Quotes of the Day:

"There are two educations. One should teach us how to make a living and the other how to live." 

- John Adams

The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled. 

- Plutarch

“Dare to begin! He who postpones living rightly is like the rustic who waits for the river to run out before he crosses.” 

- Horace

1. NDAA: What’s in the $886 billion defense bill

2. Philippine Provinces Linked To US Military Welcome Chinese Investment

3. Washington Urges Israel to Scale Down Its War in Gaza

4. Confident Putin Suggests He Has Winning Hand in Ukraine

5. The Atrophy of American Statecraft

6. ‘We’ll Be at Each Others’ Throats’: Fiona Hill on What Happens If Putin Wins

7. Weapons aid sent to low-income nations may fuel instability, Army-sponsored study finds

8. Why China’s Growing Challenge To Big Tech Is A Problem For The Pentagon

9. The Axis of Disorder: How Russia, Iran, and China Want to Remake the World

10. Why the World Should Still Worry About Dirty Bombs

11. Counterpoint to U.S. Special Operations Forces Cuts

12. Fighting reported to be continuing in northern Myanmar despite China saying it arranged a cease-fire

13. Bridging the gap: Army validates division-led river crossing

14. Palantir Stock: Primed For A Banner 2024

15. Sullivan says both the U.S. and Israel expect fighting to slow down eventually.

16. Israeli Military Says It Accidentally Killed Three Israeli Hostages in Gaza

17. The Road to China-Free Supply Chains Is Long. Warning: Legless Lizards Ahead.

18. A World in Disarray? A Longtime Diplomat Says It’s Worse Than That

19. Opinion | In 2024, U.S. domestic politics will cast a dark shadow across the world

20. Confident Putin Suggests He Has Winning Hand in Ukraine

21. Spying the secrets of creativity

22. The mystery of the missing binder: How a collection of raw Russian intelligence disappeared under Trump

23. At least 70 arrested in China Rocket Force Scandal

24. Sustaining the All-Volunteer Force Means Streamlining Army Recruitment

1. NDAA: What’s in the $886 billion defense bill

The NDAA can be accessed here: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/2670/text

Here are the key SOF/Irregular Warfare provisions in the NDAA but not included in the article below. Below the article I have pasted the entire excerpt for each provision listed here:

SEC. 1075. SPECIAL OPERATIONS FORCE STRUCTURE.

(a) REPORT.—Not later than 90 days after the date of the

enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Defense shall submit to

the congressional defense committees a report containing an assessment

of the optimal force structure for special operations forces.

SEC. 1091. SENSE OF CONGRESS REGARDING AUTHORITY OF SECRETARY

OF DEFENSE WITH RESPECT TO IRREGULAR

WARFARE.

(a) IN GENERAL.—It is the sense of Congress that the Secretary

of Defense has the authority to conduct irregular warfare operations,

including clandestine irregular warfare operations, to defend

the United States, allies of the United States, and interests of

the United States, when such operations have been appropriately

authorized.

SEC. 1201. MODIFICATION OF SUPPORT OF SPECIAL OPERATIONS FOR

IRREGULAR WARFARE.

(a) IN GENERAL.—Chapter 3 of title 10, United States Code,

is amended by inserting after section 127c the following:

‘‘§ 127d. Support of special operations for irregular warfare

‘‘(a) AUTHORITY.—The Secretary of Defense may, with the

concurrence of the relevant Chief of Mission, expend up to

$20,000,000 during any fiscal year to provide support to foreign

forces, irregular forces, groups, or individuals engaged in supporting

or facilitating ongoing and authorized irregular warfare operations

by United States Special Operations Forces.

...

‘‘(k) IRREGULAR WARFARE DEFINED.—Subject to subsection (d),

in this section, the term ‘irregular warfare’ means Department

of Defense activities not involving armed conflict that support predetermined

United States policy and military objectives conducted

by, with, and through regular forces, irregular forces, groups, and

individuals.’’.

SEC. 1221. MODIFICATION OF AUTHORITY FOR EXPENDITURE OF

FUNDS FOR CLANDESTINE ACTIVITIES THAT SUPPORT

OPERATIONAL PREPARATION OF THE ENVIRONMENT

AND NON-CONVENTIONAL ASSISTED RECOVERY

CAPABILITIES.

(a) IN GENERAL.—Section 127f of title 10, United States Code,

is amended—

(1) in the section heading, by adding at the end the following:

‘‘and non-conventional assisted recovery capabilities’’;

(2) in subsection (a)—

(A) by striking the first sentence and inserting the

following: ‘‘(1) Amounts appropriated or otherwise made

available for the Department of Defense for operation and

maintenance, Defense-wide, may be used for any purpose

the Secretary of Defense determines to be proper—

‘‘(A) for operational preparation of the environment

for operations of a confidential nature; or

‘‘(B) to establish, develop, and maintain non-conventional

assisted recovery capabilities to facilitate the

recovery of United States military and civilian personnel,

or other individuals, who become isolated or separated.’’;

Funding:

040 OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE—

MISO ............................................................................ 252,480     252,480

060 SPECIAL OPERATIONS COMMAND COMBAT DEVELOPMENT

ACTIVITIES ....................................... 2,012,953         2,012,953

070 SPECIAL OPERATIONS COMMAND MAINTENANCE

......................................................................... 1,210,930      1,182,630

MQ–9 Unmanned Aerial Vehicle unjustified increase

..................................................................... [–4,000 ]

Program decrease ..................................................... [–24,300 ]

080 SPECIAL OPERATIONS COMMAND MANAGEMENT/

OPERATIONAL HEADQUARTERS .............. 202,574        199,968

Program decrease ..................................................... [–2,606 ]

090 SPECIAL OPERATIONS COMMAND THEATER

FORCES ....................................................................... 3,346,004      3,337,278

Program decrease ..................................................... [–8,726 ]

100 SPECIAL OPERATIONS COMMAND CYBERSPACE

ACTIVITIES ................................................................. 49,757 49,757

110 SPECIAL OPERATIONS COMMAND INTELLIGENCE

..................................................................... 1,391,402.    1,405,402

Program decrease ..................................................... [–6,000 ]

Special Operations Command Intelligence increase

in Non-Traditional ISR (SOF Digital

Ecosystem POR) ................................................... [20,000 ]

120 SPECIAL OPERATIONS COMMAND OPERATIONAL

SUPPORT .................................................. 1,438,967 1,419,975

Program decrease ..................................................... [–18,992 ]

Republic of Poland Funded Construction Projects—

Continued

Component Installation or

Location Project Amount

Lubliniec ........ Special Operations

Forces Company

Operations Facility $16,200,000

There is no mention of the John S. McCain Center III for Center for Security Studies in Irregular Warfare.

NDAA: What’s in the $886 billion defense bill | CNN Politics

amp.cnn.com · by Tami Luhby · December 13, 2023

CNN —

The House and Senate have approved a $886.3 billion defense policy bill, which would provide the largest raise for service members in more than two decades, temporarily extend a controversial surveillance program and strengthen the US posture in the Indo-Pacific region to deter Chinese actions.

The nearly 3,100-page National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2024 now goes to President Joe Biden for his signature. The package authorizes $28 billion, or about 3%, more than the previous fiscal year.

The legislation outlines the policy agenda for the Department of Defense and the US military and authorizes spending in line with the Pentagon’s priorities. But it does not appropriate the funding itself.

Also notable, the joint package does not include two controversial provisions related to abortion and transgender health care access, which were in the House defense policy bill that passed this summer. The House version would have prohibited the secretary of defense from paying for or reimbursing expenses relating to abortion services. It also would have barred a health care program for service members from covering hormone treatments for transgender individuals and gender confirmation surgeries.

But the final version of the bill does include multiple measures aimed at “ending wokeness in the military,” according to a summary provided by the Republican-led House Armed Services Committee.

Funding for a separate $105 billion national security package that would provide more assistance to Israel and Ukraine continues to be a point of contention in Congress, with Senate Republicans insisting that more foreign aid be paired with major border security policy changes. While there have been talks to try to find consensus, no bipartisan deal has been reached.

The defense authorization bill would extend the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative through the end of 2026 and authorize $300 million for the program in the current fiscal year and the next one. The program provides funding for the federal government to pay industry to produce weapons and security assistance to send to Ukraine, rather than drawing directly from current US stockpiles of weapons.

Here are some key provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act, according to summaries provided by the House and the Democratic-led Senate Armed Services committees:

Support for service members and their families

The package contains several measures to improve service members’ wages and benefits in hopes of aiding in recruitment and retention.

It would provide a 5.2% boost in service member basic pay and authorize a monthly bonus for junior enlisted members. The bill would also adjust the Basic Allowance for Housing calculation to boost reimbursement for junior enlisted service members so they could better afford rising rents. And it would expand the Basic Needs Allowance to help low-income service members with families.

The bill would also authorize $38 million over the budget request for new family housing and $356 million over the budget request to renovate and build new barracks.

To help military spouses, it would expand their reimbursements for relicensing or business costs and help those working for the federal government keep their jobs by allowing them to telework when service members transfer locations.

And the legislation would reduce child care expenses for military families and authorize $153 million over the budget request for the construction of new child care centers.

Plus, it would authorize the Department of Defense to fund – and Armed Services members to participate in – clinical trials using psychedelic substances and cannabis to treat post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injuries.

Warrantless surveillance of foreign nationals

The bill includes a short-term extension of a controversial law that permits warrantless surveillance of foreign nationals, extending authority for the program through April 19.

The law, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, enables the US government to obtain intelligence by collecting communications records of non-Americans overseas who are using US-based communications services.

Supporters argue Section 702 is a critical tool for safeguarding national security, but it has come under scrutiny from some lawmakers over alleged misuse.

Focus on Indo-Pacific region

To counter Chinese aggression, the package would authorize $14.7 billion for the Pacific Deterrence Initiative and extend it through fiscal year 2024. And it would establish a training, advising and institutional capacity-building program for the military forces of Taiwan.

It would enable the implementation of the AUKUS agreement between the US, United Kingdom and Australia and authorize the eventual sale of nuclear-capable submarines to Australia. The bill would also establish the Indo-Pacific Campaigning Initiative, which would facilitate an increase in the frequency and scale of exercises conducted by the US Indo-Pacific Command, among other efforts.

‘Ending wokeness in the military’

The package would prohibit funding for the teaching, training or promotion of critical race theory in the military, including at service academies and Department of Defense schools, according to the House summary. And it would prohibit the display of any unapproved flags, such as the LGBTQ pride flag, at military installations.

It would also put in place a hiring freeze on diversity, equity and inclusion positions until the US Government Accountability Office completes an investigation of the Pentagon’s DEI programs. Plus, the bill would cut and cap the base pay of DEI staffers at $70,000 a year.

The package includes a Parents Bill of Rights, which would give parents of children in Department of Defense schools the right to review curriculum, books and instructional materials, meet with teachers and provide consent before schools conduct medical exams or screenings of students.

In addition, the legislation reiterates that no funds may be spent on drag shows, Drag Queen Story Hours or similar events.

Help service members who did not get the Covid-19 vaccine

The legislation would require the defense secretary to inform the 8,000 service members who were discharged for not receiving the Covid-19 vaccine of the process they can follow to be reinstated.

It would also treat the lapse in service as a “career intermission” so future promotions are not affected, and it would require the Defense Department to grant requests to correct the personnel files of those discharged so they can receive full retirement benefits.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

CNN’s Clare Foran contributed to this report.

amp.cnn.com · by Tami Luhby · December 13, 2023

SEC. 1075. SPECIAL OPERATIONS FORCE STRUCTURE.

(a) REPORT.—Not later than 90 days after the date of the

enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Defense shall submit to

the congressional defense committees a report containing an assessment

of the optimal force structure for special operations forces.

Such report shall include—

(1) a description of the role of special operations forces

in implementing the most recent national defense strategy

under section 113(g) of title 10, United States Code;

(2) a detailed accounting of the demand for special operations

forces by the geographic combatant commands;

(3) an assessment of current and projected capabilities

and capacities of the general purpose forces of the United

States Armed Forces, including forces that enable special operations,

that could affect force structure capability and capacity

requirements of special operations forces;

(4) an assessment of the size, composition, and organizational

structure of the special operations command headquarters

of each of the Armed Forces and subordinate headquarters

elements;

(5) an assessment of the adequacy of special operations

force structure for meeting the goals of the National Military

Strategy under section 153(b) of title 10, United States Code;

(6) a description of the role of special operations forces

in supporting the Joint Concept for Competing; and

(7) any other matters the Secretary of Defense determines

relevant.

(b) NOTIFICATION REQUIRED.—Except as provided in subsection

(d), not later than 15 days before making any reduction in the

number of special operations forces by more than 1,000 personnel

and prior to implementing or announcing such reduction, the Secretary

of Defense shall submit to the congressional defense committees

written notification of the decision to make such reduction.

(c) CONTENTS OF NOTIFICATION.—A notification required under

subsection (b) shall include—

(1) details of the planned changes to force structure and

personnel requirements and a justification for the planned

changes, including—

(A) which units or occupational skills are planned to

be reduced or reallocated; and

(B) to which units or capabilities the force structure

is planned to be transferred or reallocated;

(2) an accounting of the personnel planned to be transferred

under the force structure change, including which units such

personnel are planned to be transferred to and from;

(3) an analysis of the expected implications of the planned

change on the ability of the Department of Defense to carry

out operational and campaign plans of combatant commanders,

support the Joint Concept for Competing, and meet the goals

of the most recent national defense strategy under section

113(g) of title 10, United States Code; and

(4) any other matters the Secretary of Defense determines

relevant.

(d) EXCEPTION.—The notification requirement under subsection

(b) shall not apply with respect to a reduction in the number

of special operations forces if the Secretary of Defense submits

to the congressional defense committees certification that such

reduction needs to be implemented expeditiously for reasons of

military urgency.

(e) DEFINITIONS.—In this section:

(1) The term ‘‘special operations forces’’ means the forces

described in section 167(j) of title 10, United States Code.

(2) The term ‘‘force structure’’, when used with respect

to an organization, means—

(A) the mission of the organization;

(B) the personnel required to operate the organization;

and

(C) the equipment required to execute the mission

of the organization.

SEC. 1091. SENSE OF CONGRESS REGARDING AUTHORITY OF SECRETARY

OF DEFENSE WITH RESPECT TO IRREGULAR

WARFARE.

(a) IN GENERAL.—It is the sense of Congress that the Secretary

of Defense has the authority to conduct irregular warfare operations,

including clandestine irregular warfare operations, to defend

the United States, allies of the United States, and interests of

the United States, when such operations have been appropriately

authorized.

(b) RULE OF CONSTRUCTION.—Nothing in this section shall be

construed to constitute a specific statutory authorization for any

of the following:

(1) The conduct of a covert action, as such term is defined

in section 503(e) of the National Security Act of 1947 (50

U.S.C. 3093(e)).

(2) The introduction of United States Armed Forces, within

the meaning of the War Powers Resolution (Public Law 93–

148; 50 U.S.C. 1541 et seq.), into hostilities or into situations

wherein hostilities are clearly indicated by the circumstances.

SEC. 1201. MODIFICATION OF SUPPORT OF SPECIAL OPERATIONS FOR

IRREGULAR WARFARE.

(a) IN GENERAL.—Chapter 3 of title 10, United States Code,

is amended by inserting after section 127c the following:

‘‘§ 127d. Support of special operations for irregular warfare

‘‘(a) AUTHORITY.—The Secretary of Defense may, with the

concurrence of the relevant Chief of Mission, expend up to

$20,000,000 during any fiscal year to provide support to foreign

forces, irregular forces, groups, or individuals engaged in supporting

or facilitating ongoing and authorized irregular warfare operations

by United States Special Operations Forces.

‘‘(b) FUNDS.—Funds for support under this section in a fiscal

year shall be derived from amounts authorized to be appropriated

for that fiscal year for the Department of Defense for operation

and maintenance.

‘‘(c) PROCEDURES.—

‘‘(1) IN GENERAL.—The authority in this section shall be

exercised in accordance with such procedures as the Secretary

shall establish for purposes of this section.

‘‘(2) ELEMENTS.—The procedures required under paragraph

(1) shall establish, at a minimum, the following:

‘‘(A) Policy guidance for the execution of, and constraints

within, activities under the authority in this section.

‘‘(B) The processes through which activities under the

authority in this section are to be developed, validated,

and coordinated, as appropriate, with relevant entities of

the United States Government.

‘‘(C) The processes through which legal reviews and

determinations are made to comply with the authority in

this section and ensure that the exercise of such authority

is consistent with the national security of the United

States.

‘‘(D) The processes to ensure, to the extent practicable,

that before a decision to provide support is made, the

recipients of support do not pose a counterintelligence or

force protection threat and have not engaged in gross violations

of human rights.

‘‘(E) The processes by which the Department shall keep

the congressional defense committees fully and currently

informed of—

‘‘(i) the requirements for the use of the authority

in this section; and

H. R. 2670—303

‘‘(ii) activities conducted under such authority.

‘‘(3) NOTICE TO CONGRESS ON PROCEDURES AND MATERIAL

MODIFICATIONS.—The Secretary shall notify the congressional

defense committees of the procedures established pursuant to

this section before any exercise of the authority in this section,

and shall notify such committee of any material modification

of the procedures.

‘‘(d) CONSTRUCTION OF AUTHORITY.—Nothing in this section

shall be construed to constitute a specific statutory authorization

for any of the following:

‘‘(1) The conduct of a covert action, as such term is defined

in section 503(e) of the National Security Act of 1947 (50

U.S.C. 3093(e)).

‘‘(2) The introduction of United States Armed Forces

(including as such term is defined in section 8(c) of the War

Powers Resolution ( 50 U.S.C. 1547(c))) into hostilities or into

situations wherein hostilities are clearly indicated by the circumstances.

‘‘(3) The provision of support to regular forces, irregular

forces, groups, or individuals for the conduct of operations

that United States Special Operations Forces are not otherwise

legally authorized to conduct themselves.

‘‘(4) The conduct or support of activities, directly or

indirectly, that are inconsistent with the laws of armed conflict.

‘‘(e) LIMITATION ON DELEGATION.—The authority of the Secretary

to make funds available under this section for support of

a military operation may not be delegated.

‘‘(f) PROGRAMMATIC AND POLICY OVERSIGHT.—The Assistant

Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict

shall have primary programmatic and policy oversight within

the Office of the Secretary of Defense of support to irregular warfare

activities authorized by this section.

‘‘(g) NOTIFICATION.—

‘‘(1) IN GENERAL.—Not later than 15 days before exercising

the authority in this section to make funds available to initiate

support of an ongoing and authorized operation or changing

the scope or funding level of any support under this section

for such an operation by $500,000 or an amount equal to

10 percent of such funding level (whichever is less), the Secretary

shall notify the congressional defense committees of the

use of such authority with respect to such operation. Any such

notification shall be in writing.

‘‘(2) ELEMENTS.—A notification required by this subsection

shall include the following:

‘‘(A) The type of support to be provided to United

States Special Operations Forces, and a description of the

ongoing and authorized operation to be supported.

‘‘(B) A description of the foreign forces, irregular forces,

groups, or individuals engaged in supporting or facilitating

the ongoing and authorized operation that is to be the

recipient of funds.

‘‘(C) The type of support to be provided to the recipient

of the funds, and a description of the end-use monitoring

to be used in connection with the use of the funds.

‘‘(D) The amount obligated under the authority to provide

support.

H. R. 2670—304

‘‘(E) The duration for which the support is expected

to be provided, and an identification of the timeframe in

which the provision of support will be reviewed by the

commander of the applicable combatant command for a

determination with respect to the necessity of continuing

such support.

‘‘(F) The determination of the Secretary that the provision

of support does not constitute any of the following:

‘‘(i) An introduction of United States Armed Forces

(including as such term is defined in section 8(c) of

the War Powers Resolution (50 U.S.C. 1547(c))) into

hostilities, or into situations where hostilities are

clearly indicated by the circumstances, without specific

statutory authorization within the meaning of section

5(b) of such Resolution (50 U.S.C. 1544(b)).

‘‘(ii) A covert action, as such term is defined in

section 503(e) of the National Security Act of 1947

(50 U.S.C. 3093(e)).

‘‘(iii) An authorization for the provision of support

to regular forces, irregular forces, groups, or individuals

for the conduct of operations that United States

Special Operations Forces are not otherwise legally

authorized to conduct themselves.

‘‘(iv) The conduct or support of activities, directly

or indirectly, that are inconsistent with the laws of

armed conflict.

‘‘(h) NOTIFICATION OF SUSPENSION OR TERMINATION OF SUPPORT.—

‘‘(1) IN GENERAL.—Not later than 48 hours after suspending

or terminating support to any foreign force, irregular force,

group, or individual provided pursuant to the authority in

this section, the Secretary shall submit to the congressional

defense committees a written notice of such suspension or

termination.

‘‘(2) ELEMENTS.—The written notice required by paragraph

(1) shall include each of the following:

‘‘(A) A description of the reasons for the suspension

or termination of such support.

‘‘(B) A description of any effect on regional, theater,

or global campaign plan objectives anticipated to result

from such suspension or termination.

‘‘(C) A plan for such suspension or termination, and,

in the case of support that is planned to be transitioned

to any other program of the Department of Defense or

to a program of any other Federal department or agency,

a detailed description of the transition plan, including the

resources, equipment, capabilities, and personnel associated

with such plan.

‘‘(i) BIANNUAL REPORTS.—

‘‘(1) REPORT ON PRECEDING FISCAL YEAR.—Not later than

120 days after the close of each fiscal year in which subsection

(a) is in effect, the Secretary shall submit to the congressional

defense committees a report on the support provided under

this section during the preceding fiscal year.

‘‘(2) REPORT ON CURRENT CALENDAR YEAR.— Not later than

180 days after the submittal of each report required by paragraph

(1), the Secretary shall submit to the congressional

H. R. 2670—305

defense committees a report on the support provided under

this section during the first half of the fiscal year in which

the report under this paragraph is submitted.

‘‘(3) ELEMENTS.—Each report required by this subsection

shall include the following:

‘‘(A) A summary of the ongoing irregular warfare operations,

and associated authorized campaign plans, being

conducted by United States Special Operations Forces that

were supported or facilitated by foreign forces, irregular

forces, groups, or individuals for which support was provided

under this section during the period covered by such

report.

‘‘(B) A description of the support or facilitation provided

by such foreign forces, irregular forces, groups, or individuals

to United States Special Operations Forces during

such period.

‘‘(C) The type of recipients that were provided support

under this section during such period, identified by authorized

category (foreign forces, irregular forces, groups, or

individuals).

‘‘(D) A detailed description of the support provided

to the recipients under this section during such period.

‘‘(E) The total amount obligated for support under this

section during such period, including budget details.

‘‘(F) The intended duration of support provided under

this section during such period.

‘‘(G) An assessment of value of the support provided

under this section during such period, including a summary

of significant activities undertaken by foreign forces, irregular

forces, groups, or individuals to support irregular warfare

operations by United States Special Operations Forces.

‘‘(H) The total amount obligated for support under

this section in prior fiscal years.

‘‘(j) QUARTERLY BRIEFINGS.—

‘‘(1) IN GENERAL.—Not less frequently than quarterly, the

Secretary shall provide to the congressional defense committees

a briefing on the use of the authority provided by this section,

and other matters relating to irregular warfare, with the primary

purposes of—

‘‘(A) keeping the congressional defense committees fully

and currently informed of irregular warfare requirements

and activities, including emerging combatant commands

requirements; and

‘‘(B) consulting with the congressional defense committees

regarding such matters.

‘‘(2) ELEMENTS.—Each briefing required by paragraph (1)

shall include the following:

‘‘(A) An update on irregular warfare activities within

each geographic combatant command and a description

of the manner in which such activities support the respective

theater campaign plan and the National Defense

Strategy.

‘‘(B) An overview of relevant authorities and legal

issues, including limitations.

‘‘(C) An overview of irregular warfare-related interagency

activities and initiatives.

H. R. 2670—306

‘‘(D) A description of emerging combatant command

requirements for the use of the authority provided by this

section.

‘‘(k) IRREGULAR WARFARE DEFINED.—Subject to subsection (d),

in this section, the term ‘irregular warfare’ means Department

of Defense activities not involving armed conflict that support predetermined

United States policy and military objectives conducted

by, with, and through regular forces, irregular forces, groups, and

individuals.’’.

(b) CLERICAL AMENDMENT.—The table of sections at the beginning

of such chapter is amended by inserting after the item relating

to section 127c the following new item:

‘‘127d. Support of special operations for irregular warfare.’’.

(c) REPEAL.—Section 1202 of the National Defense Authorization

Act for Fiscal Year 2018 is repealed.

SEC. 1221. MODIFICATION OF AUTHORITY FOR EXPENDITURE OF

FUNDS FOR CLANDESTINE ACTIVITIES THAT SUPPORT

OPERATIONAL PREPARATION OF THE ENVIRONMENT

AND NON-CONVENTIONAL ASSISTED RECOVERY

CAPABILITIES.

(a) IN GENERAL.—Section 127f of title 10, United States Code,

is amended—

(1) in the section heading, by adding at the end the following:

‘‘and non-conventional assisted recovery capabilities’’;

(2) in subsection (a)—

(A) by striking the first sentence and inserting the

following: ‘‘(1) Amounts appropriated or otherwise made

available for the Department of Defense for operation and

maintenance, Defense-wide, may be used for any purpose

the Secretary of Defense determines to be proper—

‘‘(A) for operational preparation of the environment

for operations of a confidential nature; or

‘‘(B) to establish, develop, and maintain non-conventional

assisted recovery capabilities to facilitate the

recovery of United States military and civilian personnel,

or other individuals, who become isolated or separated.’’;

and

(B) by striking ‘‘Such a determination’’ and inserting

the following:

‘‘(2) Such a determination’’;

(3) by striking subsection (b) and inserting the following:

‘‘(b) AUTHORIZED ACTIVITIES.—Activities authorized by subsection

(a) may, in limited and special circumstances as determined

H. R. 2670—317

by the Secretary of Defense, include the provision of support to

foreign forces, irregular forces, groups, or individuals to conduct

operational preparation of the environment and to conduct or support

operations to establish, develop, and maintain non-conventional

assisted recovery capabilities to facilitate the recovery of United

States military and civilian personnel, or other individuals, who

become isolated or separated. Such support may include limited

amounts of equipment, supplies, training, transportation, or other

logistical support or funding.’’.

(4) by redesignating subsections (c), (d), (e), (f), and (g)

as subsections (d), (e), (f), (g), and (h), respectively;

(5) by inserting after subsection (b), as amended, the following:

‘‘(c) PROCEDURES.—

‘‘(1) IN GENERAL.—The authority in this section shall be

exercised in accordance with such procedures as the Secretary

of Defense shall establish for purposes of this section.

‘‘(2) ELEMENTS.—The procedures required under paragraph

(1) shall establish, at a minimum, each of the following:

‘‘(A) Policy, strategy, or other guidance for the execution

of, and constraints within, activities conducted under

this section.

‘‘(B) The processes through which activities conducted

under this section are to be developed, validated, and

coordinated, as appropriate, with relevant Federal entities.

‘‘(C) The processes through which legal reviews and

determinations are made to comply with the authority in

this section and ensure that the exercise of such authority

is consistent with the national security interests of the

United States.

‘‘(D) The processes by which the Department of Defense

shall keep the congressional defense committees fully and

currently informed of—

‘‘(i) the requirements for the use of the authority

in this section; and

‘‘(ii) activities conducted under such authority.

‘‘(3) NOTICE TO CONGRESS.—The Secretary shall notify the

congressional defense committees of any material change to

the procedures established under paragraph (1).’’;

(6) in subsection (d), as redesignated—

(A) in the subsection heading, by striking ‘‘LIMITATION

ON DELEGATION’’ and inserting ‘‘LIMITATIONS’’; and

(B) by striking ‘‘The Secretary of Defense may not

delegate’’ and inserting the following: ‘‘The Secretary of

Defense—

‘‘(1) may expend up to $40,000,000 in any fiscal year for

the purposes described in subsection (a); and

‘‘(2) may not delegate’’;

(7) in subsection (g), as redesignated—

(A) by redesignating paragraph (4) as paragraph (5);

and

(B) by striking paragraphs (1), (2), and (3) and

inserting the following:

‘‘(1) a description of activities carried out for the purposes

described in subsection (a);

‘‘(2) the amount of such expenditures;

H. R. 2670—318

‘‘(3) an identification of the type of recipients to receive

support, including foreign forces, irregular forces, groups or

individuals, as appropriate;

‘‘(4) the total amount of funds obligated for such expenditures

in prior fiscal years; and’’; and

(8) by adding at the end the following:

‘‘(i) OVERSIGHT BY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR SPECIAL

OPERATIONS AND LOW INTENSITY CONFLICT.—The Assistant

Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity

Conflict shall have primary responsibility within the Office of the

Secretary of Defense for oversight of policies and programs authorized

by this section.

‘‘(j) OPERATIONAL PREPARATION OF THE ENVIRONMENT

DEFINED.—In this section, the term ‘operational preparation of the

environment’ means the conduct of activities in likely or potential

operational areas to set conditions for mission execution.’’.

(b) CLERICAL AMENDMENT.—The table of sections for chapter

3 of title 10, United States Code, is amended by striking the

item relating to section 127f and inserting the following:

‘‘127f. Expenditure of funds for clandestine activities that support operational preparation

of the environment and non-conventional assisted recovery capabilities.’’.

040 OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE—

MISO ............................................................................ 252,480     252,480

060 SPECIAL OPERATIONS COMMAND COMBAT DEVELOPMENT

ACTIVITIES ....................................... 2,012,953         2,012,953

070 SPECIAL OPERATIONS COMMAND MAINTENANCE

......................................................................... 1,210,930      1,182,630

MQ–9 Unmanned Aerial Vehicle unjustified increase

..................................................................... [–4,000 ]

Program decrease ..................................................... [–24,300 ]

080 SPECIAL OPERATIONS COMMAND MANAGEMENT/

OPERATIONAL HEADQUARTERS .............. 202,574        199,968

Program decrease ..................................................... [–2,606 ]

090 SPECIAL OPERATIONS COMMAND THEATER

FORCES ....................................................................... 3,346,004      3,337,278

Program decrease ..................................................... [–8,726 ]

100 SPECIAL OPERATIONS COMMAND CYBERSPACE

ACTIVITIES ................................................................. 49,757 49,757

110 SPECIAL OPERATIONS COMMAND INTELLIGENCE

..................................................................... 1,391,402.    1,405,402

Program decrease ..................................................... [–6,000 ]

Special Operations Command Intelligence increase

in Non-Traditional ISR (SOF Digital

Ecosystem POR) ................................................... [20,000 ]

120 SPECIAL OPERATIONS COMMAND OPERATIONAL

SUPPORT .................................................. 1,438,967 1,419,975

Program decrease ..................................................... [–18,992 ]

Republic of Poland Funded Construction Projects—

Continued

Component Installation or

Location Project Amount

Lubliniec ........ Special Operations

Forces Company

Operations Facility $16,200,000

2. Philippine Provinces Linked To US Military Welcome Chinese Investment

I did not meet any Filipino in Manila this week who had anything positive to say about China.

Philippine Provinces Linked To US Military Welcome Chinese Investment

eurasiareview.com · December 15, 2023

By Camille Elemia

Free classrooms, cash donations and all expenses-paid trips to China.

Against the backdrop of Sino-U.S. tensions, Beijing is investing in Philippine provinces facing Taiwan, according to an interview with a provincial governor and information from China’s envoy to Manila.

In recent years, China has intensified its efforts to woo officials in the provinces of Cagayan, at the northern tip of Luzon island, and Batanes, a chain of Philippine islands 125 miles (201 km) from Taiwan. Both provinces, which are relatively close to the strategic Luzon Strait and Bashin Channel, have also been a focus lately of American military activity.

Chinese officials have visited Cagayan at least four times this year, according to official records. That includes a Nov. 29 to Dec. 1 visit to the province by Chinese Ambassador Huang Xilian, who was welcomed by Cagayan Gov. Manuel Mamba.

“Why would we fight China? China has been very good to Cagayan,” Mamba told BenarNews in a phone interview on Tuesday. He described China as Cagayan’s “big brother,” citing their pre-colonial trade relations.

Still, Cagayan is home to Naval Base Camilo Osias and Cagayan North International Airport, two sites that are covered under a newly expanded military agreement between the Philippines and the United States.

The Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) signed by the Marcos and Biden administrations earlier this year, gives U.S. troops access to more Philippine military bases on a rotating basis and allows Washington to build facilities as well as pre-deploy military weapons and equipment at nine bases.

The Philippines and the United States are bound by the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty, which calls on both to assist each other in times of aggression or war. American troops are regularly in the Philippines for war games that have taken renewed urgency, analysts have said, because of perceptions that Beijing may invade Taiwan.

Mamba had earlier publicly stated his opposition to EDCA sites located in Cagayan province.

Ambassador Huang visited the town of Santa Ana where Naval Base Camilo Osias is located, said Mamba, who is seeking financing from Chinese investors for a new international airport and seaport to link his province to East Asian countries.

“The Chinese embassy is helping me look for Chinese investors,” Mamba said. “Their government is giving incentives to businesses that will invest in us.”

Mamba said the embassy had also promised to help find buyers for the dredged materials from the Aparri river, the spot for a planned seaport.

Sister city

In Cagayan, China has donated money and food packs to the province during typhoons.

The embassy in Manila reported donating at least U.S. $54,000 for the construction of kindergarten classrooms in the municipality of Tuao, Mamba’s hometown.

“Since 2016, China has been very generous to us, not like America which did not give us anything,” Mamba said. “Sometimes China would course it through the different Chinese chambers of commerce.”

Negotiations are ongoing for a sister city pact between Tuguegarao city in Cagayan and Huzhou city in China’s Zhejiang province, which Mamba visited with other local officials in May.

He said about 20 business people from Zhejiang frequently visit Cagayan, adding that on Dec. 17, local officials and business people were expected to travel to China on a sponsored trip.

While in China, Mamba said he had a “deep and long discussion” with Sun Weidong, Chinese vice minister of foreign affairs, on the two countries’ ties.

Mamba said Sun asked him to relay three points to Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr: Taiwan is China’s internal problem; the South China Sea dispute should be discussed only by Manila and Beijing; and the two countries are good neighbors and should not allow foreign forces to interfere.

The Cagayan governor told BenarNews that he sent a letter to the president after his trip, but Marcos’ office had yet to respond.

Batanes

In the Batanes islands, which make up the northernmost province in the Philippines, China recently donated laptops, desktops and printers as requested by Gov. Marilou Cayco.

Previously, according to Cayco, the Chinese Embassy was very quick in delivering funding.

“They just ask me to write what we need and they will give it to us,” Cayco told reporters in December 2022.

Just like in Cagayan, China began wooing Batanes in 2016 – the year that an international court ruled in favor of Manila and invalidated Beijing’s expansive claims in the South China Sea.

In a social media post by the Chinese Embassy in Manila, it said that China had been generous to Batanes since Cayco’s term started.

The embassy donated $180,000 for the victims of earthquakes. It also donated computer equipment and funds to create a “friendship farm” in Kavaywan on the island of Itbayat, the northernmost inhabited island in the Philippines.

“We have had a long-term cooperation with the Province of Batanes and helped to establish the Kavaywan Ivatan-Chinese Friendship Tourism Farm,” Ambassador Huang said in a Facebook post on Dec. 9. “Glad to turn over sets of laptops, desktops and printers to Gov. Cayco. May our humble contribution help the people of Batanes.”

The farm, which is part of a vast vegetable production site according to local officials, is a vital component of the food sufficiency program for the province, which has long felt isolated from the national government.

Cayco had said the province’s officials decided to focus on beefing up the remote islands’ food supplies to prepare for a possible conflict between Taiwan and China. The remote province is anticipating hosting thousands of Filipino repatriates should there be an invasion.

In this year’s Balikatan (shoulder-to-shoulder) exercises, the annual joint military drills between the U.S. and the Philippines, troops simulated the defense of Batanes from a hypothetical aggressor through air assault.

In September, U.S. Ambassador MaryKay Carlson told reporters that the governor had pitched several development projects for U.S. support. These included constructing a breakwater to allow cargo ships to dock when waters are rough and providing solar lights and streetlights.

eurasiareview.com · December 15, 2023

3. Washington Urges Israel to Scale Down Its War in Gaza

Applying the 10,000 mile screwdriver on our ally's military forces?

Washington Urges Israel to Scale Down Its War in Gaza

By Adam Entous, Aaron Boxerman and Thomas Fuller

Adam Entous reported from Washington, Aaron Boxerman from Jerusalem and Thomas Fuller from San Francisco.

The New York Times · by Thomas Fuller · December 15, 2023

The call for a more targeted phase in the war appeared to be the most definitive effort yet by the United States to restrain Israel in its retaliation against Hamas for the attacks it led on Oct. 7.

Israeli soldiers in northern Israel in October. The United States has urged Israel to draw down its ground campaign in Gaza.Credit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

Dec. 14, 2023

Biden administration officials want Israel to end its large-scale ground and air campaign in the Gaza Strip within weeks and to transition to a more targeted phase in its war against Hamas, American officials said Thursday.

Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser, met with Israeli leaders on Thursday about the direction of the war. Mr. Sullivan did not specify a timetable, but four U.S. officials said Mr. Biden wants Israel to switch to more precise tactics in about three weeks. The officials asked for anonymity to discuss the president’s thinking.

American officials have made that timeline clear to their Israeli counterparts in recent days, the latest step in a gradual move by the administration to communicate that American patience with widespread civilian deaths is running out.

“I want them to be focused on how to save civilian lives — not stop going after Hamas, but be more careful,” Mr. Biden said on Thursday after a speech on prescription drug costs at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md.

The new phase that the Americans envision would involve smaller groups of elite forces that would move in and out of population centers in Gaza, carrying out more precise missions to find and kill Hamas leaders, rescue hostages and destroy tunnels, the officials said.

The moment appeared to be the most definitive effort yet by the United States to restrain Israel in its campaign against Hamas for the attacks it led on Oct. 7, particularly as the conditions in Gaza turn catastrophic.

After wholeheartedly embracing Israel even as the Palestinian death toll mounted, the Biden administration has found itself under pressure at home and abroad to rein in the assault. The challenge has been preserving the president’s determination to let Israel eliminate Hamas while at the same time easing the chorus of critics outraged by the humanitarian crisis.

Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defense minister, said before meeting with Mr. Sullivan on Thursday that his country’s campaign against Hamas would last “more than several months,” a signal from Israeli officials that they intend to keep fighting until Hamas is eliminated. He said destroying Hamas, the armed group that carried out the devastating Oct. 7 attacks in Israel, was essential to his country’s security.

Mr. Gallant described Hamas as well entrenched. “They built infrastructure under the ground and above the ground, and it is not easy to destroy them,” Mr. Gallant said. “It will require a period of time — it will last more than several months.”

U.S. officials insisted that the two positions were not in direct conflict. Israel’s efforts to hunt down Hamas leaders will continue for months, even after the transition from higher to lower intensity operations takes place, they said.

During their meetings in Israel on Thursday, Israeli leaders presented Mr. Sullivan with their own timeline for waging a more targeted offensive. Their timeline was slower than the one favored by Mr. Biden and some of his advisers.

The American officials emphasized that Mr. Sullivan did not direct or order Israeli leaders to change tactics.

Still, the U.S. efforts come as differences between the United States and Israel have spilled into the open. Mr. Biden said this week that Israel was losing international support because of the “indiscriminate bombing” of Gaza, a much harsher assessment than his earlier public statements urging greater care to protect civilians.

The conflict has forced Mr. Biden to confront the limits of his leverage over Israel, which receives $3.8 billion a year in American security assistance.

Most American arms sales come with strings attached; Ukraine, for example, has been prohibited from firing American-made missiles into Russian territory. Mr. Biden could put a similar limit on how American bombs are used in dense civilian areas like Gaza.

But to do so could also diminish Israel’s ability to go after underground Hamas tunnels and complexes — and it would put Mr. Biden at odds with the pro-Israel lobby with which he has been sympathetic over many years.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has, in the past, acquiesced to advice from the Biden administration — for Israel to allow humanitarian supplies into Gaza and to take steps to reduce civilian casualties — after initially rejecting them outright.

Mr. Netanyahu’s office released a statement about the U.S. desire for a more targeted strikes, saying only that “Prime Minister Netanyahu has made it clear that Israel will continue the war until we complete all of its goals.”

Mr. Sullivan also heard from Israeli officials about their concerns about a wider regional conflict, as their military trades strikes with the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon across Israel’s northern border.

“The international community, and the United States in particular, must take swift action to ensure that this threat is removed,” the office of Benny Gantz, a member of the Israeli war cabinet and a former military chief of staff, said in a statement. The statement noted that Hezbollah and Hamas share an ally and sponsor in Iran.

Israel’s determination to carry on with its siege of Gaza comes as Philippe Lazzarini, the director of the United Nations agency that assists Palestinians, described conditions in the Palestinian territory as a “living hell.”

Fighting across Gaza appears to have intensified this week, with Israel saying Wednesday that 10 of its soldiers had been killed in a single day.

More than two months of air and artillery strikes have forced hundreds of thousands of Gazans into makeshift encampments without enough food or water, and nearly nonexistent sanitation, Mr. Lazzarini said in a speech Wednesday hours after visiting southern Gaza.

He described Gazans as “desperate, hungry people” and said the sight of a truck carrying humanitarian assistance now provokes chaos, with people stopping the convoys and eating what they can get from the trucks on the streets.

“Civil order is breaking down,” he said.

“We are still distributing whatever food we manage to bring in, but this is often as little as a bottle of water and a can of tuna per day, per family, often numbering six or seven people,” he said.

Mr. Netanyahu’s government and the Biden administration have mostly sought to paper over their divides since the attack that killed at least 1,200 people in southern Israel on Oct. 7. Israel has responded with more than two months of bombardment and a ground invasion of Gaza that have killed at least 15,000 people, and likely thousands more, according to Gazan health officials, and forced most of the territory’s 2.2 million people to flee their homes.

The United States and Israel have also differed over who should control Gaza after the war. American officials have said the Palestinian Authority, which has international support, should control the enclave, while Mr. Netanyahu has appeared to rule that out for now.

Even as Mr. Biden has said Israel must do more to protect civilians, he has been steadfast in supporting its right to respond to the Oct. 7 attack.

Adam Entous is a Washington-based investigative correspondent and a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner. Before joining the Washington bureau of The Times, he covered intelligence, national security and foreign policy for The New Yorker magazine, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. More about Adam Entous

Thomas Fuller, a Page One Correspondent for The Times, writes and rewrites stories for the front page. More about Thomas Fuller

A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: U.S. Wants Israel To Narrow Scale Of Attack in Gaza

558

The New York Times · by Thomas Fuller · December 15, 2023

4. Confident Putin Suggests He Has Winning Hand in Ukraine

Confident Putin Suggests He Has Winning Hand in Ukraine

By Valerie Hopkins and Anton Troianovski

Valerie Hopkins reported from Vladimir Putin’s news conference in Moscow, and Anton Troianovski from Berlin.

The New York Times · by Anton Troianovski · December 14, 2023

The Russian leader, in his annual news conference, said he was open to peace talks but showed no hint of compromise. “Peace will come when we achieve our goals,” he said.

President Vladimir V. Putin arriving for his annual news conference on Thursday in Moscow, in a photo provided by Russian state media.Credit...Aleksander Kazakov/Sputnik

Dec. 14, 2023

阅读简体中文版閱讀繁體中文版

President Vladimir V. Putin on Thursday cast himself as a wartime leader in full control of his invasion and his nation, his confidence on display in a stage-managed, four-hour news conference that underscored the Russian leader’s apparent determination to outlast Ukraine and the West.

Mr. Putin said his vaguely defined goals of the “demilitarization” and “denazification” of Ukraine — the same unfounded justifications that he used to launch the invasion nearly two years ago — had not changed. He reiterated that he was open to peace talks, but offered no hint of a willingness to compromise. And he boasted that Ukraine’s Western backing was running dry, a sign of how the impasse in Washington over more funding for Kyiv had buoyed the mood in the Kremlin.

“Peace will come when we achieve our goals,” Mr. Putin said. Referring to Western military aid to Ukraine, he added: “They’re getting everything as freebies. But these freebies can run out at some point, and it looks like they’re already starting to run out.”

Mr. Putin said Russia’s vague goals of “demilitarization” and “denazification” in Ukraine remained unchanged.Credit...Pool photo by Alexander Zemlianichenko

For the first time, Mr. Putin commented on Russia’s arrest last March of Evan Gershkovich, a correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, who remains in pretrial detention in Moscow on espionage charges that he, his employer and the U.S. government have vehemently denied. Analysts have said that Mr. Gershkovich’s best hope of being released is through a prisoner exchange with the United States or another Western country.

“We want to make a deal, but it should be mutually acceptable to both sides,” Mr. Putin said at the news conference, referring to Mr. Gershkovich and Paul Whelan, a former Marine and corporate executive. Mr. Whelan is serving a 16-year sentence in Russia on espionage charges that the United States has called politically motivated.

The Russian leader’s appearance came just hours after a Moscow court upheld the detention of Mr. Gershkovich with a ruling that will leave the journalist — who has been held for 260 days — in custody until at least the end of January. The State Department said last week that Russia had rejected a “substantial offer” that would have freed him and Mr. Whelan

“It’s not that we’re refusing to return them; we didn’t refuse,” the Russian leader said, adding, “There is contact and dialogue with our American partners on this.”

transcript

0:00/1:16

-0:00

transcript

Russia in Dialogue With U.S. on Detained Americans, Putin Says

Mr. Putin described talks with U.S. officials over two detained Americans, Evan Gershkovich, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, and Paul Whelan, a former Marine and corporate executive, as “difficult.”

My colleague, the Wall Street Journal correspondent Evan Gershkovich has been held in Lefortovo Prison without a trial for 37 weeks. His detention was today, again, the extension on his detention was today, again, upheld. Paul Whelan, another U.S. citizen, has been in prison for nearly five years. A spokesman for the U.S. State Department, which considers both men wrongfully detained, recently said that Moscow had rejected what it called a substantial offer to return both of them to the United States. Is that true? What will it take to bring them home?

Mr. Putin described talks with U.S. officials over two detained Americans, Evan Gershkovich, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, and Paul Whelan, a former Marine and corporate executive, as “difficult.”Credit...Dmitry Serebryakov/Associated Press

Mr. Putin spoke on Thursday from a position of relative strength. Russian forces fended off Ukraine’s counteroffensive this year and are now attacking in several areas along the front line. Military production in Russia is ramping up, and Western sanctions have failed to cripple the economy.

At the same time, Ukraine faces some of the steepest challenges of the war, deadlocked on the battlefield and urgently seeking to shore up Western support. Just this week, President Volodymyr Zelensky came away from Washington empty-handed as he sought to persuade Congress to pass a substantive aid package.

Ukraine did receive a glimmer of good news on Thursday when the European Union agreed to officially open talks for Kyiv to join the bloc. Accession could take years, but any attempt by Ukraine to move closer to the West has always irritated Mr. Putin, including a potential trade deal that Russia pressured Kyiv to abandon in 2013.

Mr. Putin spoke at a nationally televised event near the Kremlin that featured two staples of the two-plus decades of his rule: his year-end news conference, at which hundreds of journalists try to get the president’s attention by hollering and holding up signs; and his annual call-in show, in which thousands of regular Russians write in, many of them trying to get him to intervene to solve local problems.

This photo released by Russian state media shows would-be questioners attempting to get Mr. Putin’s attention during his news conference on Thursday.Credit...Vladimir Gerdo/Sputnik

Last year, Mr. Putin held neither event, a sign that he had little good news to report after the disastrous beginning of his invasion of Ukraine. This year, the Kremlin for the first time combined the two so that Thursday’s spectacle became a head-spinning telecast that alternated between questions from journalists in the hall and carefully selected notes and videos sent in by the public.

Throughout the event, Mr. Putin sought to appear confident and in command. Next spring’s rubber-stamp presidential election, which is expected to grant him another six-year term, went largely unmentioned, suggesting that the president saw no need for even perfunctory campaigning. One journalist from the Russian Far East expressed support for Mr. Putin’s candidacy, telling the Russian leader that “you’re in power as long as I can remember myself.”

Queried about problems, Mr. Putin largely brushed them off, even when it came to the skyrocketing price of eggs. He responded to a question about it with a deadpan, off-color joke before apologizing for his government’s inability to come to grips with the problem. And when a military correspondent asked about the shortage of drones on the front line, Mr. Putin shot back, “You can’t not see that it’s getting better.”

Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, wrote: “Putin isn’t interested in currying favor or buttering people up. He believes that the people are with him, and therefore he allows himself to behave very reservedly.”

The event’s stagecraft highlighted the war in Ukraine, which the Kremlin still describes as “the special military operation.” The first 90 minutes featured a wounded soldier, two military bloggers and three video questions from Ukrainian territory occupied by Russia. Unlike the war’s early months, when Russian officials sought to hide its reality from the public, the Kremlin now evidently sees it as a winning message.

But Mr. Putin also tried to assure Russians that the invasion would not bring new upheaval into their lives. He said he saw no need for another military draft because, he claimed, some 500,000 people had signed up for military service voluntarily.

“Why do we need mobilization?” Mr. Putin said. “Today, there’s no need for it.”

Soldiers in Moscow in August. Mr. Putin said he saw no need for another military draft for the war in Ukraine.Credit...Nanna Heitmann for The New York Times

The program, carefully curated to convey a veneer of openness, took place in Moscow’s Gostiny Dvor, a vast former market hall one block from Red Square. It was decked out with large video screens on which questions from across Russia and occupied Ukrainian territory were displayed for 20 or so seconds at a time. Most of them went unanswered.

As time ticked on, people in the audience began yelling out the names of their cities — “Omsk!” “Ufa!” — and their news outlets in the hope of posing their questions. In the background, a constant ticker of videos and questions — reminiscent of the blue background with white font of “Jeopardy!” — were broadcast on four screens on the wall.

At one point, Mr. Putin gave the floor to two young men from Luhansk and Donetsk, Ukrainian territories that Russia illegally annexed last year. Their comments highlighted the propagandistic nature of the event.

“We came without questions; we have nothing to complain about,” said the questioner from Luhansk. “We came to say thank you to you for making us part of Russia.”

But throughout the discussion, many questions from the occupied territories were displayed on the large screens.

“In Mariupol after liberation many of the old elevators in high buildings have been shut off. When will there be new ones? I live on the eighth floor and I’m 80 years old,” one person wrote in.

Many questions focused on basic quality-of-life issues, topics that ordinary Russians were coping with on a daily basis: inflation, a lack of infrastructure and rising energy prices in cities where temperatures reach minus 22 Fahrenheit.

Yakutsk, in northern Siberia, this month, where temperatures dropped below minus 58 Fahrenheit.Credit...Roman Kutukov/Reuters

The session represents an opportunity for regular Russians to take their hyperlocal issues to the president. Many people perceive the local and regional authorities as corrupt, but believe in the president.

That was certainly how Mr. Putin behaved, rather than as someone seeking support for re-election. He did not make many campaign promises and was very confident in his responses, blaming people’s problems on local and regional governments, calling them “technical issues.”

Mr. Putin has held power in Russia, either as president or prime minister, since 1999. If he wins as expected in March and serves the term to completion, he would become the longest-serving Russian leader since Empress Catherine the Great in the 18th century.

Mr. Putin did not address the vast inequality in Russia, but the questions scrolling behind him were a reminder that there were some people who expected more.

In the ticker of questions was this one: “Why is your reality so divergent from our existence?” Another questioner, using Mr. Putin’s patronymic as a sign of respect, wrote: “Vladimir Vladimirovich, please tell us, when are we going to live better?”

Anatoly Kurmanaev contributed reporting from Berlin, and Ivan Nechepurenko from Tbilisi, Georgia.

Valerie Hopkins covers the war in Ukraine and how the conflict is changing Russia, Ukraine, Europe and the United States. She is based in Moscow. More about Valerie Hopkins

Anton Troianovski is the Moscow bureau chief for The Times. He writes about Russia, Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia. More about Anton Troianovski

A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 10 of the New York edition with the headline: Confident Putin Suggests He Has Winning Hand in His War on Ukraine

The New York Times · by Anton Troianovski · December 14, 2023

5. The Atrophy of American Statecraft

Perhaps we could shift all the spaces that are being cut from DOD over to State. I am not being sarcastic this time. I think we should fund a national security budget that includes both DOD and State and achieve a proper resourcing balance between the two.

Excerpts:

Across the free world, the current period of crisis has spotlighted the mismatch between the institutions it had going in and the quality of effort it needs now. The public debates about national interests are largely disconnected from the practical issues. In the medium term, the U.S. government and its partners must examine whether their institutions—especially the civilian institutions that deal with finance, commerce, technology, and humanitarian relief—are really fit for purpose. People meet constantly, but they strain to get things done. At the end of 2023, the economic side of the U.S. government was taking protectionist actions that were sabotaging cooperation with allies on green technology, critical materials, and common management of the digital revolution at the same time that Biden claimed to be rallying the free world.

The U.S. Foreign Service could be tripled in size and reconceived on a whole-of-government basis, with overhauled training, and the costs would amount to a rounding error in the overall federal budget. Across the Atlantic, the EU should develop a better growth strategy, with a streamlined European Commission and more effective decision processes by the European Council, the EU’s governing board of member states. But the European experiment in common foreign policymaking has not been successful, and national governments must step up to their heightened responsibilities in this time of crisis. As for military power, the overreliance on small numbers of extremely expensive, exquisite American systems seems out of date and unaffordable, even for the United States. The Ukraine war has encouraged the Pentagon to make big bets—for example, instituting the Replicator Initiative, which is supposed to mass produce and field thousands of weapons that use emerging technologies.

In the next year or two, if East Asia stays relatively quiet and the war in the Middle East does not widen to Iran, the course of the Ukraine war may be the most important bellwether. A rare opportunity beckons in that conflict. Enormous resources are available, thanks to the aggressor’s overconfidence in leaving hundreds of billions of dollars and euros in law-abiding states. A landmark recovery program could give Ukraine the future its people yearn for, regardless of where the battle line ends up. The resources could ease the burdens of enlarging the EU and reinvigorate that project. To do the job right is an enormous challenge of policy design. But one lesson of the Marshall Plan was that success breeds successes.

The operational talent that Western policymakers displayed in the twentieth century was not in their genes. It was the accumulation of hard-earned experience and an accompanying culture that reinforced practical professionalism, including new and difficult habits of cooperation with international partners. There is only one way to recover these skills: practice them again.

The Atrophy of American Statecraft

How to Restore Capacity for an Age of Crisis

By Philip Zelikow

January/February 2024

Published on December 12, 2023

Foreign Affairs · by Philip Zelikow · December 12, 2023

The world has entered a period of high crisis. Wars rage in Europe and the Middle East, and the threat of war looms in East Asia. In Russia, China, and North Korea, the United States faces three hostile states with nuclear weapons and, in Iran, another on the verge of acquiring them. Beyond the headlines, states are failing in Africa, Latin America, and Southwest Asia, and enormous migrations are in motion. Having just weathered a pandemic that was the costliest crisis since 1945, the United States must now contend with other urgent transnational challenges, such as managing energy transition amid a deteriorating climate, the rapid development of artificial intelligence, and a global capitalist system under more pressure than it has been for decades. Unpacked, each one of these issues has its own set of complex problems that few understand. And on almost every issue, whether they like the Americans or resent them, people in the world look to the U.S. government for help, if only in organizing the work.

The Americans cannot meet this demand. Their supply of effective policies is limited. The United States does not have the breadth and depth of competence—capabilities and know-how—in its contemporary government. The problem has existed for decades, as has been depressingly evident from time to time. What is new is the context. The current period of crisis challenges the United States and the other countries of the free world more than anything has in at least 60 years. They will have to cultivate new qualities of practical leadership.

Saying what to do is the easy part. Designing how to do it is the hard part. “Ideas are not policies,” Dean Rusk observed while serving as U.S. secretary of state. “Besides, ideas have a high infant-mortality rate.” An even more experienced statesman, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, commented that “hope flies on wings, and international conferences plod afterwards along dusty roads.”

The “how” is the “craft” in statecraft. Most of what the U.S. government does is distribute money and set rules. Relatively few parts of it mount policy operations, especially diplomatic ones. Doing so requires complex teamwork. Officials must master international choreographies, intricacies of law and practice, and a bewildering variety of instruments, cultures, and institutions spanning societies. The ability to do all that is a fading art in the United States and the rest of the free world. As it fades, handwringing and platitudes take its place. Officials paper over the gaps with meetings and pronouncements.

The limited supply of effective U.S. policymaking was demonstrated tragically during the COVID-19 outbreak, when the world failed to create a global alliance to fight a global pandemic. It can be seen today in Ukraine, where the free world is struggling to sustain a country fighting a war of attrition. And it is surfacing in the Gaza Strip, where well-meaning countries try to help with Gaza’s future sustenance and governance. There will doubtless be new demands in the coming months and years, and one can debate which of them Washington and its allies must answer. But no one wants to take on a problem and then fail. Success has to be defined concretely and practically. Governments have to more effectively pool their capabilities and know-how. Only then can they convert blue-sky hopes into blueprints.

THE AGE OF EMERGENCIES

All three of the major anti-American partnerships of the last hundred years—the Axis powers in World War II, the communist countries during the Cold War, and the anti-American league today led by China, Russia, and Iran—had a common core. All regarded the United States (or the United Kingdom in its day) as the anchor of a domineering imperial system that tried to block their own aspirations. They rallied other countries that also felt oppressed. But beyond that, the partnerships exhibited no common master plan. The partners rarely trusted one another. They often did not even like one another.

This generation’s period of high crisis may well subside, or it could get much worse. The history of past anti-American partnerships humbles complacent assumptions. It reveals rapid recalculations, quick turns, surprises. Dictatorships have always been riven by factions; their intentions and plans change suddenly, often affected by seemingly invisible details and circumstances. What is different this time, compared with those past eras of confrontation, is that the American public has not absorbed the gravity of the dangers, and the country’s industrial base is much narrower and less agile. The United States relies too much on ill-focused military insurance policies and has not adequately prepared plausible operational strategies short of direct warfare.

In January 1941, while the United States was still at peace, President Franklin Roosevelt wrote to Joseph Grew, his old friend and prep school classmate and the U.S. ambassador to Japan. “We must recognize that the hostilities in Europe, in Africa, and in Asia are all parts of a single world conflict,” Roosevelt wrote. Each part had its own story. The president stressed that “the problems which we face are so vast and so interrelated that any attempt even to state them compels one to think in terms of five continents and seven seas.” He went on: “We cannot lay down hard-and-fast plans. As each new development occurs we must, in the light of the circumstances then existing, decide when and where and how we can most effectively marshal and make use of our resources.”

So Roosevelt began marshaling resources on an epic scale. Congress had already resumed the conscription of soldiers, sailors, and airmen. In early 1941, the president and his team persuaded a bitterly divided Congress, in a bitterly divided country that was not yet at war, to spend ten percent of GDP to help foreigners. The money went to American supplies for those who were in the fight: the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and China. The equivalent level of effort today would be about $2.6 trillion dollars—about 25 times the amount President Joe Biden requested in October 2023 from today’s divided Congress for Ukraine, Israel, and other priorities.

The United States relies too much on ill-focused military insurance policies.

The United States and its allies must now prepare for how they might be pulled into four different wars—with China, with Iran, with North Korea, and with Russia—and how these dangers could interact. The default assumption of most Western policymakers is that these rivals are led by fundamentally rational regimes that will not court the risks of seeking violent change. That was the default assumption a year before Russia invaded Ukraine. It was the default assumption the day before Hamas invaded Israel. The current era may well turn out to be a prewar period. But Americans, Europeans, Japanese, South Koreans, and Australians are not coordinating as if this were so. Meanwhile, the governments and media of China, Iran, and North Korea have been mobilizing for war. Russia is already at war and preparing for a long one.

The existing level of conflict in the world is already the highest in more than a generation. Look just at the region surrounding the Gaza Strip. Even before Hamas’s October 7 attack, Libya, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen had already been shattered by conflict, resulting in millions of starving and displaced people. All the international mediation and reconstruction efforts to address these crises have been going poorly. All demonstrate the failure of the United Nations’ mediating and peacekeeping attempts. In each case, aid organizations struggle to meet needs and sustain support from weary donors. This tally does not include the ongoing international involvements in Iraq, Lebanon, and Somalia or in war-torn Ethiopia.

Then there are the demands in other regions and on transnational concerns, such as the deteriorating climate, the digital and biological revolutions, and the fragility of global finance. Some of these issues have been festering for decades. Much of the news about cooperation among the free world is, again, disappointing: problems in orchestrating a global energy transition, with fragmented work on green technologies, frustrated talks on critical materials, and furious disagreements about how to ease the burdens on poor countries.

LOST LESSONS

In an emergency, people need effective action. No country faces more demands for providing that than the United States. The country may seem awfully powerful, in static enumerations of economic or military mass, but applied power—actual power out in the world—is something quite different. It is more like the measurement of kinetic energy, which is calculated with the formula 1/2 mv². The value of mass is halved. The value of velocity is squared. In statecraft, competence is velocity.

Competence is a function of capabilities and know-how. When it comes to doing things in the world, Americans’ supply of both is constrained by two deep structural conditions. The first has been with the country, in varying degrees, since its founding: a sense of detachment. America is usually detached from foreign problems, often by a great distance, and Americans feel detached, too. Fortunate in its geology and continental breadth, the United States has never depended all that much on foreign commerce or foreign commodities. Public interest in foreign engagement—political, military, or economic—is limited. More than half of all Americans do not own a passport. Only one-third of them can find Taiwan on a map.

The second factor limiting the United States’ global engagement is newer: its now limited repertoire of what it can do abroad. The repertoire dramatically expanded, as so much did, during World War II and the Cold War. By the middle of the twentieth century, U.S. officials were famous across the world for their know-how, esteemed as enterprising, imaginative problem solvers who could do almost anything in war or peace. The United States had helped organize D-Day, built the first atomic bomb, fed millions of people amid the ruins of Europe and Asia, rescued Western Europe with the Marshall Plan, and overcome a Soviet blockade with the Berlin airlift. Washington even helped eradicate smallpox.

These and other awe-inspiring deeds drew on the exceptional and decentralized problem-solving culture of American business and civic planning that emerged in the twentieth century. The paradigmatic discipline of American business at the time was engineering. This can-do culture improved the way policy was designed and managed and encouraged strong habits of written staff work. It had emerged from vast and stressful trial and error, with plenty of rivalry and confusion.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaking at the United Nations in New York City, August 2023

Eduardo Munoz / Reuters

Generations passed, the century ended, and little was done to preserve or teach the older skills and routines. Written operational analyses were subsumed by more meetings, with fewer efforts to record and reflect on what had been said. Unlike the methods taught for engineering, the techniques of policy staff work are rarely recognized or studied. There is no canon with norms of professional practice. American policymaking became procedural, less about deliberate engineering and more about improvised guesswork and bureaucratized habits.

Meanwhile, as the mountains of superpower confrontation crumbled with the end of the Cold War, the remaining foothills began to seem like mountains. NATO and Croatia’s victory over little Serbia in 1995 fed years of hubris. That sensibility, mixed with the great fear after 9/11, ushered in the United States’ years of nemesis. Chastened, the American public’s already slender interest in foreign engagement thinned. The protectionist current became a flood. In the scholarly world, the fashion was to critique the United States’ hunger for empire, its endemic racism, its endless militarism, and its voracious capitalism. The implied corollary was that if the U.S. government was such a malign force in the world, then everyone would be better off if it stayed home.

Even as the U.S. intelligence community grew and grew, the U.S. government’s capacity to analyze and solve problems did not. Its policy side became weakly staffed and poorly trained; officials had barely been taught about policy work at all. Those who excelled had usually taught themselves. When operations were needed, contractors had to be hired, and they often just compounded the problems. Although the military’s components were still potent, its force structure—the hugely expensive carriers, squadrons of aircraft, and brigades of troops stationed back home—became more symbolic and less relevant. Economic sanctions became the tool of first resort. Communiques and platitudes covered the rest.

AGAINST VAGUENESS

But paper palliatives will not address the world’s present emergencies. Generic doctrines of “restraint” or “realism” signal attitudes, not answers. George Marshall knew this well. In April 1947, Marshall, recently appointed secretary of state and fresh from a lengthy trip to Europe, gave a national radio address to tell the American people about the scale of the needed repairs on the continent. He implored them to be patient. “Problems which bear directly on the future of our civilization cannot be disposed of by general talk or vague formulae—by what Lincoln called ‘pernicious abstractions,’” Marshall warned. “They require concrete solutions for definite and extremely complicated questions.” Working with an extraordinary group of European leaders, Marshall and his team found those solutions, designing an extraordinary system that used American goods to cement new European partnerships and help European governments raise money to rebuild.

Amid the spectacular recent failures in Iraq and then in Afghanistan, it is worth noticing some recent success stories, too. Consider the military realm. Between 2015 and 2019, after a year of floundering, having learned from prior missteps, and with relatively few troops, the United States helped lead a remarkable foreign coalition that liberated lands overrun by the Islamic State, or ISIS, in northern Iraq and eastern Syria.

In global health, the United States and its partners, beginning in 2003, created an emergency plan for AIDS relief, known as PEPFAR, and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. Designed with the lessons of past failures in mind, these programs elicited broad support in Congress and across the world. They have saved millions of lives. Or look at diplomacy. Beginning in 2005, the United States orchestrated a complex global effort to accept India’s nuclear status and unwind a generation’s accumulation of restrictions. This diplomacy transformed relations and opened up trade in advanced technology with what is now the world’s most populous country.

The United States has also authored economic success stories. Many rightly blame its failure to police highly leveraged asset speculation for the global financial crisis. But they should also recognize that as the crisis spread to Europe, American and European leaders did whatever it took to arrest it, backing financial guarantees to stave off sovereign defaults and keep the eurozone from plunging into the abyss. That continental collapse would have rippled back to the United States, and so this success may have prevented a replay of the sequence that produced the Great Depression. More recently, before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, few would have predicted that Europe, and especially Germany, could ever wean itself from Russian energy. Yet after the invasion, a handful of European—especially German—leaders worked with Americans and rose to the challenge.

What these and other successes demonstrate is a possibility theorem. Governments can still produce extraordinary results. But doing so will require a greater focus on the “how.” Consider three contemporary emergencies as illustrations: the failures in the war against COVID-19, the perilous situation now in Ukraine, and the challenge in Gaza.

PANDEMIC POLICYMAKING

Judged by its human and economic toll, the COVID-19 pandemic was a global war. More than 20 million people died. The United States spent, in discretionary fiscal policy, about $5 trillion. But in January 2020, few understood the pandemic that was unfolding. The so-called pandemic playbook prepared by the Obama administration did not actually diagram any plays. There was no “how.” It did not explain what to do. When it came to the job of containing COVID-19, the playbook was a blank page.

What the ensuing months and years would expose was, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, the erosion of operational capabilities in much of the U.S. government and the flailing reliance on management consultancies to plug these gaps. Early on, it became clear that the public sector did not have the resources it needed—drugs, masks, vaccines—from the private sector. The choices about what to do were relatively easy: almost everyone wanted tests, effective therapeutics, and vaccines. The problems arose in the “how.”

The supposed U.S. success story in the pandemic was the Defense Department’s management of Operation Warp Speed, a public-private partnership to develop and deploy vaccines. But that success is more celebrated than understood. Thanks to prewar choices by some gifted officials, coronavirus R & D was already advanced when the pandemic broke out. The U.S. government and others had already sponsored early work on messenger RNA technology. An initiative improvised by career bureaucrats, outside experts, and administration gadflies, Operation Warp Speed did not score its main success in vaccine development. Rather, it succeeded by acquiring and manufacturing the vaccines at scale. It managed a portfolio of investments in different designs to hedge its bets on unproven mRNA technology, and it planned national distribution through the United States’ drugstores.

Yet the mass production of vaccines was not knitted into strategies to coordinate global production and distribution or to persuade people to get the jabs. Global pandemics, like global wars, must be fought by global alliances. Only a handful of countries produced vaccines, but they never built an allied war effort against the virus. The disappointing performance of the World Health Organization, which neither warned of the outbreak nor coordinated a common response, did not cause that failure. Constrained by its members, the WHO reflected their failure.

Paper palliatives will not address the world’s present emergencies.

Reacting to prior decades of weak government work on vaccines, philanthropies had tried to fill the void by creating unusual nonprofit institutions such as Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and CEPI, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovation. Some of the policymakers who spearheaded Operation Warp Speed wanted to use those nonprofits and organize a proper global effort. As the proposal for Operation Warp Speed made its way to President Donald Trump in April 2020, U.S. officials put aside building a global coalition and chose a national approach. In reaction, the nonprofits and their supporters had to quickly improvise a global structure. Aided by France and Singapore, they partnered with the WHO to create the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access initiative, or COVAX, to distribute vaccines across the world, based on need.

By May 2020, there were thus two parallel structures: Operation Warp Speed and COVAX. COVAX immediately fell behind, spending months raising money. Watching what the United States had chosen, European countries decided they had to mimic that approach. The United Kingdom moved out on its own with a well-designed program. The EU tried to reconcile the desires of its 27 members’ health authorities. But European countries were growing impatient with the sluggish pace of the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, in organizing a common vaccine effort. Shortly after the unveiling of Operation Warp Speed, four of them—France, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands—announced that they would move ahead on their own. National, more self-interested, programs would thus be the pattern.

In some ways, the story turned out well. The mRNA vaccine candidates worked. Private industry ramped up and produced vaccine doses on an astonishing scale. By the end of 2021, the supply of vaccines saturated global demand. Although it was improvised into existence practically overnight, COVAX was the principal reason a substantial fraction of people in low-income countries were vaccinated at all, helped by UNICEF and other organizations. Yet pushed to the back of the procurement queue, COVAX effectively lost at least a year of possible progress, instead fighting against vaccine hoarding, export restrictions, and problems with manufacturers. These delays caused millions of avoidable hospitalizations and deaths.

The success of Operation Warp Speed is more celebrated than understood.

Vaccine nationalism is no surprise. In a global coalition, major producers are not going to ignore the needs of their own people. But a coalition could have planned, from the start, to visibly take the whole world’s needs into account. In the absence of such planning, countries hoarded their own supplies until they were sure they would have a surplus, at which point some offered that surplus to COVAX. The problem was that it takes time to set up vaccine education campaigns, distribution networks, and cold storage facilities and to find people to do the work.

In the short run, Trump’s “America first” vaccine strategy seemed to pay off for Americans. Then it backfired. “Buy American” provisions—which accompanied the government’s use of its authorities under the Defense Production Act to tell U.S. firms what to produce—ended up pushing most production for the global market outside the United States. The fragmented national approaches to selecting vaccine candidates and managing the supply chains to produce vaccines created unnecessary friction and duplication, wasted investments, and tangled negotiations with industry. The opportunity to more intelligently coordinate the huge national investments, procurements, and supply chains was lost. The end result put the pharmaceutical firms in the driver’s seat.

The war against COVID-19 relied on a few major powers to help the rest of the world. The United States, the major European countries, and the big Asian powers never joined forces effectively enough. They, along with the rest of the world, paid the price for that. There is no reason to believe that biological dangers will diminish, and they may get worse. Yet policymakers have absorbed few lessons about how to do better next time.

THE FIGHT FOR UKRAINE

By the end of 2022, it was clear the war in Ukraine would not end quickly. Rightly inspired by the Ukrainians’ heroic resistance, many commentators and officials underestimated Russia. Much of the debate was about whether Ukraine should drive on to victory or accept a stalemate, or whether certain weapons systems would be the magic ingredients the country needed to win. Over the course of 2023, however, Ukraine’s military, social, economic, and financial condition became increasingly grave and unsustainable. And although Russia has geared up for a long war, Ukraine’s supporters have not.

As with the pandemic, the “what to do” part seems easy, since citizens in the free world generally support Ukraine’s survival as a free country with a hopeful future. Surely, people think, the coalition’s combined resources and economies can overmatch what Russia and its friends can do. Yet again, what stands out is the problem of “how.” Again, the free world has not adequately pooled and mobilized its resources.

At the start of the war, the G-7 countries froze about $300 billion worth of Russian state financial assets that were being held in their own currencies. Never in history has an aggressor left such an immense sum in the hands of countries wounded by its aggression. None of the G-7’s members doubt that Russia has committed the gravest possible breaches of international law or that it is legally obligated to compensate those it has damaged. No one can deny that Ukraine’s economy is in critical condition. The question of what to do seems clear. Yet as the war finishes its second year, this enormous, game-changing war chest of Russia’s money remains virtually untouched. There is no plausible scenario in which it goes back to Russia. The potentially decisive assets lie there, inert and useless to anyone. Why?

For too long, the handful of relevant officials were preoccupied with other matters and were put off by a welter of confused and often superficial legal and financial arguments. Privately, some have confided fears about Russian retaliation against their countries’ companies. Or in the German case, some fear that Polish nationalists might then ask for more reparations from Germany for World War II.

An artillery shell near Donetsk, Ukraine, November 2023

Alina Smutko / Reuters

All these arguments are slowly being sorted out as lawyers rediscover the international law of state responsibility and state countermeasures. Needed next is the design for a monumental European recovery program, anchored in the recovery of Ukraine. That program should have two dimensions. One would be policy-driven. The West would support reconstruction and recovery across several sectors, linking its spending to Ukrainian reforms that would also facilitate Ukraine’s EU accession process. The other dimension would be a substantial and painstaking claims process from Ukraine and other state and private entities damaged by Russia’s internationally wrongful acts, including expropriated companies and poor countries victimized by price shocks. Work to set up this enormous recovery program has barely begun.

By contrast, the military assistance program for Ukraine would seem to be the great success story. It is, to some extent. But it is flagging. The public story is dominated by arguments about which weapons to send to Ukraine. The real story, however, is about the “how” of finding enough weapons to begin with. In theory, the quantity of weaponry sent to Ukraine should be both sufficient and affordable if all of Ukraine’s partners efficiently pooled their potential resources and industrial capacities. That efficient pooling of resources is not happening. Aside from the usual challenges of transport, training, and maintenance that are multiplied with each new donated system, five big factors seem to cripple the effort, even if Congress appropriates needed money.

First, most of the help has come from drawing down inventories. By now, the U.S. military’s branches have sent all the equipment they regard as disposable, and they are protecting the rest. Pushing them to give up more means making difficult tradeoffs among risks. In the early Lend Lease era, these tradeoffs were frequently resolved in the White House, often by Roosevelt himself.

Second, European inventories were often more useful to Ukraine, because the Europeans had stockpiled more. Those inventories have been drawn down. The United States’ allies in Europe are anxious. They were promised backfills that are not in sight, as they form queues that look to the 2030s.

The strain to mobilize resources to help Ukraine is a tragedy.

Third, the U.S. defense industrial base cannot expand quickly enough to meet the emergencies of the next year or two. That puts a premium on quick mass production of relatively inexpensive defensive systems such as drones. These novel systems are being developed by new producers. The Defense Department does not like to buy from new producers. They are not “programs of record,” in Pentagon parlance, and thus do not have an associated acquisition bureaucracy. In the years it takes to meet that threshold, the new producers often die or are bought out. Even if they survive to receive a contract, they often face a thicket of export controls in the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, a U.S. government regime that is a vestige of the Cold War. Ukraine does not have that kind of time.

Fourth, much could be accomplished if U.S. money could be more freely used, including by Ukraine, to buy drones and other needed weapons from non-American suppliers. The Pentagon’s acquisition process makes it hard to spend defense dollars on foreigners. Influential U.S. companies like to keep it that way. Americans are not alone in this; several U.S. allies have understandable habits of defense industry protectionism. But these national stovepipes are a peacetime luxury. In World War II, the legendary P51 Mustang, an American-made fighter, flew with a British engine. Leaders should dramatically change the way they buy in this time of crisis, recognizing that the results could benefit them all, including financially.

Fifth, the big defense contractors will not expand their production base without multiyear contracts. But even if they got them, there is little slack in the American industrial base. Contractors also face bottlenecks in supplies of certain critical components. So the longer-term challenge circles back to the goal of pooling the free world’s resources. There is more slack in industrial bases outside the United States, very much including Ukraine itself.

The strain to mobilize resources to help Ukraine is a tragedy. It is tragic not only because of the suffering of heroic Ukrainians. It is tragic also because some in the U.S. government are valiantly trying to solve these “how” problems, whether they are banging on the table at the U.S. Army headquarters in Wiesbaden, Germany, where Ukraine’s partners try to coordinate their military help, or in the White House. Yet in a new age of emergencies, they find that most people in most governments are still conducting business as usual.

GOVERNING GAZA

The Gaza Strip has been an international policy problem for 75 years. Since 1948, the international goals have been clear and limited: aid Palestinians and prevent war. Raids out of Gaza and Israeli reprisals were part of the spiral of violence that led to the first Israeli occupation of Gaza in 1956. The international community responded brilliantly, showing some of the skills and energy that the West could command in that era.

Within the space of about a week, in November 1956, UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold and his team, including the American diplomat Ralph Bunche, created the UN Emergency Force, a coalition that was led by Canada and India and enjoyed strong support from the United States. The UN leadership and those three countries drove the work. U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower boosted the UNEF strategy from the start but deferred to India and Canada to provide the military muscle. The Palestinians in Gaza still felt they were at war with Israel. But there was no war. UNEF effectively kept the peace on the Gazan-Israeli border for ten years. When the force was withdrawn in 1967 at the request of Egypt, war quickly followed, and then 38 years of Israeli military rule.

In 2005, when Israel withdrew, outside actors had hoped that Gaza would be ruled by the Palestinian Authority and become part of a Palestinian state, including the West Bank, willing to develop peaceably alongside Israel. That strategy for replacing the Israeli occupation and solving the security problem failed. Hamas, a military movement at war with Israel, then took over Gaza in 2007, throwing out the PA. It resumed warfare, culminating in its bloody raids on Israel on October 7.

The United States will not and should not be central in governing Gaza.

A common proposal for the future of Gaza, which the United States has endorsed, is to use the current war to establish a reconfigured PA. The new PA would be more competent and legitimate than the present one based in the West Bank. It would replace Hamas and renew progress toward a two-state solution. This is a reboot of the original goal sought after 2005. I was at the State Department back then and worked on the policy choices and negotiations involving Israel and the PA about the future of Gaza and Palestinian statehood. The “how” for this strategy is much harder now. The mutual fear and hatred have intensified. Israeli settlements in the West Bank have multiplied. A democratically legitimate PA is more likely to reflect Hamas than replace it. And relevant American capabilities and know-how are more constrained, including by other U.S. priorities.

To many, the current crisis in Gaza seems to demand a central role for the United States. But the United States will not and should not be central in governing Gaza. It should play a secondary role, at most, in providing aid and reconstruction assistance to the strip. It may have capabilities and know-how to help prevent future attacks from Gaza against Israel, but any maritime and commercial control regime to stem the flow of weapons into Gaza would obviously have to be multilateral. As with efforts in Libya, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen, the talks on Gaza already involve the UN, a group of interested Western states, and a group of interested Muslim states.

While the United States makes pronouncements on general goals, the best approach to Gaza would begin by looking at the menu of plausible solutions on the ground there: in governance, sustenance, and security. Officials should work hard on the policy designs these solutions might entail. Each will be complex. With some of that analysis done, they should next ask who in the world has assets, knowledge, or people that can help make one of these designs viable or can incentivize those who can. Then, policymakers should see where, among other countries, the United States comes into play. Finally, they should design and defend the U.S. contribution.

RECOVERY ACT

Across the free world, the current period of crisis has spotlighted the mismatch between the institutions it had going in and the quality of effort it needs now. The public debates about national interests are largely disconnected from the practical issues. In the medium term, the U.S. government and its partners must examine whether their institutions—especially the civilian institutions that deal with finance, commerce, technology, and humanitarian relief—are really fit for purpose. People meet constantly, but they strain to get things done. At the end of 2023, the economic side of the U.S. government was taking protectionist actions that were sabotaging cooperation with allies on green technology, critical materials, and common management of the digital revolution at the same time that Biden claimed to be rallying the free world.

The U.S. Foreign Service could be tripled in size and reconceived on a whole-of-government basis, with overhauled training, and the costs would amount to a rounding error in the overall federal budget. Across the Atlantic, the EU should develop a better growth strategy, with a streamlined European Commission and more effective decision processes by the European Council, the EU’s governing board of member states. But the European experiment in common foreign policymaking has not been successful, and national governments must step up to their heightened responsibilities in this time of crisis. As for military power, the overreliance on small numbers of extremely expensive, exquisite American systems seems out of date and unaffordable, even for the United States. The Ukraine war has encouraged the Pentagon to make big bets—for example, instituting the Replicator Initiative, which is supposed to mass produce and field thousands of weapons that use emerging technologies.

In the next year or two, if East Asia stays relatively quiet and the war in the Middle East does not widen to Iran, the course of the Ukraine war may be the most important bellwether. A rare opportunity beckons in that conflict. Enormous resources are available, thanks to the aggressor’s overconfidence in leaving hundreds of billions of dollars and euros in law-abiding states. A landmark recovery program could give Ukraine the future its people yearn for, regardless of where the battle line ends up. The resources could ease the burdens of enlarging the EU and reinvigorate that project. To do the job right is an enormous challenge of policy design. But one lesson of the Marshall Plan was that success breeds successes.

The operational talent that Western policymakers displayed in the twentieth century was not in their genes. It was the accumulation of hard-earned experience and an accompanying culture that reinforced practical professionalism, including new and difficult habits of cooperation with international partners. There is only one way to recover these skills: practice them again.

• PHILIP ZELIKOW is a Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. A historian, former U.S. diplomat, and former Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission, he has worked for five presidential administrations.

Foreign Affairs · by Philip Zelikow · December 12, 2023

6. ‘We’ll Be at Each Others’ Throats’: Fiona Hill on What Happens If Putin Wins

Conclusion:

The decision is ours, this decision is entirely ours. We’re just falling all over ourselves to engage in self-harm at the moment. Ukraine shouldn’t be a partisan issue. I just hope that people are going to be able to dig deep, and realize the moment that they’re in.

‘We’ll Be at Each Others’ Throats’: Fiona Hill on What Happens If Putin Wins

By MAURA REYNOLDS

12/12/2023 11:43 AM EST

Maura Reynolds is POLITICO Magazine's deputy editor for ideas.

Politico

The veteran Russia watcher is deeply alarmed as Washington reaches an inflection point on the war in Ukraine.

Fiona Hill is a keen observer not just of Russia and its leader, but also of American politics, having served in the White House as a top adviser to both Democrats and Republicans. | Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg via Getty Images

12/12/2023 11:43 AM EST

Maura Reynolds is POLITICO Magazine's deputy editor for ideas.

It was nearly two years ago that Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and in recent months, the fighting appears to have ground to a stalemate. Aid from the United States has helped Ukraine get this far — but now Americans are asking, how long should they continue to support Ukraine in its war against Russia? At this point, just what are the stakes for the United States?

Since the war began, I’ve turned to Fiona Hill periodically for insight into what’s driving Russian President Vladimir Putin, and where America’s interests lie. She’s a keen observer not just of Russia and its leader, but also of American politics, having served in the White House as a top adviser to both Democrats and Republicans, including President Donald Trump. Since she left the Trump administration (and after a star turn testifying in his first impeachment), she’s become a highly sought-out voice on global affairs as well as the domestic roots of authoritarianism in countries around the world.

When we spoke this week, she made clear that the decision of whether Ukraine wins or loses is now on us — almost entirely. As Congress debates how much more money to authorize for Ukraine’s assistance amid growing Republican opposition, she says that what we are really debating is our own future. Do we want to live in the kind of world that will result if Ukraine loses?

Hill is clear about her answer. A world in which Putin chalks up a win in Ukraine is one where the U.S.’s standing in the world is diminished, where Iran and North Korea are emboldened, where China dominates the Indo-Pacific, where the Middle East becomes more unstable and where nuclear proliferation takes off, among allies as well as enemies.

“Ukraine has become a battlefield now for America and America’s own future — whether we see it or not — for our own defensive posture and preparedness, for our reputation and our leadership,” she told me. “For Putin, Ukraine is a proxy war against the United States, to remove the United States from the world stage.”

Hill sees U.S. domestic politics as the main obstacle to Ukraine’s ability to win. She has long warned, including in a book published after she left the White House, that high levels of partisanship in the United States promote authoritarianism both at home and around the world. She’s been talking to some lawmakers about Ukraine, and she’s worried that their partisanship has blinded them to the dangers the country faces if Putin gets his way.

“The problem is that many members of Congress don’t want to see President Biden win on any front,” she said. “People are incapable now of separating off ‘giving Biden a win’ from actually allowing Ukraine to win. They are thinking less about U.S. national security, European security, international security and foreign policy, and much more about how they can humiliate Biden.”

“In that regard,” she continued, “whether they like it or not, members of Congress are doing exactly the same thing as Vladimir Putin. They hate that. They want to refute that. But Vladimir Putin wants Biden to lose, and they want Biden to be seen to lose as well.”

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Ukraine is fighting the Russian invasion on several fronts: military, financial, political. In each of those areas, is Ukraine winning, or is Russia?

We have to think about where we would have been in February of 2022. Russia’s intent was to decapitate the Ukrainian government so it could take over the country. That’s what we all anticipated. We anticipated that [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelenskyy would have gone into exile, the Ukrainians would have capitulated, then there would be a very messy insurgency against the Russian forces. So if we start from that point, militarily, and we look at what’s happened over the last two years, we can actually say that Ukraine has won in terms of securing its independence, and has won by fighting Russia to a standstill.

But then we get into the details. Because, of course, the standstill is the main issue at hand. The Ukrainians were initially able to take back quite a lot of the territory that the Russians seized in the early phases of the invasion, but then the Russians dug in. We had all the hype around a counteroffensive this past summer, a lot of expectations built up inside and outside of Ukraine, especially here in the United States. If we look at other wars, major wars, often these much-anticipated individual battles don’t turn out the way that the planners or the fighters actually anticipate. Now we are in a scenario where having not succeeded in reaching the stated goals of the counteroffensive, we’re basically positing that Ukraine has somehow lost the entire war.

Ukraine has succeeded so far because of massive military support from European allies and other partners. So in that regard, we’ve now reached a tipping point between whether Ukraine continues to win in terms of having sufficient fighting power to stave Russia off, or whether it actually starts to lose because it doesn’t have the equipment, the heavy weaponry, the ammunition. That external support is going to be determinative.

So it’s maybe too soon to answer the question of has Ukraine won or lost militarily.

How about in the financial and diplomatic arenas?

It’s a question of whether Ukraine has enough resources, financial resources, not just to keep going on the battlefield, but also to keep the country together at home. And up until now you’re still seeing a lot of European countries stepping up. Not just you know, the United States, but definitely the EU, Japan, South Korea and others. Japan recently made an offer of additional major financial support. The Germans have said that they’ll make sure that the Ukrainian economy will continue to not just survive, but thrive, and over the longer term, they’ll help rebuild. This is still somewhat positive.

On the political side, however, we’ve got the problems of the policy battlefields on the domestic front. Ukraine has now become a domestic political issue in a whole range of countries, not just here in the United States, but in countries like Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Germany and many more. And that’s an issue where it’s going to be very hard for Ukraine to win. Because when you get into the transactional issues of domestic politics, and you’re no longer thinking about national security, or these larger imperatives, then Ukraine dies a thousand deaths from all of the transactional efforts that domestic politicians engage in. Most political constituents, no matter the country, can’t really see beyond their own narrow interests.

So Ukraine isn’t losing yet. But depending on the domestic situation in the United States, and with its European allies, it could? It could start losing very soon?

That’s right, we’re at a pivotal point. There’s a lot of detail, but the bottom line is that we are at an inflection point, a juncture where it could very rapidly tip, in fact this month — December and January — into a losing proposition for Ukraine.

What do you think Putin sees when he’s watching the debate taking place in the United States right now?

He does see the entire battlefield of the military, financial and political arenas tipping to his benefit. Putin really thinks that he is on the winning side. We’ve just seen in the last few weeks, something that looks rather suspiciously like a preparatory victory tour [by Putin] around the Middle East, visiting the UAE and Saudi Arabia, stepping out again in “polite company,” preparing to go to other major meetings. And then the coverage in the Russian press — their commentators are crowing with glee at the predicament of the Ukrainians, clapping their hands, literally and figuratively, about the peril for Ukraine in the U.S. Congress.

One thing that we need to bear in mind here is that Putin turned for assistance to two countries that should give Americans and members of Congress pause — Iran and North Korea. Russia has had significant shortfalls of ammunition and sophisticated technology because of sanctions and other constraints. Ammunition has come from North Korea, which continues to provide Russia with all kinds of rounds for shells, and Iran has stepped up with the production of drones. Iran and North Korea both see this as a kind of international opening for them. If Russia prevails on the battlefield, you can be sure that Iran and North Korea will get benefits from this. We already see Russia shifting its position on the Iranian nuclear front, and we also see Russia making a major shift in its relationship with Israel. Putin has gone from being a major supporter of Israel, to now an opponent, and has switched from what was always very careful public rhetoric about Israel to pretty antisemitic statements. Putin never denigrated Jews in the past. On the contrary, he presented himself as a supporter of the Jewish population. This is a dramatic shift and clearly because of Iran. Now, whether Iran asked Putin to do this, I honestly can’t say, but we can all see this deepening relationship between Russia and Iran. That is a real problem for the administration and for others who are now looking at the Middle East and trying to figure out how to stop a broader war with Lebanon, with the Houthis in Yemen, and all of the Iranian proxies, because Iran and Russia have become fused together now in two conflicts.

China is not neutral in this either. So not only do we have North Korea, but we also have one of North Korea’s major patrons, which is China. Although we have not seen China supporting Russia in the war in Ukraine in the way that North Korea and Iran have, China continues to give Putin a lot of economic, political and moral support. China sees this as an opportunity to put pressure on the United States. China’s also learning an awful lot of lessons from this war, about how the United States and Europe and other countries are likely to react in other contexts. If we step back and allow Ukraine to lose, well, are we going to do the same in the case of Taiwan?

And this also brings in another couple of places, South Korea and Japan. We tend to fixate on what the United States is doing, and all the machinations in Europe, but the South Koreans have found ways of getting supplies of armaments to the Ukrainians through back channels via other countries that are purchasing the weapons. Japan has just given Ukraine a significant tranche of money, because they know only too well that a military failure for Ukraine is going to shift the entire balance in the Indo-Pacific.

You said a loss for Ukraine would shift the entire balance in the Indo-Pacific region — you mean shift it toward China?

Yes, it’s highly likely that that would be the case. And that’s why Japan and South Korea are desperately trying to help out Ukraine because they see the larger geopolitical implications of this.

But it’s not just China and Russia who are learning from this war. So are we. We’ve seen the impact of drone warfare and we’re thinking about how we deal with this ourselves. We’ve been kind of shocked to see how much wars like this take up ammunition stocks — this is not the type of war that we’ve fought for a very long time. When we’re thinking about our own defense, our own national security, we need to be looking very carefully at this conflict. The way that Putin has played with the idea of using tactical nuclear weapons, the use of drones on the battlefield, the use of mines, the use of ships and blockades in the Black Sea, the difficulty of pushing forward in a counteroffensive against these deep entrenchments, how various military systems including defensive equipment actually perform in real time and conditions. We can see how effective our ATACMS were, for example, our Patriot batteries. This is, in a way, a proving ground for our own equipment.

Other countries elsewhere in the world have been watching, seeing Russia adapt and learn lessons, do more with less. The Russians have ramped up their military production. They are on a war footing. They now have a war economy. And although Russia has been dependent on North Korea and on Iran for some weapons, they’re starting to produce their own. So what you’re seeing here is a Russian military buildup on the back of this war that will become a menace to its neighbors and those don’t have to be just the neighbors in Europe, but can be further afield. Remember, Japan still has a territorial dispute with Russia.

Putin initially thought he would just go and take Kyiv, and obviously, that didn’t happen. How do you think Putin now would define a win for himself and for Russia?

Well, there’ll be multiple ways he will define it, one of which is defeating the United States, politically, psychologically and symbolically. If the United States doesn’t pass the supplemental [bill to approve aid to Ukraine], and we get this chorus of members of Congress calling for the United States to pull away from Ukraine, Putin will be able to switch this around and say, “There you go. The United States is an unreliable ally. The United States is not a world leader.” And there will be a chilling effect for all our other allies. In the past, Putin has actually, for example, approached the Japanese and said, “Look, we can be your interlocutor with China. The United States is not going to be there to assist you in a crunch.” And that’s certainly what this is going to look like. The Japanese, the South Koreans, the Vietnamese, others that we have bilateral treaties with, are going to wonder, “OK, the United States made such a push here to support Ukraine, along with other European members of NATO, and now they’ve just walked away from it.” And you put that on top of Afghanistan and the withdrawal, also the withdrawal from Iraq, withdrawal from Syria, and the whole fraught history of United States interventions in the last two decades, and Putin will be able to present a pretty potent narrative about the United States’ inability to maintain its commitments and forfeiting its role as an international leader. So that that becomes a major political win.

And that’s aside from the obvious win of being able to turn the tide on Ukraine, because Putin will now see an opportunity to partition Ukraine. The partition will be along the existing ceasefire lines, he’ll start to push, and others will be pushing, for a negotiation. We’ve already heard former President Trump saying he would solve the conflict in 24 hours, and many other senators and people who would be supporting Trump in an election, basically saying we need to get this over with, pushing Ukraine towards the table. That’s not the position of this administration, to be very clear. And that’s not the position of many in Congress and Senate. But we’ve definitely got those voices.

So for Putin, he will see this is a very propitious moment, to re-up the idea of a negotiation for a ceasefire on his terms. And, of course, we’ve got all of the drama around the issue of a ceasefire in the Middle East. There may also be a push from many other countries to say, let’s stop, we need to focus on the disasters in Gaza, let’s just get Russia and Ukraine to put their war to one side. Putin’s already playing into this, trying to get other countries to say, “Look, we’re always dealing with Europe’s problems. We need to be dealing with the Middle East here. This is more consequential for everyone.” Putin is likely hoping that there’ll be pressure put on Ukraine that way as well, to come to the negotiating table because of the international imperative to focus on the Middle East crisis. There’s been the revival of an idea that was a peace agreement on the table back in the spring of 2022, and a lot of talk around this issue along with a lot of propaganda and a lot of misinformation and disinformation about the prospects for a negotiated solution.

For Putin it would be a win to have a partition of Ukraine on his terms. We know from Russian public opinion, that there is a mounting desire for the war to end. That’s even reflected in some of the polling that is done close to the Kremlin. We’re seeing a majority of Russians who are polled saying that they would like the war to end. But they’re not saying that they want to give up the Ukrainian territories that Russia has taken or that they want to pay reparations to Ukraine. So Putin knows that there is a desire to end the war, and if he gets a partition through a ceasefire with limited cost to Russia it will boost his popularity ahead of the Russian election, which is coming up. And he’s just declared himself, surprise surprise, as the candidate — the only real candidate — for yet another six-year presidential term.

Russia’s presidential election is scheduled for March. How does the war in Ukraine play into Putin’s reelection bid?

It’s pretty critical. But it’s critical in that he has to have a win. A win, as I’ve just said, would be a distinct end to the war with a ceasefire and the partition of Ukraine. Any Ukrainians who are in the occupied and partitioned territories of Ukraine will be forced to become Russians, we’re already seeing that. It’s not just the deportation, and kidnapping, abduction of Ukrainian children from the conflict zones who are then being turned into Russians, literally, and in many cases, through adoptions. But it’s the fact that Ukrainians living in the occupied territories are being forced to take Russian passports and Russian citizenship to be able to get basic payments for their jobs, pensions, et cetera. Putin has already made it clear that he no longer thinks that there is a separate Ukrainian identity or language or heritage, and that Ukrainians are nothing but Russians.

A partition of Ukraine would not create a north and south Ukraine or an East and West Ukraine, along the lines of a partitioned Ireland or partitioned Korean peninsula or partitioned Germany after World War Two. This would be a rump Ukraine and an annexed territory that Russia will say is Russia, just like they have with Crimea. Putin will see that as a major win, because that will give him a platform for push back and later attempts to try for more, and because he will also have discredited the United States politically, and created a whole wave of knock-on effects internationally.

This would greatly complicate rump Ukraine’s ability to move forward and rebuild. Putin will basically say to Ukraine, you could have done all of this, handed over these territories to us without hundreds of thousands of people dying. And then there will be a constant flow of Russian propaganda and influence operations against Ukraine in which Russians will accuse the Ukrainians of violating the ceasefire, or manipulating negotiations, and will stir up political strife. This will not end. It will go on forever.

It will be a great win for Putin because he will be able to move on to the next part of the game while everyone else is stuck in place. He thinks in terms of bouts and tournaments. Like the judo professional he was before, in his youth. If he doesn’t win the first bout outright, he might win the second and still move on to victory.

What happens to the West if Putin wins?

We’ll be at each others’ throats. There’ll be no way in which this is going to turn out well. There’ll be a lot of frustration on the part of people who thought that this was the easier option when we reel from crisis to crisis. There’ll also be the shame, frankly, and the disgrace of having let the Ukrainians down. I think it would create a firestorm of recrimination. And it will also embolden so many other actors to take their own steps.

One key challenge is going to be the nuclear front. There’s several different ways in which we can look at the nuclear front. There’s the moral imperative. We pushed Ukraine to give up the nuclear weapons that it had inherited from the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. And we gave assurances along with the United Kingdom, that Ukraine would not end up in the situation that it is in now. We guaranteed its territorial integrity and sovereignty and independence and also assured Ukraine that we would step up to help. This opens up a whole can of worms related first to the moral jeopardy of this, that we obviously don’t stick to our word.

But also in terms of nuclear weapons, we could face proliferation issues with Japan, South Korea, other countries — even NATO countries who currently see themselves covered under the U.S. nuclear umbrella. They will start to worry about how much we would actually support them when they needed it, and how vulnerable they are to pressure or attack by another nuclear power. Think about the dynamics between India and Pakistan, for example, or China and India, or China and South Korea and Japan; and the predicament of leaders in other countries who will be thinking right now that, “I’m going to be extremely vulnerable — so perhaps I should be getting my own nuclear weapon.” You’re hearing talk about this in Germany, for example. You hear it all the time in places like Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, we know that they have nuclear aspirations. So this opens up a whole set of different discussions.

So you’re concerned that if Putin wins and Ukraine is partitioned, that will set off a nuclear proliferation race.

There is a very good chance that it will, because it will open up the question — you had a country that gave up nuclear weapons, didn’t keep any at all, was given guarantees of its security, and then it got invaded and partitioned.

You’ve written about the failure of the United States and the UK to provide adequate opportunity to all of its citizens. You’ve talked about the United States as being in need of a bigger “infrastructure of opportunity.” What do you say to Americans and members of Congress who feel like the money that we’re using to help Ukraine would be better spent right now at home?

That it’s actually being spent at home! That’s the irony. Because every time you send a weapon to the Ukrainians, it’s an American weapon. You’re not buying somebody else’s weapons to go to Ukraine. It’s also a fraction of our defense budget.

It’s really a circular process here. We are providing weapons to Ukraine, we’re buying them from major manufacturers of defense systems here in the United States, which are obviously providing jobs for the people who are making them. And then we’re going back and we’re ordering more because we’re replenishing and upgrading our own weapons stocks. This is all part of our own system. These defense manufacturers account for huge numbers of jobs across the whole of the United States, so arming Ukraine means significant job creation and retention across the United States and also in Europe and elsewhere.

People in Congress know that, it’s just that they’re playing a different game. They want to play up this issue of “it should be spent at home” because of the transactional nature of congressional supplemental bills.

Let’s just put it frankly — this is all about the upcoming presidential election. It’s less about Ukraine and it’s more about the fact that we have an election coming up next year. The problem is that many members of Congress don’t want to see President Biden win on any front. People are incapable now of separating off “giving Biden a win” from actually allowing Ukraine to win. They are thinking less about U.S. national security, European security, international security and foreign policy, and much more about how they can humiliate Biden.

In that regard, whether they like it or not, members of Congress are doing exactly the same thing as Vladimir Putin. They hate that. They want to refute that. But Vladimir Putin wants Biden to lose, and they want Biden to be seen to lose as well.

For Vladimir Putin now Ukraine has become a proxy war. It’s not a proxy war by the United States against Russia. We’re trying to get Russia out of Ukraine, period. But for Putin, Ukraine is a proxy war against the United States, to remove the United States from the world stage. He’s trying to use Gaza, and Israel like that now, as well. He’s trying to whip up anti-United States sentiment wherever he can. I’ve just come back from Europe and from a whole host of conferences where there’s just so much rage and grievance about the United States and Putin is fanning the flames.

Putin sees Biden as a major opponent. He is an obstacle for Putin to be able to win on the battlefield of Ukraine. So Putin wants Biden to fail. Putin would be thrilled if Trump would come back to power because he also anticipates that Trump will pull the United States out of NATO, that Trump will rupture the U.S. alliance system, and that Trump will hand over Ukraine. So right at this particular moment, Putin sees an awful lot that he can get out of undermining Biden’s position.

Now, the problem, of course, is that currently many members of Congress and others are thinking about whether they want to run to be vice president for Trump, and what they should perhaps do now to support Trump and pave the way for his presidency. So the idea of giving Biden anything that could positively affect the election is just a bridge too far.

We have a situation now where perhaps Biden is the only person who can actually break the legislative logjam. Members of Congress and senators, many of whom I know from my own discussions with them absolutely support assisting Ukraine and get the importance of this moment, still can’t get past the domestic politics. Biden is going to have to somehow persuade them that if they rise to the occasion, helping Ukraine is not going to give him some kind of political boost and a consequential win.

This is the best possible position that Vladimir Putin could possibly have. He’s got no problems for his own election in March of 2024. Is there seriously going to be any kind of opposition to him? He doesn’t have the equivalent of the New York Times and Washington Post writing articles about how old he is or how he might have tripped walking downstairs or, in the case of Vladimir Putin, how much Botox did he use this morning? There’s no one trying to put his family on trial. There’s no one digging into every little part of his personal and political history. Putin is just home free.

We’re not doing anything to put Putin in political jeopardy. We’re just fighting with ourselves all the time. And we can’t see past that. Biden’s got to try to help Ukraine, but can he get enough people to see past the election and also see the jeopardy we are in? We are in peril. We don’t see it. There’s such an anti-American wave that’s out there in the world. People want to see America fail and pulled down to size.

Ukraine has become a battlefield now, for America and America’s own future — whether we see it or not — for our own defensive posture and preparedness, for our reputation and our leadership.

American leadership is still very important. But other countries are starting to make plans for a world without us at this particular point. And you can be sure that Vladimir Putin, and President Xi and many others will be pretty ecstatic if we give up on Ukraine. And that could happen just as soon as December or January, because if Congress goes home for the holidays without passing the supplemental, and everyone’s back in their constituencies, there’s a lot of stuff that can happen in their absence, in that vacuum, that void that we have created. Everybody else in the rest of the world would be wondering, not just, “Where is America?” but, “What on earth has happened to America?” And if President Trump thinks that he’s going to be the leader of the free world when he comes back into office — well, think again. There won’t be a free world to be leading at all. And that’s not an overstatement. That’s just a fact.

National security ought to begin at the border of the United States. We shouldn’t be fighting about it all the time. We’ve got ourselves dangerously polarized along partisan lines, even though most Americans are not that polarized on this particular issue. I think the majority of Americans can see the importance of Ukraine. The majority of members of Congress and the Senate, irrespective of party, can see this as well. But the dynamic in our domestic politics has gotten to a point of such friction that our own position in the world is imperiled.

If the supplemental passes, and the U.S. does not step back from its support for Ukraine, where do we go from here? What’s the best-case scenario for going forward?

It’s still going to be difficult. Is there a win in here for Ukraine? Again, a win for Ukraine is having fought off Russia. A loss for Ukraine is everybody else stepping back — “You’ve made it this far, but we’re not going to help you anymore. Now, we’re going to leave you to your own devices.” Ukraine is the largest country in Europe, after Russia. Just think about the significance and symbolism of a partitioned Ukraine, one that seems very unlikely to be able to be joined together again.

So the best case scenario is, of course, one in which Ukraine continues to be able to hold its own and if we helped build it up militarily, where it can make another push or another series of pushes. If we think about World War Two and other wars, there were multiple offensive efforts, counteroffensives, and you just kept on trying until you succeeded. It will be very difficult to have an absolute victory over Russia. But what you want to have is Ukraine in a position to have a negotiation, a diplomatic solution, on its terms, not on Russia’s terms. A solution in which Ukraine is recognized as the party in the right, as the aggrieved party by the whole of the international community, and where Ukraine is, if not completely in territory, but materially and in every other way possible, made whole.

Another aspect of having this war resolved on Ukraine’s terms is that Russia is going to have to pay for or contribute to the reconstruction of Ukraine in some fashion. That is another major reason why Putin would see the U.S. and its allies stepping back as a major win, because then there’d be no leverage whatsoever or pressure put on Russia for rebuilding Ukraine. Russia could just step back, wash its hands of all of this and let everybody else fix what it broke.

So the best possible outcome here, beyond Ukraine being able to prevail on the battlefield, is a negotiated settlement that is in Ukraine’s favor, that leads to commitments to its security and reconstruction, and leads to some soul searching in Russia. That’s not going to happen under these current circumstances. The only way that that happens is when Russia believes that everybody else has the fortitude and staying power for this conflict. And right now, that’s not what we’re displaying at all. Actually, we’re looking pretty pathetic, I can’t think of any other way to describe it. And for Putin, this is just such a gift. This is such a gift.

What happens to Putin if he loses?

It’s problematic for Putin if he loses, or if he’s seen to lose and is diminished. He thinks he’s got clear sailing to be president in Russia from here to eternity, at least his eternity. He’s got two more six-year terms that can take him up to 2036 when he’ll be in his 80s. He will have been in power longer than any other Russian ruler in history. That’s his legacy. And if he loses the war in Ukraine, he no longer looks like the person who should be at the helm of Russia; and you’ll get a lot more machinations behind the scenes and questions about his ability to manage things.

Putin doesn’t seem to have many internal threats at this particular juncture. But that could change very quickly if he’s seen to lose in a definitive way, if he’s not accepted in polite company around the world, if the UAE and the Saudis don’t want to see him. If Putin looks like a loser and not a winner, people won’t be eager to host him. It’s while he still looks like a winner or somebody who could be a winner that people want to see him.

The problem, however, is an awful lot of countries don’t want to see Putin lose either, because they want Putin and Russia as a counterweight. Some countries, ironically, want to see Russia as a counterweight against China. That’s where Japan and India and others in the Indo-Pacific come in. Others want to see Russia as a counterweight against the United States. And so there will always be a push, just like the Chinese are doing, to try to prop Putin up. But if he looks like a loser who is significantly reducing Russian power on the world stage and damaging others’ interests in the process, then there may be more international pressure for the Russians to get their act together, resolve this war and move on.

How will China respond to a Putin loss?

They’re very assiduously trying to make sure that he doesn’t lose but probably also trying to make sure that he doesn’t win outright. The Chinese don’t necessarily want to see Ukraine completely lose and be partitioned. They make a case all the time about sovereignty and territorial integrity. That’s the base of their claim on Taiwan, for example. So it could be awkward for them. But, then again, I’m sure they’ll find some narrative to finesse it as they certainly don’t want to have Putin lose. This would be very negative for China, it would have all kinds of reverberations for China’s own claims against Taiwan. And for Xi personally, he has a lot invested in his relationship with Putin. This would raise questions about his judgment and about the costs to China of propping up Russia at the expense of other relationships.

What we need to do here is look for the best possible diplomatic solution, one in which Ukraine becomes an asset rather than a liability, where we use the war in Ukraine to try to stabilize the international system. The situation in Ukraine has so much riding on it at this point, and the longer this war goes on, of course, the more complicated it is.

But by giving up now, we’re basically giving up on ourselves, and giving up on European security and our own international position. This will have knock-on effects, very negative knock-on effects, including on our own domestic affairs.

So the big question is, again, is Putin winning right now?

He’s about to, and it’s on us. We’re at the point where it’s on us. If we leave the field, then he will win. His calculation is that our domestic politics and our own interests override everything, and that we no longer have a sense of national security, or of our role in international affairs. This is a moment for him to get rid of not just Pax Americana, but America as a major global player.

But the decision’s ours?

The decision is ours, this decision is entirely ours. We’re just falling all over ourselves to engage in self-harm at the moment. Ukraine shouldn’t be a partisan issue. I just hope that people are going to be able to dig deep, and realize the moment that they’re in.

POLITICO

Politico

7. Weapons aid sent to low-income nations may fuel instability, Army-sponsored study finds

So what happens if these poor countries only get weapons from the revisionist and rogue powers of China, Russia, Iran, and north Korea? Will there be more or less instability if all these poor countries are in the orbit of Russia and China, etc?

Some interesting information here:

Rand’s analysis found that a steady overseas presence of U.S. forces as seen in Europe, Japan and South Korea, and corresponding defense treaties associated with those places “appear to be the strongest, most consistent tools for deterrence.”

Such arrangements have proved useful in preventing war and, in some cases, hostile measures below the threshold of armed conflict, Rand said.

“These results do not imply that U.S. allies and partners protected by such measures are never the victims of aggression. But they are substantially less likely to be targeted,” Rand said.

Weapons aid sent to low-income nations may fuel instability, Army-sponsored study finds

Stars and Stripes · by John Vandiver · December 15, 2023

Soldiers and airmen board an aircraft at Aviano Air Base, Italy, Feb. 24, 2022. Quick-turn deployments were examined in a recent Army-sponsored study pointing to potential risks associated with military aid to unstable regions. (U.S. Army/Meleesa E. Gutierrez)

Sending American weapons and other forms of military support to countries that lack stable governments raises the odds of armed conflict, proxy wars and terrorism in the places where those arms are sent, according to a new Army-sponsored study.

“In such cases, U.S. materiel assistance might embolden regimes in ways that ultimately prove self-defeating,” the Rand Corp. think tank said in a report released Wednesday.

The report, which looked at 65 years of overseas U.S. troop deployments, exercises and military assistance initiatives in 160 countries, revealed that some tools were more effective than others in deterring conflicts and promoting stability.

Perhaps the riskiest of the tools is sending arms to lower-income countries or those with a history of instability.

For example, Rand said it was possible that U.S. military assistance to Georgia “led to more-aggressive policies by the Tbilisi government, which ultimately set it on a collision course with Moscow that ended in the 2008 Russo-Georgian War.”

A service member briefs Nigerian special operations soldiers on range procedures near Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire while participating in Exercise Flintlock, March 2, 2023. A recent Rand Corp. report questioned the efficacy and risks of military aid in countries with fragile political institutions. (Clara Soria-Hernandez/U.S. Marine Corps)

U.S. involvement during the Cold War in parts of Africa also was cited as an example of when military aid got misused.

More recently, U.S. weapons intended for the government of Somalia also have found their way into the hands of the al-Shabab terrorist group, Rand noted.

Unmentioned in the scope of the report were recent coups in Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali, all of which previously had close military ties with the U.S.

“Partners with weak political institutions are more likely to suffer destabilizing effects” from U.S. military aid, the report said.

There are options at the Pentagon’s disposal when it comes to projecting power abroad.

Rand’s analysis found that a steady overseas presence of U.S. forces as seen in Europe, Japan and South Korea, and corresponding defense treaties associated with those places “appear to be the strongest, most consistent tools for deterrence.”

Such arrangements have proved useful in preventing war and, in some cases, hostile measures below the threshold of armed conflict, Rand said.

“These results do not imply that U.S. allies and partners protected by such measures are never the victims of aggression. But they are substantially less likely to be targeted,” Rand said.

Less effective as deterrents are more periodic exercises and troop deployments, such as the Dynamic Force Employment concept.

That concept, developed by former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and still in use, revolves around short-notice missions over relatively short duration that are intended to showcase the military’s flexibility to adversaries.

Such short-term drills are likely more useful as tools for practicing tactics rather than serving as signals of U.S. resolve to adversaries, the report said.

On the downside, Rand found that in general, a U.S. military presence was associated with an increase in terrorist attacks.

“This is true across the spectrum of forces, footprints and agreements, and activities,” Rand said.

However, the analysis indicates that in most of those terrorism cases, the scale of attacks tended to be small. Most instances happened during the Cold War, when organizations like the Red Army Faction were active in Germany.

A lot also depends on the wealth of the partner state, with low-income countries at greater risk.

“Advanced industrialized countries are typically of greater strategic significance to the United States, and they typically are better able to convert U.S. security cooperation into usable military capabilities,” Rand said.

The U.S. could take more steps to mitigate risks when working with less advanced countries, such as adjusting the types of equipment it provides, Rand said.

“The transfer of attack helicopters, for instance, has more potential for misuse than the transfer of coastal radar systems or coast guard cutters,” Rand said.

Stars and Stripes · by John Vandiver · December 15, 2023

8.  Why China’s Growing Challenge To Big Tech Is A Problem For The Pentagon

Excerpts:

Some domestic manufacturers are investing heavily in new technology, but the evidence suggests they are losing the race to China. Chinese companies routinely beat their American counterparts to market with new commercial products like drones, or offer their products at prices that U.S. companies can’t match.

This does not bode well for the future of the U.S.-China military competition. The Pentagon has been seeking innovations that will enable it to stay a generation ahead of military rivals, but it looks unlikely that edge can be provided by the nation’s manufacturing sector. China’s share of global manufacturing is now bigger than that of America, Japan and South Korea combined.

Why China’s Growing Challenge To Big Tech Is A Problem For The Pentagon

Forbes · by Loren Thompson · December 14, 2023

Secretary Austin has a new problem to add to his long list of challenges.

Wikipedia

When it comes to innovation, the U.S. economy is a tale of two cities. The biggest U.S. providers of software and services, such as Amazon AMZN and Microsoft MSFT , are world-class innovators. American manufacturers of hardware, on the other hand, are barely holding their own against foreign competitors.

The “steady deindustrialization” of the economy, as a recent Pentagon industrial-base assessment put it, has forced the Department of Defense to get increasingly involved in shoring up domestic producers of critical minerals and components used in military systems.

So many companies have moved manufacturing operations offshore that in much of the military supply chain only one domestic source of vital production inputs remains. For example, Fairbanks Morse Defense is the sole surviving U.S. producer of large diesel engines used in warships. Once there were six.

Some domestic manufacturers are investing heavily in new technology, but the evidence suggests they are losing the race to China. Chinese companies routinely beat their American counterparts to market with new commercial products like drones, or offer their products at prices that U.S. companies can’t match.

This does not bode well for the future of the U.S.-China military competition. The Pentagon has been seeking innovations that will enable it to stay a generation ahead of military rivals, but it looks unlikely that edge can be provided by the nation’s manufacturing sector. China’s share of global manufacturing is now bigger than that of America, Japan and South Korea combined.

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The Pentagon thought it had a solution by turning to U.S. producers of software and services to maintain its military edge. The digital revolution has spawned a domestic ecosystem of innovators who leverage clever source code to lead the world in areas like cloud computing and artificial intelligence.

Advanced software won’t give America’s military a multi-decade advantage on the battlefield—software generations are measured in months rather than years—but it has the potential to at least keep the U.S. ahead of China in areas such as AI.

However, Chinese firms have begun challenging U.S. Big Tech companies in core markets. The best-known example of this is the challenge China-based TikTok poses to previously dominant Instagram. TikTok has been the world’s most frequently downloaded app for several years running.

That’s a minor concern for military planners, but other challenges are more worrisome. Alibaba, Huawei and Tencent are now actively challenging Amazon, Google and Microsoft for cloud-computing business in many markets. They already are players in countries such as Australia, Japan and the United Kingdom, and are seeking to dominate in regions like Southeast Asia.

Cloud computing has been the biggest growth area for companies such as Amazon and Microsoft in recent years, so the rising Chinese challenge in that business has the potential to impair the kind of investment in innovation the Pentagon is counting on.

And that is not all. Forbes contributor Nina Xiang reported on December 13 that Huawei is moving to dethrone Android as the dominant operating system for smart phones in China. If it succeeds, it will undoubtedly carry that product into other markets, where Huawei phones often cost much less than the offerings of competing companies like Apple AAPL .

So, although American Big Tech firms continue to be the world’s leading innovators, China is moving to do to them what it has already done to much of U.S. manufacturing.

If Big Tech falters, Pentagon efforts to remain ahead of China in critical technologies may no longer be attainable. Almost all of the emerging technologies the Department of Defense identifies as top priorities for the future are software-driven, commercial innovations.

Against that backdrop, the continuous harassment of Big Tech firms by U.S. antitrust authorities looks untimely and potentially destructive of U.S. security.

The military is counting on commercial companies to make huge investments in cutting-edge innovations like AI software during this decade, but you need huge companies to make huge investments.

As a report from the Competitive Enterprise Institute noted just this week, assailing Big Tech with a raft of antitrust suits could help China to overtake America in the race to innovate. The Biden administration needs to do a better job of reconciling its security and regulatory goals.

Disclosure: Amazon, Alphabet and Fairbanks Morse Defense contribute to my think tank, the Lexington Institute.

Forbes · by Loren Thompson · December 14, 2023

9. The Axis of Disorder: How Russia, Iran, and China Want to Remake the World

Why is north Korea always left out?

Excerpts:

In the meantime, Xi is likely assessing what he can get away with in this incipient age of global disorder. He may already be trying to take advantage, most notably in the South China Sea. The past year has been marked by near-unrelenting pressure on the Philippines. That it is targeted at the only American treaty ally with South China Sea claims is no accident. Beijing is clearly testing the Biden Administration at a time when it is grappling with other conflicts and has been signaling that it is eager to stabilize US-China relations. Put another way, he is testing both the legitimacy of an order in which international differences are supposed to be solved peacefully and whether American (and allied) power is capable of upholding it.

What Xi learns in the South China Sea and from observing American approaches to countering Russia and Iran could prove ominous for Taiwan, Japan, and China’s other neighbors in Asia. The United States has crucial, regionally specific interests at stake in both Europe and the Middle East, but it also has a more abstract interest in defending the global order in which it has thrived—and under which repeats of the twentieth century’s most abhorrent spasms of bloodletting have been largely avoided. If Washington fails to do so, the risk that China will pounce will grow far more acute.

The main point. The United States has an interest in defending the global order in which it has thrived. If Washington fails to do so, a Chinese turn to aggression will become far more likely.

The Axis of Disorder: How Russia, Iran, and China Want to Remake the World

Michael Mazza

Michael Mazza is a senior non-resident fellow at the Global Taiwan Institute and a non-resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

globaltaiwan.org · December 13, 2023

• December 13, 2023

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Is the world entering a new age of global disorder? Signs point to yes: we see simultaneously the biggest armed conflict in Europe since World War II, a war in the Levant, and a short, sharp war in the Caucasian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. These seemingly separate conflicts are in fact connected not just by a coincidental moment in time, but by the actors involved. From Russia to Iran to a veritable smorgasbord of terrorist groups, bad actors have unleashed turmoil in a swath of territory stretching from Ukraine to Azerbaijan to Yemen.

Behind them all stands the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Beijing has sought to give the appearance of being an independent peacemaker. But the veil it has erected is transparent in nature. It is less interested in peace, stability, and justice for the victims of aggression than it is in fostering a global state of affairs in which China can more easily pursue its own ends. For now, disorder suits Xi Jinping (習近平) just fine.

Defining Disorder

Is this burgeoning period of global history truly different from what preceded it? After all, there is no period in living memory in which the world can truly be said to have been at peace. Since the close of World War II, the United States has fought wars or engaged in military interventions in East Asia, Southeast Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America. Insurgencies and civil wars have been regular features across much of the developing world. Terrorism has been an ever-present concern since the 1970s. The Rwandan Genocide occurred during what might be considered the high-water mark of global order in the 1990s, with the genocide in Darfur following just a decade later.

Yet, both the Cold War and post-Cold-War eras featured an order of a kind, even if that order was at times quite bloody. Henry Kissinger helpfully defined world order as “the concept held by a region or civilization about the nature of just arrangements and the distribution of power thought to be applicable to the entire world.” Whatever the order, its durability depends on its general acceptance, or legitimacy, and a balance of power that can sustain it. For much of history, orders have been regional, rather than worldwide, in nature. That changed beginning in the nineteenth century, when Europe’s Westphalian order went global.

What is the Westphalian order? According to Kissinger, “it relied on a system of independent states refraining from interference in each other’s domestic affairs and checking each other’s ambitions through a general equilibrium of power.” Those fundamental features remain, even as the system has evolved:

The contemporary, now global Westphalian system […] has striven to curtail the anarchical nature of the world with an extensive network of international legal and organizational structures designed to foster open trade and a stable international financial system, establish accepted principles of resolving international disputes, and set limits on the conduct of wars when they do occur.

Those modern-day structures arguably include the norm of peacefully resolving international disputes, the law of armed conflict, freedom of the seas, the United Nations system, and the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Arguably, each of these contributes to the presiding order’s legitimacy and enables the balance of power needed to ensure its survival.

The United States sought to reshape global order in the wake of the Soviet Union’s dissolution. In particular, it aimed to weaken the norm against interfering in the domestic affairs of others—not because it was eager to meddle in the nitty-gritty of foreign political processes, but because it saw the unipolar moment as a moment in which it could, finally, give in to its evangelistic impulses. Here was an opportunity to fulfill the destiny Thomas Jefferson had foreseen for the United States: that it would become an “empire for liberty,” spreading democracy to the furthest reaches of the world.

Image: Russian President Vladimir Putin, CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping, and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani (with Belorussian President Alexander Lukashenko in the background) appear together at a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO, 上海合作組織) in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan (June 2019). (Image source: Express Tribune, July 15, 2020)

Even so, the basic nature of the Westphalian order—a system of sovereign states coequal in status if not in power—remained largely unchanged, despite America’s more fulsome embrace of liberal internationalism and despite movements in some regions, notably Europe, toward supra-regional organization.

The Westphalian order, and especially its modern structures, is now under threat. Moscow’s and Beijing’s imperial pretensions, though distinct, both harken to earlier eras in which their Russian and Chinese forebears had yet to buy into the Westphalian approach to international organization. The Russian cyberattack on Estonia in 2007, the invasion of Georgia in 2008, the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, and the full-scale assault on Ukraine in 2022 all made manifest what Putinistic rhetoric had long espoused: a worldview in which Russian neighbors are not sovereign states, properly understood. Russia now stands at the precipice of a return to the tsarist approach of nonstop expansion; whether Russia topples over the edge depends in large part on what happens in Ukraine.

China, meanwhile, has long bristled at a world order in which it is supposed to be bound by rules it did not write—and in which it is simply one country among many equals, both in Asia and globally. Beijing has set out to reestablish a Sino-centric order, at least in its own neighborhood—and perhaps beyond. Domestic and international economic policy and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI, formerly known as “One Belt, One Road,” 一帶一路) are designed to ensure that all economic roads lead to Beijing. Investments in military power and the increasing use of that power are meant to ensure Beijing can secure by intimidation and force what foreign economic interests alone do not guarantee: that China, and China alone, sits atop a new Asian hierarchy, in which might makes right and which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) can rule over something like a modern-day tributary system.

Iran and its Shiite satellites, including Hamas and Hezbollah, have a very different idea of international order, but share with Russia and China opposition to the presiding order today. Tehran’s goals in some ways call to mind pre-Westphalian Europe, in which sectarian differences drove interstate conflict. Iran remains committed to “exporting” the revolution, by which it aims to spread Shiism and provide Shia Muslims with the ideological, military, and economic tools to defeat “imperialists.” Despite Hamas’s role in governing Gaza, its objectives are similarly religious in nature, according to its own covenant: “They are the fighting against the false, defeating it and vanquishing it so that justice could prevail, homelands be retrieved and from its mosques would the voice of the mu’azen emerge declaring the establishment of the state of Islam, so that people and things would return each to their right places and Allah is our helper.”

Russia, China, Iran, and Hamas are all, then, revisionists. They may not agree on what world order should ultimately look like—or whether there should even be a world order—but they are united in opposition to the order as it stands. And they are making headway. The world now may be approaching a moment in which, to use Kissinger’s framing, no single concept of order enjoys widespread legitimacy and the balance of power that has long upheld the presiding order proves no longer up to the task.

Richard Haass, former president of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and longtime US diplomat, is right when he argues that “the term ‘order’ implicitly also reflects the degree of disorder that inevitably exists.” But what happens when disorder—or the lack of any agreed upon framework for organizing the world—reigns supreme?

China Gets Ready to Pounce

At the moment, Russia, Iran, and Iranian state and nonstate satellites are the main antagonists in the assault on global order. All are striving to wipe fellow sovereign states off the map, and have strained against or ignored entirely the “international legal and organizational structures” that Kissinger points to as aimed at curtailing “the anarchical nature of the world.” Beijing has decided not to stand in their way. Indeed, China has provided modest but important support for their efforts. Xi Jinping, perhaps, assesses that once others have done the hard work of tearing down global order, China can swoop in to rebuild order in its own image.

In the meantime, Xi is likely assessing what he can get away with in this incipient age of global disorder. He may already be trying to take advantage, most notably in the South China Sea. The past year has been marked by near-unrelenting pressure on the Philippines. That it is targeted at the only American treaty ally with South China Sea claims is no accident. Beijing is clearly testing the Biden Administration at a time when it is grappling with other conflicts and has been signaling that it is eager to stabilize US-China relations. Put another way, he is testing both the legitimacy of an order in which international differences are supposed to be solved peacefully and whether American (and allied) power is capable of upholding it.

What Xi learns in the South China Sea and from observing American approaches to countering Russia and Iran could prove ominous for Taiwan, Japan, and China’s other neighbors in Asia. The United States has crucial, regionally specific interests at stake in both Europe and the Middle East, but it also has a more abstract interest in defending the global order in which it has thrived—and under which repeats of the twentieth century’s most abhorrent spasms of bloodletting have been largely avoided. If Washington fails to do so, the risk that China will pounce will grow far more acute.

The main point. The United States has an interest in defending the global order in which it has thrived. If Washington fails to do so, a Chinese turn to aggression will become far more likely.

globaltaiwan.org · December 13, 2023

10. Why the World Should Still Worry About Dirty Bombs

Conclusion:

Although these steps could help mitigate the risks posed by radiological weapons, their implementation relies on like-minded states. With little certainty that this will transpire, shedding more light on the impediments faced by past would-be radiological weapons proliferators could discourage new states from investing in them in the first place.

Why the World Should Still Worry About Dirty Bombs

With Radiological Weapons, States—Not Terrorists—Pose the Main Risk

By By William C. Potter, Sarah Bidgood, Hanna Notte

December 15, 2023

Foreign Affairs · by William C. Potter, Sarah Bidgood, Hanna Notte · December 15, 2023

In the years after the 9/11 attacks, a new threat loomed large in the minds of policymakers and the public: the dirty bomb. This term describes a radiological weapon that used an explosive to disperse radioactive material over a limited area. A dirty bomb is far less powerful than a nuclear bomb, but it is easier and cheaper to assemble and can cause tremendous panic and disruption. Many analysts feared that terrorist groups would seek to develop and use such weapons: In 2002, U.S. officials announced the detention of Jose Padilla, an American citizen and alleged al Qaeda operative who they insisted intended to detonate a dirty bomb in the United States. Since then, several governments in Europe have claimed to have foiled similar plots by terrorist groups.

But visions of dirty bombs and radiological terrorism obscured the fact that the threat from radiological weapons was not limited to terrorist groups. Indeed, for decades, major countries including the United States and the Soviet Union pioneered the development of these weapons. And now, as the norm against nuclear weapons is weakening and tensions between great powers mount, there is reason to worry that the dangers posed by radiological arms proliferation may be growing again.

In the past, at least five states expressed interest in weapons designed to disperse radioactive material without a nuclear detonation. Four states actively pursued them, and three—Iraq, the Soviet Union, and the United States—tested them on multiple occasions before ultimately choosing not to deploy them. The largely obscure history of the development of radiological weaponry helps to explain its appeal, especially in the context of rising international hostilities, a breakdown in nuclear arms control, and a loss of faith in the credibility of security assurances.

Russian disinformation about a purported covert Ukrainian radiological weapons program has brought renewed attention to the issue. Russia’s war against Ukraine and the attendant escalation in great-power competition have eroded the taboo against nuclear weapons use and undermined the international nonproliferation regime. Additional states may consider the possible deterrent benefits of possessing nuclear arms or, if the costs of acquiring such weapons are prohibitive, other nonconventional weapons. For these states, radiological weapons may appear a more viable option, something akin to “a poor man’s nuclear weapon.” Although U.S.-led diplomatic efforts are now underway to ban them, radiological weapons are not prohibited under international law, which could encourage states to seek them out. Two decades ago, policymakers were haunted by visions of dirty bombs in the hands of terrorists. In the near future, however, they may have to grapple with the more dangerous possibility that states will once again turn to these lethal weapons.

Death dust

Although shrouded in secrecy and largely ignored by both scholars and diplomats, the origins of the pursuit of radiological weapons by states can be traced to World War II. Unsurprisingly, the first two countries to explore these capabilities were also the first two to develop nuclear weapons. In October 1940, a pair of Soviet mathematicians submitted a proposal to the Soviet Union’s inventions bureau on the “use of uranium as an explosive and poisoning substance.” In May of the following year, the initial report of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences’ Advisory Committee on Uranium highlighted the “production of violently radioactive materials” to be carried by airplanes and dispersed over enemy territory as one of three possible military uses of atomic fission.

Within a matter of years, these proposals and reports had turned into something more substantial. Starting in 1949, the U.S. Army’s Chemical Corps oversaw dozens of atmospheric tests of prototypes for radiological munitions. Similarly, the Soviet Union conducted tests of various munitions containing radioactive waste in the mid-1950s. These included experiments on live animals, including rabbits, dogs, and mice, and, inadvertently, on the humans staging the tests themselves.

At virtually the same time, the United Kingdom also began to explore the military potential of radiological weapons. These preliminary investigations led to a more substantial British developmental effort, but by the autumn of 1953, about one year after the country’s first nuclear weapons detonation, its radiological arms program had for all practical purposes been abandoned. There is also circumstantial evidence that in the early 1960s, Egypt flirted with the idea of developing radiological artillery shells and sought to import radioactive isotopes to that end. Two decades later, Iraq undertook a far more serious program, which led to the development and testing of radiological weapons toward the end of its war with Iran in the 1980s.

The rise and demise of radiological weapons

The circumstances differed, but none of these efforts led to the mass production or deployment of radiological weapons. Why, then, did countries want to develop this capability in the first place, and why did they all ultimately decide to abandon these programs?

States were principally motivated to seek radiological weapons for security reasons. In both the United States and, to a lesser extent, the United Kingdom, concerns that Nazi Germany was pursuing radiological weapons prompted explorations of their military potential. In the Soviet Union, meanwhile, knowledge of the United States’ radiological weapons activities—provided, in part, by spies active in the British nuclear weapons program—generated high-level support for the establishment of a Soviet program.

Iraq sought these weapons for tactical reasons during its war with Iran. Specifically, Iraqi leaders thought radiological weapons could be useful in disrupting “human wave” attacks in which Iran hurled massed ranks of infantrymen at Iraqi positions. In contrast to the substantial documentary evidence available about the Iraqi program, much less is known about Egypt’s short-lived flirtation with radiological weapons. Nevertheless, it appears that after the revelation in 1960 that Israel was building its Dimona nuclear reactor in the Negev desert, Egypt sought ways to match and counter Israeli military innovations, in part by experimenting with radiological artillery shells.

In none of the five cases, however, did external threats or internal drivers prove sufficient to move radiological weapons from experimentation or testing to mass production and deployment. Instead, radiological weapons lost traction—and budgetary support—in Washington, Moscow, and London as policymakers in those capitals placed a greater emphasis on developing nuclear weapons, especially hydrogen bombs. In Iraq, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States, the attention of leaders shifted to chemical weapons, which were judged to be more cost-effective.

But perhaps the biggest factor accounting for the demise of radiological weapons was their technological limitations. The weapons could not deliver what their advocates promised. In some cases, it proved too difficult or expensive to produce the sources of radiation from which the weapons were made. Especially challenging were very specific military requirements regarding the half-life of the radioisotopes that would be dispersed by the weapons and the intensity of radioactivity emitted. In other instances, the risks associated with the production, transportation, testing, and delivery of radiological weapons were regarded as outweighing their utility on the battlefield. Over time, the enthusiasm many states had for the weapons waned and ultimately disappeared.

IN SEARCH OF A DEAL

The war in Ukraine has revived interest in the risks of radiological weapons. Shortly after Russia’s invasion in February 2022, Russian media began to disseminate unsubstantiated claims that Russian forces had interrupted a Ukrainian radiological weapons program that some propagandists asserted was based at the defunct Chernobyl nuclear power station. Russia’s subsequent seizure of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and its shelling of other nuclear facilities in Ukraine raised the specter of the unintended dispersal of radioactive material in a fashion that might have resembled the battlefield effects of radiological weapons.

Ironically, the Soviet Union—along with the United States—had led the initial effort to negotiate a ban on radiological warfare. A draft convention submitted to the Committee on Disarmament—the predecessor to the current Conference on Disarmament, a 65-member multilateral forum based in Geneva—by the two superpowers in 1979 specified that parties to the accord would agree not to develop, produce, stockpile, otherwise acquire or use radiological weapons. Consensus could not be reached, however, because delegations found its scope to be too narrow. (It did not include radiation emitted by nuclear explosions.) What is more, many governments were simply not convinced of the importance of radiological weapons.

It is significant, therefore, that in October 2023, the United States and 38 co-sponsors introduced a remarkably similar draft resolution on radiological weapons at the UN General Assembly. This resolution called on all states not to use radiological weapons and to refrain from developing, producing, or stockpiling devices or materials for use in such weapons. In addition, it urged the Conference on Disarmament to commence negotiations that would result in a prohibition of the use of radiological weapons by states. Although some adversaries of the United States opposed the draft resolution, its final version was adopted by a vote of 159 to 5 with 13 abstentions. (The five naysayers were Belarus, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Syria. China abstained.)

The war in Ukraine has revived interest in the risks of radiological weapons.

This overwhelming vote in favor of the U.S.-led initiative does not necessarily augur a successful prohibition of radiological weapons. UN General Assembly resolutions are mostly nonbinding and may not spur any meaningful action. Most states do not have well-formed views on radiological weapons. There is also considerable skepticism about the timing of the U.S. initiative and why it was introduced without greater consultation.

Some diplomats, for example, see the initiative as a move to embarrass Russia after its bogus allegations about Ukrainian radiological activities. Many states also question what Washington expects to accomplish at the Conference on Disarmament, which is the sole multilateral negotiating forum on that issue but has been paralyzed for decades. Other states object to the resolution’s emphasis on banning the use of radiological weapons rather than focusing equally on limiting the development, production, and stockpiling of materials that can be used in such devices. A senior diplomat from one state that voted in favor of the resolution raised an interesting question shortly after the vote about what prompted the resolution. Was there new intelligence to suggest that some states were considering the launch of radiological weapons programs?

U.S. officials have yet to respond to the question, but they believe this effort is long overdue. The recent UN vote has convinced them that banning radiological weapons has broad support. The test will now come at the Conference on Disarmament, where prospects for the accord are dim: The body’s consensus-based decision-making process has long stalled negotiations, and several opponents of the U.S. initiative, including Iran and Russia, could exercise a veto. If talks founder there, Washington might support commissioning an international group of government experts who would assess the dangers posed by radiological weapons and make recommendations about how to prevent or mitigate these risks. They could in turn recommend legally binding restraints on the production and use of radiological weapons, as well as the adoption of nonproliferation and non-use commitments, the creation of radiological weapons-free zones, and the fostering of a taboo against radiological weapons through civil society engagement and public education.

Although these steps could help mitigate the risks posed by radiological weapons, their implementation relies on like-minded states. With little certainty that this will transpire, shedding more light on the impediments faced by past would-be radiological weapons proliferators could discourage new states from investing in them in the first place.

• WILLIAM C. POTTER is Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar Professor of Nonproliferation Studies and Founding Director of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.
• SARA BIDGOOD is a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at MIT’s Security Studies Program and a former Director of the Eurasia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies.
• HANNA NOTTE is Director of the Eurasia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies and a Nonresident Senior Associate with the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
• They are the authors of Death Dust: The Rise, Decline, and Future of Radiological Weapons Programs, from which this essay is adapted.

Foreign Affairs · by William C. Potter, Sarah Bidgood, Hanna Notte · December 15, 2023

11. Counterpoint to U.S. Special Operations Forces Cuts

Some good anecdotes. Useful descriptions and assertions. But what is lacking is data. Data (or lack thereof) is driving force cuts. There is a lot of good analysis in this essay but there is no data that can be linked to justifying force structure (either to keep it, add to it, or maintain the status quo).

Here is what the just signed NDAA calls for. It is asking for a zero based assessment to determine the optimal forces structure for SOF:

SEC. 1075. SPECIAL OPERATIONS FORCE STRUCTURE.

(a) REPORT.—Not later than 90 days after the date of the

enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Defense shall submit to

the congressional defense committees a report containing an assessment

of the optimal force structure for special operations forces.

The question is, will we have the report done by March 14th? If I were directing a study I would compare three organizations: the OSS, the CIA's paramilitary force, and current Special Operations? Both the OSS and the CIA's paramilitary organization are much smaller than the current SOF force structure. Yet they did/do punch well above their weight? Why were/are they able to do more with less?  Are there lessons in terms of authorities, permissions, concepts of operations and "doctrine," and flattened C2 that we could learn from and might make SOF more effective with a reduced force structure. Would we trade some forces structure for more flattened and dispersed organizations with the right authorities and permissions? Could we be more effective? Could we generate the data to test that hypothesis?

Counterpoint to U.S. Special Operations Forces Cuts

Lt. Col. Doug Livermore, North Carolina National Guard

armyupress.army.mil

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December 2023 Online Exclusive Article

• Online Exclusive Article Archive

Lt. Col. Doug Livermore, North Carolina National Guard

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A soldier with the 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne) operates a drone during a raid exercise 15 March 2021 at the Muscatatuck Urban Training Center, Indiana. U.S. special operations forces conduct regular training focused on building partner force capacity while enhancing readiness for worldwide deployments in response to threats to national security. (Photo by Staff Sgt. William Howard, U.S. Army)

The current geopolitical circumstances in which the United States finds itself are fraught with challenges and opportunities that its special operations forces (SOF) are uniquely able to address, making any significant reduction in SOF manpower unwise and potentially catastrophic for the long-term security of the Nation. Drawn from all the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) services, SOF is organized under the functional command of the U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM).1 U.S. SOF has a long and proud history of making significant contributions to the advancement of our national interests in unique but impactful ways. This impact is only made possible through the distinctive capabilities SOF brings, borne from the most exacting assessment and selection processes, training, technology, and international access gained through constant overseas deployments. Specifically recruited, designed, and employed to punch well above its weight class, U.S. SOF provides an incredibly efficient return on investment to the Nation. Finally, if cuts to U.S. SOF are unavoidable, USSOCOM should undertake every effort to retain the most skilled service members and critical capabilities within its Reserve Component (RC) formations.

Increasingly, U.S. SOF is diversifying its capabilities far beyond those of traditional combat operators with which most Americans are familiar with from Hollywood and the nightly news. For the last two decades of the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), Americans have come to think of all SOF personnel as barrel-chested, weapon-festooned warriors who spend their every waking hour solely kicking down doors and shooting terrorists. The reality is much more nuanced, as U.S. SOF requires a wide range of diverse skills and capabilities to effectively operate—computer system technicians, logisticians, psychological operations experts, and cyber operations specialists in addition to the “traditional” SOF operators. Particularly as USSOCOM continues its pivot away from the counterterrorism focus of the GWOT and reorients onto competition with Russia and China, advanced technical skills like cyberspace operations and psychological operations designed to influence relevant populations will gain in prominence.

U.S. SOF is a critical component of what has come to be known as the “Influence Triad,” in which these specialized forces provide the on-the-ground access and placement that enables U.S. Space Force and U.S. Cyber Command elements to have their own outsized strategic effects.2 Unfortunately, to preserve its core SOF capabilities, it is likely that USSOCOM personnel cuts would fall disproportionately on these components with more specialized applications.3 While recognizing the importance of maintaining such unique capabilities, much of USSOCOM’s cyberspace and psychological operational capability would either be outsourced to less capable formations or abandoned entirely. U.S. SOF personnel are not homogenous, and manpower cuts reducing any niche specialty within the broader force would severely undermine not just our special operations activities. Inevitably, personnel reductions to USSOCOM would negatively impact on the entire Influence Triad upon which much of our strategic competition relies.

Global Impact

The rapidly growing prevalence of irregular warfare and related asymmetric/hybrid threats to U.S. interests and security demonstrate the growing complexity of strategic competition in the modern world.4 SOF has been at the forefront of meeting these challenges to ensure the maintenance of a stable, rules-based order. While irregular U.S. formations have been a part of our history since before there was even a country, modern U.S. SOF came into being in the fires of World War II, when the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) emerged to fight against the Axis powers.5 Operating deep behind enemy lines across Europe, Southeast Asia, and elsewhere, the OSS worked alongside the British Special Operations Executive and indigenous groups like the French Resistance to wage a “butcher-and-bolt reign of terror.”6 While the OSS was disbanded shortly after the war in September 1945, the Central Intelligence Agency and the U.S. Army Special Forces trace their lineage to the OSS and count many former OSS commandos among their ranks. Established in 1987 to functionally control all the DOD’s various service SOF, the OSS’s distinctive arrowhead emblem is represented in USSOCOM’s own crest.7

Soldiers in the Special Forces Communications Sergeant Course practice using a PDA-184 computer and an AN/PRC-117G satellite radio 29 August 2019 at the Yarborough Training Complex, Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The satellite communications module qualified students to be proficient in installing, operating, and maintaining a satellite communications link. (Photo by K. Kassens, U.S. Army)

Throughout the Cold War, the presence of U.S. SOF in Western Europe served as a strong deterrent to the Soviet Union’s ambitions of invading the region. Building off the legacy of the OSS, U.S. Army Special Forces units trained with Western European partners to prepare “stay behind” forces to attack rear areas in the event of any Soviet invasion.8 These SOF units were trained in a wide range of unconventional warfare techniques, which provided a degree of unpredictability and uncertainty to the Soviets. Famously, some Special Forces units were even equipped and prepared to deploy man-portable nuclear weapons, which were intended to wreak havoc upon Soviet invasion corridors.9 Whereas conventional American forces might potentially take months to deploy to Europe in the event of a Soviet invasion, SOF units could deploy rapidly and effectively to respond to any potential Soviet incursions. Moreover, the presence of U.S. SOF in the region provided the United States with a valuable intelligence-gathering capability that could be used to preemptively detect and counter any Soviet moves.10 Ultimately, the presence of U.S. SOF in Western Europe served as a strong deterrent that helped to prevent the Soviets from launching an invasion of the region.

In Asia, U.S. SOF has played an instrumental role in deterring and defeating threats to U.S. interests without the need to deploy large conventional formations. Having learned the lessons of America’s disastrous involvement in Vietnam, U.S. SOF provided more subtle and nuanced responses to challenges, such as by helping the Philippines fight against communist and Islamist insurgencies over the past decades. In what has been the world’s longest-running communist insurgency from 1968 to the present, the United States provided training and equipment to the Philippine military to help it combat the communist New People’s Army.11 This assistance helped the Philippines gain the upper hand and eventually defeat the New People’s Army, though the organization continues as a terrorist group. In the early 2000s, the United States shifted most of its focus to helping the Philippines fight against Islamist insurgents such as the Abu Sayyaf Group. This included providing intelligence, training, and equipment to the Armed Forces of the Philippines, as well as deploying U.S. personnel to advise and assist in combat operations.12 The assistance provided by the United States has been critical in helping the Philippine government defeat both the New People’s Army and Abu Sayyaf Group, and it has helped to secure peace and stability in the region.

Closer to our own borders, the United States began to provide Colombia with support in its fight against the communist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and drug-trafficking cartels in the late 1990s. Since its formation in 1964, the FARC had waged a protracted and horrifically bloody insurgency against successive Colombian governments, while the considerable expansion of the drug cartels’ narcotics exports to the United States had reached epidemic proportions. U.S. support was formalized in 2000 through Plan Colombia, a multibillion-dollar aid package that provided military assistance, counternarcotics training, and economic aid to help strengthen Colombia’s government and fight crime and terrorism. U.S. SOF played a key role in the implementation of this plan by providing intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, as well as training and advising Colombian forces.13 Despite legitimate concerns raised by the international humanitarian community involving alleged excesses by the Colombian government, this support played a critical role in Colombia’s successful efforts to defeat the FARC and drug-trafficking cartels and helped to ensure stability and security along America’s southern flank.

Special Forces soldiers from the 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne) exfiltrate a counter-improvised explosive device (C-IED) lane in an MRZR off-road utility vehicle 11 June 2020 at Panzer Local Training area near Stuttgart, Germany. The C-IED training was a five-day course with both day and nighttime lanes that incorporated various types of simulated explosives and scenarios. (Photo by Sgt. Patrik Orcutt, U.S. Army)

Following the al-Qaida terrorist attack on the United States in September 2001, the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq marked the start of the most significant chapters in the Global War on Terrorism, characterized by the swift and remarkable initial successes achieved by U.S. SOF. With unparalleled speed and precision, these elite units executed daring missions that dismantled key enemy strongholds and disrupted terrorist networks. In Afghanistan, the rapid overthrow of the Taliban regime in 2001 showcased the effectiveness of our SOF, which worked in tandem with local Afghan allies to achieve swift victories.14 Similarly, in 2003, the lightning-quick advance of SOF during the initial stages of the Iraq invasion demonstrated its unparalleled capability to swiftly neutralize high-value targets and secure strategic objectives.15 This early success highlighted the potency of special operations in asymmetrical warfare, though the subsequent challenges of nation-building and long-term stability would later emerge as complex and protracted issues.

A soldier (center) assigned to the 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne) coaches members of the Colombian Compañía Jungla Antinarcóticos during “Glass House Drills” meant to simulate clearing the interior of a building during a joint training exercise 20 November 2015. The Junglas, as they are known, trained with the Special Forces soldiers on Eglin Air Force Base as part of the Western Hemisphere’s longest enduring security partnership formed to counter narcotic and human trafficking. (Photo by Maj. Thomas Cieslak, 7th Special Forces Group [Airborne])

American SOF has played a pivotal role in the implementation of Special Operations Command Europe’s Resistance Operating Concept (ROC), particularly in the context of Ukraine and the deterrence of Russian aggression. First published in 2020 following years of collaboration between Special Operations Command Europe and the Swedish military, the ROC proposes a holistic approach to “developing a nationally authorized, organized resistance capability prior to an invasion and full or partial occupation resulting in a loss of territory and sovereignty.”16 Drawing from the ROC and leveraging their expertise in unconventional warfare, psychological operations, and strategic advisory roles, U.S. and partnered foreign SOF have collaborated closely with Ukrainian forces to enhance their capabilities and resilience in the face of external threats. Through training, advising, and providing critical support, U.S. SOF has contributed to developing a robust resistance posture within Ukraine, fostering a capacity to counter Russian aggression.17 These forces have played a key role in bolstering Ukrainian defenses, cultivating a broader deterrence effect against potential adversaries. By aligning with Ukrainian counterparts and embodying the principles of the ROC, U.S. SOF has strengthened the resilience of Ukraine and contributed to regional stability in the face of evolving geopolitical challenges.

To ensure the enduring defeat of the Islamic State (IS) in Syria and al-Sham’s physical caliphate in the Levant, U.S. SOF played a decisive role by again applying its unique capabilities and persistent relationships across the Middle East. Operating in close coordination with regional partners, starting in 2014, U.S. SOF executed a multifaceted strategy that combined direct action, advisory support, and intelligence gathering.18 These forces spearheaded critical operations to dismantle key IS strongholds, eliminate high-value targets, and disrupt the group’s command and control structures. Through its expertise in counterinsurgency and irregular warfare, U.S. SOF not only contributed to the territorial defeat of IS but also facilitated the training and empowerment of local forces to prevent the resurgence of the terrorist organization. Most recently, I returned from a yearlong mobilization as the deputy commander for Special Operations Advisory Group-Iraq, where our team advised the Iraqi Counter-Terrorism Service and Federal Intelligence and Investigations Agency from the tactical to ministerial levels as part of the continuing effort to enable our partners to maintain crushing pressure on IS.19 The success in the Levant stands as a testament to the effectiveness of U.S. SOF in combating transnational threats and ensuring the lasting defeat of a significant terrorist entity in the region.

Ukrainian special operations soldiers and U.S. Army Special Forces soldiers assigned to 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne) enter an enemy-occupied building during exercise Combined Resolve XI on 10 December 2018 at the Joint Multinational Readiness Center in Hohenfels, Germany. During Combined Resolve XI, special operations forces conducted operations in enemy-occupied territory to support and operate with conventional forces. (Photo by 1st Lt. Benjamin Haulenbeek, U.S. Army)

In direct alignment with the 2022 U.S. National Defense Strategy (NDS), U.S. SOF has had a unique and impactful role in collaborating with U.S. Indo-Pacific Command partners and allies to deter China in regions such as the Philippines and Taiwan.20 Operating at the forefront of irregular warfare, U.S. SOF has provided critical support through training, advising, and capacity-building initiatives.21 By working closely with local forces, U.S. SOF has not only enhanced the capabilities of partner nations but has also fostered a collective deterrence against potential Chinese aggression. The nuanced and matchless understanding of the region and cultural sensitivities exhibited by U.S. SOF has enabled effective cooperation, contributing to a cohesive and coordinated approach to regional security. Through its strategic advisory roles and engagement in joint exercises, U.S. SOF has bolstered the resilience of partner nations, sending a clear signal of deterrence to mitigate potential threats in the Indo-Pacific theater in a way that conventional DOD formations are ill-equipped to provide.22

American SOF boasts a storied history of operating on the fringes of U.S. national security strategy, consistently making substantial and often pivotal contributions to shaping the global environment. Their unique capabilities in unconventional warfare, counterterrorism, and strategic advisory roles position them as a force multiplier with the ability to exert influence in regions crucial to U.S. interests. U.S. SOF’s adaptability and agility has proven critical in the ever-evolving contemporary geopolitical environment. Operating in the shadows and addressing emerging threats with precision, it provides a nuanced and proactive approach to security challenges. Whether countering terrorism, supporting allies in deterrence efforts, or executing complex operations, U.S. SOF remains indispensable in navigating the complex and dynamic global environment. As geopolitical conditions continue to evolve, the enduring importance of U.S. SOF in safeguarding and advancing U.S. interests becomes increasingly evident, underlining its irreplaceable role in shaping the world’s strategic contours.

Capabilities

The unparalleled effectiveness of U.S. SOF stems from a distinctive amalgamation of exceptional training, state-of-the-art technologies, and sustained involvement in some of the globe’s most politically sensitive yet strategically crucial regions. Its rigorous training regimens hone specialized skills, preparing it for a diverse range of missions. Equipped with cutting-edge technologies, U.S. SOF can operate with precision and agility, adapting to dynamic and challenging environments. Moreover, its persistent engagement in key geopolitical hotspots ensures an intimate understanding of local nuances and complexities. This unique combination of skills, technology, and experience empowers U.S. SOF to navigate delicate situations with finesse, providing the Nation with a strategic advantage in addressing multifaceted global challenges.

An Army “Green Beret” advises a Maghaweir al-Thowra (MaT) soldier on base defense tactics during a surprise inspection 27 May 2020 at MaT base within the 55 km deconfliction zone in Syria. Coalition forces in Syria continue to train, advise, and assist our partner force in the fight to defeat the Islamic State and counter violent extremist organizations. (Photo by Staff Sgt. William Howard, U.S. Army)

Commencing with exceptionally demanding assessment and selection processes, each facet of U.S. SOF undergoes a continuous and evolving training pipeline meticulously crafted to comprehensively cultivate personnel skills at initial, intermediate, and advanced levels. This rigorous training continuum ensures that SOF operators are not only highly specialized in their respective domains but also possess the adaptability and resilience necessary to confront an array of complex challenges. By investing in the continuous development of its personnel, U.S. SOF aims to provide the Nation with a cadre of elite operators capable of delivering effective and strategic service throughout their careers.23 This commitment to lifelong learning and skill enhancement reinforces the prowess and versatility of U.S. SOF, enabling it to remain continuously relevant and effective in advancing our national security interests.

The distinctive research, development, and acquisition authorities vested in USSOCOM empower the force to swiftly tailor its technological capabilities to address evolving requirements and outpace potential adversaries. Unlike its conventional DOD counterparts, which require decades (or more) to acquire new equipment, USSOCOM can uniquely respond to emerging threats through these rapid-acquisition authorities.24 This agility in the technological domain is paramount in the ever-changing landscape of modern warfare. With the ability to expedite innovation and deploy cutting-edge solutions, U.S. SOF maintains a competitive edge, ensuring that its equipment and technology align with the dynamic nature of global security challenges.25 This adaptability underscores the importance of granting SOF the flexibility to explore, develop, and acquire advanced technologies, enabling it to respond effectively to emerging threats and maintain a strategic advantage in the complex and rapidly evolving competition space of special operations.

American SOF strategically cultivates a resilient and extensive network of international contacts by engaging persistently with partners and allies worldwide. This proactive approach enables SOF to harness the power of the informal global SOF network, uniquely positioning it to navigate the increasingly unpredictable global environment in a manner unparalleled by other elements of the DOD.26 The depth of this engagement is facilitated through ongoing security cooperation initiatives, the National Guard’s state partnership programs, and the utilization of SOF-specific authorities and permissions such as 10 U.S.C. § 127e (Support of Special Operations to Combat Terrorism) and Section 1202 (Support of Special Operations for Irregular Warfare) of the National Defense Authorization Act.27 These frameworks not only enhance interoperability but also foster a collaborative environment where U.S. SOF can seamlessly share expertise, intelligence, and resources with its international counterparts. This robust ecosystem of relationships ensures that U.S. SOF remains at the forefront of global security efforts, equipped to respond effectively to emerging threats and challenges.

Special Forces soldiers insert onto a rooftop from an MH-47G helicopter during the annual U.S. Army Special Operations Command capabilities exercise at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, held 10–13 June 2019. The exercise scenario, based on potential real-world special operations forces mission requirements, was designed to improve interoperability with conventional forces, enhance interagency and intergovernmental partnerships, and test capabilities. (Photo by Spc. ShaTyra Reed, U.S. Army)

The substantial investments directed toward USSOCOM’s formations over the past several decades have yielded a force that stands unparalleled in terms of training, equipment, and connectivity within the DOD. This robust investment has resulted in a highly specialized and adaptable force, uniquely positioned to address the complexities of modern warfare. U.S. SOF’s superior training programs have honed skills that are not only specialized but also versatile, allowing for agile responses to a broad spectrum of threats. The cutting-edge equipment at its disposal, coupled with advanced technologies, affords U.S. SOF capabilities that are unmatched by any other DOD component. Furthermore, its extensive network of international partnerships and collaborations underscores its connectivity, providing a strategic advantage in the global security situation. In essence, the considerable investments in U.S. SOF underscore its irreplaceable utility and its critical role in safeguarding national interests.

Investment

Despite constituting a relatively modest percentage of the overall DOD budget, U.S. SOF plays an outsized role in meeting the most pressing needs of the geographic combatant commands (GCC). While positioned as a supporting entity, U.S. SOF efficiently undertakes the critical task of shaping conditions for the conventional elements of the joint force. The ability of SOF to deliver substantial impact with a comparatively small budget underscores its exceptional efficiency and the concept of “return on investment.”28 This cost effectiveness is a testament to the specialized nature of SOF operations, emphasizing their ability to achieve strategic objectives with precision, agility, and a judicious allocation of resources. The strategic importance of U.S. SOF becomes evident in its capability to maximize impact while operating within constrained budgetary frameworks, reinforcing its indispensable role in the broader defense apparatus.

A formation of MC-130J Command II aircraft from the 1st Special Operations Squadron flies off the coast of Okinawa, Japan, on 6 January 2021. The MC-130Js provide unique and extremely risky low-level infiltration, exfiltration, and resupply capabilities to special operations forces in hostile or denied territory. (Photo by Capt. Renee Douglas, 353rd Special Operations Wing Public Affairs)

As both a service-like entity and a functional combatant command, the budget allocated to USSOCOM is notably dwarfed in comparison to the traditional services. In the fiscal year 2024 forecasts, USSOCOM’s budget equaled approximately 1.6 percent of the overall DOD budget request.29 Although USSOCOM does not share the same level of operations and management budget requirements as the services, it boasts the distinction of producing the most highly capable military forces that consistently deploy globally. This emphasizes the strategic efficiency of USSOCOM, which excels in cultivating and deploying elite special operations forces despite its relatively constrained budget. The focused nature of USSOCOM’s mission allows it to prioritize the development of specialized capabilities, contributing to its reputation as a force multiplier and a crucial component in addressing complex, high-stakes scenarios on a global scale.

The evident preference for U.S. SOF in sustaining ongoing engagements with crucial partners and allies, including the Baltic States and Taiwan, underscores the force’s enduring significance in shouldering a disproportionate share of deployment requirements. Many partners and allies, fully appreciating the enhanced capabilities and reputation of our SOF, insist on working with such forces over conventional DOD formations.30 This trend, which originated in 2001 with the Global War on Terrorism, persists into the current operational landscape and is projected to continue in the foreseeable future.31 The specialized skills, adaptability, and cultural acumen inherent to U.S. SOF make it an invaluable asset in navigating complex geopolitical relationships and addressing evolving security challenges. As the operational tempo remains high, U.S. SOF’s role in fostering strategic partnerships and bolstering global security emerges as a consistent and essential aspect of U.S. military strategy.

U.S. Navy SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team 2 launches a SEAL Delivery Vehicle (mini submarine) from the Los Angeles-class submarine USS Philadelphia. Such teams provide a specialized capability for conducting covert infiltration and exfiltration littoral operations in regions of potential conflict such as the South China Sea. (Photo by Chief Photographer’s Mate Andrew McKaskle, U.S. Navy)

While the war plans of the GCCs heavily rely on the conventional elements of the joint force as the supported elements, U.S. SOF assumes a more prominent role in the preconflict campaign plans. These plans strategically leverage the unique capabilities, engagements, and authorities/permissions of U.S. SOF to not only deter aggression but also set conditions for rapidly defeating threats should deterrence fail. The incredible work done by U.S. and partnered SOF with Ukrainian forces in the years before the escalated Russian invasion of 2022 clearly demonstrated the outsized nature such forces can have during the initial phases of a broadening conflict.32 The agility, specialized skills, and inherent flexibility of U.S. SOF make it instrumental in shaping the preconflict conditions, offering a proactive and versatile approach to address emerging security challenges. By emphasizing the use of SOF in the preconflict phase, the military optimizes its ability to respond rapidly and effectively to potential threats, aligning with the evolving nature of global security.

Pound for pound, U.S. SOF consistently demonstrates an extraordinary efficiency, punching well above its weight class in terms of both taxpayer dollars and DOD personnel billets. Despite operating with a comparatively smaller budget and authorized size, the USSOCOM effectively addresses the most crucial requirements of the GCCs. In peacetime, U.S. SOF plays a pivotal role in deterring aggression, leveraging its specialized capabilities and strategic engagements. Simultaneously, during wartime, it skillfully shapes the battlefield to provide indispensable support to the broader joint force. This efficiency not only highlights the exceptional value proposition of U.S. SOF but also underscores its strategic importance in maintaining a robust and agile national defense posture.

Safeguarding Future Capabilities

In the scenario where USSOCOM faces the unavoidable necessity of cutting active-duty billets, it becomes crucial to prioritize retaining capacity and capabilities within the RC. Failing to preserve these vital elements in the RC would have severe consequences, potentially causing catastrophic damage to the DOD’s ability to effectively deter the aggression of global competitors or mount a successful defense should deterrence prove insufficient. Recognizing the RC as a reservoir of essential skills and expertise is paramount to maintaining the strategic depth necessary for a flexible and responsive national defense posture, particularly in the face of evolving geopolitical challenges.

An airman with Special Operations Forces Medical Element, 18th Wing, prepares freeze-dried plasma during a simulated casualty evacuation drill 8 October 2020 at Ie Shima, Okinawa, Japan. U.S. Special Operations Command has sponsored extensive medical research focused on upgrading lifesaving medical capabilities and techniques to support personnel recovery from isolated locations. (Photo by Cpl. Ethan M. LeBlanc, U.S. Marine Corps)

The U.S. SOF RC already plays a pivotal role in advancing the goals of the NDS, employing various strategies such as the State Partnership Program and persistent engagement through Joint Combined Exchange Training. Through the State Partnership Program, meaningful engagements with the Baltic nations strengthen alliances and foster interoperability.33 These partnerships, facilitated by the RC, enhance regional security and align with the overarching objectives of the NDS. The persistent engagement through Joint Combined Exchange Training further allows for the cultivation of critical skills and the establishment of enduring relationships, ensuring that U.S. SOF in the RC remains an asset in supporting and bolstering our partners and allies across the globe. Notably, the U.S. Army Special Operations Command maintains special operations detachments within its RC structure, each commanded by a colonel and providing senior level command and control to joint task forces while advising partners and allies.34 Special Operations Detachment-NATO from the Maryland Army National Guard deployed and assumed command of Special Operations Advisory Group-Iraq in 2022, the first time a special operations detachment had taken responsibility for an entire joint and international task force, further demonstrating the continued utility of RC elements of U.S. SOF to the Nation.35

If U.S. SOF members are compelled to transition from active duty, it becomes imperative to provide compelling incentives for their continued service in the RC. Retention bonuses previously offered for such transfers served as effective motivational tools and must be considered for renewal and expansion.36 However, it is also crucial to acknowledge the potential strain on the U.S. SOF RC force structure, which may be insufficient to absorb the surplus of personnel transitioning from active duty. Much like the active-duty force, the RC is limited in the total number of personnel it may employ, requiring expansion. To mitigate additional adverse effects stemming from required cuts, USSOCOM should proactively engage in contingency planning. This involves budgeting for increased transfer incentives and making necessary force structure adjustments to ensure a smooth transition, minimize disruptions, and retain a highly capable and motivated RC within U.S. SOF.

Spc. Josh Brimm, 307th Tactical Psychological Operations (PSYOP) Company, 7th PSYOP Group, plays a counter-improvised explosive device message on a loud speaker during a mission around Malajat, Afghanistan, on 3 June 2011. The purpose of the mission was to gather information from the local population and to distribute PSYOP flyers and radios. (Photo by Sgt. Canaan Radcliffe, U.S. Army)

Oftentimes, U.S. SOF personnel transition from active duty to the RC and seek outside employment that significantly augments their military service. Many choose roles within the U.S. government, leveraging their specialized skills and experiences to contribute uniquely to various agencies.37 In my own case, I left active duty nearly a decade ago, transitioning to a contracting career and eventually serving as a senior intelligence officer and director within the Office of the Secretary of the Navy. In those years, I have also continued my U.S. SOF service with three different special operations detachments, advancing in rank and responsibility. This dual-hatted approach not only allows SOF personnel to maintain their military readiness but also provides them with distinctive perspectives and connections within the interagency and international communities. Integrating SOF expertise into different facets of the U.S. government ensures a valuable exchange of insights and fosters a more comprehensive understanding of global security challenges, ultimately enhancing the effectiveness of U.S. SOF in an evolving strategic landscape.

Staff Sgt. Aidan McNulty, Civil Affairs Team 142, Company D, 91st Civil Affairs Battalion, writes down a patient’s medical information 19 February 2021 at a medical clinic in Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso. Civil Affairs Team 142 partnered with the 25th Régiment Parachutiste Commando medical personnel to conduct a joint medical readiness training exercise and supply basic medical services to local populations. (Photo by Spc. Nathan Hammack, U.S. Army)

Regardless of any success that we might witness with active-duty U.S. SOF personnel transitioning to the RC, the loss of those active-duty billets will undoubtedly significantly undermine the overall readiness and capabilities of USSOCOM to contribute to the national defense. While every effort should be exerted to prevent cuts to the active-duty force structure of USSOCOM, prudent measures should be taken to mitigate the potential negative repercussions of such reductions. Above all else, USSOCOM is renowned for its adaptability, resilience, and commitment to forge itself into whatever force the Nation requires. A strategic approach involves retaining the best and brightest U.S. SOF members within the RC. By doing so, the considerable investments made in these highly skilled individuals can continue to be leveraged for the benefit of national defense. This approach not only safeguards the wealth of experience and expertise within the SOF community but also ensures that these exceptional individuals remain active contributors to the broader defense apparatus, even in a part-time capacity within the RC.

Conclusion

In an era defined by escalating global complexity and an array of security challenges stretching across the world, the prospect of reducing personnel from USSOCOM appears misguided. The distinct capabilities, substantial capacity, and extensive global connections inherent in USSOCOM personnel are critical assets in navigating the uncertainties of the contemporary security environment. The specialized skills and adaptability of these service members make them indispensable in addressing the multifaceted threats facing the United States. Opting for poorly considered cuts to USSOCOM personnel not only risks weakening our most impactful force but also poses a direct threat to the DOD’s capacity to execute the NDS effectively. In times of pervasive uncertainty, preserving the strength and capabilities of USSOCOM is vital for maintaining a robust and responsive national defense posture.

The unique role of USSOCOM personnel in irregular and asymmetrical warfare, coupled with their ability to operate in politically sensitive and geographically diverse environments, positions them as an irreplaceable asset for addressing evolving security challenges. Their distinct skill set is not easily replicated within conventional military forces. Any reduction in USSOCOM personnel would not only compromise the United States’ ability to counter emerging threats but could also undermine the strategic objectives outlined in the NDS. Recognizing the importance of USSOCOM in navigating the intricacies of global security, it becomes imperative to weigh the long-term consequences and potential vulnerabilities that would arise from ill-advised cuts, emphasizing the need to safeguard this essential force to ensure the Nation’s security interests are effectively preserved.

All opinions expressed are those of the author alone and do not reflect the official positions of any department or agency of the U.S. government.

Notes

1. U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) Office of Communication, Fact Book 2023 (MacDill Air Force Base, FL: USSOCOM, 2023), 10–11, https://www.socom.mil/FactBook/2023%20Fact%20Book.pdf.
2. Will Beaurpere and Marsh Ned, “Space, Cyber, and Special Operations: An Influence Triad for Global Campaigning,” Modern War Institute, 6 September 2022, https://mwi.westpoint.edu/space-cyber-and-special-operations-an-influence-triad-for-global-campaigning/.
3. Todd South, “Personnel Cuts and Force Redesign Ahead for Army Special Operations,” Army Times (website), 1 November 2023, https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2023/11/01/personnel-cuts-and-a-force-redesign-ahead-for-army-special-operations/.
4. The White House, National Defense Strategy (Washington, DC: The White House, 2022), https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/8-November-Combined-PDF-for-Upload.pdf.
5. “The Office of Strategic Services: America’s First Intelligence Agency,” Central Intelligence Agency, accessed 30 November 2023, https://www.cia.gov/legacy/museum/exhibit/the-office-of-strategic-services-n-americas-first-intelligence-agency/.
6. Fredric Boyce and Douglas Everett, SOE: The Scientific Secrets (Gloucestershire, UK: Sutton Publishing, 2003), 205.
7. “The OSS Primer: An Enduring Legacy,” U.S. Army Special Operations Command, accessed 30 November 2023, https://www.soc.mil/OSS/oss-legacy.html.
8. Christopher Klein, “How Green Berets Became the US Army’s Elite Special Forces,” History Channel, 7 November 2023, https://www.history.com/news/green-berets-armys-special-forces.
9. Colin Schultz, “For 25 Years, U.S. Special Forces Carried Miniature Nukes on Their Backs,” Smithsonian (website), 10 February 2014, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/25-years-us-special-forces-carried-miniature-nukes-their-backs-180949700/.
10. Olav Riste, “‘Stay Behind’: A Clandestine Cold War Phenomenon,” Journal of Cold War Studies 16, no. 4 (Fall 2014): 35–59, https://direct.mit.edu/jcws/article-abstract/16/4/35/13485/Stay-Behind-A-Clandestine-Cold-War-Phenomenon.
11. Keith B. Richburg, “Philippine Communists Claim Colonel’s Killing,” Washington Post (website), 23 April 1989, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1989/04/23/philippine-communists-claim-colonels-killing/b0a989aa-234c-4847-baa8-50bb56085703/.
12. Linda Robinson, Patrick Johnston, and Gillian Oak, U.S. Special Operations Forces in the Philippines, 2001–2014 (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2016), https://doi.org/10.7249/RR1236.
13. David Sosa, “Peace Colombia: The Success of U.S. Foreign Assistance in South America,” U.S. Global Leadership Coalition, 10 May 2017, https://www.usglc.org/blog/peace-colombia-the-success-of-u-s-foreign-assistance-in-south-america/.
14. Walter L. Perry and David Kassing, Toppling the Taliban: Air-Ground Operations in Afghanistan, October 2001–June 2002 (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 4 January 2016), https://doi.org/10.7249/RR381.
15. John D. Gresham, “Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF): Special Operations Forces and the Liberation of Iraq,” Defense Media Network, 19 March 2015, https://www.defensemedianetwork.com/stories/operation-iraqi-freedom-oif-special-operations-forces-and-the-liberation-of-iraq/.
16. Otto Fiala, Resistance Operating Concept (MacDill Air Force Base, FL: Joint Special Operations University Press, 2020), 17, https://jsou.edu/Press/PublicationDashboard/25.
17. Walter Pincus, “U.S. SOCOM Has History with Ukraine’s Special Forces,” The Cipher Brief, 12 April 2022, https://www.thecipherbrief.com/column_article/u-s-socom-has-history-with-ukraines-special-forces.
18. Michael Gordon, “Explainer: U.S. Strategy to Defeat ISIS,” Wilson Center, 30 September 2022, https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/explainer-us-strategy-defeat-isis.
19. Crispin Smith, “Still at War: The United States in Iraq,” Just Security, 18 May 2022, https://www.justsecurity.org/81556/still-at-war-the-united-states-in-iraq/.
20. The White House, National Defense Strategy, 23–25.
21. Stavros Atlamazoglou, “With Tension Rising in the Pacific, US Special Operators Have a New Goal: Creating ‘Multiple Dilemmas’ for China,” Business Insider, 8 December 2022, https://www.businessinsider.com/us-special-operators-focusing-on-creating-multiple-dilemmas-for-china-2022-12.
22. Gordon Richmond, “Sharpening the Spear: Moving SOF’s Operating Concept Beyond the GWOT,” Modern War Institute, 23 February 2022, https://mwi.westpoint.edu/sharpening-the-spear-moving-sofs-operating-concept-beyond-the-gwot/.
23. Bryan P. Fenton, “How Special Operations Forces Must Meet the Challenges of a New Era,” Defense One, 11 May 2023, https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2023/05/how-special-operations-forces-must-meet-challenges-new-era/386216/.
24. Inspector General Report No. DODIG-2021-125, Evaluation of U.S. Special Operations Command’s Supply Chain Risk Management for the Security, Acquisition, and Delivery of Specialized Equipment (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Defense, 14 September 2021), https://media.defense.gov/2021/Sep/16/2002855097/-1/-1/1/DODIG-2021-125_REDACTED.PDF.
25. U.S. Special Operations Command, “USSOCOM: Special Operations Forces Acquisition, Technology and Logistics (SOF AT&L) Overview,” Defense Media Network, 7 July 2021, https://www.defensemedianetwork.com/stories/ussocom-special-operations-forces-acquisition-technology-logistics-sof-atl-overview/.
26. Tim Nichols, “Special Operations Forces in an Era of Great Power Competition,” Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, May 2023, https://sais.jhu.edu/kissinger/programs-and-projects/kissinger-center-papers/special-operations-forces-era-great-power-competition.
27. Kimberly Jackson, Authorities and Permissions to Conduct Army Special Operations Activities Abroad (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2022), 4, https://doi.org/10.7249/RR-A412-4.
28. Isaiah Wilson III, “Rediscovering the Value of Special Operations,” Joint Force Quarterly 105 (2nd Quarter, April 2022), https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Media/News/News-Article-View/Article/2999171/rediscovering-the-value-of-special-operations/.
29. Office of the Undersecretary of Defense (Comptroller)/Chief Financial Officer, Defense Budget Overview: United States Department of Defense Fiscal Year 2024 Budget Request (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, March 2023), A-1, https://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudget/FY2024/FY2024_Budget_Request_Overview_Book.pdf.
30. Steven Kashkett, “Special Operations and Diplomacy: A Unique Nexus,” Foreign Service Journal 94, no. 5 (June 2017): 22–27, https://afsa.org/special-operations-and-diplomacy-unique-nexus.
31. Ibid.
32. Kevin D. Stringer, “Special Operations Forces Institution-Building: From Strategic Approach to Security Force,” Joint Force Quarterly 110 (3rd Quarter, 2023): 75–87, https://ndupress.ndu.edu/JFQ/Joint-Force-Quarterly-110/Article/Article/3450149/special-operations-forces-institution-building-from-strategic-approach-to-secur/.
33. “The U.S Army’s Security Force Assistance Triad: Security Force Assistance Brigades, Special Forces and the State Partnership Program,” Association of the United States Army, 3 October 2022, https://www.ausa.org/publications/us-armys-security-force-assistance-triad-security-force-assistance-brigades-special.
34. Joseph Trevithick, “Maryland Now Has a Special Forces Unit Dedicated to Countering Russia,” War Is Boring (blog), Medium, 16 June 2016, https://medium.com/war-is-boring/maryland-now-has-a-special-forces-unit-dedicated-to-countering-russia-ff4cc5688d4f.
35. As a member of Special Operations Detachment-NATO, I served as the deputy commander for Special Operations Advisory Group–Iraqbased in Baghdad from January to October 2022.
36. “Bonuses,” Army.mil, accessed 30 November 2023, https://myarmybenefits.us.army.mil/Benefit-Library/Federal-Benefits/Bonuses?serv=122.
37. John E. Peters, Brian Shannon, and Matthew E. Boyer, National Guard Special Forces: Enhancing the Contributions of Reserve Component Army Special Operations Forces (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 6 November 2012), https://www.rand.org/pubs/technical_reports/TR1199.html.

Lt. Col. Doug Livermore, North Carolina National Guard, is the deputy commander for Special Operations Detachment–Joint Special Operations Command. He recently returned from a yearlong mobilization as the deputy commander for Special Operations Advisory Group–Iraq. In addition to his evacuation and advocacy work with the nonprofit organization No One Left Behind, Livermore is the national director of external communications for the Special Forces Association, national secretary for the Special Operations Association of America, and the director of external communications for the Irregular Warfare Initiative. He is widely published as a subject-matter expert on and advocate for special operations and national security issues.

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armyupress.army.mil

12. Fighting reported to be continuing in northern Myanmar despite China saying it arranged a cease-fire

Can China be a peacemaker?

Fighting reported to be continuing in northern Myanmar despite China saying it arranged a cease-fire

By Grant Peck | AP

December 15, 2023 at 6:17 a.m. EST

The Washington Post · by Grant Peck | AP · December 15, 2023

BANGKOK — Reports from Myanmar said there was continuing fighting Friday in the northeast of the country between the military government and an alliance of ethnic minority armed groups, even after China announced that the two sides had reached agreement on a cease-fire at meetings it had brokered.

Clashes have been raging in the northern part of Myanmar’s Shan state since Oct. 27, when the Arakan Army, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army, branding themselves the Three Brotherhood Alliance, launched a coordinated offensive.

MeKong News, an online news site reporting from Shan state, said on its Facebook page that the army was carrying out airstrikes and firing heavy weapons Friday morning in the area around 105-Mile Trade Zone in Muse, a major city that is a border crossing point with China.

The report said that according to town residents, the Three Brotherhood Alliance forces had occupied a strategic hill near the trade zone on Thursday evening after heavy fighting.

There were similar reports in other Myanmar media, including Khit Thit news, but no way to independently confirm them.

Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun, spokesperson of the ruling military council, was quoted in the state-run Myanma Alinn newspaper on Friday as saying that there was fighting in the areas between Namhkam township and the 105-Mile Trade Zone in Muse, about 30 kilometers (19 miles) to its east.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning had said Thursday on the sidelines of a news conference in Beijing that China had acted as a mediator for a cease-fire between the army and the alliance, and that there had been a notable de-escalation of fighting in the area near the border with China.

She said China has provided support and facilitation for dialogue and the meetings had “reached agreement on a number of arrangements, including the temporary cease-fire and maintaining the momentum of dialogue.”

“China hopes that relevant parties in Myanmar can speed up efforts to implement what has been agreed, exercise maximum restraint, actively ease the situation on the ground, promptly manage sporadic confrontation events and together realize the soft landing of the situation in northern Myanmar.” Mao Ning said.

The Chinese statement did not give a date for when the cease-fire would go into effect.

The Associated Press received no immediate response to requests for comment about a cease-fire from representatives of the Three Brotherhood Alliance.

The alliance said in its daily report late Thursday on the Telegram messaging platform that it would “continue to implement the military and political objectives as anticipated since the implementation of Operation 1027,” which is its name for the offensive.

It has declared previously that one of its goals is the eradication of the military regime that seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021.

The Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, is a military organization of the Kokang minority that is trying to oust a rival Kokang group backed by the military government from its seat of power in the key border city of Laukkaing

It has said that one of its goals is to rid the region of major organized criminal enterprises including cyberscam operations controlled by Chinese investors in collusion with local Myanmar warlords. China has also been pressing to end such operations, which have become a major embarrassment.

The offensive of the well-trained and well-armed ethnic militias has been seen as a significant challenge for the army, which has struggled to contain a nationwide uprising by members of the People’s Defense Force, a pro-democracy armed group established after the 2021 army takeover.

The various PDF groups that operate around the country have joined forces with well-organized, battle-hardened ethnic armed groups — including those in the Three Brotherhood Alliance — that have been fighting Myanmar’s central government for greater autonomy for decades.

The Washington Post · by Grant Peck | AP · December 15, 2023

13. Bridging the gap: Army validates division-led river crossing

This is one of the most difficult military missions for a ground force (as we are seeing in Ukraine). It is a huge undertaking to move a unit of this size across a river. I have only done battalion and brigade size crossing in the 1980s with the 2d and 3d Infantry Divisions in Korea and Germany. I do not recall participating in a division size crossing, battalions and bridges were complex and complicated enough.

Bridging the gap: Army validates division-led river crossing

Defense News · by Jen Judson · December 15, 2023

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army successfully validated a force structure change meant to help it make better wet gap crossings during large scale combat operations, according to service leaders.

Defense experts have long considered U.S. bridging capability inadequate, particularly in the European theater.

Building bridges over rivers or other bodies of water to advance forward in an operation sounds simple, but involves complex coordination to ensure the enemy is suppressed long enough to move thousands of soldiers and equipment across and that the bridges can support even the heaviest combat vehicles and tanks.

And strong wet gap crossing capabilities are expected to be needed in the Indo-Pacific region, according to both Army officials and defense experts.

“The U.S. clearly does not have enough river crossing capability, and river crossing is an important part of what’s happening in Ukraine,” retired Army Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, who previously led U.S. Army Europe, told Defense News in an interview earlier this year. Beyond Ukraine, bridging is “a capability that we need to have in a lot of places in the world.”

Typically, engineer brigades, which provide bridging capability, are a corps-level asset, but during a large-scale combat exercise — Remagen Ready — at Fort Cavazos, Texas, earlier this fall, the 36th Engineer Brigade was taken out of the III Armored Corps and brought into the 1st Cavalry Division, Maj. Gen. Kevin Admiral, 1st Cavalry Division commander, told Defense News in a Dec. 12 interview.

Corps are made up of two divisions and roughly 20,000 to 45,000 troops total, while divisions are made up of three brigades and 10,000 to 15,000 soldiers.

Wet gap crossings “is one of the most difficult things to do,” said Col. Aaron Cox, the 36th Engineer Brigade commander.

“We play one role, which is the actual building of rafts and full enclosure bridges. Those tactical challenges aren’t too difficult, but it is making sure that the fires threat is reduced, that there’s no enemy on the far side objectives, that we have obscuration, that the enemy’s logistics nodes on the far side have been suppressed,” he added. “That’s where the challenge comes from, and it’s converging all of those capabilities into one location in time so that we can successfully get across.”

Engineer units in divisions are “not purpose-built for large-scale combat operations,” Admiral noted. Those units are usually organized in battalions under brigade combat teams, which are not adequate to support large-scale combat maneuver. To conduct a wet gap crossing at the division level in large-scale combat, “I would need external resources that I don’t really have,” he said.

By putting the 36th Engineer Brigade into the 1st Cavalry Division for the exercise, it gave the division the assets and manpower it needed to execute the wet gap mission. Because the brigade was under the control of the division commander, it was easier to coordinate the complex movements needed to set the conditions for a safe crossing and then execute the crossing of about 20,000 soldiers and their armored equipment.

The 1st Cavalry coordinated the two-day live wet gap crossing during the exercise with two physical bridges using what’s known as the Improved Ribbon Bridge, made up of panels that can be put on the back of a truck for transport and then combined to make larger rafts. Seven panels connected together can support an M1 Abrams tank.

The exercise validated the need to put engineer brigades underneath division command, Admiral said, part of a larger plan to redesign force structure as the Army modernizes and shifts from years of using the brigade combat team as the tactical unit where maneuver operations are planned and executed. Now, the service plans to give the division that responsibility.

During the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, BCTs operated relatively independently, but large-scale operations across land, air, sea, space and cyber against adversaries like Russia and China would require division-level operations.

The exercise “gave us a good chance to do an initial validation of the Army 2030 Armored Strike Division,” Admiral said. “This is the right direction for the armored divisions.”

Army Futures Command continues to work on what a modernized force’s structure will look like in 2030 and beyond, incorporating lessons from exercises like Remagen Ready.

The Army’s plan to grow its engineer companies, according to the service’s acquisition chief, Doug Bush, is “on track. It’s just finding the money,” he said in an interview this fall. “It’s a big priority, especially as they learned a lot from trying to move around Europe.”

About Jen Judson

Jen Judson is an award-winning journalist covering land warfare for Defense News. She has also worked for Politico and Inside Defense. She holds a Master of Science degree in journalism from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Kenyon College.

14. Palantir Stock: Primed For A Banner 2024

Lots of charts and graphs at the link. https://seekingalpha.com/article/4657880-palantir-primed-for-banner-2024

Palantir provides key capabilities to DOD and the intelligence community.

Palantir Stock: Primed For A Banner 2024 (NYSE:PLTR)

seekingalpha.com · by Riyado Sofian · December 14, 2023

imaginima

Introduction

Palantir (NYSE:PLTR) is building the foundational software of tomorrow that serves as the central operating system for enterprises. At its core, Palantir's flagship platforms - Gotham, Foundry, and Apollo - integrate and optimize data, decisions, and operations at scale.

A few months ago, Palantir launched its Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP). In short, AIP connects large language models and other AI with clients' data and operations, ultimately driving AI-powered decision-making.

More notably, AIP has taken center stage as the new platform reaccelerated Palantir's overall business amidst an AI-hyped world.

As AI grows increasingly important, Palantir will be the main beneficiary of this megatrend as the company has built itself one of the most powerful software stacks in the business, adored by hundreds of the most important organizations in society.

While Palantir stock may look expensive, the company's differentiated AI offering, strong outlook, and improving financials set the stock well for a banner 2024.

Palantir Revenue Growth

In Q3, Revenue was $558M, up by 17% YoY, beating analyst estimates by $2M and management's guidance by $3M. As you can see, growth reaccelerated after a disappointing second quarter, which saw the business growing only 13%. Many investors were concerned with the slowdown but Palantir's exceptional performance in Q3 reignited hopes of the company returning to strong growth.

Author's Analysis

Excluding the negative impact from strategic commercial contracts - or Palantir's failed SPAC investments - Q3 Revenue would have grown 21% YoY.

Even more impressive, Revenue Per Employee almost doubled in four years, from $299K to $558K, demonstrating the success of its acquire-expand-scale strategy.

Breaking it down by segment, Government Revenue was the clear laggard, up just 12% YoY to $308M.

• US Government Revenue was $229M, up only 10% YoY. Despite the weak performance, management expects US Government Revenue to accelerate moving forward as there was a "pickup in activity at the end of the U.S. government fiscal year".
• International Government Revenue fared better, increasing 20% YoY to $78M.

Author's Analysis

On the other hand, the Commercial segment rebounded in Q3, growing 23% YoY to $251M. As you can see, growth accelerated by 1,300 basis points sequentially.

• US Commercial Revenue drove the majority of growth, which increased 33% YoY to $116M. Excluding strategic commercial contracts, it would have grown 52% YoY. This was primarily due to the recent launch of Palantir's latest offering, AIP. It's important to note that AIP was only launched in April this year, so the impact it already had in just a few months shows how good Palantir's AIP offering is - imagine how big it can get over the next few years...
• International Commercial Revenue was $135M, up by 16% YoY.

Author's Analysis

The most impressive thing coming out of Palantir's Q3 earnings report was its customer count, which grew 34% YoY to 453 Total Customers.

Its Commercial segment continued to see exceptional growth, which grew 45% YoY to 330 Commercial Customers, again, due to increased demand for AIP.

Author's Analysis

Management also mentioned that nearly 300 companies have used AIP. To put that into perspective, that is an attach rate of ~90%, which is incredible.

The potential market for AIP and the trajectory of possible AIP growth for our business is massive. We almost tripled the number of AIP users last quarter and nearly 300 distinct organizations have used AIP since our launch just five months ago.

(CRO Ryan Taylor - Palantir FY2023 Q3 Earnings Call)

As Palantir "acquires" more customers, robust Revenue growth should follow as customers "expand" and "scale" their use of Palantir's platforms.

That is what we're seeing, with Revenue Per Top 20 Customer growing 13% YoY to $54M per customer, another record high for the metric.

Author's Analysis

In my opinion, customer growth is the single most important metric to track as it is a leading indicator of future Revenue growth. And fortunately, Palantir continues to see strong customer adds, which is also a reflection of Palantir's superior offering.

I expect Palantir to continue to acquire more customers down the road, given the strong demand for AIP. In addition, Palantir's recognition as the #1 ranked vendor in AI, Data Science, and Machine Learning reinforces its competitive positioning in a highly competitive industry.

Profitability

Palantir produced record Gross Profit in Q3, which was $450M, up 22% YoY. This represents a Gross Margin of 81%, a 400 basis points improvement YoY, and a record high as well.

As you can see, Gross Margin has been improving over the last few quarters, demonstrating economies of scale within the business.

Author's Analysis

Q3 Operating Income was $40M, representing a 7% Operating Margin. This marks Palantir's third consecutive quarter of GAAP operating profitability. Of important note, Operating Margin expanded by 2,000 basis points YoY, showing strong operating leverage.

This trend should continue as both Palantir and its customers scale further.

Author's Analysis

Another reason why Operating Margin should improve moving forward is that Share-based Compensation continues to fall over time. As of Q3, SBC as a percentage of Revenue was 20%, down 900 basis points YoY and 100 basis points sequentially.

Yes, SBC is still high at 20%, which is why Shares Outstanding is up almost 4% YoY. However, dilution should be less of an issue with each passing quarter as the company continues to focus on growing profitability and moderating SBC expenses.

Author's Analysis

Palantir's bottom line is getting better as well, posting its fourth consecutive quarter of GAAP Net Income profitability. In Q3, GAAP Net Income was $72M, which is a 13% Net Margin.

Author's Analysis

As you can tell, each of Palantir's profitability lines is at record highs with no signs of breaking their trends.

Without a doubt, Palantir is at an inflection point. It is no longer regarded as a loss-making growth company - it is now a highly profitable growth company capable of delivering strong, durable earnings for years to come.

Health

Palantir has a pristine balance sheet with $3.3B of Cash and Short-term Investments and $0.2B of Total Debt (mostly in the form of Operating Lease Liabilities), which puts its Net Cash position at $3.1B.

As you can see, Palantir's Net Cash balance has been increasing over the last few quarters, which is great to see.

Author's Analysis

Q3 Free Cash Flow was $132M, which is a 24% FCF Margin. Not much to talk about here but Palantir has always displayed strong FCF generation. Moving forward, I wouldn't be surprised if Palantir sustains a long-term FCF Margin of more than 30%.

Author's Analysis

With such a healthy Net Cash and FCF profile, management announced a $1B buyback program in Q2.

In my previous article, I expressed my confusion with the buyback program given that it was announced after the stock had rallied more than 100%. I like buybacks, but only when the stock is attractively valued, not after it has doubled.

Fortunately as of Q3, Palantir has yet to repurchase shares. Given that the stock is up more than 150% year-to-date, I would prefer the company keep its cash for a rainy day or invest it for growth. Only when we see a selloff would I be content with the company buying back shares.

Outlook

Management expects Q4 Revenue of $601M at its midpoint guidance, which beat analyst estimates by $2M. This implies an 18% increase YoY, which reflects continued acceleration from Q3's growth of 17%.

Q4 Adjusted Operating Income is expected to be $186M at its midpoint, implying an Adjusted Operating Margin of about 31% based on a Revenue of $601M. This is a 200 basis point increase QoQ and a 900 basis point increase YoY. In other words, profitability is set to improve even more.

Management also raised their FY2023 Revenue guidance by $6M, to $2.218B, suggesting a 16% YoY growth.

In addition, management raised their FY2023 Adjusted Operating Income guidance by $33M, to $609M - when management raises its bottom line more than its top line, it's a clear indication of strong operating leverage.

Author's Analysis

I expect this improvement in profitability to continue in 2024, aided by a robust deal pipeline. In Q3, Palantir closed the most number of deals of at least $1M in a single quarter.

• 80 deals of at least $1M, across 30 industries
• 29 deals of at least $5M, across 16 industries
• 12 deals of at least $10M, across 11 industries

Interestingly, management added the number of industries they closed, highlighting Palantir's broad use case and ability to attract a diverse set of customers.

In addition, Total Contract Value is up 29% QoQ to $830M. Moreover, US Commercial deal count is up 2.4x YoY and US Commercial TCV is up 55% YoY to $252M.

The most exciting thing is that management is "seeing the acceleration of larger deals and shorter times to conversion and expansion", due to AIP's strong traction and Palantir's renewed go-to-market strategy (i.e. the AIP Bootcamps).

That is great news as future deals will likely be reflected in Palantir's income statement sooner rather than later.

Palantir FY2023 Q3 Investor Presentation

Not only that but the AI market is expected to explode in the next few years, from $96B in 2021 to $1.8T by 2030. With Palantir's best-in-class software, the company is well-positioned to capture a good chunk of this massive emerging market in my view.

Statista

Given Palantir's return to strong growth, improved profitability, robust deal pipeline, effective new marketing strategy, and the ever-growing AI market, it looks like Palantir is set for a banner year in 2024.

PLTR Stock Valuation

Palantir is not exactly the cheapest stock out there. As a matter of fact, it's quite expensive, especially after its 180% rally this year.

As such, it won't be surprising to see the stock pull back slightly or trade sideways for a while, before ascending further.

After all, the stock trades at a Forward EV to Revenue multiple and Forward PE Ratio of 13x and 61x, respectively. While multiples have fallen from their peaks, Palantir is still not cheap by any means.

Perhaps, that's the premium you pay for a company with deep moats and improving fundamentals, buoyed by strong secular trends.

Data by YChartsI've updated my DCF model as well. Here are my key assumptions for my base case.

Author's Analysis

For Revenue growth, I follow analyst estimates for the first three years. For the remaining years, I assume growth will eventually moderate to 18% and then 15%. By 2032, I expect Revenue to expand to $9.6B.

Palantir should continue to gain operating leverage over the next decade, ultimately reaching a FCF Margin of 35%. For reference, Microsoft (MSFT) has a FCF Margin of 36%. Given that Palantir is a pure software business, I think my FCF Margin assumption for Palantir is quite conservative.

Author's Analysis

Based on a discount rate of 10% and a perpetual growth rate of 3%, I arrive at a fair value estimate of $15.20 for Palantir stock which is roughly a 15% downside from the current price of $17.87.

Here's a summary of my DCF model with bear and bull cases.

Bear Base Bull FY2032 Revenue $8.8B $9.6B $10.9B FY2032 FCF Margin 31% 35% 38% Perpetual Growth Rate 2% 3% 4% Discount Rate 10% 10% 10% Fair Value $11.79 $15.20 $19.81

Yes, by looking at the results of my DCF model, Palantir looks overvalued.

That's why I trimmed my position a few months ago.

At the same time, I also acknowledged that there might be further upside given the shift in sentiment and the strong momentum of the business. What's more, Palantir could be added to the S&P 500 anytime now, which could be a major catalyst for the stock.

That's why I continue to hold a modest position in Palantir stock.

In other news, insider selling continues to be a major bear argument against Palantir. In the last three months, some notable sellers include:

• Co-founder Peter Thiel sold $48M
• Co-founder Stephen Cohen sold $13M
• CFO David Glazer sold $4M

On the bright side, institutional ownership is at a record high as 'smart money' piles into the AI revolution - and what better way to ride the AI wave than to bet on the best surfer in town: Palantir.

Fintel

Risks

Dilution

It's hard to ignore the fact that Palantir's SBC remains high at 20%, which inevitably leads to shareholder dilution. If high SBC expenses persist, the upside potential for Palantir stock might be limited.

Growth Slowdown

The million-dollar question is: can Palantir sustain high double-digit growth - perhaps in the high teens to 20s - and justify its premium valuation?

If Palantir misses expectations or if growth slows down substantially, Palantir investors could be in for a rude awakening.

Thesis

Q3 was a mic-drop quarter for Palantir with a triple beat on analyst estimates. In addition, management left some positive remarks on the outlook of the business, particularly with the overwhelming demand for AIP.

As CEO Alex Karp mentioned in his letter to shareholders, companies are "scrambling" left and right in search of a platform that could leverage the power of AI - enter Palantir's AIP.

The newly launched platform should drive strong customer growth - both new and existing - and that should translate to rapid Revenue growth for years to come.

What's more, Palantir still has a long growth runway ahead as AI is still in its early innings.

Complementing its growth ambitions, Palantir's profitability continues to improve, eliminating its status as a loss-making growth company - for good.

While Palantir stock is already up substantially in 2023, there are reasons to believe that there's more upside for the stock, including:

• growth reaccelerating
• margins improving
• robust deal pipeline
• refined go-to-market strategy
• S&P 500 inclusion

That said, it seems like Palantir is primed for a banner year in 2024.

seekingalpha.com · by Riyado Sofian · December 14, 2023

15. Sullivan says both the U.S. and Israel expect fighting to slow down eventually.

Of course a snarky comment would be that all fighting can be expected to slow down eventually. At some point militaries reach a culmination.

Sullivan says both the U.S. and Israel expect fighting to slow down eventually.

By Victoria Kim and Aaron Boxerman

Dec. 15, 2023

Updated 5:02 a.m. ET

The New York Times · by Aaron Boxerman · December 15, 2023

Dec. 15, 2023Updated 5:02 a.m. ET

Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser, sought on Friday to play down differences between the United States and Israel over the war against Hamas in Gaza, emphasizing that both allies expected the pace of the fighting to ultimately slow down.

Israel “was clear from the beginning that this war would proceed in phases,” Mr. Sulivan told reporters in Tel Aviv, describing the current fighting as high intensity. “But there will be a transition to another phase of this war: one that is focused on targeting the leadership, on intelligence operations,” he said.

Mr. Sullivan said he had discussed the conditions and timing for Israel to wind down the current phase of its operations with Israeli leaders on Thursday, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But he declined to specify a time frame, saying that neither wanted to “telegraph for the enemy what the plan is.”

Mr. Sullivan was speaking on the second day of a visit to Israel, after American officials said that Washington would like to see Israel end its large-scale air and ground assault in Gaza and move to a more targeted phase of war within weeks. This week, President Biden gave some of his most critical statements about the war, saying that Israel’s “indiscriminate bombing” was costing it international support.

Mr. Netanyahu and members of Israel’s war cabinet have given no indication that Israel plans to end its large-scale air and ground assault anytime soon.

After meeting with Mr. Sullivan on Thursday, Mr. Netanyahu thanked the United States for its supply of munitions and for its veto of the United Nations resolution for an immediate cease-fire. But he did not mention a timeline for moving to a new phase of the war, or the U.S. insistence on more targeted strikes, saying only: “We are more determined than ever to continue fighting until Hamas is eliminated — until absolute victory.”

Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defense minister, said before meeting with Mr. Sullivan on Thursday that achieving Israel’s stated aim of eliminating Hamas in Gaza “will require a period of time — it will last more than several months.”

A displaced Palestinian in a makeshift camp in Rafah on Wednesday.

Political pressure has been building in the United States for the Biden administration to do more to alleviate a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza that is reaching a breaking point for the territory’s 2.2 million civilians. On Thursday, the head of the United Nations agency aiding Palestinians said after visiting southern Gaza that hunger and desperation were driving people to raid trucks with relief supplies and devour the food on the spot.

The war has displaced more than 85 percent of Gaza’s population. Many people there have been pushed to the border region with Egypt and have endured extreme shortages of food, water and fuel while living under the constant threat of Israeli bombardment.

Mr. Netanyahu on Thursday met with Mirjana Spoljaric, the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, who said after a recent visit to Gaza that the situation there was “evidently a moral failure in the face of the international community.” Mr. Netanyahu’s office said in a statement about the meeting that he had sought to distinguish between Israel’s actions and the atrocities committed by Hamas on Oct 7.

American and Israeli leaders have also publicly been at odds on a postwar plan for Gaza. Biden administration officials have repeatedly said they believe the Palestinian Authority needs to be involved, something that top Israeli officials have dismissed.

Mr. Sullivan said that he would visit the Israeli-occupied West Bank later on Friday to meet with the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas. They will “discuss ongoing efforts to promote stability in the West Bank, including through efforts to confront terrorism, to support the Palestinian Authority security forces” as well as “revamp and revitalize the Palestinian Authority and through initiatives to hold extremist settlers accountable for violence against Palestinians,” Mr. Sullivan said.

Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, said in an interview with The Associated Press before meeting with Mr. Sullivan on Friday that it was too early to discuss a two-state solution, which he and his party have backed in the past. In a statement after the meeting, Mr. Herzog, who serves in a mostly ceremonial post, said he and Mr. Sullivan had discussed efforts to release the roughly 130 hostages who Israeli officials say remain in captivity in Gaza.

Victoria Kim is a correspondent based in Seoul, focused on international breaking news coverage. More about Victoria Kim

The New York Times · by Aaron Boxerman · December 15, 2023

16. Israeli Military Says It Accidentally Killed Three Israeli Hostages in Gaza

Sadly, tragic things happen in war.

Israeli Military Says It Accidentally Killed Three Israeli Hostages in Gaza

Military says it believes the hostages were either abandoned by captors or running away

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/israeli-military-says-it-accidentally-killed-three-israeli-hostages-in-gaza-2acebecc?mod=hp_lead_pos1

By Anat Peled

Updated Dec. 15, 2023 4:26 pm ET

Israeli armored vehicles and troops deployed in southern Israel, near the border with the Gaza Strip, on Friday. PHOTO: GIL COHEN-MAGEN/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

The Israeli military said it mistakenly killed three Israeli hostages that it misidentified as militants during fighting in Shujaiyeh, in the east of Gaza City, on Friday.

“This is a sad and painful event for all of us and the IDF is responsible for everything that happened,” Israel Defense Forces spokesman Daniel Hagari said, adding that the event was being investigated.

The killed civilian hostages were identified as Yotam Haim, 28 years old, and Samer Talalka, 25, and Alon Shamriz, 26, according to Israeli officials and the Hostages and Missing Families Forum. All three men were abducted from kibbutzim near the Gaza border on Oct. 7.

Hagari said the military believes that the three Israeli hostages either ran away or were abandoned by their captors. “There will be full transparency to the public about this event,” he said.

The accidental killing of the three hostages was the first incident of its kind since the start of the war, and it comes as the Israeli military is engaged in combat in densely packed urban areas. Since the start of the ground offensive, at least 20 of the Israeli military’s 119 fatalities were accidents, mostly the result of friendly fire, the Israeli military said.

“My heart goes out to the bereaved families at this difficult time,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Friday night.

“This is a painful incident for every Israeli,” Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said after the incident. “We must remain resilient and continue operating—for the hostages, for our citizens and for our soldiers.”

“My heart is broken upon learning of the tragedy this evening,” Benny Gantz, head of the National Unity Party, said in a statement. “All of Israel is crying together with you,” he said, referring to the grieving families. Gantz said Israel “will do everything” to bring the remaining hostages back alive.

The Boston Real-Estate Lawyer Helping Dozens Evacuate Gaza

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A Boston real-estate lawyer has become an unlikely force in helping dozens of Americans and their family members evacuate the war-torn Gaza Strip. We sat down with him and a Gaza evacuee to get an inside look at what it takes to get people out of the region. Photo illustration: Kaitlyn Wang/Google Maps

Israel’s two stated goals for the war have been defeating Hamas and returning the remaining hostages in Gaza. Israel has argued that increased military pressure on Hamas would help bring home the hostages either through military operations or by pushing the group to the negotiation table. But some hostage families are increasingly questioning this approach.

“There is no military option. There is no time,” wrote Hen Avigdori on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Friday night. Avigdori’s wife and daughter were freed from Hamas captivity as part of a hostage deal in November. “Israel must initiate a deal to bring them back alive and not in coffins,” he said.

“They talk about defeating Hamas all the time and this defeat of Hamas will come at the expense of our hostages,” said freed hostage Yelena Troufanov, in an interview on Israeli public radio on Sunday. Troufanov’s son, Sasha, 28, remains in captivity in Gaza.

While Israel has successfully retrieved the bodies of several hostages from Gaza, it has so far successfully rescued only one living hostage, Pvt. Ori Megidish, a soldier taken hostage on Oct. 7 who was retrieved on Oct. 30, according to the Israeli military.

17. The Road to China-Free Supply Chains Is Long. Warning: Legless Lizards Ahead.

A key national security issue.

The Road to China-Free Supply Chains Is Long. Warning: Legless Lizards Ahead.

Companies trying to break the grip on rare-earth magnets—a crucial ingredient in modern technology—are encountering unusual hurdles

https://www.wsj.com/business/the-road-to-china-free-supply-chains-is-long-warning-legless-lizards-ahead-00c45f9b?mod=Searchresults_pos1&page=1

By Jon EmontFollow

Updated Dec. 15, 2023 12:00 am ET

Building China-free supply chains is tough. Sometimes it means dealing with lizards that don’t have legs and sands that are radioactive.

That is the case with making rare-earth magnets—a powerful piece of tech that is as crucial to jet fighters and wind turbines as it is to smartphones and electric cars.

For decades, China has dominated every step in the process of making rare-earth magnets. It is the only nation capable of producing the magnets from start to finish at scale.

Now, with demand growing for China-free magnets in the U.S. and Europe, a diverse group of companies are stitching together globe-spanning supply chains and encountering all kinds of obstacles as they attempt to break China’s grip on the market.

An Australian company has spent years relocating protected pink-tailed reptiles from its rare-earths mine site to unlock a new source of the minerals outside China. Meanwhile, the company is trying to find other sources of rare earths, from countries such as Vietnam and the U.S., for its processing plant in South Korea. 

Samples of rare-earth minerals mined in Vietnam, which is among the countries that could be an alternative source. PHOTO: LINH PHAM FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

On the other side of the world, the hunt for rare earths has led a Canadian company to use ones that have been extracted from the mineral-rich sands in the U.S. state of Georgia. The rare earths there had to be brought to Utah to be stripped of radioactive uranium, and then shipped to Estonia to be ready for magnets.

Two-thirds of the world’s rare-earth mining occurs in China. It processes around 85% of the ore, and it builds more than 90% of the magnets.

The new ventures can’t deliver prices as low as China’s. But the companies say some Western automakers and defense manufacturers are willing to pay more for magnets largely untouched by China.

“There’s a massive gap that needs to be filled in,” said Rahim Suleman, chief executive of 

Neo Performance Materials, the Canadian company seeking to make a magnet supply chain outside China.YOU MAY ALSO LIKE

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Neodymium is critical to making the wheels of a Tesla spin or creating sound in Apple’s AirPods, and China dominates the mining and processing of this rare-earth element. So the U.S. and its allies are building their own supply chain. Photo illustration: Clément Bürge/WSJ

Assembling new supply chains requires a game of connect-the-dots. Companies are cobbling together far-flung networks—and encountering hurdles along the way.

The U.S. and Australia mine rare earths but can’t process them at scale. Malaysia can process the ore but doesn’t make magnets. Japan makes magnets but has no mines.

“Building out that dispersed supply chain, but across friendly nations, is considered probably the most likely way that this is going to develop,” said David Merriman, research director at Project Blue, a London-based market intelligence provider. “What needs to really be emphasized is that the Chinese are very far ahead.”

Western companies, Merriman said, can draw on only a limited pool of expertise in magnet production, and often struggle to convince financial backers that their businesses will survive. Putting mines down isn’t easy, because of tight environmental requirements. “There’s a number of hoops that need to be jumped through,” Merriman said.

Take Australian Strategic Materials, which has a deal to supply China-free rare earths to an American buyer who is attempting made-in-USA magnets. 

The company has a mining site in eastern Australia, but environmental rules called for it to first move the area’s rare legless lizards before it moved the rare earths. Company scientists got to work, starting years ago by laying out tiles in the bleak landscape. 

The Lynas Rare Earths processing plant in Western Australia. Like the U.S., the country can mine rare earths but doesn’t process them at scale. PHOTO: CARLA GOTTGENS/BLOOMBERG NEWS

The 6-inch lizards, which resemble earthworms and tend to live underground, began using the tiles for shelter. The scientists then shifted the tiles—a few paces at a time—and the burrowing beasts followed until they were off the mine. 

Following the recommendations of ecologists, the company planned to give the lizards 10 years to relocate from the parts of the mine area where they lived. The company says it is now looking for financing to begin mining, starting in areas where the lizards haven’t been found. It doesn’t expect to start digging up ore until 2027. Meanwhile, the tiling has continued to push the lizards farther from the mining site.

An environmental specialist inspects artificial habitats for the legless lizards surrounding the Australian mining site. PHOTO: AUSTRALIAN STRATEGIC MATERIALS

Vulnerable pink-tailed worm-lizards, also known as pink-tailed legless lizards, have moved away from the site. PHOTO: AUSTRALIAN STRATEGIC MATERIALS

The lizards aren’t the only problem. In May, the company signed a deal to buy rare-earth materials from a small company in northern Vietnam. Its plan was to ship the oxides to its plant in South Korea where they could be turned into metals for use in magnets.

But the plan has faced turbulence, in a sign of how tricky it can be to stitch supply chains across jurisdictions. In October, the founder of the Vietnamese company was arrested there on allegations of financial fraud connected to the illicit purchase of rare earths. The founder and a company representative didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Australian Strategic Materials, which isn’t involved in the investigation, says it is exploring whether it will still be viable to source rare earths from the Vietnamese company while looking into other non-Chinese alternatives.

In its quest to build a rare-earth supply chain outside China, Canada’s Neo Performance Materials has run into its own challenges. The company already makes magnets in China, but it set out to build an alternative supply chain to meet the growing demand for China-free rare earths.

Canadian company Neo Performance Materials is expanding operations, including in Estonia. PHOTO: NEO PERFORMANCE MATERIALS

The company turned to ore from Georgia, in addition to places in countries such as Australia and Vietnam. The southern U.S. state is home to mineral sands that are used mainly to make titanium, but are also brimming with top-notch rare earths. There was an issue, however: Lurking in the sands is radioactive uranium and thorium.

These have to be filtered out to get to the rare-earth prize. After separation, the radioactive minerals can’t just be dumped back into the soil, where they could pose a danger.

In 2020, Neo joined with a Colorado-based uranium producer called 

Energy Fuels, which retrofitted a mill in Blanding, Utah, to remove the uranium and thorium from the rare earths. Equipment was installed to handle one-ton sacks of sand, along with presses and dryers to get rid of moisture.Energy Fuels kept the uranium and sold it to power plants. Neo bought the rare earths.

After that, there was more processing to be done. The materials that were extracted had different types of rare earths jumbled up together that needed to be separated. Only a few companies outside China do that, and none in the U.S. does it at scale.

Neo had a facility that was up to the task—a continent away. The company had years earlier bought a former Soviet-era uranium plant that had been converted into a facility that separated rare earths. It began receiving the Utah shipments in 2021 and selling the separated rare earths to Japanese magnet makers. Soon, the Utah plant will start doing the separating, too, taking on two jobs instead of one.

The final piece of the puzzle came in April, when Neo acquired a small British rare-earth magnet maker, giving it the capacity to produce magnets in the West for the first time. In August, it went bigger, breaking ground on a new magnet facility in the Estonian town of Narva on the Russian border.

When production begins in 2025, the plant will churn out the most powerful type of heat-resistant magnets for use in electric vehicles and wind turbines, in what will be one of the largest such facilities outside Asia. The European Union has offered up to roughly $20 million in grant money for the plant. 

The EU “of the future is being born right here in Narva,” Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, said in June.

Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, left, with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Estonia last year. PHOTO: RAIGO PAJULA/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Write to Jon Emont at jonathan.emont@wsj.com

​18. A World in Disarray? A Longtime Diplomat Says It’s Worse Than That

"Disarray on stilts."

Richard Haas covers a lot of ground. Here is one key point that caught my eye (though the whole interview is worth reading):

WSJ: The traditional U.S. position has been to avoid saying whether we will defend Taiwan in the event it is attacked by China. You’ve said that this isn’t the sweet spot anymore, that we have to say explicitly, “We will defend Taiwan.” Why? And why is that not dangerous?

HAASS: Our view is simply it’s up to China and Taiwan to work it out. We just don’t want it to be coercive. This discourages the use of force. It lets China know that we’ll do it. Every one of our allies in the region assumes we are going to be there for Taiwan.

WSJ: Including the Taiwanese?

HAASS: Yes. If we’re not, particularly for Japan and South Korea and others, that would be the end of the American alliance system. By the way, I don’t think it’s impossible to make this work at an affordable price. China knows if it uses large-scale force against Taiwan it is betting the future of the Communist Party and the current leadership.

I’m much more worried about gray-area scenarios. What if China cuts off Taiwan? You could have that in the next year. Taiwan has an election in a month. And I wouldn’t be surprised if we see some more muscular stuff by Chinese aircraft or naval vessels. But I think they’ll be restrained.

WSJ: So you think Xi will play out his pressure on Taiwan in indirect fashion?

HAASS: For sure.

WSJ: For the foreseeable future?

HAASS: Yes. The one thing that could change it would be a dramatic shift in U.S. ability or willingness to come to Taiwan’s aid. I think the most significant election is ours in November. A lot of countries in the region are looking at what that will mean for U.S. willingness to stand by its allies and partners. Every one of our allies and partners is asking that question.

A World in Disarray? A Longtime Diplomat Says It’s Worse Than That

Richard Haass offers his perspective on the wars in Ukraine and Israel, and China’s outlook

https://www.wsj.com/world/world-disarray-diplomat-pessimistic-b2dad137?mod=Searchresults_pos4&page=1

Dec. 14, 2023 10:33 am ET

American Diplomacy Under Pressure

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American Diplomacy Under Pressure

Play video: American Diplomacy Under Pressure

Former State Department official Richard Haass discusses U.S. strategies on global conflicts including Israel and Ukraine that are spreading American resources thin.

Sometimes it seems as if disorder is the new world order.

Wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, and challenges from China were some of the main topics of conversation at The Wall Street Journal CEO Council earlier this week in Washington, D.C. Former Executive Washington Editor Gerald F. Seib dug into these issues with Richard Haass, a former head of the Council on Foreign Relations who also served in the State Department under Presidents George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, at the White House under George H.W. Bush and at the Pentagon under Jimmy Carter. He is currently senior counselor with Centerview Partners, an investment banking firm. Edited excerpts of the interview follow.

A Pessimistic Sequel

WSJ: In 2017 you wrote a book about diplomacy titled “A World In Disarray.” If the world was in disarray then, what is it now? What’s the title of your sequel?

HAASS: Disarray on Stilts. When the book came out, I was criticized for being too negative. In retrospect, I wasn’t negative enough.

WSJ: There is a dictators-versus-democracy struggle, a decline in U.S. influence over global affairs, the rise of China. Which of those factors are contributing to this disarray?

HAASS: All of the above: The rise of China, which is not a status quo power, represents a shift in the balance; a truly disaffected Russia with the ability to do something about it, as we’re seeing in Ukraine and elsewhere; a shift in power in various forms moving around the world.

The domestic disarray in this country has really contributed to it. We’re less able, less willing to act effectively in the world. The gap between global challenges and global responses—there is no international community. Let’s get that on the record.

Declining U.S. Power?

WSJ: The Russians could have moved on Ukraine any time in the past 20 years. They didn’t do it until now.

HAASS: Well, they did it in 2014.

WSJ: But not in 1994, when Boris Yeltsin was there. And the Chinese could have acted provocatively in the South China Sea before. They’re doing it now. That to me says there is a sense of declining U.S. power.

HAASS: Our relative position in the world has deteriorated, which, again, is in part because of the buildup of others. We’ve got a real problem with the defense manufacturing base.

We’ve got to do much more to back up Taiwan, to discourage the Chinese from moving there. And with Ukraine, it’s an indirect effort on our part. What could we do to increase support? The question is how do we avoid walking away from it.

WSJ: What is the path out of the predicament in Ukraine?

HAASS: Two years ago, if we had said that two years after a Russian invasion Ukraine would still control 80-odd percent of its territory, would have fought the Russians to a standstill, every one of us would have said, “Where do we sign? What a fantastic outcome.”

As desirable as it is that Ukraine recover all of its territory, it isn’t going to happen. In part, because Russia can produce a lot more. And, in a pinch, North Korea, Iran, conceivably China would help them out.

Ukraine needs to move away from its current strategy. We need to define success as not that Ukraine militarily liberates all of its land, but that Ukraine becomes a permanent fixture. They move away from an offensive strategy, which I believe cannot succeed, to a defensive strategy, which can succeed.

My guess is it has to wait for a very different Russia that might be willing to make some trades in exchange for no longer being a political and economic pariah.

WSJ: Two potential problems with that: Vladimir Putin would take the scenario you just described and declare victory. And the follow-on Russia might be worse.

HAASS: Russia could say that they won, but they haven’t. Plus, you’d have Ukraine integrated one way or another into the EU and NATO. You’d have a thriving Western country, which is exactly what Putin doesn’t want to see.

His immediate successor might be worse. Maybe his successor’s successor, though, won’t be. At some point in Russia, Vladimir Putin is going to be seen as the guy who drove Russia over the cliff into the ditch.

WSJ: There are two knock-on effects of the war in Ukraine. A friendship without limits between Russia and China, and a bizarre situation in which Russia is dependent on weapons from North Korea and Iran. Are those now new features of the international landscape?

HAASS: Well, the latter certainly is. I mean Russia, Iran, North Korea, those really are the pariahs. China is not totally comfortable there, nor is it totally comfortable with its no-limits relationship with Putin.

That’s not China’s economic future.

WSJ: China isn’t comfortable about a friendship without limits with Russia, despite their joint proclamation in 2022?

HAASS: Yes. There’s a lot of grumbling in China about what Putin told them, whether he misled them. We don’t know what China would do to help Russia in extremis. But they’ve accepted some limits.

Richard Haass discussing geopolitics at The Wall Street Journal CEO Council Summit. PHOTO: RALPH ALSWANG FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

China’s Woes

WSJ: Is China the rising power or is it a big power that is in some trouble? It has an economy that is not performing well, and a giant upside-down demographic picture.

HAASS: It’s still rising in absolute terms. The long-term problem is China will probably go from 1.4 billion to maybe 800 million people over the next three-quarters of a century, which is an enormous shift. Tremendous economic implications. The near-term economic problems—youth unemployment, bubbles, trying to switch from an export-led economy to a consumer-demand-led economy—are enormous.

Xi Jinping has made a determination. He’s in year 11 of his rule. He is willing to pay an economic price for political control. And that’s where China is for as long as Xi rules.

WSJ: The traditional U.S. position has been to avoid saying whether we will defend Taiwan in the event it is attacked by China. You’ve said that this isn’t the sweet spot anymore, that we have to say explicitly, “We will defend Taiwan.” Why? And why is that not dangerous?

HAASS: Our view is simply it’s up to China and Taiwan to work it out. We just don’t want it to be coercive. This discourages the use of force. It lets China know that we’ll do it. Every one of our allies in the region assumes we are going to be there for Taiwan.

WSJ: Including the Taiwanese?

HAASS: Yes. If we’re not, particularly for Japan and South Korea and others, that would be the end of the American alliance system. By the way, I don’t think it’s impossible to make this work at an affordable price. China knows if it uses large-scale force against Taiwan it is betting the future of the Communist Party and the current leadership.

I’m much more worried about gray-area scenarios. What if China cuts off Taiwan? You could have that in the next year. Taiwan has an election in a month. And I wouldn’t be surprised if we see some more muscular stuff by Chinese aircraft or naval vessels. But I think they’ll be restrained.

WSJ: So you think Xi will play out his pressure on Taiwan in indirect fashion?

HAASS: For sure.

WSJ: For the foreseeable future?

HAASS: Yes. The one thing that could change it would be a dramatic shift in U.S. ability or willingness to come to Taiwan’s aid. I think the most significant election is ours in November. A lot of countries in the region are looking at what that will mean for U.S. willingness to stand by its allies and partners. Every one of our allies and partners is asking that question.

No endgame

WSJ: The stated goal of the Israeli government is to destroy Hamas. Can Hamas be destroyed?

HAASS: No. It can be seriously weakened or degraded. But Hamas is as much of a network, a movement. You’re always going to have either actual or potential armed resistance.

WSJ: So what’s the path forward in this conflict? What does an endgame look like?

HAASS: I don’t think there is an endgame right now, because the Israelis have gone in without an endgame.

There are two big issues. They can degrade Hamas, and will. They are causing an awful lot of civilian casualties and deaths in the process, which is a separate conversation. But for there to be a real endgame you need a successor governing authority and a security provider. I don’t see either available. The Israelis are going to have to do it.

WSJ: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu undermined the Palestinian Authority, which was the potentially viable Palestinian partner. You could argue he empowered Hamas by essentially turning Gaza over to Hamas.

HAASS: He did.

WSJ: What was the endgame supposed to be? You’ve dealt with Netanyahu over the years.

HAASS: His endgame is a perpetuation of a version of the status quo in Israel. Basically let Gaza be isolated. Israelis, for the most part, do not care about Gaza. It’s never been part of the settler movement in a serious way. It’s been a sideshow.

What the Israelis want to do is avoid a Palestinian state. They want to avoid limits on settlements. I say Israelis. I mean this coalition. Netanyahu and his colleagues. What they want is essentially what I would call the one-state nonsolution.

WSJ: But you worked inside a U.S. government that, for decades, has said, “No, the answer is the two-state solution.” Is the two-state solution more alive or more dead than it was on Oct. 6?

HAASS: It’s more dead. It’s on life support. And the reason is, as bad as Israeli-Palestinian relations were on Oct. 6, they’re far worse now.

I can make all the arguments against the feasibility of the two-state solution, but it’s almost a version of Churchill: It’s the worst approach to dealing with this, except for all the others. It’s the only way I know to deal with legitimate Palestinian aspirations and to keep Israel a democratic Jewish state.

Appeared in the December 15, 2023, print edition as 'A World in Disarray? A Longtime Diplomat Says It’s Worse Than That'.

19. Opinion | In 2024, U.S. domestic politics will cast a dark shadow across the world

Conclusion:

As I recently wrote in Foreign Affairs, “the most worrying challenge to the rules-based international order does not come from China, Russia, or Iran. It comes from the United States.” If America retreats, in each of these three areas, aggression and disorder will rise. 2024 might be a year in which the ugly, polarized politics on Capitol Hill ends up shaping the world in which we will live for decades to come.

Opinion | In 2024, U.S. domestic politics will cast a dark shadow across the world

By Fareed Zakaria

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December 15, 2023 at 6:30 a.m. EST

The Washington Post · by Fareed Zakaria · December 15, 2023

2023 has turned out to be a year that has seen a fundamental challenge to world order. The rules-based international system built by the United States and others over the decades is now under threat in three regions.

In Europe, Russia’s war on Ukraine shatters the long-standing norm that borders should not be changed by force. In the Middle East, the war between Israel and Hamas threatens a dangerous radicalization of the region, with Iranian-backed militias fighting U.S.-backed allies from Lebanon to Yemen to Iraq to Syria. And in Asia, China’s rise continues to unsettle the balance of power.

Each of these challenges has its peculiarities, but they have in common the need for a sophisticated mixture of deterrence and diplomacy. The Biden administration has tackled them energetically, setting agendas, rallying allies and talking to adversaries. Success will depend on whether it can execute the policies it has adopted. Alas, that might depend on the United States’ domestic politics more than its grand strategies.

In Europe, Washington has emphasized combating Russian aggression. This is easier said than done. Russia has an economy that was nine times the size of Ukraine’s before the war and a population today almost four times larger. That basic mismatch can only be addressed through continuous, large-scale Western assistance to Ukraine, coupled with pressure on Kyiv to develop a more manageable military strategy and to reform its politics and economics so that it can genuinely become a part of the West.

In the Middle East, the challenge is more in the realm of diplomacy than deterrence. Israel has overwhelming power compared with Hamas; there really is no doubt that it will win in the narrow, military sense of the word. But to leave Israel more secure, with meaningful, new alliances with the Gulf Arab states, the United States must get Israel to address an underlying, unavoidable reality: about 5 million Palestinians live in lands occupied by Israel without political rights and without a state of their own.

China is the largest of the challenges and the one that, in the long run, will shape the international order — determining whether the open international system collapses into a second Cold War with arms races in nuclear weapons, space and artificial intelligence. The strategy the Biden administration has adopted is nuanced, emphasizing competition and deterrence while also trying to build a working relationship with Beijing. During the past few months, that strategy seems to have yielded results, including a more conciliatory tone from the Chinese. The shift undoubtedly has much to do with Beijing’s economic troubles, as well as the realization that Xi Jinping’s “Wolf Warrior” diplomacy has backfired, producing animosity across Asia. But part of the credit goes to a U.S. policy that has pushed tough measures even as it has encouraged dialogue and diplomacy.

Despite well-designed policy in each of these areas, the Biden administration confronts the reality that U.S. domestic politics could derail all progress. If U.S. support for Ukraine wavers, European resolve will also weaken, and Russian leader Vladimir Putin will be confirmed in his prediction that he can outlast the West. Large constituencies in both America and Europe still support Ukraine, but the United States is experiencing growing opposition from a newly isolationist right. And the Republican Party is poised to nominate Donald Trump as its presidential candidate, a man who has made no bones about his dislike of Ukraine and admiration for Putin.

In the Middle East, Biden faces Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is highly adept at pocketing U.S. support and resisting all advice. Since the days of the Oslo accords in the 1990s, Netanyahu has found ways to feign support for a peace process while actually gutting it. The last time Washington tried to pressure him, he made an end run around President Barack Obama and mobilized support directly through Congress. Perhaps recognizing this, the Biden administration seems instead to be trying to marshal Arab states — chiefly Saudi Arabia — to influence Israel.

With China, the Biden administration’s careful mix of deterrence and diplomacy can only work if domestic policy does not upend it. The politics of China policy remain overwhelmingly hawkish; there is no perceived downside to bashing Beijing. The House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party just recommended even more severe measures against China, including a slew of tariffs that would, according to an estimate by Oxford Economics, cost the U.S. economy up to $1.9 trillion over the next 5 years and could lead to a broad rupture in the global economy.

As I recently wrote in Foreign Affairs, “the most worrying challenge to the rules-based international order does not come from China, Russia, or Iran. It comes from the United States.” If America retreats, in each of these three areas, aggression and disorder will rise. 2024 might be a year in which the ugly, polarized politics on Capitol Hill ends up shaping the world in which we will live for decades to come.

The Washington Post · by Fareed Zakaria · December 15, 2023

20. Confident Putin Suggests He Has Winning Hand in Ukraine

Confidence? Arrogance? I hope pride goeth before the fall.

Excerpts:

The session represents an opportunity for regular Russians to take their hyperlocal issues to the president. Many people perceive the local and regional authorities as corrupt, but believe in the president.

That was certainly how Mr. Putin behaved, rather than as someone seeking support for re-election. He did not make many campaign promises and was very confident in his responses, blaming people’s problems on local and regional governments, calling them “technical issues.”

Mr. Putin has held power in Russia, either as president or prime minister, since 1999. If he wins as expected in March and serves the term to completion, he would become the longest-serving Russian leader since Empress Catherine the Great in the 18th century.

Mr. Putin did not address the vast inequality in Russia, but the questions scrolling behind him were a reminder that there were some people who expected more.

In the ticker of questions was this one: “Why is your reality so divergent from our existence?” Another questioner, using Mr. Putin’s patronymic as a sign of respect, wrote: “Vladimir Vladimirovich, please tell us, when are we going to live better?”

Confident Putin Suggests He Has Winning Hand in Ukraine

By Valerie Hopkins and Anton Troianovski

Valerie Hopkins reported from Vladimir Putin’s news conference in Moscow, and Anton Troianovski from Berlin.

The New York Times · by Anton Troianovski · December 14, 2023

The Russian leader, in his annual news conference, said he was open to peace talks but showed no hint of compromise. “Peace will come when we achieve our goals,” he said.

President Vladimir V. Putin arriving for his annual news conference on Thursday in Moscow, in a photo provided by Russian state media.Credit...Aleksander Kazakov/Sputnik

Dec. 14, 2023

阅读简体中文版閱讀繁體中文版

President Vladimir V. Putin on Thursday cast himself as a wartime leader in full control of his invasion and his nation, his confidence on display in a stage-managed, four-hour news conference that underscored the Russian leader’s apparent determination to outlast Ukraine and the West.

Mr. Putin said his vaguely defined goals of the “demilitarization” and “denazification” of Ukraine — the same unfounded justifications that he used to launch the invasion nearly two years ago — had not changed. He reiterated that he was open to peace talks, but offered no hint of a willingness to compromise. And he boasted that Ukraine’s Western backing was running dry, a sign of how the impasse in Washington over more funding for Kyiv had buoyed the mood in the Kremlin.

“Peace will come when we achieve our goals,” Mr. Putin said. Referring to Western military aid to Ukraine, he added: “They’re getting everything as freebies. But these freebies can run out at some point, and it looks like they’re already starting to run out.”

Mr. Putin said Russia’s vague goals of “demilitarization” and “denazification” in Ukraine remained unchanged.Credit...Pool photo by Alexander Zemlianichenko

For the first time, Mr. Putin commented on Russia’s arrest last March of Evan Gershkovich, a correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, who remains in pretrial detention in Moscow on espionage charges that he, his employer and the U.S. government have vehemently denied. Analysts have said that Mr. Gershkovich’s best hope of being released is through a prisoner exchange with the United States or another Western country.

“We want to make a deal, but it should be mutually acceptable to both sides,” Mr. Putin said at the news conference, referring to Mr. Gershkovich and Paul Whelan, a former Marine and corporate executive. Mr. Whelan is serving a 16-year sentence in Russia on espionage charges that the United States has called politically motivated.

The Russian leader’s appearance came just hours after a Moscow court upheld the detention of Mr. Gershkovich with a ruling that will leave the journalist — who has been held for 260 days — in custody until at least the end of January. The State Department said last week that Russia had rejected a “substantial offer” that would have freed him and Mr. Whelan

“It’s not that we’re refusing to return them; we didn’t refuse,” the Russian leader said, adding, “There is contact and dialogue with our American partners on this.”

Russia in Dialogue With U.S. on Detained Americans, Putin Says

Mr. Putin described talks with U.S. officials over two detained Americans, Evan Gershkovich, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, and Paul Whelan, a former Marine and corporate executive, as “difficult.”

My colleague, the Wall Street Journal correspondent Evan Gershkovich has been held in Lefortovo Prison without a trial for 37 weeks. His detention was today, again, the extension on his detention was today, again, upheld. Paul Whelan, another U.S. citizen, has been in prison for nearly five years. A spokesman for the U.S. State Department, which considers both men wrongfully detained, recently said that Moscow had rejected what it called a substantial offer to return both of them to the United States. Is that true? What will it take to bring them home?

Mr. Putin described talks with U.S. officials over two detained Americans, Evan Gershkovich, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, and Paul Whelan, a former Marine and corporate executive, as “difficult.”Credit...Dmitry Serebryakov/Associated Press

Mr. Putin spoke on Thursday from a position of relative strength. Russian forces fended off Ukraine’s counteroffensive this year and are now attacking in several areas along the front line. Military production in Russia is ramping up, and Western sanctions have failed to cripple the economy.

At the same time, Ukraine faces some of the steepest challenges of the war, deadlocked on the battlefield and urgently seeking to shore up Western support. Just this week, President Volodymyr Zelensky came away from Washington empty-handed as he sought to persuade Congress to pass a substantive aid package.

Ukraine did receive a glimmer of good news on Thursday when the European Union agreed to officially open talks for Kyiv to join the bloc. Accession could take years, but any attempt by Ukraine to move closer to the West has always irritated Mr. Putin, including a potential trade deal that Russia pressured Kyiv to abandon in 2013.

Mr. Putin spoke at a nationally televised event near the Kremlin that featured two staples of the two-plus decades of his rule: his year-end news conference, at which hundreds of journalists try to get the president’s attention by hollering and holding up signs; and his annual call-in show, in which thousands of regular Russians write in, many of them trying to get him to intervene to solve local problems.

This photo released by Russian state media shows would-be questioners attempting to get Mr. Putin’s attention during his news conference on Thursday.Credit...Vladimir Gerdo/Sputnik

Last year, Mr. Putin held neither event, a sign that he had little good news to report after the disastrous beginning of his invasion of Ukraine. This year, the Kremlin for the first time combined the two so that Thursday’s spectacle became a head-spinning telecast that alternated between questions from journalists in the hall and carefully selected notes and videos sent in by the public.

Throughout the event, Mr. Putin sought to appear confident and in command. Next spring’s rubber-stamp presidential election, which is expected to grant him another six-year term, went largely unmentioned, suggesting that the president saw no need for even perfunctory campaigning. One journalist from the Russian Far East expressed support for Mr. Putin’s candidacy, telling the Russian leader that “you’re in power as long as I can remember myself.”

Queried about problems, Mr. Putin largely brushed them off, even when it came to the skyrocketing price of eggs. He responded to a question about it with a deadpan, off-color joke before apologizing for his government’s inability to come to grips with the problem. And when a military correspondent asked about the shortage of drones on the front line, Mr. Putin shot back, “You can’t not see that it’s getting better.”

Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, wrote: “Putin isn’t interested in currying favor or buttering people up. He believes that the people are with him, and therefore he allows himself to behave very reservedly.”

The event’s stagecraft highlighted the war in Ukraine, which the Kremlin still describes as “the special military operation.” The first 90 minutes featured a wounded soldier, two military bloggers and three video questions from Ukrainian territory occupied by Russia. Unlike the war’s early months, when Russian officials sought to hide its reality from the public, the Kremlin now evidently sees it as a winning message.

But Mr. Putin also tried to assure Russians that the invasion would not bring new upheaval into their lives. He said he saw no need for another military draft because, he claimed, some 500,000 people had signed up for military service voluntarily.

“Why do we need mobilization?” Mr. Putin said. “Today, there’s no need for it.”

Soldiers in Moscow in August. Mr. Putin said he saw no need for another military draft for the war in Ukraine.Credit...Nanna Heitmann for The New York Times

The program, carefully curated to convey a veneer of openness, took place in Moscow’s Gostiny Dvor, a vast former market hall one block from Red Square. It was decked out with large video screens on which questions from across Russia and occupied Ukrainian territory were displayed for 20 or so seconds at a time. Most of them went unanswered.

As time ticked on, people in the audience began yelling out the names of their cities — “Omsk!” “Ufa!” — and their news outlets in the hope of posing their questions. In the background, a constant ticker of videos and questions — reminiscent of the blue background with white font of “Jeopardy!” — were broadcast on four screens on the wall.

At one point, Mr. Putin gave the floor to two young men from Luhansk and Donetsk, Ukrainian territories that Russia illegally annexed last year. Their comments highlighted the propagandistic nature of the event.

“We came without questions; we have nothing to complain about,” said the questioner from Luhansk. “We came to say thank you to you for making us part of Russia.”

But throughout the discussion, many questions from the occupied territories were displayed on the large screens.

“In Mariupol after liberation many of the old elevators in high buildings have been shut off. When will there be new ones? I live on the eighth floor and I’m 80 years old,” one person wrote in.

Many questions focused on basic quality-of-life issues, topics that ordinary Russians were coping with on a daily basis: inflation, a lack of infrastructure and rising energy prices in cities where temperatures reach minus 22 Fahrenheit.

Yakutsk, in northern Siberia, this month, where temperatures dropped below minus 58 Fahrenheit.Credit...Roman Kutukov/Reuters

The session represents an opportunity for regular Russians to take their hyperlocal issues to the president. Many people perceive the local and regional authorities as corrupt, but believe in the president.

That was certainly how Mr. Putin behaved, rather than as someone seeking support for re-election. He did not make many campaign promises and was very confident in his responses, blaming people’s problems on local and regional governments, calling them “technical issues.”

Mr. Putin has held power in Russia, either as president or prime minister, since 1999. If he wins as expected in March and serves the term to completion, he would become the longest-serving Russian leader since Empress Catherine the Great in the 18th century.

Mr. Putin did not address the vast inequality in Russia, but the questions scrolling behind him were a reminder that there were some people who expected more.

In the ticker of questions was this one: “Why is your reality so divergent from our existence?” Another questioner, using Mr. Putin’s patronymic as a sign of respect, wrote: “Vladimir Vladimirovich, please tell us, when are we going to live better?”

Anatoly Kurmanaev contributed reporting from Berlin, and Ivan Nechepurenko from Tbilisi, Georgia.

Valerie Hopkins covers the war in Ukraine and how the conflict is changing Russia, Ukraine, Europe and the United States. She is based in Moscow. More about Valerie Hopkins

Anton Troianovski is the Moscow bureau chief for The Times. He writes about Russia, Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia. More about Anton Troianovski

A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 10 of the New York edition with the headline: Confident Putin Suggests He Has Winning Hand in His War on Ukraine

The New York Times · by Anton Troianovski · December 14, 2023

21. Spying the secrets of creativity

A little OSS history. Some interesting insights. Graphics at the link below.

Spying the secrets of creativityReddit

December 14, 2023

https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/spying-secrets-creativity?utm_source=pocket_saves

Coby McDonald, California magazine, UC Berkeley

Credit: Architect, I.M. Pei / Institute of Personality and Social Research

In late January of 1958, five of America’s most renowned writers converged in a repurposed frat house just off the Berkeley campus for what promised to be a long, strange weekend. Formerly the Sigma Phi Epsilon house, the mock-Tudor structure was now the headquarters and laboratory of Berkeley’s Institute of Personality Assessment and Research, or IPAR. In a nod to the observational studies that took place inside, the institute’s founding director, psychologist Donald MacKinnon, called the building “the fishbowl.” And for three days, this small group of writers — among them a young Truman Capote — would be the goldfish, subjects of an unprecedented study into the secret sauce of creativity.  

When MacKinnon created IPAR in 1949, he was already one of the world’s leading assessors of human aptitude. He had sharpened his talents during World War II as the director of Station S in Fairfax, Virginia, for the Office of Strategic Services (precursor to the CIA). There MacKinnon screened candidates for jobs in irregular warfare — as spies, counterespionage agents, leaders of resistance groups. The elaborate battery of psychological tests honed at Station S became known as “the assessment method,” and after the war, MacKinnon wondered how else it could be put to productive use. Then Berkeley called. 

Initially the admissions office tasked MacKinnon with creating better assessments for selecting graduate students. But soon, with funding from the Carnegie Corporation, IPAR’s mission expanded to unlocking the secrets of personality. 

“MacKinnon brought that same [OSS] methodology to IPAR,” says William Todd Schultz, professor of psychology at Pacific University, who is working on a book about the IPAR writers studies. “It was very ambitious.” 

At Berkeley, the former spy screener assembled a group of eclectic, high-powered psychologists to join him. Early IPAR research focused on the concept of the “effective person.” They wanted to know both the ingredients of the successful personality and the societal conditions that allowed such people to thrive — the nature and nurture of success. 

But in the mid-1950s, an obsession with creativity took hold in America. Not the watercolor and pottery kind, but rather creative thinking as a means to solve the world’s most pressing problems. As author Pierluigi Serraino noted in his 2016 book, The Creative Architect: Inside the Great Midcentury Personality Study, the project was considered to be of existential importance: “As alarming visions of an Orwellian society dominated by automated technologies were going viral in postwar Western civilization, the investigation on creativity was seen as a crucial tool in the race for humanity’s very survival, saving it from an obliteration of its own making.…”

As it happened, IPAR had a creativity expert on staff. Psychologist Frank Barron was known for blending ideas from philosophy, religion, and the arts into his personality research. He and MacKinnon had an idea: If they could bring America’s most formidable writers (and architects, mathematicians, etc.) to the fishbowl for a few days and use MacKinnon’s assessment tools on them, the secrets of creativity might just be revealed. 

Versa-tile: Among the battery of tests given to IPAR subjects was the Mosaic Construction Test, intended to guage creative response within a fixed set of parameters. Architect, Eero Saarinen / Institute of Personality and Social Research.

From the moment Capote and his fellow writers entered the IPAR house that winter morning, they were under careful observation by note-taking graduate students. The group, which included novelists, a poet, and a literary critic, was subjected to numerous assessments, some familiar, like Myers-Briggs and Rorschach tests, and others not so much. One required them to arrange colored tiles into a mosaic. Another tasked them with choosing their favorite pattern from a series of Scottish tartans. Group activities had them discuss contingency plans for the end of the world and collaborate on story plots. There was even a test using a Ouija board to measure the writers’ suggestibility. 

“One of the distinctive things about IPAR is they believed that personality was a complicated whole,” says Schultz. “And to really get a sense of a person you need to come at that person from multiple angles.” 

The subjects were often skeptical. One of Barron’s subjects, Kenneth Rexroth, known as the “godfather of the beat poets,” later described his IPAR experience in a long, caustic prose poem entitled “My Head Gets Tooken Apart.” 

“I sorted things and interpreted symbols. A rather frightened, puzzled, but very determined looking young woman took me in the attic, blindfolded me, led me into a dark room, and spent twenty minutes finding out if I could tell vertical from horizontal. Honest to God, cross my heart, hope to die. I could, pretty good.” 

At times the subjects were given breaks to drink and socialize, but these cocktail hours were actually assessments in disguise. Utilizing what MacKinnon called the “house party” approach, assessors took careful note of their behavior and interactions. 

“It’s kind of a cool, unusual thing that’s unimaginable today,” says Schultz. “One thing about that group of researchers was that there were no limits. They were extremely broad-minded. They were going to try anything.” In other words, they were getting creative.

And perhaps they needed to, given the elusive nature of their subject. Creativity is a nebulous concept, variously defined, and difficult if not impossible to measure. The field of creativity research, MacKinnon felt, had long been awash in untested theories and what he called “armchair model-building.” He was determined that with empirical studies he could wrestle the concept to the ground once and for all. 

While Rexroth was clearly unimpressed, Capote was an enthusiastic and forthcoming participant. He provided researchers plenty of raw material, holding forth about his famous friends, difficult childhood, nightmares, and more. And the three days at IPAR may have been productive for Capote too. According to Merve Emre, author of The Personality Brokers, during one collaborative assessment, Capote workshopped an early version of Holly Golightly, the future protagonist of Breakfast at Tiffany’s. 

Barron would ultimately bring 31 prominent writers to IPAR for assessment, among them Norman Mailer, Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist MacKinlay Kantor, and poet William Carlos Williams. (Two years later, Barron would co-found the infamous Harvard Psilocybin Project along with a former IPAR graduate student, Timothy Leary.) 

Color-coded: Where most tests resulted in tabulated data, the Mosaic Test yielded art. Mosaic by famous architect Richard Neutra / Institute of Personality and Social Research

Mosaic by famous architect George Nelson / Institute of Personality and Social Research

And it wasn’t just writers who were put in the fishbowl. Creativity studies were also conducted on mathematicians, research scientists, and architects. The latter was practically a Who’s Who of mid-century modern masters. Eero Saarinen, Richard Neutra, George Nelson, I.M. Pei, they were all there. (IPAR study subjects were overwhelmingly white and male, a longitudinal study of Mills College graduates being a notable exception.) 

The influence of the IPAR studies is lasting, the work still cited in both scientific and popular literature. Monty Python comic John Cleese drew two salient conclusions from the architect study in his 2020 book, Creativity: A Short and Cheerful Guide. One was that the most creative architects know how to play. The other one, perhaps less intuitive, was that they deferred important creative decisions to the last moment. They weren’t procrastinating so much as giving their minds more time to work on the problem. 

Among the other conclusions, IPAR researchers noted that creatives tended to have a good opinion of themselves; they were also risk-takers, on the whole, who thrived on ambiguity and complexity and had a high tolerance for chaos; and they often scored high on traits that in 1950s America were widely viewed as feminine, including self-awareness and an openness to their feelings. Notably, the studies revealed that “above a certain required minimum level of intelligence” there was no correlation between creativity and intelligence. MacKinnon wrote that, in some creative individuals, IQ was “surprisingly low.” 

There were also contradictions aplenty. Barron himself commented that the creatives were “both more primitive and more cultivated, more destructive, a lot madder and a lot saner than the average person.” Not exactly a consistent profile. And not everyone in the field was sold. 

“The research was a little bit what we call in science ‘underpowered,’” says former director of the institute, Professor Emeritus Robert Levenson. The sample sizes were small, “and a lot of the measures were not replicable, in the sense that if you gave a person the same test on a different day, they might perform in a different way.” 

The research continues, albeit with a different focus. In 1992, the Institute of Personality Assessment and Research received a new name: the Institute of Personality and Social Research. It was a change that reflected shifts in both American society and the field of psychology. Gone was the obsession with individual genius. 

“One of the core ideologies behind a focus on identifying the exceptional person is individualism,” says IPSR’s new director (as of July), Professor of Psychology Iris Mauss. “And that’s much more aligned with the ‘P’ in IPSR.” The “S,” she says, “was added to reflect that you can only understand the human mind by looking at the social aspects of people’s psychology.” 

Today’s IPSR is focused more on health and well-being for everyone, she says. Personality still has a role to play however. “We aren’t all the same, right? People differ, including in how they respond to the social conditions they live in, and how they respond to their communities,” Mauss says. “And so to understand who will thrive and who will not do so well, we absolutely need to understand personality differences, as well as social context. We need both.” 

The fish and the fishbowl.

Coby McDonald is a frequent contributor to California and producer of The Edge, the magazine’s podcast. He last wrote in this space about the staying power of Telegraph Avenue’s iconic record shops.

22. The mystery of the missing binder: How a collection of raw Russian intelligence disappeared under Trump

We will be seeing more of these reports concerning both presidential candidates.

The mystery of the missing binder: How a collection of raw Russian intelligence disappeared under Trump

CNN

December 15, 2023

Washington (CNN) — A binder containing highly classified information related to Russian election interference went missing at the end of Donald Trump’s presidency, raising alarms among intelligence officials that some of the most closely guarded national security secrets from the US and its allies could be exposed, sources familiar with the matter told CNN.

Its disappearance, which has not been previously reported, was so concerning that intelligence officials briefed Senate Intelligence Committee leaders last year about the missing materials and the government’s efforts to retrieve them, the sources said.

In the two-plus years since Trump left office, the missing intelligence does not appear to have been found.

The binder contained raw intelligence the US and its NATO allies collected on Russians and Russian agents, including sources and methods that informed the US government’s assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to help Trump win the 2016 election, sources tell CNN.

The intelligence was so sensitive that lawmakers and congressional aides with top secret security clearances were able to review the material only at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, where their work scrutinizing it was itself kept in a locked safe.

CIA Headquarters at Langley, Virginia (David Burnett/Newsmakers/Getty Images)

The binder was last seen at the White House during Trump’s final days in office. The former president had ordered it brought there so he could declassify a host of documents related to the FBI’s Russia investigation. Under the care of then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, the binder was scoured by Republican aides working to redact the most sensitive information so it could be declassified and released publicly.

The Russian intelligence was just a small part of the collection of documents in the binder, described as being 10 inches thick and containing reams of information about the FBI’s “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia. But the raw intelligence on Russia was among its most sensitive classified materials, and top Trump administration officials repeatedly tried to block the former president from releasing the documents.

The day before leaving office, Trump issued an order declassifying most of the binder’s contents, setting off a flurry of activity in the final 48 hours of his presidency. Multiple copies of the redacted binder were created inside the White House, with plans to distribute them across Washington to Republicans in Congress and right-wing journalists.

Instead, copies initially sent out were frantically retrieved at the direction of White House lawyers demanding additional redactions.

Just minutes before Joe Biden was inaugurated, Meadows rushed to the Justice Department to hand-deliver a redacted copy for a last review. Years later, the Justice Department has yet to release all of the documents, despite Trump’s declassification order. Additional copies with varying levels of redactions ended up at the National Archives.

But an unredacted version of the binder containing the classified raw intelligence went missing amid the chaotic final hours of the Trump White House. The circumstances surrounding its disappearance remain shrouded in mystery.

US officials repeatedly declined to discuss any government efforts to locate the binder or confirm that any intelligence was missing.

The binder was not among the classified items found in last year’s search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, according to a US official familiar with the matter, who said the FBI was not looking specifically for intelligence related to Russia when it obtained a search warrant for the former president’s residence last year.

Mark Meadows on January 20, 2021 (Alex Edelman/AFP/Getty Images)

There’s also no reference to the binder or the missing Russian intelligence in the June indictment of Trump over the mishandling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.

One theory has emerged about the binder’s whereabouts.

Cassidy Hutchinson, one of Meadows’ top aides, testified to Congress and wrote in her memoir that she believes Meadows took home an unredacted version of the binder. She said it had been kept in Meadows’ safe and that she saw him leave with it from the White House.

“I am almost positive it went home with Mr. Meadows,” Hutchinson told the January 6 committee in closed-door testimony, according to transcripts released last year.

A lawyer for Meadows, however, strongly denies that Meadows mishandled any classified information at the White House, saying any suggestion Meadows was responsible for classified information going missing was “flat wrong.”

“Mr. Meadows was keenly aware of and adhered to requirements for the proper handling of classified material, any such material that he handled or was in his possession has been treated accordingly and any suggestion that he is responsible for any missing binder or other classified information is flat wrong,” Meadows attorney George Terwilliger said in a statement to CNN. “Anyone and any entity suggesting that he is responsible for anything missing does not have facts and should exercise great care before making false allegations.”

In the years since Trump left office, his allies have pursued the redacted binder so they can release it publicly, suing the Justice Department and the National Archives earlier this year. And Trump’s lawyers are now seeking access to the classified intelligence from the 2016 election assessment as they prepare for his defense against charges stemming from efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

This account of the classified binder’s journey to the White House, how its trail went cold once Trump left office, and the lingering questions it raises is based on interviews with more than a dozen sources familiar with the matter, all of whom requested anonymity to discuss the sensitive issue.

The CIA, the FBI, the National Archives and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment for this story. A spokeswoman for the Senate Intelligence Committee declined comment. A lawyer for Hutchinson also declined comment. A spokesman for Trump did not respond to a request for comment.

Click or tap an item for more details

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‘A safe within a safe’ at the CIA

The missing binder is at the heart of one of the most contentious fights waged behind the scenes by then-President Trump. Despite fierce opposition from his own national security officials, Trump spent years trying to declassify material that he said would prove his claims the FBI’s Russia probe into his campaign was a hoax.

The binder’s origins trace back to 2018, when Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee, led by Chairman Devin Nunes, compiled a classified report alleging the Obama administration skewed intelligence in its assessment that Putin had worked to help Trump in the 2016 election.

The GOP report, which criticized the intelligence community’s “tradecraft,” scrutinized the highly classified intelligence from 2016 that informed the assessment Putin and Russia sought to assist Trump’s campaign. House Republicans cut a deal with the CIA in which the committee brought in a safe for its documents that was then placed inside a CIA vault – a setup that prompted some officials to characterize it as a “turducken” or a “safe within a safe.”

Republican and Democratic sources disagreed on the substance of the report. GOP sources familiar with its details said the report argued the intelligence community assessment was skewed by senior Obama administration officials to exclude intelligence suggesting that Russia actually wanted Hillary Clinton to win in 2016, while overemphasizing the significance of intelligence indicating that Russia preferred Trump.

Democratic sources, however, say the Republican allegations were overblown. One source said the intelligence referenced in the report actually proved the opposite of what Republicans were claiming – saying it showed that Russia was meddling in US elections and seeking to personally manipulate Trump and help him win.

The Democratic view was corroborated in 2020 by the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee, which concluded that the 2016 assessment was a “sound intelligence product” and that analysts were under no political pressure to reach specific conclusions, undercutting Nunes’ allegations.

Nunes, who left Congress to become CEO of Trump's media company, provided a statement in response to questions mocking CNN for focusing on "secret Trump binders.”

National security leaders resist

Nunes’ 2018 report became one of many documents connected to the Russia investigation that Trump and his allies wanted to make public.

But Trump’s national security leaders, particularly CIA Director Gina Haspel, vehemently resisted public release of the report and other Russia documents, fearing the exposure of sources and methods. The disagreement followed Haspel throughout her tenure in the Trump administration.

Trump privately made clear that he wanted to get his hands on the GOP report. During one exchange in October 2020, Trump suggested he should personally visit CIA headquarters and demand access to it, according to a source familiar with the conversation.

In the leadup to the 2020 election, two Trump intelligence leaders, acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell and his successor, John Ratcliffe, declassified some documents and intelligence related to Russia and the FBI. But the House GOP report remained classified.

Trump considered firing Haspel after the election as he pushed to release more information about the Russia investigation. At least one Trump adviser floated replacing Haspel with Kash Patel, an aide to Nunes in 2018 when the GOP report was drafted. In 2019, Patel went to work for Trump on the National Security Council before becoming chief of staff to the acting defense secretary in Trump’s final months.

In December 2020, then-Attorney General William Barr worked with Ratcliffe to dissuade Trump from declassifying at least a subset of the intelligence related to Russia, arguing that it would damage national security, sources familiar with the matter said. Other current and former officials say Barr and aides in his office also pushed the FBI and the intelligence agencies to satisfy Trump’s demands and make public more of the information, pressure that continued after Barr left office.

At one point after the election, Haspel, FBI Director Christopher Wray and NSA Director Gen. Paul Nakasone trekked to Capitol Hill on short notice to speak to congressional intelligence leaders about their deep concerns of Trump possibly releasing the material, sources said.

Secrets arrive at the White House

On December 19, four days after Barr announced his resignation, Nunes met with Meadows at the White House to discuss how to declassify documents related to the FBI’s investigation into the Trump campaign and Russia, Hutchinson testified to Congress.

Eleven days later, sources say that a copy of the GOP report was brought to the White House as one part of the massive binder of documents on Russia and the FBI investigation. Hutchinson told the January 6 committee she signed for the documents when they arrived at the White House.

Over the next few days, Meadows discussed the documents with then-White House Counsel Pat Cipollone and also met with Republican staffers from the House Intelligence Committee to review them, according to Hutchinson.

In his book about his time as Trump’s chief of staff, Meadows wrote that Trump demanded the documents be brought to the White House. “I personally went through every page, to make sure that the President's declassification would not inadvertently disclose sources and methods,” he wrote.

Along with the GOP report scrutinizing the intelligence on Russia, the binder’s contents included the FBI’s problematic foreign intelligence surveillance warrants on a Trump campaign adviser from 2017; interview notes with Christopher Steele, author of the infamous dossier on Trump and Russia; FBI reports from a confidential human source related to the Russia investigation; and internal FBI and DOJ text messages and emails, among other documents.

The version of the binder Hutchinson signed for was kept in Meadows’ office safe, she testified, except when it was being worked on by congressional staffers.

“He wanted to keep that one close-hold. He didn't want that one to be widely known about,” Hutchinson told the January 6 committee. “I just know Mr. Meadows. He wouldn't have had that one copied unless he did it on his own, but I don't think he knows how to use a copy machine.”

In her book, Hutchinson recalled a moment when Meadows asked her to retrieve the binder and complained when she told him it was in the safe. “I told you not to let it out of your sight. It should have been in your desk drawer,” Meadows told her.

“My desk drawer, Mark, is not where classified documents belong. It was in the safe. You have nothing to worry about,” Hutchinson writes that she responded.

Once the committee aides completed their proposed redactions, additional copies were made at the White House so the binder could be declassified and released.

A botched rollout

Meanwhile, at the FBI, top officials scrambled to protect the most sensitive details and limit the damage of what they felt were insufficient redactions.

“Any further declassification would reveal sensitive intelligence collection techniques, damage foreign partner relations, jeopardize United States Intelligence Community equities, potentially violate court orders limiting the dissemination of FISA information … (and) endanger confidential human sources,” a top FBI official wrote to White House officials, according to a source who read portions of the letter to CNN.

On January 19, 2021, Trump issued a declassification order for a “binder of materials related to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation.”

The White House had planned to distribute the declassified documents around Washington, including to Trump-allied conservative journalist John Solomon. But Trump’s order did not lead to its release – and earlier this year Solomon sued the Justice Department and National Archives for access to the documents.

His court filings provide colorful details of the last-minute scramble.

Solomon claims that on the night of January 19, Meadows invited him to the White House to review several hundred pages of the declassified binder. One of Solomon’s staffers was even allowed to leave the White House with the declassified records in a paper bag.

“Mr. Solomon’s staff began setting up a scanning operation for the complete set of documents to be released the next morning,” Solomon’s attorneys wrote in a court filing last month. “But as they set up the equipment, they received a call from the White House asking that the documents — still under embargo — be returned because the White House wished to make some additional redactions to unclassified information under the Privacy Act.”

Hutchinson writes in her book that Cipollone told her after 10:30 p.m. on January 19 to have Meadows retrieve the binders that had been given to Solomon and a right-wing columnist. “The Crossfire Hurricane binders are a complete disaster. They’re still full of classified information,” Hutchinson writes that Cipollone told her. “Those binders need to come back to the White House. Like, now.”

The documents were returned the next morning, on January 20, after they were picked up by a Secret Service agent in a Whole Foods grocery bag, according to Hutchinson.

‘How quickly can we get this to DOJ?’

On the morning of January 20, the final day of the Trump presidency, Meadows rushed to the Justice Department to turn over a copy of the binder Trump ordered declassified for a final review.

Hutchinson told the committee that sometime between 11 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. that morning, Meadows emerged from the White House in a hurry to deliver a copy of the binder to the Justice Department.

Hutchinson recalled Meadows asking his security detail, “How quickly can we get this to DOJ?”

Meadows also delivered a memo instructing the Justice Department to conduct its own privacy review of the bulk of the documents Trump had declassified before they were released.

“I am returning the bulk of the binder of declassified documents to the Department of Justice (including all that appear to have a potential to raise privacy concerns) with the instruction that the Department must expeditiously conduct a Privacy Act review under the standards that the Department of Justice would normally apply, redact material appropriately, and release the remaining material with redactions applied,” Meadows wrote in the memo.

Solomon’s lawyers contend in a legal filing that Meadows “promised Mr. Solomon that he would receive the revised binder. However, this never occurred.”

As for the unredacted version of the binder, Hutchinson writes in her book that she saw Meadows get into his limo the night of January 19 with the “original Crossfire Hurricane binder tucked under his arm.”

“What the hell is Mark doing with the unredacted Crossfire Hurricane binder?” Hutchinson recalled asking herself as Meadows drove away.

When she looked in Meadows’ safe for the last time before she left the White House, Hutchinson said it was gone.

“I don't think that would have been something that he would have destroyed,” Hutchinson told the January 6 committee. “It was not returned anywhere, and it never left our office to go internally anywhere. It stayed in our safe, in the office safe most of the time.”

Terwilliger, an attorney for Meadows, disputes Hutchinson’s account, saying Meadows did not mishandle any classified documents at the White House.

The hunt continues

Even after Trump left office, the hunt for the binder continued on multiple fronts.

Roughly a year after Trump left office, Senate Intelligence Committee leaders were briefed by intelligence officials about the disappearance of the raw Russian intelligence contained in the unredacted version of the binder and the government’s efforts to retrieve it, sources told CNN.

At the same time, Trump’s allies sought to regain access to the declassified version of the binder that Meadows had taken to the Justice Department.

In June 2022, Trump named Solomon and Patel as his representatives to the National Archives, who were authorized to view the former president’s records. Solomon’s lawsuit included email correspondence showing how Solomon and Patel tried to get access to the binder as soon as they were named as Trump’s representatives.

“There is a binder of documents from the Russia investigation that the President declassified with an order in his last few days in office. It's about 10 inches thick,” Solomon wrote in June 2022 to Gary Stern, the Archives’ general counsel. “We'd like to make a set of copies -- digital or paper format -- of every document that was declassified by his order and included in the binder.”

The National Archives, Washington, DC (Education Images/Universal Images Group/Getty Images)

In February and March, the FBI released under the Freedom of Information Act several hundred pages of heavily redacted internal records from its Russia investigation, following lawsuits from conservative groups seeking documents from the probe.

The Justice Department said in a June filing seeking to dismiss Solomon’s lawsuit that the FBI’s document release had fulfilled Meadows’ request for a Privacy Act review, noting that it had “resulted in the posting of most of the binder” on the FBI’s FOIA website.

Solomon responded claiming the documents that the FBI released were only “a small part of the binder’s contents with substantial additional redactions.”

Last July, Meadows said in an interview with Solomon that he turned over the documents to the Justice Department out of an “abundance of caution.”

“We gave them those declassified documents -- I want to stress they were declassified documents -- to do a final redaction for some of that personal information, with the instruction that they were to go ahead and disseminate those,” Meadows said. “We expected fully that they would do that, at the most a few days -- but here we are a few years later.”

Update: This story has been updated to provide a more detailed description of conservative journalist John Solomon.

CNN

23. At least 70 arrested in China Rocket Force Scandal

I assume this is significant. Why are we not seeing more reporting on this? Yes we have seen quite a bit on the "missing" foreign minister. But what about these 70 who were arrested? What does it mean? (if anything)

POLITICS

At least 70 arrested in China Rocket Force Scandal

https://www.asiasentinel.com/p/arrest-china-rocket-force-scandal?r=yxn&utm_source=pocket_saves

Prolonged disappearance of ex Chinese foreign minister fuels suspicions of his execution for treason

OUR CORRESPONDENT

DEC 14, 2023

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Gone fishing?

The Chinese government’s investigation of China’s Rocket Force, which includes the country’s long-range nuclear missiles capable of hitting the US, has netted at least 70 people. While corruption is one problem plaguing the rocket force, another motive for this widening investigation is suspicion that generals in the rocket force leaked China’s missile secrets to the US.

When Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Russian President Vladimir Putin in March, Putin disclosed to Xi that former Chinese foreign minister Qin Gang played a role in the leak of China’s missile secrets to the US, Asia Sentinel learned from several sources. Qin was sacked as foreign minister on July 25, Asia Sentinel reported.

He was last seen on June 25, while Lieutenant General Li Yuchao, then commander of China’s rocket force, was arrested around the same time, which strengthened suspicions that Qin was connected to the investigation of the rocket force, as Asia Sentinel reported on July 30.

“So far, we have been able to track down around 70 individuals who have been taken away within the larger frame of the Rocket Force investigation. As of yet, we believe, considering that procurement, and logistics are also involved, it is still too early to inquire about the results of the ongoing crackdown,” an analyst for Cercius Group, a Canadian geopolitical consulting firm, told Asia Sentinel.

The Chinese government takes its investigation of the rocket force very seriously, said the Cercius analyst. The rocket force will be the most needed force in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) should the Chinese government decide to attack Taiwan, he explained. “Hence, it is of critical importance that the rocket force be reviewed and be ready for combat and the Chinese government needs to assess the political loyalty of the commanding chain to make sure orders are followed in times of crisis. Second, the rocket force is also in charge of stratospheric weaponry development.”

“Furthermore, corruption within the PLA’s procurement and development structure has severely impacted weapon and equipment quality and the viability of existing supply chains: rectifying this issue is of critical importance not only for Xi, but for the PLA at large, as functioning equipment is necessary for combat readiness. However, remedying these matters will no doubt take a long time, further delaying any kind of military action against Taiwan,” the analyst said.

“We are not only talking about embezzling funds or getting kickbacks from military-linked SOEs (state-owned enterprises), but also lowered quality-control standards, resulting in subpar quality weapons and military equipment being purchased and possibly used by the PLA – which includes the Rocket Force,” the analyst added.

Since China’s missile secrets have fallen into Washington’s hands, it will cost trillions of yuan (hundreds of billions of dollars) for the Chinese government to reconfigure its missile system, another analyst said. This huge amount of money could have been spent on improving the Chinese people’s livelihood, said the analyst who declined to be named.

On October 24, Xi personally gave an order to remove Qin as state councilor, a post in the Chinese government equivalent to minister, and dismiss Li Shangfu as defense minister and state councilor, Asia Sentinel reported on October 26. Li has been detained by the authorities, who need to interrogate him on contracts and suppliers in order for the PLA to review its stockpile of missiles and high-tech weaponry prior to engaging in any military action, the Cercius analyst explained.

Was former foreign minister Qin Gang executed?

Two sources told Asia Sentinel that Qin was executed a few months ago, but we have been unable to verify this. In addition to these two sources, a professor believes Qin is either executed or serving a life sentence in prison.

“We may never see old Qin and his lovely girlfriend again. Sad. They will serve at least life in prison,” a professor said.

Fu Xiaotian, a female reporter with Phoenix TV, a Chinese state-owned broadcaster, is believed to have had an affair with Qin in the US. In April, one month after Putin told Xi that Qin was involved in the leak of China’s missile secrets, Fu flew to mainland China in April ostensibly to attend a meeting and was never heard from again, a source said.

Fu’s last post on Weibo, a Chinese social media platform, was on April 11. She had made several Weibo posts that hinted Qin, a married man, had fathered a baby with her. These posts were broadcast in July around the time of Qin’s dismissal as foreign minister, despite the Chinese government’s heavy censorship of Weibo. This has aroused suspicion among some that the posts are a red herring designed to distract people from the main reason for Qin’s downfall.

“The leakage of state secrets seems the most probable reason they are serving life in prison or worse. In China, the punishment for treason is death,” said the professor who declined to be named. Although he has no evidence that Qin was executed, this outcome or life in prison was likely according to his analysis.

Normally, after a senior official is taken down for corruption in China, the Chinese government would announce details of his crimes but to date, the Chinese authorities have made no public announcement of the reasons for Li’s dismissal as defense minister and Qin as foreign minister, the professor pointed out.

“There has been no precedent for a senior official such as Qin or general Li Shangfu disappearing for so long without official explanation. Just via logical elimination, treason via leakage of state secrets to the US seems the only plausible reason left,” the professor said.

It is doubtful that Qin is dead, the Cercius analyst said.

“There is simply no valid reason for the party to sit on this information of Qin’s death for four to five months, while still playing the administrative game of removing him from positions twice during official meetings. And lest we forget, Qin, to this day, is still a member of the Central Committee,” the analyst explained.

The Central Committee consists of the 205 most senior Chinese government officials and is vested with the power to elect top Chinese officials.

“Following this logic, why publicize Li Keqiang’s death so soon? Why not wait as well?” the Cercius analyst argued.

Li Keqiang, a former Chinese prime minister, died of a heart attack after swimming in a pool in Shanghai on October 27, state media reported on the same day. The 68-year-old Li was accorded a funeral and obituary with high honors.

Qin has been under detention for several months, which is far shorter than some individuals who have been taken down by the Chinese anti-graft agency years ago and still have not been completely processed by China’s judicial system, the Cercius analyst pointed out. “Are we to assume that they have been executed? We do not think so.”

The analyst raised the possibility that rumors of Qin’s execution might be a propaganda ploy by anti-Xi forces within Beijing to undermine the Chinese president.

“Competing factions have been known to mobilize foreign news outlets to spread rumors to push their agenda or undermine someone else’s,” said the analyst.

​24. Sustaining the All-Volunteer Force Means Streamlining Army Recruitment

Conclusion:

The servicemembers and civilians of Military Entrance Processing Command are loyal servants of their country. However, doing things as they have always been done will not solve our recruiting crisis. As we often told the enlistees’ families, the arsenal of a democracy is the all-volunteer force. Without addressing every possible source of friction in the recruitment process, we will not be doing everything we can to ensure that we are able to maintain the force that our country requires. The operational environment is changing, and the United States faces powerful foes on distant shores. We will not be able to rely on the all-volunteer force if it is no longer there.

Sustaining the All-Volunteer Force Means Streamlining Army Recruitment - Modern War Institute

mwi.westpoint.edu · by Jesus M. Feliciano, Travis M. Prendergast · December 14, 2023

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Editor’s note: Earlier this year, we announced an essay contest, organized in association with the US Army’s Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), focused on addressing the US military’s recruiting crisis. After receiving an unprecedented number of submissions, the essays were narrowed down to a small group of finalists, from which leaders at TRADOC selected the top three.

This essay, from Master Sergeant Jesus M. Feliciano and Major Travis M. Prendergast, was chosen as the contest’s third-place entry.

Having served as a company leadership team in the United States Army Recruiting Command (USAREC), we understand that recruiting is a numbers game with extremely thin margins. On a good day, recruiters must attempt to contact ten individuals just to speak to a single one. The recruiters then need to speak with ten individuals to get an applicant to agree to come to the office for a visit. Looking at the benchmarks in US Army Recruiting Command Training Circular 5-03.1, the numbers from that point on do not get any better. For example, the standard is that only 75 percent of those that agree to come in to talk to a recruiter show up. Among those who progress to take the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB), the Army expects only 50 percent to receive the minimum score of 31 required for enlistment. Between the ASVAB, medical requirements, lack of follow-through commitment, and other issues, an applicant who agrees to an appointment only has a 10 percent chance of signing a contract. These margins, combined with social and economic factors that are often at the center of recruiting discussions, are responsible for the recruiting crisis America is experiencing today.

While there is no single solution or trick that will solve the recruiting crisis, the recruiting process can become more efficient by making changes to how applicants process through the military entrance processing station (MEPS). Typically, applicants will make multiple trips to MEPS depending on their likelihood of passing the ASVAB and medical screening. The gold standard is the “test, physical, and enlist” MEPS experience in which an applicant takes the ASVAB, receives a physical examination, and signs a contract all in the same day. This outcome is rare, however, and each of the multiple trips applicants must often make takes time. Because a MEPS trip is typically an all-day affair requiring the applicant to take off work or school, making multiple trips means multiple days of altering schedules. Each MEPS trip also pulls a recruiter out of the fight to escort the applicant. In a country with many employment opportunities, these trips represent an unencouraging obstacle to joining the military. However, drawing on lessons from the Europe Recruiting Detachment, the military can streamline the MEPS process and decrease obstacles to joining the service.

First, the military can move away from using guidance counselors at MEPS to oversee the final steps of the recruiting process. In the Army, the guidance counselor is a 79R (Army recruiter) assigned to MEPS who handles enlistment packet reviews and guides applicants through signing their contracts. The problem with this policy is twofold. First, the applicant has no rapport with the guidance counselor. Throughout the applicant’s time in the recruitment process, he or she has been working with a single recruiter at the station level. When applicants subsequently go to MEPS to sign the single most important document of their young lives, they are doing so with guidance counselors they have never met. Second, the simple act of picking a job and signing a contract requires a lengthy trip to MEPS, with all the previously identified problems that entails. Pushing this step down to the company or station level would ameliorate these problems, albeit with some additional training requirements for station- and company-level servicemembers.

Guidance counselors receive certification by attaining the V7 additional skill identifier upon completion of the four-week Guidance Counselor/Operations Course (GCOC). To shift guidance counselors’ services from MEPS to the company or station level, company commanders, first sergeants, or station commanders would need to attend GCOC and receive the V7 additional skill identifier. This would require an increase in the throughput of GCOC. It would also add to the task load of company commanders, first sergeants, and station commanders. However, station commanders are the ones who send enlistment packets to guidance counselors for approval. Thus, certifying station commanders in guidance counselor tasks would remove an extra step from the process. If this seems far-fetched, one could look at the Europe Recruiting Detachment, which, because of the comparatively small and geographically dispersed number of recruits across Europe, does not use MEPS for this part of the recruiting process.

Second, the military should reexamine the role of MEPS in conducting physical examinations. Reducing the reliance of the military upon doctors at MEPS would also streamline the recruitment process. There is no special reason for a physical examination to be conducted by a MEPS doctor. The Europe Recruiting Detachment does not use MEPS for physical examinations but still manages to put many young Americans into the United States Army. Much in the same way that DoD Medical Evaluation Review Board (DoDMERB) physicals can be arranged to take place at local physicians’ offices, applicants should be able to get their MEPS physical done by a regular doctor. Critics of this proposal will argue that this policy would increase the likelihood of applicants forging medical records. However, there are already laws in place to address this. Creating the infrastructure for scheduling the massive amount of physical exams required for the Army’s recruiting goals would be a significant investment. DoDMERB currently manages about 35,000 physical exams every year. In Fiscal Year 2022, medical personnel at MEPS conducted 215,000 medical examinations. DoDMERB would need to increase its capacity tenfold to accommodate both non–prior service enlistments and its current requirements. However, the benefits of streamlining the recruitment process would outweigh the costs.

Finally, with ASVAB testing available at local testing sites, the only thing remaining for MEPS would be the enlistment oath ceremony. This is a meaningful ceremony for many enlistees. However, there is an equally good alternative. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, family members were not allowed to attend these ceremonies for some time. To make up for this, our recruiting company began holding enlistment ceremonies at the recruiting stations. As a result, family members who would not have been able to make the trip to MEPS were able to attend an enlistment ceremony. Furthermore, the enlistees were able to have their recruiters present and as many family members as they would like. The company commander would be able to tell the enlistees’ families about the specific jobs that they would be performing in the Army and what their oath meant. Then, the company commander would lead each enlistee through the oath in front of family and friends. Having sworn to support and defend the Constitution of the United States in front of their loved ones, enlistees had even more of a reason to follow through with their oath and not become part of the 10 percent that do not attend basic training due to lack of commitment.

The servicemembers and civilians of Military Entrance Processing Command are loyal servants of their country. However, doing things as they have always been done will not solve our recruiting crisis. As we often told the enlistees’ families, the arsenal of a democracy is the all-volunteer force. Without addressing every possible source of friction in the recruitment process, we will not be doing everything we can to ensure that we are able to maintain the force that our country requires. The operational environment is changing, and the United States faces powerful foes on distant shores. We will not be able to rely on the all-volunteer force if it is no longer there.

Master Sergeant Jesus M. Feliciano is a 79R (Army recruiter) who is currently serving as the recruiting department sergeant major at the Recruiting and Retention College in Fort Knox, Kentucky. His twelve-year recruiting career has included serving as a recruiter, station commander, brigade master trainer, and company first sergeant.

Major Travis M. Prendergast is an FA59 (Army strategist) who is currently serving on the Joint Staff. He commanded the Rhode Island Recruiting Company from 2019 to 2021 alongside Master Sergeant Feliciano. He has also served as a rifle platoon leader, rifle company commander, and staff officer.

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

Image credit: Petty Officer 2nd Class Cynthia Oldham, US Coast Guard

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mwi.westpoint.edu · by Jesus M. Feliciano, Travis M. Prendergast · December 14, 2023

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