Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

"Just as the right to speak and the right to refrain from speaking are complementary components of a broader concept of individual freedom of mind, so also the individual's freedom to choose his own creed is the counterpart of his right to refrain from accepting the creed established by the majority."

– John Paul Stevens

"We don't accomplish anything in this world alone, and whatever happens is the result of the whole tapestry of one's life and all the weavings of individual threads from one to another that creates something."

– Sandra Day O'Connor

"Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book."

– Cicero

1. The Iranian Hostage Crisis

2. Biden’s Biggest Foreign Policy Legacy Will Be in Economic Warfare

3. Putin's Nightmare: Russian Soldiers and Civilians are Turning on the Ukraine War

4. Opinion North Korean troops fighting Ukraine marks a dangerous new escalation

5. Trump vs. Harris: Ukraine’s Future Could Depend on America’s 2024 Election by Ben Hodges and Peter Zwack

6. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, November 3, 2024

7. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, November 3, 2024

8. The Nerdy Gamers Who Became Ukraine’s Deadliest Drone Pilots

9. Professors Are Uniquely Powerful. That May Be Changing.

10. Israel pounds Lebanon, Gaza as Netanyahu visits northern border

11. As America votes for new president, what are the 3 Cs and 3 Ts that will define Sino-US ties?

12. How Donald Trump winning would impact China, Russia, Iran and North Korea

13. Chinese Logistics Operators Are Getting Into U.S. Warehousing

14. Israel says it carried out ground raid into Syria, seizing a Syrian citizen connected to Iran

15. An Indonesian Tribe’s Language Gets an Alphabet: Korea’s

16. Disinformation remains major campaign concern as US election nears

17. Adapting for Agility: How Flexible Funding in Defense Addresses Emerging Threats

18. ‘Every single American’ a target of election interference, former DHS official says

19. Pentagon Blind to Troop Woes in Areas Across US with Limited Housing Options, Report Finds

20. Staff Jobs and Officer Education: An Army Ghost Story

21. Fighters and bombers are what America needs to win — not quadcopters

22. “I Want to Live”: Psychological Warfare for the Modern Era

23. The Perfect Has Become the Enemy of the Good in Ukraine

24. The Best NATO Is a Dormant NATO

25. The Voyage of the Meishan and Xiushan: China’s Template for a Blue-Water Coast Guard

1. The Iranian Hostage Crisis

On this day in history. Articles from State and CIA.

The Iranian Hostage Crisis

https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/short-history/iraniancrises?utm

Representing the United States abroad has been a dangerous job since the beginning of the Republic, but that was never truer than during the Carter Administration. In the wake of a successful revolution by Islamic fundamentalists against the pro-American Shah of Iran, the United States became an object of virulent criticism and the U.S. Embassy in Tehran was a visible target. On November 4, 1979, Iranian students seized the embassy and detained more than 50 Americans, ranging from the Chargé d’Affaires to the most junior members of the staff, as hostages. The Iranians held the American diplomats hostage for 444 days. While the courage of the American hostages in Tehran and of their families at home reflected the best tradition of the Department of State, the Iran hostage crisis undermined Carter’s conduct of foreign policy. The crisis dominated the headlines and news broadcasts and made the Administration look weak and ineffectual. Although patient diplomacy conducted by Deputy Secretary Warren Christopher eventually resolved the crisis, Carter’s foreign policy team often seemed weak and vacillating.

U.S. hostage being paraded in front of the public

The Administration’s vitality was sapped, and the Soviet Union took advantage of America’s weakness to win strategic advantage for itself. In 1979, Soviet-supported Marxist rebels made strong gains in Ethiopia, Angola, and Mozambique. Vietnam fought a successful border war with China and took over Cambodia from the murderous Khmer Rouge. And, in late 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan to support its shaky Marxist government.

In light of these challenges to global stability, President Carter significantly altered his view of both the Soviet Union and the advice of his own advisers. Carter initially favored Secretary Vance’s policy of negotiation, but by 1980 was more receptive to National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski’s more confrontational stance. Once again the National Security Council and the Department of State were in open conflict. The issue came to a head when Secretary Vance opposed a mission to rescue the hostages in Iran—a move championed by Brzezinski. Vance had been correct—the 1980 mission was a debacle. But Vance was frustrated and he resigned in protest in April 1980. Cyrus Vance was the first Secretary of State clearly and publicly to tie his resignation to a difference of opinion over policy since William Jennings Bryan in 1915. Carter chose Senator Edmund Muskie as his new Secretary.

444 Days in Tehran: The Story of CIA Officers Held Captive During the Iranian Hostage Crisis

November 4, 2014

https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/444-days-in-tehran-the-story-of-cia-officers-held-captive-during-the-iranian-hostage-crisis/

Intelligence and Operations

It was a warm, sunny November morning when six CIA officers stationed at the US Embassy in Iran first heard the rumblings of a crowd amassing outside. A small group of mostly nonviolent protesters had been gathering near the Embassy for several weeks to demonstrate against US support for the exiled Iranian leader Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. This protest seemed no different. Then, slowly, the noise from the crowd changed, intensified, and grew closer. By mid-morning, a group of radical Islamist students breached the perimeter of the US Embassy on Takht-e-Jamshid Avenue in Tehran and took sixty-six Americans hostage. Fifty-two of the hostages, including the CIA officers, remained in captivity for 444 days.

The Iranian hostage crisis began on November 4, 1979 and was one of the greatest US foreign policy crises of the last century. While much has been written about the crisis, we wanted to share a story you may not know: the plight of two CIA officers who were held hostage during this critical point in American history.

A yellow ribbon tied around an old oak tree, as seen throughout the U.S. in honor of the Americans taken hostage during the Iranian Hostage Crisis.

Storming of the Embassy: November 4, 1979

William Daugherty was on his first overseas job as a new operations officer with the Directorate of Operations. Recruited out of graduate school in 1978, Daugherty arrived in Iran on September 12, 1979. In his book, In the Shadow of the Ayatollah: A CIA Hostage in Iran, Daugherty describes his initial days in Tehran as challenging, but interesting and fun. “I was thirty-two years old and at the top of my form, physically and, especially, mentally.” He was in the country only fifty-three days before being taken hostage. As Daugherty states in his first-person account, “A First Tour Like No Other,” written for CIA’s Studies in Intelligence, “It is not often that a newly minted case officer in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations spends his first tour in jail.”

The chief of the CIA station in Tehran was Tom Ahern. He had arrived earlier that summer and was the first Permanent Station Chief assigned in Iran after the fall of the Shah during the Iranian Revolution in February. According to Ahern, “the general atmosphere in Tehran was very, very tense.”

President Jimmy Carter reluctantly allowed the Shah to come to the US for medical treatment on October 22, a move many believed would outrage the Iranians. However, for a few weeks the usual riots and protests outside the Embassy died down and were replaced by an eerie calm. “I think it’s just classic psychological denial to live with that kind of uncertainty about your future,” says Ahern. “You don’t like it to be that uncertain and so you look for signs that things are really okay. We were rather rudely brought back to earth, of course.”

Ahern describes the morning of the Embassy takeover as a perfectly routine Sunday (the first day of the work-week in many Muslim countries). “I think I was dictating something to my assistant when I looked outside and saw a couple of scruffy-looking young people drifting around inside the grounds right below my window.” It was three or four hours from the time Ahern saw the first people in the courtyard until the Embassy was taken over. “There was no real storming of the compound,” recalls Ahern, “It was more like it was infiltrated.”

Ahern and Daugherty were in different parts of the Embassy when it was overrun. Most of the Embassy employees had already been captured by the Iranians, and soon Ahern and Daugherty were left with little option but to surrender. “Having checked around to make sure that it was secure, that everything classified had been destroyed, I opened the door and there they [the Iranian students] were,” recalls Ahern. “They were a little annoyed that they’d been made to wait. The first one in gave me an elbow in the chest so hard that it should have knocked the wind out of me, because it was really a nasty chop. Maybe an adrenalin rush kept me standing, but I was sort of helpless while the rest of them filed into the room. I was not, in any case, planning to resist their entry. And that was how we fell into the hands of the Iranians.”

Life in Captivity

Initially the hostages were held together in the Embassy’s Residence, although divided into separate rooms. However, after those first few weeks, Daugherty and Ahern were kept in solitary confinement for the rest of their captivity. They were subjected to beatings—a rubber hose the favored instrument—coercive interrogation, and threats of public trial and execution. Both officers were determined to maintain their cover as State Department Foreign Service Officers, but the Iranians soon discovered their true affiliation (not everyone in a staff of 50, nearly all of them aware of station identities, could be expected to resist their captors’ pressure to identify the resident spies).

Daugherty recalls the moment the Iranians told him they knew who he really worked for. “To my mind, I was outwitting the interrogators, and I was smugly satisfied. Returning to the subject of my general duties (yet again!) after an interlude for tea, Hossein [the interrogator] asked if I still denied I was CIA. When I responded yes, Hossein handed me a sheet of paper, and my heart seemed to stop dead in mid-beat. In that moment, I thought my life was over.”

The paper was a classified cable the Iranians had found during their search of the Embassy which gave Daugherty’s true name and details of his CIA affiliation and duties. Daugherty had no good options left. “With my stunned brain generating no other brilliant ideas, I looked up at the gloating Iranians and said, “‘OK, so what?'” The interrogators went silent, stunned. Unfortunately, the shock didn’t last long. Both Ahern and Daugherty went through numerous rounds of intense questioning over the next several months.

For Daugherty, the interrogation sessions offered him the opportunity to learn more about the students and why they took the Embassy. “I often found the hours and hours of non-hostile discussions and conversations with the Iranians to be interesting, occasionally useful, and not infrequently a source of true amazement.” Says Daugherty. “And it killed time.”

Ahern and Daugherty developed daily schedules of exercise to help pass the long hours of solitary confinement. “My routine,” says Daugherty, “was to wake sometime after daylight, and then await the usual breakfast of Iranian bread or Afghan barbari bread with butter and jam or feta cheese, and tea. I would then prop my pallet against the wall and take my morning walk, beginning at one corner of the room and striding the eight to 10 paces to the opposite corner, then turning around and heading back. This would continue until I became tired or my feet grew sore. I would then read until lunch, after which I would repeat the morning agenda until dinner. After dinner, I would again walk and read until I was sufficiently tired to sleep.”

Ahern describes a similar routine that he would do for nine out of ten days. “On the tenth day, you rested,” says Ahern. “Why not a week, I don’t know. It just seemed to work out that way.”

Ahern, Daugherty and the other hostages were also able to fill their time by reading. Luckily, just before the Embassy takeover, the entire Tehran-American School library had been delivered to the Embassy warehouse for safekeeping, providing the hostages access to a large selection of novels and nonfiction books. The Iranians supplied their captives with the books, probably to keep them busy so they wouldn’t cause trouble. Daugherty says he read over 500 books during the confinement. “I read most of Dickens’s works, and lots of Agatha Christie and Ruth Rendell. I delighted in the adventures of Bertie Wooster and Jeeves. I devoured histories of Russia, Britain, World War I, early 20th-century America, and all of Barbara Tuchman’s works up to that time. Some of the most enjoyable books I stumbled across were ones that I would never have even looked at in a normal life,” he recalls.

Ahern spoke decent (and some indecent) French, so he read all the French literature available and then came across a few basic German grammar books. “The first time I saw them, I just put them aside.” He says. “The second time I thought, ‘Man, you’ve got a German wife, and the family’s always been after you to learn German, you may never see any of these people again, but, if you do, you might as well have used this time to a halfway good effect.'”

Ahern says his secret to surviving as a hostage was to spend as little time as possible wondering how things would turn out. Thinking about it too much, he believed, could change you. “That was what I had to remind myself of. I didn’t want to come out of there having wasted my time and having allowed myself to deteriorate to the point where I wasn’t even me anymore.”

It would be over a year of intense negotiations, a failed US military rescue mission, and the election of a new President before the hostages would learn their fate.

The Release: January 20, 1981

After months of international political arguing and the election of a new US President, the Iranian students finally agreed to the release of the US hostages. The hostages had no idea if or when they would be released, but Daugherty suspected that if it were to happen, it would be on or near President Reagan’s inauguration day: a final insult from the Iranian students to President Carter.

“Nineteen January lasted forever,” recalls Daugherty. “I could not sleep, read, or close my mind. I spent most of that day pacing the room and waiting for another knock. Dinner came and went, while time dragged on and I grew more and more despondent. I had miscalculated, I thought. If I was not released now, then it would probably be a long time before I enjoyed any kind of freedom again.”

Finally Daugherty, Ahern and the other hostages were released after sundown on January 20, 1981. They were all blindfolded for the last time, put on a bus, and driven to the airport where an Air Algerie flight was waiting to take them home. “I was the last one on [the bus] standing at the rear,” says Daugherty. “I glimpsed my COS [Ahern] sitting in the seat in front of me. This was the first time I had seen him in nearly 15 months.”

Coming Home

Ahern and Daugherty had little access to news from the outside world during their months in isolation and had no idea about the great outpouring of public support that would greet them upon their return.

“The reception in America is still difficult for me to describe,” says Daugherty. “It could not have been any warmer or more memorable. I was–and remain so today–immensely grateful for the homecoming our fellow Americans showered on us. We landed at Stewart Airport near Newburgh, New York, and, after having cheerful and tearful reunions with our families, we boarded buses for the ride to West Point, where we were to have a sheltered two days with our families before going to Washington for our official welcome home. It took more than two hours to cover the 18 miles from the airport to West Point; the way was lined with well-wishers who carried all types of signs expressing their happiness to see us back and their feelings toward the Iranians who had held us captive.”

After the parades of red, white and blue ended, and the yellow ribbons that lined the main streets of America in support of the hostages faded, life for Ahern and Daugherty eventually transitioned into a new normal.

“We went from being hostages,” says Daugherty, “to former hostages, until, with the passage of years, we were not even that.”It was a warm, sunny November morning when six CIA officers stationed at the US Embassy in Iran first heard the rumblings of a crowd amassing outside. A small group of mostly nonviolent protesters had been gathering near the Embassy for several weeks to demonstrate against US support for the exiled Iranian leader Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. This protest seemed no different. Then, slowly, the noise from the crowd changed, intensified, and grew closer. By mid-morning, a group of radical Islamist students breached the perimeter of the US Embassy on Takht-e-Jamshid Avenue in Tehran and took sixty-six Americans hostage. Fifty-two of the hostages, including the CIA officers, remained in captivity for 444 days.

A yellow ribbon tied around an old oak tree, as seen throughout the U.S. in honor of the Americans taken hostage during the Iranian Hostage Crisis.

Storming of the Embassy: November 4, 1979

Life in Captivity

Ahern describes a similar routine that he would do for nine out of ten days. “On the tenth day, you rested,” says Ahern. “Why not a week, I don’t know. It just seemed to work out that way.”

It would be over a year of intense negotiations, a failed US military rescue mission, and the election of a new President before the hostages would learn their fate.

The Release: January 20, 1981

Coming Home

“We went from being hostages,” says Daugherty, “to former hostages, until, with the passage of years, we were not even that.”

2. Biden’s Biggest Foreign Policy Legacy Will Be in Economic Warfare

Excerpts:

Economic warfare has figured in great competitions and conflicts since the ancient age. As every reader of Thucydides knows, the Megarian Decree — a trade embargo imposed by Athens — was a signpost on the road to the Peloponnesian War. In 1941, a US oil embargo against Japan helped to trigger the attack on Pearl Harbor and globalize World War II. During the Cold War, the free world contained the Soviet Union in economic as well as military terms.

After the Cold War, the US mostly used sanctions against rogue states and terrorist groups, while hoping that economic integration could lead to great-power peace. But amid escalating geopolitical rivalries, first Donald Trump and now, more systematically, Joe Biden, have increasingly wielded economic weapons.

After Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the US and its allies blitzed Russia with a stunning array of sanctions. Biden’s China strategy has featured domestic investments to keep the US ahead in key sectors of the 21st century economy — and targeted restrictions, from investment curbs to export controls, to keep Beijing from catching up.

These measures are reshaping the global economy. They can serve to avert devastating military conflicts — or to prepare for them. And this contest is hardly a one-way affair: Autocratic powers, namely China, are racing to blunt the impact of Western sanctions even as they sharpen their own economic knives for the long struggles ahead. So, navigating this new era will require learning 10 lessons from the Biden years.

...

First, economic warfare is back for a very old reason: Economic strength is the wellspring of global power.

...

This relates to a second lesson, which is that the toolkit has expanded, and its tools have become sharper.

...

Indeed, a third lesson is that attrition is displacing coercion.

...

Doing so requires heeding a fourth lesson: Building up one’s own capabilities is as important as holding down those of the other side.

...

Thus, a fifth lesson: Even a superpower needs lots of help. America has an unmatched ability to squeeze its competitors. But effective economic warfare work still entails bringing allies along.

...

Sixth, economic warfare can be a substitute for military warfare — or a means of waging it.

...

Seventh, economic warfare is powerful, but it’s not a wonder weapon. Just look at what sanctions have and haven’t achieved against Russia.

...

An eighth lesson is that America’s tactics are inspiring insulation and imitation. US adversaries, principally China, are trying to protect themselves from economic pressure while developing economic arsenals of their own.

...

A ninth lesson, then, is that the danger of overuse is real, even if the damage is still mostly hypothetical.

...

That’s worth remembering, in view of a final lesson: The new age of economic warfare is only beginning.

Biden’s Biggest Foreign Policy Legacy Will Be in Economic Warfare

His administration has pushed back harder against rivals and adversaries such as China and Russia, and done so with more potent tools.

November 3, 2024 at 8:00 AM EST

By Hal Brands

Hal Brands is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist and the Henry Kissinger Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-11-03/biden-s-biggest-foreign-policy-legacy-will-be-in-economic-warfare?utm

Joe Biden’s foreign policy will be remembered for many things: the humiliating exit from Afghanistan, the stalwart response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the struggle to contain the fallout from Oct. 7 in the Middle East. But Biden has cast his longest shadow by shaping a new era of economic warfare likely to intensify in the years ahead.

Economic warfare has figured in great competitions and conflicts since the ancient age. As every reader of Thucydides knows, the Megarian Decree — a trade embargo imposed by Athens — was a signpost on the road to the Peloponnesian War. In 1941, a US oil embargo against Japan helped to trigger the attack on Pearl Harbor and globalize World War II. During the Cold War, the free world contained the Soviet Union in economic as well as military terms.

After the Cold War, the US mostly used sanctions against rogue states and terrorist groups, while hoping that economic integration could lead to great-power peace. But amid escalating geopolitical rivalries, first Donald Trump and now, more systematically, Joe Biden, have increasingly wielded economic weapons.

Sanctions Use Has Soared Under the Last Two US Presidents

New additions to OFAC sanctions list by year

Source: Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP

Note: 2024 numbers are through Sept. 11

After Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the US and its allies blitzed Russia with a stunning array of sanctions. Biden’s China strategy has featured domestic investments to keep the US ahead in key sectors of the 21st century economy — and targeted restrictions, from investment curbs to export controls, to keep Beijing from catching up.

These measures are reshaping the global economy. They can serve to avert devastating military conflicts — or to prepare for them. And this contest is hardly a one-way affair: Autocratic powers, namely China, are racing to blunt the impact of Western sanctions even as they sharpen their own economic knives for the long struggles ahead. So, navigating this new era will require learning 10 lessons from the Biden years.

***

First, economic warfare is back for a very old reason: Economic strength is the wellspring of global power. A country’s military prowess reflects its economy’s heft and dynamism. Even in peacetime, economic influence helps to win friends and punish enemies. As strategic competition sharpens, economic rivalry becomes a cut-throat business.

For a generation after 1989, America had no real competitors. Even as the US sanctioned tin-pot dictators and lethal terrorists, it sought to draw potential great-power rivals into the global economy in hopes of making them satisfied members of an American-led world. It didn’t work out as planned.

Russia used access to the international economy, as well as the post-2001 oil boom, to rebuild its military. It cultivated European dependence on Russian energy, in hopes of neutralizing resistance to its own broader ambitions. China’s access to foreign markets enabled a decades-long, export-driven boom — and a record-shattering, increasingly disruptive military buildup. Beijing also made a mercantilist push to dominate industries both old (e.g., steel) and new (e.g., advanced telecommunications).

China and Russia were using economic statecraft to weaken the very system that had assisted their rise. Now, the US is pushing back harder, and with more potent tools.

***

This relates to a second lesson, which is that the toolkit has expanded, and its tools have become sharper. My Johns Hopkins colleague Adam Szubin makes this point — and he would know, having been a top Treasury official in the Obama years.

Traditionally, economic warfare featured blockades and trade embargoes. These measures were potentially powerful, but also difficult and costly to impose. If Britain wanted to crush Napoleonic France, for instance, it had to physically blockade Europe — and even then, the results were disappointing.

Over the past quarter-century, however, the US has honed a sharper, more targeted set of sanctions that exploit its control of chokepoints in the global economy. They inflict outsized damage on an adversary by barring it from key sources of innovation and prosperity in the modern world.

Biden’s team didn’t invent these tools, many of which emerged in earlier fights against Iran, North Korea and al Qaeda. But it did refine them and apply them more extensively — especially against great-power rivals — than any prior administration.

History will record that the US-China tech war began in earnest in October 2022. That’s when Biden rolled out far-reaching export controls that used the primacy of the dollar in global finance, as well as America’s role in a specific supply chain (designing high-end semiconductors), to curtail China’s access to the advanced chips that power economic and military innovation. Under Trump, Washington had used those tools to target a single company, Huawei. Biden expanded the restrictions to target China as a whole.

This strategy built on what the US had done earlier to Russia following its invasion of Ukraine, exploiting the centrality of the dollar, and America’s influence in key financial messaging systems, to disconnect Russian banks from the world. Washington cut off Russia’s access to the most sophisticated semiconductors — a preview of what would soon happen to China.

Russia Sanctions Have Risen Steadily Since the Invasion

Source: Castellum.AI

Note: Includes sanctions by Australia, Canada, EU, France, Switzerland, UK, and US

The US and its allies also used their financial dominance to freeze Russia’s huge foreign reserve holdings — and their preeminence in maritime insurance markets and other crucial services to cap the price of oil that Russia exports to the globe. “No one could have predicted” the severity of those sanctions, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.

In the world’s two most important rivalries, Biden has aggressively — and creatively — wielded America’s asymmetric economic advantages. He has also subtly shifted the purpose of those sanctions.

***

Indeed, a third lesson is that attrition is displacing coercion. The point of modern economic warfare is more often to weaken an opponent’s capabilities than to change his mind.

That hasn’t always been the case. For decades, the US viewed sanctions primarily as tools to modify weaker adversaries’ behavior — to persuade Iran, for instance, to negotiate a nuclear deal. Even the tariffs Trump slapped on China were intended to change Beijing’s approach to development and trade. Yet Biden’s strategy has often had a different aim.

Almost no one expected the sanctions imposed on Russia in February 2022 and after — whether tech restrictions or Germany’s cancellation of the Nord Stream 2 energy pipeline — to compel Putin’s withdrawal from Ukraine. The goal was merely to weaken a dangerous rival in a protracted struggle — to “impair their ability to compete,” as Biden explained.

Similarly, Biden didn’t make any specific asks of Beijing when he imposed semiconductor curbs or restricted US investment in China’s high-tech sector. That’s because these sanctions are strategic, not transactional: Their primary purpose is to hinder China’s innovation in areas essential to economic and military power.

Coercive sanctions persist: Biden threatened China with harsh penalties if it exported weapons to Russia in 2022-23. But since America probably can’t fundamentally change the behavior of its rivals, keeping them behind will have to be good enough.

***

Doing so requires heeding a fourth lesson: Building up one’s own capabilities is as important as holding down those of the other side.

The counterpart to Biden’s chip curbs on China was his administration’s investment in expanded domestic chip production. Biden’s tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles, and his subsidies to bolster America’s EV industry, are two sides of the same coin.

Granted, industrial policy’s track record is uneven — and as the international reaction to the Inflation Reduction Act shows, protectionism can annoy America’s friends. But the measures America has used to prevent rivals from ruling key supply chains will only buy time unless they are paired with a more positive agenda in the US and the larger democratic world.

***

Thus, a fifth lesson: Even a superpower needs lots of help. America has an unmatched ability to squeeze its competitors. But effective economic warfare work still entails bringing allies along.

Freezing Russia’s foreign reserves required the cooperation of the European countries in which Putin had stashed so much of his loot. Enforcing semiconductor controls requires working with countries — Taiwan, Japan, the Netherlands, and others — that make advanced chips and the equipment used to manufacture them. Starving China’s high-tech industries of foreign capital will be much easier if allies in Europe and Asia join the fight.

America’s financial power and alliance networks give it leverage: It’s hard for Taiwan or Japan to tell their primary security partner to take a hike. But the process isn’t always pretty.

The run-up to the Ukraine war saw protracted transatlantic wrangling over how harshly to penalize a Russian invasion. Securing Japanese and Dutch collaboration on semiconductor curbs was (and remains) a fraught endeavor. The Biden team has tried to win cooperation through engagement and persuasion — with the implicit threat that it might just use the same sanctions to compel allies if they don’t play ball.

No matter how targeted, sanctions inflict pain on the countries that impose them; not every democracy sees the world as America might like. Economic warfare is waged against one’s enemies; it also requires some rough bargaining with one’s friends.

***

Sixth, economic warfare can be a substitute for military warfare — or a means of waging it. The appeal of sanctions is that they allow Washington to jostle for advantage without getting into a physical fight. That’s especially important given that conflict with China or Russia could lead, as Biden has said, to “World War III.”

But the line between military and economic issues isn’t always bright and clear. One reason the US is so concerned about China’s access to high-end semiconductors is that those chips could end up in Beijing’s nuclear arsenal or other military capabilities. And one reason Washington triggered those curbs in October 2022 was that a high-profile crisis over Taiwan two months earlier had raised concerns that America and China might be headed for a shooting war.

If Washington and Beijing do end up in a more dangerous Taiwan crisis, the US might threaten to employ stronger trade, tech and financial sanctions to deter a Chinese attack — or ratchet up the price it incurs. Economic statecraft isn’t just some enlightened alternative to military conflict; it is a way of shaping the battlefield in intense, bloody fights.

***

Seventh, economic warfare is powerful, but it’s not a wonder weapon. Just look at what sanctions have and haven’t achieved against Russia.

Sanctions have strained Russia’s finances, restricted its access to Western technology and caused deep economic imbalances. But contrary to some premature crowing by Biden, sanctions haven’t brought that economy crashing down. Russia continues to find large sums for defense; its war industries are churning out tanks and shells. Its ability to do both tells us a lot about the limits of modern economic warfare.

A Russia isolated by the West pivoted toward trade with the East, especially China. Moscow rapidly learned the art of sanctions evasion — just witness how much Western tech still ends up in Russian arms — with assists from Beijing and Tehran. It skirted the oil price cap by building a shadow fleet of tankers that carries illicit crude.

Not least, Russia benefitted from Western skittishness. The US and its allies tried to limit the price Putin gets for his oil. But they haven’t really tried to remove it from the global market, by aggressively sanctioning its buyers, for fear of roiling relations with swing states such as India and causing widespread economic disruptions.

Seaborne Crude

Russia's seaborne crude shipments (2022-2024)

Source: Vessel tracking data monitored by Bloomberg

The implications for a Taiwan crisis are worth pondering. Perhaps, as some US analysts hope, a sanctions blitz will bring China to its knees. Or perhaps greater interdependence between the US and China will simply make it too hard to blast Beijing without causing ghastly collateral damage. And surely a key lesson of the Ukraine war is that strangling a major power isn’t easy — especially if that country is preparing for the assault.

***

An eighth lesson is that America’s tactics are inspiring insulation and imitation. US adversaries, principally China, are trying to protect themselves from economic pressure while developing economic arsenals of their own.

Beijing is hoarding fuel, food and other commodities that could be cut off in a crisis. It is building a payment system to get around the Western-dominated SWIFT and striving for technological self-reliance to blunt US export controls. Meanwhile, the autocratic quartet — China, Russia, Iran and North Korea — is developing geographically protected trade routes to foster a Eurasian economic bloc that is beyond America’s wrath.

China isn’t just playing defense. In recent years, Beijing has restricted trade and tourism with South Korea, Australia, Lithuania and other disobedient democracies. It has announced (largely symbolic) restrictions on the export of key minerals. Now, China is assembling a larger arsenal of export controls, asset freezes, financial restrictions, and many of the same measures Washington uses, so it can deter the use of foreign sanctions or take the offensive against its enemies.

China’s toolkit still doesn’t rival America’s: That’s a key reason Beijing has refrained from responding too strongly to Biden’s tech squeeze. But China is preparing for the future because it doesn’t want economic warfare to be a one-way street.

***

Of course, bad actors aren’t the only ones that worry about the reach of US sanctions. Friendlier countries also fear that the US might turn the same tools against them someday. A ninth lesson, then, is that the danger of overuse is real, even if the damage is still mostly hypothetical.

India, for instance, may be the biggest winner from Western sanctions against Russia, which have allowed it to buy oceans of Putin’s oil at bargain prices. But it simultaneously wants to ensure, as Fareed Zakaria has reported, that America “could never do to India what it has just done to Russia.”

It’s a common sentiment. As US sanctions have skyrocketed, more countries are looking to limit their vulnerability. A BRICS summit last month buzzed with talk of “de-dollarization.” During the Trump years, even close allies in Europe experimented with alternative financial mechanisms meant to evade US influence.

The barriers to diversification are high because the dollar remains ubiquitous in global finance. De-dollarization is still more of a catch-phrase than a reality. But the more aggressively the US uses sanctions, the more it risks undermining the advantages, and alienating the allies, that make them so potent in the first place.

***

That’s worth remembering, in view of a final lesson: The new age of economic warfare is only beginning.

The US and China are playing a cat-and-mouse game in which Beijing tries to evade one set of sanctions, causing the US to adapt and tighten them. And while Washington has moved against Beijing on the most advanced chips, another battle — to ensure China doesn’t dominate production of widely used “legacy chips” — now looms.

Moreover, a whole suite of new technologies — chips, quantum computing, AI, advanced robotics, synthetic biology — will shape the global economy. The campaigns for supremacy in these areas are now unfolding. For all the Biden team’s declarations that it is pursuing a “small yard, high fence” strategy to safeguard US technological advantages, the yard just keeps getting bigger.

The next president, in fact, will surely reach for the same weapons Biden has wielded. If Donald Trump is elected, America will have an economically pugilistic president who — if his first term is any guide — will pressure allies as well as enemies in the quest for US advantage. If Kamala Harris prevails, she may persist with the more targeted, multilateral approach she inherited from Biden. Even so, she will likely expand the use of these economic tools, as US-Russia tensions remain high and deteriorating US-China relations turn points of interaction into vectors for vulnerability.

Today, economic statecraft is at the very core of the struggle for global power and influence. That won’t change, no matter how the coming election turns out.

Brands is also a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, the co-author of Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China and a member of the State Department's Foreign Affairs Policy Board. He is a senior adviser to Macro Advisory Partners.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Hal Brands is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist and the Henry Kissinger Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies.

3. Putin's Nightmare: Russian Soldiers and Civilians are Turning on the Ukraine War

Can this be exploited? (if accurate)

Putin's Nightmare: Russian Soldiers and Civilians are Turning on the Ukraine War

Opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is growing among both civilians and soldiers, with dissenters facing severe punishment under Kremlin crackdowns.

The National Interest · by Stavros Atlamazoglou · November 3, 2024

What You Need to Know: Opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is growing among both civilians and soldiers, with dissenters facing severe punishment under Kremlin crackdowns.

-Reports indicate record convictions for treason, extremism, and “disinformation,” with Russia employing extreme measures to control the population and shape the war narrative. Despite some tactical gains, Russia’s invasion has failed to yield substantial victories and has severely weakened its military, now sustaining extensive casualties and equipment losses.

-Initially planned as a swift “special military operation,” the conflict has made Russia increasingly isolated on the global stage, with alliances shifting toward other isolated states like North Korea and Iran.

Growing Resistance: Russians Facing Record Convictions for Opposing Ukraine War

Russian soldiers and civilians are opposing the invasion of Ukraine in droves and end up facing the wrath of the Kremlin.

Data from the Russian government suggest that the number of dissenters to the conflict is increasing.

Meanwhile, the Russian military continues to suffer extremely heavy casualties on the ground with just some tactical gains to show for it.

Opposing an Illegal War

“According to Russian independent media, convictions on treason charges in Russia are at the highest level in at least 9 years, with more convictions in the first 6 months of 2024 than in all of 2023, citing data from the Russian Ministry of Justice,” the British Military Intelligence stated in its latest operational update on the conflict.

Suffice to say that not everyone in Russia agrees with the decision to launch a large-scale invasion of Ukraine on completely illegal pretexts.

“Similarly, there has been significant growth in convictions under criminal articles relating to extremism, terrorism, and ‘disinformation,’” the British Military Intelligence added.

Internal opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s illegal war in Ukraine isn’t new. Since February 24, 2022, there have been countless of instances where Russian citizens have attacked military-related facilities in an attempt to frustrate the Kremlin’s “special military operation” in Ukraine.

The Russian government has been cracking down on the dissenters, arresting and convicting people at record rates.

“This conviction data illustrates the increasing reliance by the Russian government on coercive and demonstratively deterrent methods to maintain control over elements of the population that are hostile to the regime,” the British Military Intelligence assessed.

“Prior to Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine, the regime would usually preference more subtle ways of controlling dissent,” the British Military Intelligence concluded.

But now the gloves are off, and the Kremlin is evidently taking extreme measures to ensure that its control over the population and, most importantly, the narrative of the war remains secure.

For all terms and purposes, Putin’s decision to invade his neighbor is a disaster. To be sure, the Russian forces might be on the offensive right now, making slow but steady tactical progress at several parts of the contact line. Over the past couple of months, the Russian military has captured some important urban centers on the contact line but hasn’t been able to leverage its numerical superiority and (very slow) momentum to achieve wider operational gains. Moreover, overall, the Russian military has failed in Ukraine.

What was supposed to be a lightning operation that would last between three days and two weeks is now a conflict with global implications that is approaching its 1,000 day. In the process, the Russian forces have lost approximately 700,000 troops and tens of thousands of heavy weapons systems, thus seriously degrading their ability to fight against the United States and NATO. Russia has become an international pariah and is increasingly forced to deal with other pariah states like North Korea and Iran. And the conflict is still ongoing with no end in sight.

About the Author

Stavros Atlamazoglou is a seasoned defense journalist specializing in special operations and a Hellenic Army veteran (national service with the 575th Marine Battalion and Army HQ). He holds a BA from Johns Hopkins University and an MA from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). His work has been featured in Business Insider, Sandboxx, and SOFREP.

Image Credit: Creative Commons and Shutterstock.

The National Interest · by Stavros Atlamazoglou · November 3, 2024

4. Opinion North Korean troops fighting Ukraine marks a dangerous new escalation

All the Korea watchers on the Washington Post editorial Board are weighing in. So "the West must be ready to respond."

Like most of us their recommendations are steadfast diplomacy, strong alliances, and firm deterrence. It would have been nice to see them flesh those out a little more.

But this about more tuna north Korea. The buried lede is that the convergence of geopolitical flashpoints is the main challenge facing the next president.

Conclusion:

A deadly axis of hostile anti-American and anti-Western powers is deepening military cooperation and is determined to challenge U.S. global primacy.Russia, China and North Korea are nuclear powers, and Iran is an aspirant to the nuclear club. Isolated geopolitical flash points in Europe, the Middle East and the Pacific could converge. Steadfast diplomacy, strong alliances and firm deterrence will be needed to meet this growing threat. This is the main challenge facing the next president, who will take office Jan. 20.

Opinion North Korean troops fighting Ukraine marks a dangerous new escalation

Mr. Putin has succeeded in internationalizing the war; the U.S. and the West must be ready to respond.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/11/01/north-korea-russia-ukraine-war-escalation-pyongyang/?utm

Members of the Korean Vietnam War Veterans Association stage a rally against a recent deployment of North Korean troops to Russia. (Ahn Young-joon/AP)

By the Editorial Board

November 2, 2024 at 7:00 a.m. EDT

Confirmation that North Korea has deployed combat troops to assist Russian President Vladimir Putin in his full-scale invasion of Ukraine marks a dangerous escalation. In a worst-case scenario, it threatens to expand a European war into a global conflict encompassing the Asia-Pacific region. It is also a reminder of the high stakes of Tuesday’s U.S. presidential election, as candidates wrangle over how the United States responds to such threats. America and its allies, in Asia as well as Europe, must coordinate their response.

U.S. and NATO officials estimate that North Korea has sent some 10,000 troops to Russia’s far east for training. South Korean intelligence and Ukrainian officials put the number as high as 19,000. Some 1,500 North Korean special forces, known as the Storm Corps, are already believed to have been deployed to Russia’s Kursk region, where Russian soldiers have been struggling to eject the Ukrainian military.

Mr. Putin’s reliance on North Korean troops might be considered a tacit acknowledgment that his illegal invasion of Ukraine has not gone according to plan. Russia has suffered an estimated 600,000 troops killed or wounded and has had to expand an unpopular conscription. For Russia to turn to impoverished North Korea for fresh troops might be cause to think that Ukraine, with American and NATO support, is winning.

No one should give in to complacency.

Follow Editorial Board

Mr. Putin and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un in June signed a mutual assistance pact. Pyongyang was already supplying Moscow with ballistic missiles and ammunition, particularly artillery shells, but the deployment of troops takes their partnership to an unnerving new level.

The North Korean deployment gives Mr. Putin additional manpower to prolong this conflict, which will soon mark three bloody years. His short-term goal is merely to keep the war going and make small territorial gains in Ukraine’s east — like the village of Tsukuryne, which Russia claims to have recently seized — while waiting for the U.S. election outcome.

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, promises to continue supporting Ukraine and engaging with historical allies. Former president Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, has signaled he wants to end U.S. support for Ukraine and seek an immediate cease-fire deal, which could include forcing Ukraine to accept territorial concessions. The Europeans might still arm Ukraine even without continued U.S. help. But with Ukraine running out of troops, the addition of the North Koreans could at least incrementally help wear down European resolve.

The North Korean reinforcements also help Mr. Putin with his larger goal of demonstrating that Russia is not isolated on the world stage. It comes just after he hosted a summit of the BRICS group with leaders of Brazil, India, China and South Africa— the original members, along with Russia — and newcomers such as Egypt, Iran, Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates. (Saudi Arabia participated without formally joining the group.) Ostensibly, the BRICS group’s goal is to help countries of the Global South challenge U.S. dominance in global financial institutions. Mr. Putin used the event to thumb his nose at Western leaders who have imposed sanctions on Russia and to showcase that he still has high-level friends.

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North Korea gets cash from Russia for its troops and access to coveted military technology it has been denied because of United Nations sanctions — technology that could be used against South Korea in event of a conflict. The North Korean troops will also get real battlefield training in modern-day warfare, including use of advanced weaponry and drones. The experience would prove invaluable to the North in a future conflict with South Korea.

Mr. Putin’s effort to internationalize the Ukraine war extends beyond North Korea. He has also turned to Iran and China; the latter has been stepping up purchases of Russian oil, gas and grain. Iran has supplied Russia with ballistic missiles, and Russia has reportedly given targeting data to the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen for its attacks on ships in the Red Sea.

A deadly axis of hostile anti-American and anti-Western powers is deepening military cooperation and is determined to challenge U.S. global primacy.Russia, China and North Korea are nuclear powers, and Iran is an aspirant to the nuclear club. Isolated geopolitical flash points in Europe, the Middle East and the Pacific could converge. Steadfast diplomacy, strong alliances and firm deterrence will be needed to meet this growing threat. This is the main challenge facing the next president, who will take office Jan. 20.

5.Trump vs. Harris: Ukraine’s Future Could Depend on America’s 2024 Election by Ben Hodges and Peter Zwack

Excerpts;

Remember, Ukrainians aren’t asking us to fight their war for them. They will keep putting themselves in harm’s way to win it. All they want from us is moral and political support and the ammunition to protect their country and the whole democratic world from Putin’s aggression.

At this moment, Ukraine’s victory depends as much on the outcome of our presidential election as it does on any front line battle with the Russian army. The ballots Americans cast on November 5 will determine if Ukrainians have bullets to fire tomorrow. So let’s cast those ballots for someone who believes in their cause and will continue to have their backs.

Trump vs. Harris: Ukraine’s Future Could Depend on America’s 2024 Election

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/trump-vs-harris-ukraine%E2%80%99s-future-could-depend-america%E2%80%99s-2024-election-213475?utm

At this moment, Ukraine’s victory depends as much on the outcome of our presidential election as it does on any front line battle with the Russian army. The ballots Americans cast on November 5 will determine if Ukrainians have bullets to fire tomorrow. So let’s cast those ballots for someone who believes in their cause and will continue to have their backs.

by Ben Hodges Peter Zwack

As retired military leaders, we believe Ukraine’s survival as a sovereign, democratic country is vital for the security of the United States and the future of international order. Allowing Russia to succeed in its brutal invasion of Ukraine would not only reward atrocities, but embolden Russia to threaten other European states, potentially triggering direct military conflict with NATO. So from the day Putin started this war, we have urged the Biden administration to send even more aid faster to Ukraine, and pressed members of Congress of both parties to fund that aid.

But right now, we believe that the single most important thing Americans can do for Ukraine – and for America’s security – is to elect a president who will provide steady and strong leadership in standing up to Russia and with allied support help Ukraine win. Based on the clear record of what the candidates have said and done, it’s undeniable that only Kamala Harris will do that. Donald Trump has told us he will do the opposite.

The differences between Harris and Trump on Ukraine could not be greater.

First, Harris understands the difference between right and wrong in this terrible war. She called Putin’s invasion of Ukraine “an assault on our common values, an attack on our common humanity.” She has praised Ukraine’s leaders and people for their courage in standing up to Russian aggression.

Donald Trump, on the other hand, praised Putin’s criminal actions as “savvy” and “genius.” He has mocked Ukraine’s President Zelensky as “the world’s greatest salesman” and blamed Ukraine for having “let the war start.” His running mate J.D. Vance has said “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine.”

Second, Harris has done everything in her power to help Ukraine. She fought for Congress to approve billions of dollars in military and economic aid to produce weapons in American factories that brave Ukrainians have used to destroy half of Russia’s land army.

In contrast, Donald Trump used his allies in Congress to hold up that aid for six months as Ukrainian forces ran out of ammunition, losing lives and territory to Russia.

Third, Harris supports a just end to the war that vindicates the sacrifices Ukrainians have made.

Standing with Zelensky at the White House last week, she stated that “nothing about the end of this war can be decided without” the consent of Ukraine. She rightly condemned proposals for Ukraine to give up its sovereign territory or its right to join NATO, and said she would work to ensure that “Ukraine prevails in this conflict and remains a free, democratic, and independent nation.”

Trump, on the other hand, has repeatedly refused to say that he wants Ukraine to win. He suggested that Ukraine should simply give in to Russia because he believes (falsely) that Russia always wins its wars. He endorsed a plan to force Ukraine to surrender territory and give up NATO membership forever, promising he’ll try to end the war on what are essentially Putin’s terms even before he’s sworn in.

Finally, Harris understands the danger ahead for America and our allies in Europe and Asia if we let Putin win. She has said that “if we allow aggressors like Putin to take land with impunity, they will keep going.” She knows that other dictatorships, including China, would be emboldened to attack their neighbors if Russia prevails.

Meanwhile Trump has said — and these are his actual words — that he would “encourage” the Russians to do “whatever the hell they want” to our allies.

Again, these are not small differences, but a stark contrast of strength versus weakness. One candidate for president, Kamala Harris, has made clear that she will stand by Ukraine and our NATO allies against Russian aggression — in the same tradition as every past president, Republican and Democrat, from Reagan to Bush to Biden. The other candidate, Donald Trump, has opposed helping Ukraine and pledged to cut a deal that will give Vladimir Putin, one of America’s greatest adversaries, most of what he wants.

Remember, Ukrainians aren’t asking us to fight their war for them. They will keep putting themselves in harm’s way to win it. All they want from us is moral and political support and the ammunition to protect their country and the whole democratic world from Putin’s aggression.

About the Authors

Lt. General Frederick Benjamin "Ben" Hodges III, retired United States Army officer, served as commanding general, United States Army Europe. He has been Senior Advisor to Human Rights First since June 2022 and also serves as NATO Senior Mentor for Logistics

Brigadier General Peter Zwack, retired United States Army officer, had a 35-year Army career that began enlisted at the Officers Candidate School in 1980 and ended with his retirement in 2015. He deployed world-wide as a military intelligence officer and later as a diplomat in the Army Foreign Area Officer corps. He also served in multiple NATO staff and leadership positions in diverse locations such as West Germany, Afghanistan, South Korea and Kosovo while closely working NATO Enlargement issues on the Joint Staff before becoming the US Senior Defense Attache to Russia from 2012-2014.

Image Credit: Creative Commons.

6. Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, November 3, 2024

Israel–Hamas War (Iran) Update, November 3, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-november-3-2024

The Israeli Defense Minister emphasized that Iran is “pouring everything [it] can” into the West Bank, indicating that Iran will very likely attempt to pursue a different strategy when rebuilding Palestinian militias to fight Israel again. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said that Iran is looking for additional routes to destabilize Israel and incite terrorism, particularly utilizing the West Bank, due to the IDF's degradation of Iran’s Axis of Resistance. Iran and Hamas have observed the military degradation of Hamas’ units in the Gaza Strip. Hamas, however, is likely trying to reconstitute regardless of how badly the IDF defeated it as defeat is a temporary condition. It does not follow that Iran and Hamas will decide to rebuild Hamas and other Palestinian militias in the same way again. Iran and Hamas have almost certainly learned many lessons from the October 7 War, including the difficulty of rearming and rebuilding militias in an area that can be easily isolated, such as the Gaza Strip. Hamas’ severe degradation in the Gaza Strip and the difficulty in rebuilding Hamas’ military wing isolated there could cause Iran and Hamas to redouble their efforts to strengthen Hamas and Palestinian military organizations elsewhere, including in the West Bank. Iran has increased its efforts to smuggle weapons and other materiel into the West Bank in recent years. Iran’s efforts have so far had only limited success.

The IDF captured a Syrian man who was collecting intelligence on Israeli border arrangements during a ground raid in southern Syria. This Iranian-led intelligence effort is likely an attempt to gather information on Israeli border security that Iranian-backed militias could use to undertake small-scale infiltrations into the Golan Heights. The IDF said on November 3 that the Egoz Unit captured Ali Suleiman al Asi in Saida, Daraa Province, in recent months. The IDF said that al Asi collected intelligence on Israeli operations along the Syrian border with the Golan Heights for “future terror activity” on behalf of Iran. The IDF “closely monitor[ed]” al Asi before his capture. The IDF did not specify when the raids took place, but Israeli special operations forces (SOF) have conducted numerous covert raids into Lebanon to disrupt Hezbollah border infrastructure since October 2023. The IDF said that Aadi’s capture prevented a future attack and exposed Iranian attempts to gather intelligence on the Syria-Golan Heights border.

Key Takeaways:

West Bank: The Israeli Defense Minister emphasized that Iran is “pouring everything [it] can” into the West Bank, indicating that Iran will very likely attempt to pursue a different strategy when rebuilding Hamas to fight Israel again.

Syria: The IDF captured a Syrian man who was collecting intelligence on Israeli border arrangements during a ground raid in southern Syria. This Iranian-led intelligence effort is likely an attempt to gather information on Israeli border security that Iranian-backed militias could use to undertake small-scale infiltrations into the Golan Heights.

Israeli Ground Operations in Lebanon: The Israeli prime minister stated that Israel needs to push Hezbollah north of the Litani River “with or without an agreement” to achieve Israel's stated war aims, which is to return residents of northern Israel to their homes under safe conditions. Current Israeli operations in southern Lebanon are unlikely to achieve these war aims, though it does not follow that future Israeli operations will fail to achieve the Israeli objectives.

Iranian Retaliation against Israel: UK-based Saudi outlet Elaph reported that Israel warned the Iraqi government that if Iranian-backed Iraqi militias continue to attack Israel from Iraqi territory, Israel may strike predetermined targets in Iraq.

US Diplomatic Efforts: The United States warned Iran against launching another attack on Israel in retaliation for Israel’s strikes into Iran on October 25 because the United States will not be able to restrain Israel’s response.

US Posture in the Middle East: US Central Command (CENTCOM) announced that B-52 strategic bombers arrived in the Middle East on November 3. US CENTCOM Commander General Michael Kurilla met with IDF Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi in Israel between November 2 and November 3.

Saudi Arabia: The Islamic Resistance in the Land of the Two Holy Mosques, an Iranian-backed militia claiming to operate in Saudi Arabia, claimed its second attack since announcing its existence.

7. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, November 3, 2024

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, November 3, 2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-november-3-2024

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-november-3-20

Incumbent Moldova President Maia Sandu has claimed victory in the Moldovan presidential runoff election held on November 3, 2024. Preliminary results reported by the Moldovan Central Election Commission (CEC) show that Maia Sandu has won around 55 percent of the vote, defeating Kremlin-friendly presidential candidate Alexandr Stoianoglo. The Moldovan CEC reported on November 3 that over 54 percent of the Moldovan electorate voted in the presidential runoff elections compared to the approximately 51 percent voter turnout during the first election round held on October 20, 2024. The reported voter turnout for the runoff election is also over the minimum legal turnout requirement of 20 percent. ISW will cover the final result of the runoff Moldovan presidential elections on November 4 after the Moldovan CEC finishes counting all votes, including votes from the Moldovan diaspora voters whose votes take longer to count due to time zone differences.

Moldovan authorities reported extensive Russian interference and sabotage efforts during the runoff presidential elections held on November 3, 2024, in a likely effort to favor pro-Kremlin Stoianoglo. Sandu’s National Security Advisor Stanislav Secrieru warned on November 3 of significant Russian interference in the runoff election, noting the organization of voter transport in Transnistria (which is illegal under Moldovan law); the organization of buses and charter flights from Russia to polling stations in Azerbaijan, Turkey, and Belarus; the distribution of vouchers to Moldovan voters in Moscow; and cyberattacks against the Moldova CEC's voter education site. Moldovan Independent Press Agency IPN reported on November 2 that Russian authorities preemptively transported 150 Moldovan citizens from Russia to Moldova via Turkey for free in a concerted effort to maximize the voter base of Kremlin-friendly Stoianoglo. Moldovan authorities also notified numerous Western countries about Russian efforts to disrupt Moldovan diaspora voting abroad by creating false bomb threats at polling stations. The Moldovan diaspora notably largely favored Sandu in the first round of the presidential elections. Moldovan Prime Minister Dorin Recean stated that Moldovans throughout the country had received anonymous “death threats” through phone calls, likely as part of a scare tactic to sway election results. ISW previously reported on large-scale Russian intervention efforts in the first round of the 2024 Moldovan presidential elections in order to enhance the outcome in favor of Stoianoglo and against Moldova’s European Union (EU) referendum vote, which ultimately passed by a small margin. Sandu stated on October 21 that "criminal groups" and "foreign forces" — likely referring to Russia and Kremlin-linked Moldovan opposition politician Ilan Shor — used tens of millions of euros to spread propaganda to destabilize Moldova. Sandu also stated that Moldovan authorities had evidence that the criminal groups wanted to buy 300,000 Moldovan votes during the first round of presidential elections and that the scale of fraud was "unprecedented.”

Key Takeaways:

Incumbent Moldova President Maia Sandu has claimed victory in the Moldovan presidential runoff election held on November 3, 2024.

Moldovan authorities reported extensive Russian interference and sabotage efforts during the runoff presidential elections held on November 3, 2024, in a likely effort to favor pro-Kremlin Stoianoglo.

The Russian Ministry of Defense's (MoD) efforts to centralize control over informal Russian drone operation units may degrade the effectiveness of Russian drone capabilities.

Ukrainian Human Rights Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets refuted a Russian information operation about prisoner of war (POW) exchanges aimed at destabilizing Ukrainian society and undermining Ukrainians' trust in their government.

Ukrainian Human Rights Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets refuted a Russian information operation about prisoner of war (POW) exchanges aimed at destabilizing Ukrainian society and undermining Ukrainians' trust in their government.

Russian forces recently advanced near Siversk, Pokrovsk, Kurakhove, and Vuhledar in Donetsk Oblast.

A Ukrainian official reported that Russian naval infantry units cannot be considered “elite” due to a lack of specialized training for new recruits and because Ukrainian forces have destroyed the main core of the Russian professional army since the start of the Russian full-scale invasion.

8. The Nerdy Gamers Who Became Ukraine’s Deadliest Drone Pilots

Can we learn from the Ukrainians?

The Nerdy Gamers Who Became Ukraine’s Deadliest Drone Pilots

Tech-savvy soldiers target Russian tanks and infantry, holding back advance; a few pounds of explosives make inexpensive aerial devices lethal

https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/ukraine-gamers-drone-pilots-russia-85a1af3b?mod=latest_headlines

By James Marson

/ Photographs by Serhii Korovayny for WSJ

Nov. 3, 2024 9:00 pm ET

POKROVSK, Ukraine—The Ukrainian drone pilot spotted two Russian soldiers seeking cover from his explosive machine in an outhouse. He sent his aerial craft, the size of a dinner plate with four rotors, swooping toward the narrow open door and performed what is known as fokus—a magic trick.

The Russians’ bodies disappeared in a puff of smoke, blown apart by a couple of pounds of explosives strapped to the drone. As the dust settled, body parts appeared to be sticking out from the toilet.

“They returned to where they came from,” said the drone pilot, Oleksandr Dakhno, as he re-watched the scene, shot from a surveillance drone that accompanied the armed one, a few days later. Then he chuckled.

The cheerful, soft-spoken 29-year-old had added another two to the roughly 300 Russians he says he has killed in about a year and a half, a tally almost double that credited to the reputed deadliest American sniper, Chief Petty Officer Chris Kyle, who served in Iraq. Some of Dakhno’s colleagues have even higher numbers.

A Ukrainian drone tracks Russian soldiers seeking cover in an outhouse. VIDEO: Ukrainian Armed Forces

Aerial-drone pilots are the deadliest soldiers on the modern battlefield, just as machine-gunners or snipers were in the last century. They can deliver the explosive power of a rocket-propelled grenade with the precision of a sniper, at the range of an artillery gun.

In Ukraine, they’ve created a no man’s land forward of front lines that has stopped the massive Russian army from overrunning defenses this year. Russia’s much larger and better equipped forces have inched forward but haven’t achieved a breakthrough, and have incurred heavy losses, largely thanks to the drone killers.

The movie image of elite soldiers as macho hulks has fueled concerns that today’s flabby and screen-addicted youths couldn’t cut it in a real fight. But piloting drones demands quick thinking, sharp eyes and nimble thumbs, the kind of prowess more readily associated with computer games than military combat.

With artillery ammunition in short supply, Ukraine has increasingly relied on its nerdy Rambos to hold back waves of Russian armored and infantry assaults. Ukraine is the first country to integrate drone units into most brigades of its armed forces, where they tend to operate as a creative subculture, running their own tech hubs and bomb factories.

Heorhiy Volkov, commander of the Clear Eyes battalion, looks at ammunition with a member of his team.

“We are a team of civilians who want to kill Russians with our cleverness and technology,” said Heorhiy Volkov, commander of a drone battalion called Yasni Ochi, or Clear Eyes.

Russia has quickly caught on and can put a larger number of drones in the sky, but Ukraine has an edge in skilled pilots and technology, Ukrainian soldiers say. The role of pilot is a plum job, in part for the distance and relative safety it offers compared with other roles, such as infantry.

For pilots, mostly men in their 20s, the long-distance killing can appear like a realistic videogame without the gut-churning proximity of trench warfare. But the human on the screen sometimes flickers into view.

“You see the flesh torn apart, how you tore a head off,” said Dakhno, who is from the 47th Mechanized Brigade. “It can be horrific. Someone’s legs are blown off and he bleeds to death.”

The former director of a co-working space said he is doing his job, to stop armed invaders, and that joking and laughing about it helps. “If I worried about it I’d have to stop. I know that it’s the enemy, but it’s still a living being,” he said.

Volkov at one of the drone team’s bases. ‘We are a team of civilians who want to kill Russians with our cleverness and technology.’

Scrappy startups

Ukraine’s innovative use of small aerial craft has given it an edge since its much-larger neighbor invaded in February 2022.

Drone teams like Clear Eyes started out as unpaid civilian enthusiasts who would deploy commercial drones to track Russian military movements.

Volkov, the 37-year-old owner of a marketing agency, soon progressed to dropping bomblets from drones using plastic claws produced on 3-D printers. He enlisted in the military, and by 2023 was experimenting with explosive drones.

The quick, nimble craft—known as first person view drones, or FPVs—are controlled by a pilot who wears goggles that stream a live feed from a camera on the craft. They usually have a diameter of 7 or 10 inches, a range of around 12 miles and can carry explosives weighing up to 9 pounds that detonate when the drone slams into a target.

Ukrainians also developed larger drones known by the Russians as “Baba Yaga” after a wicked witch from Slavic folklore. They are typically armed with four bombs weighing 9 pounds each that they can drop from the air and then return to base to reload.

FPVs are in plentiful supply as Ukrainian factories are churning out tens of thousands of them a month at $500 apiece.

Behind the best remote killers stand organizations that operate like edgy but orderly tech startups. The key to success, said Volkov, is innovation, logistics and communications, as well as solid military tactics.

“One good pilot doesn’t change anything,” he said.

Pilots from the Clear Eyes team take part in flying drills.

A team member prepares explosives to be used with a drone.

Clear Eyes’ main headquarters in the eastern Dnipropetrovsk Region has a command center where dispatchers watch feeds from reconnaissance drones and coordinate the work of strike-drone teams. There are workshops for engineers and a pilot-training school for dozens of recruits. And there’s a ping-pong table.

Training in a nearby field one recent day, a dozen pilots smoked, slurped energy drinks and ribbed each other while taking turns to show off their skills. One of them flipped the FPV over in midair and sent it zipping away just before it hit the ground.

The vast majority of personnel in drone units were never in the military before and largely ignore the service culture of ranks, including saluting or waiting for an order to get on with their job.

Volkov at times seems more like the head of a scrappy startup than a military unit. He said he prefers to think of it as a creative profession. “I’m a music producer and these guys are my f—ing boy bands,” he said.

Team members innovate and repair equipment themselves, including at locations closer to the front lines.

Yevhen Yachevskiy, Volkov’s 34-year-old deputy, is an agricultural chemist who became a bomb-maker. He learned how to make explosives from YouTube, then managed to recruit one combat engineer and a 55-year-old former miner who used dynamite in his day job.

An engineer builds drones at a base in eastern Ukraine.

An engineer from the Clear Eyes team works on a drone.

A handful of village houses in the northern Kharkiv region, where Clear Eyes teams are also deployed, function as small bomb factories and tech hubs.

In one, a soldier from Clear Eyes sawed the detonator off a Soviet-era rocket-propelled grenade. The explosives are removed, melted in slow cookers and then poured into lighter plastic casings, allowing drones to carry bombs that pack a bigger punch.

In another house, an engineer attached a guidance system taken from a Russian glide bomb that had failed to detonate on hitting the ground. The main aim at the bomb factory is to add more explosives—sometimes using duct tape—for a bigger bang that leaves few places to hide on the battlefield.

Dakhno, an avid videogamer in his youth whose mom would tell him off for playing too long, recently flew a large FPV loaded with a 9-pound bomb into a school auditorium where Russian soldiers were sheltering.

“No more school,” he said. “My childhood dream came true.”

Drone pilot Oleksandr Dakhno says he has killed roughly 300 Russians with drones.

A new weapon rises

It was late last year, as artillery ammunition ran low, that strike-drone pilots earned their spurs. Ukrainian forces were outnumbered and outgunned following a failed counteroffensive and as the U.S. dithered over sending fresh military supplies.

The situation called for men like Farmer, a laconic, 27-year-old former restaurant manager who received his call sign from playing a mobile game where he raises hens and pigs.

After Russian forces took over his hometown in 2022, he became a reconnaissance drone pilot but grew bored as an observer. “It’s more interesting to kill,” he said. Now he pilots FPVs for Clear Eyes. He has adopted a simple logic: The more Russians he kills, the sooner he’ll be able to go home.

After Russia started pushing for a breakthrough around the eastern city of Avdiivka last fall, Clear Eyes was assigned to villages to its west. Their task was to create a kill zone a mile deep to protect outnumbered Ukrainian infantry in front-line trenches from Russian assaults.

They set up positions in basements and other locations a couple of miles behind the front line. Dispatchers at a headquarters miles away watch a bank of screens that beam live feeds from reconnaissance drones, identifying targets and passing them to the pilots.

Views from reconnaissance drones in the Kharkiv region of Ukraine.

During quieter times, they hunt for high-value targets like armored vehicles and long-distance surveillance equipment. Farmer eliminated three tanks in a single day that were hidden in trees. FPVs struck bridging equipment last month during Ukraine’s invasion of Russia’s Kursk region, part of an effort to cut off thousands of Russian troops there.

When Russian vehicles course toward Ukrainian lines, drone pilots look for their weak spots, such as engines or turrets. Once the vehicles are immobilized, they can be destroyed with further strikes before the Russians are able to recover them.

Dakhno, also stationed nearby for the 47th Brigade, spotted one of Russia’s most modern tanks, a T-90, barreling toward Ukrainian trenches. His FPV hit it and exploded just under the turret. The damage was minor, but it spooked the Russian driver, who veered off the road, crashed through a tree and pulled up. The crew dismounted and ran away, and drone teams soon finished off the abandoned vehicle.

The strikes are often caught on video from reconnaissance drones. In one, Dakhno hits a Russian armored vehicle piled high with infantry. Soldiers jump from the top as it careens from the road. The video has a Keystone Kops quality, as one soldier tumbles over another.

It’s this kind of video that is popular on social media. Drone units set them to thumping electronic music and add their unit’s badge. Volunteers who raise money for them often post stills of terrified Russian invaders reacting as the drone swoops in for the kill.

“Grandmothers donate money, and when they see the result they feel part of it,” said Volkov, the Clear Eyes commander.

‘I’m done’

After repeated failures to advance with armored columns, the Russian army now often sends forward small groups of infantrymen to try to cross a no man’s land strewn with charred vehicles and shattered buildings and survive long enough to bring forward reinforcements. That means drone pilots are often targeting individual soldiers in battles that pitch man against machine.

Farmer said he started taking double his usual allotment of 20 FPV drones with him for a day’s work, most of them armed with shrapnel munitions to target infantry rather than high-explosive ones for armored vehicles.

Sometimes there are so many targets that he doesn’t wait for the signal from a dispatcher or the video feed from a reconnaissance drone, but takes off and searches for enemies via the FPV’s own fuzzy feed. It’s harder in the summer, as the Russians are more concealed under thick foliage.

The sound of an approaching FPV, like the buzzing of a giant mosquito, now rivals the whoosh of artillery shells as the most terrifying sound on the battlefield for infantrymen.

The drone pilot known as Farmer conducts flying drills.

Dakhno said he closely observes the enemy’s reaction as his craft swoops in for the kill. Terror quickly turns to resistance or a desperate attempt to flee, and then, finally, resignation or a last pathetic attempt to shield the fragile body with raised arms.

“They try to shoot, try to throw something, then their shoulders slump and they look at the drone as if to say, ‘I’m done,’” he said.

The drone operator kills from a relatively safe distance in a one-sided contest, like a bomber pilot. Only the image on the screen provides a measure of intimacy. On rare occasions, pilots are even able to direct enemies to surrender.

Dakhno recalls one exhausted Russian looking at his drone, crossing his arms and mouthing: “I won’t do it any more.” The invader escaped as the reconnaissance drone tracking the target ran out of battery and it was too dark to send out another.

“I would have gone to kill him,” said Dakhno. “Why the f— did you come here? I couldn’t care less that he prays, begs, swears he won’t do it again. I’m sure the mothers of Ukrainian children also cried.”

On radio intercepts, Ukrainian soldiers hear their enemy call roads littered with corpses “Roads of Death.”

“It’s just roads and fields, there’s nowhere for them to hide,” said Dakhno.

Drone pilots zero in on a Russian military vehicle in Ukraine.

Russian soldiers often pretend to be dead, but the Ukrainian teams identify them by learning the pattern of corpses or spotting them when they sneeze or open an eye. Reconnaissance drones capture the aftermath of a strike, allowing pilots to decide whether they inflicted a fatal injury or need to send another drone.

A recent video shared online by one Ukrainian unit showed a Russian soldier in a field fleeing grenades dropped by drones. His legs apparently crippled, he drags himself under a small tree. Another grenade drop sets the grass around him on fire.

The soldier props a rifle up on the ground and puts its muzzle in his mouth. He pulls the trigger but it jams, so he casts it aside. He picks up a second rifle and fires it into the branches to check it works, then puts the muzzle in his mouth and pulls the trigger. The bullet blows his hat and the back of his head off, and he slumps to the ground.

Discussing his recent strike that decapitated a Russian soldier, Farmer wondered whether a quick death may be preferable.

“He got lucky,” said Farmer, as he hadn’t suffered before dying.

Pilots say their strike rate is about one in three. The Russians are getting better at jamming the connection between the pilot’s controller and the craft, which sends it crashing to the ground. Sometimes, the drones don’t detonate on impact due to technical faults.

Farmer recently sent three drones, one after the other, in for the kill on one Russian soldier—first when he hid under a rug, then when he emerged and got to his feet and a third time when he ran away through a field. The drones hit near their target, but none of them exploded.

“He must have gone to church and prayed that morning,” said Farmer.

Night falls at a Clear Eyes temporary base.

Ievgeniia Sivorka contributed to this article.

Write to James Marson at james.marson@wsj.com

9. Professors Are Uniquely Powerful. That May Be Changing.

This is a national security issue. Our colleges and universities need fixing. WHile I have known many great professors, I have also observed many in leadership positions and many simply trying to impose their will on the education system and they have no business doing so. Most professors should keep to their professional expertise and not try to social engineer universities to support their political agenda by indoctrinating our youth.

That said, I am not in favor of government intervention either.

Professors Are Uniquely Powerful. That May Be Changing.

Faculty members are used to sharing power with presidents and trustees to run universities. But some presidents and lawmakers have made moves to reduce their say.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/02/us/faculty-power-shared-governance-university-presidents.html?referringSource=articleShare&smid=nytcore-ios-share&utm

In September, faculty members held a silent vigil in defense of academic freedom and shared governance at the Emory University campus in Atlanta.Credit...Nicole Craine for The New York Times

By Alan Blinder

Reporting from Atlanta

Nov. 2, 2024

Ilya Nemenman, an Emory University physics professor, seethed as summer break neared its end.

After a pro-Palestinian demonstration in April had ended with police officers firing chemical irritants, Emory’s president had decided to update the campus’s protest policy. The revisions were not necessarily what angered Dr. Nemenman.

The problem was that the president had not received the University Senate’s feedback first.

“This is not just a corporation,” Dr. Nemenman chided the president, Gregory L. Fenves, during an Aug. 28 meeting, according to interviews and contemporaneous notes that summarized the discussion. “It is also a community that does not operate top-down.”

But Dr. Fenves’s repeated pledges to work with faculty did not reassure every professor.

For more than a century, professors have regularly had vast influence over instruction, personnel and other hallmarks of campus life, sharing sway with presidents and trustees in decisions shaping many parts of campus life — an authority that is unfathomable in many workplaces.

But this year has shown how fraught and fragile that practice, known as shared governance, has become at public and private universities alike.

Image

Dr. Ilya Nemenman, center, joined faculty members during the silent vigil at Emory.Credit...Nicole Craine for The New York Times

Arizona lawmakers sought to do away with legal guarantees of faculty power at public universities, their ambitions thwarted only by the governor’s veto. At the University of Kentucky, trustees dissolved the University Senate and made professorial influence only advisory. Amid protests at Columbia University, the school’s then-president provoked fury when she defied a University Senate committee and called in the police.

A coast-to-coast wipeout of faculty influence is not imminent, despite years of swelling suspicions of higher education and repeated attacks on tenure protections. But in recent months, professors have warned of an erosion of their power that they fear could undermine university culture. Some see efforts to diminish shared governance as part of a campaign to curb faculty participation in events, like campus protests over the war in Gaza, that have left universities vulnerable to criticism.

“There’s a need for governing boards, and there’s a need for administrations to run things,” said Noëlle McAfee, a philosophy professor who is the Emory Senate’s president-elect. “But they don’t have the expertise, they’re not qualified and it’s not their job to be handling matters having to do with educational mission.”

Dr. McAfee, who was among the people arrested at Emory in April, added, “We need to have a kind of partnership with them, but if they decide to take it over, we’ve lost the heart and soul of what a college or university is.”

Critics of shared governance systems — often filled with senates, councils, committees, subcommittees and task forces grappling with motions, resolutions, reports and the finer points of Robert’s Rules of Order — have complained that, well intentioned as they may be, they can be too plodding in a sped-up world.

At Kentucky, which recently ended a system developed in 1917, President Eli Capilouto said he believed that faculty members had brought nothing but “a pure interest” to Senate deliberations.

But in a time of “rapid leaps,” he added, “I think we did have a model that was inherently out of date.”

Image

At Columbia University, the school’s then-president provoked fury among professors when she called in the police.Credit...Bing Guan for The New York Times

Details of shared governance vary among campuses, though the American Association of University Professors, the American Council on Education and the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges wrote what became a leading framework in 1966. It declares that “important areas of action involve” at some point “decision-making participation of all the institutional components.” It also says that “the weight of each voice” in a particular deliberation should be based on guidelines that outline responsibilities for faculty, presidents and trustees.

But presidents and boards often retain ultimate authority, and professors across the country increasingly see fading fealty to the principles outlined in the 1960s. Since 1994, the professors’ association has sanctioned 19 institutions for violating governance guidelines. Nine of the schools that have received what are essentially public censures have been called out since the start of 2021.

Although administrators and trustees sometimes seek to dilute faculty power, the last 12 months have underscored how pressure can come from beyond a campus.

In Arizona, a Republican-championed proposal in the Legislature sought to eliminate shared “responsibility for academic and educational activities and matters related to faculty personnel.” Instead, the measure called for regents and administrators to “consult with” faculty members. (The Board of Regents told the Legislature it was “neutral” on the proposal.)

“When you have decisions getting made all over the place — whether it be all throughout the student body and faculty and staff — you can’t run any organization that way,” Representative Travis Grantham, a Republican from the Phoenix area who sponsored the legislation, said during a committee hearing in February.

Image

At the University of Kentucky, trustees dissolved the University Senate and made professorial influence advisory.Credit...Luke Sharrett for The New York Times

Mr. Grantham insisted he was not suggesting that “the faculty is making all of these stupid decisions.” But, he said, “The president is the president for a reason. If we’re not going to acknowledge that, we’ve got bigger problems.”

Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, vetoed the legislation in June.

Days earlier, the University of Kentucky had formally dissolved its Senate. Dr. Capilouto, Kentucky’s president since 2011, said the reworked structure in Lexington would allow the school to be more “nimble” and give students and staff members greater influence.

Over the years, he argued, the University Senate had amassed too much power and gone “a little far afield.”

The rapid rollback alienated faculty members; in May, after Dr. Capilouto proposed the governance changes, the Senate approved a no-confidence resolution against him. Although the president said last month he knew professors remained unsettled, he predicted that they would ultimately become more supportive.

That time may be long in coming.

DeShana Collett, a professor in Kentucky’s College of Health Sciences who chaired the University Senate Council, described the moves as “institutional betrayal.” She speculated that the changes could hinder the university’s ability to recruit or retain professors.

“We are striving for excellence, right?” Dr. Collett said. “We should have integrity and mutual respect. This is not totalitarianism. That’s not what it should be about.”

The Emory experience shows that even less drastic changes can stir worries.

After Emory summoned the police to break up the April 25 demonstration, Dr. Fenves wanted the university to make clear that encampments and building occupations were forbidden, as were protests between midnight and 7 a.m.

Formalizing those rules would mean amending Emory’s open expression policy, which Dr. Nemenman and others believed a University Senate committee was essentially guaranteed a role in rewriting. But the Senate did not act, and as the possibility of new protests loomed, Dr. Fenves felt that he needed to do something before a new school year began.

“The Senate started a process to revise the policy. We were fully committed to working with them in that process, and nothing happened,” Dr. Fenves said in an interview, where he said that “the process has to work on both sides for shared governance to be effective.”

Dr. McAfee, the Senate’s president-elect, disputed Dr. Fenves’s account of the summertime process. But Dr. Fenves described shared governance as “an asset” and added that he was “not trying to undercut” the Senate’s role. He defended his decision given “a specific situation related to safety on campus and the times we’re in.”

Perhaps so. But professors like Dr. Nemenman insisted that the president had done too little to try to consult with the Senate and that his ultimate choice was a slow-motion shredding of the compact that binds a university like Emory.

“People will feel alienated,” Dr. Nemenman said, adding, “We are all, generally, very intelligent people who chose this job over potentially many others that pay a lot more for the reason that we are not going to be bossed around.”

Alan Blinder is a national correspondent for The Times, covering education. More about Alan Blinder

A version of this article appears in print on Nov. 3, 2024, Section A, Page 30 of the New York edition with the headline: Professors Feel Constricted as Universities Rethink Shared Governance. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

10. Israel pounds Lebanon, Gaza as Netanyahu visits northern border

Israel pounds Lebanon, Gaza as Netanyahu visits northern border

04 Nov 2024 05:14AM

channelnewsasia.com

BEIRUT: Israel on Sunday (Nov 3) pressed on with its campaigns in Lebanon and Gaza, launching several deadly strikes as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited his country's northern border.

Netanyahu's visit came after an air strike killed at least three people near the southern Lebanon city of Sidon, the Lebanese health ministry said, and as more bombs hit the country's east.

"I want to be clear: with or without an agreement, the key to restoring peace and security in the north ... is first and foremost to push Hezbollah back beyond the Litani River, secondly to target any attempt to rearm, and thirdly to respond firmly to any action taken against us," Netanyahu told troops at the border, his office said in a statement.

Netanyahu's border visit came as Israel's military said more than 100 projectiles were fired from Lebanon into Israeli territory on Sunday. Several were intercepted, and some fell in unpopulated areas.

People search for victims at a destroyed building hit in an Israeli airstrike, in Ghaziyeh town, south Lebanon, Sunday, Nov. 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)

Hezbollah later said it also fired a barrage of missiles at an Israeli air force "technical base" in the northern coastal city of Haifa.

Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon have been at war since September 23, when Israel escalated cross-border air raids after a year of tit-for-tat exchanges of fire.

A week later it sent in ground troops on "targeted raids".

Hezbollah said it was acting in support of Palestinian militants Hamas, whose unprecedented attack against Israel on October 7 last year triggered the ongoing war in Gaza.

"The Israeli enemy's raid on Haret Saida resulted in an initial death toll of three people killed and nine others injured," Lebanon's health ministry said, referring to a densely populated area near Sidon.

People protest against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government and call for the release of hostages held in the Gaza Strip by the Hamas militant group in Tel Aviv, Israel, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)

Lebanon's official National News Agency (NNA) reported another Israeli strike south of Sidon, on the town of Ghaziyeh. An AFP correspondent said a child was rescued from the rubble of a residential building.

NNA said other Israeli strikes hit near a hospital in Tebnine, a town in the south Lebanon district of Bint Jbeil.

The health ministry said the hospital sustained "severe damage", and that seven people were wounded.

Neither the Haret Saida strike nor those in Lebanon's south were preceded by a warning to evacuate.

The health ministry also said a strike near Tyre killed two rescue workers from the Hezbollah-affiliated Islamic Health Committee.

HEAVY AIR RAIDS

Israel's military did issue a warning for Lebanon's eastern Baalbek area, saying it would attack Hezbollah-linked facilities.

An AFP correspondent later reported at least three strikes in the Baalbek area, where Hezbollah holds sway and which has seen heavy air raids over the past few days.

Also on Sunday, NNA reported the recovery of five out of 21 bodies buried under the rubble for about a week in the flashpoint southern town of Khiam.

Hezbollah on Sunday published an undated video of an underground facility dubbed "Imad 5", showing a hatch opening and a missile pointing skywards.

Fighters are also seen moving through an apparently underground tunnel carved into the rock.

The war has killed more than 1,940 people in Lebanon since September 23, according to an AFP tally of Lebanese health ministry figures.

Israel's military says 38 soldiers have been killed since it began ground operations in Lebanon.

Iran and Israel have also attacked each other directly, heightening fears of even wider conflict.

But Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian on Sunday said a potential ceasefire with its allies Hamas and Hezbollah "could affect the intensity and type of our response".

The Islamic Republic's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had on Saturday warned Israel and the United States they "will definitely receive a tooth-breaking response".

Israel has warned Iran against responding to its Oct 26 attack.

Palestinians gather to receive bags of flour distributed by UNRWA, the U.N. agency helping Palestinian refugees, in Deir al Balah, central Gaza Strip, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

SACKS OF FLOUR

In Gaza, Israel's military again reported "dozens" of militants killed in the northern Jabalia area where since Oct 6 it has carried out a major air and ground assault to stop Hamas regrouping.

Gaza rescuers and medics said Israeli strikes in Gaza on Sunday killed at least 30 people across the territory.

In central Gaza, people crowded to receive sacks of flour from a UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) distribution point in Deir el-Balah.

Israel's parliament last Monday banned UNRWA - the main aid agency in Gaza - from operating in Israel and annexed east Jerusalem, despite international objections.

If implemented, the ban would hit humanitarian work in Gaza, experts say.

It came after the United States on Oct 15 warned Israel it could withhold some of its billions of dollars in military assistance unless it improves aid delivery to Gaza within 30 days.

Also in Deir el-Balah on Sunday, relatives at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital mourned a father and son killed during Israeli bombardment.

Hamas's Oct 7 attack on Israel resulted in 1,206 deaths, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel's military response against Hamas has killed 43,341 people in Gaza, a majority of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory's health ministry which the United Nations consider to be reliable.

Source: AFP/fs

channelnewsasia.com

11. As America votes for new president, what are the 3 Cs and 3 Ts that will define Sino-US ties?

1. Trade, Tech, Taiwan

2. Cooperate, Competent, Confront

As America votes for new president, what are the 3 Cs and 3 Ts that will define Sino-US ties?

Trade, tech and Taiwan loom large in the present Sino-US relationship. And how the next US president handles these issues will determine how much both sides will cooperate, compete or even confront each other, say analysts.

Wong Woon Shin

Melody Chan

03 Nov 2024 06:00AM

(Updated: 03 Nov 2024 02:53PM)

channelnewsasia.com

SINGAPORE: A rocky road lies ahead for Sino-US ties regardless of who emerges as America's next leader, but the size of the rocks and which areas they lie in will vary depending on whether a Harris or Trump presidency emerges, say analysts.

They add that for all their disagreements, one thing both Republicans and Democrats agree on, even before the polarising and deadlocked presidential contest, is the need to counter China. This won’t change, whether it’s Vice-President Kamala Harris or former president Donald Trump who takes office.

Observers say this stance will colour Washington’s approach towards Beijing - a reality well recognised by the Chinese leadership.

“Strategic patience is Beijing's only choice in dealing with Washington, regardless of whether it's Trump or Harris,” Mr Einar Tangen, a senior fellow at the Beijing-based Taihe Institute, told CNA.

Trade, tech and Taiwan are the hot-button issues looming large over the bilateral relationship, with far-reaching global consequences depending on how they are handled, experts warn.

Dr William Choong, a senior fellow at ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, told CNA that clarity on America’s China policies is a key want from Beijing.

“If the Chinese had their wish, they’d wish that all these trade curbs and tech export controls went away. But we know that's not going to go away,” he said.

COOPERATION, COMPETITION, CONFRONTATION

Competition and confrontation have been gaining ground in recent years, at the expense of cooperation in the Sino-US relationship. Competition, in particular, has effectively become a structural condition of their ties, say analysts.

A landmark Sino-US scientific cooperation treaty slipped away without renewal in late August for the first time in 45 years. Meanwhile, both sides have been locking horns on an expanding list of issues, centred on themes like national security.

Analysts expect this trend to persist regardless of a Harris or Trump win in the US presidential election. Americans head to the polls on Nov 5 to choose between Mr Trump, gunning for a second term, and Ms Harris, who replaced President Joe Biden on the Democratic Party ticket just over two months ago.

“(A Trump or Harris win is) two roads to the same cliff,” said Mr Tangen.

Similarly, Mr Steven Okun, senior advisor from the public affairs consultancy firm APAC Advisors, told CNA that whoever takes the Oval Office will not have “directional change” in China policy.

“US-China policy will be the same under either a Harris or Trump administration. There will be more tariffs and more investment restrictions,” he said.

Both presidential contenders have already made clear what they think about China.

“I will make sure … that America, not China, wins the competition for the 21st century,” pledged Ms Harris in late August when she accepted the Democratic nomination for the presidency.

Meanwhile, her Republican rival Mr Trump - who launched a trade war against China while in the White House from 2017 to 2021 - has vowed to get even tougher on China and “completely eliminate dependence” on the country of 1.4 billion people.

China is clear-eyed on this - and sees a Trump or Harris presidency as determining the degree of containment towards the world’s No 2 economy, said Dr Chen Dongxiao, a senior research fellow and president of the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (SIIS), at a recent public lecture in Singapore.

Dr Chen highlighted that in the event of a Trump victory, he would have another four years in office without the pressure of re-election. Under American law, a US president can only serve two terms.

He explained that this would be of concern to China, as Mr Trump will have “more space and potential” to mobilise federal agencies in order to serve his “confrontational, anti-China containment policy and measures”.

China is not expected to publicly state or even allude to who it wants as America’s next leader, observers have noted, because it does not want to be accused of interference in the US election. Chinese officials have repeatedly stated the US presidential election is the Americans’ internal affair.

“They don’t have a vote. They do have a preference. But when they don’t get their preference, they have to work with whoever occupies the Oval Office in the White House,” said Dr Choong on Beijing’s perspective, based on his conversations with Chinese academics.

Professor Jia Qingguo, former dean of the School of International Studies at Peking University and a senior member of China’s top political advisory body, believes what matters is whether the incumbent or opposition party’s candidate comes up top, with the first scenario - in this case, a Harris presidency - being more beneficial for Beijing.

“The reason is in a presidential election, the opposition party would condemn or has to condemn the ruling party’s policies. When it comes to (policies on China), invariably … the opposition party candidate would condemn the ruling party for being too soft on China, and then they would vow to make some changes,” he explained at a recent conference in Singapore.

“When they get elected, they would have to honour some of their campaign promises - whether they are realistic or not - and (when trying to do so), the relationship would be in trouble,” he added.

Prof Jia also highlighted the potential for miscommunication during the presidential transition as some “tacit understandings” might not be passed on, potentially adding friction between the Chinese government and the new US administration.

In the US, a presidential transition is a formal process where a president-elect takes over the administration of the federal government from the incumbent president, giving the incoming leader and their team time to prepare for governance.

Conversely, a win by the incumbent party candidate - in this case, Ms Harris - would likely mean a smoother transition and some level of policy continuity - predictability that Beijing is likely to favour, he suggested.

TUSSLING OVER TRADE, TECH AND TAIWAN

Dr Choong said trade, tech and Taiwan are at the heart of US-China tensions - and how America’s next leader addresses these three issues, especially the last, determines not just the trajectory of bilateral ties, but whether competition and confrontation could boil over into conflict.

On trade, the US has been taking action to curb what it has described as unfair practices by China, hiking tariffs on Chinese imports ranging from steel to electric vehicles. Beijing has consistently denied the allegations and accused the US of trying to contain it.

A second Trump term would see tariffs taking pride of place in America’s economic policy, as the man himself has all but proclaimed.

“To me, the most beautiful word in the dictionary is ‘tariffs’,” Mr Trump said in an October interview with Bloomberg News. The businessman-turned-politician has signalled a 10 to 20 per cent blanket tariff on all imports under his watch, with the rate upwards of 60 per cent on goods from China.

Some tariff measures under the Biden administration were carried forward from the first Trump term.

Should she win the election, Ms Harris is likely to retain many of these elements, including targeted tariffs as well as working with partners and allies from a military security perspective, noted Mr Okun, who served in the Bill Clinton administration.

While China would obviously like to see US tariffs gone, it’s resigned to the fact they will remain in some shape or form beyond the Nov 5 poll, said Dr Choong, who is also the managing editor of the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute's Fulcrum commentary website.

The US is moving to restrict investment in Chinese technology like semiconductors and AI. (Photo: REUTERS/Florence Lo)

Tech is another sticking point in Sino-US relations.

The Biden administration has kept up what it has termed a “small yard, high fence” approach to restrict Chinese access to key technologies, for reasons of national security.

“Small yard” refers to a small group of technologies and research deemed critical to US national security, while “high fence” signifies strict containment measures on them. This strategy leaves room for engagement with China beyond this perimeter.

But observers have pointed out that the yard has been growing bigger and the fence getting higher.

“(The measures) now include export controls, inward and outbound investment controls, and vendor monitoring and reporting obligations that cover a growing list of technologies,” Mr John Lee, the director of consultancy East West Futures and a researcher at the Leiden Asia Centre, noted in a February article.

On Oct 28, US officials announced new rules, banning US-headquartered firms, citizens, and permanent residents from investing in Chinese technology like semiconductors, artificial intelligence and quantum computing, with effect from Jan 2 next year.

Dr Choong shared that based on his conversations with the Chinese, many see the expanding measures as a new reality. What they seek is clarity on the exact scope of the policy so as to work around it, he noted.

“(The Chinese) are saying: ‘We don’t care if it’s going to be a small yard or big yard. Just tell us what the boundaries of the yard actually are.’ I think that’s a pretty reasonable request,” he said.

Then there’s Taiwan, the self-ruled island China considers an inalienable part of its territory.

Beijing has repeatedly underscored it will not tolerate any internal or external attempts towards Taiwan independence. Chinese President Xi Jinping has framed the issue as “the bedrock of the political foundation of China-US relations”, and the “first red line” that must not be crossed in bilateral ties.

Cross-strait tensions are at their highest in recent years. Chinese military sorties around the self-ruled island have become a near-daily occurrence. Major drills just last month simulated a blockade and assaults on “maritime and ground targets”.

The US has long followed a policy of strategic ambiguity regarding Taiwan, being intentionally vague about how it would support Taiwan should China attempt a takeover.

This has provided space for future resolution of the issue, Mr Okun observed.

“There has been no indication that any of the three parties (the US, China, and Taiwan) are looking for an immediate change to the status quo within the US-China bilateral relationship from their respective positions,” he added.

On broader security issues, including that of Taiwan, Dr Choong noted that a Harris presidency would continue emphasising alliances and partnerships to deter China.

“This will also continue to irritate China to no end, simply because the Chinese feel that they are being hemmed in,” he said.

In contrast, for a Trump 2.0 presidency, Dr Choong sees a "big question mark", saying that the former president has a “short attention span”.

Mr Trump has made several comments on the campaign trail that Taiwan should pay to be protected, and accused the island of stealing US semiconductor business.

“Some of the comments made on Taiwan, whether it's actually worth the candle on (the island), who knows? It really depends on the day or the month that we are raising that question,” remarked Dr Choong.

REGIONAL RIPPLES

Whichever way the chips fall in the race for the White House, analysts say Southeast Asia will feel the ripples considering the region’s strategic importance in the US-China rivalry.

Should Mr Trump emerge victorious and make good on his tariff threat, aside from hurting American consumers and businesses, the international economy would be roiled as other countries retaliate, the non-partisan US think tank Peterson Institute for International Economics warned in June.

This would result in a global decline cutting across resource, manufacturing and financial centres, said Mr Tangen from Taihe Institute.

In particular, trading nations like Singapore and those which have large trade surpluses with the US, like Malaysia and Vietnam, should brace for economic pain under a second Trump administration, noted Mr Okun from APAC Advisors.

“Those countries should prepare for tariffs to be clapped upon them, regardless of their importance to the US in terms of China,” he said.

Mr Trump has a “short attention span” and has limited patience for specific policy details, Dr Choong said. “That's the larger problem for people in this region who want an administration that thinks through carefully about its policies towards this region.”

When it comes to a Harris presidency, analysts agree that the regional implications would be relatively less acute as she is unlikely to veer from the policies set by her current boss.

A Harris administration will fundamentally keep up Mr Biden’s approach of working with partners and allies to advance American national interests in the region and forge a multilateral rules-based order, Mr Okun said.

Be it Ms Harris or Mr Trump, America’s regional strategy could face turbulence, analysts warn.

Dr Choong said there have been observations of a decline in Southeast Asia experts in Washington, which may signal a “systemic problem” in tailoring appropriate policies for the region.

Collapse Expand

FOR THE US, “PERSONNEL IS POLICY”

Be it a Trump or Harris presidency, analysts point out that their respective administration members will have a major hand in shaping policies.

“More so for the US than most governments, personnel is policy,” said Mr Okun from APAC Advisors. He explained that while the White House determines the overall direction, presidential appointees have “large sway” in determining administration policy due to a hefty government that’s involved in “nearly every global issue”.

In terms of Washington’s policies towards Beijing, key positions to look out for are secretary of state, treasury secretary, the US trade representative and national security advisor, Mr Okun said.

For example, current Secretary of State Blinken has been at the forefront of Sino-US engagements, making two visits to Beijing in the past two years and meeting top Chinese leaders, including President Xi. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has similarly made trips to China to express concerns over overcapacity.

While neither Mr Trump nor Ms Harris has explicitly stated their cabinet lineup should they take the Oval Office, potential picks have already surfaced in the lead-up. Both sides have also hinted at a baseline criteria.

A senior official in Trump’s campaign told the Financial Times early last month that any appointees to a second Trump administration would need to prove “fidelity and loyalty”. Meanwhile, continuity aside, Ms Harris is also looking towards a younger, more diverse lineup, US media outlet Politico has reported.

Mr Okun believes Trump will prioritise appointees who are loyal to him if he gets a second stint in the Oval Office. Consequently, these loyalists are more likely to back his more aggressive stance against China.

“His national security team could range from being hawkish in China within the existing relationship to one that could push for a further decoupling of the two economies,” he said.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken greets China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi before a meeting Friday, Sept. 27, 2024, in New York. (Photo: AP/Heather Khalifa, Pool)

For China, the landscape is considerably different. While Foreign Minister Wang Yi has been the leading diplomat on the frontline, power is effectively centralised around Mr Xi as the core of the leadership, observers note.

Mr Wang became the country’s top diplomat in January last year when he was appointed as the director of the Office of the Central Foreign Affairs Commission of China’s Communist Party (CCP).

At the same time, the work of policymaking is done by think tanks and government commissions that assess the landscape and make recommendations, shared Mr Tangen from Taihe Institute.

“(President Xi) is credited with the strategy, but the policies are the result of hundreds of thousands of hours of study and debate … in contrast to many developed nations where policies are based on the political winds,” Mr Tangen remarked, without specifying which countries he was referring to.

He added that at the end of the day, both China and the US need to understand that mutual cooperation is the best way forward - the challenge is making sure both sides are aligned in mindset and execution.

Mr Tangen referenced the Prisoner’s Dilemma, a thought experiment where two parties are separated and unable to communicate. One side benefits if it betrays the other, but working together can yield better collective results.

“China and the US are not the only actors in the world, but as the leading economies they have a duty to learn and accept their differences and work together towards a shared future, not one that prioritises one above all,” he said.

channelnewsasia.com

12. How Donald Trump winning would impact China, Russia, Iran and North Korea

How Donald Trump winning would impact China, Russia, Iran and North Korea

Newsweek · by Brendan Cole · November 3, 2024

Donald Trump has boasted about his ties with strongman leaders other United States presidents would have kept at arm's length, but this does not mean his potential retaking of the Oval Office next week will be toasted in Moscow, Pyongyang, Tehran or Beijing.

Foreign policy issues on the Resolute Desk's in-tray include whether Trump can make good on his claim that he can end the war in Ukraine started by Vladimir Putin, dealing with a widening conflict in the Middle East in which the U.S. has a key role, North Korea's nuclear threats and a trade tussle with China.

Amid concern that Washington would lurch toward a more isolationist foreign policy should Trump win on Tuesday, Newsweek asked experts what they thought his victory would mean for four countries considered adversaries or rivals.

Newsweek reached out to the Trump campaign for comment.

China

Then-U.S. President Donald Trump (L) and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on November 9, 2017. Another Trump presidency could see a heightened tensions between Beijing and Washington, experts told Newsweek. Then-U.S. President Donald Trump (L) and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on November 9, 2017. Another Trump presidency could see a heightened tensions between Beijing and Washington, experts told Newsweek. FRED DUFOUR/Getty Images

Trump's first administration contained China hawks, and during his first term, Trump slapped tariffs and other barriers to tackle what he said were Beijing's unfair trade practices and intellectual property theft.

According to Lyle Goldstein, director for Asia Engagement at Defense Priorities, Beijing is wary of a Trump White House return.

"There is some possibility that the relationship could take a positive turn if Trump is more inclined to strike pragmatic deals with Beijing and less inclined towards directly supporting Taiwan," Goldstein told Newsweek.

"My sense is that Beijing would react by trying to appeal to Trump's pragmatic side but would also steel itself for the more likely intensification of tensions," he said.

Beijing shows little sign of altering its stance either on its ties with Moscow or its belligerence in the South China Sea, including drills around Taiwan, the self-governing island it claims as its own, which Beijing could invade to prove it.

However, Goldstein said if the Trump administration embraced the One China policy, "Beijing would reciprocate by lowering tensions—both in the Strait and also in the South China Sea."

Zhiqun Zhu, a political science professor at Bucknell University, said a Trump presidency would see him continue or even escalate his trade war.

"One can expect some retaliation from China, and bilateral tensions will rise," he told Newsweek.

"Xi is likely to take advantage of Trump's ego and make some symbolic concessions in trade to Trump, such as buying more agricultural products from the U.S. and simultaneously seek Trump's reciprocity in other areas such as Taiwan or the South China Sea."

Russia and the War in Ukraine

Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) and then-President Donald Trump at the G20 Summit on November 30, 2018. Kremlin propagandists have championed Trump's return to the White House. Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) and then-President Donald Trump at the G20 Summit on November 30, 2018. Kremlin propagandists have championed Trump's return to the White House. Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images

Trump has repeatedly said he would end the war in Ukraine within a day were he to retake office. Trump's praise for Putin during the war, calling the Russian president a "genius" at the invasion's start and "smart" as recently as October 25, amplify concerns about what his return to the White House means for U.S. support for Kyiv.

"Trump has indicated a strong preference for Russia over Ukraine in both words and deeds," Robert Orttung, research professor of international affairs at the George Washington University, told Newsweek.

"But his policies are out of step with traditional U.S. national interests and will create strong pushback across the political spectrum and from the intelligence and national security communities," Orttung said. "These groups are rightly skeptical of Russian intentions. Under Trump, the U.S. would appear weak, divided, and easily manipulated by dictators."

Following their September meeting in New York, Trump said he had a good relationship with Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky, but he also reiterated his warm ties with Putin.

Simon Schlegel, senior Ukrainian analyst at the International Crisis Group, said Trump has made it clear he wants to resolve the war quickly and could initiate negotiations between Russia and Ukraine even before he takes office after winning.

"All of this, of course, is very worrying for Ukraine," he told Newsweek. "Ukrainians know very well there is no easy way out of this and that it's going to mean very painful decisions for the Ukrainian government which the Zelensky presidency is not very good at taking, and which will be necessary if Trump wins.

"There's also a bit of wishful thinking around Donald Trump's possible next presidency that his foreign policy has been so erratic, and so guided by personal friendships and personal grudges, that if he would try to negotiate with Putin and Putin would let him run into a wall, then he would put all his support behind Ukraine."

"A lot of Ukrainians find consolation in the unpredictability of what Trump is going and also because it is not clear what Kamala Harris winning means for Ukraine," Schlegel added.

Iran

Photo-illustration by Newsweek/Getty

During Trump's presidency, tensions between Washington and Tehran soared after he pulled the U.S. out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which had imposed restrictions on Iran's nuclear program.

Two years later, Iran issued an arrest warrant for Trump and his aides after the killing of top Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in an airstrike in Iraq.

Hamidreza Azizi, a research fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, said there is no unified view in the Islamic Republic about what a Trump victory might mean. However, the dominant opinion among Tehran's political elite "is that the situation is going to get worse for Iran."

Azizi said this is due to Trump's history of "maximum pressure" on Iran, his alliance with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his support for Israel "and his unpredictability."

A second group in Iran believes that the overarching hostility between Tehran and Washington will remain, regardless of who is in the White House. However, a minority hopes that a Trump presidency would be better for Iran "because he's more open to business, and if you are going to make a deal with Trump, it would be easier with him than with Kamala Harris," Azizi said.

The repercussions of U.S.-Iranian relations will be felt across the Middle East. Tehran backs Hamas in Gaza, which Israel has bombarded following the Palestinian militant group's October 7, 2023, attacks.

The conflict has widened to include Hezbollah in Lebanon, whose leaders Israel has targeted, while the U.S. and the United Kingdom are targeting other Iranian proxies, the Houthis in Yemen, following the group's attacks on Red Sea shipping.

"With Trump, there is a winner and a loser. There's no gray zone, and there's not a diplomatic zone, really," said Gene Moran, a national security expert and former adviser to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, "so I think we might see a more brash approach with Iran."

"I think there would be certainly tougher words," Moran told Newsweek. "We could see Trump take more aggressive action in cutting off funding more completely. I think Biden has allowed money to move in ways that probably could have been prevented more aggressively."

The signals Trump has sent so far could encourage Netanyahu to take the next step in the conflict with Iran between the election and taking the oath of office.

"My fear is that in that scenario—even in the period between November and January—you're going to see an actual war between Iran and Israel," Azizi said.

North Korea

Then-U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un talk in the Demilitarized Zone on June 30, 2019. There is speculation over what another Trump presidency would mean for ties between Washington and... Then-U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un talk in the Demilitarized Zone on June 30, 2019. There is speculation over what another Trump presidency would mean for ties between Washington and Pyongyang. BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/Getty Images

As the first U.S. president to ever step inside North Korea, Trump told podcast host Joe Rogan that he "got along great" with the secretive state's leader.

But Trump's view of Kim Jong Un as both "little rocket man" and "wingman" has reinforced concerns about his attitude toward Pyongyang, which test-launched an intercontinental ballistic missile on Thursday—five days before the U.S. election.

Karl Friedhoff, a fellow for Asia Studies at the Chicago Council on Foreign Affairs, said that if Trump were elected, there would be little interagency coordination, which Pyongyang could leverage.

"I think we're likely to see chaos," Friedhoff told Newsweek."We'll see a roller coaster vacillating from very high tensions to highly choreographed personal diplomacy between leaders."

Friedhoff said that when Kim and Trump last met in Vietnam in February 2019, Pyongyang came in unprepared to make any deal, but "that won't be the case this time around.

"They'll be much better prepared with a negotiating package and will seek to exploit all of Trump's weaknesses. Those negotiations will be a real wild card for Trump's presidency and the region."

South Korea is the linchpin of the U.S. alliance architecture, and Friedhoff said that Trump has been "steadily trying to claw that pin loose."

During his first presidency, the presence of 28,000 American troops in South Korea prompted Trump to accuse Seoul of "free-riding" on U.S. military might.

The current agreement expires next year, but in October, the U.S. and South Korea announced a new cost-sharing agreement for U.S. forces in South Korea that both sides were keen to complete ahead of a possible Trump administration, CNN reported.

"The most extreme nonwar result would likely be a South Korean nuclear weapons program coming online within the Trump presidency, and the ripple effects of that program washing up on the shores of Japan," said Friedhoff.

"The development of such a program would be extremely risky in the time between the program being discovered—and it will be discovered—and those weapons becoming operable."

Newsweek · by Brendan Cole · November 3, 2024

13. Chinese Logistics Operators Are Getting Into U.S. Warehousing

Excerpts:

The companies have been investing in U.S. sales at a time when regulatory changes are in the pipeline that would make it more complicated and expensive to ship directly to Americans from China.

The Biden administration said in September that it would restrict use of a tariff policy called the de minimis rule that allows packages valued at under $800 to enter the country without duty or customs screening, a provision that the Chinese e-commerce sellers have used to ship their goods to U.S. customers.

Jason Tolliver, head of logistics and industrial real estate at real-estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield, said some companies are storing more goods in the U.S. to prepare for the prospect of additional tariffs on products made in China. “Regardless of who wins the U.S. presidential election, both parties have a platform where tariffs are a part of their policy, and particularly tariffs against China,” Tolliver said.

Experts say the leasing activity has been a bright spot for warehouse owners as the broader U.S. warehousing market has contracted following frenzied demand during the pandemic.

The vacancy rate for industrial real estate climbed to 6.4% in the third quarter, up from 4.6% in the same period a year earlier and the highest quarterly reading since the end of 2014, according to Cushman.

Chinese Logistics Operators Are Getting Into U.S. Warehousing

The growing leasing activity comes as e-commerce operators are trying to reach more American consumers

https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinese-logistics-operators-are-getting-into-u-s-warehousing-199a0f0d?mod=latest_headlines

By Liz Young

Nov. 4, 2024 5:30 am ET

China-founded fast-fashion site Shein has a warehouse in Whitestown, Ind. Photo: Getty Images

Logistics operators with roots in China are taking on more warehouse space across the U.S. amid broad changes in sourcing, manufacturing and global trade flows.

Prologis, the world’s largest industrial real-estate operator, said it estimates China-based third-party logistics providers and e-commerce companies accounted for 20% of net new warehouse leasing across the U.S. this year through the third quarter, which company officials say is up sharply over recent years.

Chris Caton, the company’s managing director for global strategy and analytics, said Prologis has long leased space to Chinese retailers and logistics operators and the demand “has clearly accelerated this year.”

Industrial real-estate experts said some of the companies are based in China, while others have their headquarters in the U.S. or elsewhere and primarily handle logistics from China to the U.S. Many of the logistics operators have focused on leasing space in major U.S. logistics markets near ports in Southern California, New Jersey and Savannah, Ga.

In New Jersey, logistics companies based in China leased 5.6 million square feet of warehouse space through the third quarter, nearly three times the amount of space those companies leased in that region in all of 2023, according to real-estate services firm JLL.

Chinese e-commerce giants Alibaba Group and JD.com have been expanding their warehousing presence in the U.S., and third-party logistics firms including Western Post, Lecangs and Elogistek have also stepped up leasing.

Western Post’s website lists an address in Shenzhen, China. The website says it provides services such as warehousing, ocean freight and customs handling. The company didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Lecangs, with an address in Perris, Calif., is a third-party logistics subsidiary of China-based furniture manufacturer Loctek, according to the company’s website. The company didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Elogistek’s website lists an address in Fontana, Calif., and says it is a supply-chain management company with a presence in Ningbo, China. The website includes links to YQN Logistics, a Shanghai-based freight forwarder. Elogistek didn’t provide comment.

Prologis’s Caton said some logistics providers are setting up warehouses in response to the rapid growth of China-founded discount retailers such as Shein and Temu, which have won over American shoppers with rock-bottom prices on products ranging from apparel to home goods.

“Some of these concepts are growing 25%, 50% year on year,” Caton said. “When you go from having a $5 [billion] to $10 [billion], or $10 [billion] to $20 billion online concept, you need a supply chain to execute on that.”

Fast-fashion site Shein and shopping app Temu have been building out U.S. supply chains to speed up fulfillment. The companies have typically shipped most orders via air directly to U.S. consumers from suppliers in Asia, with delivery times that could extend beyond a week, far beyond the average shipping time of retail rivals such as Amazon.com, Walmart and Target.

Shein, based in Singapore, has opened warehouses in Indiana and California. A company spokesperson said Shein is also using third-party logistics providers across the U.S.

The U.S. arm of Temu, owned by Chinese e-commerce company PDD Holdings, has been adding American brands and sellers with inventory stored in the U.S. to its low-price marketplace. A Temu spokesperson said the third-party sellers on its marketplace use a variety of logistics operators.

The companies have been investing in U.S. sales at a time when regulatory changes are in the pipeline that would make it more complicated and expensive to ship directly to Americans from China.

The Biden administration said in September that it would restrict use of a tariff policy called the de minimis rule that allows packages valued at under $800 to enter the country without duty or customs screening, a provision that the Chinese e-commerce sellers have used to ship their goods to U.S. customers.

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection technician monitors overseas parcels at the agency’s overseas mail inspection facility at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. Photo: Associated Press

Jason Tolliver, head of logistics and industrial real estate at real-estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield, said some companies are storing more goods in the U.S. to prepare for the prospect of additional tariffs on products made in China. “Regardless of who wins the U.S. presidential election, both parties have a platform where tariffs are a part of their policy, and particularly tariffs against China,” Tolliver said.

Experts say the leasing activity has been a bright spot for warehouse owners as the broader U.S. warehousing market has contracted following frenzied demand during the pandemic.

The vacancy rate for industrial real estate climbed to 6.4% in the third quarter, up from 4.6% in the same period a year earlier and the highest quarterly reading since the end of 2014, according to Cushman.

Write to Liz Young at liz.young@wsj.com

14. Israel says it carried out ground raid into Syria, seizing a Syrian citizen connected to Iran

Israel says it carried out ground raid into Syria, seizing a Syrian citizen connected to Iran

By MELANIE LIDMAN and SAMY MAGDY

Updated 9:29 PM EST, November 3, 2024

AP · by MELANIE LIDMAN · November 3, 2024

JERUSALEM (AP) — The Israeli military said Sunday it has carried out a ground raid into Syria, seizing a Syrian citizen involved in Iranian networks. It was the first time in the current war that Israel announced its troops operated in Syrian territory.

Israel has carried out airstrikes in Syria multiple times over the past year, targeting members of Lebanon’s Hezbollah and officials from Iran, the close ally of both Hezbollah and Syria. But it has not previously made public any ground forays into Syria.

The Israeli military said the seizure was part of a special operation “that took place in recent months,” though it did not say exactly when it occurred. Syria did not immediately confirm the announcement, but a pro-government Syrian radio station, Sham FM, reported Sunday that Israeli forces carried out a “kidnapping operation” over the summer targeting a man in the south of the country.

Israel has waged an escalating campaign of bombardment in Lebanon for the past six weeks, as well as a ground invasion along the countries’ shared border, vowing to cripple Hezbollah. On Saturday, an Israeli military official said naval forces carried out a raid in a northern Lebanese town, seizing a man they called a senior Hezbollah operative.

The army identified the man as Ali Soleiman al-Assi, saying he lives in the southern Syrian region of Saida. It said the man had been under military surveillance for many months and was involved in Iranian initiatives targeting areas of the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights near the border with Syria.

Body camera video of the raid released by the army showed soldiers seizing a man in a white tank top inside a building. The man was brought to Israel for interrogation, the military said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the border with Lebanon on Sunday, saying his focus was trying to keep Hezbollah from rearming itself through the “oxygen lifeline” of Iranian weapons transferred to Lebanon via Syria. Israel says its campaign in Lebanon aims to push Hezbollah away from the border and put an end to more than a year of fire by the group into northern Israel.

Israel’s strikes in Lebanon have killed more than 2,500 people over the past year. In Israel, 69 people have been killed by Hezbollah projectiles.

On the U.S. presidential campaign trail this weekend, Vice President Kamala Harris acknowledged progressives and members of the state’s significant population of Arab Americans who are angry at the Biden administration for its continuation of the U.S. alliance with Israel as the Netanyahu government presses its war against Hamas in Gaza.

“I have been very clear that the level of death of innocent Palestinians is unconscionable,” Harris told reporters.

In East Lansing, Michigan, she addressed the issue soon after beginning her remarks. “As president I will do everything in my power to end the war in Gaza, to bring home the hostages, end the suffering in Gaza, ensure Israel is secure and ensure the Palestinian people can realize their right to freedom, dignity and self-determination,” she said.

Some students in East Lansing voiced their opposition Sunday with audible calls for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war. At least one attendee was escorted out after the cease-fire calls.

Meanwhile, Israeli forces continued an offensive in the northern Gaza Strip, where the military has said it is battling Hamas fighters who regrouped there.

Shell fire hit Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, injuring patients, including children, hospital director Hossam Abu Safiya said in a statement to the media. He said the shells hit the hospital’s nursery, dormitory and water tanks just after a delegation from the World Health Organization ended a visit.

Kamal Adwan and two other nearby hospitals have been hit by Israel several times during the fighting. Earlier this month, Israeli troops stormed Kamal Adwan, detaining a large number of people, including much of the staff, Abu Safiya said at the time of the raid. The military said those detained included members of Hamas, without providing evidence, and said weapons were found in the facility.

But the Israel Defense Forces in a statement denied striking Kamal Adwan on Sunday, blaming “an explosive device planted by the terrorist organizations in Gaza” for the attack.

“Attacks on civilians, including humanitarian workers, and what remains of Gaza’s civilian facilities and infrastructure must stop,” UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said in a statement Saturday. “The entire Palestinian population in North Gaza, especially children, is at imminent risk of dying from disease, famine, and the ongoing bombardments.”

In southern Gaza, an Israeli strike hit a group of people gathered outside in an eastern district of Khan Younis, killing at least eight Palestinians, including four children and a woman, the territory’s Health Ministry’s emergency services said. The city’s Nasser Hospital, which received most of the bodies, confirmed the figures.

Palestinian officials said an Israeli drone strike on Saturday hit a clinic in northern Gaza where children were being vaccinated for polio, wounding six people including four children. The Israeli military denied responsibility.

Dr. Munir al-Boursh, director general of the Gaza Health Ministry, told The Associated Press that a quadcopter struck the Sheikh Radwan clinic in Gaza City early Saturday afternoon, just a few minutes after a United Nations delegation left the facility.

UNICEF and WHO, which are jointly carrying out the polio vaccination campaign, expressed concern over the reported strike. Rosalia Bollen, a spokesperson for UNICEF, said the strike occurred when a “humanitarian pause” agreed to by Israel to allow vaccinations was in effect.

Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, an Israeli military spokesperson, said that “contrary to the claims, an initial review determined that the (Israeli military) did not strike in the area at the specified time.”

It was not possible to resolve the conflicting accounts. Israeli forces have repeatedly raided hospitals in Gaza over the course of the war, saying Hamas uses them for militant purposes, allegations denied by Palestinian health officials. Hamas fighters are also operating in the north, battling Israeli forces.

Northern Gaza has been encircled by Israeli forces and largely isolated for the past year. Israel has been carrying out another offensive there in recent weeks that has killed hundreds of people and displaced tens of thousands.

A scaled-down campaign to administer a second dose of the polio vaccine began Saturday in parts of northern Gaza. It had been postponed from Oct. 23 due to lack of access, Israeli bombings and mass evacuation orders, and the lack of assurances for humanitarian pauses, a U.N. statement said.

Administration of the first doses was carried out in September across the Gaza Strip, including the north.

At least 100,000 people have been forced to evacuate from areas of north Gaza toward Gaza City in the past few weeks, but around 15,000 children under the age of 10 remain in northern towns, including Jabaliya, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun, which are inaccessible, according to the U.N.

The final phase of the polio vaccination campaign had aimed to reach an estimated 119,000 children in the north with a second dose of the oral polio vaccine, the agencies said, but “achieving this target is now unlikely due to access constraints.”

They say 90% of children in every community must be vaccinated to prevent the spread of the disease.

The campaign was launched after the first polio case was reported in Gaza in 25 years — a 10-month-old boy, now paralyzed in the leg. The World Health Organization said the presence of a paralysis case indicates there could be hundreds more who have been infected but aren’t showing symptoms.

The war began on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting another 250. Israel’s offensive has killed over 43,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities, who do not say how many were combatants but say more than half were women and children.

___

Magdy reported from Cairo.

___

Follow AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war

MELANIE LIDMAN

Lidman is an Associated Press reporter based in Tel Aviv, Israel.

AP · by MELANIE LIDMAN · November 3, 2024

15. An Indonesian Tribe’s Language Gets an Alphabet: Korea’s

Fascinating. Korea is truly a global pivotal state. The Hangul alphabet does seem to be a very efficient phonetic alphabet.

Excerpts:

In 2009, Hangul was introduced as a script for Cia-Cia after a visit by South Korean academics. Two instructors were sent from Baubau to South Korea to learn Hangul and develop a method for using it to teach Cia-Cia.

Abidin, a native Cia-Cia speaker who like many Indonesians goes by a single name, was one of them. He spent six months at Seoul National University and is considered the pioneer of transcribing Cia-Cia into Hangul.

“After I learned Hangul, I found that there are certain Cia-Cia tones and pronunciations that could be denoted by Hangul characters. It’s not exactly the same but it’s really close,” Mr. Abidin said.

“We borrow the Hangul to preserve our language. We mix and match the old and modern alphabet and that makes it uniquely Cia-Cia,” he said, referring to some Hangul characters that are rarely used in Korean these days.

Some critics have raised concerns about the use of Hangul, saying it could lead to cultural domination or distort the community’s identity. But others argue that the international mix could benefit the preservation process.

An Indonesian Tribe’s Language Gets an Alphabet: Korea’s

The Cia-Cia language has been passed down orally for centuries. Now the tribe’s children are learning to write it in Hangul, the Korean script.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/04/world/asia/indonesia-korea-hangul.html

Teaching Hangul, the Korean alphabet, to Cia-Cia children in Baubau, Indonesia. People trying to preserve the tribe’s spoken language found that the Korean script was a good fit for it.Credit...Nyimas Laula for The New York Times

By Muktita Suhartono

Reporting from Baubau, Indonesia

Nov. 4, 2024, 12:02 a.m. ET

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Excited chatter filled the classroom as the lesson began. Every desk had a paper nameplate on it with the occupant’s name written in the Korean alphabet, called Hangul. Soon, the students were following their instructor’s lead and etching the distinctive circles and lines of the script in their notebooks.

But these fourth graders were not studying the Korean language. They were using Hangul to write and learn theirs: Cia-Cia, an indigenous language that has no script. It has survived orally for centuries in Indonesia, and is now spoken by about 93,000 people in the Cia-Cia tribe on Buton Island, southeast of the peninsula of Sulawesi Island in Indonesia’s vast archipelago.

“Say, ‘ph.’ Hold a piece of paper in front of your mouth and make sure the paper moves when you pronounce it,” Deuk-young Jung, who has been teaching the alphabet here for more than a decade, told his 40 or so students at Hendea Elementary School, south of the town of Baubau.

Indonesia is home to myriad tribes and cultures, and to more than 700 native languages. It is the most linguistically diverse nation in the world after neighboring Papua New Guinea. On Buton Island alone, there are a handful of local languages and almost two dozen dialects. However, most of them are at risk of disappearing because they do not have a script.

“Language is the wealth of a community, a legacy,” said Amirul Tamim, a former mayor of Baubau who was been instrumental in efforts to preserve the Cia-Cia language. “Language shows the civilization of a tribe, and a language without its own alphabet loses its authenticity.”

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Deuk-young Jung has been teaching Hangul to children in Baubau for more than a decade.Credit...Nyimas Laula for The New York Times

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Students from fourth through sixth grade are being taught to use the Korean script for Cia-Cia.Credit...Nyimas Laula for The New York Times

Conservationists initially tried using Arabic script for Cia-Cia because the syllable-timed language, unlike Indonesia’s national language, could not be easily transliterated into the Roman alphabet. On Buton, most people speak the Wolio dialect, which has been written in the Arabic alphabet since the 1500s. But Arabic turned out to be unsuitable for Cia-Cia, which has more in common with Korean.

In 2009, Hangul was introduced as a script for Cia-Cia after a visit by South Korean academics. Two instructors were sent from Baubau to South Korea to learn Hangul and develop a method for using it to teach Cia-Cia.

Abidin, a native Cia-Cia speaker who like many Indonesians goes by a single name, was one of them. He spent six months at Seoul National University and is considered the pioneer of transcribing Cia-Cia into Hangul.

“After I learned Hangul, I found that there are certain Cia-Cia tones and pronunciations that could be denoted by Hangul characters. It’s not exactly the same but it’s really close,” Mr. Abidin said.

“We borrow the Hangul to preserve our language. We mix and match the old and modern alphabet and that makes it uniquely Cia-Cia,” he said, referring to some Hangul characters that are rarely used in Korean these days.

Some critics have raised concerns about the use of Hangul, saying it could lead to cultural domination or distort the community’s identity. But others argue that the international mix could benefit the preservation process.

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In the Sorawolio district of Baubau, street signs are in both Bahasa Indonesia, the national language, and Cia-Cia, using Hangul. Credit...Nyimas Laula for The New York Times

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Cia-Cia people selling produce from their farms at a traditional market in Baubau. Few members of the tribe use Hangul.Credit...Nyimas Laula for The New York Times

“Indonesia’s culture is diverse and resilient,” said Mr. Amirul, the former mayor. “Let us not close ourselves to the entry of other cultures. We have the means to preserve our traditional language, so why allow it to become extinct?”

Seoul National University has tried for several years to promulgate Hangul — which was developed by a Korean king, Sejong, in the 1400s — as a script for languages without a writing system. Cia-Cia has been its only success.

Even that program, under which elementary to high school students were taught Hangul, was shelved in Baubau for a decade because of a lack of teachers, among other issues. It found new momentum after a Cia-Cia dictionary was published in 2020, which uses Hangul characters and gives a translation of the word into Bahasa Indonesia, the national language.

In the Sorawolio district of Baubau today, the names of streets, schools and public facilities are displayed in the Roman and Korean alphabets. Schools have made their own textbooks, and fourth- through sixth-grade students are taught the Korean script.

“It’s easy to learn the Hangul because we are familiar with the words already as we speak it at home,” said Nurfin, 24, who once was among the top three students in her Hangul class. “I still remember some, but because I rarely use it, I have forgotten a lot.”

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“It is good to have a written form of the language, but more importantly to have it spoken and used in daily life,” said Djunuddin, a Cia-Cia elder.Credit...Nyimas Laula for The New York Times

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A traditional Cia-Cia house. Fears about the tribe’s future have prompted community elders and scholars to work together to preserve the language.Credit...Nyimas Laula for The New York Times

Cia-Cia remains largely a spoken language. Relatively few members of the tribe are conversant with Hangul. The language also faces pressure from the dominance of Bahasa.

“It is good to have a written form of the language, but more importantly to have it spoken and used in daily life,” Djunuddin, a local elder, said of Cia-Cia. “Children nowadays, they don’t speak the Cia-Cia language anymore. They are so used to using Bahasa Indonesia, only us, the older generation, still speaks it,” he said. Many native words have been lost, he said.

Fears about the tribe’s future have prompted community elders and scholars to work together to preserve the language. Native words are continually being collected and written down in Hangul, with guidance from the elders. Parents are being encouraged to speak Cia-Cia to their children at home, and folk tales are being transcribed into Hangul for the younger generation to learn.

“When a language becomes extinct, the identity, the local wisdom of that tribe will also disappear,” said La Ode Alirman, a sociologist who lives in Baubau. “By documenting our folk tales, we get to pass on our local wisdom, the history of our ancestors, our memory and tribe’s identity to the next generation for them to hold on to.”

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Students at a Hangul school in Baubau performing a traditional Korean dance.Credit...Nyimas Laula for The New York Times

Muktita Suhartono reports on Thailand and Indonesia. She is based in Bangkok. More about Muktita Suhartono

16. Disinformation remains major campaign concern as US election nears

Disinformation remains major campaign concern as US election nears

False information could play a critical role in what is expected to be a razor-thin race to the White House between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.

Ira Spitzer

04 Nov 2024 03:17PM

(Updated: 04 Nov 2024 04:22PM)

channelnewsasia.com

SAN FRANCISCO: As election day approaches, voters in the United States are facing a deluge of false information online.

Untruths on issues ranging from voter fraud to false stories about the candidates have spread rapidly on social media, often amplified by artificial intelligence tools.

“It’s a huge problem. Nearly 60 per cent of Americans say they don't know what to believe about the election,” said Carah Ong Whaley, vice president of election protection at Issue One, a non-profit election watchdog group.

One widely shared video showed submitted ballots supposedly being ripped up in the swing state of Pennsylvania. US intelligence agencies stated the video was fake, saying it was the work of Russian propagandists.

Washington has accused foreign actors of seeking to interfere with the vote by spreading false claims, with intelligence agencies specifically calling out Russia, Iran and China for election influence campaigns.

SOCIAL MEDIA INTENSIFIES FALSEHOODS

Major changes to the social media landscape have allowed disinformation to spread more easily, leading to fears it could play a critical role in what is expected to be a razor-thin race to the White House.

Since the 2020 election, companies including Meta – the parent of Facebook and Instagram – have taken a major step back from trying to moderate content.

With no legal obligation to do so in the US, and facing political pressure from both sides, many firms decided it was just not worth it.

Justin Buchler, an associate professor of political science at the Case Western Reserve University, said online platforms could find it tricky to discern truth from falsehoods.

“When we face those kinds of dilemmas, the problem that social media companies have is if they start labelling a piece of information as misinformation and disinformation, and restrict it in some way - what happens if that claim turns out to be true?” he asked.

It is even less clear what impact disinformation might have on the outcome of an election, as the main determinant to an individual voter’s choice is just party identification, Buchler added.

“It's hard to say how many votes are swayed by misinformation or disinformation. But in a close election – as the 2024 election is likely to be – in principle, even a small number of votes could determine an outcome,” he told CNA.

FALSEHOODS COULD CAUSE CHAOS

Experts said that once the disinformation is out there – whether the goal is to support a candidate or to simply sow chaos – it can easily spread organically.

“Probably, most people who spread disinformation (are) doing it unknowingly,” said Darren Linvill, co-director of Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub, adding that some may be locked in an echo chamber.

“They do it because the message confirms their existing beliefs. It makes them feel good about their existing beliefs, and they share it for those reasons.”

Many believe disinformation could be an even more significant factor in this election after voting has ended.

Election personnel have already faced threats dating back to the previous election, while US officials have warned that workers may face heightened risks in the current climate.

Researchers said false information on social media, particularly Facebook, played a crucial role in spreading lies that led to violent unrest on Jan 6, 2021.

On that day, die-hard supporters of then-president – and current Republican nominee – Donald Trump stormed the Capitol to prevent Joe Biden from taking office, believing poll results were fraudulent.

Listen:

Supporters of US President Donald Trump gather with signs claiming a stolen election outside the Philadelphia Convention Center as they await general election tabulation results, Nov 6, 2020. (File Photo: AP/John Minchillo)

This time, much of the disinformation in the lead up to the race to the White House has been focused on undermining the integrity of the electoral process. These claims have been amplified by the Trump campaign and supporters like billionaire Elon Musk.

Observers expressed fears that if false information takes hold during a delay in declaring a winner, many Americans could be left unsure about what to believe and increase the risk of another bout of violence in the election aftermath.

Source: CNA/dn(lt)

channelnewsasia.com

17. Adapting for Agility: How Flexible Funding in Defense Addresses Emerging Threats

Excerpts:

Conclusion: A Vision for an Agile Future

In today’s complex defense environment, adaptability is paramount. A flexible funding model, as endorsed by Army Under Secretary Camarillo and supported by the PPBE Reform Commission, could play a vital role in equipping the U.S. military with the resources needed to respond to a rapidly changing threat landscape. By moving away from rigid budget cycles and embracing a more dynamic approach, the DoD and USSOCOM can ensure that their spending aligns with the demands of modern warfare and great power competition.

The potential benefits of flexible funding are vast: from enabling rapid technology integration to enhancing operational agility and promoting strategic alignment. However, realizing this vision will require overcoming entrenched practices, refining accountability structures, and adopting a forward-thinking approach to procurement and resource allocation. As global threats continue to evolve, so must the funding mechanisms that support defense, ensuring that the U.S. military remains equipped and agile in the face of the unexpected.

Adapting for Agility: How Flexible Funding in Defense Addresses Emerging Threats

By the Veritas Rei Group

https://www.strategycentral.io/post/adapting-for-agility-how-flexible-funding-in-defense-addresses-emerging-threats?postId=3f7a7013-3987-4adb-a0ae-d4fda8b832e2&utm

Introduction

In the ever-evolving defense landscape, where threats and technologies develop faster than traditional processes can accommodate, agility in resource allocation has become paramount. This need for rapid adaptation has been underscored by thought leaders like Army Under Secretary Gabe Camarillo, who has advocated for a more flexible spending model within defense acquisitions. This model, which allows funds to be grouped into broader categories rather than assigned to specific systems, holds promise for enhancing the U.S. military’s responsiveness to emerging threats and technological advancements.

This article delves into how flexible funding can address defense challenges, with a focus on its potential for organizations like the U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) and its alignment with the recent Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution (PPBE) Reform Commission recommendations.

The Current State of Defense Spending

Traditional defense funding practices follow rigid budget cycles and structured allocations, designed in an era when military threats and innovations advanced at a slower pace. Historically, budgets have been assigned to specific programs or systems years in advance, a practice that, while thorough, struggles to keep up with modern, dynamic threats. For instance, the current defense budget process is less effective in rapidly funding new initiatives or reallocating resources as technologies evolve. This inflexibility can result in inefficiencies, where funds become locked into legacy projects, and by the time they are deployed, the relevance of those systems may have diminished.

This model does not adequately address the fluidity of modern warfare and the growing importance of technology-centric combat strategies. In an age where cyber threats and electronic warfare capabilities can shift overnight, there is an urgent need for a budgetary approach that can anticipate and swiftly react to such changes.

The Case for Flexible Funding

Flexible funding in defense refers to an adaptable budget structure where funds are pooled into broader categories like unmanned aerial systems, artificial intelligence (AI), or electronic warfare, rather than being assigned to specific weapons or systems. This model offers several advantages:

Rapid Resource Allocation: Flexible funding enables defense departments to pivot resources toward areas of immediate concern. For instance, if a new cybersecurity threat emerges, funds can be allocated promptly to bolster cyber defenses without waiting for a new budget cycle.
Enhanced Technological Adaptation: By allowing funds to support technological advancements across categories, defense agencies can more easily incorporate cutting-edge technologies like AI or machine learning into their operations.
Efficient Modernization: Rather than channeling funds into outdated systems, flexible funding empowers defense entities to invest in modernization aligned with current and future operational needs.

According to Under Secretary Camarillo, this approach would ensure that spending remains aligned with current and anticipated threats, a critical capability as the U.S. military pivots to address great power competition and complex global threats.

The USSOCOM Perspective

USSOCOM, as a highly specialized entity within the U.S. military, faces unique operational demands that flexible funding could directly address. Tasked with unconventional missions ranging from counterterrorism to direct action, USSOCOM must remain agile and responsive to an array of global threats. Traditional, rigid budget allocations often hinder this agility, leaving USSOCOM dependent on lengthy reprogramming requests to access needed funds.

The PPBE Reform Commission recently advocated for budget models that prioritize agility and the alignment of resources with strategic goals. For USSOCOM, this recommendation is especially relevant as it seeks to strengthen capabilities in areas such as electronic warfare, cyber operations, and intelligence. By adopting flexible funding, USSOCOM could allocate resources more effectively across these advanced technologies and address new threats without bureaucratic delays.

How Flexible Funding Aligns with PPBE Reform

The Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution (PPBE) Reform Commission’s recommendations underscore the need for a defense budgeting approach that emphasizes speed and adaptability. Traditionally, the PPBE process has been meticulous, but its multi-year budget cycle has limited the defense sector’s ability to respond to rapid shifts in the threat landscape.

PPBE reform calls for a more fluid budgetary structure that would allow defense organizations to reallocate resources with greater freedom and align spending with immediate strategic needs. This alignment is critical as the U.S. navigates an era marked by great power competition, where the capabilities of potential adversaries evolve quickly, necessitating an equally agile U.S. response. Flexible funding fits well within the PPBE reform framework, as it allows the Department of Defense (DoD) to execute an agile resourcing strategy, aligning resources with pressing priorities rather than pre-determined programmatic budgets.

Implementing Flexible Funding: Challenges and Solutions

Implementing flexible funding, while promising, is not without challenges. Here are some potential obstacles and solutions for a successful shift toward a more adaptive budgeting model:

Overcoming Bureaucratic Resistance: Traditional budget models have created deeply entrenched processes within the DoD. Transitioning to a flexible funding model will require a significant shift in mindset and operational practices. Implementing gradual changes and training programs can help ease this transition.
Ensuring Accountability: With increased flexibility comes the risk of resource misallocation. Establishing clear accountability frameworks and performance metrics will be essential to ensure that funds are used effectively and transparently.
Adapting Procurement Protocols: Defense procurement often involves lengthy approval processes, even for critical technologies. Streamlining procurement protocols to align with flexible funding will be essential for rapid acquisition of needed resources.
Technology and Data Integration: A flexible funding model will depend on real-time data insights to make informed resource allocation decisions. Investments in data analytics and AI-driven decision-making tools can help defense organizations better understand their resource needs and respond accordingly.

Potential Advantages for Modern Warfare

Modern warfare has shifted from traditional combat to a more technology-centric approach, where control over cyber networks, data, and communications channels is as crucial as physical assets. Flexible funding can enhance capabilities in these areas in several ways:

Cybersecurity: Cyber warfare and cybersecurity are increasingly critical in defense. Flexible funding would allow the DoD to respond quickly to new cyber threats, reinforcing protections and launching countermeasures without waiting for additional budget approvals.
Electronic Warfare: As adversaries become more technologically sophisticated, electronic warfare capabilities will play a crucial role in defense. Flexible funding allows for continual investment in tools and strategies that safeguard communications and GPS networks from interference.
Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Systems: AI and autonomous systems are revolutionizing defense strategies. With flexible funding, the DoD can continually invest in AI research and development, ensuring the military remains at the forefront of innovation.

The Future of Defense Spending: Strategic Implications

Transitioning to a flexible funding model could lead to broader strategic implications for U.S. defense policy:

Enhanced Great Power Competition Readiness: As the U.S. contends with rivals such as China and Russia, flexible funding could give it a significant advantage, allowing for rapid investment in response to emerging capabilities from adversaries.
Increased Collaboration: A flexible funding model would foster collaboration between defense departments and private industry, especially in high-tech fields like cybersecurity, AI, and quantum computing. By easing budgetary constraints, defense agencies can engage with private-sector innovators to bring cutting-edge technologies into military use more swiftly.
Optimized Defense Modernization: Modernization remains an ongoing priority for the U.S. military, as it seeks to replace legacy systems with advanced solutions. Flexible funding could streamline this process, making it easier to retire outdated equipment and invest in new, relevant technologies.

Conclusion: A Vision for an Agile Future

In today’s complex defense environment, adaptability is paramount. A flexible funding model, as endorsed by Army Under Secretary Camarillo and supported by the PPBE Reform Commission, could play a vital role in equipping the U.S. military with the resources needed to respond to a rapidly changing threat landscape. By moving away from rigid budget cycles and embracing a more dynamic approach, the DoD and USSOCOM can ensure that their spending aligns with the demands of modern warfare and great power competition.

The potential benefits of flexible funding are vast: from enabling rapid technology integration to enhancing operational agility and promoting strategic alignment. However, realizing this vision will require overcoming entrenched practices, refining accountability structures, and adopting a forward-thinking approach to procurement and resource allocation. As global threats continue to evolve, so must the funding mechanisms that support defense, ensuring that the U.S. military remains equipped and agile in the face of the unexpected.

18. ‘Every single American’ a target of election interference, former DHS official says

My last reminder before the election tomorrow. It is all of our responsibility to be informed and engaged.

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

Access NSS HERE (from the 2017 National Security Strategy signed by Donald Trump)

‘Every single American’ a target of election interference, former DHS official says

defenseone.com · by David DiMolfetta

Adversaries have heavily accelerated efforts to sway the outcome of next week’s presidential election.

By David DiMolfetta

Cybersecurity Reporter, Nextgov/FCW

November 1, 2024

Foreign adversaries aiming to influence next week’s election and sway the outcome of the presidential race are targeting “every single American” in their efforts, a former Department of Homeland Security official warned Thursday.

Suzanne Spaulding, who led the predecessor organization under DHS that later became the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said that nations including Russia and Iran are ramping up operations because the U.S. election is an existential issue for their position on the world stage.

“We are the target, and Americans should not take that lightly,” Spaulding, now a senior homeland security policy adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said on an election security panel at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington, D.C.-based national security think tank. “[Americans] should be demanding of policymakers that they have a vigorous response to counter this activity.”

Foreign election disruption efforts have accelerated in the weeks and months leading up to the Nov. 5 presidential election. They’ve been conducted by Russia, Iran and China, the latter two of which have successfully compromised tangible confidential data or communications of the two major presidential campaigns that are deadlocked in national polls.

Russia, meanwhile, has conducted complex and prolonged disinformation campaigns to sway Americans in favor of voting for former president Donald Trump, according to intelligence assessments.

Adversaries will likely amplify disinformation campaigns about election results after Nov. 5 and may focus on domestic efforts to encourage physical violence between next month and Inauguration Day in January, officials warned last week.

“Americans should be confident about the legitimacy of [the election] process and the security of that process, and that's an important role that CISA plays,” Spaulding said. “CISA makes it very clear that Americans should look to authoritative sources, and to me, that is sources with first-hand information” about developments, she said, encouraging Americans to lean on local officials administering the election next week.

CISA Director Jen Easterly on Wednesday said the agency has “not seen any evidence of foreign adversaries getting into our election infrastructure,” a statement that’s lined up with earlier public assessments from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

19. Pentagon Blind to Troop Woes in Areas Across US with Limited Housing Options, Report Finds

Pentagon Blind to Troop Woes in Areas Across US with Limited Housing Options, Report Finds

military.com · by Konstantin Toropin · November 1, 2024

A new government watchdog report has found that the Pentagon is not doing enough to track how much housing is available in communities around its bases, and that's forcing some service members to leave families in other states, work extra jobs or live in recreational vehicles just to afford rent.

Furthermore, the Government Accountability Office report released Wednesday noted that the Pentagon "does not routinely assess" the effects -- both financial and quality-of-life hardships -- that this housing crunch has foisted on service members.

The report is just the latest in a long series of government reports and media coverage that shows the Pentagon has been neglecting the housing needs of troops, and the problem has gotten to a point where any major fix is years away and easier solutions such as boosting pay have proven ineffective.

Military.com reached out to the Pentagon for reaction or comment to the findings but did not receive a reply in time for publication.

At the heart of the problem, according to the report, is the fact that the Defense Department and the services have been neglecting to regularly complete housing requirements and market analyses, or HMRAs.

Those reports are supposed to help installation commanders and military leaders understand not only how much housing is available around the area of a base, but also "economic trends that could affect housing supply and demand."

Pentagon policy, according to the report, says HMRAs are supposed to be done "within a minimum four-year interval," leaving open to interpretation whether that means no less than every four years or at most every four years.

Since Pentagon leaders have not stepped in to clarify, investigators found that "the services have generally followed their own guidance," and the result has been a wide gulf between the branches.

The Navy, for example, had all of its reports done in the last five years while the vast majority -- 89% -- of the Air Force's reports were more than 10 years old.

Officials at Marine Corps Base Hawaii, for example, told investigators that their 2018 report "limited the installation's ability to effectively plan for more updated housing requirements."

However, the report noted that even fully complying with this rule was still not providing the services with a clear picture of the problem.

"Naval Air Station Key West told us even an HRMA conducted as recently as 2021 was outdated given rapid changes in the local housing market in their area," the report said.

The Navy's installation at Key West is a clear example of the problems that service members can face in attaining housing through no fault of their own.

In 2022, Military.com reported that the closure of two barracks buildings sent about 80 sailors scrambling to find new places to live in the expensive and tiny community made up of a group of islands at the southernmost tip of Florida.

The Navy tried to deal with the problem by offering even the youngest single sailors at the base a housing allowance. But the extra cash didn't make much of a difference, because there was simply little housing to be had in an area that has little land to begin with and is also rife with tourists who are willing to pay higher prices.

One sailor told Military.com at the time that two of their fellow sailors "found something on Craigslist where they're living with eight other people in a house."

A year later, the base was still struggling.

The GAO report confirmed that reporting, saying that "service members stationed at this location described significant challenges finding available and affordable housing, despite the most recent HRMA showing a surplus of housing." It noted that Key West's "large share of vacation rentals" play a major role since, while being available housing, they are "cost-prohibitive to rent long-term for many service members."

Living with Termites or Without Air Conditioning

Investigators said that between 2022 and 2024, they visited seven bases.

Four were across the country in Fort Bliss, Texas; Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho; Naval Air Station Key West; and Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, as well as three bases in Hawaii: U.S. Army Garrison Hawaii, Marine Corps Base Hawaii and Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam.

They also held 15 discussion groups where service members told them that the housing problem was not only having financial impacts but affecting their quality of life and mission performance.

Echoing the earlier Military.com reporting, GAO officials were told in Key West that long-term rentals are scarce and typically require significant up-front, move-in costs. Investigators were told that service members had to "withdraw retirement savings, incur significant credit card debt, or secure additional employment" just to be able to afford rent, utilities, gas and groceries.

"Participants in 11 of the 15 discussion groups noted that they or others they knew had second jobs to supplement their income given high costs of housing and living expenses," the report said.

Across the country, some service members were forced to live in homes without air conditioning despite being in a hot, humid climate. One told investigators that they "had to settle for a poor-quality home out in town -- with major termite issues -- just to have somewhere to live."

"At two installations, discussion group participants told us they lived, or knew others who lived, in recreational vehicles due to availability and affordability challenges," the report said.

Others chose to either live farther away from base -- one service member said their commute was two hours -- while troops at two different bases said they left their families behind in other states in order to afford rent.

"Discussion group participants at Mountain Home Air Force Base all agreed that housing was limited near base, and as a result, many service members seek housing about 50 miles away in Boise, Idaho," the report noted.

Many of these problems go unnoticed by leaders at the Pentagon, because the Defense Department simply doesn't ask.

Investigators found that while the Pentagon has tools like surveys or town halls to get feedback on base housing issues, it "does not routinely assess the effects that limited supply or unaffordable housing has on all affected service members."

"The tenant satisfaction survey is not administered to service members who live in private-sector housing -- the majority of service members -- which limits the services' ability to understand the financial and quality-of-life effects of limited supply or unaffordable housing on all affected service members," the report added.

Limited Efforts to Help

Broadly, the idea that service members are struggling with finding housing is not news to leaders at the Pentagon, and there have been several instances -- with the help or insistence of Congress -- where they have tried to address that need with more pay.

In 2021, amid the housing crunch brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin rolled out a boost in the housing allowance, saying that "basic necessities like food and housing" shouldn't be among the things troops worry about. That policy was temporary.

More recently, the Pentagon rolled out "economic hardship bonuses" that Congress authorized in 2023. However, the amount of money given by Congress meant that the most junior service members would only be getting about $20 a month for half a year.

Congress included language in last year's massive military policy bill to allow more flexibility in adjusting the housing allowance to respond to market conditions. There's also language in this year's House version of the defense bill that would increase the housing allowance from covering 95% of housing costs to 100%, though there is no guarantee that provision will be signed into law.

Even so, the GAO report noted that the way the housing allowance is calculated "may not be suitable, especially for areas with limited housing supply or high costs." The cost of living adjustment, or COLA, is helpful to some but is not available in all areas.

For example, it's not available in Key West despite the fact that both service members and Navy officials told investigators the area presents troops with financial burdens.

Meanwhile, according to the report, the Pentagon's own guidance says that it should be pursuing privatization, more military construction or leasing to ease the burden. Yet, investigators found that the Defense Department "challenges with these options, and thus efforts to pursue them have been limited."

Among its recommendations, the GAO suggests that the Pentagon develop and maintain a list of critical housing areas and create a plan "for how the department can respond to and address the financial and quality-of-life effects ... such as through feasible solutions to increase housing supply or through additional strategies such as alternative compensation."

The report also recommended that the Pentagon use its Status of Forces survey to get a better sense of where limited supply or unaffordable housing is impacting troops.

military.com · by Konstantin Toropin · November 1, 2024

20. Staff Jobs and Officer Education: An Army Ghost Story

I overlooked this fascinating essay last week.

Conclusion:

At first blush, these pedagogical prescriptions are intimidating. Scary, even. But ghosts are scary, too—until you read a forty-year-old memo that puts them, and their eminent utility, in a different light. Happy Halloween, indeed.

Staff Jobs and Officer Education: An Army Ghost Story - Modern War Institute

mwi.westpoint.edu · by Patrick Sullivan · October 31, 2024

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A senior Army strategist recently forwarded me an interesting, albeit obscure, piece of Army history. Dated January 20,1983, it is a memo from the director of the Combat Studies Institute to General Jack Merritt, the commanding general of the Combined Arms Center. The memo outlined a proposal for Merritt to appoint a special assistant—one that should have a unique role and, per the memo, should have specific qualifications.

The ideal candidate should be “literate” (someone “who appreciates that words are important”) and should be a major or lieutenant colonel with an advanced degree in the liberal arts and able to speak a foreign language. The special assistant should be “self-confident” but have a “very small ego.” The individual should also be “mature” (which the memo’s author further describes as “not an old grouch, but clearly satisfied with his lot in life and generally with his army”) and have “an inquiring mind.” And the person must be a “hard worker” (“but not tense”)—knowing “how to be constructively critical, demonstrating “intellectual courage,” and “anticipat[ing] well.”

This special assistant, the memo declared, should be a “ghost,” working directly for (and reporting directly to) Merritt, with no routine administrative functions, and making Merritt’s “mind (thoughts) an object of his daily study.” Additionally, the ghost would have free reign to track down ideas, gather information, cultivate expertise, self-select into tasks, and tell Merritt “what he thinks as opposed to what he thinks you think.” The author further cautions Merritt that his ghost will need to be protected from short-term requirements, enjoy the functional equivalent of tenure, be able to appear idle (time for reading, writing, and thinking), and have license to debate ideas with him in a free and dialectical manner.

I do not know if Merritt ever selected a ghost or, if he did, whether the special assistant was employed to the effect that the memo’s author envisioned. What is interesting about the memo, however, is its description of work that is now seemingly the purview of commander’s action groups or strategic initiatives groups (CAGs/SIGs), an organizational innovation that was ushered in by the Army’s adoption of mission command doctrine over the past two decades. And yet, I received the memo from an officer who has worked as part of CAGs/SIGs at the highest levels of the Army and forwarded the document to me along with a declaration: “I would like to be a ghost!” It would appear, therefore, that the ghost concept and the actual work of CAGs/SIGs are not entirely aligned. Moreover, while there are certainly some flag officers who employ their aides-de-camp, CAG chiefs, political advisors, speechwriters, or executive officers in a ghost-like role, this is inconsistent across the enterprise and almost certainly does not conform to the requirements that the memo’s author prescribed.

Such inconsistencies are to be expected since the ghost concept is not something that could easily (or even prudently) be institutionalized. Flag officers have rightful prerogative on how they constitute and employ their personal staffs—CAGs/SIGs included—and not every flag officer would benefit from a ghost given variances in command styles and organizational needs. However, as evidenced by numerous discussions I have had with various flag officer staffs that have visited the Modern War Institute over the past three years, certain commands need a ghost but are unable to get or create one.

Although the ghost concept cannot perhaps be institutionalized, the de facto proponents for CAGs/SIGs—the Army strategist community (functional area 59), the Army War College’s Strategic Education Program, and the Combined Arms Center’s School of Advanced Military Studies—can surely develop a way to identify the need for ghosts in certain commands and provide options for the flag officers at those commands on who their ghosts should be. To these ends, it is important to look beyond the normal talent pool for prospective ghosts, such that the memo author’s envisioned qualifications are preserved. As it stands, CAG chiefs and executive officers—the extant positions most analogous to a ghost—are often too senior in rank (the author was adamant that a ghost should not be a full colonel) and selected based on very different criteria than that laid out in the memo.

Fortunately, and at the risk of organizational self-advocacy, there is a ready-made population to serve as ghosts where and for however long needed, and with the desired qualifications as outlined in the original memo: permanent faculty (functional area 47) from the non-STEM academic departments at the United States Military Academy. West Point permanent faculty all have doctoral degrees and, since they cannot move up or out from the faculty track, are presumably satisfied with their lots in life. And while not all have small egos (no sample population anywhere in the Army uniformly does), they are all surely inquisitive, confident and hardworking in their academic fields, and intellectually courageous at levels that exceed most (if not all) of their peer groups. Moreover, there is an established mechanism for West Point permanent faculty to rotate back into the operational Army to leverage their intellectual talents against real-world problems within flag officer commands. This operational experience program (akin to a sabbatical in civilian academia) could easily accommodate ghost requirements. Additionally, increasing the functional area 47 population, either at West Point or through new billets at the War College or Combined Arms Center, against projected ghost needs would be a low-cost and low-scale workaround to the institutionalization challenge.

Separate from the untapped potential in functional area 47 population, ghost requirements could be serviced in the long term by changing how we educate Army officers. It is reasonable to infer that the memo author’s use of the term ghost related to the modern understanding of the paranormal concept: someone who could serve as Merritt’s “soul” or “spirit,” which diffuses throughout the command. This conception, coupled with the qualifications listed in the original memo, suggests that an effective ghost display two fundamental “habits of mind”: empathy and critical thinking.

Empathy and critical thinking are not new concepts to the Army officer education system, of course. They are fields of study in various core curriculum courses here at West Point and (presumably) other commissioning outlets, a point of emphasis in theater-specific training for recent conflicts, and prominent features in much of the Army’s planning and visualization doctrine. These are piecemeal approaches that fall well short of the habit-of-mind threshold, however, and the fact that Army officers routinely underperformed quasi-diplomatic and development roles in Iraq and Afghanistan that required cognitive discomfort and cultural sensitivity, is an indictment a posteriori. The Iraq and Afghanistan experiences serve to illustrate the utility of changing officer education beyond simply creating a future ghost pool.

To be sure, curriculum adjustments and policy changes have a tendency of running into brick walls of bureaucratic resistance. But as an aspirational thought exercise, if we were to reimagine Army education to reinforce in officers the habits of mind that will equip them for the challenges of the future battlefield, what might that look like? What are the pedagogical prescriptions? First, provide foundational liberal arts instruction, arrayed against the three initial levels of the officer education system and taught by credentialed civilian faculty. This will normalize officers’ baccalaureate-level education, irrespective of their commissioning source and college major. At basic officer leader courses, all Army officers will take a course on world history but presented through a non-Western and non-Eurocentric lens. At captains career courses, all Army officers will take a course on illiberal political orders, such as those manifest in autocracies and nonsecular states. Lastly, all Army officers will take a course on international relations during intermediate-level education, with the course itself refreshing officers on the main theories of international relations as well as providing a history of American foreign policy.

Second, enforce proficiency in a second language. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis posits that language shapes the fundamental cognition of its speakers, so speaking another language can literally enable Army officers to think like others—a core precept of empathy, and a pathway to more effective relationships with allies and partners in coalition warfighting. As such, all Army officers will demonstrate proficiency in a second language prior to graduating from captains career courses, to be measured by the Defense Language Proficiency Tests. The language can be of the officer’s choice, as long as there is a corresponding test available. The pedagogy envisions this as an individual responsibility, but school commandants across the officer education system would be well-advised to develop supplemental instruction programs during both basic officer leader courses and captains career courses. An officer who is unable to demonstrate proficiency by the end of his or her captains career course will be flagged until passing a proficiency test. Additionally, pegging the requirement to captains career courses allows officers to self-select out of the requirement after their initial terms of service are completed (by submitting an unqualified resignation or transitioning to the Individual Ready Reserve).

Third, formally train all Army officers on negotiation theory. Not only are negotiations a form of problem solving by way of formal conflict resolution—and thus inherently valuable to military professionals—but they require incisive understanding of individual behavior and how behavior influences decision-making. Understanding of this type is basically empathy defined. This training is best suited for the captains career courses and can be accomplished by exporting curricula from either the West Point Negotiation Project or Harvard University’s various programs on negotiation.

Lastly, certify all Army officers on the Paul-Elder Framework for Critical Thinking. This framework is world-renowned and influenced much of the initial development of Army Design Methodology. As suggested earlier, however, in order to affect cognitive change at the habit-of-mind level, Army officers need to formally learn critical thinking skills separately from their appearance in planning and visualization doctrine so that the skills do not become pigeonholed. There are numerous online courses that meet the certification requirement, which the Army could easily subsidize or even license. As with language proficiency, the pedagogy envisions this as an individual responsibility to be completed any time prior to the end of the captains career course.

At first blush, these pedagogical prescriptions are intimidating. Scary, even. But ghosts are scary, too—until you read a forty-year-old memo that puts them, and their eminent utility, in a different light. Happy Halloween, indeed.

Colonel Patrick Sullivan, PhD, is the director of the Modern War Institute at West Point.

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

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mwi.westpoint.edu · by Patrick Sullivan · October 31, 2024

21. Fighters and bombers are what America needs to win — not quadcopters

Fighters, bombers, and the Navy's ships as well. How can we afford all we need?

You cannot have deterrence if you do not have the ability to fight and win.

Conclusion:

The last three decades have seen a decline in the combat inventory of the U.S. Air Force by over half. As a priority, America must now rebuild its arsenal of fighters and bombers. Neglecting this imperative will put credible deterrence and its necessary prerequisite — our ability to win — at risk.

Fighters and bombers are what America needs to win — not quadcopters

Defense News · by USAF Gen. T. Michael Moseley (ret.) · November 1, 2024

On Saturday, Israeli F-35 stealth fighter aircraft penetrated highly defended Iranian airspace, struck a broad number of military targets and returned home safe. Days earlier, U.S. B-2 stealth bombers struck multiple deeply buried Houthi arms caches. These missions illustrate a key point: Despite trendy arguments to the contrary, the United States still requires the most advanced fighters and bombers in our arsenal if we want to win in future conflicts.

Questioning the value of modern combat aircraft is not new within the Washington defense arena. Some observers of Russia-Ukraine fighting in trenches extrapolate that small drones are changing the nature of air warfare. However, these assertions ignore the fact that the drones’ impact is largely isolated to tactical Army ground operations, not on air warfare. Infantry and armor cannot move without being targeted by drones. Ukrainian fighter aircraft moving at 500 miles an hour are not affected.

While it is appropriate to recognize the impact of small drones in the battlespace, it is also crucial to be clear-eyed about the scale and scope of that potential. Quadcopters did nothing to prevent the Russia-Ukraine war from descending into a withering slog. Conditions for that type of fight were set when neither side secured air superiority. The U.S. must bear this in mind with extreme care as it prepares for a potential fight against China.

Deterring adversaries requires a successful plan and the requisite means to defeat them. This starts with the ability to control the air in times and places necessary to execute conventional strategic attack of key enemy centers of gravity, such as war material production, logistics, command leadership, control centers, communications, power generation and supply depots. An opponent cannot sustain a fight if their means to execute it are paralyzed or negated. This is why the stealthy penetrating B-21 bomber is so important.

Fighters like the F-35 and F-22 secure air superiority over enemy territory and U.S. forces while adding to strike capacity. The Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) advanced stealth fighter working in conjunction with uninhabited Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) will take these mission capabilities to new heights.

Anyone questioning the importance of these critical airpower missions should review recent headlines. Consider the recent B-2 strike in Yemen. After months of intercepting Houthi missiles targeting international shipping in a reactionary, whack-a-mole fashion, the Biden administration finally sought to eliminate a source of these attacks by striking arms caches buried in hardened underground facilities. B-2s have the unique ability to carry weapons large enough to destroy these protective measures while also harnessing their stealth to avoid enemy threats. A swarm of quadcopters would be useless in this attack. Range, payload and survivability matter.

Similarly, Israel turned to the F-35 in its recent strikes against Iran because this aircraft possesses the ability to penetrate robust air defenses, deliver powerful precision strikes and get home safe. Nor is this the only recent use of the F-35. Israel, along with the U.S., used the F-35, plus other fighter aircraft, to intercept over 100 Iranian missiles launched in April. The results were impressive and heralded a historic air-and-missile defense accomplishment. Of note, no quadcopters carrying hand grenades were used in either Iran’s attack or the coalition’s defense of Israel.

Bottom line: Modern fighters and bombers provide essential security options. Design attributes tied to range, payload, flight performance, survivability and lethality found in the F-22, F-35, B-2, B-21 and NGAD penetrating counter-air fighter are make-or-break. While some may criticize the cost of these aircraft, they evidence much more value than less costly aircraft without stealth. Back in Desert Storm, one stealth aircraft exhibited the capability to deliver the same effects that it took 19 less costly but nonstealthy aircraft. Today, modern stealth multiplies that figure. Analysts should focus on cost-per-effect, not unit aircraft cost. The question that really matters is the cost of not having enough modern fighters and bombers.

The price of not possessing these capabilities is on display every day in Ukraine. Despite having millions of drones and thousands of missiles, Ukraine is stuck in a World War I-style trench warfare fight with Russia. They lack the means to wage sufficient deep strikes that would put Russia on the defensive. They also lack modern air superiority fighters necessary to secure its skies from attack. Quadcopters with grenades targeting individual tanks or military personnel may be tactically useful in trench warfare, but they are of little relevance at the operational or strategic level.

Overreliance upon such technologies invites catastrophic risk when facing a larger opponent who can win simply by not quitting. The U.S. should bear this in mind with extreme care as it prepares for a potential fight against China.

Serious threats demand serious solutions. The U.S. is facing a greater set of threats than it has ever faced before. Small drones, Collaborative Combat Aircraft and next-generation missiles will have a role in the equation, but we must not confuse them as the critical components of airpower that are essential to win in war. Recent world events prove this in stark terms.

The last three decades have seen a decline in the combat inventory of the U.S. Air Force by over half. As a priority, America must now rebuild its arsenal of fighters and bombers. Neglecting this imperative will put credible deterrence and its necessary prerequisite — our ability to win — at risk.

USAF Gen. T. Michael Moseley (ret.) served as the 18th Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force.

22. “I Want to Live”: Psychological Warfare for the Modern Era

Excerpt:

While currently a novelty, “I Want to Live” exemplifies a more general shift in modern warfare, with digital influence and data-driven strategies shaping military outcomes and extending conflict beyond physical battlefields into the digital domains of information and perception. This trend, often called “participatory warfare,” blurs the lines between combatants and civilians. Combining footage of POWs, messaging about internal Russian army divisions, and reports of alleged mistreatment by Russian commanders, “I Want to Live” engages both military personnel and civilians, including families of POWs. With technology and intelligence services converging to make projects like “I Want to Live” possible, traditional intelligence cycles are evolving into more participatory models where diverse actors, such as celebrities and POWs, are used to persuade enemy forces to surrender. For policymakers and strategists, this blending of information warfare with conventional operations emphasizes the need to monitor and carefully consider legal and ethical boundaries in modern conflict.

“I Want to Live”: Psychological Warfare for the Modern Era - Irregular Warfare Initiative

irregularwarfare.org · by Peter Schrijver · November 4, 2024

In the evening of August 6, 2024, the smartphones of Russian soldiers in Kursk Oblast lit up with messages decrying “the flames of war unleashed by Putin” that “have spread to the Kursk region” and the “senseless bloodbath in Ukraine.” They called on Russian troops to “extinguish this fire” by “voluntarily surrender[ing] through the ‘I Want to Live’ project.” That same day, Ukraine had launched an offensive in the region, marking a significant shift in the Russia-Ukraine War. Ukrainian forces were now moving beyond their borders to target Russian territory directly, with the goal of destabilizing Russian troops. The messages received by Russian soldiers that day were a critical part of this effort, which Ukraine is still waging.

The products of the “I Want to Live” project—a Ukrainian psychological operation (PSYOP) launched in September 2022—represent Ukraine’s strategic decision to use twenty-first-century technology to bolster its kinetic campaign. By replacing traditional PSYOP methods with mobile technology and social media, Ukraine can now reach enemy soldiers through the smartphones in their hands, aiming to stoke fear, spread confusion, and encourage surrender. More broadly, Ukraine’s “I Want to Live” project reflects the shifting character of warfare, where battles are no longer confined to physical fronts and digital spaces emerge as arenas for shaping perceptions and influencing outcomes. However, this approach also introduces new challenges and ethical considerations that underscore the complexity of PSYOPs in modern conflicts.

Evolution of PSYOPs

PSYOPs are activities planned during times of conflict that use communication methods and other means to influence the perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors of target audiences in order to achieve political and military objectives. These operations can be directed at enemy forces, civilian populations, or other approved audiences to weaken an enemy’s will, strengthen support from allies, and gain cooperation from undecided groups.

“I Want to Live”: Psychological Warfare for the Modern Era – Insider: Short of War

PSYOPs have evolved significantly over the last three decades of conflict. Traditional methods, like dropping leaflets over Iraqi positions during the 1991 Gulf War, have given way to more advanced digital strategies. One notable example is Israel’s use of short message services, or SMS, since 2009 to warn civilians during conflict and collect information about Palestinian militants. Another example is Russia’s 2014 deployment of Leer-3 Electronic Warfare (EW) systems in Ukraine to intercept and manipulate mobile communications, aiming to undermine Ukrainian troop morale and confuse their relatives. Ukraine’s “I Want to Live” project demonstrates the latest advancement in leveraging digital platforms to reach enemy soldiers directly.

Project Overview and Goals

Operating under Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate (HUR), the “I Want to Live” project aims to encourage Russian soldiers in Ukraine to surrender voluntarily. Through this initiative, Ukraine seeks to weaken Russian military leadership, erode troop morale, and promote surrender as a safe, legitimate option. The project’s name reflects its core message: for soldiers seeking to preserve their lives, surrender offers an alternative to continued combat.

The program assures humane treatment according to international standards like the Geneva Conventions. Through its website, the project provides detailed surrender procedures, legal guidance, and information about potential asylum options. Russian soldiers can access these resources through a range of secure channels, including dedicated hotlines, encrypted communications, and QR codes embedded in social media posts. The project’s integrated approach, which combines several distinct features discussed below, maximizes its reach and effectiveness.

Practical Instructions and Individualized Outreach

Building on earlier technological developments in the PYSOPs realm, Ukraine’s “I Want to Live” project fully embraces the ubiquity of smartphones, recognizing their potential as a direct channel to individual soldiers. Whereas Israel’s aforementioned use of standard or GSM phones and SMS capabilities was more of a broadcast, meant to reach a critical mass of individuals, Ukraine has jumped on the evolution of cellular technology to establish actual and bidirectional contact with potential defectors and soldiers who want to surrender. And it has done so successfully: by January 2024, the project had drawn more than 48 million visits to its website, hochuzhit.com, primarily from within Russia.

In seizing on the evolution of cellular technology, the project has also marked a shift from earlier, less targeted methods of psychological operations by directly engaging soldiers rather than relying on the “shotgun” strategy of leaflet drops or mass SMS campaigns. Ukrainian psychologists and analysts focus on one-on-one communication with Russian personnel, offering practical instructions on how to surrender safely. Their goal is to convince Russian soldiers to lay down their weapons and turn themselves over to Ukrainian forces. This individualized outreach—made possible by smartphones and their pervasiveness—is integral to the project’s success by offering soldiers a direct, personal channel to plan their surrender.

Video Testimonials

Ukraine’s strategy is particularly noteworthy for its use of personal video testimonials from surrendered Russian soldiers and prisoners of war (POWs) to alter enemy perceptions about Ukraine. For example, in one testimonial, a Russian soldier who had surrendered to Ukrainian forces discusses how the Ukrainians gave him and other soldiers “water to drink from the last bottle” and “a smoke” and how they had “expected a completely different attitude.” By sharing such accounts on social media, the project not only challenges Russian soldiers’ preconceptions of Ukrainian forces but also exploits the platforms’ ease of dissemination, relying on third parties to re-share the messages and thus reach a wider audience.

Operational Coordination

By closely integrating military intelligence with operations, “I Want to Live” demonstrates the Ukrainian military’s high level of coordination. The aforementioned recorded interviews of captured Russian POWs, who often express disappointment in their leadership, are tactically distributed through social media to influence enemy morale and undermine Russian command in contested areas. The project has also proactively engaged Russian villagers in Kursk Oblast, encouraging them to report on “Kadyrov’s gangs.” As Ukrainian forces advanced, the project adapted its messaging in real-time, warning Russian units of potential encirclement and abandonment by their commanders. This alignment of timely, targeted messaging with military operations illustrates how the project strategically influences enemy troops in key areas.

Leveraging Internal Tensions within Russian Forces

A significant part of the project’s messaging strategy exploits reported tensions within Russian forces, particularly between Chechen so-called Kadyrovtsy units and regular Russian military personnel. The term Kadyrovtsy refers to units under the control of Ramzan Kadyrov, head of the Chechen Republic within the Russian Federation. For example, after Chechen commander Apti Alaudinov criticized young Russian conscripts for surrendering in Kursk Oblast, Ukraine, through its “I Want to Live” project, responded by highlighting perceived inequalities between Chechen and Russian soldiers. To drive a wedge between these groups and thus exacerbate divisions within the Russian ranks, one “I Want to Live” message described how “Kadyrov’s bandits loot freely while young conscripts die. Apti blames their mothers, but his own son won’t go to war. So why are you needed? To die for them?” Another message that generated significant interaction on Telegram (1,626,117 views and 4,540 reposts as of August 15, 2024) discussed and depicted the surrender of “more than a hundred Russian soldiers,” stating that it was “understandable” and “hard to conduct military operations when you’re commanded by tyrants and embezzlers and your flanks are ‘protected’ by Kadyrov’s bandits who abandon everything and everyone just to avoid being captured themselves.” By using such personalized messages and targeted communication strategies, the project aims to erode trust within the Russian military, fulfilling the ultimate goal of encouraging surrender and undermining troop cohesion.

Metrics-Driven Adaptation

“I Want to Live” also exemplifies a dynamic approach to psychological operations. By monitoring key metrics like message spread, surrender requests, and civilian inquiries about mobilization, the project can adjust its messaging to respond to battlefield developments and shifts in Russian public sentiment. It has thus been able to refine its strategies based on data throughout the conflict in Kursk Oblast.

The following statement from the project team underscores the value of this metrics-driven approach (see also Figure 1): “It has only been a week of fighting in the Kursk region, and the number of applications to ‘I Want to Live’ has sharply increased by a third during this period! In total to date, we have received almost 40,000 requests through all channels: hotline, Telegram, WhatsApp, and chatbot. We are contacted by both active servicemen of the Russian army for voluntary surrender and civilians who are afraid of the announcement of a new wave of mobilization and do not want to become cannon fodder for Russian commanders.” This message highlights the project’s ability to reach both servicemen and concerned civilians, using social media not only to broadcast conflict dynamics but also to undermine enemy confidence, morale, and security where it benefits Ukraine most.

Such data regarding surrender requests enables the project to be both responsive—adapting to immediate battlefield conditions—and proactive—anticipating future shifts in the conflict. For example, when surrender requests spike after military engagements, the project can tailor its messaging to target vulnerable Russian units in order to capitalize on heightened fears of encirclement and abandonment. Similarly, civilian inquiries about mobilization allow the project to influence public opinion, positioning itself as a reliable source of information amid growing uncertainty.

The project’s immediate impact is significant, with over 300 Russian surrenders and more than 26,000 individual applications as of June 2024. By late August 2024, the number of young Russian conscripts who had surrendered provided enough pressure on the Kremlin to facilitate the first POW swap since the start of Ukraine’s Kursk incursion. The long-term effects of the “I Want to Live” project on Russian troop morale and broader public opinion may be even more consequential: by consistently undermining the credibility of Russian commanders and offering a clear alternative to continued fighting, the project is eroding military cohesion and civilian support for the war, potentially creating lasting divisions within Russian society and its armed forces.

Ethical Considerations

Notwithstanding their advantages, Ukraine’s use of such psychological tactics, particularly POW interviews, raises important legal and ethical questions. Article 13 of the Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War (Geneva Convention III) requires that POWs be protected from “insults and public curiosity.” Thus, some debate exists about whether sharing POW interviews on social media constitutes exposure to such “insults and public curiosity” in violation of this provision. Relatedly, there is a question as to whether POWs can genuinely consent to these interviews while in captivity, which could assuage concerns regarding an alleged failure on Ukraine’s part to protect these soldiers. Furthermore, coercion—explicit or implicit—is hard to assess, and the project’s use of video testimonials raises additional anxieties regarding potential exploitation even where POWs appear to be willing participants.

The project’s promotion of videos of Ukrainian celebrities like Yarmak, a popular rapper, conversing with a captured Russian soldier, could be seen as exploiting Russian POWs’ vulnerability to highlight admiration for Ukrainian icons and infringing on their rights and dignity for the sake of strategic influence and broad appeal. Thus, while such tactics may serve the goal of undermining Russian morale, they must be balanced against the potential harm to the individuals involved. This includes conducting careful legal and ethical analyses of proposed tactics before they are employed in a media environment where persuasion and coercion can blur. Given the reach of some of these videos, consideration should also be given to possible retaliatory actions against the POWs upon their prospective return to Russia.

Broader Impact on Modern Warfare

While currently a novelty, “I Want to Live” exemplifies a more general shift in modern warfare, with digital influence and data-driven strategies shaping military outcomes and extending conflict beyond physical battlefields into the digital domains of information and perception. This trend, often called “participatory warfare,” blurs the lines between combatants and civilians. Combining footage of POWs, messaging about internal Russian army divisions, and reports of alleged mistreatment by Russian commanders, “I Want to Live” engages both military personnel and civilians, including families of POWs. With technology and intelligence services converging to make projects like “I Want to Live” possible, traditional intelligence cycles are evolving into more participatory models where diverse actors, such as celebrities and POWs, are used to persuade enemy forces to surrender. For policymakers and strategists, this blending of information warfare with conventional operations emphasizes the need to monitor and carefully consider legal and ethical boundaries in modern conflict.

Peter Schrijver is a Ph.D. researcher affiliated with the Netherlands Defence Academy. His academic interests focus on Ukraine’s operations in the information environment.

Main Image: Image created by DALL-E, generated with assistance from ChatGPT, OpenAI, 2024.

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

If you value reading the Irregular Warfare Initiative, please consider supporting our work. And for the best gear, check out the IWI store for mugs, coasters, apparel, and other items.

23. The Perfect Has Become the Enemy of the Good in Ukraine

Excerpts:

As of this writing, there are approximately 75 days remaining in Joe Biden’s presidency. Biden should use that time to do all he can to increase the odds that the United States adopts this new strategy for Ukraine, one that it is accepted by both U.S. allies and Kyiv.

He should do so no matter who wins on November 5. A president-elect Kamala Harris would benefit from Biden having taken the difficult but necessary step of revoking Ukraine’s veto over Washington’s war aims. It would be better for her if he is the one who stops insisting on goals that cannot be met. Biden would take the heat, giving Harris space to carry out what would be a controversial but necessary strategy change.

Biden would also be wise to embrace a diplomatic settlement following a Donald Trump victory. Trump, after all, is on record advocating for one himself. But by outlining a new strategy for Ukraine, one predicated on advancing a reasonable diplomatic proposal coupled with the promise of long-term military support, Biden could help set the bar for U.S. policy in a manner that would help protect Kyiv’s core interests from an individual less inclined to back Ukraine against Russia. And hopefully, Trump would ultimately see that continuing to support Ukraine while pushing for diplomacy is actually necessary to ending the conflict. The alternative—selling out Ukraine—would be rejected by Kyiv, resulting in a one-sided but open-ended war between it and Russia. A rejection by Trump of this approach or something like it would pin the moral and political responsibility for a Russian victory and Ukraine’s defeat on his administration and the United States.

The 47th U.S. president, of course, will ultimately enjoy considerable discretion. No policy can be entirely locked in by a predecessor. But assisting Ukraine in repelling Russian aggression has arguably been Biden’s greatest foreign policy accomplishment. In the time he has left, he should do whatever he can to protect it. And adopting a new, more sustainable strategy for Kyiv is the best way to do so—and to therefore ensure Ukraine continues to exist as a thriving, sovereign, independent nation.

The Perfect Has Become the Enemy of the Good in Ukraine

Why Washington Must Redefine Its Objectives

By Richard Haass

November 4, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by Richard Haass · November 4, 2024

Well into the September 10 debate between the U.S. presidential candidates, ABC News anchor David Muir posed a question to Republican nominee Donald Trump: “Do you want Ukraine to win this war?”

Trump refused to answer directly. “I want the war to stop,” he said. When Muir repeated the question, Trump again evaded: “I think it’s in the U.S. best interest to get this war finished and just get it done.”

Many observers were critical of Trump’s refusal to espouse support for Ukraine in its war against Russian aggression. Yet the former president is hardly the only person refusing to directly answer such a query. Most American national security experts, including U.S. President Joe Biden’s foreign policy team, have said they want Ukraine to defeat Russia. But they have refused to define what, exactly, that means, often saying it is for Ukraine to decide.

If pressed, most would indeed probably define winning in a way similar to how Kyiv defines it, including in its most recent “victory plan”: ousting Russian troops from the entirety of Ukraine’s territory, Crimea included, and reestablishing control over its 1991 borders. There is good reason for adopting this definition. The most basic, if not always honored, norm of international order—one that has endured for some 400 years—is that borders are to be respected. Territory is not to be acquired through the threat or use of armed force. This was one of the main reasons why the United States and other countries rallied to defend South Korea in 1950 and Kuwait in 1990.

Yet although this definition is desirable, it is ultimately unworkable. In principle, Ukraine could liberate its lost territory if the United States and its European partners intervened with forces of their own. But this would require jettisoning the indirect strategy they chose in 2022. It would come at great human, military, and economic cost. And it would introduce far greater risk, as it would mean war between NATO and nuclear-armed Russia. For this reason, such a policy will not be adopted.

Instead of clinging to an infeasible definition of victory, Washington must grapple with the grim reality of the war and come to terms with a more plausible outcome. It should still define victory as Kyiv remaining sovereign and independent, free to join whatever alliances and associations it wants. But it should jettison the idea that, to win, Kyiv needs to liberate all its land. So as the United States and its allies continue to arm Ukraine, they must take the uncomfortable step of pushing Kyiv to negotiate with the Kremlin—and laying out a clear sense of how it should do so.

Such a pivot may be unpopular. It will take political courage to make, and it will require care to implement. But it is the only way to end the hostilities, preserve Ukraine as a truly independent country, enable it to rebuild, and avoid a dire outcome for both Ukraine and the world.

WHAT IS AND WHAT WILL NEVER BE

For Kyiv, a return to 1991 borders is militarily unachievable. The disparity between the manpower and equipment of Russia and Ukraine is simply too great. History suggests that to expel Russia from Crimea or the Donbas, Ukraine would need forces some three times more numerous and capable than Moscow’s, and Russia has a population at least three times larger and a much bigger industrial base. Russian defensive positions are well fortified, and it has received arms and technical assistance from China, Iran, and North Korea. There is no reason to assume it will not receive more such help over time. In October, after all, North Korea deepened its involvement by deploying thousands of its troops to Russia for use in the war effort.

Kyiv, meanwhile, needs most of its forces just to defend the approximately 80 percent of Ukrainian territory it still controls. It especially needs them right now: in recent weeks, Russian forces have gained control of additional territory in the east. Ukraine is trying to build up a more formidable arsenal, but it lacks much in the way of defense manufacturing capability. Its Western partners are helping, but they lack the ability to produce enough arms and ammunition to give Kyiv all it wants while meeting their other commitments. The United States needs enough arms to help not just Ukraine, but also partners such as Israel and Taiwan (as well as to provide for itself). Washington could and arguably should provide Kyiv with more sophisticated systems and loosen the constraints on U.S. provisions for their use. But there is no game-changing weapon or lifted restriction that would allow Ukraine to simultaneously defend what it already controls and liberate what it does not.

Many analysts refuse to publicly acknowledge these realities, in part out of fear that doing so would embolden Russia and demoralize Ukraine. But articulating an impossible definition of winning creates its own political problems.

Doing so has, for example, handed American and European opponents—or, more generously, skeptics—of providing Ukraine with additional military aid a powerful argument. The West, they say, is spending tens of billions of dollars on a policy that has little or no chance of succeeding while threatening to reduce its readiness in other theaters, where some analysts say greater U.S. interests are at stake.“Fundamentally, we lack the capacity to manufacture the amount of weapons Ukraine needs us to supply to win the war,” wrote Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance, in April. “These weapons,” he continued, “are not only needed by Ukraine.”

Ukraine and its supporters are pursuing a policy that is unlikely to succeed but sure to be costly.

By not offering a realistic definition of victory, the West is also reducing the pressure on Russia by leaving little room for serious diplomacy. Each protagonist is left free to pursue its maximalist aims. This is not to suggest Russia and Ukraine are morally equivalent; they are not. But without a real Western diplomatic effort, Russian President Vladimir Putin can argue that his regime is not the principal obstacle to ending the war, citing the United States’ and Europe’s refusals to negotiate. The result is less international and internal pressure on the Kremlin. Western sanctions against Russia are widely ignored, and Putin is increasingly welcome at major international forums—including, for example, the October BRICS summit.

The continuation of the war, meanwhile, is devastating Ukraine. The country has suffered over 300,000 casualties, a staggering number—even if only half of Russia’s losses. The Ukrainian economy is expected to grow by only three percent this year after having contracted by some 30 percent in 2022. Continued conflict makes it impossible for the country to begin serious rebuilding, as few will want to invest in structures that could again be reduced to rubble. It also increases the ultimate cost of rebuilding, which has already reached an estimated $500 billion. And the endless fighting is immiserating Ukrainian citizens, who now suffer from regular shortages of electricity caused by Russian attacks on Ukraine’s infrastructure and the open-ended military service required of many Ukrainian men. It is thus no surprise that Ukrainians are increasingly leaving their state. Roughly six million of them now live elsewhere, a number that includes many military-age men.

In short, Ukraine and its supporters find themselves pursuing a policy that is unlikely to succeed but sure to be costly. Time will not make things better. Fatigue is setting in, both inside Ukraine and among its backers. The war’s trajectory is neither desirable nor sustainable.

Ukrainians are aware of these facts. It is why, in October, President Volodymyr Zelensky released his “Victory Plan. But despite the accompanying fanfare, Zelensky’s proposal provides little guidance on how Ukraine can overcome the many challenges the country faces. The plan lists the security guarantees and economic support Ukraine wants, but not the outcome it desires. It calls for the “madmen in the Kremlin to lose the ability to continue the war,” but it fails to define any diplomatic objectives other than that “Russia must permanently lose control over Ukraine and even the desire for such control.” It offers, in other words, no realistic strategy that Ukraine’s partners can support. It is not a plan for victory, but a prescription for continued war. If Kyiv’s allies walk away, it could end up being a prescription for defeat.

THE ART OF THE POSSIBLE

The prospect of Ukraine losing—or ceasing to be a truly independent country, out from under Russia’s sway—would constitute a serious blow to international order and to European security. It would increase the risk from Russia to other parts of Europe, weaken the confidence of the West, and signal to China (and possibly North Korea) that the West may not have the ability and resolve needed to defeat aggression. It would weaken the norm against conquest. And it would, of course, be terrible for the Ukrainian people.

There is, however, an alternative strategy to both indefinite war and Kyiv’s defeat. It involves continued Western support for Ukraine and opposition to Russia. But it also requires straight talk with Ukraine’s leadership along with limited incentives for Moscow.

At the core of such a revamped strategy is a more modest definition of winning—but one that still protects fundamental Western and Ukrainian interests while denying Putin many of his war aims. The objective should be keeping Ukraine an independent, sovereign, and economically viable country. It must be free to choose its political system and leadership. The country must also be free to rearm and maintain a military of whatever size it wants, to join the European Union, and to accept security commitments from outsiders. It needs to have economic access to the Black Sea.

Kyiv does not require 100 percent of its territory to realize these goals. But what, then, does it need? An end to the war, above all. That end does not mandate a permanent settlement that addresses all the issues separating Russia and Ukraine. Indeed, it should not at this juncture, as any overly ambitious diplomatic undertaking would surely fail. Instead, what the country needs now is an interim cessation of hostilities that largely reflects current realities on the ground.

There is an alternative to both indefinite war and Kyiv’s defeat.

To bring this about, the United States and its partners in Europe should initiate a dialogue with Ukraine. The goal would be to persuade its leaders to accept this more modest definition of winning. They should tell Kyiv that Western support cannot be expected to continue at or near current levels without it. But they should also make an ironclad pledge to do everything in their power to provide Ukraine with arms for the long haul. The bulk of these arms would be made available on the condition that they be used for defensive purposes, but certain longer-range systems could be used by Ukraine against military and economic targets in Russia. The aim would be to signal to Moscow that it will not prevail on the battlefield now or in the future and that it will pay a high price for trying. Additional carrots for Ukraine are most likely to be found in the economic realm.

Diplomacy would take place in two phases. The first phase would seek to bring about a cease-fire, either along current battle lines or with limited adjustments, with a buffer zone separating the two protagonists. It would end the bloodshed and allow Ukraine to rebuild. It would not require the country to give up or compromise on any of its legal or political claims when it comes to borders. There could be some sort of international presence to monitor the agreement. It might be modeled in some ways on the cease-fire that has maintained peace in Cyprus for 50 years.

A second phase of diplomacy would start as soon as the first phase is done. This second phase would be much more prolonged—perhaps lasting decades, until Russia has a post-Putin leadership interested in reintegrating the country into the West. It would address additional arrangements, including what are often termed final-status issues. This phase could involve territorial transfers in both directions and a degree of autonomy for the inhabitants of Crimea and Ukraine’s east. It would also involve the creation of a security guarantee for Ukraine, even though the history of such guarantees is mixed. (The discredited 1994 Budapest Memorandum clearly did not offer real protection.) Ideally, this guarantee would involve NATO membership for Kyiv. But a coalition of the willing, including the United States, could offer Ukraine a security pledge if NATO members prove reluctant to admit Ukraine.

Foreign policy must be doable as well as desirable.

Critics of diplomacy argue that Russia will not abide by any agreement it signs and that it will instead use a cease-fire as a chance to regroup before continuing its offensive. This is, of course, possible. But a credible long-term commitment by the West to provide military help to Ukraine, along with fewer restrictions on how Ukraine could use long-range systems, would increase the cost of the war to Russia and challenge Putin’s assumption that he can outlast the West. At the same time, there is something in this proposal for Putin that might prompt him to respect its terms. It would not require Russia to give up claims to Ukraine. Moscow could continue to rearm. It would keep, for now, most or all of the Ukrainian territory it controls. The West might even agree to lift some sanctions on the Russian economy, and should Russia respect the cease-fire, lift more later—although important sanctions would remain in place to provide leverage for diplomacy’s second phase. As part of that second phase, the West might ask Ukraine to forswear nuclear weapons. NATO, while admitting Ukraine, could pledge not to station its forces on Ukraine’s territory.

If accepted, the first phase of this diplomatic initiative would help preserve Ukraine’s independence and allow it to start rebuilding. But even if rejected, the initiative should make it less difficult to galvanize continued military and economic support for Ukraine. It would highlight that it really is Putin’s ambitions, not Zelensky’s, that stand in the way of an end to the fighting. Either way, Ukraine would be better off than it is now.

To some, what is described here may not sound like winning. It is arguably neither fair nor just. It does not promise peace. But it would be incomparably better than the alternative of Ukraine losing the war or fighting endlessly. This approach would deny Putin much of what he seeks, which is to bring most or all of Ukraine back under Moscow’s thumb. Foreign policy must be doable as well as desirable. The comparison analysts should make is not between what exists and the ideal, but between the possible and the alternative.

FIGHTING CHANCE

As of this writing, there are approximately 75 days remaining in Joe Biden’s presidency. Biden should use that time to do all he can to increase the odds that the United States adopts this new strategy for Ukraine, one that it is accepted by both U.S. allies and Kyiv.

He should do so no matter who wins on November 5. A president-elect Kamala Harris would benefit from Biden having taken the difficult but necessary step of revoking Ukraine’s veto over Washington’s war aims. It would be better for her if he is the one who stops insisting on goals that cannot be met. Biden would take the heat, giving Harris space to carry out what would be a controversial but necessary strategy change.

Biden would also be wise to embrace a diplomatic settlement following a Donald Trump victory. Trump, after all, is on record advocating for one himself. But by outlining a new strategy for Ukraine, one predicated on advancing a reasonable diplomatic proposal coupled with the promise of long-term military support, Biden could help set the bar for U.S. policy in a manner that would help protect Kyiv’s core interests from an individual less inclined to back Ukraine against Russia. And hopefully, Trump would ultimately see that continuing to support Ukraine while pushing for diplomacy is actually necessary to ending the conflict. The alternative—selling out Ukraine—would be rejected by Kyiv, resulting in a one-sided but open-ended war between it and Russia. A rejection by Trump of this approach or something like it would pin the moral and political responsibility for a Russian victory and Ukraine’s defeat on his administration and the United States.

The 47th U.S. president, of course, will ultimately enjoy considerable discretion. No policy can be entirely locked in by a predecessor. But assisting Ukraine in repelling Russian aggression has arguably been Biden’s greatest foreign policy accomplishment. In the time he has left, he should do whatever he can to protect it. And adopting a new, more sustainable strategy for Kyiv is the best way to do so—and to therefore ensure Ukraine continues to exist as a thriving, sovereign, independent nation.

RICHARD HAASS is President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, Senior Counselor at Centerview Partners, and Distinguished University Scholar at New York University.

Foreign Affairs · by Richard Haass · November 4, 2024

24. The Best NATO Is a Dormant NATO

Excerpts:

A dormant NATO addresses these dilemmas. It keeps the United States tied to the continent, checks nuclear proliferation, and keeps nationalistic and imperialistic urges down among European powers. It restrains populism on both sides of the Atlantic with more equitable defense spending and provides security to European states that cannot, for historical reasons, trust their fellow European powers. But it still forces western Europe to do more to protect the continent than the region does right now. The simple fact is that France, Germany, and other western European states will never seriously invest in their militaries until they can no longer free ride off the United States for protection. They need Washington to partially pull back before they will better coordinate with central and eastern Europe.

Europeans will certainly grouse about a partial U.S. retrenchment. But ultimately, a dormant NATO would benefit all its members. If Europe better shares the burden of logistics, armor, intelligence, and infantry, the United States will have an easier time guaranteeing European peace and unity with its overbearing nuclear and naval might. And NATO would finally become closed, minimalist, and defensive—as its founders originally intended.

The Best NATO Is a Dormant NATO

Less Reliance on America Would Yield a Stronger Alliance and a Safer Europe

By Sumantra Maitra

November 4, 2024

Foreign Affairs · by The Sources of Russian Aggression · November 4, 2024

In “Planning for a Post-American NATO,” Phillips P. O’Brien and Edward Stringer attempt to address the security vacuum they foresee resulting from a second Trump administration. They highlight, in particular, my proposal for a “dormant NATO,” in which I lay out an organizational framework where the United States would remove its ground forces from the Europe in order to shift the burden of defending the continent away from Washington and toward the region’s own governments. According to O’Brien and Stringer, a dormant NATO could quickly become a dead NATO, because the alliance would struggle to survive unless the United States clearly displays an overwhelming commitment to Europe. Without that commitment, the authors argue, older divisions will return, with central and eastern Europe turning more hawkish while northern and western Europe continue to free ride on Washington. “A European security alliance,” they write, “could collapse under the weight of such incompatible outlooks.”

O’Brien and Stringer are incorrect in their assessment of my proposal. A dormant NATO is not a devastating retrenchment from Europe. Instead, it is predicated on three correct assumptions: that structural forces will push the United States to prioritize Asia over Europe, that continued expansion of NATO dilutes NATO’s core geographical interests and transforms a defensive alliance to an ideological one, and that western European free-riding is a result of an overwhelming American presence. Under my system, the United States would still backstop the continent’s security by providing a nuclear umbrella and deploying its naval resources. The proposal never calls for a total retrenchment. What it does call for is a better and fairer distribution of labor, where Washington shifts the burden of logistics, armor, and infantry to affluent western European powers.

But more important, O’Brien and Stringer are wrong about European security in general. The authors argue that NATO could survive a U.S. withdrawal if it reshuffles its leadership and unifies. They argue, specifically, that the continent should hand over NATO’s military command to an eastern European state, such as Poland, and develop a joint nuclear deterrent. But their proposals ignore the central puzzle that they explicitly put to themselves: Europe’s strategic incoherence. They fail to accept that the continent’s “incompatible outlooks” are not the product of bad design but the result of geography, culture, threat perceptions, offensive capabilities, industrial power, and a whole array of other variables. Such differences are irreconcilable. There can be no coherent European security alliance without Washington because there is no united Europe, nor has there ever been.

Instead, Europe is an artificial entity, one made up of states that have very different interests. It is only sensible, for example, that Germany and the Netherlands are less invested in helping Ukraine than Estonia or Poland because each of these states’ defense priorities depends on its geographic distance from Russia—and the former two countries are much farther away than the latter. The shared European security architecture is, by contrast, unnatural. It is propped up by American hegemony, which has prompted Europe’s traditional great powers to spend less on their militaries than they otherwise would, as well as discouraged traditional nationalist violence in the continent. To envision European unity without the United States—as the authors attempt to do—is therefore absurd.

SOCIAL CONSTRUCTS

O’Brien and Stringer try to address, in a practical way, the hard security questions Europe would face if abandoned by Washington. They weigh the resources and ideologies of the continent’s biggest states to determine which one might be the best leader. Eventually, they reach the conclusion that France, Germany, and the United Kingdom are all incapable of leading the continent—but that Poland might be, given the country’s recent rearmament. They also argue that Europe would need to consider establishing a continent-wide nuclear deterrent. In the near term, they propose that London and Paris could offer such a shield by giving other European states some power over their launch protocols. In the long term, they argue that the continent should create a nuclear arsenal that is jointly owned.

These ideas might make for a good academic discussion, but they are unrealistic. Consider the nuclear issue first. The idea that France or the United Kingdom would allow another state—let alone some unelected bureaucrat in the European Union—to dictate their nuclear postures is fanciful. So is the idea that European countries would coordinate to develop a shared nuclear arsenal.

Relatedly, the authors’ assertion that France, Germany, and the United Kingdom will consent to a united foreign policy direction defies logic: great-power peace in Europe is due to an overwhelming Pax Americana, not because its countries have suddenly become benevolent. Even if Europe’s greatest powers are now inherently more peaceful, it is unlikely that the continent’s three most populous states would forego their competing strategic and economic interests and agree to be led by a hawkish and paranoid eastern European country that is far less powerful, financially or materially, than any of them.

O’Brien and Stringer appear to thus misunderstand European history. NATO’s job for over 70 years has not just been to defend Europe. It has also been to temper the European national outbursts that helped produce two world wars, in part by making it impossible for any country to dominate others. The only plausible way Europe can achieve what the authors lay out is by turning the European Union into a supranational empire, with all the resultant repressions that come from creating such an entity. By centralizing Europe from a federalized trade bloc into a formal imperial state, policymakers would naturally encourage and foster centrifugal social forces. These forces would, in turn, initiate a cycle of political and economic repression and erode democratic rights—as has happened in the past.

BEST OF BOTH WORLDS

Fortunately, there is a moderate option for a new European strategic architecture, one that avoids a total U.S. withdrawal but does not stretch Washington to the point of insolvency. Instead of trying to provide security for a continent which is mostly at peace and rich enough to fund its own defense, the United States can act as an offshore balancer. Washington will no longer aspire for primacy in the European theater. Instead, it will allow for a European rearmament and, subsequently, European burden sharing. It will remove soldiers and equipment from Europe and allow western European states to return to a pre-1990 force posture. But the United States will continue to provide an overarching nuclear umbrella to NATO members and discourage nuclear proliferation on the continent, a core American aim for over half a century. Its formidable Second Fleet would protect sea routes, support the continent’s major naval powers, and continue to provide extended deterrence—satiating Europeans who are afraid of abandonment at a time of Russian revanchism.

This approach, unlike O’Brien and Stringer’s, is rooted in reality. It acknowledges that not all states will face similar threats, and that if a distant hegemon provides total security, the chances of free riding increase among states that are distant from their primary rival power. Additionally, the bigger an alliance, the more equal all states become regardless of their size and contribution, making the relative power of the hegemonic protector decline. Neither of these forces are beneficial to Washington.

A dormant NATO addresses these dilemmas. It keeps the United States tied to the continent, checks nuclear proliferation, and keeps nationalistic and imperialistic urges down among European powers. It restrains populism on both sides of the Atlantic with more equitable defense spending and provides security to European states that cannot, for historical reasons, trust their fellow European powers. But it still forces western Europe to do more to protect the continent than the region does right now. The simple fact is that France, Germany, and other western European states will never seriously invest in their militaries until they can no longer free ride off the United States for protection. They need Washington to partially pull back before they will better coordinate with central and eastern Europe.

Europeans will certainly grouse about a partial U.S. retrenchment. But ultimately, a dormant NATO would benefit all its members. If Europe better shares the burden of logistics, armor, intelligence, and infantry, the United States will have an easier time guaranteeing European peace and unity with its overbearing nuclear and naval might. And NATO would finally become closed, minimalist, and defensive—as its founders originally intended.

SUMANTRA MAITRA is an Elected Associate Fellow at the Royal Historical Society and the author of The Sources of Russian Aggression.

Foreign Affairs · by The Sources of Russian Aggression · November 4, 2024

25. The Voyage of the Meishan and Xiushan: China’s Template for a Blue-Water Coast Guard

Excerpts:

During a 2014 interview following the founding of the China Coast Guard, a senior officer named Wu Zhuang (吴壮) discussed the future of his service. In his view, there would be a clear division of labor between the coast guard and the navy. The coast guard would “guard the homeland,” thereby enabling the navy to operate overseas, “carrying out major international tasks.” The September-October bilateral engagement with Russia suggests that Wu’s vision is obsolete. The Chinese government has empowered the coast guard to become a “blue-water” maritime law enforcement force, and there are clear indications that this trend will not be confined to the Arctic Ocean.

A close analysis of the deployment of the Meishan/Xiushan task force suggests that when it goes abroad, the coast guard will borrow heavily from its sister service, the People’s Liberation Army Navy. The coast guard could have sent any of its dozens of specialized patrol cutters to carry out this bilateral engagement, including those that have already operated with success in the North Pacific. Instead, it chose ships modeled on the navy’s most advanced class of frigate. For this mission, the coast guard did not select a coast guard officer with decades of maritime law enforcement experience to command the task force; instead, it opted for a career naval officer only recently transferred to the service. Lastly, unlike most coast guard deployments — but like navy deployments — the service imposed a high degree of operational security on the mission. The cutters did not transmit automatic identification system signals, nor did the coast guard indicate where the task force planned to operate in the North Pacific or even that it intended to make a run for the Arctic.

Chinese reporting on the Meishan/Xiushan task force also reveals that the coast guard framed the deployment, at least in part, using terms commonly associated with naval missions. Even if we accept coast guard statements that the North Pacific patrol was intended to uphold the regional fishing order — a very generous assumption — other language suggests a far more parochial purpose: namely, to safeguard China’s maritime rights and interests in these waters. This clearly indicates that the coast guard is applying key concepts from its East and South China Sea strategy to its evolving blue-water mission set.

In sum, Beijing has apparently decided to empower the coast guard to go abroad as an instrument to protect China’s overseas interests — a less menacing, but still very capable, version of the navy. Where those interests collide with the interests of other states, Beijing will regard it, and wield it, like a second navy.

The Voyage of the Meishan and Xiushan: China’s Template for a Blue-Water Coast Guard - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Ryan Martinson · November 4, 2024

The China Coast Guard cutters Meishan and Xiushan slipped into port on Oct. 17, ending a dramatic 35-day deployment that brought them from the East China Sea to the Sea of Japan, the North Pacific, the Bering Sea, and, ultimately, the Arctic Ocean — and back again.

The deployment, which occurred as part of a bilateral engagement with the Russian Maritime Border Guard, made news in China for two main reasons, both superlatives. It marked the first time that the two coast guards had ever conducted a joint patrol, and the first time that the China Coast Guard had ever operated in the Arctic Ocean. Both milestones lent themselves to easy narratives — of deepening ties between China and Russia, of Beijing’s expanding activities in the high north — narratives that the government of the People’s Republic of China did much to encourage.

However, the voyage of the Meishan and Xiushan marked another breakthrough, that, while less obvious, may be even more important. It was the first time the China Coast Guard had ever conducted a “blue-water” paranaval operation. The composition of the task force (modified naval frigates), its leadership (a career naval officer), and the secrecy that attended its activities all differed from out-of-area coast guard patrols of the past. These facts, combined with Chinese framing of the mission, suggest that Beijing regarded the deployment as an operation to defend and advance its overseas interests, making it more “gray” (that is, naval) than “white” (coast guard).

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The Deployment in Brief

The voyage of the Meishan and Xiushan comprised three phases. First, the two ships sailed to Vladivostok for bilateral exercises with the Russian Maritime Border Guard (Sept. 16–20). Here the ships, together with their Russian counterparts, practiced search and rescue, conducted simulated boarding of noncompliant vessels, fired their main and secondary guns, and steamed in formation.

Next, the Meishan and Xiushan, accompanied by two Russian ships, the P. Kamchatskiy and the Kamchatka, conducted a joint patrol in the North Pacific (around Sept. 21–27). According to Chinese reporting, they largely confined their operations to the “high seas,” a legal term that refers to waters beyond state jurisdiction. To get there, the ships transited through the Sea of Japan and the Sea of Okhotsk. While in the North Pacific, the joint task force conducted firefighting/damage control and man overboard drills.

Lastly, the task force sailed north for the Arctic leg of their journey (Sept. 27–Oct. 1). This brought them through the Bering Sea, Bering Strait, and the Chukchi Sea. The ships did not remain long in the Arctic Ocean. On Sept. 28, the U.S. Coast Guard spotted them 440 miles south of St. Lawrence Island, the southern gateway to the Bering Strait, heading northeast. By Oct. 1, however, they were already returning south through the strait, mission accomplished. Roughly two weeks later, the ships were home in Zhoushan, Zhejiang. It is unclear at what point they separated from their Russian counterparts, or the path by which they arrived home.

Navy Ships, Navy Commander, and Navy Secrecy

For this operation, the China Coast Guard borrowed heavily from its sister service, the People’s Liberation Army Navy. First, the Meishan (2303) and Xiushan (2305) belong to the Type 818 class of patrol cutter, the design of which is based on a Chinese naval frigate — the Type 054A. The Type 818 and Type 054A are not identical. The cutters lack missiles and related combat systems. Their decks are also studded with equipment that frigates do not need, above all, the powerful water cannons that the coast guard has used with devastating effect against Vietnamese and Filipino mariners in the South China Sea.

Still, the Type 818 retains valuable capabilities particular to the Type 054A design. The two classes probably have the same combined diesel and diesel powerplants, which means the Meishan and Xiushan have excellent endurance and comparatively high top speeds. The two classes have the same main gun, a 76 millimeter cannon, and two 30 millimeter secondary batteries. Like the Type 054A, the Type 818 is organized around a modern combat information center, images of which were disclosed when the ships went to “general quarters” during exercises in Vladivostok. Both classes have facilities to embark helicopters.

Second, the China Coast Guard chose a career naval officer, Senior Captain He Feng (何峰), to serve as the task force commander. He Feng enlisted in the navy after he graduated from a high school in Hai’an, Jiangsu. He was subsequently chosen to pursue an undergraduate degree at the navy’s Dalian Ship Academy. After commissioning as an officer, he quickly promoted within the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s surface warfare community. By 2012, he was the skipper of a naval frigate, probably a Type 054A. Four years later, he served as the chief of staff for the opposition (i.e., “Blue”) force in the annual China-Russia “Joint Sea-2016” exercise, held in Zhanjiang, Guangdong, duty for which he received a commendation from his unit (Unit 91991, the 6th Destroyer Flotilla). The following year, He Feng went to sea as the chief of staff for the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s 26th Gulf of Aden Escort Task Force, comprising two Type 054A frigates and an oiler.

He Feng was likely transferred to the coast guard in 2018 or 2019, one of several outstanding naval officers assigned to bolster the service, then in the throes of a difficult reform. His former boss, Rear Admiral Wang Zhongcai (王仲才), commander of the 26th Escort Task Force, was made the coast guard’s commandant and may have personally selected He Feng to go with him. As of March 2024, He Feng served as the director of the Law Enforcement Department of the 2nd Directly Subordinate Bureau, the coast guard unit that owns the Meishan and Xiushan.

Lastly, this China Coast Guard deployment was unprecedented in the degree of secrecy that surrounded it. This manifested in multiple ways. Aside from a brief moment while sailing south through the Bering Strait, the ships did not transmit their location, bearing, and speed via automatic identification system. This was not standard practice. The coast guard often transmits automatic identification signals when operating in the most sensitive areas of the East China Sea and South China Sea, even though as government vessels they are not required by international convention to do so. Moreover, coast guard cutters have always transmitted automatic identification system signals when conducting North Pacific fisheries patrols in the past. The navy, by contrast, never transmits these signals, presumably for the sake of operational security. That likely was the consideration here as well.

Moreover, despite significant Chinse reporting on the mission, the coast guard provided few clues about the destination of the bilateral patrol. It did not, for example, telegraph its plans to sail to the Arctic Ocean. While the coast guard did reveal the task force’s intentions to patrol the high seas of the North Pacific, it offered no sense of where in this vast expanse the ships would operate. The Global Times — citing a naval officer, Zhang Junshe — hinted that the task force might sail north to the Bering Sea, but no credible reporting predicted an Arctic Ocean deployment.

Navy Mission

In key respects, the mission of the Meishan/Xiushan task force more closely resembled a naval operation than a coast guard operation. In general, navies exist to defend and advance the interests of the states that operate them, principally, though not exclusively, against the threats and actions of foreign armed forces. Coast guards, on the other hand, chiefly enforce domestic law against nonstate actors and ensure the safety of life at sea. There can be significant overlap between the missions. Indeed, some smaller countries have sea services that serve both functions. But this basic division of labor normally obtains, especially for great powers.

Coast guards with large oceangoing cutters may be assigned missions in waters beyond their countries’ legal jurisdiction. The U.S. Coast Guard’s Shiprider Program is a case in point. Based on bilateral agreements, the service helps resource-constrained partner countries enforce law in their exclusive economic zones by physically transporting local law enforcement personnel to the scene of suspected criminal activity. The U.S. Coast Guard also enforces regional fisheries agreements designed to suppress high seas drift net fishing, including in the North Pacific. Beijing likewise has provisions in its “Coast Guard Law” allowing the coast guard to carry out law enforcement tasks in waters beyond Beijing’s jurisdiction, as allowed by international agreement.

Publicly, the coast guard characterized the North Pacific portion of the bilateral patrol as a fisheries patrol. The two coast guards were “actively safeguarding the high seas fishing order,” based on a U.N. resolution (46/215) and a regional high seas fisheries management convention. To this end, the task force purportedly “inspected” fishing vessels. However, the coast guard provided no corroborating images or information, as they have always done for past North Pacific fisheries deployments.

Moreover, despite its advanced capabilities, the Type 818 would not be the preferred ship for a North Pacific patrol, if fisheries enforcement were indeed the primary objective. Each summer, the coast guard sends a task force to patrol high seas fishing grounds in the North Pacific, but it has never selected a Type 818 for the task. Instead, it opts for larger, more versatile ships like the 5,000-ton Changshan (6501), or purpose-built fisheries enforcement cutters like the 3,500-ton Shicheng (6306), both of which had just returned from a 45-day North Pacific fisheries patrol when the Meishan and Xiushan departed for theirs.

Other statements suggest that the coast guard conceived this mission in terms more often associated with naval operations. The commanding officer of the Meishan, Captain Feng Mingming (冯明明), declared that the North Pacific patrol had “positively expanded the connotations of [the China Coast Guard’s] rights protection law enforcement mission.” This suggests that the coast guard, at least in part, saw its purpose as safeguarding China’s own rights and interests in this region. Indeed, “rights protection law enforcement” is the term Chinese experts have long used to describe paranaval actions to assert Chinese territorial claims in disputed space in the East China Sea and South China Sea. Perhaps for the first time, at least publicly, the coast guard has applied this concept to out-of-area deployments.

Chinese maritime expert Yang Xiao (杨霄), from the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, made similar remarks when asked why the Meishan and Xiushan were chosen for this mission. The key, in his view, was their large displacement, which allowed them to maintain “long-term maritime presence” and gave them “multiple tactical uses.” Ultimately, the Type 818 was the “preferred ship type for the [the China Coast Guard] when conducting middle and long distance patrols for maritime rights protection [emphasis added].”

Chinese sources did not specify which “rights” the ships were sent to protect. But with the emphasis on the North Pacific fisheries order, Beijing may have been posturing to safeguard the prerogatives of China’s distant water fishing fleet in the Pacific Ocean. Recall that in early 2024, Chinese diplomats reacted furiously to a case of U.S. Coast Guard personnel boarding Chinese fishing vessels suspected of operating illegally in Vanuatu’s exclusive economic zone.

During the Arctic portion of the patrol, the ships may have been asserting China’s right to access these potentially valuable sea lanes. This was suggested in another statement by Task Force Commander He Feng. During an interview following the ships’ arrival in the high north, He declared that “in reaching in the Arctic Ocean, the coast guard had demonstrated its ability to protect maritime transport in the region.” Commerce protection, of course, is a classic navy mission.

Going Abroad, As a Second Navy

During a 2014 interview following the founding of the China Coast Guard, a senior officer named Wu Zhuang (吴壮) discussed the future of his service. In his view, there would be a clear division of labor between the coast guard and the navy. The coast guard would “guard the homeland,” thereby enabling the navy to operate overseas, “carrying out major international tasks.” The September-October bilateral engagement with Russia suggests that Wu’s vision is obsolete. The Chinese government has empowered the coast guard to become a “blue-water” maritime law enforcement force, and there are clear indications that this trend will not be confined to the Arctic Ocean.

A close analysis of the deployment of the Meishan/Xiushan task force suggests that when it goes abroad, the coast guard will borrow heavily from its sister service, the People’s Liberation Army Navy. The coast guard could have sent any of its dozens of specialized patrol cutters to carry out this bilateral engagement, including those that have already operated with success in the North Pacific. Instead, it chose ships modeled on the navy’s most advanced class of frigate. For this mission, the coast guard did not select a coast guard officer with decades of maritime law enforcement experience to command the task force; instead, it opted for a career naval officer only recently transferred to the service. Lastly, unlike most coast guard deployments — but like navy deployments — the service imposed a high degree of operational security on the mission. The cutters did not transmit automatic identification system signals, nor did the coast guard indicate where the task force planned to operate in the North Pacific or even that it intended to make a run for the Arctic.

Chinese reporting on the Meishan/Xiushan task force also reveals that the coast guard framed the deployment, at least in part, using terms commonly associated with naval missions. Even if we accept coast guard statements that the North Pacific patrol was intended to uphold the regional fishing order — a very generous assumption — other language suggests a far more parochial purpose: namely, to safeguard China’s maritime rights and interests in these waters. This clearly indicates that the coast guard is applying key concepts from its East and South China Sea strategy to its evolving blue-water mission set.

In sum, Beijing has apparently decided to empower the coast guard to go abroad as an instrument to protect China’s overseas interests — a less menacing, but still very capable, version of the navy. Where those interests collide with the interests of other states, Beijing will regard it, and wield it, like a second navy.

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Ryan D. Martinson is a researcher in the China Maritime Studies Institute at the U.S. Naval War College. The views expressed in this article are the author’s alone and do not reflect the assessments of the U.S. Navy, U.S. Department of Defense, or any other U.S. government entity.

Image: The Chinese Coast Guard.

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Ryan Martinson · November 4, 2024

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

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

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