Xi Jinping accumulate a level of power unseen since Mao Zedong. PHOTO: JADE GAO/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

The fear is leading bureaucrats to act timidly, with potentially significant impact on the economy, researchers say. “Officials are more inclined to provide favors to [state-owned enterprises], thereby reducing their career risks because such allocations do not imply corruption,” Zeren Li and Songrui Liu, a pair of Chinese researchers, wrote in a recent study. Such favoritism undermines economic efficiency and diverts resources from more dynamic private enterprises, they argued. 

Party authorities also have issued fresh warnings against “formalism,” or box-ticking behavior that cadres engage in to feign compliance with Beijing—bogging down the bureaucracy in unproductive work.

The persistent slowdown in China’s economy magnifies both the stakes and challenges for the party. Xi’s dominance “has made it difficult for lower officials to make decisions because they are concerned about running into trouble,” particularly given conflicting policy demands, said Andrew Collier, managing director of Orient Capital Research in Hong Kong. “They are at the difficult end of choices between paying for social services, economic development, and lowering debt levels—an impossible balancing act.”

Xi has signaled no retreat.

“The struggle against corruption will never end,” the Communist Party’s top antigraft body said in a recent commentary. “It will only be ongoing, but never completed.”

Write to Chun Han Wong at chunhan.wong@wsj.com

8. China's military purge deepens

Dec 31, 2023 -World

China's military purge deepens

• Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian
• , author of

Axios China

https://www.axios.com/2023/12/31/xi-jinping-china-military-corruption-purge?utmPLA soldiers wear protective masks as they stand at attention in front of photo of China's president Xi Jinping at their barracks outside the Forbidden City, near Tiananmen Square, on May 20, 2020 in Beijing, China. Photo: Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

China's leaders are expanding an anti-corruption campaign targeting power centers within the military, risking instability and a crisis of confidence during a sensitive time in China's foreign relations.

Why it matters: Recent purges highlight the obstacles facing China's leader Xi Jinping as he tries to complete his military modernization drive by 2050.

Driving the news: Nine Chinese generals and three Chinese defense technology officials were removed from a top Chinese Communist Party advisory body late last week, according to Chinese state media.

• The generals largely came from the Rocket Force, which oversees China's missile program.
• "The strategic nuclear force is what China relies on as the bottom line of its national security, and the last resort on Taiwan," said Yun Sun, China program director at the DC-based Stimson Center, told Reuters.
• "It will take some time for China to clean up the mess and restore confidence in the Rocket Force's competence and trustworthiness. It means for the time being, China is at a weaker spot."

Details: The defense industry officials, meanwhile, all work at state-owned missile manufacturing companies.

• "These officials' removal may engender political instability among the political leadership," said Wen-Ti Sung, a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council's Global China Hub. Three members of the powerful Politburo also once worked at the same three companies of the ousted officials.
• In China's opaque high-level politics, that kind of link between powerful officials and fallen officials could mean Xi is targeting patronage networks.

Between the lines: Corruption in the People's Liberation Army, China's military, has long been endemic and military officials have been resistant to efforts to address it.

• Evidence of corruption in the advanced weapon systems and components sectors could detract from China's push to modernize its military and "may chip away at China's ability to catch up with the U.S. militarily," Sung added.

The other side: The Chinese government has not commented on the personnel shake-ups, though in July Xi called for "deepening reforms" in the armed forces and "improving the strategic management of the military."

• "Corruption is the biggest cancer that harms the vitality and combat effectiveness of the party, and anti-corruption is the most thorough self-revolution," Xi said at the 20th Party Congress last year.

Background: The removals are the latest in a series targeting top-level defense officials in China.

• In August, two generals overseeing China's nuclear and missile force were removed and, in a highly unusual move, replaced with officials from outside the force.
• Former Chinese defense minister Li Shangfu was detained earlier this year and then removed from his position. Former Chinese foreign minister Qin Gang, who previously served as China's envoy to the U.S., was also removed from his position this year.
• Chinese authorities have given no explanation for the removals, but rumors have swirled of procurement-related corruption, affairs, and even espionage committed by the fallen officials.

What to watch: China appointed a new defense minister on Friday, navy admiral Dong Jun, a move that could help relieve the uncertainty the U.S. and other governments have felt since Li's detention.

9. U.S. oil production hit a record under Biden. He seldom mentions it.

U.S. oil production hit a record under Biden. He seldom mentions it.

The politics of oil are particularly tricky for Democrats, whose chances for victory in next year’s elections can hinge on whether young, climate-focused voters come out in big numbers

By Evan Halper and Toluse Olorunnipa

December 31, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EST

The Washington Post · by Evan Halper · December 31, 2023

You won’t hear President Biden talking about it much, but a key record has been broken during his watch: The United States is producing more oil than any country ever has.

The flow of huge amounts of crude from American producers is playing a big role in keeping prices down at the pump, diminishing the geopolitical power of OPEC and taming inflation. The average price of a gallon of regular gasoline nationwide has dropped to close to $3, and analysts project it could stay that way leading up to the presidential election, potentially assuaging the economic anxieties of swing-state voters who will be crucial to Biden’s hopes of a second term.

But it is not something the president publicly boasts about. The politics of oil are particularly tricky for Democrats, whose chances for victory in the 2024 elections could hinge on whether young, climate-conscious voters come out in big numbers. Many of those voters want to hear that Biden is doing everything in his power to keep oil in the ground.

“If you are not looking carefully at what the administration is actually doing, it is easy to get the wrong impression,” said Kevin Book, managing director at ClearView Energy Partners, a research firm. “There are a lot of things going on at once. This is an administration which is focused on the energy transition, but also taking a pragmatic approach on fossil fuels.”

The United States is producing about 13.2 million barrels of crude oil per day. That is millions of gallons more than is coming out of Saudi Arabia or Russia. It is more oil than was being produced even at its peak during the pro-fossil-fuels administration of former president Donald Trump, when production was 13 million barrels a day in November 2019.

Voters who listen to Trump and Biden speak may come away with the impression that the opposite is true. Trump recently told Fox News’s Sean Hannity that he would act as a dictator only on the first day of his presidency in 2025, in part because he wanted to “drill, drill, drill” for more oil. The former president has constantly attacked Biden’s clean energy agenda and accused him of squandering America’s prior “energy independence” because of allegiance to “environmental lunatics.”

While Biden’s White House has publicly celebrated the decline in gas prices and pledged to help consumers struggling with inflation, the president has largely stayed mum about the oil industry’s record output. In several speeches this year, he has blasted oil company executives for amassing record profits.

“They invested too little of that profit to increase domestic production and keep gas prices down,” Biden said during his State of the Union address in February. “Instead, they used those record profits to buy back their own stock, rewarding their CEOs and shareholders.”

The White House has also largely stayed mum on the oil production boom, instead touting Biden’s legislative record as the most ambitious effort to combat climate change in history and contrasting his stance with that of Trump and other deniers.

“The President is implementing the largest investment in climate ever, putting the United States on a path to cut climate pollution in half by 2030,” White House spokesman Angelo Fernández Hernández said in a statement. The statement praised Biden for protecting more than 21 million acres of public lands and waters and boosting clean-energy manufacturing by invoking the Defense Production Act and facilitating private-sector investments. “The President will continue to take bold climate action and rally world leaders to raise their collective ambition.”

The soaring domestic oil output has already begun to reshape geopolitical dynamics. The United States is producing so much oil that it has undermined the influence of OPEC, which failed when it tried to make production cuts recently to drive prices up globally. The amount cut was quickly backfilled by the United States and other non-OPEC nations, which gladly grabbed the market share OPEC forfeited.

The diminishment of OPEC’s influence gives Democratic operatives one less thing to worry about. It was only last year, during the midterm election, that Saudi Arabia embarrassed the administration by disregarding its requests not to cut production as prices at the pump were soaring. As things stand now, Saudi Arabia is not in a position to influence the U.S. election by pushing oil prices up as voting nears, which typically sours consumers on the incumbent in the White House.

The huge boost in U.S. oil production has defied analyst expectations and driven energy prices down around the globe. White House policy is hardly the key factor, but it has helped. Biden’s vows on the campaign trail to restrict growth of fossil fuels gave way to a more moderate approach after Russia invaded Ukraine and prices soared. The signal he sent to the industry as voters struggled with high gas prices was clear: Pump more.

“When the head of the U.S. government tells industry to produce more, that is significant,” Book said. “It reflected a sea change, and certainly the end of a campaign of very restrictive rhetoric.”

The shift, he said, gave oil companies and their investors the confidence to redouble their efforts to pull oil from the ground. They were able to ramp up production so high in large part because of efficiencies and innovations in the way oil is pumped.

“These companies have gotten more effective at drilling more rapidly,” said Mark Finley, a fellow in energy and global oil at Rice University’s Baker Institute. “They are drilling longer wells, and they are getting more production from each well.” He said analysts had not anticipated such strong growth because oil company investors were pressuring companies to scale back their infrastructure spending amid projections that the energy transition will shrink the market for fossil fuels.

But, Finley said, the companies have managed to recalibrate their infrastructure investments and increase output at the same time.

It is a mixed blessing for Biden. At the moment, the administration appears content not to be taking too much credit. The continued attacks from Republicans accusing the president of jeopardizing America’s energy security with his focus on climate action are out of sync with the reality on the ground, but they give Biden cover with his base. At the same time, the relatively low gas prices help him with swing voters.

“While the administration is pushing for an energy transition, they know prices at the pump matter to the economy, consumer pocketbooks and also their reelection prospects,” Finley said.

Climate activists have slammed Biden’s agreement to fast-track a controversial oil pipeline in West Virginia and a separate decision to approve the Willow oil project in Alaska, which is opposed by environmentalists.

Some liberals have also criticized Biden’s assertion in August that he had “practically” declared a climate emergency with his environmental policies, saying he should actually declare one, to combat extreme weather and other threats. Biden has taken steps to reduce methane emissions and also signed historic climate and infrastructure legislation aimed at weaning the country off fossil fuels in the years ahead.

But the current rush of domestic oil production comes as the president’s push to facilitate a transition to electric vehicles is falling short of expectations, providing an uncomfortable contrast for the White House.

As U.S. oil production was soaring to record levels in December, Biden administration officials were at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Dubai assuring world leaders that the United States would help lead the global transition away from fossil fuels. That dichotomy stood out to Amara Enyia, an activist and policy director for the Movement for Black Lives, who attended the conference, known as COP28.

“There’s this dissonance between the commitments that are being made versus what the administration is actually doing,” she said. “We’re seeing this sort of two-headed approach to climate — on the one hand, drilling permits, and then on the other, talking about the need to move away from fossil fuels.”

For his part, Biden has said his top domestic priority is reducing prices for Americans, and the relief at the pump carries potential benefits for his 2024 prospects.

A short-term boost in domestic oil production and a corresponding decline in gas prices could have a long-term benefit for environmentalists — helping prevent the return to power of Trump and other deniers of climate change, said Josh Freed, the director of climate and energy at the center-left think tank Third Way.

“The fastest way to end all of American climate action is to see oil prices dramatically rise and have Republicans get elected to office,” he said, commending Biden’s handling of the issue.

Whether Biden is successfully walking this tightrope is likely to remain a matter of debate ahead of November’s election. Climate activists say base voters are frustrated by the softening of the president’s stance against fossil fuels, and mobilizing them will prove difficult despite the historic investment the administration is making in green power and accelerating the energy transition.

Climate-conscious voters were particularly dismayed by the administration’s approval of the Willow project, which will allow hundreds of miles of roads and pipelines, airstrips, a gravel mine and a major new processing facility in the middle of pristine Arctic tundra and wetland. For many, that decision was one of several signifying how Biden’s bold campaign promises to take on the fossil fuel companies yielded to dealmaking on permits and a more conciliatory approach toward the industry overall.

“You can’t solve the climate crisis without keeping fossil fuels in the ground,” said Jamie Henn, founder of Fossil Free Media, a nonprofit focused on ending oil and gas use. “Record oil production stands in the way of the energy transition … An ‘all of the above approach’ leads to flip-flopping on fossil fuels. It is bad policy, and also bad politics.”

The Washington Post · by Evan Halper · December 31, 2023

10. Liberals say the country has moved to the right; conservatives say it's moved to the left

Where you stand depends on where you sit. My guess is that most of these opinions are formed within the echo chamber of each political party's news sources.

This is really the key point:

While Americans are divided on which way politics has moved, liberals and conservatives have starkly different views on the matter. 44% of self-identified liberals say the U.S. has moved to the right, compared to 15% of conservatives. Meanwhile 55% of conservatives say the U.S. has moved to the left, while 15% say it's moved to the right.

A question I would love to see asked and answered: Do you believe that the political party which you oppose is an existential threat to the American political process?

Please go to the link to view the graphics: https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/48194-liberals-say-us-moved-right-conservatives-say-moved-left?fbclid=IwAR3dTFHJCbnhpefF_IRUkug5DOEYBaG2F2CV7oAAi3rKD8voVBH5T6KHF90

Liberals say the country has moved to the right; conservatives say it's moved to the left

https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/48194-liberals-say-us-moved-right-conservatives-say-moved-left?fbclid=IwAR3dTFHJCbnhpefF_IRUkug5DOEYBaG2F2CV7oAAi3rKD8voVBH5T6KHF90

David Montgomery

Senior data journalist

Politics & current affairs

December 15, 2023, 4:19 PM GMT-5

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Americans agree that the country's politics have moved in a single consistent direction over the past decade: away from their own politics.

YouGov recently surveyed 33,000 Americans about the political changes they see — in the U.S., in their states, and in themselves. Overall, 30% of U.S. adults say the U.S.'s politics have moved to the left in the last 10 years, while 26% say they have moved to the right. 22% say U.S. politics have stayed the same and 22% aren't sure.

While Americans are divided on which way politics has moved, liberals and conservatives have starkly different views on the matter. 44% of self-identified liberals say the U.S. has moved to the right, compared to 15% of conservatives. Meanwhile 55% of conservatives say the U.S. has moved to the left, while 15% say it's moved to the right.

This same polarization is there in people's views of their own political changes. While Americans are most likely to say their political views have stayed the same, liberals are more likely to say they've become more liberal and conservatives are more likely to say they've become more conservative. That's especially true for the very liberal and very conservative, perhaps because it might be difficult to "move right" and still be "very liberal" or to "move left" and still be "very conservative.".

Among self-described "moderates," 13% say they've moved to the left over the past 10 years, while 16% say they've moved to the right, and 57% say their politics have stayed the same.

But among the "very liberal," 53% say they've moved to the left over the past 10 years, compared to 6% who've moved right and 35% who've stayed the same. And among the "very conservative," only 10% say they've moved left, while 43% say they've moved further right and 42% have stayed the same.

Views on the U.S.'s changing politics appear to be more closely tied to Americans' current political ideologies than to how those ideologies have changed. Liberals are much more likely to say the country has moved to the right (and not the left), regardless of whether they say their own politics have moved to the right, to the left, or stayed the same.

Similarly, conservatives are most likely to have equivalent views about the country's changing direction — that it moved away from them, to the left — whatever their own personal change in politics.

Residents of blue states see them moving left; residents of red states see them moving right

YouGov also asked Americans about how they think politics in their own states have changed. Overall Americans are fairly divided: 24% say their states have moved to the left and 22% say they have moved to the right.

People who live in states that Donald Trump, the Republican, won in 2020 are more likely to say their states had moved to the right, while residents of states won by Joe Biden, the Democrat, are more likely to say their states had moved left.

In states decided by less than 3 percentage points in the 2020 presidential election's two-party vote margin — the margin in the candidates' shares of all votes cast for the Democrat or the Republican — 30% say their states have moved left, 19% say they've moved right, and 30% say their state's politics have stayed the same.

Among the states whose residents were most likely to say there has been a rightward move are Iowa, Montana, West Virginia, and Arkansas. Iowa, for example, voted for Democrat Barack Obama by nearly 6 percentage points in 2012, then for Trump by more than 8 percentage points in 2020.

The states whose residents were most likely to say they had moved left: Colorado, Arizona, Minnesota, and New Mexico. Arizona, for example, voted narrowly for Biden in 2020, the first time a Democratic presidential candidate had won the state in more than 20 years.

There's no single objective way to quantify how a state's politics have changed. Votes for U.S. president, Congress, governor, state legislature, and more could all impact people's perceptions. So could the ultimate winner of a given race, regardless of how close the vote was. (And politics can also change outside of election results.)

YouGov compared the net share of Americans saying their state has moved left against the change in the Democratic share of combined votes for president, U.S. Senate, U.S. House, and governor between the 2012 and 2022 election cycles. American opinion on changes to their state's politics generally corresponds to election results: States that saw bigger increases in Democratic vote share also saw larger shares saying their state had moved left, and vice versa.

— Carl Bialik contributed to this article

Methodology: This Daily Questions survey was conducted online on November 3 - 6, 2023 among 33,191 U.S. adults. The sample was weighted according to gender, age, race, education, U.S. census region, and political party.

See results of this poll:

• In the past 10 years, would you say that the politics of the U.S. as a whole have…?
• In the past 10 years, would you say that the politics of your state have…?
• In the past 10 years, would you say that your own political views have…?

Image: Getty (filo)

11. Xi Jinping rings in 2024 with rare admission that China’s economy is in trouble

Xi Jinping rings in 2024 with rare admission that China’s economy is in trouble | CNN Business

CNN · by Laura He, Simone McCarthy · January 1, 2024

Chinese leader Xi Jinping speaks at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on December 29, 2023.

Li Xueren/Xinhua/Getty Images

Hong Kong CNN —

China’s businesses are struggling and job seekers have trouble finding work, President Xi Jinping acknowledged during his Sunday New Year’s Eve speech.

This is the first time Xi has mentioned economic challenges in his annual New Year’s messages since he started giving them in 2013. It comes at a critical juncture for the world’s second largest economy, which is grappling with a structural slowdown marked by weak demand, rising unemployment and battered business confidence.

Acknowledging the “headwinds” facing the country, Xi admitted in the televised speech: “Some enterprises had a tough time. Some people had difficulty finding jobs and meeting basic needs.”

“All these remain at the forefront of my mind,” Xi said in remarks which were also widely circulated by state media. “We will consolidate and strengthen the momentum of economic recovery.”

Hours before Xi spoke, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) published its monthly Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) survey, which showed that factory activity declined in December to the lowest level in six months.

The official manufacturing PMI dropped to 49 last month, down from 49.4 in November, according to a statement from the NBS.

A PMI reading above 50 indicates expansion, while any reading below represents a contraction. December also marked the third straight month the manufacturing PMI has contracted.

Manufacturing downturn

The country’s massive manufacturing sector had been weak for most of 2023. After a brief pickup in economic activity in the first quarter of last year, the official manufacturing PMI contracted for five months until September. Then it dipped below 50 again.

China’s economy has been plagued by a set of problems this year, including a prolonged property downturn, record high youth unemployment, stubbornly weak prices and mounting financial stress at local governments.

An unfinished apartment building in Xinzheng City, Zhengzhou, China's central Henan province, seen on June 20, 2023.

Pedro Pardo/AFP/Getty Images/File

Beijing is scrambling to revive growth and spur employment, having rolled out a flurry of supportive measures last year and vowed to step up fiscal and monetary policy in 2024.

But its increasingly statist approach to the economy, which emphasises the party-state’s control of economic and social affairs at the expense of the private sector, has spooked entrepreneurs. The government’s crackdown on businesses in the name of national security has also scared away international investors.

On Saturday, the People’s Bank of China announced that it had approved an application to remove controlling shareholders at Alipay, the ubiquitous digital payment platform run by Jack Ma’s Ant Group. The move means Ma has officially ceded control of the company that he co-founded.

Ma, who also co-founded Alibaba Group, said last January that he would relinquish control of Ant, as part of his withdrawal from his online businesses. His companies were the early targets of Beijing’s unprecedented crackdown on Big Tech which were perceived to have become overly powerful in the eyes of the Communist Party.

Tough on Taiwan

Xi also pledged that the Chinese mainland would be “reunified” with Taiwan, reiterating Beijing’s long-held stance on the self-ruled island democracy, with a strongly worded comment ahead of a crucial election there.

“China will surely be reunified, and all Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait should be bound by a common sense of purpose and share in the glory of the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” Xi said during a section of his speech dedicated to his plans for China’s modernization and development.

The comments come just two weeks ahead of Taiwan’s presidential elections on January 13, and struck a more pointed tone than those in his New Year address the year before.

Then, Xi said: “The people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait are members of one and the same family. I sincerely hope that our compatriots on both sides of the Strait will work together with a unity of purpose to jointly foster lasting prosperity of the Chinese nation.”

Xi has made taking control of Taiwan a cornerstone of his broader goal to “rejuvenate” China to a position of power and stature globally. China’s Communist Party claims Taiwan as its own territory, despite never having controlled it and has not ruled out using force to take the island.

Taipei has accused the party of running influence operations ahead of the election, where current Vice President Lai Ching-te, a candidate openly loathed by Beijing, has been seen as a frontrunner.

CNN · by Laura He, Simone McCarthy · January 1, 2024

12. Homicides in U.S. set to drop by record numbers this year

Note the difference between perception and reality.

Excerpt:

Driving the news: "Murder plummeted in the United States in 2023, likely at one of the fastest rates of decline ever recorded," writes Jeff Asher, co-founder of AH Datalytics, which tracks homicide numbers across the country.

Dec 28, 2023 -Politics & Policy

Homicides in U.S. set to drop by record numbers this year

https://www.axios.com/2023/12/28/us-murder-violent-crime-rates-drop?utm

• Jacob Knutson

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Police in New York City on scene in Central Park, where a man with multiple lacerations was pronounced dead on Dec. 11. Photo: Theodore Parisienne/NY Daily News via Getty Images

The U.S. is on course to end 2023 with one of the largest annual drops in homicides on record, according to preliminary figures from AH Datalytics, a data analysis firm.

Why it matters: The findings appear to be at odds with Americans' perception of crime both in their communities and in the rest of the country.

• More than three-quarters (77%) of Americans believe crime has increased in the U.S. since last year, according to a Gallup survey of 1,009 adults released last month.
• A majority (55%) also said crime was rising in their local area.
• "Both figures are similar to what Gallup measured last year and rank among the most pessimistic readings in the respective trends," the company said.

Annual rate of homicides in the U.S.

Homicide rate per 100k, 1960 to 2023; 2023 data is estimated

A column chart shows the annual rate of homicides in the U.S. from 1960 to 2023. Data for 2023 is estimated. The chart shows the rate is trending down, estimated at 5.5 for 2023. The rate was 6.3 in 2022.

Reproduced from Datalytics; Chart: Axios Visuals

Driving the news: "Murder plummeted in the United States in 2023, likely at one of the fastest rates of decline ever recorded," writes Jeff Asher, co-founder of AH Datalytics, which tracks homicide numbers across the country.

By the numbers: Preliminary public data from 177 cities analyzed by AH Datalytics indicates that the country could see at least a 12% decrease in murders from last year.

• Declines have been seen in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit and other large cities.
• The firm expects homicides overall to fall from 21,156 last year to around 18,450 this year, representing a 12.8% decline.
• Other forms of violent crime — rape, aggravated assault and robbery — are set to see a decline as well, according to preliminary quarterly data published by the FBI earlier this month.
• However, motor vehicle thefts are set to rise, which may be the result of defects within specific models — such as some Kia and Hyundai vehicles — that make them easier to steal.

What they're saying: It's difficult to pinpoint exactly what causes crime to decline in the U.S., but Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco told ABC News in a recent interview that she believes increased federal assistance to local law enforcement agencies is partially responsible for the decrease.

• "We're using tools like crime-gun intelligence, the ability to trace the gun and the spent shell casing from a crime scene to identify who's that shooter, how many violent crimes have they been involved with," she said in the interview.
• Detroit Police Chief James White told ABC News that he thinks the Motor City's homicide decline is partly the result of increased foot and bike patrols and community engagement tactics.

Yes, but: While there has been an overall decline in homicides, thousands were still killed or affected, and some cities saw steep spikes compared to last year.

• Murders rose in Washington, D.C., (+36%), Memphis (+31%) and Dallas (+14%), among others.
• The nationwide drop also follows the roughly 30% increase in murders in 2020. That means that despite this year's drop, homicides remain slightly elevated compared to 2019.

• And considering that the data AH Datalytics used to create its estimates is preliminary, the eventual official homicide statistics for 2023 will likely be slightly different.

The big picture: Other data sources show a decline in violence, too, including the Gun Violence Archive (GVA).

• Currently, the number of homicides, murders and unintentional killings it has cataloged stands just above 18,600, which is roughly 1,785 lower than the amount it recorded in 2022.
• However, GVA has recorded more mass shootings and mass murders this year than it did last year.

Between the lines: Gallup notes that the public perception that the country is experiencing a fresh wave of crime could be a reaction to "the sharp rise in the murder rate nationally as well as news stories about car theft and shoplifting."

• Public views on crime can also be influenced by politics, especially as the country gears up for election season and some candidates lean into "tough on crime" rhetoric that doesn't necessarily match reality.
• "Republicans are far more likely than Democrats and independents to rate the U.S. crime problem as very serious and to say crime is increasing, both locally and nationally," per Gallup.
• Media, too, can influence how the public perceives crime by regularly highlighting certain individual crimes without providing a wider context.

Go deeper: Courts take action as police reform stalls

Methodology: The Gallup survey interviewed 1,009 adults from all 50 states and D.C. between Oct. 2 and 23 and has a margin of error of ±4 percentage points.

13. Why Gaza Matters

Excerpts:

A legacy of the policies that have been followed since 2006, the current war between Israel and Hamas is also a result of the denial of Gaza’s rich historical identity. During the past 16 years, Israeli leaders thought they had found the optimal formula for sidelining Gaza entirely: more than two million Palestinians could be excluded from the demographic equation between the Jewish and Arab populations in Israel, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank; and the PA, blinded by its bitter feud with Hamas, resisted any effort to alleviate the blockade in Gaza, an approach that further undermined the PA’s already waning legitimacy. Meanwhile, the division of the Palestinian leadership doomed any effort to revive the peace process and allowed the Israeli settlements to steadily expand in the West Bank. From time to time, Israel engaged in what counterterrorism experts described as “lawn-mowing” wars on Gaza, with, from its point of view, a sustainable ratio of largely military casualties, although the Palestinian killed were mainly civilians. In 2009, 13 Israeli soldiers were killed, and 1,417 Palestinians. In 2012, the ratio was six Israelis to 166 Palestinians. In 2014 it was 72 Israelis to 2,251 Palestinians, and in 2021, 15 to 256. Meanwhile, the European Union and the Gulf states were always ready to foot the bill to reconstruct the ruins in the strip.

But the idea that the terrible human reality of Gaza could be simply ignored was a delusion. On October 7, 2023, the status quo collapsed in Hamas’s horrific killing spree. The unprecedented violence that Israel has been unleashing on Gaza ever since, in which more than 21,000 Palestinians have so far been killed—and, in a cruel replay of the memories of the nakba, an overwhelming majority of its 2.3 million inhabitants have been uprooted from their homes—has sent shock waves through the Middle East and beyond. Netanyahu’s declared war aims—the “eradication” of Hamas—echo those of Ben-Gurion in 1956, only on a much larger scale and with the whole world watching. Even supposing such a goal can be accomplished, there will be no Nasser to bring order to the enclave after the Israeli withdrawal. So Israel seems destined to be haunted by the very “Gaza Strip” it created in 1948, with the continuing cycle of wars and occupation leading only to more radical Palestinian activism.

For the Israelis and the Palestinians to ultimately enjoy the peace and security they so deeply deserve, Gaza must once again return to its roots as the prosperous crossroads it was for centuries. To start with, the policy of siege and blockade must end, allowing the territory to finally reconnect with the rest of the region. At the same time, drawing on Gaza’s historic role as a major trading hub, a concerted strategy of redevelopment, echoing Wolfensohn’s 2005 plan, must be put in place to allow Gaza to move from international assistance to a self-generating economy. This is the key for the territory to be demilitarized under international supervision and in the framework of a two-state solution.

Of course, it will be extremely difficult to make any of this happen, particularly after a ruthless war that threatens to spawn a new generation of Palestinian militancy. But there are no easy solutions left. This strategy might be the only way out of the current murderous spiral. As it has been for centuries, Gaza is once again at the center of a major war but also the key to peace and prosperity in the Middle East.

Why Gaza Matters

Since Antiquity, the Territory Has Shaped the Quest for Power in the Middle East

By Jean-Pierre Filiu

January 1, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by Jean-Pierre Filiu · January 1, 2024

After nearly three months of Israel’s war on Gaza, one thing is beyond dispute: the long-isolated territory has returned to the center of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For much of the past two decades, as Israel imposed an air, sea, and land blockade on Gaza, international leaders and bodies seemed to assume that the dense enclave of 2.3 million Palestinians could be indefinitely excluded from the regional equation. Catching Israel and much of the wider world completely off guard, Hamas’s October 7 attack exposed the enormous flaws in that assumption. Indeed, the war has now reset the entire Palestinian question, putting Gaza and its people squarely at the center of any future Israeli-Palestinian negotiation.

But Gaza’s sudden new prominence should hardly come as a surprise. Although little of it is remembered today, the territory’s 4,000-year history makes clear that the last 16 years were an anomaly; the Gaza Strip has almost always played a pivotal part in the region’s political dynamics, as well as its age-old struggles over religion and military power. Since the British Mandate period in the early twentieth century, the territory has also been at the heart of Palestinian nationalism.

Therefore, any attempt at rebuilding Gaza after such a devastating war will be unlikely to succeed if it does not take account of the territory’s strategic position in the region. The demilitarization of this enclave can be achieved only by lifting the disastrous siege and putting forward a positive vision for its economic development. Rather than trying to cut off the territory or isolate it politically, international powers must work together to allow Gaza to reclaim its historic role as a flourishing oasis and a thriving crossroads, connecting the Mediterranean with North Africa and the Levant. The United States and its allies must recognize that Gaza will need to have a central part in any lasting solution to the Palestinian struggle.

THE JEWEL IN THE CROWN

In stark contrast to its present-day reality of impoverishment, extreme water shortages, and unending human misery, the oasis of Gaza, or Wadi Ghazza, was celebrated for centuries for the lushness of its vegetation and the coolness of its shade. As important, however, was its strategic value, for Gaza connects Egypt to the Levant. Its advantageous position has meant that the land has been contested since the seventeenth century BC, when the Hyksos invaded the Nile Delta from Gaza, only to be later defeated and repelled by a Theban-based dynasty of pharaohs. Eventually, the pharaohs had to abandon Gaza to the Sea Peoples—known as Philistines—who in the twelfth century BC established a five-city federation that included Gaza and the now Israeli cities of Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron, and Gath.

Violent tensions erupted over access to the sea between the Philistines and the neighboring Jewish tribes and then kingdoms. Thus the biblical story of Samson, the legendary Israelite warrior who sets out to defeat the Philistines. As his formidable strength depends on his hair never being cut, he is rendered powerless when he falls under the spell of Delilah, who has his head shaved during his sleep, and winds up in a Gaza prison. While in captivity, however, his hair grows back, restoring his strength, and when he is finally dragged out of his cell to be ridiculed in a Philistine temple, he brings down the pillars of the building, killing himself along with his enemies. In a similar vein, it is after killing the Philistine Goliath that young David begins his effort to unify the kingdoms of Judah and Israel.

In later antiquity, Gaza’s coveted geography made it a crucial battleground between some of the epoch’s greatest hegemons. After passing through the hands of the Assyrians and the Babylonians, Gaza was captured by Cyrus the Great’s Persia in the mid-sixth century. But the real shock came two centuries later, in 332 BC, when Alexander the Great of Macedonia launched a devastating hundred-day siege of Gaza on his way to Egypt. During this gruesome war, both sides fortified their positions by digging numerous tunnels beneath Gaza’s loose soil—providing a historic antecedent to Hamas’s strategy against Israel today. In the end, Alexander’s forces came out on top, but at a high cost to all sides. Alexander was injured during the siege and took terrible revenge on the defeated Gazans: much of the male population was slaughtered and the women and children reduced to slavery.

But Gaza’s importance extended beyond its military value. Having become a city-state during the Hellenistic period, it later became a major religious center in the early centuries of first Christianity and then Islam. In 407 AD, Porphyry, the Christian bishop of Gaza, managed to impose a church on the ruins of Gaza’s main pagan temple to Zeus. Even more famous was another local saint, Hilarion (291–371), who founded an important monastic community in Gaza and whose tomb became a hugely popular pilgrimage site. One of the prophet Muhammad’s great-grandfathers was a merchant from Mecca named Hashem ibn Abd Manaf, who died in Gaza around 525. As a result, after the territory was conquered by Muslim armies in the seventh century, Muslims respectfully referred to it as “Hashem’s Gaza.” (In the nineteenth century, the Ottomans built the Hashem Mosque in Gaza City to mark the site of Hashem’s mausoleum.)

Any attempt at rebuilding Gaza will be unlikely to succeed if it does not take account of the territory’s strategic position.

Between the medieval period and the nineteenth century, Gaza continued to serve as a coveted prize in the region’s major power struggles. It seesawed between Christian crusaders and Muslim defenders in the twelfth century and Mamluk generals and Mongol invaders in the thirteenth. During two and a half centuries under the Mamluks—Turkic rulers who controlled medieval Egypt and Syria—Gaza entered a kind of golden age. The territory was endowed with numerous mosques, libraries, and palaces, and it prospered from the renewed coastal trade routes. In 1387, a fortified caravanseray or khan, a kind of trading and market hub, was established at the southern end of Gaza and soon grew into a city of its own, Khan Yunis.

Gaza was absorbed by the Ottoman Empire in 1517 and conquered, briefly, by Napoleon Bonaparte’s army, after it invaded Egypt in 1798. For much of this span, Gaza was renowned for its fruitful climate, congenial natives, and high quality of life. In 1659, one French traveler described it as “a very cheerful and agreeable place”; two centuries later, another, the French writer Pierre Loti, marveled at its “vast fields of barley all clothed in green.”

When the border was drawn in 1906 to separate British-controlled Egypt from Ottoman Palestine, it ran through the city of Rafah to create a de facto free trade zone between the two empires. But during World War I, the border was fiercely contested by British and Ottoman forces; after three attempts, the British Army finally broke through Ottoman lines in 1917. General Edmund Allenby entered the devastated city of Gaza on November 9, the same day his government made public the Balfour Declaration and its commitment to “the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine.” This endorsement of the Zionist program was later incorporated into the mandate that the League of Nations granted Britain to administer Palestine.

Although Gaza was one of the areas of Palestine least targeted by Zionist settlement, it became a stronghold of Palestinian nationalism, especially during the Great Arab Revolt of 1936–39, in which Palestinian Arabs rose up against the British and fought unsuccessfully for an independent Arab state. Instead, in November 1947, the United Nations endorsed a partition plan in which Palestine would be divided between an Arab state and a Jewish one—the original two-state solution—with Gaza joining the Arab state.

SEEDS OF STRUGGLE

Crucially, what became known as the Gaza Strip was shaped by the pivotal traumas of 1948. First came the failure of the UN’s partition plan, which, although welcomed by the Zionist leadership, was flatly rejected by Palestinian nationalists and the Arab states, setting off an armed conflict between Jews and Arabs. Soon, the first waves of Arab refugees, mainly from the Jaffa area, were arriving in Gaza; in a bitter anticipation of today’s international dilemma, the British suggested that the area would have better access to humanitarian relief overland from Cairo. Then, following the Zionist leader David Ben-Gurion’s proclamation of the state of Israel in May 1948, neighboring Arab states attacked, with 10,000 Egyptian soldiers moving into Gaza. But the Egyptians never made it farther than Ashdod, some 20 miles north of Gaza, where they were soon pushed back by a daring Israeli operation.

By January 1949, the Israelis had not only defeated the Arab armies but also driven some 750,000 Palestinians from their homes, in what became known as the nakba, or catastrophe. The armistice signed between Israel and Egypt under UN auspices in February of that year created the Gaza Strip, a territory under Egyptian administration and defined by the cease-fire lines in the north and east and by the 1906 border with Egypt in the south. After centuries as a strategic crossroads and vital commercial hub for regional trade, Gaza had been reduced to a “strip” of land, cornered by the desert, and cut off from what had been Palestine. On top of that, the local population of some 80,000 was now overwhelmed by some 200,000 refugees from all over Palestine who then described the Gaza Strip as their “Noah’s ark.”

There was no infrastructure to welcome these refugees, and during the first winter of 1948–49, the International Committee of the Red Cross estimated that ten children died every day from cold, hunger, or disease. The immensity of the Sinai Desert forced the survivors to remain in the enclave. Indeed, 25 percent of the Arab population of British Mandate Palestine was now confined in the Gaza Strip to just one percent of its former territory, with Israel absorbing 77 percent of that territory and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan another 22 percent, through its annexation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Such was the magnitude of the nakba that the United Nations created a special body, the UN Relief for Palestinian Refugees (UNRPR), to deal with the humanitarian crisis. For Palestinians, the terrible upheaval also planted the seeds of a new struggle that would continue to the present day. In December 1948, the same UN General Assembly that had approved the failed partition plan a year earlier enshrined the Palestinian refugees’ “right of return”—whether by way of actual repatriation or mere monetary compensation—a concept that has been central to Palestinian aspirations ever since. It had special meaning in Gaza, given the extraordinary number of refugees there, and since Egypt had no territorial claim on the strip, the enclave became a natural incubator for Palestinian nationalism.

A man hanging a Palestinian flag on the ruins of his house in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, November 2023

Mohammed Salem / Reuters

As Israel’s first leader, Ben-Gurion understood the long-term threat Gaza posed before almost any of his fellow Israelis. At the UN peace conference in Lausanne, in 1949, he proposed annexing the Gaza Strip and allowing 100,000 Palestinian refugees into their former homes in Israel. But the plan generated an uproar in both Israel, where there was enormous opposition to any return of Palestinians, and Egypt, where the defense of Gaza had become a national cause. As a result, the UN admitted its impotence to settle the Arab-Israeli dispute, terminating the Lausanne conference and establishing open-ended “interim” institutions instead. Thus, the UNRPR was turned into the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which ever since has been the main employer and main provider of social services in Gaza. Eight refugee camps were founded in the enclave, the largest ones being Jabalya, in the far north, and the Beach Camp, on the shoreline of Gaza City—the same camps that have now been destroyed by the Israeli onslaught.

In fact, it took some years before Gazan refugees turned to militant activism. At first, both Israel and Egypt managed to tamp down on the so-called fedayeen—guerrilla fighters mainly drawn from the camps in Gaza who sought to infiltrate Israel. But by the mid-1950s, the Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser began using them for proxy raids against Israel, thus beginning the cycle of attacks and reprisals that is so closely associated with the territory today. In April 1956, the security officer of a kibbutz close to the Palestinian enclave was killed by infiltrators from Gaza, causing Moshe Dayan, the Israeli chief of staff, to warn Israelis of the unresolved grievances simmering in the territory: “Let us not, today, cast the blame on the murderers,” Dayan said. “For eight years now, they have sat in the refugee camps in Gaza, and before their eyes we have turned their lands and villages, where they and their fathers dwelt, into our home.”

Eradicating the fedayeen presence from Gaza became a top priority for Ben-Gurion and Dayan. In November 1956, the Israeli army took control of the strip as part of a coordinated offensive with France and the United Kingdom against Nasser’s Egypt. During four months of occupation, around a thousand Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces (including two massacres documented by UNRWA in which at least 275 were executed in Khan Yunis and 111 in Rafah). The trauma was so profound that when the Israelis withdrew under U.S. pressure, the Palestinian population called for the return of Egyptian rule instead of the UN trusteeship that had initially been envisioned. A historic opportunity to build a Palestinian entity that could evolve into a state had been lost. Meanwhile, the fedayeen fled to Kuwait, where they founded, in 1959, the Palestinian Liberation Movement, known as Fatah, with Yasser Arafat as its leader.

Israel’s second occupation of Gaza started in June 1967, after the Israeli triumph in the Six-Day War. Dayan, now minister of defense, with the future prime minister Yitzhak Rabin as his chief of staff, erased any trace of the border between Gaza and Israel, betting that the attraction of the Israeli labor market would dissolve Palestinian nationalism. But the local population nonetheless supported for four years a low-intensity guerrilla war, until Ariel Sharon, the Israeli commander for the region (also later prime minister), bulldozed parts of the refugee camps and broke the back of the insurgency. Today, the Israeli army is using the very same map that Sharon did to distinguish the so-called “safe areas” from the combat zones in the ongoing offensive.

MAKING A MONSTER

Israel’s more visionary leaders had long recognized that the Gaza refugee problem would not go away. In 1974—following Ben-Gurion—Sharon proposed resettling tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees in Israel to address Palestinian grievances, at least symbolically. But once again, the idea was rejected. Instead, Israel started to play off the Muslim Brothers in Gaza, led by Sheikh Yassin, against the now Fatah-controlled nationalists of the mainstream Palestinian Liberation Organization. Notably, the Israeli military governor attended the inauguration of Yassin’s mosque in Gaza in 1973, and six years later, Israel allowed the Islamists to receive foreign funds while repressing any established connection with the PLO.

For a time, this divide-and-conquer policy seemed to work well for Israel in Gaza, with clashes flaring between nationalists and Islamists in 1980. But by the late 1980s, an entire generation had grown up under the constant pressure of the Israeli settlers who, though numbering only in the low thousands, led the occupying army to exclude the already cramped Gazan population from one-fourth of the enclave. It was in Gaza’s Jabalya refugee camp that the first intifada began, in December 1987, from which it soon spread to the whole strip and then to the West Bank. Young Palestinians defied the Israeli military with their stones and slingshots but also forced Arafat and the PLO to endorse the two-state solution. In response, Yassin transformed his organization into Hamas (an acronym for the “Movement for Islamic Resistance”) accusing the PLO of having betrayed the “holy” duty to “liberate Palestine.” Once again, Israeli intelligence played on those tensions to weaken the intifada and waited until May 1989 to imprison Yassin. But the popular uprising went on until support for peace in Israel brought Rabin to office as prime minister, in July 1992.

In opening secret talks with the PLO, Rabin’s priority was to disengage Israel from the Gaza Strip yet still protect the Israeli settlers there. The Oslo accords, signed in September 1993, created a Palestinian Authority to take charge of territories evacuated by Israel. Arafat moved into Gaza ten months later, believing he had himself liberated the territory, or at least the portion under Palestinian control, while the local population was convinced it had paid the hardest price for such a liberation. This misunderstanding, along with the rampant corruption of the PA, played directly into the hands of Hamas. In 1997, a botched Israeli intelligence operation against the Hamas leader Khalid Meshal in Jordan led to the arrest of Israeli agents. To secure their release, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was forced to hand over Yassin, who had been serving a life sentence in Israel and who returned triumphantly to Gaza.

Hamas’s growing aggressiveness and the crisis of the peace process led to the eruption of the second intifada in September 2000. The shocking wave of suicide attacks helped bring Sharon to power in a February 2001 landslide. After laying siege to Arafat in Ramallah and killing Yassin in Gaza, Sharon believed that his victory would be complete only after the Israeli evacuation of the Gaza Strip. Such a unilateral withdrawal was meant to secure a new Israeli defense line around the enclave and was carried out without any consultation with Mahmoud Abbas, who had succeeded Arafat as head of the PLO and the PA. But Sharon’s gamble ruined the ambitious $3 billion development plan for Gaza that James Wolfensohn, the special envoy of the Quartet for the Middle East (Russia, the United States, the European Union, and the United Nations) had designed.

Hamas naturally claimed the Israeli withdrawal as a victory and went on to win the internationally sponsored parliamentary elections a few months later, in January 2006. Embarrassed by the unforeseen outcome, the United States and the European Union decided to boycott Hamas until it recognized Israel and renounced violence. But by the following year, the unreformed Hamas, having killed hundreds of its rivals, had gained total control of the strip, which was then put under full Israeli blockade (with the cooperation of Egypt, which controls the Rafah crossing point in the south). In many ways, Israeli policies had brought Hamas to power in Gaza, a power that the blockade has only consolidated since then.

A PATH TO PEACE?

A legacy of the policies that have been followed since 2006, the current war between Israel and Hamas is also a result of the denial of Gaza’s rich historical identity. During the past 16 years, Israeli leaders thought they had found the optimal formula for sidelining Gaza entirely: more than two million Palestinians could be excluded from the demographic equation between the Jewish and Arab populations in Israel, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank; and the PA, blinded by its bitter feud with Hamas, resisted any effort to alleviate the blockade in Gaza, an approach that further undermined the PA’s already waning legitimacy. Meanwhile, the division of the Palestinian leadership doomed any effort to revive the peace process and allowed the Israeli settlements to steadily expand in the West Bank. From time to time, Israel engaged in what counterterrorism experts described as “lawn-mowing” wars on Gaza, with, from its point of view, a sustainable ratio of largely military casualties, although the Palestinian killed were mainly civilians. In 2009, 13 Israeli soldiers were killed, and 1,417 Palestinians. In 2012, the ratio was six Israelis to 166 Palestinians. In 2014 it was 72 Israelis to 2,251 Palestinians, and in 2021, 15 to 256. Meanwhile, the European Union and the Gulf states were always ready to foot the bill to reconstruct the ruins in the strip.

But the idea that the terrible human reality of Gaza could be simply ignored was a delusion. On October 7, 2023, the status quo collapsed in Hamas’s horrific killing spree. The unprecedented violence that Israel has been unleashing on Gaza ever since, in which more than 21,000 Palestinians have so far been killed—and, in a cruel replay of the memories of the nakba, an overwhelming majority of its 2.3 million inhabitants have been uprooted from their homes—has sent shock waves through the Middle East and beyond. Netanyahu’s declared war aims—the “eradication” of Hamas—echo those of Ben-Gurion in 1956, only on a much larger scale and with the whole world watching. Even supposing such a goal can be accomplished, there will be no Nasser to bring order to the enclave after the Israeli withdrawal. So Israel seems destined to be haunted by the very “Gaza Strip” it created in 1948, with the continuing cycle of wars and occupation leading only to more radical Palestinian activism.

For the Israelis and the Palestinians to ultimately enjoy the peace and security they so deeply deserve, Gaza must once again return to its roots as the prosperous crossroads it was for centuries. To start with, the policy of siege and blockade must end, allowing the territory to finally reconnect with the rest of the region. At the same time, drawing on Gaza’s historic role as a major trading hub, a concerted strategy of redevelopment, echoing Wolfensohn’s 2005 plan, must be put in place to allow Gaza to move from international assistance to a self-generating economy. This is the key for the territory to be demilitarized under international supervision and in the framework of a two-state solution.

Of course, it will be extremely difficult to make any of this happen, particularly after a ruthless war that threatens to spawn a new generation of Palestinian militancy. But there are no easy solutions left. This strategy might be the only way out of the current murderous spiral. As it has been for centuries, Gaza is once again at the center of a major war but also the key to peace and prosperity in the Middle East.

• JEAN-PIERRE FILIU is Professor of Middle East Studies at Sciences Po in Paris and is the author of Gaza: A History and The Middle East.

Foreign Affairs · by Jean-Pierre Filiu · January 1, 2024

​14. New Spin on a Revolving Door: Pentagon Officials Turned Venture Capitalists

New Spin on a Revolving Door: Pentagon Officials Turned Venture Capitalists

Retired officers and departing defense officials are flocking to investment firms that are pushing the government to provide more money to defense-technology startups.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/30/us/politics/pentagon-venture-capitalists.html?referringSource=articleShare&smid=nytcore-ios-share&utm

By Eric Lipton

Reporting from Simi Valley, Calif., and Washington, D.C., as part of a yearlong examination of the Pentagon’s efforts to embrace new technology amid growing global demand for weapons.

• Dec. 30, 2023

When Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and other top officials assembled for an event this month at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, they walked into a lesson in how the high-stakes world of Pentagon lobbying is being altered by the rise of defense technology startups.

Inside, at this elite gathering near Los Angeles of senior leaders from government and the arms industry, was a rapidly growing group of participants: former Pentagon officials and military officers who have joined venture capital firms and are trying to use their connections in Washington to cash in on the potential to sell a new generation of weapons.

They represent a new path through the revolving door that has always connected the Defense Department and the military contracting business.

Retiring generals and departing top Pentagon officials once migrated regularly to the big established weapons makers like Lockheed Martin and Boeing.

Now they are increasingly flocking to venture capital firms that have collectively pumped billions of dollars into Silicon Valley-style startups offering the Pentagon new war-fighting tools like autonomous killer drones, hypersonic jets and space surveillance equipment.

This new route to the private sector is one indicator of the ways in which the United States is trying to become more agile in harnessing technological advances to maintain military superiority over China and other rivals.

But the close ties between venture capital firms and Defense Department decision makers have also put a new twist on long-running questions about industry access and influence at a time when the Pentagon is under pressure to rethink how it allocates its huge procurement budget.

During Mr. Austin’s visit to the Reagan Library, Mark T. Esper, who served as defense secretary under President Donald J. Trump, was on hand with business cards from Red Cell, a venture capital firm. Red Cell has invested in new military startups like Epirus, whose anti-drone technology Mr. Esper said in an interview he had helped pitch to top Pentagon officials.

Also on the guest list for the event were Ryan McCarthy, the former Army secretary, and Raj Shah, the former head of the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit. Both now work for venture capital firms.Editors’ Pick​s

The New York Times has identified at least 50 former Pentagon and national security officials, most of whom left the federal government in the last five years, who are now working in defense-related venture capital or private equity as executives or advisers. In many cases, The Times confirmed that they continued to interact regularly with Pentagon officials or members of Congress to push for policy changes or increases in military spending that could benefit firms they have invested in.

After the Pentagon:A list of former defense and national security officials who now work at venture capital or private equity firms investing in defense technology.

“There’s panache now with the ties between the defense community and private equity,” said Ellen M. Lord, a former under secretary of defense for acquisitions, who said she had been solicited by a number of venture capital firms but had decided to focus on advising individual military contractors. “But they are also hoping they can cash in big-time and make a ton of money, too.”

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The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, near Los Angeles, hosted the annual elite gathering of senior leaders from government and the arms industry.Credit...Mark Abramson for The New York Time​s

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Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III attended the event, along with other senior military officials.Credit...Mark Abramson for The New York Time​s

This new generation of venture capitalists has big incentives to tap into its network of government and military contacts, many of whom it previously helped move ahead in their careers.

Unlike former officials who have joined the big military contractors, they are not salaried executives inside public companies.

Instead, as venture capitalists who profit in part when the startups they are backing make it big, they are wagering that at least a few of the companies they have invested in will hit the jackpot in the form of major military contracts — enough, perhaps, to generate a lucrative buyout offer or even to drive one of the startups to sell shares and go public, potentially generating an even bigger windfall for the early investors.

More on U.S. Armed Forces

• New Ground: To deter China and work effectively with partners in the region, American soldiers need more jungle expertise. To achieve that goal, the Army is training troops in Hawaii.
• Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps: Congress has passed new rules on the military’s high school training program, the, that introduce more oversight around enrollment and sexual misconduct.
• Blast Exposure: The Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs have begun an aggressive outreach campaign in the wake of growing evidence of the potential health risks that troops face from exposure to blasts from their own weapons.
• Selling the Pentagon on A.I.: Shield AI, a tech start-up, already has a drone run by artificial intelligence being used by the Israeli military. But persuading U.S. military officials to embrace the technology remains a big challenge.

“A few years back you would have gone to be executive vice presidents at Lockheed Martin — totally not sexy,” said Chris O’Donnell, a former Navy SEAL and now a director at Franklin Venture Partners, whose investments include Air Space Intelligence, an air traffic control company, and CesiumAstro, a space communications company.

“Now, a venture capital guy comes up and says, ‘I will pay you twice as much. I will give you a cut in the form of carried interest in the deal and you will hobnob with the C.E.O.s of the companies we invest in,’” Mr. O’Donnell said during an interview, as he prepared to host a dinner for top Pentagon officials, members of Congress and other industry executives. “It’s much more attractive.”

The new venture capitalists say they typically use their access to press the Pentagon to provide more funding for emerging technologies in general, rather than to push for contracts for a particular startup they are backing.

“I can really leverage my experience, my positions, my voice to help accelerate innovation adoption,” Mr. Esper, a former defense industry lobbyist, said in an interview.

Pushing for a bigger share of the pie

One recent focus for the venture capitalists has been urging Congress to set aside at least $1 billion in the coming year for the kinds of cutting-edge technologies their startups are pursuing. Ensuring that innovative new firms get a bigger slice of Pentagon spending after decades in which the business has been dominated by a handful of giant prime contractors, they say, is vital to national security.

“The military-industrial-congressional complex is pretty comfortable with market share as it is,” said Sally Donnelly, a former Defense Department official who is now a founding partner at Pallas Ventures, which invests in startups while also helping them interact with Pentagon officials. “It’s a precooked system that needs to be shaken up a little bit.”

Pentagon procurement officials confirmed that they had repeatedly met with former Defense Department officials who are now venture capitalists. They said recommendations pushed by the venture capitalists had played a role in changes they are making in the way they acquire technology, helping accelerate purchases from some of the startups, like Saildrone, which makes marine surveillance equipment.

“We definitely hear from them,” said Schuyler Moore, the chief technology officer at Central Command.

In the last four years, at least $125 billion of venture capital has flooded into startups that build defense technology, according to data assembled for The Times by PitchBook, which tracks these investments, compared with $43 billion in the prior four years.

But at least so far, the defense-tech sector has had only a few breakthrough success stories. They include Palantir, which makes artificial intelligence software and went public in 2020, and Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which has a market valuation of more than $175 billion, larger than the market capitalization of Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest military contractor.

Much more frequently, it has been a continuing struggle for venture-backed defense technology companies to secure large-scale contracts.

That is where the new generation of well-connected venture capitalists comes in.

More than a dozen of them, assisted by think tanks and other nonprofits that get funding from venture capital groups, have been pushing Congress and the Defense Department to accelerate spending with defense-tech companies, or to make policy changes that make it easier for them to get Pentagon money.

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“Let’s face it, their budgets for research and development of new technologies are much better than ours,” said Representative Ken Calvert of California, the Republican chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee. Credit...Mark Abramson for The New York Time​s

Lawmakers and Pentagon officials said they welcomed the input.

“They want to do things,” said Representative Ken Calvert, Republican of California and chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the Pentagon budget. “Let’s face it, their budgets for research and development of new technologies are much better than ours. So they’re developing technologies that we can’t.”

But not everyone on Capitol Hill is pleased with the new revolving door, including Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, who raised concerns about it with the Pentagon this past summer.

The growing role of venture capital and private equity firms “makes President Eisenhower’s warning about the military-industrial complex seem quaint,” Ms. Warren said in a statement, after reviewing the list prepared by The Times of former Pentagon officials who have moved into the venture capital world. “War profiteering is not new, but the significant expansion risks advancing private financial interests at the expense of national security.”

‘Let’s go faster’

The annual Reagan National Defense Forum, the event attended by Mr. Austin this month, drew a substantial contingent of venture capitalists eager to mingle with government decision makers at cocktail parties and over meals, some held in the main atrium of the Reagan Library, where the plane used by President Ronald Reagan as Air Force One hangs suspended over visitors.

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The event at the Reagan Library drew a substantial number of venture capitalists eager to mingle with government decision makers at cocktail parties and over meals.Credit...Mark Abramson for The New York Time​s

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The guest list was invitation-only.Credit...Mark Abramson for The New York Time​s

Doug Philippone, a former Army Ranger who is now the co-founder of Snowpoint Ventures, a defense-sector venture capital firm, was busy during the event chatting with various members of Congress and Pentagon officials. They included Heidi Shyu, the under secretary of defense for research and engineering, and Representative Pat Ryan, Democrat of New York, a West Point graduate who serves on the Armed Services Committee.

Mr. Philippone, whose firm has invested $172 million over the last two years mostly in defense-tech companies, said he had repeatedly urged government officials to pick winners to get money flowing to them.

“Let’s go faster,” Mr. Philippone said, recalling his message. “Why does it take so long?”

Certain startups like Shield AI are initially building their business almost entirely around revenue from Pentagon contracts and research awards, a risky bet given how slowly the Defense Department moves.

The result is a lot of pressure on the companies, resulting in an almost frantic push for support from Washington.

“A venture capitalist that is going to put tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars into your startup, they are expecting to see revenue of $50 and $100 million a year,” said A.J. Piplica, the founder and chief executive of Hermeus, a venture-capital-funded startup that is working to build a new type of hypersonic jet. “And building a book of revenue of that scale, when you are working with the Defense Department primarily, is very, very difficult.”

Mr. Philippone, who is widely known in the industry for his role in helping build Palantir’s Pentagon sales before he set up his venture capital firm, is not shy about his advocacy. He said he works with every company he invests in to push the Pentagon or other agencies to move more quickly.

“I’m meeting with members of Congress,” he said. “I’m talking to members of the military. I’m introducing them to different people.”

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Doug Philippone’s firm has invested $172 million in nine companies over the last two years.Credit...Mark Abramson for The New York Time​s

But he said he was not a lobbyist because he is not paid for the advocacy work and it does not make up at least 20 percent of his time, the threshold for disclosure in federal law. Almost none of the venture capitalists promoting defense technology are registered as lobbyists.

Mr. Esper would not disclose the names of the government officials he spoke with on behalf of his firm’s investments, other than to say they included Pentagon officials. At times, he said, he urged them to consider specific technologies, like those from Epirus, which uses an electromagnetic pulse to disrupt or disable enemy drones. Mr. Esper said his effort in this field is based on a belief that he can help the Pentagon confront change.

“Part of this is just kind of being able to reach out to leaders within the building and say, hey, there’s a neat tech. You should check it out,” Mr. Esper said. “Because it’s being worked through echelons down. So if you know there’s a need and you can put a technology in front of them and say, just check it out, see how it works.”

Nick Sinai, an Obama-era White House official who is now a venture capitalist with Insight Partners, traveled to the Middle East last spring to meet with Gen. Michael E. Kurilla, who oversees the Pentagon’s Central Command operations in the region, to suggest ways to enhance military equipment now in use.

He suggested that the Pentagon acquire more data from commercial satellite companies that can help it improve awareness of what is happening on ocean waters. Among his firm’s investments is HawkEye 360, a startup that sells satellite data that can allow the military to track enemy movements.

Several months after the visit, the Navy doubled the size of a contract with HawkEye 360 to provide a more extensive array of satellite data. Mr. Sinai said the larger contract, worth $12.3 million, was unrelated to his intervention.

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Nick Sinai, an Obama-era White House official, is a venture capitalist with Insight Partners.Credit...Mark Abramson for The New York Time​s

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Heidi Shyu, the under secretary of defense for research and engineering, has regularly met with defense-tech venture capitalists. Here she spoke to reporters at the Reagan library.Credit...Mark Abramson for The New York Time​s

Many of the venture capitalists keep ties to Washington. Mr. Shah, the former head of the Defense Innovation Unit, serves on a congressionally appointed commission looking at ways to revamp the Pentagon’s budgeting process.

“D.C.-wise, we are very plugged in,” Mr. Shah said of his firm, which includes Michael Brown, who also served as head of the Defense Innovation Unit until he left last year.

Mr. Esper is co-chairman of a commission set up by the Atlantic Council that is studying ways to accelerate the Pentagon’s embrace of new technology. The Atlantic Council staff set up a series of 70 briefings for Pentagon and congressional officials to promote their ideas.

The staff director of the report, Stephen Rodriguez, is an executive at a defense venture capital firm. He also serves as an adviser to Applied Intuition, a software startup and military contractor that helped fund and promote the report. Funding for the Atlantic Council report also came from several other venture-backed defense startups and Mr. Philippone’s Snowpoint Ventures.

Mr. Rodriguez and his team keep a chart of all the recommendations that have resulted in policy changes, including expanding the power of the Defense Innovation Unit by making the new leader of the office a direct report to the defense secretary, and eliminating the prohibition on firms with more than 50 percent financing from venture capitalists from getting Pentagon small-business grants.

“We were not in the business of pitching or lobbying,” Mr. Rodriguez said. “We were just briefing our recommendations, and had detailed discussions about what the implementation of them would look like.”

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Many of the defense-related venture capitalists keep ties to Washington.Credit...Mark Abramson for The New York Time​s

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Gen. Charles A. Flynn, the commander of U.S. Army Pacific, mingling with other military personnel at the Reagan library. The event attracts top military leaders and people in the for-profit arms industry.Credit...Mark Abramson for The New York Time​s

Mr. O’Donnell, of Franklin Venture Partners, helped start what he calls the Silicon Valley Defense Group, which has sponsored a dozen “salon” dinners over the last year offering off-the-record opportunities for venture capital executives to meet with Pentagon officials and members of Congress.

The group has sent letters to members of Congress to push them to invest $1 billion next year in the Defense Innovation Unit, which is distributing a large share of its money to tech startups.

“The goal is to get a lot of conversations with the right people,” said Sam Gray, a former Pentagon acquisitions executive who is now the Washington-based director of the Silicon Valley Defense Group, as well as a partner at Franklin Venture Partners.

While many of the startups have yet to win substantial government funding, some are beginning to hit pay dirt.

Anduril secured a contract worth up to $1 billion with the U.S. Special Operations Command to identify, track and intercept enemy drones. Hermeus, the hypersonic jet startup whose investors include Ms. Donnelly’s firm, as well as funds set up by the investor Peter Thiel and Sam Altman, the chief executive of Open AI, recently secured a major Defense Innovation Unit contract.

Doug Beck, a former Apple executive who now leads the Defense Innovation Unit, said in an interview that the venture capitalists were not getting any special favors, nor did they ask for them.

“They are leaning in on policies that help break down systemic barriers, because that rising tide of defense innovation lifts all their boats,” he said, “and because they believe in the impact for the nation.”

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While many of the startups have yet to win substantial government funding, some are beginning to become lucrative.Credit...Mark Abramson for The New York Time​s

Eric Lipton is an investigative reporter, who digs into a broad range of topics from Pentagon spending to toxic chemicals. More about Eric Lipton

A version of this article appears in print on Jan. 1, 2024, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Ex-Pentagon Officials Flocking To Join Venture Capital Firms. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

15. America’s rising rates and neo-protectionism

America’s rising rates and neo-protectionism

https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2024/01/01/americas-rising-rates-and-neo-protectionism/?utm

1 January 2024

Author: Gary Clyde Hufbauer, PIIE

Forces inherited from 2022 shaped the US economy in 2023 — high but falling inflation, rising interest rates, neo-protectionist industrial policy, conflict with China, empty trade initiatives and the resurgence of former US president Donald Trump. From an Asian perspective, the macro impact of US economic policy was benign and the micro impact was adverse, but security guarantees were welcome.

Political gridlock in Washington, with closely divided House and Senate numbers in Congress, is overshadowing economic events. Extreme positions advocated by right-wing Republicans and left-wing Democrats makes agreement on significant legislation difficult. Neither the Democratic Party nor the Republican Party is willing to advocate painful expenditure cuts or tax increases that would curtail high budget deficits, now running at 6–7 per cent of GDP. The United States is traveling an unsustainable fiscal path.

Measured by the Consumer Price Index, annual inflation peaked at 9.1 per cent in June 2022, slowing to 3.2 per cent in November 2023. Owing to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, price inflation spurted during the first half of 2022. That spurred wage inflation, fostered by an unemployment rate under 4 per cent through 2023. In 2024, the Federal Reserve’s biggest decision is how long to keep monetary conditions tight to ensure that inflation returns to the preferred 2 per cent.

Chairman Jerome Powell retired ‘transitory’ from the Federal Reserve’s description of inflation in November 2021. He initiated a sustained rise in the federal funds rate, from 0 in January 2022 to 5.25–5.5 per cent in July 2023. Powell’s goal was to reach the 2 per cent inflation target, even at the cost of more unemployment. Yet, there was no slowdown in the US economy during 2023.

Instead, Wall Street and Main Street relished the ‘soft landing’ scenario. With inflation above 2 per cent, the mantra for interest rates became ‘high for longer’, and yields on 30-year US Treasury bonds reached 5 per cent in October 2023 before retreating. Sustained high interest rates aimed to quell inflation, but sceptics forecast a mild recession in 2024.

Early in 2023, several regional banks collapsed due to significant unrealised losses on their Treasury bond portfolios as interest rates rose. The Federal Reserve served as the lender of last resort, enabling troubled banks to borrow against the face value of Treasury bonds, containing the crisis. Yet, many regional banks now grapple with distressed commercial real estate loans as the COVID-19 pandemic work-from-home trend continues to amplify office vacancies. This could trigger another regional bank crisis in 2024.

Elevated US interest rates appreciated the dollar against most currencies throughout 2023. Consequently, Asian countries paid more, in local currency terms, for US exports, but they also earned more from exports to the United States. Additionally, sustained US GDP growth attracted imports from Asia.

Some Asian central banks raised their interest rates, but Asian share markets did not particularly suffer. Between December 2022 and October 2023, Japan equities appreciated 18 per cent, South Korean 10 per cent and Taiwan 16 per cent, while Chinese, Singaporean and Australian shares ended the year roughly flat. Towards the end of 2023, the expectation of falling US interest rates in 2024 slightly reduced the broad dollar exchange rate.

In his February 2023 State of the Union address, US President Joe Biden proclaimed Buy America as a core policy without addressing the cost of this policy for taxpayers or US allies. The new reality hit Asian partners in 2023 with the implementation of significant multi-year industrial policies. The five-year US$1.2 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Act of 2021 — funding highways, bridges, railways, high-speed internet and electric vehicle charging stations — mandated that every federal dollar procure US goods and services.

The US$278 billion CHIPS and Sciences Act of 2022 subsidises the semiconductor industry with US$78 billion over five years. Funds are equally available to foreign firms, attracting Samsung and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company to build large fabrication plants in the United States. Europe and Japan are now compelled to offer subsidies to stay in the semiconductor race.

The US$394 billion misnamed Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 added neo-protectionism to climate-friendly initiatives. Battery and electric vehicle subsidies hinge on their production in the United States or in a free trade agreement partner country. Responding to Japanese and South Korean complaints, special workarounds were designed to accommodate their export interests.

Slow-motion decoupling was 2023’s policy theme. US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan tried to distinguish between de-risking and decoupling, but that was word play to Chinese ears. Advanced semiconductors — whether made by US or allied Asian firms — became forbidden exports and numerous Chinese companies were blackballed on the US Department of Commerce ‘entity list’. The November 2023 Biden-Xi Summit focussed on setting guidelines to avoid military conflict but produced no commercial breakthroughs. Since Asian countries trade more with China than with the United States, they will try to sit on the fence.

Despite criminal indictments and civil trials, opinion polls put Trump in a strong position for the 2024 election. In addition to the disruptive geopolitical consequences of a second Trump presidential term, amplified ‘America First’ policies — starting with a 10 per cent across-the-board tariff — would echo the disastrous Smoot-Hawley tariff of the 1930s.

Gary Clyde Hufbauer is a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute of International Economics.

This article is part of an EAF special feature series on 2023 in review and the year ahead.

16. Israeli Army Discovers 'Massive' Amount of Chinese-Made Weapons in Gaza: Report

Israeli Army Discovers 'Massive' Amount of Chinese-Made Weapons in Gaza: Report

Officials believe that the weapons were not delivered on Chinese ships, but due to the sheer quantity it is assumed they were brought into Gaza through an organized process

Published 12/31/23 09:56 AM ET|Updated 12/31/23 10:33 AM ET

Perry Chiaramonte

themessenger.com · December 31, 2023

Israeli Defense Forces uncovered a 'massive' cache of weapons in Gaza that were manufactured in China, according to a new report.

A report from Israel's N12 on Saturday claimed that officials have been shown examples of the weaponry that was seized from Hamas fighters, according to the Times of Israel, which also points out that the report is unsourced.

It's not immediately clear how many weapons were seized, but it is not believed that the weapons were delivered on Chinese ships, due to the sheer quantity of weapons involved, it's likely that they were brought into Gaza through an organized process and not smuggling.

"China has an extensive arms industry. By definition, it does not sell weapons to non-state entities, it certainly does sell weapons to countries in the [Middle East]," Carice Witte, CEO and founder of SIGNAL Group and an expert on China-Israel relations, said to The Jerusalem Post.

Israeli Defense Forces have uncovered a large stash of weapons produced in China in Gaza according to a recent report from local news station N12IDF

Witte added that it's likely other countries or independent Chinese-based groups are selling the weaponry to terror groups like Hamas.

"Trade relations between China and Middle Eastern nations are well known, even with those sanctioned by the West," she said. "It is not impossible that such weaponry ends up in the wrong hands."

themessenger.com · December 31, 2023

17. The Elon Musk industrial complex

Updated Dec 30, 2023 -Technology

The Elon Musk industrial complex

• Erica Pandey
• , author of

Axios Finish Line

https://www.axios.com/2023/12/30/elon-musk-tesla-spacex-twitter-2024?fbclid=IwAR3dTFHJCbnhpefF_IRUkug5DOEYBaG2F2CV7oAAi3rKD8voVBH5T6KHF90&utm

Photo Illustration: Natalie Peeples/Axios. Photo: Taylor Hill/Getty Images

Perhaps never before in American history has one person held as much power and influence over as many critical industries as Elon Musk.

Why it matters: Musk is shaping the future of transportation, communication, artificial intelligence and space — an enormous, maybe even unprecedented concentration of power and influence. How he wields it — and whether he can get out of his own way — affects the whole world.

Zoom in: 2023 was a dramatic year for Musk, his companies, and, as a result, the industries they occupy and several big-picture scientific and geopolitical endeavors.

In space, Musk is perhaps the most important single figure to the United States' ambitions since Wernher von Braun, who revolutionized rocket science after World War II, Axios' Alex Fitzpatrick writes.

• SpaceX now gets astronauts to and from the International Space Station as reliably as a daily mail delivery
• It’s also a critical provider of commercial satellite launches — including for the Pentagon.
• Ukraine has relied heavily on SpaceX's Starlink satellites — no other CEO in the world could have singlehandedly cut off such a vital communications tool in the middle of a war.

SpaceX's still-in-development Starship rocket — the most powerful ever built by human hands — is a key element of NASA's ambitions to put American boots back on lunar soil this decade.

• The company also has ambitions to use Starship to get to Mars — and potentially beyond — as park of Musk's lofty mission to turn humanity into a "multi-planet species."

In the auto industry, Tesla this year pioneered a process called "gigacasting" that his competitors are already trying to replicate, Axios' Joann Muller writes.

• The process lowered the cost — and improved the profitability — of its best-selling Model Y.
• Instead of welding hundreds of smaller parts together to build a conventional car's underbody, Tesla uses huge, house-sized machines to mold the front and rear structures. Then, it joins the two pieces together.
• Rivals are now scrambling to catch up. Even Toyota, long known as the leanest auto manufacturer, is adopting Tesla's gigacasting process.

What to watch: Tesla is on the edge of a further breakthrough that would extend its lead — die casting nearly the entire underbody in one piece, Reuters reports.

• Slashing production costs will enable the industry's holy grail: a $25,000 electric car, making them far more accessible and accelerating the shift away from gas-powered cars — a major dent in the No. 1 source of greenhouse gas emissions.

Musk is also leaving his mark on the internet, with his purchase of — and antics on — X, formerly known as Twitter, Axios' Javier E. David notes.

• This year, we saw that Musk may ultimately kill the platform he loves using — as his actions triggered an exodus of major advertisers, including big names like Apple and Walmart.

X's dominance as a source of news and information may be slipping, and Musk's antics on the platform may put the rest of his empire at risk, Axios' Hope King writes.

• Case in point: Tesla is still one of the most valuable companies in the world, but that valuation has taken direct hits as Musk's obsession with X and his own questionable speech on the platform push investors to rethink their support.

Zoom out: Musk keeps undercutting his undeniable role as a reshaper of industries with his penchant for bizarre, quixotic products and his courtship of extremism and hate speech under the banner of free speech, Axios managing editor Scott Rosenberg writes.

• Presumably there are customers out there who find the Tesla Cybertruck — which critics likened to a refrigerator on wheels — attractive. But how many?
• X has now welcomed back conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, along with a slew of white supremacists, racists and Nazis — a good number of whom Musk himself happily replies to and retweets.

The bottom line: Reshaping the way things are done in the industries driving the future is one kind of hard that Musk excels at.

• But dealing with a complex human society is an order of magnitude harder, and Musk's powers seem to fail him whenever he leaves the factory floor for the broader social arena.

Go deeper: Elon Musk to advertisers boycotting X: "Go f**k yourself"

18. Analysis: Perception vs. Reality – Russia Is Losing, Not Winning

Analysis: Perception vs. Reality – Russia Is Losing, Not Winning​

Despite a disastrous invasion of Ukraine, Russia has continued to use KGB-style ruses to conjure the illusion of success. But the facts show that Russia’s situation is only worsening.

By Jason Jay Smart

By Chuck Pfarrer

December 30, 2023, 5:15 pm | Comments (6)

kyivpost.com · by Jason Jay Smart

December 30, 2023, 5:15 pm |

Photo credit: General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Intelligence officers learn early in their careers that perception is not reality; impressions can be manipulated, “alternate facts” can be presented, and what one sees, or is meant to see, can convince the under-informed that up is down, and day is night. As a former KGB operative, Vladimir Putin understands this well – disinformation is a weapon that Russia uses with great skill.

Hamas has publicly acknowledged Russia’s ongoing help. Even as Russian resources were stretched to the breaking point in Ukraine, Moscow diverted important bandwidth by inviting a Hamas delegation to Moscow within days of the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel. Putin has gained directly by Western nations’ attention being diverted from his own faltering war in Ukraine.

The conflict in Gaza grinds on – and has shouldered news of the war in Ukraine from the front pages and off nightly news casts.

Having neatly diverted Western attention, next came the sowing of doubt. Russian sources then inserted the implication that the United States, and the West, would now have to choose between supporting Ukraine or supporting Israel. Though patently untrue, it did not take too long before America’s politicians divided themselves along these lines.

Though the US has military stores in abundance – and more than enough to support Ukraine and Israel – doubting members of the US congress chose to swallow Moscow’s lies, hook line and sinker. To add injury to insult, Congress delayed passing much needed aid packages to Ukraine, and blithely skipped off for an extended Christmas holiday. All of this to the delight of Putin and his FSB information warriors.

Other Topics of Interest

Is Russia Really Winning in Ukraine?

The West’s military history illiteracy, its self-serving political players and duped appeasers all feed into Kremlin propagandists’ ability to spread the lie that Russia is winning.

Distractions from the death count

Moscow must distract, and thereby delay Western aid, because their war in Ukraine is going very, very badly.

At Kupyansk, Kreminna, Bakhmut and most notably Avdiivka, columns of Russian armored vehicles have been thwarted by Ukrainian FPV Drone strikes and barrages of anti-tank guided missiles. Despite often massing 5 to 1 superiority at the point of attack, Russian daily casualties routinely approach 1,000 troops killed in action. Total Russian casualties since the full-scale invasion now top 300,000 – six times the number of troops lost by the United States in ten years of the Vietnam War.

Hoping, apparently, to force Ukraine to disperse forces over increasingly larger swaths of terrain, Russia has embarked on a series of piecemeal, uncoordinated company-sized attacks, hitting widely spaced objectives. This tactic continues to puzzle Western military observers, who rightly point out that Russia now appears to be afraid to engage in multi-unit maneuver warfare combinations.

The last time it did mount a large-scale offensive, a multi brigade task element assault on Vuhledar last February, the Ukrainians defeated and destroyed the entire Russian 155th Naval Infantry Brigade – inflicting losses of upwards of 100 infantry fighting vehicles, 46 tanks and as many as 5,000 Russian dead.

In Avdiivika, at the cost of more than 40,000 dead, Russia has managed to advance 1-2 kilometers. Though Russia fails even as it succeeds, Ukrainian valor is being sorely tested. Ukraine is burning through precious supplies of ammunition. With Congressional vacationers not scheduled to return to work before the middle of January, many Western observers are questioning whether Ukraine can be expected to hold back unending Russian attacks.

For now, Ukraine is punishing the aggressor. Russian morale and combat effectiveness is in precipitous decline. South of Kherson, Russia’s 104th Division of VDV paratroopers has been fought to a standstill by something less than 1,000 Ukrainian marines. Morale is a factor in Russian failure. Putin’s troops rightly complain that they are not rotated from the front lines, that they are under-trained, under fed, under supplied, poorly led, and, if wounded, they are left in the field without medical care.

As a result of this maltreatment and the military malpractice of their leaders, Putin’s troops have refused orders, murdered each other and their officers, and almost daily release videos condemning their leadership. In any other army in the world these acts of mutiny would be put down violently and the officers who permitted such conditions would be court martialed. In Putin’s army, these are standard operational conditions.

At sea as on land

Russia’s military failures are not confined to land warfare. Though Ukraine lacks a single major surface combatant warship, it has turned the western Black Sea into a non-permissive environment for the Russian navy.

Utilizing asymmetrical and unconventional warfare Ukraine has sunk the battle cruiser Moskva, the flagship of the Black sea fleet, destroyed the HQ of the Russian navy in Crimea, attacked naval air stations, air defense sites and radar stations, carried out cruise missile and precision strikes on naval yards in Kerch and Sevastopol, destroyed Russian missile corvettes, landing ships and submarines, and, critically, forced the Russian navy to withdraw its warships hundreds of miles to bases in the eastern Black Sea.

This achievement, often overlooked by Western press, has made an impression on naval warfare experts in the West, who rightly see the Ukrainian achievement as an unprecedented and disruptive technological inflection. It is not an understatement to say that Ukraine has literally changed the way navies will fight forevermore.

Russia can’t win

The plain truth is that Russia can no longer win its war in Ukraine. Not with the force posture it has now, not with the tactics and leadership it has, and certainly not with the conscripted army of untrained convicts and mobniks that it is hustling onto the battlefield.

Russia desperately needs to distract the West, from comprehending the actual condition of Russian forces even as it grinds its own army to dust. It is critical at this point that the West continue and expand its support for Ukrainian forces.

Congress’ dereliction came at a particularly bad time. Desperate for “good news” from his 670-day long “72-hour Special Military Operation,” Putin has embarked his forces on a series of large, but poorly executed local offensives. Kupyansk, Bakhmut and Kherson are now the targets of daily assaults, with the city of Avdiivka now the principal object of Russia’s fiercest and most costly attacks. Though daily Russian losses approach, and often exceed, 1,000 troops killed in action per day, with scores of armored vehicles and artillery pieces destroyed.

Jason Jay Smart

Jason Jay Smart, Ph.D., is a political adviser who has lived and worked in Ukraine, Moldova, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Latin America. Due to his work with the democratic opposition to Pres. Vladimir Putin, Smart was persona non grata, for life, by Russia in 2010. His websites can be found at www.JasonJaySmart.com / www.AmericanPoliticalServices.com / fb.com/jasonjaysmart / Twitter: @OfficeJJSmart

Chuck Pfarrer

A former Squadron Leader for the US Navy’s SEAL Team Six, Chuck Pfarrer is a New York Times Best Selling author. As a journalist, he has written extensively on Benghazi, and during the US-Afghan War reported from Kabul and Bagram while flying missions with the Afghan Air Force. Pfarrer has appeared as a military affairs and counter-terrorism expert on CNN, ABC, BBC, CSPAN2, NPR, Al Jazeera, CBC, and MSNBC. He’s written Op Ed for the New York Times and served as a Senior Correspondent and Associate Editor of the Counterterrorist Journal.

kyivpost.com · by Jason Jay Smart

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